Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (23 page)

GERMAIN
WAS
ON
the roof. Huddled up on the floor in our second-floor bedroom lean-to, his knees raised, arms crossed over them, and head buried in his forearms, a dark lump against the paleness of the bedclothes behind him.

The picture of woe—and the picture of someone desperate to be asked what the matter was, in hopes of reassurance.
Well,
I reflected,
as Jenny says—what’s a grannie for, then?

I picked my way carefully round the edge of the floor, clinging to the timber studs for balance and thanking God that it was neither raining nor blowing up a hurricane. In fact, the night was calm and starlit, full of the half-heard susurrus of pine trees and night-going insects.

I eased myself carefully down beside him, hands sweating just a little.

“So,” I said. “What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

“I—” he started, but stopped, glancing over his shoulder, then moved close to me. “I have a letter,” he whispered, putting a hand over his breast. “Mr. Myers brought it for me; it has my name on it.”

That
would
be startling, I thought. As was the case with Fanny, it was undoubtedly the first personal letter he’d ever received.

“Who is it from?” I asked, and heard him swallow.

“My mam,” he said. “It— I know her writing.”

“You haven’t opened it yet?” I asked.

He shook his head, pressing his hand against his chest as though fearing the letter might fly out by itself.

“Germain,” I said softly, and rubbed his back, feeling his shoulder blades sharp under the flannel shirt. “Your mother loves you. You don’t need to be af—”

“No, she doesn’t!” he burst out, and curled up tight, trying to contain the hurt. “She doesn’t, she can’t…I—I killed Henri-Christian. She c-can’t…can’t even look at me!”

I got my arms round him and pulled him to me. He wasn’t a tiny boy by any means, but I pressed his head into my shoulder and held him like a baby, rocking a little, making soft shushing sounds while he cried, big gulping sobs that he couldn’t hold back.

What could I say to him? I couldn’t just tell him he was wrong; simple contradiction never works with children, even when it’s the obvious truth. And in all honesty, this wasn’t obvious.

“You didn’t kill Henri-Christian,” I said, keeping my voice steady with some effort. “I was there, Germain.” I
had
been there, and I didn’t want to go back. Just Henri-Christian’s name, and it was all there, surrounding us both: the reek of smoke and the boom of exploding barrels of ink and varnish and the roar of flames coming up through the loft, Germain clinging to a rope, dangling high above the cobblestones. Reaching for his little brother…

It was no use. I couldn’t hold back my own tears and I held him hard, my face pressed against his hair with its smell of boy and innocence.

“It was awful,” I whispered. “So terrible. But it was an accident, Germain. You tried all you could to save him. You know you did.”

“Yes,” he managed, “but I
couldn’t
! Oh, Grannie, I
couldn’t
!”

“I know,” I whispered, over and over, rocking him. “I know.”

And slowly, the horror and the grief subsided into sorrow. We sniffled and wept and I found a handkerchief for him and wiped my own nose on my apron.

“Give me the letter, Germain,” I said, clearing my throat. I sat back against the bed. “I don’t know what it says, but you have to read it. Some things you just have to go through.”

“I can’t read it,” he said, and gave a small forlorn laugh. “It’s too dark.”

“I’ll go and get a candle from the surgery.” I got my feet under me and stood up; I was stiff from crouching on the floor, and it was a moment before I could be sure of my balance. “There’s water on the table, there. You have a drink and lie down on the bed. I’ll be right back.”

I went downstairs in that sort of grim resignation one enters when there’s nothing else to be done, and climbed the stairs again, the candle’s glow softening the rough boards of the stairwell, shadowing my steps.

The truth was that while Marsali naturally didn’t blame Germain for Henri-Christian, he was probably right about her not having been able to look at him without being torn apart by the memory of it. That was why, without much being said about it, we had brought Germain with us to the Ridge, in hopes that both he and his family would heal more easily with a little distance.

Now he probably thought that his mother had written to tell him that she didn’t want him back, ever.

“Poor things,” I whispered, meaning Germain, Henri-Christian, and their mother. I was quite sure—well, almost quite sure—that Marsali intended no such thing, but I could feel his fear.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, gripping his knees, and looked up at me with his eyes huge, dark with longing. The letter lay by his side and I picked it up, sat down beside him, and opened it. I made a gesture, offering it to him, but he shook his head.

“All right,” I said, cleared my throat, and began to read.

“Mon cher petit ami—”

I paused, both from surprise and because Germain had stiffened.

“Oh,” he said, in a very small voice. “Oh.”

“Oh!” I said myself, suddenly understanding, and my clenched heart relaxed.
Mon cher petit ami
was what Marsali had called him when he was very small, before the girls had been born.

It would be all right, then.

“What does it say, Grannie? What does it say?”

Germain was pressed up tight against my side, suddenly eager to look.

“Do you want to read it yourself?” I asked, smiling and offering it to him. He shook his head violently, blond hair flying.

“You,” he said, husky. “You, Grannie. Please.”

“Mon cher petit ami,

We have just found a new house, but it will never be home until you are here.

Your sisters miss you terribly (they have sent locks of their hair—in case you were wondering what these straggly things are—or in case you’ve forgotten what they look like, they say. Joanie’s hair is the light brown, and Félicité’s the dark one. The yellow ones belong to the cat), and Papa longs for you to come and help him. He forbids the girls to go into taverns to deliver the papers and broadsheets—though they want to!

You also have two new little brothers who—”

“Two?” Germain grabbed the page from me and held it as near the candle as he could without setting it on fire. “Did she say
two
?”

“Yes!” I was nearly as excited as he was to hear it, and bent over the page, shoulder-to-shoulder with him. “Read the next bit!”

