Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (109 page)

THE SMALL WOODEN STRUCTURE
to which Lieutenant Hanson escorted them might originally have been a chicken coop, Brianna thought, ducking beneath the flimsy lintel. Someone had been living in it, though; there were two rough pallets with blankets on the floor, a chipped and stained pottery ewer and basin between them, and an enameled tin chamber pot in much better condition.

“I do apologize, ma’am,” Lieutenant Hanson said, for the dozenth time. “But half our tents have blown away and the men are holding down the rest.” He held his lantern up, peering dubiously at the dark splotches seeping through the boards of one wall. “It seems not to be leaking too badly. Yet.”

“It’s perfectly fine,” Brianna assured him, hunching out of the way so her two large escorts could squeeze in behind her. With four people inside the shed, there was literally no room to turn around, let alone lie down, and she clutched her sketchbox under her cloak, not wanting it to be trampled.

“We are obliged to you, Lieutenant.” William was bent nearly double under the low ceiling, but managed a nod in Hanson’s direction. “Food?”

“Directly, sir,” Hanson assured him. “I’m sorry there’s no fire, but at least you’ll be out of the rain. Good night, Mrs. MacKenzie—and thank you again.”

He squirmed past the bulk of John Cinnamon and disappeared into the blustery night, clutching his hat to his head.

“Take that one,” William said to Brianna, jerking his chin at the bed sack farthest from the leaking wall. “Cinnamon and I will take the other in shifts.”

She was too tired to argue with him. She laid down her sketchbox, shook the blanket, and when no bedbugs, lice, or spiders fell out, sat down, feeling like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.

She closed her eyes, hearing William and John Cinnamon negotiate their movements, but letting the low voices wash over her like the wind and rain outside. Images crowded the backs of her eyes, the trampled grass of the shoreline trail, the suspicious faces of the Highlanders at the edge of the city, the ever-changing light on the dead man’s face, her brother jerking his chin in exactly the way her—their—father did…dark streaks of water and white streaks of chicken shit on silvered boards in the lanternlight…light…it seemed a thousand years since she’d watched the morning sun glow pink through Angelina Brumby’s small sweet ear…and Roger…at least Roger was alive, wherever he was right now…

She opened her eyes on darkness, feeling a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t fall asleep before you eat something,” William said, sounding amused. “I promised to see you fed, and I shouldn’t like to break my word.”

“Food?” She shook her head, blinking. A sudden glow rose behind William, and she saw the big Indian set down a clay firepot next to the stubby candle he’d just lit. He tilted the candle over the bottom of the upturned chamber pot, then stuck it into the melted wax, holding it until the wax hardened.

“Sorry, I should have asked if you wanted to piss first,” Cinnamon said, looking at her apologetically. “Only there’s no place else to put the candle.”

“No,” she said, and shook her head to clear it. “That’s all right. Is there anything to drink?” She’d drunk almost nothing during the day and evening and felt dry as a winter husk, in spite of the prevailing damp.

Lieutenant Hanson had managed to find several bottles of beer, some slices of cold roast pork, rimmed with grease, a loaf of dry, dark bread, a pot of strong mustard, and a large lump of crumbling cheese. She’d never eaten anything better in her life.

They didn’t talk; the men ate with the same single-mindedness as she did, and, the last crumb finished, she eased herself down flat on the blanket, wrapped her cloak around her, and fell asleep without a word.

She dreamed, caught in the uneasy chill between sleep and waking. She dreamed of men. Men as shadows, slow with grief. Men at work, their sweat running down bare arms, scarred backs…Men walking in ranks, their uniforms black with wet, splashed with mud, no telling who they were…a tiny boy rooting at her breast with great determination, unaware that he was helpless.

She woke every now and then, briefly, but seldom broke the surface of the dream and fell back slowly into sleep, with the scents of men and chickens lending odd, stumpy wings to a man flying upward into the sun…

She woke slowly to the sensation of wings beating in her chest.

“Shit,” she said, but softly, and pressed her palm hard against her breastbone. As usual, this accomplished nothing, and she lay still, breathing as shallowly as possible, hoping it would stop. She was lying on her side, and her brother’s face was a foot from hers, shadowed but visible as he lay asleep on the other pallet.

The rain had stopped, the wind had dropped, and she could hear water dripping from the eaves of the shed. Moonlight filtered through cracks in the boards, flickering on and off as clouds raced past. And the flutter in her chest eased and her heart bumped two or three times, then resumed its usual rhythm.

