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 cookies!” Smelling the strong scent of incipient scorching, I darted to the oven, snatched the girdle out, and hastily flipped the cookies off onto the Big Plate—the only pottery dish we owned at the moment, but capable of holding anything up to a small turkey.
“Are the cookies okay?” Jem, with a total disregard for his sister’s immediate prospects, hurried over to look.
“Yes,” I assured him. “A bit brown at the edges, but perfectly fine.”
Fanny had come, too, but was less intent on gluttony.
“Will Mr. Fraser whip her?” she whispered, looking anxious.
“No,” Germain assured her. “She’s too little.”
“Oh, no, she’s not,” Jemmy assured him, with a wary glance at his mother, whose face was distinctly flushed, if not quite as red as Mandy’s.
All the children had clustered round me, whether out of interest in cookies or from self-preservation. I lifted an eyebrow at Roger, who went and sat down beside Brianna. I turned my back, to allow a little marital privacy, and sent Fanny and Jem out to fetch the big pitcher of milk, presently hanging in the well—and I did hope none of the local frogs had decided to avail themselves, in defiance of the stone-weighted cloth I’d draped over the pitcher’s mouth.
“I’m sorry, Grannie.” Germain edged close to me, low-voiced. “I didna mean to cause a stramash, truly.”
“I know, sweetheart. Everybody knows, except Mandy. And Grandda will explain it to her.”
“Oh.” He relaxed at once, having total faith in his grandfather’s ability to charm anything from an unbroken horse to a rabid hedgehog.
“Go get the mugs,” I told him. “Everyone will be back soon.”
The tin mugs had been rinsed after dinner and left upside down to dry on the stoop; Germain hurried out, carefully not looking at Bree.
Germain thought she was angry with him, but it was apparent to me that she was upset, not angry. And no wonder, I thought sympathetically. She’d tried so hard, for so long, to keep Jem and Mandy safe—and happy. First, during Roger’s long and harrowing absence, and then the search to find him, the trip through the stones, and the long journey here. Little wonder that her nerves were still on edge. Luckily, Roger’s instincts as a husband were quite good; he had his arm round her and her head resting on his shoulder, and was murmuring things to her, too low for me to catch the words, but the tone of it was love and reassurance, and the lines of her face were smoothing out.
I heard soft voices in the other direction, too, through the open kitchen door—Jamie and Mandy, evidently pointing out stars they liked to each other. I smiled, arranging the cookies on the platter. He probably could charm a rabid hedgehog, I thought.
With his own good instincts, Jamie waited until the mob had reassembled and were eagerly sniffing the warm cookies. Then he carried Mandy back in and deposited her among the other children without comment.
“Thirty-four?” he said, assessing the array at a glance. “One for Oggy, aye?”
“Yes. How do you do that?”
“Och, it’s no difficult, Sassenach.” He leaned over the platter and closed his eyes, inhaling beatifically. “It’s easier than goats and sheep after all—cookies dinna have legs.”
“Legs?” said Fanny, puzzled.
“Oh, aye,” he said, opening his eyes and smiling at her. “To know the number o’ goats ye have, ye just count the legs and divide by four.”
The adult members of the audience groaned, and Germain and Jem, who had learnt division, giggled.
“That—” Fanny began, and then stopped, frowning.
“Sit,” I said briskly. “Jem, pour the milk, please. And how many cookies does each person get then, Mr. Know-it-all?”
“Three!” the boys chorused. A dissenting opinion from Mandy, who thought everyone should have five, was quelled without incident and the whole room relaxed into a quiet orgy of cold, creamy milk and sweet-scented crumbs.
“Now, then,” Jamie said, and paused, carefully brushing crumbs off his shirtfront into his palm and licking them off. “Now, then,” he repeated. “Amanda tells me she can read her book by herself. Will ye maybe read it to us, a leannan?”
“Yes!”
And with only a brief interruption for the wiping of sticky hands and face, she was ensconced once more in her mother’s arms—but this time, the vivid orange book was in her own lap. She opened the cover and glared at her audience.
“Everybody shut up,” she said firmly. “I read.”
THE SURGERY WAS the only room with complete walls, so once the cookie crumbs were all devoured, and Mandy’s book read aloud several times, Ian and his family left for their own cabin and the children lugged their pallets down the rudimentary hallway, excited at the prospect of sleeping in their own house.
I went with them to make up a fire in the brazier, the second chimney not being yet complete, and hung tattered quilts over the open window and doorway to discourage bats, mosquitoes, foxes, and curious rodents.
“Now, if a raccoon or a possum should come in,” I said, “don’t try to make it leave. Just come out of the surgery and get your father or your grandsire. Or your mother,” I added. Bree could certainly deal with a rogue raccoon.
I threw a kiss to the room at large and went back to the kitchen.
The smell of molasses had faded, but the air was still sweet, now with the scent of whisky. Brianna, sitting on a wooden box of indigo, raised her tin cup to me.
“You’re just in time,” she said.
“For what?”
Jamie handed me a full cup and tapped the rim of his to mine. “Slàinte,” he said. “To the new hearth.”
“For presents,” Bree said, half apologetically. “I thought about it for a long time. I didn’t know if I’d ever find you—any of you—” she added, with a serious glance at Roger. “And I wanted to bring something that would last, even if it got destroyed or lost.”
Jamie and I exchanged a puzzled look, but she was already delving into her canvas bag. She came up with a chunky blue book and, eyes dancing, put it into my hands.
“What—” I began, but I knew instantly from the feel of it and let out a noise that could only be called a squeal. “Bree! Oh, oh …!”
Jamie was smiling but still puzzled. I held it out to him, then clutched it to my bosom before he could take it. “Oh!” I said again. “Bree, thank you! This is wonderful!”
She was pink with pleasure, her eyes shiny in response to my excitement. “I thought you’d like it.”
“Oh …!”
“Let me see it, mo nighean donn,” Jamie said, reaching gently for the book. I could hardly bear to let go of it, but relinquished it.
“Merck Manual, Thirteenth Edition,” he read from the cover, and looked up, brows raised. “Merck seems a popular writer—that, or he makes the devil of a lot of mistakes.”
“It’s a—a—medical book,” I explained, beginning to get hold of myself, though little thrills of elation were still washing through me. “The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. It’s a sort of compendium of—of the state of general medical knowledge.”
“Oh.” He looked at the book with interest, and opened it, though I could see he didn’t yet grasp its full importance. “Controlling the spread of E. histolytica requires preventing access of human feces to the mouth,” he read, and looked up. “Oh,” he said softly, seeing the look on my face, and smiled. “It’s what folk will have found out—then. Things about healing that ye dinna ken yet, yourself. Though I’m guessing ye do ken not to eat shite?”