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.
126
When I Go to Sleep at Night, I Die
THE MACKENZIES’ ROOM WAS quiet; the house had gone to bed, and even Adso, who had wandered in and curled up on Brianna’s lap an hour ago, was snoring in a sort of syncopated purr interrupted by small mirp! noises as he spotted dream-mice. The noise had roused Roger from his doze; he lay on his side, watching his wife through a pleasant haze of the sleep that had left him, but not gone far.
As with all redheads, the color of her hair depended on the light in which one saw her: brown in shadow, blazing in sunlight, and by the light of a low-burning fire, a fall of changing color, sparked with threads of gold. She was writing, slowly, lifting her quill now and then to frown at the page in search of a word, a thought. Adso stirred, yawned, and began to knead her thighs and belly, claws prickling through her shift and wrapper. She hissed through her teeth and pushed back from the table.
“You leave something to be desired as a muse,” she whispered to the cat, putting down her quill and carefully detaching his claws. She scooped him up, rose, and took him to the bed where Roger lay, curled up in the bedclothes, eyes almost closed. She set Adso down at the foot of the bed and stood back to watch. The cat stretched luxuriously, then—without opening his own eyes—oozed slowly up the bed and curled into the spot between Roger’s face and shoulder, purring loudly.
Roger slid a hand under Adso, picked him up, and dropped him unceremoniously onto the floor.
“Are ye coming to bed soon?” he asked sleepily, brushing cat hairs away from his mouth.
“Right now,” she assured him. She shrugged out of her wrapper and tossed it on the floor, where Adso, who had been blinking grouchily, promptly took possession of the nice warm nest thus provided and settled down on it, eyes going back to blissful slits. Brianna blew the candle out; Roger heard the tiny spatter of wax droplets on the tabletop.
“That cat sounds like a motorboat. Why is he in here, anyway? Oughtn’t he to be out in the barn hunting vermin?” Roger lifted the quilts and squirmed back, welcoming her in. It had rained earlier and the night chill of her was delicious. She settled solidly into his arms with a shudder of relaxation, and his hand settled contentedly on her lovely, blooming belly.
“Mama says cats are attracted to people working, so they can get in the way. I guess I’m the only person in the house who was doing anything at this hour.”
“Mmm.” He breathed near her ear. “Ye smell like ink, so ye must have been writing, not drawing. Letters?”
“Nooo … just, you know, thoughts. Maybe something for the kids’ book, maybe not.” She was trying to sound casual, but mention of the Practical Guide for Time Travelers brought him to full wakefulness.
“Oh?” he said, cautious. “Do I want to know?”
“Probably not,” she said frankly, “but I’d like to tell you about it. It could wait until morning, though …”
“As if something like coherent conversation happens in the morning around here,” he said, and rolled onto his back, yawning. “All right, tell me.”
“Well … you remember I was thinking about the problem of mass.”
“Dimly, yes. I don’t recall what you decided, though.”
“I didn’t,” she said frankly. “I just don’t know enough—and there are a lot of problems with the hypothesis that I don’t have a way to resolve. But it made me think about what mass is.”
“Mmh.” His eyes were closed, but his hand slid down her back and cupped her behind, warm and substantial. He jiggled it, gently. “There’s some. I’m pretty sure that’s mass.”
“Yes. So’s that.” She slid a hand down between them and cupped his testicles. Lightly, but it made him open his eyes.
“Point taken,” he said, and moved his hand to the small of her back. “So?”
“What do you think happens to us when we die?”
That woke him completely, though it took a moment to assemble words.
“When we die,” he said slowly. “If you mean in terms of our souls, the basic truth is that we don’t know, but we do have faith that we’ll go on existing, and we have a pretty good reason for having said faith. But that’s not what you mean, is it?”
“No. I mean bodies. Physically.”
He changed metaphysical gears, not without a small sense of clashing and grinding.
“You mean something other than just … er … decay?”
“Well, no, that is what I mean—but kind of … beyond rotting.”
He rolled onto his side and she followed, nestling under his chin, much like Adso, but with better-smelling hair.
“Beyond rotting … this is the kind of thing that keeps you up at night? God, what kind of dreams do you have? You’re the scientist here, but so far as I know, the process just goes on … what, dissolving?”
“Dissolution. Yes, exactly.”
“You know, normal people talk about sex in bed, don’t they?”
“Most of them probably talk about what horrible thing their child did during the day, the price of tobacco, or what to do about the sick cow. If they can stay awake. Anyway—I only had the required physics classes in college, so this is pretty basic and it may be completely wrong, and—”
“And nobody will ever be able to prove it one way or the other, so let’s not trouble about that part,” he suggested.
“Good thought. And speaking of smelling …” She turned her head and snuffled gently at his neck. “You smell like gunpowder. You haven’t been hunting, have you?” Her voice held a certain amount of incredulity. Not without reason, but he was slightly nettled.
“I have not. Your da asked me to show a’ chraobh àrd how to load his new musket and fire it without knocking his teeth out.”
“Cyrus Crombie?” she said. “Why? Da isn’t conscripting him into his gang, is he?”
“I believe ‘partisan band’ is the proper term,” Roger said primly. “And no. Hiram asked Jamie to take the boy on and teach him to fight—with a gun and dirk, that is. He said if it was a matter of fists, any fisherman could lay a landsman out like a flatfish without half trying—and he’s probably right—but none of the Thurso folk had ever even held a gun before coming here, and most of them still haven’t. They fish, and snare, and trade for meat.”
“Mm. Do you think Hiram made him, or was it Cyrus’s own idea?”
“The latter. He’s courting Frances—in his own inimitable way—but he knows he hasn’t a chance unless your da thinks he’ll make her a good husband. So he means to prove his mettle.”
“How old is he?” Brianna asked, a note of concern in her voice.
“Sixteen, I think,” Roger said. “Old enough to fight, so far as that goes.”
“So far as that goes,” she muttered, huffing a little under her breath, and he knew why.
“Jemmy won’t be old enough to ride with them before the war’s over,” he assured her. “No matter how good he is with a gun.”
“Great. So he can stay and guard the ramparts here with me, Rachel, and Aunt Jenny and the Sachem, while the partisan band—and Mama, because she won’t let Da go alone—and probably you—go roaming the countryside, getting their asses shot off.”
“As you were saying about your physics class …?”
“Oh.” She paused to regather her thoughts, a small soft frown between her brows. “Well. You know all about atoms and electrons and that sort of thing?”