Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (117 page)

MY RIGHT HAND WAS
throbbing, in time with my heartbeat. The cut across my palm had healed, superficially, but it had been deep enough that the nerves in the dermis had been injured, and they woke every now and then to protest the insult. I turned the hand over, checking idly for swelling or the red streaks of belated blood poisoning, though I knew quite well there was nothing of that kind.

It’s just that broken things always hurt longer than you think they will.

Plainly I wasn’t going to sleep until—and unless—Jamie came home, more or less in one piece. I lit the small brazier in my surgery and fed the infant fire with hickory chips. “Like a bloody Vestal,” I muttered to myself, but I did feel a slight comfort from the burgeoning light.

I’d already checked and refurbished my field kit, in case of emergency. It hung on its accustomed nail, by the door. I’d put aside the
Merck Manual;
I couldn’t settle myself to read.

Bluebell and Adso had both wandered into the surgery to keep me company; the dog was asleep under my chair and Adso was draped over the counter, his big celadon eyes half closed, purring in brief spurts like a distant motorcycle being revved.

“Thanks for small mercies,” I said to him, just to break the silence. “At least Jamie will never break his neck riding a motorcycle.”

He might never do a lot of other things, too…

I cut that thought off short and, reaching over the cat, started taking bottles and jars out of the cupboard in a determined sort of way. I might as well take inventory: throw out things that were too old to be pharmaceutically active, make a list of things we needed next time Jamie went (
yes, he will too go!
) into a town, and maybe grind a few things, if only for the sake of pretending I was grinding Charles Cunningham’s face…or maybe the King’s…

Bluebell’s head came up suddenly and she gave a small
hurf!
of warning. Adso instantly uncoiled and leapt on top of the tall cabinet where I kept bandages and my surgical implements. Clearly, we had company.

“It’s too early,” I said aloud. He’d left the house no more than an hour ago. Surely nothing could have happened yet…But my body was far ahead of my thoughts and I had reached the front door before I completed that one. I hadn’t barred it after Jamie left, but I had shot the mortised-bolt lock and opened it now with a sharp, decisive
thunk!
It didn’t matter who had come to tell me what. I had to know.

I was startled, but not truly surprised.

“Elspeth,” I said. I stepped back, feeling as though I did it in a dream.

“I had to come,” she said. She was white as a ghost and looked exactly as I felt—shattered.

“I know,” I said, automatically adding, “Come in.”

“You
know
?” she said, and her voice held both doubt and the horror of realizing that there was no doubt left.

I shut the door and turned away to go to my surgery, leaving her to follow as she liked.

Once we were both inside the surgery, I dropped the heavy quilt that still served me as a door, sheltering us from the night. Bluey was on her feet, just behind my knee, and was growling in a low, menacing sort of way. She knew Elspeth and normally would have gone to her for a friendly sniff and pat.
Not tonight, Josephine,
I thought, but said, “Leave off, dog. It’s all right.”

The hell it is
was written all over Bluebell’s face, but she stopped growling and backed up slowly to the hearth rug, where she lay down, but kept her hackles raised and a deeply suspicious gaze fixed on Elspeth, who didn’t seem to notice.

I waved Elspeth to one of the two chairs. Without asking, I took down the bottle of JF Special and filled two cups to their rims. Elspeth accepted hers but didn’t drink immediately, though it was clear that she needed it. I didn’t hesitate to take my own dose.

“I’d thought I might—pray with you,” she said.

“Fine,” I said, flatly. “There’s nothing else we can do now, is there?”

I drank, hoping against hope that I was right and that she hadn’t come to tell me that her son had killed or captured my husband. But she hadn’t; I could see as much through the firelight that painted her face with the illusion of health. She’d come to me in fear, not pity. Her lean, weathered hands were both wrapped round her cup, and I thought that if she squeezed it much harder, the pewter would bend.

“It hasn’t happened yet?” I asked, and was surprised that I sounded almost casual.

“I don’t know.” At last she raised the cup to her lips, still holding it in both hands. When she lowered it, she looked a little less rattled. She sat silent for a long moment, studying my face. For once, I wasn’t bothered by the fact that I had a glass face; it might save explanations.

It did. She’d been shaken and pale when she came in. Now she was stirred, and a flush had risen in her sunken cheeks.

“How long has he known?” she asked. “Your husband.”

“About a week,” I said. “We found out by accident. I mean—none of your son’s associates betrayed him.” I wasn’t sure why I offered her this scrap of charity; I supposed there wasn’t anything left between us now but the memory of kindness.

She nodded slowly, and looked down into the smoky amber of the whisky. I was surprised to realize that she, too, had the sort of face that didn’t hide its owner’s thoughts, and the realization restored a small part of my feelings for her.

“We know everything,” I said, quite gently. “And Jamie knows that the captain doesn’t mean him immediate harm. He won’t kill your son.”

Unless he has to.

She looked up at me, a nerve twitching the corner of her mouth.

“Unless he has to? Let me offer you the same assurance, Mrs. Fraser.”

“Claire,” I said. “Please.” The surgery smelled of hickory smoke and healing herbs. “Do you know any good prayers suitable to the occasion?”

WEAPONS WERE FORBIDDEN
in Lodge, both in symbol of the members’ Masonic ideals and more pragmatically to increase the chances of those ideals being upheld, at least for the hourly meeting. Nonetheless, Jamie had come in midafternoon to place a loaded pistol under a stone near the door, and he had cartridges and balls in his sporran and Claire’s best knife sheathed and tucked into the small of his back, the hilt hidden by his coat and the tip of it tickling the crack of his arse.

