Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

This trench ran behind the beehives. There were eleven hives now: One swarm had divided before Kings Mountain and I had been in time to catch a departing new queen and install her in a new hive with her followers, and Young Ian had found a wild swarm and gone with Rachel and Jenny to capture them and bring them back. All of them had survived the winter, and a few bees would now and then come out and cruise slowly round the garden before going back in. Jamie looked cautiously behind him, to make sure he wouldn’t knock against the hives with his spade, then glanced at me in surprise.

“I hear them!” he said. “Or at least I think I do …” He advanced cautiously, putting his ear close to the woven straw of the skep.

“Yes, you do,” I said, amused at his expression. “Honeybees don’t die in the winter and they don’t really hibernate, either—so long as they have enough honey stored up to last them ’til spring. They cluster together and shiver to generate warmth, but otherwise they just eat and … sleep, I suppose.”

“I can think o’ worse ways to pass the winter,” he said, and smiled. “Holdin’ your feet.”

The interesting question as to just what parts of him I would like to hold while sleeping was obliged to wait, as we heard the rustlings and shuffle of heavy footsteps coming up the path.

I wasn’t surprised to see John Quincy Myers—he routinely stopped at Fraser’s Ridge when he came back from the Cherokee villages where he usually spent the winter—but I was very pleased.

“How are you?” I asked, standing back to look up at him after greetings and embraces had been exchanged. He had apparently left his pack at the house and looked much as usual, but thin from the winter, like everyone else.

“Sprightly, Missus, sprightly,” he said, giving me a wide smile that had one or two fewer teeth than it had when last seen. “And I see your bees are thrivin’, too.”

“Yes, they seem to be—and thank you again for giving them to me. We were just talking about what bees do in the winter. Eat and sleep, I imagine.”

“Oh, I’m sure they do that,” he said, and reached delicately to put his hand on one of the hives. He smiled, feeling the faint hum on his skin. “But I think they pass the time much as we do in the cold, tellin’ each other stories through the long nights.”

Jamie laughed at that, but came cautiously closer, putting his hand on one of the hives as well. “What sorts of stories d’ye think bees tell, a charaid?”

“Tales of bears and flowers, I reckon. Though a queen maybe dreams of other things.”

“If you mean laying thousands of eggs, that sounds more like a nightmare,” I said. John Quincy laughed, but tilted his head to and fro in equivocation.

“It’s not for a man to say, but I think she maybe dreams of flyin’ free and high with a hundred drones in a cloud o’ mad desire. Oh—” He stopped, feeling in his pouch. “I ’most forgot, Missus. I’ve summat here for you.” He drew out a small package, wrapped in a piece of grimy pink calico.

“Who is it from?” I asked, taking it. It was light, no more than a few ounces, and something crackled faintly inside.

“That, I don’t rightly know, Missus Claire,” he said. “’Twas given me by a woman keeps a tavern down near Charlotte, in January. She said it was a black man left it, sayin’ it was for the conjure-woman what lived at Fraser’s Ridge, and would she kindly pass it on when someone was to be headin’ up this way. I do suppose he meant you,” he added with a smile. “Ain’t that many conjure-women in this neck o’ the woods.”

Puzzled, I opened the little parcel to find a sheet of thick paper, carefully folded around a hard object. I unfolded it and a rock the size of a hen’s egg—and roughly the same shape—fell out into my hand. It was a mottled gray in color, with white and green splotches. It was smooth and felt remarkably warm, considering the chilliness of the air. I handed it to Jamie and unfolded the large sheet of paper it had been wrapped in. The note was written with quill and ink, the writing a little straggly but quite legible.

I have left the army and returned to my home. My grandmother sends this for you, in thanks. It is a bluestone from an old place and she says it will heal sickness of spirit and of body.

I read this, astonished, and was about to tell Jamie that it must be from Corporal—evidently now ex-Corporal—Sipio Jackson, when he suddenly reached over and took the paper out of my hand.

“A Mhoire Mhàthair!”

John Quincy craned his neck to see, interested.

“I be damned,” he said. “That there’s your name, ain’t it, Jamie?”

It was substantially battered; it was torn at one corner, rubbed and dirty, some of the ink had evidently got wet and run, and the red wax seal had fallen off, leaving a round red stain behind—but there was no doubt at all what it was.