Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (27 page)

“Aye, she is,” he said, squatting down beside them. He ran a hand gently down the dog’s knobbly backbone and her tail moved briefly, but her whole attention was focused on the food. “Why is she starving, I wonder?”

“Why?” I asked. I glanced at him, careful what I said. “Perhaps she’s lost her master.”

“Aye, but she’s a hound. She can hunt for herself—and it’s summer; there’s food everywhere. Master or no, she shouldna be in this case.”

Curious, I got down on my knees and looked closely. He was right; she was gulping the small bites of food, simply swallowing, with little or no mastication. That might be her personal habit, or perhaps any dog would do that with small bits of food like this, but…there
was
something wrong. Something not quite a wince, but…

“You’re right,” I said. “Let her finish, and I’ll have a look.”

The hound polished off the last of the scraps, sniffed hungrily for more—though by now her stomach was visibly distended—then lapped water and, after a glance at the assembled company, nosed Jamie’s leg and lay down beside him.

“Bi sàmhach, a choin
…
”
he said, running a light hand down her long back. Her tail wagged gently and she let out a great sigh, seeming to melt into the floorboards. “Well, then,” he said, in the same soft tones, “come and let me see your mouth,
mo nighean gorm,
” The dog looked surprised but didn’t resist as he rolled her onto her side.

“She
is
blue, isn’t she?” Fanny crawled closer, fascinated, and put out a tentative hand, though she didn’t quite touch the dog.

“Aye, they call this kind a bluetick hound—they’re the color o’ mattress ticking. Let her smell your fingers, lass, so as she kens who ye are. Then just move slow, but she seems a friendly bitch.”

Fanny blinked at the word, and glanced at Jamie.

“Have you never had a dog, Fanny?” Bree asked, seeing this little byplay.

“No,” Fanny replied uncertainly. “I mean…I remember a dog. From when I was very little. It—he—I remember petting him.” Her hand touched the dog’s back, and the hound’s tail stirred. “It was on the ship. I sat under the big sail when the weather was good and he’d come and thit—sit—with me and let me pet him.”

Bree exchanged a quick glance with Roger, who was on the settle, holding Amanda, half asleep.

“The ship,” she said to Fanny, her voice light and casual. “You were on a ship. Before you came to Philadelphia?”

Fanny nodded, only half paying attention. She was watching me as I ran a finger along the black inner lip, lifting it away from the dog’s teeth. The gums were all right, so far as I could see by firelight—not bleeding, maybe a little pale, maybe not. It was common to find parasites in dogs, and that could cause pale gums from internal blood loss, but I didn’t know of any parasitic infections that occurred
in
the mouth…

Jem had sat down on the floor with us and was scratching the dog behind the ears with a practiced hand.

“Like this, Fanny,” he said. “Dogs like to have their ears scratched.” The dog sighed in bliss and relaxed a little, letting me open her mouth. The teeth were good, very clean—

“Why do people say ‘clean as a hound’s tooth’?” I asked, feeling the angles of her jaw, the temporomandibular joints—no apparent tenderness—and the lymph nodes in the neck—not lumpy, but there
was
some swelling on the side of the lower jaw and she winced and whined at my touch. “Her teeth
are
clean, but do hounds really have cleaner teeth than other dogs?”

“Oh, maybe.” Jamie leaned forward to look in the dog’s mouth. “She’s a young bitch—maybe nay more than a year or so. Hunting dogs that eat their prey usually have clean teeth, though—from the bones.”

“Really.” I was only half listening. Turning the dog’s head a little more toward the fire, I’d seen the shadow of something. “Jamie—can you bring a candle or something closer here? I think she has something stuck between her teeth.”

“Were your parents with you, Fanny?” Roger’s voice was quiet, barely pitched above the crackle of the fire. “On the ship?” Fanny’s hand stopped for a moment, resting on the dog’s head, but then resumed scratching, more slowly.

“I fink so,” she said, hesitant.

The candle flame wavered as Jamie glanced at Fanny, then steadied.

“Yes, there it is!” It was a small chip of bone, wedged tightly between the dog’s lower premolars. It was evidently sharp; the gum had been cut and was swollen and spongy-looking around the site of the injury. I pressed gently and the dog whimpered and tried to pull her head away.