He didn’t often wear his belted plaid to Lodge but was glad he’d taken the trouble tonight; it would keep him warm if he was taken prisoner and obliged to spend the night tied to a tree or locked up in someone’s root cellar. And he had a
sgian dubh
in his belt in front, concealed by his Masonic apron. Just in case.

“Ciamar a tha thu, a Mhaighister.”
Hiram Crombie looked just as usual—dour as a plate of pickled cabbage—and Jamie found that a comfort. Dissimulation was not one of Hiram’s gifts, and if he’d known anything was afoot, he’d likely not have come tonight.

“Gu math agus a leithid dhut fhein,”
Jamie said, nodding to him. Well, and the same to you.

“Will I have a word with you, after?” Hiram asked, still in the Gaelic.

“Aye, of course.” Jamie answered him in the same tongue, and saw a couple of the non-Gaelic-speaking tenants glance at them—with a touch of suspicion? he wondered.

“Will it be to do with your wee brother, then?” he asked, changing to English, and was pleased to see that hearing the Tall Tree referred to as his wee brother made the corner of Hiram’s mouth quiver.

“Aye.”

“Fine, then,” Jamie said pleasantly, trying to ignore the beating of his heart. “But ken,
a charaid,
I’ve said I willna let Frances be married before she’s sixteen—and not then, if she doesna choose to.”

Crombie shook his head briefly.

“It’s naught to do wi’ the lassie,” he said, and went into the Meeting House, followed by his kin and nearby friends.

And here the man himself came with his two young lieutenants, them in half-dress uniform and himself in pale linen breeches and a light-gray cloak, with a slouch hat against the rain. Plain, by his lights. Jamie caught the movement as Kenny Lindsay ducked his head to hide a smirk, but Jamie wasn’t so sure. Aye, it was possible that a sailor wouldn’t think what sort of target he’d make in the dark—but it was also possible either that Cunningham hadn’t thought that he might
be
a target, or that Cloudtree’s news was wrong, and the ambush—if there was meant to be one—wasn’t meant to be tonight.

Then Cunningham emerged into the fall of light from the open door, saw Jamie, and bowed to him.

“Worshipful Master,” he said.

“Captain,” Jamie replied, and his heart thumped hard in his ears as he bowed, because Cunningham was no card player and the truth was written in the narrowing of his eyes and the hardness of his mouth.

A formal occasion, then, is it?
He had a sudden mental picture of them squaring up to fight a duel, in kilt, cocked hat, and their Masonic aprons. What would be the weapons? he wondered. Cutlasses?

“Dèan ullachadh, mo charaidean,”
he said casually to the men who stood with him. Stand ready.

The meeting went well enough—outwardly. The ritual, the words of brotherhood, fellowship, idealism. But he thought the words rang hollow, with a sense of ice among the men, covering their hearts, separating one from another, leaving all in the cold.

Things felt easier when it came to Business: the small things they did as a matter of community. A widow unable to deal with her late husband’s stock; a man who’d fallen through his own roof whilst repairing his chimney and broken both an arm and a leg; an auld quarrel betwixt the MacDonalds and the MacQuarries that had broken out in a fistfight at market day in Salisbury and had come home with them, still trailing clouds of ill will.

Things that were not really the business of the Lodge but that should be brought up: talk that Howard Nettles was having to do with a woman who kept shop at Beardsley’s Trading Post, whose husband was a bargeman and spent weeks away from home.

“Is there anyone here who kens Nettles well enough to drop a word in his ear?” Jamie asked. “If it’s Mrs. Appleton that’s bein’ talked about, I’ve seen her husband and he’d make two of Howard.”

A small murmur of humor ran through the room, and Geordie MacNeil said he didna ken Howard well enough to say what he needed to hear, but he did ken Howard’s cousin, who lived in a wee settlement near the Blowing Rock, and he could have a word next time he passed that way.

“Aye, well enough,” Jamie said, thinking that Claire’s bees would enjoy hearing about this. “And we’ll hope it’s soon enough to save Howard’s neck. Thank ye, Geordie. Anything else before we start the beer?” From the corner of his eye, he saw Cunningham move suddenly but then catch himself and subside.

It’ll be outside, then.
He took a deep breath and felt a distant
bodhran
start to beat in his blood.

Hiram Crombie had brought the beer tonight, it being his turn. Skinflint he might be—all the fisher-folk were, having lived in stark poverty all their lives—but he kent what was right, and the beer was good. Jamie wondered what was ado with wee Cyrus, but it didn’t look urgent….

On the far side of the room, Cunningham was talking. About loyalty. About his service in the Royal Navy. About loyalty to the King.

Jamie slowly got his feet under him. All right, there was nothing that prevented men talking of politics or religion outside of Lodge, but this was not quite far enough outside, and everyone knew it. Silence spread from the men who surrounded Cunningham—Jamie took note of their faces—and a coldness ran through the room like spreading frost as the others began to listen and hear what was being said.

Then it stopped. Cunningham still stood, unmoving save for his eyes, which took note in turn of each face in the room. Jamie had been listening intently, not so much for Cunningham’s words but composing answers to them. Then Jamie rose to his feet. His own words fell away, and others rose in their place.

“I will say but one thing to ye all,
a charaidean.
And that is not my own, but a thing said by our forefathers, four hundred years ago.” A faint stir broke the sense of ice, and men shifted on their stools, drawing themselves up to hear. Glancing sideways, to see how matters lay.