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.
“There’s nay rush about it, is there? No one’s going to confuse him wi’ any other bairn on the Ridge.” No one would. Rachel’s wee man had the best lungs Jamie had ever heard, and seldom stopped using them. Right now, he didn’t seem upset, just bellowing for the fun of it.
“I’ll go meet them,” he said. “I want to talk to Jenny before she sees Roger Mac.”
Claire’s face went blank for an instant and then she turned her head quickly toward the trees, where Jamie saw Brianna and Roger Mac standing in close conversation. Is he telling her what he told me? he wondered, with a resurgence of the “falling off a staircase” feeling in his wame.
“Goodness,” Claire said, a look of intense interest coming into her eyes like the one she had when she saw the tinker’s anal warts that looked like a fleshy cauliflower growing out of his bum. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well, I dinna think she’ll faint, because she never does,” he said. “But ye might have a dram of something ready, just in case.”
AS IT WAS, his sister wasn’t with Ian and Rachel; Rachel said Jenny had gone aside to thig a wee bit of mother of vinegar from Morag MacAuley, but would be down right after them. That was a bit of luck, and he thanked her, pausing to rub the top of Oggy’s head briskly with his palm, an attention that usually made the bairn laugh. It did this time, too, and he set off up the trail feeling just that wee bit more settled in himself.
He found Jenny sitting on a stump beside the trail, shaking a stone out of her shoe. She heard his step and, looking up to see him, leapt to her feet and flung herself into his arms, ignoring the shoe.
“Jamie, a chuisle! Your bonnie lass! I’m fit to burst wi’ joy for ye!” She let go of his ribs and looked up, eyes brimming, and he felt his own sting, too, though he couldn’t help laughing through it, her joy reminding him of his own.
“Aye, me, too,” he said. He wiped his eyes briefly on his sleeve and set her cap straight for her. “How long ago was it that ye met Brianna? She said she’d gone to Lallybroch looking for her mother and me. And met you and Ian and all. And Laoghaire,” he added, remembering.
Jenny crossed herself at mention of the name, and laughed, too.
“Blessed Mother, the look on Laoghaire’s face when she saw the lass! And then the one when she tried to claim Mam’s pearls and Brianna shut her up like a writing desk!”
“Did she?” He regretted not seeing that, but then forgot it, recalling why he’d come looking for Jenny.
“Brianna’s man,” he said to the top of her head as she bent to put her shoe back on. “Roger MacKenzie.”
“Aye, what sort of man is he, then? Ye said ye liked him fine, in your letters.”
“I still do,” he assured her. “It’s just … d’ye recall when Claire and I came to Scotland to bury Simon the General at Balnain?”
“I’m no likely to forget it,” she said, her face darkening. Nor would she; that had been during Ian’s long dying, a terrible time for them all, but worst by far for her. He hated to bring it back to her, even for a moment, but couldn’t think how else to begin.
“Ye’ll remember, then, what Claire told ye all—about … where she came from.”
Jenny looked blankly at him, her mind clearly still shadowed by memories, but then she blinked, frowning.
“Aye …” she said cautiously. “Some taradiddle about stone circles and faeries, as I recall.”
“Aye, that’s the bit. Now—can ye maybe cast your mind back a bit further, to—to the time I was away in Paris, just before Da died?”
“I can,” she said tersely, glaring up at him. “But I dinna want to. Why are ye plaguing me wi’ that, of all things?”
He patted the air with his palm, urging her to hear him out.
“There was a man came to Lallybroch, looking for his kidnapped son. A dark-haired man, called Roger MacKenzie, from Lochalsh, he said. Do ye remember him?”
The sun was coming down, but there was plenty of light left to show him the blood draining from her face. She swallowed visibly and nodded, once.
“His wee lad was named Jeremiah,” she said. “I remember, because Da got a wee bawbee sent him from the garrison commander”—her lips compressed, and he kent she was thinking of Jack Randall—“and when the dark-haired man came back, Da gave it to him, and I heard Mr. MacKenzie talking to his friend later, and saying that it must have belonged to his own father, who was named Jeremiah, like … Jemmy. His son’s name was Jeremiah and they called him Jemmy.” She stopped talking and stared at him, her eyes round as three-penny bits. “Ye’re tellin’ me your grandson is that Jemmy, and the dark-haired man is …”
“I am,” he said, and let his breath out.
She sat down again, very slowly.
He let her alone, remembering all too well the mix of incredulity, bewilderment, and fear that he’d felt when Claire, battered and hysterical after he’d rescued her from the witch trial in Cranesmuir, had finally told him what she was.
He also remembered vividly what he’d said at the time. “It would ha’ been easier if ye’d only been a witch.” That made him smile, and he squatted down in front of his sister.
“Aye, I ken,” he said to her. “But it’s no really different than if they’d come from … Spain, maybe. Or Timbuktu, say.”
She darted a sharp look at him and snorted, but her hands—clenched in her lap—relaxed.
“So the way of it is that Roger Mac and Brianna were each of them at Lallybroch—then. Ye met Brianna when she came to find us. But ye’d met Roger Mac years earlier, looking for his wee lad. Brianna came again a bit later wi’ the bairns, looking for Roger. Ye didna meet her then, but she saw Da.”
He paused for a moment, waiting. Jenny’s look changed suddenly and she sat up straighter.
“She met Da? But he was already dead …” Her voice trailed off as she tried to juggle it all in her head.
“She did,” he said, and swallowed the lump in his throat. “And Roger Mac spent some time with Da, too, searching. He—told me things about Da. See … for the two o’ them, it was nay more than a few months ago that they saw him,” he said softly, and took her hand, holding it tight. “To hear Roger Mac speak of him so—it was as though Da stood beside me.”
She let out her breath in a small sob, and squeezed his hand tight between her own. The tears were in her eyes again, but she wasn’t afraid, and she blinked them back, sniffing.
“It’s maybe easier if ye think of it as a miracle,” he said, trying to be helpful. “I mean—it is, no?”
She gave him a look, took out a hankie, and blew her nose.
“Fag mi,” she said. Don’t try me.
“Come,” he said, and stood, pulling her up. “Ye’ve a new nephew to meet. Again.”
ROGER SAW JAMIE first, stepping out from the shadow of the chimney, a shadow himself, dark against dark—and behind him, another shadow, so insubstantial that for a moment he wasn’t sure she was there at all. Then he found himself on his feet, moving to meet her on the edge of the firelight, the flicker of the flames behind him bright in her eyes and the lovely girl he had known shining out at him.
“Miss Fraser,” he said softly, and took her hand in both of his, light-boned and firm as a bird’s foot. “Well met.”
She breathed a laugh, lines creasing round her eyes.
“Last time we met,” she said, “I thought I’d like it if ye kissed my hand, but ye didn’t.”
He could see the rapid beat of her pulse at the side of her throat, but her hand was steady in his, and he raised it and kissed it with a tenderness that was not at all assumed.