She took a cautious breath and sat up slowly, not to wake William, but he was dead asleep, long body sprawled limp with exhaustion.

“There’s water,” said a soft voice to her right. “Do you want some?”

“Please.” Her tongue clicked from dryness and she reached toward the vast shadow that must be John Cinnamon. He was sitting on the upturned chamber pot; he leaned forward and put a small canteen into her hand.

The water was fresh and cool, with a pleasant metallic taste from the tin, and she drank thirstily, just managing to stop without draining the canteen entirely. She handed it back, reluctantly, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Thank you.” He made a small grunt in response, and leaned back; the boards of the shed wall creaked in protest. Now she really did need to piss, she realized. Well, no way round it.

She got clumsily to her feet, and Cinnamon rose too, much more gracefully, and seized her by the arm to stop her falling.

“I—just—I’m going outside for a moment.”

“Oh.” He let go her arm, hesitant, and half-turned toward the upside-down chamber pot as though to right it.

“No, it’s all right. The rain’s stopped.” The door of the shed was stuck, swollen with the wet; he reached past her and freed it with a jolt of his palm. Fresh cold air rushed into the shed, and she heard a rustle as William stirred.

“I’ll go first.” Cinnamon whispered in her ear as he somehow slid past her. “You wait ’til I call.”

“But—” But he was gone, leaving the door slightly ajar. She cast a quick glance at William, but he had sunk back into slumber; she could hear a faint snore from the darkness and smiled at the sound.

As quietly as she could, she pushed the ramshackle door open and stuck her head out. The night spread overhead in a silent rush, bright-edged clouds racing past a bright half-moon.

She could hear the drip of water more clearly out here, falling from the leaves of a big tree that stood by the chicken shed. She could hear a steadier splash of water, too, and smiled again. John Cinnamon had taken the opportunity for discreet relief of his own.

She turned in the other direction and retired under the shadow of the big tree, in spite of the drips, where she accomplished her own business without ceremony.

“I’m just here,” she said, emerging in time to forestall Cinnamon’s calling her. He turned from the shed door sharply, then nodded, seeing her.

He made a slight inquisitive motion toward the shed, but she shook her head.

“Not yet. I need a little air.” She tilted back her head and breathed, grateful for the freshness of the night and for the stars appearing and vanishing overhead, vivid in the patches of black night scoured by the passing clouds.

John Cinnamon kept her company, though he didn’t speak. She could feel his presence, large and reassuring.

“Have you known my—my brother long?” she asked at last.

He lifted a shoulder in equivocation.

“Yes and no,” he said. “We spent a winter together in Quebec, when? Maybe three years ago. I was a guide for him, a scout. Then we met again by accident…three months ago? About that.”

“Where did you meet this time?” she asked, curious. “In Canada?”

“Oh. No. In Virginia.” He turned his head at a sudden cracking noise, but then dismissed it. “A broken branch falling. It was a place called Mount Josiah. Do you know it?”

“I’ve heard of it. What brought you there?”

He made a small humming sound, but nodded, deciding to tell her.

“Lord John Grey. Do you know his lordship?”

“Yes, very well,” she said, smiling at the memory. “Was he in Virginia, then?”

“No,” Cinnamon said thoughtfully, “but your brother was.”

“Oh. Was he looking for Lord John as well?”

“I don’t think so.” He stood silent for a moment, then added, “He was looking for other things. Maybe he’ll tell you; I can’t.”

“I see,” she said, wondering. Shocked—and moved—by meeting William, she hadn’t had time to wonder, let alone ask, what had led him to Savannah, why he had resigned his army commission, what he thought about his two fathers…what he thought about her. Who he was.

Her father had said almost nothing about William, and she hadn’t asked. Time enough, she’d felt. But the time had evidently come.

Still, she didn’t want to pry or discomfit John Cinnamon by asking whether—or what—he knew about Jamie Fraser.

“William said that he—or rather you—wanted a portrait made,” she said, changing to what seemed safer ground. “I’d be very happy to do that. Er…is it meant for some lucky lady?”

That surprised him, and he laughed, a low, warm sound.

“No, I don’t have a woman. I mean to send it to my father,” he said.

“Your father? Where is he?” The clouds had shredded and the light of a setting moon showed her his broad face, soft-eyed now, and thoughtful. He would be wonderful to paint.

“London,” he said, surprising her. He saw that he
had
surprised her and ducked his head, abashed.

