Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (119 page)

IT WAS STILL RAINING,
but the day was near. I made my way slowly toward the dim glow of the kitchen, not quite leaning on the walls as I passed, but letting my fingertips touch them now and then, to make sure that I was where I thought I was. The house was still and smelled of blood and burnt things, but the air was cool and gray with coming dawn, the desk and chairs in Jamie’s study a monochrome still life painted on the wall—and yet my fingertips passed through empty air as I walked past the doorway, my footsteps inaudible to my own ears, as though I were the ghost who haunted this house.

Most of the men had left for their own homes, but there were a few bodies on the floor of the parlor. I had left Charles Cunningham sleeping on the table, under the influence of a lot of laudanum, and Elspeth dozing in my surgery chair, head nodding on her neck like a dandelion. I wasn’t going to wake her; the Loyalist wounded would have to see to themselves—or their wives would.

In the kitchen, Fanny was sound asleep, sprawled facedown on one of the wide benches, one leg dangling comically to the side. Bluebell was curled up below her, also sound asleep, and Jamie was on his back on the hearth rug, looking like a desecrated tomb effigy in the dying light of the fire. It was smoking and nearly out; no one had smoored it properly. He opened his eyes at the sound of my footsteps and looked up at me, heavy-lidded but alert.

“Come and sit down, Sassenach,” he murmured, and lifted a finger vaguely at a nearby stool. “Ye look worse than I do.”

“Not possible,” I said. But I did sit down. Tiredness flooded up from the aching soles of my feet, closing my eyes as it rose through my body like a spring tide—filled with churning sand and fragments of sharp shell and seaweed. A warm hand curled around my ankle and rested there.

“How do you feel?” I murmured. I did want to know, but was having trouble opening my eyes to look.

“I’ll do. Hand me the wee jar, Sassenach.” The hand left my ankle and rose up to my lap, where I was holding the small jar of alcohol and sutures. “I’ll do it.”

“You’ll do
what
?” I opened my eyes and stared at him. “Stitch your own chest back together?”

“I thought that might wake ye up.” He dropped his arm. “Help me get up,
a nighean.
I’m stiff as parritch on the third day and I dinna want ye crouchin’ on the floor to stitch me. Besides, I might wake the wee lassie if ye make me howl.”

“Howl, forsooth,” I said, rather cross. “Serve you right if I did. Let me see it, at least, before I try to get you on your feet.” The floor around him was littered with wadded cloths, rusty with drying blood, and there were smears of it across a wide swath of floorboards. I slid gingerly down onto my knees beside him.

“It smells like an abattoir in here.” He smelled of blood and mud and smoke, but most strongly of the curdled sweat of violence.

He put his head back, sighed, and closed his eyes, letting me look at his chest. The girls had put his wet plaid over him for warmth, and underneath was a folded linen towel soaked in water. A faint scent of lavender and meadowsweet drifted up, along with the sharp copper tang of fresh blood. I was surprised and wondered which one of them had thought to use a wet compress to keep the edges of the wound moist. Whoever it was had also thought to take his shoes off and put the bundle of his rolled-up jacket and shirt under his feet to raise them. Or maybe Jamie had told them, I thought vaguely.

Fanny’s description of the wound had been completely accurate; it was a deep slash that ran downward from the middle of his right clavicle, across the center of his chest—I could see a faint shadow of white bone under the raw red scrape where the cutlass had almost touched his sternum—and ended two inches below his left nipple—which demonstrated its resiliency by hardening into a tiny dark-pink nub when I brushed it. By reflex, I touched the other one.

“They both work,” he assured me, squinting down his chest. “So does my cock, if ye’re reckoning such things.”

“Glad to hear it.”

I picked up his wrist to check his pulse, though I could see it plainly in his neck, banging steadily along at a tranquil rate. The feel of him, warm and solid, was restoring my sense of my own body. I yawned suddenly, without warning, and the rush of oxygen spiked my blood. I began to feel somewhat more alert.

“That’s going to hurt like the devil if you try to get up by yourself,” I observed. Putting any pressure on his arms would tighten the severed muscles and skin.

“I know,” he said, and immediately started trying to do it anyway.

“
And
you’ll make it bleed more,” I added, putting a hand on his throat to stop him. “And you haven’t an ounce of blood to spare, my lad. Stay,” I said sternly, as though to a dog, and he laughed—or started to. He went white—well, whiter—and stopped breathing for a moment.

“See?” I said, and got awkwardly to my feet. “Don’t laugh. I’ll be back.”

I was moving much better on my way back to the surgery, my head clearing and my brain beginning to work again. Aside from the impressive knife wound across his chest, he seemed uninjured. No signs of shock or disorientation, and the wound was clean, that was good…

Elspeth was still sitting in my surgery chair, but she was awake. My
Merck Manual
lay open on her lap. I stopped dead in the doorway, but she’d heard me coming. She looked up at me, the skin of her face white and stretched so tight across her bones that I could see plainly what she’d look like dead.

