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.
Cunningham gave a brief “hmp,” but one indicating pause for summation, rather than hesitance.
“Like a good many others, I came here because I had acquaintances here. Two of my seamen have settled in North Carolina, as has Lieutenant Ferrell, who served with me through three commissions before being wounded severely enough that he was obliged to leave the service with a naval pension. His wife is here as well.”
Roger wondered whether—and how—the pension might continue to be paid, but it luckily wasn’t his problem at the moment.
“So,” Cunningham continued, meeting Roger’s eye ironically, “that will give me a congregation of at least six souls.”
Roger smiled obligingly, but told the truth when he assured Cunningham that entertainment was sufficiently scarce as to ensure a full house for anyone who was willing to get up in public and provide it.
“Entertainment,” Cunningham said, rather bleakly. “Quite.” He coughed. “Might I ask just why you have proposed this arrangement, Mr. MacKenzie? You seem entirely capable of entertaining any number of people, all by yourself.”
Because Jamie wants to know whether you’re a Loyalist and what you might be inclined to do about it if you are—and luring you out to preach and talk to people in public will probably show him.
He wouldn’t lie to Cunningham, but didn’t mind offering him an alternative truth.
“As I said, more than half the settlers here are Catholic, and while they’ll come to listen to me if there’s nothing better on offer, I imagine they might also listen to you. And given my own unorthodox family situation”—he raised a deprecating shoulder—“I think people should be allowed to hear different points of view.”
“Indeed they should,” said a soft, amused voice behind him. “Including the voice of Christ that speaks within their own hearts.”
Cunningham dropped his charcoal again. “Mrs. Murray,” he said, and bowed. “Your servant, mum!”
Looking at Rachel Murray always lightened Roger’s heart, and seeing her here, now, made him want to laugh.
“Hallo, Rachel,” he said. “Where’s your wee man?”
“With Brianna and Jenny,” she said. “Amanda is trying to make him say ‘poop,’ by which I gather she means excrement.”
“Well, she won’t get far, trying to make him say ‘excrement.’”
“Very true.” She smiled at him, then at Cunningham. “Brianna said thee would be here with the captain, arranging matters for the new meetinghouse, so I thought I should join thy discussion.” She was wearing pale-gray calico with a dark-blue fichu, and the combination made her eyes go a deep, mysterious green.
Cunningham, while gallant, looked somewhat confused. Roger wasn’t, though he was surprised.
“You mean—you want to use the chapel, too? For … um … meeting?”
“Certainly.”
“Wait … do you mean a Quaker meeting?” The captain frowned. “How many Quakers are presently living on the Ridge?”
“Just one, so far as I’m aware,” Rachel said. “Though I suppose I might count Oggy; that’s two. But Friends have no notion of a quorum, and no Friend would exclude visitors from an ordinary meeting. Jenny and Ian—my husband and his mother, Captain—will surely join me, and Claire says she and Jamie will come as well. Naturally, thee and Brianna are invited, Roger, and thee, too, Friend Cunningham, with thy mother.”
She gave the captain one of her smiles, and he smiled back by reflex, then coughed, mildly embarrassed. He was quite flushed. Roger thought the man might be on the verge of ecumenical overdose, and stepped in.
“When would you like to have the place, Rachel?”
“On First Day—thee would call it Sunday,” she explained to Cunningham. “We don’t use the pagan names. But the time of day doesn’t matter. We would not discommode any arrangements you have come to.”
“Pagan?” Cunningham looked aghast. “You think ‘Sunday’ is a pagan term?”
“Well, of course it is,” she said reasonably. “It means ‘day of the sun,’ meaning the ancient Roman festival of that name, dies solis, which became Sunnendaeg in English. I grant you,” she said, dimpling slightly at Roger, “it sounds slightly less pagan than ‘Tuesday,’ which is called after a Norse god. But still.” She flipped a hand and turned to go. “Let me know what times you both intend to preach, and I will arrange things accordingly. Oh—” she added, over her shoulder. “Naturally we will help with the building.”
The men watched her disappear among the oaks in silence.
Cunningham had picked up another fragment of charcoal and was rubbing it absently between thumb and forefinger. It reminded Roger of going with Brianna once to an Ash Wednesday service at St. Mary’s, in Inverness; the priest with a small dish of ashes (Bree had told him they were the ashes of palm fronds left over from the previous year’s Palm Sunday) rubbed a thumb through the black and then made a rapid cross on the forehead of each person in the congregation, swiftly murmuring to each, “Remember, Man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
Roger had gone up for his turn, and could vividly recall both the strange gritty feel of the ashes, and the odd sense of mingled disquiet and acceptance.
Something like now.
23
Trout-fishing in America, Part Two
THE FLY FLUTTERED DOWN, green and yellow as a falling leaf, to land among the rings of the rising hatch. It floated for a second on the surface, maybe two, then vanished in a tiny splash, yanked out of sight by voracious jaws. Roger flicked the end of his rod sharply to set the hook, but there was no need. The trout were hungry this evening, striking at everything, and his fish had taken the hook so deep that bringing it in needed nothing but brute force.
It came up fighting, though, flapping and silver in the last of the light. He could feel its life through the rod, fierce and bright, so much bigger than the fish itself, and his heart rose to meet it.
“Who taught ye to cast, Roger Mac?” His father-in-law took the trout as it came ashore, still flapping, and clubbed it neatly on a stone. “That was as pretty a touch as ever I’ve seen.”
Roger made a modest gesture of dismissal, but flushed a little with pleasure at the compliment; Jamie didn’t say such things lightly.
“My father,” he said.
“Aye?” Jamie looked startled.
Roger hastened to correct himself. “The Reverend, I mean. He was really my great-uncle, though—he adopted me.”
“Still your father,” Jamie said, but smiled. He glanced toward the far side of the pool, where Germain and Jemmy were squabbling over who’d caught the biggest fish. They had a respectable string but hadn’t thought to keep their catches separate, so couldn’t tell who’d caught what.
“Ye dinna think it makes a difference, do ye? That Jem’s mine by blood and Germain by love?”
“You know I don’t.” Roger smiled himself at sight of the two boys. Germain was a little more than a year older than Jem, but slightly built, like both his parents. Jem had the long bones and wide shoulders of his grandfather—and his father, Roger thought, straightening his own shoulders. The two boys were much of a height, and the hair of both glowed red at the moment, the ruddy light of the sinking sun setting fire to Germain’s blond mop. “Where’s Fanny, come to think? She’d settle them.”
Frances was twelve, but sometimes seemed much younger—and often startlingly older. She’d been fast friends with Germain when Jem had arrived on the Ridge, and rather standoffish, fearing that Jem would come between her and her only friend. But Jem was an open, sweet-tempered lad, and Germain knew a good deal more about how people worked than did the average eleven-year-old ex-pickpocket, and shortly the three of them were to be seen everywhere together, giggling as they slithered through the shrubbery, intent on some mysterious errand, or turning up at the end of churning, too late to help with the work but just in time for a glass of fresh buttermilk.