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.
“Aye,” he said at last, and closed his fingers into a fist. “It’s what Benjamin Cleveland—ken, the great fat Overmountain bugger who tried to threaten me?—was proposing to me—in a roundabout way, but he was clear enough.” He looked down at me, eyes dark and serious in the dim flicker of the night.
“I shallna fight again wi’ the Continental army,” he said. “I’ve had enough of armies. And I dinna think General Washington would have me back, for that matter.” He smiled at that, a little ruefully.
“From what Judah Bixby told me, you resigned your commission pretty thoroughly. I’m sorry I missed it.” I smiled, too, with no less rue. I’d missed it because at the moment Jamie had resigned his commission, writing his resignation on the back of the messenger who’d come to summon him to duty, I was lying on the ground at his feet, in the process of bleeding to death. In fact, Judah—one of his young lieutenants, who had been present—told me that Jamie had actually written his brief refusal with mud soaked through with my blood.
“Aye,” he said dryly. “I didna hear what Washington thought about it, but at least he didna send to have me arrested and hanged for desertion.”
“I imagine he’s had a few other things on his mind since then.” I hadn’t been in any condition to hear—or care about—the progress of the war for some time after becoming one of the final casualties of the Battle of Monmouth. But it wasn’t possible to avoid for long. We’d lived in Savannah when the British invaded and occupied the city—they were still there, so far as I knew. But news, like water, runs downhill and was inclined to puddle in the coastal cities with newspapers, shipping, and the brand-new postal service. Hauling it up into the mountains was a slow, difficult process.
“Am I to deduce that you’re actually planning to start a partisan band of your very own?” I asked, trying to keep it light.
“Oh,” he said, in a similar tone, “I thought I might. Nay so much for the raiding and killing, mind—it’s been a long time since I rode in a raid,” he added, with a distinct note of nostalgia. “For protection on the Ridge, though. And then … as the war goes on, well … it might happen that a wee gang might be of use here or there.” This last was added in such a casual manner that I sat up straight and gave him a narrow look.
“A gang? You want to start a gang?”
He looked surprised at that.
“Aye. Had ye not heard that word before, Sassenach?”
“I have,” I said, and sipped from the cup of wine, in hopes of inducing calm. “But I didn’t think you would have.”
“Well, of course I have,” he said, lifting a brow at me. “It’s a Scottish word, no?”
“It is?”
“Aye. It’s just the men ye gang oot with, Sassenach. Slàinte.” He took the cup from me, lifted it in brief salute, and drained it.
15
Which Old Witch?
MANDY AND I STOOD on either side of the table—she standing on the bench—looking down into the small yellow bowl between us with intense concentration.
“How long, Grannie?”
“Ten minutes,” I replied, and glanced at the silver filigree chiming watch that Jenny had lent me. “It’s only been two. You can sit down; it won’t happen any faster just because we’re watching.”
“Jes it will.” She made this pronouncement with a calm confidence that made me smile. Seeing that, she tossed her head and said, “Jemmy says you gots to watch hard or it gets away.” Realizing that she’d taken her eyes off the bowl, she thrust her head forward and glowered sternly into it, forbidding the yeast to slither over the side and crawl away.
“I don’t think he meant yeast, sweetheart. Probably rabbits.” Still, I couldn’t bring myself to turn away. I sniffed the air over the bowl, and Mandy did the same, with great vigor.
“I’m sure the yeast is good,” I said. “It smells … yeasty.”
“YEEeeestee,” she said, nodding agreement and snorting.
“If it wasn’t still active—still good—” I explained, “it would smell bad.”
I’d wait the full ten minutes, so I could show her the foam that active yeast makes when you mix it with warm sugar-water, but I was sure in my own mind that the yeast was all right—and felt relieved on that account. One could make raised biscuits with soda ash, but it was a good deal more complicated.
“We’ll put some of the yeast in milk,” I said, spooning a large dollop from the small crock in which I kept the starter into a clean one. “To make more for next time.”
Jamie’s head appeared in the doorway.
“Will ye lend me the wee lass for a minute, Sassenach?”
“Yes,” I replied promptly, grabbing Mandy’s hand an inch away from the full—and open—sack of flour on the table. “Grandpa needs you to help him, sweetheart.”
“Okay,” she said affably, and stuffed one of the raisin cookies we’d made earlier into her mouth before I could stop her. “Whaffoont, Gmp?”
“I need ye to sit on something for a moment.” Jamie’s long, straight nose twitched at the scent of butter and raisins, and his hand snaked out toward the tray.
“All right,” I said, resigned. “One. But eat it in here, for God’s sake; if the boys see you with that, they’ll be in here like a swarm of locusts.”
“Wasslocst?”
“Mandy! Have you got another cookie in your mouth?”
Mandy’s eyes bulged as she made a heroic effort and swallowed most of what was in her mouth.
“No,” she said, spraying crumbs. Jamie finished his own cookie and swallowed, somewhat more neatly.
“That’s good, Sassenach,” he said, nodding at the tray. “Ye’ll make a decent cook yet.” He grinned at me, took Mandy by the hand, and headed for the door.
Lacking anything like a cookie jar—could I make one? I wondered. Doubtless Brianna could, once she’d resurrected her kiln—I shoveled the fresh cookies into the smaller kettle and put a large plate on top, then picked up two of the big river stones we kept by the hearth to use as bed warmers when the truly cold weather came and put them on top of the plate. It wouldn’t deter the boys, but it would keep insects and—maybe—marauding raccoons out. The kitchen walls were sound, but there was no glass in most of the windows as yet.
I gazed thoughtfully at the kettle for a bit, envisioning the possibilities, and then lugged it down the hall to the surgery, where I shut it up in the cupboard where I kept distilled spirits, bottles of saline solution, and other items unlikely to attract anyone’s interest. I heard Jamie and Mandy out on the front porch, talking, and went to the front door to see what they were up to.
Jamie was on his knees, scraping the wood of what was clearly meant to be a toilet seat—Mandy-sized. “Try that,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “Sit on it, I mean.”
Mandy giggled, but did.
“Whatsis for, Grampa?”
“Ken the wee mouse that got into your room last week?”
“Jes. You caughts it in your hand. Did it bites you, Grampa?” she asked with sympathy.
“Nay, a leannan, it ran up my sleeve and jumped out my collar and made off across the landing and into our room and hid under your grannie’s good shoes. D’ye no remember that?”
Her small brow furrowed in concentration.
“Jes. You scweamed.”
“Aye. Well, now and again we have wee mice—and other wee beasties—who run to hide in the privy, if something’s frightened them outside. Now, such things mostly willna hurt ye”—he raised a finger at her—“but they might give ye a start. And if one does, I dinna want ye to loose your hold and fall down through the hole into the privy.”