“I am a bastard, of course,” he said, with a tone of apology. “My father was a British soldier; he got me on an Indian woman in Canada.”

“I…see.” There didn’t seem anything else she could say, and he gave her a small, shy smile.

“Yes. I thought—for many years, I thought that Lord John was my father. It was him who took me when my mother died—I was an infant—and gave me to the holy fathers at the mission in Gareon. He sent money for my keeping, you see.”

“That…seems very like him,” she said, though in fact she would never have thought of him doing such a thing.

“He is a kind man.
Very
kind,” he added firmly. “William brought me to Savannah to talk to him—William thought Lord John to be my father, too—and it was his lordship who told me the truth. My real father abandoned me; such things are common.”

His voice was matter-of-fact; probably such things
were
common.

“That doesn’t mean it’s
right,
” she said, angry at the unknown father.

He shrugged.

“But Lord John told me his name, and a direction. I know how to—to send the picture to him.”

“You want a portrait for a man who abandoned you? But—why?” She spoke cautiously. This young man was patently a realist; did he really think that a portrait of his half-breed child, now grown, would move the sort of selfish, coldhearted oaf who—

“I don’t think he will acknowledge me,” he assured her. “I don’t want him to. I don’t want money or anything he might value. But he has one thing that I want, and I hope that if he sees my face, he will give it to me.”

“What on earth is that?”

Even the dripping from the trees had ceased by now. The night was so still that she could hear him swallow.

“I want to know my name,” he said, so low she scarcely heard him. “I want to know the name my mother called me. He’s the only one who knows that.”

Her throat was too tight to speak. She stepped toward him and put her arms around him, holding him as his mother might have, had she lived to see him grown.

“I promise you,” she whispered when she could speak. “Your face will break his heart.”

He patted her back, very gently, and stepped back.

“You’re very kind,” he said. “You should sleep now.”

J
OHN CINNAMON TACTFULLY LEFT
William and Brianna soon after they had made their way back through the debris of the abatis line into the city, saying that he had business at the riverfront and would see William later at Lord John’s house.

“I like your friend a lot,” Brianna said, watching Cinnamon’s broad back disappear into the dappled sunlight of a square whose name she didn’t know.

“So do I. I only hope—” William checked himself, but his sister turned to him, a sympathetic expression on her face.

“Me, too,” she said. “You mean London, and this Matthew Stubbs?”

“Malcolm, but yes.”

“What sort of man is he?” she asked curiously. “Have you met him?”

“Yes, twice that I recall. Once at Ascot and once at one of my f—one of Lord John’s clubs.” He glanced at her to see whether she’d noticed, but of course she had.

“It’s okay—all right, I mean—to call Lord John your father,” she said, the expression of sympathy transferring itself to him. “Da wouldn’t mind.”

Blood rose in his cheeks, but he was saved from saying what he thought about Jamie Fraser’s preferences in the matter by Brianna’s instantly returning to the subject of Malcolm Stubbs.

“So, what’s he like, this Stubbs?”

He couldn’t help a smile at the suspicious tone of “this Stubbs.”

“To look at, very aptly named. Short and thick—with hair just like Cinnamon’s, though it’s a sort of a sandy blond. It may be gray by now, though,” he added. “He always wears a wig in public.”

She lifted her brows at him—thick brows, for a woman, and red to boot, but very expressive.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, in response to the brows’ question. “There’s the one thing that
might
help. Pa—Papa, I mean,” he said, giving her a brief glare that dared her to comment, “told me that he has a black wife. Stubbs has, I mean,” he amended. “Not Papa.”

She blinked.

“In
London
?”

She sounded so shocked that he laughed.

“Why should the place make a difference? I imagine she’d be just as surprising here”—he waved a hand at the stately, shattered houses surrounding St. James Square—“if not more so.”

“Hm!” she said. Then, curiously, “Did he free her from slavery, and then marry her?”

“She wasn’t a slave,” William said, somewhat surprised. “My father said that he—he and Stubbs both, he meant—had met her in Cuba. Stubbs’s first wife had just died of some sort of fever, and he brought this woman—Inocencia, that’s her name, I knew it was some sort of Spanish virtue—brought her back to London with him and married her. Anyway,” he said, bringing the conversation back to its point, “I’m sure that Papa said Stubbs had children by this woman.”

“You mean he wouldn’t necessarily turn his back on John Cinnamon because of being…” She waved a hand, indicating Cinnamon’s noticeable Indian-ness.

