Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone
- Автор: Гэблдон Диана
- Серия: Outlander #9
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Delacorte Press
- ISBN: 978-1-473-51900-8
- Жанр: Исторические приключения
Электронная книга - «Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone». Краткое содержание книги:
The past may seem the safest place to be . . . but it is the most dangerous time to be alive. . . .
Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same. It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser’s Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible. Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell’s teakettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his tenants are split and it won’t be long until the war is on his doorstep. Brianna and Roger have their own worry: that the dangers that provoked their escape from the twentieth century might catch up to them. Sometimes they question whether risking the perils of the 1700s—among them disease, starvation, and an impending war—was indeed the safer choice for their family. Not so far away, young William Ransom is still coming to terms with the discovery of his true father’s identity—and thus his own—and Lord John Grey has reconciliations to make, and dangers to meet . . . on his son’s behalf, and his own. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary War creeps ever closer to Fraser’s Ridge. And with the family finally together, Jamie and Claire have more at stake than ever before.
“Why—” The captain glanced at his mother, then drew himself up, chin set. “Yes, sir. We should be most obliged to you.”
Brianna saw Mrs. Cunningham’s lips shaped to say “Phut!” again, but Roger hastily forestalled her, raising his hands slightly and bowing his head in benediction.
“May God bless the dwelling,
Each stone, and beam, and stave,
All food, and drink, and clothing.
May health of men be always here.”
“Good day to ye, sir, madam,” he added quickly, and, bowing, grabbed Brianna’s hand. She hadn’t time to say anything—just as well, she thought—but smiled and nodded to the basilisk as they backed out of the door.
“So now we know what Blue Light means,” she said, casting a ginger glance behind them as they reached the end of the path. “As Mama says … Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!”
“Apt,” Roger said, laughing.
“Was that a Hogmanay prayer?” she asked. “It sounded kind of familiar, but I wasn’t sure …”
“It is—and a house-blessing. Ye’ve heard your da say it a few times, but he does it in the Gaelic. The Cunninghams are educated Lowlanders, from their accent; if I’d tried the Gaelic version, Mrs. C. might well have thought I was trying to put a spell on them.”
“Weren’t you?” She said it lightly, but he turned his head to her, surprised.
“Well … in a way, I suppose so,” he said slowly, but then smiled. “Highland charms and prayers often aren’t distinguishable from each other. But I think if you address God directly, then it’s probably a prayer, rather than witchcraft.”
She glanced over her shoulder once more, with the feeling that Mrs. Cunningham’s eyes were burning a hole through the door of the cabin, watching their retreat.
“Do Presbyterians believe in exorcism?” she asked.
“No, we don’t,” he said, though he also looked back. “My father—the Reverend, I mean—did tell me, though, that when you go visiting, you should never leave a house without offering a blessing of some kind.” He held back a springy oak branch so she could duck beneath it. “He did add that it might keep things from following you home—but I think he was joking.”
I WAS WORKING my way down the creek bank, collecting leeches, watercress, and anything else that looked either edible or useful, when I heard a distant sound of wagon wheels.
Thinking that this might be the tinker Jo Beardsley had mentioned to Germain, I hastily shook down my skirts, shoved my feet back into my sandals, and hurried toward the wagon trace, where the rumbling of wheels had been suddenly replaced by a good deal of bad language.
This proved to be coming from a very large man, who was excoriating his mules, the wagon, and the wheel that had just hit a rock and sprung its iron tyre. He lacked Jamie’s creativity in cursing but was making up for it in volume.
“May I help you, sir?” I asked, seizing a moment when he’d paused for breath.
He swung round, astonished.
“Where the devil did you come from?” he asked.
I gestured toward the trees behind me, and repeated, “Do you need help?” Closer to the wagon, it was apparent that he wasn’t the tinker. The wagon—drawn by two very large mules—held a variety of things, but not iron pans and hair ribbons. There were half a dozen muskets lying in the wagon bed, together with a small collection of swords, scythes, and staves. A few small barrels that might be salt fish or pork—and one that was most certainly gunpowder, both from its markings and from the faint scent of charcoal tinged with sulfur and urine.
My insides contracted.
“Is this Fraser’s Ridge?” the man demanded, looking at the woods around us. We were some way below the clearing where the Higginses’ cabin stood, and there was no sign of habitation other than the wagon trace, which was quite overgrown.
“It is,” I said, there being no point in lying. “Do you have business here?”
He looked sharply at me, and focused on me for the first time.
“My business is my own,” he said, though not impolitely. “I’m looking for Jamie Fraser.”
“I’m Mrs. Fraser,” I said, folding my arms. “His business is mine.”
His face flushed and he glowered at me, as though thinking I was practicing upon him, but I gave him stare for stare and after a moment, he gave a sort of barking laugh and relaxed.
“Will you fetch your husband, then, or will I come and find him?”
“Whom shall I say is calling?” I asked, not moving.
“Benjamin Cleveland,” he said, swelling a bit with a sense of his own importance. “He’ll know the name.”
JAMIE LAID THE last brick in the course and trimmed the mortar with a small feeling of satisfaction—mingled with a mild dismay at the realization that tomorrow’s work on the chimney would need to be done with a ladder; this was as high as he could reach, without. His shoulders were complaining; the thought of his knees joining in made him stretch his back and sigh.
Aye, well, maybe my bonnie lass can help wi’ that. Brianna had said something to him the first night they’d come. She’d followed him through the building site, the two of them stumbling over rocks and strings and laughing as though they were drunk, bumping shoulders and grasping elbows to keep their balance in the dark. Each fleeting touch a spark that warmed him.
“I can make a movable frame with a pulley.” That’s what she’d said, putting a hand on the half-built chimney. “We can hoist up a bucket of bricks you can reach from the ladder.”
“We,” he said softly, smiling to himself. Then looked over his shoulder, self-conscious, lest the men carrying logs should have heard him. But they’d laid down the last one and paused for refreshment—Amy Higgins and Fanny had brought beer, and he dropped the trowel in a bucket of water and went to join them. Just before he reached the edge of the foundation, though, his eye caught a flicker of movement at the head of the wagon road, and the next instant Claire came into sight, dwarfed by the man who walked beside her.
“A Naoimh Micheal Àirdaingeal, dìon sinn anns an àm a’ chatha,” he said under his breath. He didn’t know the man, but there was something about him beyond his size that made the hairs rise on Jamie’s neck.
He glanced at his helpers for the day—seven men: Bobby Higgins, three of his Ardsmuir men, the others tenants he didn’t yet know well. And Fanny, who had brought them lunch.
None of the men had noticed the man making his way across the clearing—but Fanny had; she frowned and then looked quickly toward Jamie. He nodded to her, reassuring, and her face relaxed, though she kept glancing back down the hill, even as she answered something one of the men said to her.
Jamie stepped over the foundation. He had a feeling that he’d have liked to meet the fellow whilst standing in his own house with men at his back, but he had a stronger feeling that he wanted to get between the man and Claire.
She was smiling politely at the man as he talked, but he could see the wariness plain in her face. She looked up, though, and saw him coming. Relief bloomed in her, and he felt an answering thrum in his chest. He walked toward them, not smiling, but looking pleasant, at least.
“General Fraser?” said the man, looking him up and down with interest. Aye, well, that explained Claire’s wariness.
“Not anymore,” he said, still pleasant, and put out a hand. “Jamie Fraser, your servant, sir.”
“Yours, sir. Benjamin Cleveland.” A sweaty hand substantially bigger than his own grasped him and squeezed in a manner indicating that the owner thought he could have hurt him, had he wanted to.