“Jemmy, run to the surgery and fetch me the little first-aid box—you know the one?”

“Sure, Grannie!” He hopped up and made off into the darkness of the front hall without a qualm.

“Will she be all right, Mithuth—Mrs. Fraser?” Fanny leaned forward anxiously, trying to see.

“I think so,” I said, trying to wiggle the bone chip with my thumbnail. The dog didn’t like it, but didn’t snarl or offer to bite. “She has a bit of bone stuck between her teeth, and it’s made her mouth sore, but if it hasn’t made an abscess under the tooth…You can let her go for a minute, Jamie. I can’t get it out ’til Jem comes back with my forceps.”

Released, the dog leapt up, shook herself vigorously, and then shot off, rushing down the hall after Jem. Fanny rose up on her knees, but before she could get up altogether, the dog came roaring back, paws thundering on the wooden floor. She let out an excited bark at seeing us, ran around the room in circles, and finally leapt on Fanny, knocking her sideways, then stood over her, panting happily and wagging.

“Get off!” Fanny said, giggling as she squirmed out from under the dog. “You thilly thing.” I smiled and, glancing at Jamie, saw him smiling, too. Fanny laughed with the boys, but seldom otherwise.

“Here, Grannie!” Jem dropped the first-aid box on my lap, then dropped to his knees and started boxing with the dog, feinting slaps to one side of her face and then the other. The hound panted happily and made little wuffs, darting her head at Jem’s hands.

“She’ll nip ye, Jem,” Jamie said, amused. “She’s quicker than you are.”

She was, and she did, though not hard. Jem yelped, then giggled. “Thilly thing,” he said. “Shall we call her Thilly?”

“No,” said Fanny, giggling, too. “That’s a thilly name.”

“That poor dog will never get her mouth taken care of if the lot of you don’t stop stirring her up,” I said severely—for Brianna and Jamie were laughing, too. Roger was smiling but not laughing, not wanting to wake Mandy, now sound asleep on his shoulder.

Bree calmed the incipient riot by going to the pie safe and extracting half of a large dried-apple pie, which she distributed to everyone, including a small piece of crust to the dog, who wolfed it happily.

“All right.” I swallowed the last flaky, cinnamon-scented bite of my own slice, dusted crumbs off my fingers—the dog promptly snuffled them up off the floor—and laid out my small splinter-forceps, my smallest tenaculum, a square of thick gauze, and—after a moment’s thought—the bottle of honey-water, the mildest antibacterial I had. “Let’s go, then.”

Once we’d got the dog immobilized on her side—no easy matter; she writhed like an eel, but Jem flung himself on top of her back half and Jamie pressed her down with one hand on her shoulder and one on her neck—it took no more than a couple of minutes to work the bone chip loose, with Fanny carefully holding the candle so as not to drip wax on me or the dog.

“There!” I held it up in the forceps, to general applause, then tossed it into the fire. “Now just a bit of cleanup…” I pressed the gauze over the gum, firmly. The dog whined a little but didn’t struggle. A small amount of blood from the lacerated gum, and what might be a trace of pus—hard to tell, by candlelight, but I brought the gauze to my nose and couldn’t detect any scent of putrefaction. Meat scraps, apple pie, and dog breath, but no noticeable smell of infection.

Once the bone chip was out, interest in my activities waned, and the conversation turned back to dog names. Lulu, Sassafras, Ginny, Monstro (this from Bree, and I looked up and met her eye with a smile, visualizing the toothy whale from Disneyland as plainly as she did),
“Seasaidh
…
”

Jamie didn’t take part in the naming controversy, but he did—for the first time—stroke the dog’s head gently. Did he already know what her name was? I wondered. I rinsed the gum well with the honey-water—the dog lapped and swallowed, even lying down—but most of my attention was on Jamie.

“I left her howling on her master’s grave.”
Something too faint to be a shiver ran over me, and I felt the hairs on my forearms lift, stirring in the warm draft from the fire. I was morally sure that Jamie had
put
the dog’s master in his grave—and that I was the unwilling cause of it.

