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.
A sort of murmur ran through the men: acknowledgment and satisfaction. Jamie swallowed, a taste of bile in his mouth.
“There’s more of ’em, but they’re trapped up there.” Cleveland put the sense of the meeting into words. “Like rats.” And he laughed and stamped a large boot as though crushing a rat into bloody mush.
Likely what he does for fun, Jamie thought. He cleared his throat and spat into the dead leaves.
It took no more than a few minutes to sort out whose men should take which direction. Jamie’s band would go with Campbell and several others, and he went back to gather the men and tell them how it would be.
ROGER HAD BEEN told off to mind me—or, as Jamie put it more politely, to wait until the attackers reached the saddle of the mountain.
“Ye’ll do most good comin’ in when folk will need ye most,” he’d said to us both, in the firm tone that meant he expected to be obeyed. My face must have expressed what I was thinking, for he glanced at me, smiled involuntarily, and looked down.
“Look after her, Roger Mac,” he said, then cupped my face in his hands and kissed me, briefly. His hands and face were pulsing with heat and I felt a sudden coolness when his touch left my skin.
“Tha gràdh agam ort, mo chridhe,” he said, and was gone.
Roger and I looked at each other with a perfect understanding.
“He told you, didn’t he?” I said, watching him disappear upward into the brush. “About Frank’s book?”
“Yes. Don’t worry. I’m going after him.”
The brush above was crackling and snapping as though the mountain was on fire. I could see men flickering through the leaves and trunks, reckless and purposeful. It was happening.
“The curse has come upon me, said the Lady of Shalott.” I hadn’t thought I’d spoken aloud, until I saw Roger’s startled look. Whatever he might have said, though, was drowned by William Campbell’s shout.
“Whoop, boys, whoop! Shout like the devil and fight like hell!”
The mountainside erupted and a panicked squirrel leapt from a branch above me and hit the ground running, leaving a spray of moist droppings behind it.
Roger did the same—minus the droppings—climbing as fast as he could through the trees on the slope, grabbing branches to help himself along.
I saw William Campbell, a little below where I stood, still mounted on his big black horse. He saw me, too, and shouted, but I didn’t listen and I didn’t stop, but hitched up my skirts and ran. Whatever happened to Jamie in the next little while, I was going to be there.
“YE’LL HELP NOBODY if ye’re dead, and ye may be useful if ye’re not. Ye may be God’s henchman, but ye’ll follow my orders for now. Stay here until it’s time.”
Jamie had clapped him on the shoulder, grinning, then turned on his heel and shouted to his men that it was time. Jamie had given Roger two decent pistols, in holsters, with a cartridge box and powder horn. And a large, hand-carved wooden cross on a leather thong, which he’d dropped over Roger’s head last thing.
“So nobody will shoot ye,” he’d said. “Not from the front, anyway.”
Claire, tense and worried, had smiled involuntarily, seeing the cross, then handed Roger a sloshing canteen.
“Water,” she said, “with a bit of whisky and honey in. Jamie says there’s no water on the summit.”
The men had been ready; they swarmed out of the trees and bushes at once, bristling with guns. Faces sweaty and gleaming under their hats, teeth showing, eager for the fight. Roger felt that eagerness hum briefly in his own blood, but his part in this fight would be later, among the fallen, and the memory of the battlefield at Savannah chilled his heart, despite the heat of the day.
To his surprise, though, the men were crowding up together before him, taking their hats off, expectant looks on their faces. Jamie appeared suddenly beside him.
“Bless us before the battle, a mhinistear, if ye will,” he said respectfully, and took off his own hat, holding it to his breast.
Jesus. What on earth …
“Dear Lord,” he started, with not the faintest notion what might come next, but a few words showed up, and then a few more. “Protect us, we pray, O Lord, and be with us this day in battle. Grant us mercy in our extremities and grant us the grace to show mercy where we can. Amen. Amen,” he repeated more strongly, and the men murmured, “Amen,” and put their hats back on.
Jamie raised his rifle overhead and shouted, “To Colonel Campbell! At the quick-march!” The militia drew together with a growl of satisfaction and set off at once toward Colonel Campbell, who sat his black gelding on the rough track at the base of the mountain. Jamie looked after them, then turned suddenly and pressed his hand over the cross on Roger’s breast.
“Pray for me,” he said in a low voice, and then was gone.
146
The Curse Is Come upon Me
THE SHOOTING STARTED before I had made it a hundred feet up the hill, slipping on dead leaves and grabbing branches to save myself falling. Panicked, I whirled round and ran downhill but slipped almost at once, tripped on a rock and tobogganed a few feet on my stomach, arms flung out.
I slammed into a sapling of some sort; it bent and I rolled over it, ending flat on my back. I lay frozen for a moment, gasping for breath, hearing the battle begin in earnest.
Then I turned over, got to my hands and knees, and started crawling up the mountain.
IT WAS FAST and it was fierce.
Frank Randall had described it as a “just fight,” and he wasna wrong about that, though maybe he hadn’t been thinking about wringing with sweat and breathing air full of gun smoke.
He gave a sharp whistle, and the few of his men in hearing ran to his side.
“We’ll go up, but go canny,” he said, shouting over the crack of the guns. “The Provincials have bayonets, and they’ll use ’em. If they do, fall away to the side. Come back up somewhere else.”
Nods and they were pushing upward, pausing every few feet to fire and reload, dodge to another tree, and do it again. It wasn’t only gun smoke now, but the smell of battered trees, sap, and burning wood. It wasn’t bayonets yet.
I’D HAD TO stop, a hundred feet lower than the summit. I stood plastered against a big walnut tree, eyes closed, holding on hard. A ball slammed into the trunk just above my hand and I jerked my arms back in panic. More balls were humming through the trees, shredding leaves, making sharp little pocks! as they struck wood. Occasional brief cries and grunts nearby indicated that flesh was being struck, as well.
I’d dug my fingers so hard into the bark that sharp bits were wedged under my nails, but I was much too scared to worry about it. They’d seen me move; an instant later, shots struck the tree in a fusillade that sent bark and wood chips flying; they stung my face and flew into my eyes. I pressed hard to the tree, eyes shut tight and watering, using all my strength not to run downhill, shrieking. I was shaking everywhere and couldn’t tell if it was sweat or urine running down my legs and didn’t care.
It seemed to go on for a very long time. I could hear my heart, booming in my ears, and clung to the sound. I was scared—very scared—but no longer panicked. My heart was still beating; I hadn’t been shot.