“Yes.” William felt doubtful, despite the firmness of his answer. Having children of an unusual hue would cause comment, but wasn’t necessarily a scandalous thing, provided they were legitimate, which the junior Stubbses certainly were. Having an enormous and very obviously extra-legal adult Indian turn up and claim parentage might well be a horse of a different color. And he found that he very much wanted John Cinnamon not to be hurt.

Brianna made a clicking noise, and her horse moved obligingly out of the shade of the live oaks and into Jones Street. There were a large number of people out, William saw; overnight, the sense of fearful oppression had lifted with the siege, and while the smell of burning still tinged the air and broken tree limbs were scattered everywhere, people had to eat and business must be done. The normal tide of daily life was coming in apace.

“Will you go with him? To London?” Brianna asked over her shoulder. She nudged her horse with both heels, reining him out of the way of an oncoming wagon filled with barrels and sweetly smelling of beer.

“London?” William repeated. “I don’t know.” He didn’t, and let so much uncertainty show in his voice that his sister pulled up a bit to wait for him, then nodded toward a lane that ran behind the Baptist church, indicating that he should follow her.

“It’s not my business,” she said, as they passed into the cold shadow of the church, “but—what are you planning to do? I mean, now the siege is lifted, I suppose you can go anywhere you want…”

Excellent question.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Truly, I don’t.”

She nodded.

“Well, you have options, don’t you?”

“Options?” he said. He was amused, but the word still gave him a sense that he’d swallowed a live eel.
You have no idea, sister mine…

“Lord John says you own a small plantation in Virginia,” she pointed out. “If you didn’t want to go back to England, I suppose you could live there?”

“It’s possible, I suppose.” He could hear the doubt in his own voice, and so could she; she glanced sharply at him, eyebrow lifted.

“The place is a ruin,” he said, “though the fields have been kept in fairly good condition. But the war—” He gestured at the nearest house, pocked by cannonballs and its bright-blue paint scorched and fire-blackened on one side. “I think it might not just flow round me like a rock in the water, you know.”

Something odd moved over her face, and he looked at her in considerable surprise.

“You’ve thought of something?” he asked.

“Yes, but it’s not—I mean—it’s not relevant right this minute.” She waved away whatever the thought had been. “I know Lord John and your uncle—the duke still thinks of himself as your uncle, I know—”

“So do I,” William said, wryly, but with a small sense of relief at the thought. Uncle Hal truly
was
a rock, over whom floods and torrents had often passed, leaving him unmoved.

“They want you to go back to England,” Brianna said. “I was wondering, myself—you’re an earl; doesn’t that mean you have…people? Land? Things that need taking care of?”

“There is an estate, yes,” he said tersely. “I—what the devil?” His horse had stopped dead, and Brianna’s mount was trying to turn around in the alley, whuffling at some disturbing scent.

Then his feebler olfactory sense perceived it, too—a stink of death. A wagon stood at the end of the alley, its sides draped with black cloth, this threadbare and bleached by age into rusty folds. The wagon was unhitched, and there were neither horses nor mules in evidence, but a small group of roughly clad men, both black and white, stood in a patch of sun just beyond the alley’s mouth, in attitudes of watchful expectation.

There was a sound of voices in the distance, subdued, but several of them, a murmuring that was punctuated abruptly by a piercing wail that made the waiting men flinch and look away, shoulders hunched.

Brianna turned in her saddle, looking over her shoulder and gathering up her reins, evidently wanting to go back—but there were people coming into the alley behind them, mourners in dark veils and armbands. Bree glanced at William, and he shook his head and nudged his own horse toward hers, jockeying toward the side of the alley in order to give the newcomers space to pass. This they did, a few sparing a glance at the riders—one or two with eyes widened at sight of Brianna astride with her skirts hiked up and an indecent expanse of calf showing—but most so focused on present grief as to be indifferent to spectacle.

Movement near the wagon drew William’s attention back; they were bringing out the body—bodies.

He whipped off his hat, pressed it to his heart, and bowed his head. To his astonishment, Brianna did the same.

There were no coffins; this was a funeral of the poor. Two small bodies wrapped in rough shrouds were borne out on planks and gently lifted into the wagon.

“No! No!” A woman, who must be the children’s mother, broke from the arms of her supporters and ran to the wagon, trying to climb in, screaming, “Noooo!” at the top of her voice. “No, no! Let me go with them, don’t take ’em away from me,
no
!”