“Where did you get this?” she whispered, one hand spread across the page as though to hide it. I could see the words “Spinal Cord Injuries” at the top of the page.

“My daughter brought it to me from—er…Scotland,” I said, improvising out of a momentary panic. But then I remembered: I’d destroyed the copyright page. No one outside the family knew, or could know, and I breathed again.

“I can ask Fanny to copy out some of the passages for you, if you’d like. Though I don’t know how much use they might be,” I added reluctantly. “Some of the procedures they mention just aren’t available in the colonies—nor yet in most of Europe.” I crossed my fingers under my apron, thinking,
Nor anywhere else in the world.
“And even as advanced as some of the things mentioned there are…they might not be useful to—to your particular concerns.”

I looked at Charles Cunningham as I said this, and wanted to cross my fingers again—for luck, this time. Instead, I drifted to the foot of the table and gently lifted the bottom of the vomit-yellow coverlet to expose his bare feet. They looked perfectly normal.

But of course they would. Even if his spinal cord hadn’t been severed—and I didn’t
think
it had—it had clearly been compressed and damaged to some extent. And spinal cord injuries were often permanent. But it would take a little time for the visible effects—wasting of muscles, twisting of limbs—to become apparent. A sharp stink made my nostrils twitch and compress.

Loss of bowel and bladder control.
Expected, but not good.

“Have you seen anyone like this before?” Elspeth’s voice was sharp and she rose to her feet, as though drawn to defend her son.

“Yes,” I said, and she heard everything in my voice and sat down again as though she, too, had been shot in the back.

Jesus, who shot him? Please, God, don’t let it have been Jamie…

I pushed back the coverlet and cleaned him gently with a wet cloth. He was unconscious and didn’t stir. Nothing stirred under my hands, and my lips tightened. Men have very little conscious control over their erectile responses, as Jamie had just demonstrated to me, and I’d had a lot of men with quite severe wounds stiffen at my touch. Not this one. Still, it might be the laudanum…that really
did
affect libidinal response.

I held on to that minuscule shred of hope for the moment and covered the captain again. Elspeth was sitting upright now, but her attention was inward, and I knew she was envisioning the same things I was: caring for a beloved child for whom there was no real hope. Her last child. Months, years—
Five years,
came the searing thought—of wiping his arse and changing his sheets, moving his dead legs four times a day to prevent atrophy. Of dealing with the bitterness of a man who had lost his life, but had not died.

There was light behind the shutters now, though it was pale and watery; the sound of the rain had settled to the steady drumming of an all-day downpour. I walked behind Elspeth and opened the shutters, then cracked the window enough to bring a waft of cold, clean, damp air into the room.

I had to go and see to Jamie; there was nothing more I could do here. I turned and put my hands on Elspeth’s shoulders and felt her bones, hard and brittle under the black of her shawl.

“He’ll be able to talk and to feed himself,” I said. “Beyond that…time will tell.”

“It always does,” she said, her voice colorless as the rain.

AS I LEFT THE
surgery, the front door opened behind me, admitting Lieutenant Esterhazy. He looked as shocked and disordered as everyone else this morning, but was at least on his feet and not visibly damaged.

“Come with me,” I said, seizing him by the arm. “Your captain is sleeping and won't need you for a bit, but I do.”

“Of course, ma'am,” he muttered, and shook his head as though to throw off some heavy thought before following me to the kitchen.

“Where is Lieutenant Bembridge?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder. I half-expected him to come through the door; the two lieutenants were so seldom apart that I sometimes forgot which was which.

“I don't know, ma'am,” he said, his voice quivering a little. “He—didn't come back to the rendezvous last night, nor this morning—I went down by the Meeting House and walked round, calling out. So I came to report to the captain, before I go back to look for him some more.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I said, sincerely. “I heard there was a landslide last night—were you there when that happened?”

“No, ma'am. But I heard. So when Gilbert didn't come back, I thought perhaps…”

“I see. What about this landslide I hear so much about?” I said to Jamie, who had managed to get himself up on one elbow and was eyeing the lieutenant with some wariness. “What happened?”

“A good bit of hillside came down wi' the rain,” he said. “Trees and rocks and mud. But I canna say more than that. I dinna even ken where we were when it happened. Maybe somewhere near the wagon road.” He touched his chest gingerly, grimacing.

“
That
happened in a landslide?” I knew a cutlass wound when I saw one—and had an eight-inch scar down the inside of my left arm to prove it.

