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.
The produce fleet—fishermen and farmers bringing fruit and vegetables from upriver—consisted mostly of small boats, and thus docks near to Bay Street tended to be narrow and close together. The docks owned by the warehouses, though, were stout, wide affairs down which barrows could be driven, barrels rolled, and crates hauled with minimal danger of falling into the water. The big ships that sailed foreign seas anchored either by the warehouse docks or out in the river, if there was a great deal of ship traffic.
There was a great deal of such traffic at the moment, and Grey stopped to admire it; a beautiful sight, with tall masts swaying and sun glinting off the wings of the seabirds circling the ships. He liked ships of all sorts, though the sight of them always made him think of one James Fraser, who disliked ships to the point of nearly dying of seasickness every time he went aboard one. He smiled, the memory of an eventful Channel crossing with the Scotsman many years ago being now distant enough as to be entertaining.
He’d kept away from the easternmost dock, not being a complete fool. He bought some apples from a seller on one of the smaller docks, taking the opportunity to look over at the larger ships.
“What’s that Indiaman, anchored out in the channel?” he asked the apple seller, gesturing briefly at a large ship clearly capable of crossing the Atlantic. It was flying no flag he recognized, though.
“Oh,” she said, having glanced indifferently over her shoulder. “Castle, it’s called. No, I tell a lie, it’s Palace, that’s it.”
Well, that was one fact noted: a ship named Pallas did exist and was an Atlantic sailor. Whether Tom Byrd was or ever had been aboard her was another question, but—
“Sir? Sir!” The repetition jerked him from his thoughts to see a runty sailor with a rusty beard before him. “There’s summat on your hat, sir,” he said, pointing upward.
Seagulls instantly in mind, Grey clapped a hand over his head, then seized the hat and brought it down for inspection. Suddenly his vision went dark and something light tickled his face. Then something exploded in his head and everything went dark.
HE CAME ROUND with a sharp ache in the back of his head and a strong urge to vomit. He attempted to roll onto his side in order to do so, but discovered that his arms were bound to his sides. There was also a burlap sack over his head, and this decided him not to vomit, even though a dizzy sense of being rocked back and forth made the urge to do so still more urgent.
Shit. It’s a boat. Now he heard the splash of oars and the grunt of whoever was wielding them, and smelled the fecund scent of the distant marshes. It wasn’t a big boat; he’d been doubled up and stuffed into a small space between the seats. His knees were wet.
Before he could congratulate himself on the acuity of his suspicions or berate himself for stupidity in not paying sufficient attention to them, the sound of the oars ceased, and the next moment the boat came to a stop with a thump that jarred his throbbing head. More rocking and strong hands seized him and stood him up. A shout from whoever was holding him, and a rope dropped from above, hitting his shoulder. The kidnapper—was there only one?—wrapped this round his middle and knotted it, then shouted, “Heave away!” and he was jerked into the air and hauled up like a side of beef.
Hands pulled him aboard and stood him up again, but he had no balance with his arms bound and fell to his knees. The sack was jerked off his head, and the stab of sunlight into his eyes was too much. He threw up on the shoes of the man who stood before him, then collapsed gently onto his side and closed his eyes in hopes of finding equilibrium.
There was a certain amount of cursing and colloquy going on above him, but at the moment he didn’t care, as long as none of it resulted in his being obliged to stand up again.
Then he heard a voice he recognized.
“For God’s sake, untie him,” it said impatiently. “What happened to him?”
He cracked one eyelid open. His ears had not betrayed him, but his eyes had their doubts; everything overhead appeared in motion—masts, sails, clouds, sun, faces were all swirling in a dizzying fashion that made him want to vomit again.
“Someone hit me. On the head,” he said, closing one eye in hopes of stopping the maypole dance. Rather surprisingly, it did, and the blandly good-looking face of Ezekiel Richardson wavered into focus.
“My apologies,” Richardson said, and reaching down, pulled him to his feet and held him by the elbows while someone undid the ropes. “I told them to bring you, but I didn’t think to specify the means. Come below and sit down; I imagine you could use a drink.”
HE RINSED HIS mouth with brandy and spat into a bowl, then sat back and sipped a little, cautiously.
They sat in what was plainly the captain’s great cabin, for the stern windows rose in a blaze of scintillant light reflected from the river below. It made him queasy to look at it for more than a few seconds, but he was beginning to feel better.
“I really do apologize,” Richardson said, and sounded as though he meant it. “I have no personal animus against you at all, and if I could have managed this without involving you, I would have.”
Grey shifted his gaze reluctantly to Richardson, who wore the uniform of a British infantry major.
“I have heard of double agents, and met them, too,” he said, more or less politely. “But damned if I’ve seen one less able to make up his mind. Would you care to tell me which side you’re really on?”
He thought the expression on Richardson’s face was meant to be a smile, but it wasn’t altogether succeeding.
“That,” Richardson said, “is not as simple a question as you might think.”
“Well, it’s as good a question as you’re likely to get, under the circumstances.” Grey closed his eyes and lifted the glass under his nose; maybe inhaling brandy fumes would allay the headache without making him drunk. He thought it might be dangerous to be drunk in Richardson’s company.
“Let me ask you one, then.” Richardson was sitting in the captain’s chair; it creaked as he leaned forward. “When I asked you whether you had any personal interest in Claire Fraser, you replied that you didn’t, and then promptly married her. Why did you do that?”
That made John open his eyes. Richardson had spoken mildly, but was regarding him with the air of a very patient cat sat outside a mousehole. John touched the back of his head gingerly, then looked at his fingers. Yes, he was bleeding, but not heavily.
“I could tell you that it’s none of your business,” he said, wiping his fingers on his breeches. “But as it is, there’s no reason for secrecy. You had threatened to have the lady arrested for sedition. She was the widow of a good friend. It seemed to me that keeping her out of your clutches was perhaps the last office I could perform for Jamie Fraser.”
Richardson nodded.
“Just so,” he said. “A gallant gesture, my lord.” He seemed slightly amused, though it was hard to tell. “I understand that the marriage was necessarily of short duration, owing to Mr. Fraser’s unexpected return from a watery grave. But did the lady tell you, in some exchange of marital confidences, anything regarding her antecedents?”
“No,” Grey said, without hesitation.
“That seems rather remarkable,” Richardson said, “though given what those antecedents are, perhaps the lady’s reticence was justified.”
A ripple of unease crept down the back of Grey’s neck—or perhaps it was just a dribble of blood, he thought. Antecedents, my arse. He leaned back a little, careful of his tender head, and gave Richardson what he hoped was an inscrutable stare.