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.
“My nephew Ian and Gillebride MacMillan will be with me, with dogs. The three of us—and three dogs—will have the upper hand of a bear, no matter how fierce. Roger Mac and the lads will be there only to bear witness for your wife. At a safe distance,” he added.
Bobby sat up, pulling his hands free, and looked to and fro, agitated.
“But—but I should go with you, then. Shouldn’t I?”
Roger, recognizing his cue, cleared his throat.
“Your wee lads need ye, Bobby,” he said gently. “Ye’ve got to mind them, aye? Ye’re all they’ve got left.”
Jamie felt those words strike suddenly and without warning, deep in his own wame. Felt again a bundle of cloth clutched hard against his breast, feeling the tiny pushings of the hours-old babe inside, himself shaking with terror at what he’d just done to save the boy—his son.
That’s what he’d thought. The only thought that came through the haze of fear and shock: His mother’s dead. I’m all he has.
And he saw it happen for Bobby, as it had for him. Saw the life fight its way back into his eyes, the bones of his body, melted with grief, begin to stiffen and form again. Bobby nodded, lips pressed tight together. Tears still ran down his face, but he rose from the settle, slow as an auld man but moving.
“Where are they?” he asked hoarsely. “Orrie and Rob?”
“With my daughter,” Jamie said. “At the house.” He lifted a brow at Roger Mac, who gave him an old-fashioned look but nodded.
“I’ll go up with ye, Bobby,” Roger Mac said, and to Jamie, “I’ll catch ye up. You and the lads.”
THE WOMEN WERE coming. I could hear their voices, faint in the distance, coming up from the creek. That would be Gillebride’s wife, with her eldest daughter, Kirsty, and Peggy Chisholm, who lived nearby, with her two eldest, Mairi and Agnes, and Peggy’s ancient mother-in-law, Auld Mam, who was Not Right in the Head and therefore couldn’t be left alone. Then there were nearer female voices and steps in the hall, and Fanny came in, solemn-faced, with Rachel and Jenny. She glanced at the quilt-hung doorway and then averted her eyes.
I let out my breath at sight of them, and with it, the sense of being keyed up to meet something dreadful that had been with me since Jem had stumbled breathless into the surgery to tell me what had happened.
Jenny put down her basket, hugged me, quick and hard, then ducked without a word beneath the hanging quilt into the surgery. Rachel had a basket, too, and Oggy in her other arm. She detached the baby and handed him to Fanny, who looked relieved to be given something to do.
“Is thee all right, Claire?” she asked softly, then glanced at Mrs. Cunningham, who had taken up a station beside the covered surgery door, hands folded at her waist. “And thee, Friend Cunningham?”
“Yes,” I said. The odd sense of being in an intimate bubble with Elspeth Cunningham had burst at once with the advent of friends and family, but the experience had left me feeling oddly moist and exposed, like a half-opened clam. Elspeth herself had closed her shell tightly but nodded to the new arrivals. Her own near neighbors would be coming down as soon as the news reached them, but it would take some time; the Crombies’ and Wilsons’ several cabins were at least two miles from us.
Jenny was praying softly in Gaelic. I couldn’t catch the words clearly enough to know what she said, but the distinctive lilt of mourning was in it.
“Come aside,” Rachel said softly to me, and drew back the quilt a little, beckoning me with a sober nod of the head that simultaneously summoned me and indicated that no one else need follow.
Jenny had just finished her prayer. She put out a hand and rested it very gently for a moment on Amy’s white-capped head. “Biodh sith na Màthair Beannaichte agus a mac Iosa ort, a nighean.” she said quietly. May the peace of the Blessed Mother and of her son, Jesus, be on you, daughter.
Rachel looked at Amy’s body and swallowed, but didn’t flinch or look away.
“Germain said it was a bear,” she said, and I saw her eyes slide toward the pitiful pile of tattered, bloodstained garments. “Was thee … present, Claire?”
“No. Brianna was with her when it happened, picking grapes. Some of the children were there, too. Jemmy, Germain, and Aidan. The little boys. And Mandy.”
“Dear God. Did they see it?” Rachel asked, shocked.
I shook my head.
“They were up above, playing. Bree and Amy were picking muscats in that little gorge beyond the creek. She—Brianna—got the children away and then ran for Jamie. She—Amy—was just barely alive when I got to her.” My throat tightened, seeing the small pale hand, limp in Roger’s, the twitch at the corner of her mouth as she’d tried to bid her children farewell. Despite my determination, a small hot tear slid down my cheek.
Rachel made a small sound of distress and smoothed my hair away from my cheek. Jenny cleared her throat, reached into her pocket, and handed me a clean handkerchief.
“Well, the front door was open when we came in,” Jenny said, ticking off a mental checklist. She glanced at the huge, glassless surgery window, open to the day. “And ye’ll not need to open the windows.”
This tinge of dry humor, small though it was, relieved the tension and I felt a small crack between my shoulder blades as my spine relaxed, for what seemed the first time in days, not hours.
“No,” I said. I blotted the tears and sniffed. “What else—mirrors? There’s only the hand glass in my bedroom and it’s already lying facedown.”
“No birds in the house? I see ye’ve got salt …” A few grains had spilled on the counter when Elspeth had thrown salt into the water. “… and bread willna be a worry.” She cocked a still-black eyebrow in the direction of the kitchen. I could hear the voices of women as they greeted new arrivals, unpacked baskets, made things ready. I wondered if I should go and organize things, tell them where to place the coffin … Ought it to be in the front room, or in the much bigger kitchen? Oh, God, a coffin; I hadn’t even thought of that.
“Och,” said Jenny, in a different voice. “Here’s Bobby a-coming up the hill wi’ Roger Mac.” As one, we all glanced at Amy’s body, then looked at one another, questioning. We had made her as seemly as we could, but could we leave Bobby alone with her? That didn’t seem right, but neither did a crowd of women, likely to set each other off if one burst into tears—
“I’ll stay with him,” Rachel said, swallowing. Jenny glanced at me, eyebrow raised, then nodded. Rachel had a gift for stillness.
“I’ll mind our wee man,” Jenny said, and, kissing Rachel affectionately on the forehead, went out. Elspeth Cunningham had already vanished, presumably to help the women now murmuring in the kitchen, busy but subdued, the sound of them like termites working in the walls of the house.
I waited with Rachel to receive Bobby, mentally compiling a list. There was a full cask of whisky and a half-empty one in the pantry, but no beer. Caitlin Breuer might bring some; I should send Jem and Germain up to ask … And perhaps Roger would go speak to Tom MacLeod about the coffin.
Footsteps in the hall, and the sound of choked breathing. Bobby appeared in the doorway, but to my surprise, it was Brianna, not Roger, supporting him. She looked nearly as destroyed as Bobby did, but had her arm firmly round his shoulders. She was four inches taller than he was, and despite her obvious distress stood solid as a rock.
“Amy,” he said, seeing the white shroud, and her name was no more than an anguished breath. “Oh, my God … Amy …” He looked at me, in red-eyed appeal and silent despair. How could I have let her die?