Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (68 page)

Roger’s face went momentarily blank.

“Aye, he did,” he said slowly. “But it—I mean, it seemed to be an effect of coming through the stones.” His hand went to his own chest, unconsciously, and he rubbed it slowly. “He was having an…attack, a seizure…right when we came through. But then it got better—and then it got much worse later. That’s when we met Hector McEwan.”

Her breathing was a lot easier. There was something about logical thought that short-circuited emotion. Maybe that’s why people said you should count to ten when you were upset…

“I wish I’d asked him more about it,” she said. “But”—she touched her own chest, where her twitchy heart was presently beating quietly—“I wasn’t having anything like this at the time.”

She could see that he didn’t want to say it, but she could tell what he was thinking, because it was the logical conclusion and she was thinking it, too.

“Maybe it—the damage, if that’s what it is—gets worse, the more often you do it? Travel, I mean?”

“God, I don’t know.” He glanced up the hill. The kids’ voices were fainter; they were off in the woods on the other side of the road. “It doesn’t seem to have hurt Jem, or…or me. Or your mother. But—it only just occurred to me: your mother traveled through the stones while she was pregnant with you. Maybe that…?” He touched her chest, gently.

“Too small a sample size.” She laughed, shakily. “And I didn’t travel with Mandy. Don’t worry. Mama said the odds of someone my age and my state of health having a stroke were infinitesimal. As for pregnancy…”

“Bree.” He stood and pulled her to her feet, facing him. “I meant it,
m’aoibhneas.
I’d never risk your life, your health—or your happiness.” He tilted his head so they were forehead-to-forehead, eye-to-eye, and he felt her smile. “D’ye not know how much you mean to me?” he said. “Let alone the kids. For that matter…do ye really think I’d risk you dying on me and
leaving
me wi’ those wee fiends?”

She laughed, though he could see the tears still glimmering at the corners of her eyes. She squeezed his hands, hard, then let go and dug for a handkerchief in her pocket.

“ ‘
M’aoibhneas
’?” she asked, shaking the handkerchief out and wiping her nose with it. “I don’t know that one. What does it mean?”

“Joy,” he said gruffly, and cleared his throat. “My joy.” He nodded at the wheel and its sprung tyre. “What is it they say? Happiness is someone who can mend ye when you’re broken?”

IT TOOK LESS
than an hour to mend the wheel—so far as she could do that.

“It really needs a blacksmith to put fresh rivets in the tyre,” she said, rising from a squat by the freshly attached wheel. “All I had was flat-headed tacks for the felloes and a couple of really crude screws and some wire, but—”

“We’ll drive slowly,” Roger said. He shaded his eyes, judging the height of the sun. “There’s a good three hours of daylight left. And I think there’s a place called Bartholomew, or Yamville, or something like that on this road. Might be big enough to boast a blacksmith.”

The kids had exhausted themselves running up and down the trace, playing tag and hide-and-seek while she was mending the wheel. A solid lunch of cold boiled potatoes (remarkably good with a little salt and vinegar) and eggs, with a good dollop of sauerkraut for vitamin C, and apples to finish off—they had a bag of small greenish-yellow apples, sweet but tart—and Mandy was out cold, curled up in the wagon bed with her head on a sack of oats, and Jem and Germain yawning beside her but determined not to fall asleep and miss anything.

Roger felt much the same. The trace had widened into an actual road, but there was no one on it; they hadn’t passed or met anyone in the last two hours, and the horses had slowed, so the forest passed quietly, tree by tree, rather than the jolting green blur of the earlier part of the journey. It was soothing, hypno…hyp—

“Hey!” Brianna grabbed his arm, startling him back into wakefulness. By reflex, he hauled back on the reins and the horses stopped, snorting, their sides slicked with sweat.

“You’d be dead on your feet, if you were standing up,” she said, smiling. “You crawl in back with Mandy for a while. I’ll drive.”

“Nah, I’m fine.” He resisted her attempt to take the reins from him, but in the process he lost control of his face and yawned so widely that his ears roared with the sound of distant surf and his eyes watered.