His face was calm now, shadowed by the fire. Whatever he might be thinking, nothing showed. And his hand was gentle on the dog’s spotted fur. “
Absolution,”
he’d said.

“What was your dog’s name, Fanny?” Jem said, behind me. “The one you had on the ship.”

“Ssspotty,” she said, making an effort with the “s.” It was only a few months since I had clipped her tongue-tie, and she still struggled with some sounds. “He had a white spot. On his nose.”

“We could call this one Spotty, too,” Jem offered generously. “If you want. She’s got lots of spots. Lots of spots,” he repeated, giggling at the rhyme. “Lots and lots of spots and spots.”

“Now
you’re
a thilly thing,” Fanny said to him, laughing.

“Maybe you should wait and see if your grandda means to keep her, Jem,” Roger said. “Before you give her a name.”

Plainly, the possibility that we might not keep the dog hadn’t entered the children’s heads, and they were aghast at the notion.

“Oh, please, Mr. Fraser!” Fanny said, urgent. “I’ll feed her, I promise I will!”

“And I’ll take the ticks out of her fur, Grandda!” Jemmy put in. “Please, please, can’t we keep her?”

Jamie’s eyes met mine, and his mouth turned up a little at one side—in resignation, I thought, rather than humor.

“She came to me for help,” he said to me. “I canna very well turn her away.”

“Then maybe you should name her, Da,” Bree put in, quelling Jem’s and Fanny’s exhibitions of relieved delight. “What would you call her?”

“Bluebell,” he said without hesitation, surprising me. “It’s a good Scottish name—and it fits her, aye?”

“Bwoo—Bu
lu
bell.” Fanny stroked the dog’s back, and the long plumed tail moved lazily to and fro. “Can I call her Bluey? For short?”

Jamie did laugh then, and rose slowly to his feet, knees cracking from kneeling on the boards for so long.

“Call her anything she’ll answer to, lass. But for now, she needs her bed, and so do I.”

The children coaxed the newly christened Bluebell to come with them, offering more bits of piecrust, and the adults began to gather ourselves, settling for bed. There was a momentary silence as Bree took Mandy from Roger, and as I knelt to smoor the hastily stirred-up fire again, I heard Jem’s and Fanny’s voices on the stair landing.

“What happened to your dog, Spotty?” Jem asked, the question distant but clear. Fanny’s answer was just as clear, and I saw Jamie’s head turn sharply toward the open door as he heard it.

“The bad men threw him into the sea,” she said. “Can Bluey sleep with me tonight? You can have her tomorrow.”

THE FRAMING FOR THE
second story was done. It would be some time yet before it was completely walled in and a roof put on, but his nights of cool sleeping under the naked stars with Claire were numbered. Jamie felt a slight pang of regret at the thought, but this was at once eclipsed by the cozy vision of them sleeping in a featherbed before a warm hearth, three months hence, the shutters closed against howling wind and plastering snow.

He sank slowly into the big chair by the fire, half enjoying the pain as his joints relaxed, both mind and knees knowing that the bliss of rest was at hand. The household was abed, but Claire had gone to a birthing, near the bottom of the cove. He missed her, but it was a pleasant pain, like the stretch in his backbone. She would be back, likely tomorrow. For now, he had a good fire warming his feet, a glass of soft red wine, and books to hand. He took the spectacles from his pocket, unfolded them, and settled them on his nose.

The house’s entire library stood in two modest piles on the table beside his wineglass. A small Bible bound in green cloth, very much the worse for wear. He touched it gently, as he did every time he saw it; it was an old companion—a friend that had seen him through many bad times. A coverless copy of
Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress…
he’d best take that one up to the bedroom; Jem hadn’t shown any interest in it yet, but the lad could certainly read well enough to make out what it was about if he did.

A not-bad copy of Mr. Pope’s translation of
The Odyssey
—maybe he’d read a bit of that with Jem; he’d likely find the ships and monsters interesting, and it would be an excuse to cram a bit of Latin into the lad’s head while they were about it.
Joseph Andrews…
a waste of paper, that one; he’d maybe trade it to Hugh Grant, who liked silliness.
Manon Lescaut,
in French and a fine morocco binding. He frowned briefly at that one; he’d not opened it. John Grey had sent it to him, before…

He grunted irritably and, on impulse, took the book at the bottom of the stack—Mandy’s big bright-orange
Green Eggs and Ham.
The color, the title, and the comical beast on the cover made him smile, and a few minutes with Sam-I-Am eased his temper.