A wave of horrified, stricken friends closed round the woman, pulling her back, trying by sheer force of compassion to quiet her.

“Oh, dear God,” Brianna said in a choked voice. William glanced at her and saw that tears were running down her face, her eyes fixed on the pitiful scene, and he recalled with a shock the children he had heard playing outside the Brumby house—hers.

He reached out a hand and grasped her arm—she let go of the reins with that hand and seized his as though she were drowning, clinging for dear life, remarkable strength for a woman. Several men had come to take up the shafts, and the wagon’s wheels creaked into motion, the small procession beginning its mournful journey. The mother had ceased wailing now; she moved as though sleepwalking after the wagon, stumbling as her knees gave way every few steps in spite of the support of two women who held her up.

“Where is her husband?” Brianna whispered, more to herself than to William, but he answered.

“He’ll likely be with the army.” Much more likely, he was dead as well, but his sister probably knew that as well as he did.

Her own husband…God knew where he was. She’d avoided answering him when he’d asked, but it was apparent that MacKenzie was a rebel. If he’d been in the recent battle—but no, he’d survived that, at least, William reminded himself.
She didn’t ask about him, while we were in camp…why the devil not?
Still, he could feel a small constant tremor running through his sister’s hand, and he squeezed back, trying to give her reassurance.

“Monsieur?” A high-pitched voice by his left stirrup startled him and he jerked in the saddle, making his horse shift and stamp.

“What?” he said, looking down incredulously. “Who the devil are you?”

The small black boy—Christ, he was wearing the remnants of a dark-blue uniform, so he must be, or recently had been, a drummer—bowed solemnly. His face, ear, and hand were black with soot on one side, and there was a deal of blood on his clothes, but he didn’t seem to be wounded.

“Pardon, monsieur. Parlez-vous Français?”

“Oui,”
William replied, astonished.
“Pourquoi?”

The child—no, he was older than he looked; he stood up straight and looked William in the eye, maybe eleven or twelve—coughed up a wad of black phlegm and spat it out, then shook his head as though straightening his wits.

“Votre ami a besoin d’aide. Le grand Indien,”
he added as an afterthought.

“Is he saying something about John Cinnamon?” Brianna asked, frowning. She brushed at the tears streaking her face and sat up straight, gathering her own wits.

“Yes. He says—I take it you don’t speak French?”

“Some.” She gave him a look.

“Right.” He turned to the boy, who was swaying gently to and fro, staring at something invisible, plainly in the grip of exhaustion.
“Dites-moi. Vite!”

This the boy did, with admirable simplicity.

“Stercus,”
William muttered, then turned to his sister. “He says a press-gang from the French ships heard Cinnamon speaking French to someone on the shore; they followed him and tried to take him. He got away from them, but he’s hiding—the boy says in a cave, though that seems unlikely…anyway, he needs help.”

“Let’s go, then.” She gathered up her reins and looked behind her, judging the turning space.

He’d almost given up being surprised by her, but evidently not quite.

“Are you insane?” he inquired, as politely as possible.
“Steh,”
he added firmly to his own horse.

“What language are you speaking
now
?” she said, seeming impatient.

“ 
‘Steh’
is German for ‘stand still’—when talking to a horse—and
‘stercus’
means ‘shit,’ ” he informed her crisply. “You have children, madam—like the ones you have just been weeping over. If you don’t want yours to be similarly afflicted, I suggest you go home and tend them.”

The blood shot up into her face as though someone had lit a fire under her skin and she glared at him, gathering up the loose ends of her reins in one hand in a manner suggesting that she was considering lashing him across the face with them.

“You little bas—” she began, and then pressed her lips together, cutting off the word.

“Bastard,” he finished for her. “Yes, I am. Go home.” And turning his back on her, he reached down a hand to the boy and lifted him ’til he could get a foot on the stirrup and scramble up behind.

“Où allons-nous?”
he asked briefly, and the boy pointed behind them, toward the river.

A large feminine hand grabbed his horse’s bridle. The horse snorted and shook his head in protest, but she held on.

“Has anyone ever told you that being reckless will get you killed?” she asked, imitating his polite tone. “Not that I care that much, but you’ll likely get this kid, as well as John Cinnamon, killed too.”

“Kid?” was all he could think of saying, for the collision of words trying to get out of his mouth.

“Child, boy, lad,
him
!” she snapped, jerking her chin toward the little drummer behind him.

“Quel est le problème de cette femme?”
the boy demanded indignantly.