“Go,” she said, gathering the reins up neatly and twitching them across the horses’ backs, clicking her tongue before he could argue. “I’m fine. Really,” she added more softly, looking at him.

“Aye. Well…maybe just for a bit.” He couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone on the bench, though, and groped under it for the big canteen. He splashed water into his face, drank a little, and put the plug back in, feeling slightly more alert.

“What else have ye got in your magic bag?” he asked, having spotted the canvas rucksack under the bench next to the canteen. “Besides your tea?”

“Some of my small tools,” she replied, glancing at the bag. “And a good thing, too. A few books—presents, and a few toys for Mandy, and the Grinch book I made for her. She wanted to bring
Green Eggs and Ham,
but
that
wouldn’t do.”

Roger smiled at the thought of the Brumbys and their society friends spotting the big bright-orange book. Bree was slowly working on handmade approximations of some of the other Dr. Seuss books, with her own whimsical versions of the drawings and as much of the original verse as she and Claire could remember between them. They were by no means as eye-catching as the real thing, but also much less likely to cause more than a smile or a puzzled frown, should anyone look through one.

“And what if you meet a printer in Savannah, who catches sight of it and wants to publish the book?” he asked, trying to sound no more than mildly curious. He’d almost got over worrying about exposing bits of future culture to the eighteenth century, but it still gave him an uneasy feeling at the back of his neck, as though the Time Police might be lying in wait to spot
Horton Hears a Who!
and denounce them. To whom? he wondered.

“I guess it would depend how much he offered me,” she said lightly. She felt his resistance, though, and transferred the reins to her left hand in order to pat his.

“Historical friction,” she said. “There are all kinds of things—ideas, machines, tools, whatever—that were—are, I mean—discovered more than once. Mama said the hypodermic needle was independently invented by at least three different people, all around the same time, in different countries. But other things are invented or discovered and they just…sit. No one uses them. Or they’re lost, and then found again. For years—centuries, sometimes—until
something
happens, and suddenly it’s the right time, and whatever it is comes suddenly into its own, and spreads, and it’s common knowledge.

“Besides,” she added practically, nudging the bag with her foot, “what harm could it do to loose a bastardized version of
The Cat in the Hat
on the eighteenth century?”

He laughed in spite of his uneasiness.

“Nobody would print that one. A story showing children being deliberately disobedient to their mother? And
not
suffering Dire Consequences for doing it?”

“Like I said. Not the right time for a book like that,” she said. “It wouldn’t…stick.”

She’d got over the emotional breakdown altogether now—or at least that’s what she looked like. Long red hair spilling loose down her back, face animated but not troubled, her eyes on the road and the horses’ bobbing heads.

“And then I have Jane,” she said, nodding at the bag and lowering her voice. “Speaking of dire consequences, poor girl.”

“Ja—oh, Fanny’s sister?”

“I mended the drawing, but I promised Fanny that I’d paint Jane, too,” Bree said, and frowned a little. “Make her more permanent. And Lord John says Mr. Brumby is providing me with the best painting supplies that money and a solid Tory reputation can buy in Savannah. I couldn’t persuade Fanny to let me take her drawing, but she did let me copy it so I’d have something to work from.”

“Poor girl. Girls, I should say.” Claire had told Brianna, after the uproar over Fanny’s getting her monthly, what had happened to Jane, and Bree had told him.

“Yes. And poor Willie, too. I don’t know if he was in love with Jane or just felt responsible for her, but Mama said he showed up at her funeral in Savannah, looking awful, with that huge horse. He gave Da the horse, for Fanny—he’d already given Fanny to him, to take care of—and then he just…left. They haven’t heard anything about him since.”

Roger nodded, but there wasn’t much to say. He’d met William, Ninth Earl of Ellesmere, once, several years before, for roughly three minutes, on a quay in Wilmington. A teenager then, tall and thin as a rail—and with a striking resemblance to Bree, though he was dark-haired—but with a lot more confidence and bearing than he’d have expected from someone that age. He supposed that was one of the perquisites of being born (at least theoretically) to the hereditary aristocracy. You really did think the world—or a good part of it—belonged to you.

