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.
Weber was staring down at the planks of the quay, brow slightly furrowed. William cleared his throat.
“Would you care for a drink?” he asked politely, and nodded toward an open-fronted shanty on the shore, where a couple of large barrels and the presence of a sailor lying on the ground insensible probably indicated an establishment that sold liquor.
“Ich spreche kein Englisch,” the man said, spreading his hands in polite apology.
“Keine Sorge,” William said, bowing. “Ich spreche Deutsch.” He might have informed Herr Weber that his breeches were on fire, rather than making a simple statement to the effect that he, William, spoke German. Alarm convulsed the nutcracker’s features and he turned wildly, looking for Denys, who had by now disappeared.
William, afraid that Weber was about to flee, grasped him by the arm. This resulted in a sharp cry and a blow to William’s stomach. Considering Weber’s size, it wasn’t a bad try, but William grunted at the impact, let go Weber’s arm, grabbed the man by both shoulders, and shook him like a rat.
“Still!” he said. “Ich tue Euch nichts!”
The statement that he meant Weber no harm seemed not to soothe the gentleman, but the shaking at least stopped him struggling to get away. He went limp in William’s grasp and stood gasping.
“What’s going on?” William demanded sharply, in German. He nodded down the quay. “Is that man keeping you prisoner?”
Weber shook his head.
“Nein. Er ist mein Freund.”
“Well, then.” William let go and stepped back, hands spread in token of harmlessness. “Meiner auch.”
Weber nodded warily and straightened his waistcoat, but declined further conversation, resuming his wooden impassiveness. A fine tremble passed through his person at intervals, but his face showed nothing, though he glanced now and then toward the deepening fog at the end of the quay. William could see shapes—mostly masts that poked suddenly out of the mist as the air shifted—and the thick air carried random shouts that sounded eerily distant one moment and startlingly close at hand the next. The fog was deepening, creeping over the quay, and he had a sudden sense of disorientation, as though the world were dissolving under his feet.
And then Denys was suddenly there, with no warning. His face was still anxious but bore a set resolution. He seized Weber’s arm, glanced at William, and said briefly, “Kommt.” William wasted no time in argument, but seized the gentleman’s other arm, and between them, he and Denys rushed the little man into the fog and up a gangplank that suddenly appeared in front of them.
A tall man in a blue coat manifested himself on deck, flanked by two sailors. He looked closely at Denys, nodded, then, catching a glimpse of William, started back as though he’d seen a demon.
“One soldier,” he said sharply to Denys, catching him by the sleeve. “One, they said! Who’s this?”
“I’m—” William began, but Denys kicked him in the ankle. “His friend,” William said, nodding casually at Denys.
“There’s no time for this,” Denys said. He reached into his breast and withdrew a small, fat purse, which he handed over. The captain, for so he must be, William thought, hesitated for a moment, glanced suspiciously at him again, but took it.
The next instant he was hurtling back down the gangplank, propelled by an urgent shove in the back from Denys. He hit the quay staggering, but regained his balance at once and turned to see the ship—it looked like a small brig, from what he could see through the mist—draw back the gangplank like a sucked-in tongue, cast off a final line, and with a rattle of shrouds and a snap of filling sails move slowly away from the quay. In moments, it had disappeared into the grayness.
“What the devil just happened?” he asked. Rather mildly, all things considered. Denys was breathing like he’d run a mile under arms, and the edge of his neckcloth was dark with sweat. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure that the ship had gone, and then turned back to William, his breath beginning to slow.
“Herr Weber has enemies,” he said.
“So does everyone, these days. Who is Herr Weber?”
Denys made a sound that might have been an attempt at a wry laugh. “Well … he’s not Herr Weber, for starters.”
“Are you planning to tell me who he is?” William said impatiently. “Because I’ve got business elsewhere, if you haven’t.”
“Besides looking for a girl, you mean?”
“I mean supper. You can tell me who our recent friend is on the way.”
“HE HAS A few aliases,” Denys said, halfway through a bowl of chowder, thick with clams. “But his name is Haym Salomon. He’s a Jew,” he added.
“And?” William had eaten his own chowder in nothing flat and was wiping the bowl with a chunk of bread. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t think why it should. Salomon. Haym Salomon … It was the word “Jew” that supplied the missing link of memory.
“Is he Polish, by chance?” he asked, and Denys choked on a clam.
“Oh, he is.” William raised a hand toward the barmaid and pointed at his empty bowl with a gesture indicating that he’d like it refilled. “How did he escape being executed in New York?”
Denys coughed, gagged, and coughed explosively, scattering the tabletop with bread crumbs, soup droplets, and a large chunk of clam. William rolled his eyes, but reached for the beer pitcher and refilled their mugs.
Denys waited until the fresh chowder had been brought and his eyes had stopped watering, then leaned over his bowl, speaking in a voice barely loud enough to be heard over the banging of cannikins and blustering talk in the taproom.
“How in God’s name do you come to know that?” he said.
William shrugged. “Something my uncle said. A Polish Jew, and he’d been condemned to death as a spy in New York. He was rather surprised to hear of him alive, and here. So,” he added, taking a dainty spoonful of chowder, “if that’s who your little friend is—and rather plainly he is—then I’m rather wondering just who—or rather, what—you are, these days. Because Herr Weber is plainly not in the employ of His Majesty.”
Denys drank the rest of his beer deliberately, brows knitted as he considered William.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter that you know; he’s already out of reach,” he said at last. He belched slightly, said, “Excuse me,” and poured more beer, while William waited patiently.
“Mr. Salomon is a banker,” Denys said, and having evidently made up his mind to tell William more or less the truth, went on. Born in Poland, Salomon had come to New York as a young man and made a successful career. He had also begun to meddle—very cautiously—in revolutionary politics, arranging various financial transactions for the benefit of the new Congress and the emergent revolution.
“But he wasn’t as cautious as he thought, and the British did catch him and he was indeed condemned to death—but then he got a pardon, though they put him on a hulk in the Hudson and made him teach English to Hessian soldiers for eighteen months.” He took another gulp of beer. “Little did they know that he was urging them all to desert—which a good number of them actually did, apparently.”
“I know,” William said dryly. A group of Hessian deserters had tried to kill him during Monmouth—and came bloody close to doing so, too. If his wretched Scottish cousin hadn’t found him in the bottom of a ravine with his skull cracked … but no need to dwell on that. Not now.