The thump of steps coming down the stairs made him sit up, but it was only Bluebell, who padded up to him, tail wagging gently, sniffed him in case he had any food about his person, gave that up, and went to stand by the back door in a meaningful manner.

“Aye,
a nighean,
” he said, opening the door for her. “Look out for painters.” She vanished into the night with a swipe of her tail, but he stood for a moment, looking out and listening to the dark.

It was quiet, save for the trees talking among themselves, and he stepped outside and stood looking up at the stars, letting go of the lingering annoyance roused by
Manon Lescaut
and letting their peace come into him. Took a deep breath of the fresh piney air and let it out slowly.

“Aye, I forgive ye, ye bloody wee bugger,” he said to John Grey, and felt the lightening of soul he’d been unconsciously seeking.

A rustling in the bushes by the privy heralded the dog’s return. He waited for her to finish her industrious sniffing and held the door open for her. She passed him with a brief wag of her tail and bounded softly up the stairs.

He felt more settled in himself, and walked a little way by starlight to the red cedar that grew near the well, to drink water and pluck a twig. He liked the smell of the berries—Claire told him they were used to flavor gin, which he didn’t care for, but the scent was fine.

Inside again, the door bolted and the fire poked up, he went back to the books, the cedar twig making a small fresh smell for him that went well with the wine. He took up one of the small thick books about Hobbits that Bree had brought for him, but even with his spectacles, the print was dense enough to make him feel tired looking at it, and he put it down again, eyes seeking something else in the pile.

Not
Manon,
not yet. His forgiveness was sincere, but distinctly grudging, and he kent well enough it would need to be repeated a few times before he spoke to John Grey again.

Nay doubt it was the thought of reluctant forgiveness that made him pick up the book Brianna had brought for herself—Frank Randall’s book.
The Soul of a Rebel.

“Mmphm,” he said, and drew it out of the stack, turning it over in his hands. It felt strange; a good weight and size, sound binding, but the paper cover was printed with a very peculiar tartan background in pink and green, on which there was a square of pale green with a decent wee painting of the basket hilt of a Scottish broadsword and a bit of the blade. Below the square, the subtitle,
The Scottish Roots of the American Revolution.
What made it feel odd, though, was the fact that it was wrapped in a transparent sheet of something that wasn’t paper, slick under his touch. Plastic, Brianna had told him when he asked. He kent the word, all right, but not with this meaning. He turned the book over to look at the photograph—he was becoming halfway accustomed to photographs, but it still took him back a bit to see the man looking out at him like that.

He pressed his thumb firmly over Frank Randall’s nose, then lifted it. He tilted the book from side to side, letting light from the fire play over the plastic covering. He’d made a very faint smudge, not visible if you were looking straight at it.

Suddenly ashamed of this childishness, he erased the mark with his shirtsleeve and set the book on his knee. The photograph looked calmly up at him through dark-rimmed spectacles.

It wasn’t only the writer that disturbed him. Hearing bits of what was to come from Claire and Bree and Roger Mac frequently alarmed him, but their physical presence was reassuring; whatever horrible events were to happen, many folk had survived them. Still, he kent well enough that while none of his family would ever lie to him, they did often temper what they said to him. Frank Randall was another thing: an historian, whose account of what was going to happen in the next few years would be…

Well, he didn’t ken exactly
what
it might be. Frightening, perhaps. Upsetting, maybe. Maybe reassuring…in spots.

Frank Randall wasn’t smiling, but he looked pleasant enough. Lines in his face that cut deep. Well, the man had been through a war.

“To say nothing of bein’ married to Claire,” he said aloud, and was surprised at the sound of his voice. He picked up his wineglass and took a mouthful, holding it for a moment, but then swallowed and turned the book over.