“Do you know where she was buried? Jane?” he asked.

She shook her head. “In a private cemetery on an estate outside the city, is all. Why?”

He lifted one shoulder, briefly. “I thought I’d maybe pay my respects. So I could tell Fanny I’d gone and said a prayer for her sister.”

She glanced at him, soft-eyed.

“That’s a really good thought. I tell you what: I’ll ask Lord John where it is—Mama said he arranged for Jane to be buried, so he’ll know where. Then you and I can go together. Do you think Fanny would like it if I made a sketch of the grave? Or would that be too—upsetting?”

“I think she’d like it.” He touched her shoulder, then smoothed the hair back from her face and bound it with his handkerchief. “You wouldn’t have anything edible in that bag, would you?”

From Colonel Benjamin Cleveland

To Colonel Fraser, Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina, Colonel John Sevier, Colonel Isaac Shelby, etc….

Dear Sirs:

This is to inform you that as of the 14th proximo, I shall be riding with my Militia through the Farms and Settlements that lie between the lower Bend of the Nolichucky and the hot springs, with the intent of harassing and dislodging such Men as be of a Loyalist Disposition living therein and I invite you to join me in this Undertaking.

If you are of like Mind with me in appreciating the Threat we harbor in our Busom and the Necessity of Exturpating it, bring your Men prepared with their Arms and join me at Sycamore Shoals upon the 14th.

Yr. Srv.

B. Cleveland

“WHAT ARE OUR CHOICES?”
I asked, trying to sound calmly objective.

Jamie sighed and set down the ledger.

“I can ignore Cleveland’s letter—including his spelling. Like the last one. Nobody kens I’ve had it but you and Roger Mac and the tinker who brought it. Fat Benjie willna wait long for my answer; he’ll have his harvest in soon, and he’s hot to be about his hunting before the weather turns.”

“That would buy us a little time, at least.”

One corner of his mouth turned up.

“I like the way ye say ‘us,’ Sassenach.”

I flushed a little. “I’m sorry. I know it’s you that has to do the dirty work. But—”

“I wasna joking, Sassenach,” he said softly, and smiled at me. “If I get torn limb from limb doin’ this, who’s going to stitch me back together, if not you?”

“Don’t even joke about being torn limb from limb.”

He looked at me quizzically, then nodded, accepting it.

“Or…I can send back an answer tellin’ him I have my hands full wi’ the local Loyalists and I daren’t leave them loose to cause mischief on the Ridge. And that, Sassenach, is more than halfway true, but I dinna think I want either to say such a thing to Cleveland—nor do I want to put my name to such a thing on paper. Say I did write that—and that someone amongst Cleveland’s acquaintance then takes it into his head to send my wee note to the newspapers in Cross Creek?”

That was a good point, and my stomach curled a little. Putting his name to any sort of political document these days could be essentially painting a target on his back. On all our backs.

“Still…it’s not as though anyone in western North Carolina has any doubts as to your loyalties,” I objected. “I mean, you
were
one of Washington’s field generals.”

“Aye, I was,” he said cynically. “ ‘Were’ being the significant word. Half the folk who ken I was a general—for the span of a month or so—also think that I’m a traitorous poltroon who abandoned my men on the battlefield. Which I did. It wouldna surprise any of them to hear I’d turned my coat red.”

And joining the Overmountain men to harass and murder Loyalists would go some way toward restoring his reputation as a dyed-in-the-wool patriot, I supposed.

“Oh, nonsense.” I got up and came behind him, putting my hands on his shoulders and squeezing. “No one who knows you would think that for a moment, and I’d be willing to bet that most people in North Carolina never heard of Monmouth and haven’t got even the slightest idea that you fought there—let alone what really happened.”