“Just before,” he said tersely. He hadn't taken his eyes off young Esterhazy, and it finally occurred to me that the lieutenant
might
just be young enough, foolish enough, and under sufficient mental strain as to think he could take Jamie captive in his own house. He
was
wearing a pistol and an officer's dirk.
And Jamie isn't armed.
A small, cold finger touched the back of my neck, but then I looked carefully at the young man, then back at Jamie. I shook my head.

“No,” I said simply. “He's worried about his friend. And probably his captain, too,” I added. Esterhazy turned sharply to stare at me, eyes wide.

“What's happened to the captain? You said he was sleeping!”

“Shot,” I said briefly. “He'll live, but he's not going anywhere for the moment.”

“Did you shoot him, sir?” The young man addressed Jamie seriously.

“I tried,” Jamie replied dryly. “I fired just as he came at me wi' his cutlass. I dinna ken if I hit him or no—but it wasna me that shot him in the back, I can tell ye that much. I saw his face plain, in the lightning. And then the mountain fell on us,” he added, as a distinct afterthought.

“Shot in the back?” Esterhazy turned to me, shocked.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said, only halfway under my breath. “Yes. I took the ball out and he's resting comfortably. Now, if you wouldn't mind, Lieutenant, I need you to help me get Colonel Fraser off the bloody floor and up to his bed.
Now,
” I repeated, seeing that he was disposed to ask further questions.

The conversation roused Fanny, and Agnes appeared from above, frowsty with sleep. Both of them were mortified at being seen by the lieutenant in their nightdresses and wrappers, but I made them go and start slicing onions for a poultice, grinding up goldenseal root, and seeing to Mrs. Cunningham's bodily needs while Lieutenant Esterhazy and I levered Jamie up in stages, first to a seat on the bench, where Bluebell nosed him anxiously and licked his bare knees, and then to his feet, with the two of us gripping his elbows for dear life as he swayed to and fro, on the edge of fainting.

I grabbed him round the waist and the lieutenant got an arm round his rib cage from the back, and we lurched out of the kitchen and up the stairs like a mob of drunks being chivvied by the police.

We dropped him on the bed like a bag of cement and I was obliged to lean over and put my hands on my knees, gasping for air until the small black flecks left my field of vision. When I could stand up again, I thanked the lieutenant, himself red in the face and breathing like a steam engine, and sent him downstairs to be given something hot to drink. Then I went to stir up the fire and open the shutters; I was going to need both heat and light.

Jamie lay flat on the bed, pale as wax, the stained compress pressed grimly to his chest. I put a hand on his and pried his stiff fingers loose. Seen in the watery daylight from our window, the wound looked nasty but not terribly serious. It hadn't severed any tendons, nor had it gone entirely through the pectoralis, and I thought it had barely nicked his collarbone.

“It bounced off your sternum,” I told him, as I prodded gently here and there. “Otherwise, it would have cut down deep into your chest on this side.”

“Oh, good,” he murmured. His eyelids were closed tight, but I could see the eyes under them moving restlessly to and fro.

“All right.” I swabbed the area carefully with saline and fished a threaded silk suture out of the jar. “Do you want something to bite on while I stitch this, or would you rather tell me what the hell happened last night?”

He opened bloodshot eyes and considered me for a moment, then closed them again, and—muttering something in which I
thought
I distinguished the words “Spanish Inquisition…”—he clenched both fists in the bedclothes, took a deep breath, and relaxed as much as possible under the circumstances.

“Have ye got a piece of paper nearby, Sassenach?” he asked. I glanced at the bedside table, where I'd left my current journal—nothing in the way of Deep Thoughts or spiritual meditations; more a noting of the trivia of which days are composed: the small copper pot had been left on the fire too long and had a small hole melted in it; I must remember to send it to Salem to be mended when Bobby Higgins went there next week; Bluebell had eaten Something Awful and the hearth rug in the girls' room should be boiled…

“Yes,” I said, piercing the skin with a quick jab. He grunted but didn't move.

“Will ye set a paper handy, then, Sassenach, wi' something to write with? I'll be tellin' ye names as I go.”

I put in three more stitches, then swiveled round to get the journal. As I normally wrote in bed, I used a small stick of graphite wrapped round with a strip of rag, rather than ink and a quill, and I fetched that, too.

“Shoot,” I said, returning to my repairs. “If you don't mind the reference.”

His stomach twitched in brief amusement.

“I don't. It's a list of the Loyalists who were wi' Cunningham last night. Put down Geordie Hallam, and Conor MacNeil, Angus MacLean, and—”

“Wait, not so fast.” I picked up the pencil. “Why do you want a list of these men? You obviously remember who they are.”

“Oh, I kent who they were, well before last night,” he assured me, with some grimness. “The list is for you and Bobby and the Lindsays, in case they kill me in the next few days.”

The graphite snapped in my hand. I put it down, wiped my hand carefully on a wet rag, and said, “Oh?” in as calm a voice as I could manage.