“Well, I dinna ken if I forgive ye or not, Englishman,” he murmured, opening the cover and taking a cleansing breath of cedar. “Or you me, but let’s see what ye have to say to me, then.”

HE WOKE THE
next morning to an empty bed, sighed, stretched, and rolled out of it. He’d thought he’d dream about the events described in Randall’s book, but he hadn’t. He’d dreamed, rather pleasantly, about Achilles’s ships, and would have liked to tell Claire about it. He shook off the remnants of sleep and went to wash, making a mental note of some of the things he’d dreamed so as not to forget them. With luck, she’d be home before supper.

“Mr. Fraser?” A delicate rap on the door, Frances’s voice. “Your daughter says breakfast is ready.”

“Aye?” He wasn’t smelling anything of a savory nature, but “ready” was a relative term. “I’m coming, lass.
Taing.
”

“Tang?” she said, sounding startled. He smiled, pulled a clean shirt over his head, and opened the door. She was standing there like a field daisy, delicate but upright on her stem, and he bowed to her.

“Taing,”
he said, pronouncing it as carefully as he could. “It means ‘thanks’ in the Gaelic.”

“Are you sure?” she said, frowning slightly.

“I am,” he assured her. “
Moran taing
means ‘thank you very much,’ should ye want something stronger.”

A faint flush rose in her cheeks.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t really mean are you th—sure. Of course you are. It’s only that Germain told me ‘thank you’ is ‘tabag leet.’ Is that wrong? He might have been practicing on me, but I didn’t think so.”

“Tapadh leat,”
he said, restraining the urge to laugh. “No, that’s right; it’s only that
moran taing
is…casual, ye might say. The other’s when ye want to be formal. If someone’s saved your life or paid your debts, say, ye’d say,
‘Tapadh leat,’
where if they passed ye the bread at table, ye’d say,
‘Taing,’
aye?”

“Aye,” she said automatically, and flushed deeper when he smiled. She smiled back, though, and he followed her down the stairs, thinking how oddly engaging she was; she was reticent, but not shy at all. He supposed one couldn’t be shy, if raised with the expectation of becoming a whore.

Now he could smell parritch—slightly scorched parritch. He wrinkled his nose, adjusted his expression to one of stoic pleasantry, and went along to the kitchen, casting an eye at the unfinished walls of his study and the barely framed front room. He might get an hour at the study this afternoon, if he was back in time from…

“Madainn mhath,”
he said, pausing in the open space where the door would be—next week, maybe—to greet the assembled members of his family.

“Grandda!” Mandy scrambled off her bench, knocking her parritch bowl into the milk jug. Brianna, barely sitting down, lunged forward and grabbed it, just in time.

He caught Mandy and swung her up into his arms, smiling at Jem, Fanny, Germain, and Brianna.

“Mam burnt the parritch,” Jem informed him. “But there’s honey, so you don’t notice so much.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said, sitting down and setting Mandy on his knee. “The honey’s no from Claire’s bees, is it? They’ll need still to settle a bit, aye?”

“Yes,” Brianna said, and pushed a bowl toward him, followed by milk jug and honey pot. She was flushed herself, doubtless from the heat of the fire. “This is part of Mama’s wages from setting Hector MacDonald’s broken leg. Sorry about the porridge; I thought I could make it to the smoke shed and back before it needed to be stirred again.” She nodded toward the hearth, where slices of bacon were just beginning to sputter in the big spider.

“Where’s your man, lass?” he asked, tactfully ignoring her apology and helping himself to a modest drizzle of honey.

“One of the MacKinnon kids came to fetch him, just after daybreak. You were tired,” she added, seeing him frown at the thought that he hadn’t heard the visitor. “And no wonder. Don’t worry,” she said quickly, “it wasn’t really an emergency; old Grannie MacKinnon woke up dying again—that’s the third time this month—and wanted a minister. Oh, the bacon!” She leapt up, but Fanny had already moved to turn the sizzling slices and Jamie’s wame contracted pleasantly at the savory smoke.

“Thank you, Fanny.” Bree sat back down and took up her spoon again.

“Mr. Fraser?” Fanny said, waving the smoke away from her eyes.

“Aye, lass?”

“How do you say ‘You’re welcome’ in Gaelic?”