What really happened.
True, he technically had deserted his men on the field in order to keep me from bleeding to death—even though the battle had ended, and the men in question were all county militias whose enlistment was already up or due to be up the next day. Only the fact that he had formally resigned his commission—in writing, such as it was—at that point had kept him from being court-martialed. That, and the fact that George Washington was so furious with Charles Lee’s behavior on the field at Monmouth that he was unlikely to turn on Jamie Fraser—a man who had followed him through those fields and fought alongside his men with courage and gallantry.

“Take three deep breaths and let them go; your shoulders are hard as rocks.”

He obediently complied with this instruction, and after the third breath bent his head so I could knead the back of his neck, as well as his shoulders. His flesh was warm, and touching him gave me a reassuring sense of solidity.

“But what I likely
will
do,” he said into his chest, “is to send Cleveland and the others each a bottle o’ the two-year-old whisky, along wi’ a letter saying that my barley’s just been cut and I canna leave it to rot, or there’ll be no whisky next year.”

That made me feel considerably better. The Overmountain men were rebels, and some—like Cleveland—might be bloodthirsty fanatics, but I was sure that all of them had their priorities straight when it came to whisky.

“Excellent thought,” I said, and kissed the back of his neck. “And with luck, we’ll have an early winter with a lot of snow.”

That made him laugh, and the tightness in my lower back relaxed, though my hands felt empty when I took them away.

“Be careful what ye wish for, Sassenach.”

The light of the setting sun was behind him now, his profile black in silhouette. I caught the glint of light on the bridge of his long, straight nose as he turned his head, and the graceful curve of his skull—but what caught at my heart was the back of his neck.

He ran a hand beneath the tail of his hair, lifting it casually as he scratched his head, and the sun shone pure and white as bone through the tiny hidden hairs that ran down the ridge of muscle there.

Only an instant, and he pulled loose his ribbon and shook out his hair over his shoulders, a fading, still-dark mass of bronze and silver, sparking in the sun, and it was gone.

JAMIE’S
NOLLE PROSEQUI
to Benjamin Cleveland’s cordial invitation to come hunt Loyalists was evidently acceptable, for no further missives followed—and no one came by to set fire to our crops, either. That was just as well, as Jamie’s statement that his barley had been cut was anticipating the reality by a couple of weeks.

Now, though, the barley lay in sheaves in the fields and was being stuffed into sacks and hauled away for threshing and winnowing as fast as the available field hands—Jamie, me, Young Ian, Jenny and Rachel, and Bobby Higgins and his stepson Aidan—could manage. After a grueling day of working the harvest, we would stagger back to the house, eat whatever I had managed to put together in the morning—generally a stew made of greasy beans, rice, and anything else I could find in the bleary gray light of dawn—and fall into bed. Except Jamie.

He would eat, lie down before the hearth for one hour, then get up, dash cold water in his face, pull on the least filthy of his two work shirts, and go out to meet the militia in the big clearing below the house. He would set Bobby to drilling whoever had shown up, while he talked with the newcomers, persuading them to join, sealing their engagement with a silver shilling (he had sixteen left, hidden in the heel of one of his dress boots) and the promise of a mount and a decent gun. Then he would take over the drilling, as the light gradually seeped out of the land, drawn up into the last brilliance of the sky, and when the sun finally disappeared he would stagger up to bed and—with luck—get his boots off before collapsing facedown beside me.

Other men needed to tend to their harvest and butchering as well, though, so the attendance was spotty—and would be, he’d told me, until mid-October.

“By which time, I might possibly have a few horses and rifles in hand to give them.”

“I hope Mr. Cleveland’s friends all have harvests to look after, too,” I said, crossing the fingers of both hands.

He laughed and poured a ewer of water over his head, then set it down and stood for a moment, hands braced on the washstand, head down, dripping into the basin—and all over the floor.

“Aye,” he said, into the dark cavern of his long, wet hair. “Aye, they do.” He didn’t straighten up immediately, and I could see the depth of each slow breath as it swelled his back. Finally, he stood up straight and, shaking his head like a wet dog, took the linen towel I offered him and wiped his face.

“Cleveland’s rich,” he said. “He’s got servants to mind his fields and his stock and let him play hangman. I dinna have that luxury, thank God.”