“Aye,” he said. “Ye didna think last night settled matters, did ye, Sassenach?”

Given the current state of Captain Cunningham, actually I had rather thought that. I swallowed hard and picked up the needle again.

“You mean there's a possibility that we may have a visitation by the Cherokees?”

“Aye, them,” he said thoughtfully, “or maybe Nicodemus Partland, wi' a band of men from over the mountain. Mind, it may not happen,” he added, seeing my face. “And my own men will be ready if it does. But just in case, ye'll need to get rid of the Loyalists here, if I'm gone. So ye need to ken who they are, aye?”

I paused to pick up a fresh suture thread and breathed carefully, my eyes on my work.

“Get rid of them?”

“Well, I dinna mean to let them stay on as my tenants,” he said reasonably. “They tried to kill me last night. Or take me off to be hanged, which isna much better,” he added, and I saw the rage simmering under the thin skin of reason.

“That's a point, yes.” I dabbed blood away from the wound and made two more stitches. I'd poked up the fire and added fresh wood, but I felt cold to the marrow. “Can you—I mean, will they just…leave, if you tell them to go?”

He'd been looking at the ceiling, but now turned his head to look at me. It was the patient look of a lion who'd been asked if he could really eat that wildebeest over there.

“Um,” I said, and cleared my throat. “Tell me about the landslide.”

His face lightened, and he told me about his flight from the Lodge, four or five of his own men close behind him, and the Loyalists running into them, to be delayed while he escaped into the darkness.

“Only the trail I meant to take was washed away by the rain—ouch—and I got lost for a bit, looking for another. Then it began to thunder and the lightning was strikin' close enough I could smell it, but at least I could see my way now and then.”

He'd struck back in the direction he thought home to be, hoping to encounter some of his men, whom he'd told to guard the New House from the rear and capture such men of Cunningham's as came that way.

“Capture them?” I said, tying a suture, clipping it, and picking out a fresh thread. “Where did you mean to put them? Not the root cellar, I hope.” Our food levels were perilously low after a long winter, and such dried fruits and early vegetables as we had were all in the root cellar, along with bags of chestnuts, walnuts, and peanuts, and I could just imagine the havoc a lot of resentful captives might wreak in there.

He shook his head. His eyes were open now, fixed on the ceiling joists in order to avoid looking at what I was doing to his chest.

“Nay, I'd told Bobby they should put anyone they caught into the pigs' cave, tied up.”

“Dear God. And what if the White Sow took it into her mind to show up?” While the legendary Beast of the Ridge had declined to establish a new lair under the present house—thank God—she did still roam the mountainside, eating her fill of chestnut mast and anything else that took her fancy, and she did, now and then, visit the pigpen and liberate a few of its inhabitants, most of these her own descendants.

“The fortunes of war,” he said callously. “They should ha' kent better than to follow a man who canna choose between the King and God. Ng!”

“We're more than halfway,” I said soothingly. “As for the captain…most Loyalists would assure you that as God appointed the King, His interests lie in the same direction. Go on telling me about last night.”

He grunted and shifted his weight uneasily, but then settled again and took a cautious breath.

“Aye. Well, by the time I could tell for sure where I was, I was close to Tom MacLeod's place—did Gillebride say Tom's nose is broken?—and I thought I'd best take refuge there. So I was sloggin' through the mud and bushes, trying to keep track of where I was by what I could see when the lightning went, and all of a sudden there was a thunderclap that split the sky and a monstrous flash that left me blind, and the rain turned to poundin' hail, just like that—” He snapped his fingers. “So I pulled my plaid over my head to shield it, and next thing I ken, the captain's run into me in the dark. Only I didna ken who it was, and neither did he, and then the lightning went again and I went for my pistol and he went for his cutlass and…” He waved a hand at the half-sewn gash in his chest.

“I see. You said you fired at him?”

“Well, I tried. My powder was damp, and little wonder. The gun fired, but I doubt the ball even reached him.”

“It might have,” I observed, reaching for another length of suture. “I took one ball out of his forearm.”

“Good. Can I have a wee drop, Sassenach?”

“Since you're already lying down, yes.”

I'd been paying no attention to anything beyond Jamie's chest for the last little while, but when I rose to get the whisky, I heard voices downstairs. Raised voices. One seemed to be Lieutenant Esterhazy's, and I thought there was a female voice—Elspeth? Someone else that sounded familiar, but—

Jamie sat up abruptly and made a noise like a stuck pig.

“Bloody lie down!”

“That's Cloudtree,” he said urgently. “Go fetch him, Sassenach.”

I grabbed the discarded compress, slapped it into his hand, and shoved the hand against the unstitched side of his chest, which was now bleeding freely.

“Bloody lie down and I will!”

As it was, though, I didn't have to. Feet came pounding up the stairs amidst an agitation of voices, and with a cursory knock the door opened.