He straightened up a little and swallowed, then read on:

“We were all very surprised, as you might think! To be honest, I had been afraid all the time, to think about what the new baby might be. Because I wanted to see a child just like Henri-Christian, of course—to feel as though we had him back—but I knew that couldn’t happen, and at the same time, I was afraid that the new little one might be a dwarf, too—maybe your Grannie has told you that people who are born like that have a lot of troubles; Henri-Christian nearly died several times when he was very small, and Papa told me long ago about some of the dwarf-children he had known in Paris, and that most didn’t live a long life.

But a new baby is always a surprise and a miracle and never what you expect. When you were born, I was so enchanted that I would sit by your cradle and watch you sleep. Just letting the candle burn down because I couldn’t bear to put it out and let the night hide you from me.

We thought at first, when the babies were born, that perhaps we should name one of them Henri and the other Christian, but the girls wouldn’t have it. They both said that Henri-Christian was not like anyone else, and no one else should have his name.

“Papa and I agreed that they were right”—
Germain was nodding his head as he read
—“and so one of your brothers is named Alexandre and the other one Charles-Claire…”

“What?” I said, incredulous. “Charles-
Claire
?”

“…for your Grandda and Grannie,”
Germain read, and looked up, grinning hugely at me.

“Go on,” I said, nudging him. He nodded and looked back at the page, running his finger along the words to find his place.

“So,”
he read, and his voice choked suddenly, then steadied.
“So,”
he repeated,
“please, mon cher fils, come home. I love you and I need you to be here, so the new house will be home again.

“With my love always…”

He pressed his lips tight together, and I saw tears well in his eyes, still fixed on the paper.

“Maman,”
he whispered, and pressed the letter to his chest.

IT WAS ANOTHER
hour before the children were put to bed—Germain among them—and I found myself once more in our airy bedroom, this time with Jamie. He stood at the end of the open floor, clad in his shirt, looking out over the night below, while I wriggled out of my stays, sighing in relief as the cool night breeze passed through my shift.

“Are your ears ringing, Sassenach?” he said, turning and smiling at me. “It’s been some time since I heard so much talk in such a small space.”

“Mm-hmm.” I came and put my arms round his waist, feeling the weight of the day and the evening slip away. “It’s so quiet up here. I can hear the crickets in the honeysuckle round the privy.”

He groaned and rested his chin on top of my head, letting me hold a little of his weight.

“Dinna mention privies. I’m nay more than half done wi’ the one for your surgery. And if we’ve much more company like tonight, I’m going to have to dig another for the house within a month.”

“I know you know that Roger would do it if you asked,” I remarked. “You just won’t let him.”

“Mmphm. He wouldna do it right.”

“Is there an art to digging privies?” I asked this, teasing, because if Jamie was a perfectionist about anything—and in all truth, he was a perfectionist about quite a number of things, nearly all having to do with tools or weapons—it was digging a proper privy. “Wasn’t it Voltaire who said that the perfect is the enemy of the good?”

“Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien,”
he said. “The best is the mortal enemy of the good. And I’m sure Voltaire never dug a privy in his life. What would he ken about it?” He straightened up and stretched, slowly and luxuriously. “God, I want to lie down.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“I mean to enjoy the anticipation as much as the lyin’ down. Besides, I’m hungry. Have we any food to hand?”

“If none of the children have found it, yes.” I bent and rummaged under the bed, pulling out the basket I’d secreted during the afternoon against just such a contingency. “Cheese and a wedge of apple pie do you?”

He made a Scottish noise indicating thanks and deep contentment and sat down to wade in.

“Germain’s had a letter from Marsali,” I said. The corn husks in the mattress rustled as I sat down beside him. “Did John Quincy tell you?”

“Germain told me,” he said, smiling. “When I went out to tell the bairns to come in, he was out by the well tellin’ Jem and Fanny about his new wee brothers, and his hair standin’ on end with excitement. He said he couldna sleep for wanting to see his folk, so I gave him paper and ink to write his mam a letter.

“Fanny’s helping him wi’ the spelling,” he added, brushing crumbs off his shirt. “Who d’ye think taught her to write? It’s no a skill likely to be of value in a brothel, surely.”

“Someone has to keep the books and write occasional genteel blackmail letters, but perhaps that’s the madam’s job. As for Fanny, she’s never said, but I think it must have been her sister.”

My heart contracted a little at this reminder of Fanny’s recent past. She never spoke of it, or of her sister.

“Aye,” Jamie said, and a shadow crossed his face at the mention of Jane Pocock. Arrested and sentenced to death for killing a sadistic client who had bought her little sister’s maidenhead, she had killed herself the night before she would have been hanged—only hours before William and Jamie reached her.

He pressed his lips together briefly and then shook his head. “Aye, well. We must send Germain home as soon as we can, of course. I’m afraid Frances will miss him, though.”

I’d bent to scoop up our discarded outer garments, but straightened up at this.

“Do you think we should send Fanny with him? To stay with Fergus and Marsali for a while? She’d be a help with the children.”

He paused, a slice of cheese in hand, then shook his head.

“No. Seven is more than enough mouths for Fergus to feed, and the lass is happy enough here, I think. She’s accustomed to us; I wouldna like her to think we dinna want her—or to feel uprooted, aye? And”—he hesitated, then added in an offhand way—“William gave her to me. He meant me to keep her safe.”

“And you think he might come here to see her,” I added gently.

“Aye,” he said, a little gruffly. “I wouldna want him to come and not find her here, I mean.” He took a bite of cheese and chewed it slowly, looking away.