Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (115 page)

Kings Mountain, Tennessee County

April 1780

TAKING POSSESSION OF THE
high ground was one of the cornerstones of military strategy. Jamie’s da had told him that, once, when he and Murtagh had sat up late before the fire, drinking whisky and talking. Jamie had been hunched up on the floor in a corner with the dogs, hoping to be overlooked so he could stay and listen.

Neither man was unobservant, though, and they’d spotted him soon enough—but by then, they’d had a few drams and so his da had let him stay, now curled up next to Da on the settle, warmed by the fire and the heat of his father’s solid body, the big hand that wasn’t holding a whisky glass resting absently on Jamie’s back.

“Ye remember hidin’ in the bracken?” Murtagh was saying, his eyes glinting with memory. “Up on the hillside, waitin’ for the start of it?” A small rumble of laughter under his father’s ribs had tickled Jamie’s ear.

“I remember you standin’ up to piss and Enoch Grant behind ye pokin’ ye in the arse with the end of his bow and hissin’ like a snake through his teeth to make ye set down again. Not that ye did set yourself down,” Da added, fairly.

Murtagh had made a disgruntled
hmph!
and Jamie had ventured to ask what he’d done instead then?

The result was another, louder
hmph!
and his da laughed again, out loud this time.

“He turned round and pissed on Enoch Grant and then jumped down his throat and gave him laldy wi’ the hilt of his dirk.”

“Mm,” said Murtagh, clearly relishing the memory.

The hapless Grant had escaped worse injury, though, because just then the officers started shouting and the enemy—visible on the field at Sheriffmuir these last two hours—began to move.

“And a few minutes later, we popped out o’ the bracken like a swarm o’
brobhadan
and the archers fired their arrows and those of us wi’ swords and targes ran down upon the
Sassunaich,
” Da said to Jamie.

“Aye, much good havin’ the high ground did
us,
” Murtagh said, glowering slightly. “I near as breakfast got an arrow in the back from our own men. It went through the sleeve o’ my shirt!”

“Well, ye did piss on Enoch Grant,” Da said reasonably. “What would ye expect him to do?”

Jamie smiled to himself, hearing the two of them talking, clear as day, and feeling in his bones the memory of the comfort of sleep coming for him, wrapped in the warmth of the firelit room at Lallybroch.

He was warm now, sweating from the climb, and he wasn’t sleepy. It was a small mountain, not even half the height of a Scottish
beinn,
but the sides were steep and thickly forested. He was following a cattle track across the face of the mountain—the local people grazed their stock sometimes on the top of the mountain, because there was a good meadow—but oak and maple saplings and a scurf of low bushes were creeping over it, and the track had vanished altogether by the time he made it to the summit through a screen of pines.

He stood at the edge of a long meadow, growing in a sort of saddle-shaped depression. It was late in the afternoon by now, and several deer were grazing at the far end, close to the shelter of the trees. One or two lifted their heads and looked at him, but he was still, and they went back to their business among the growing shadows.

There were rocky outcroppings near the edges of the plateau. Not large ones, but for a single rifleman, a decent vantage point—if you could make it that far and not be picked off struggling up the mountainside.

Aye, he could see well enough what Patrick Ferguson would think. With plenty of ammunition and a well-armed band of militia, it would be a simple matter to hunker down near the edges and fire downhill at the attackers.

Except, as Frank Randall had recounted it, this strategy would work only so long as the attackers were kept at a distance. Let them get too high, too close to the wee meadow, and Ferguson would switch to bayonet tactics at that point. But the problem was that the attackers who’d survived to get high enough and had eluded the bayonets would come over the edge with their weapons loaded and mow down the Loyalists who were fighting with unloaded guns equipped with butcher knives for bayonets. According to the damned book, Ferguson had little experience in battle—he’d been shot in the elbow in the only battle he’d fought, and the wound had crippled him—and he’d not understood either the terrain or the character of the men who would be climbing that mountain.

Randall hadn’t mentioned it, but Jamie was sure that Ferguson would have been using his own patented breech-loading rifle—he’d always use it, being unable to load a regular gun with his crippled elbow.

Strange to think of this man, this Ferguson, minding his own business somewhere just this minute, having no notion what was coming for him.

But you know the same is coming for you.
A strange quivering ran down the backs of his legs, and he tensed his back and curled his fists to make it stop.

“Nay, I don’t,” he said defiantly to the shade of Frank Randall. “Ye’ve not been here; ye won’t be here. I’m no going to believe you just because ye wrote it down, aye?”

He’d spoken aloud and the deer had vanished like smoke, leaving him alone in the gathering twilight.

The evening was peaceful, but not the meadow. He’d brought his own disturbance with him, and the wind made long, rippling furrows through the grass, as though small creatures were being chased, running for their lives.

There ought to be some ritual for facing one’s death—and in fact, there were many, but none seemed quite appropriate for this situation. Lacking any other notion, though, he turned sunwise and walked the edge of the grass, making a circle completely round the mountaintop and the shades of the battle to come. The first sun charm to come to his mind was the deasil charm, said to bless a new child and protect him from harm.

William.
Of course it would be William, always there in the back of his mind, the inner chambers of his heart. This might be the only thing of value that he could leave this child of his, and he let the prayer fill his heart as he said it aloud:

Wisdom of serpent be thine,

Wisdom of raven be thine,

Wisdom of valiant eagle.

Voice of swan be thine,

Voice of honey be thine,

Voice of the Son of the stars.

Sain of the fairy-woman be thine,

Sain of the elf-dart be thine,

Sain of the red dog be thine.

Bounty of sea be thine,

Bounty of land be thine,

Bounty of the Father of Heaven.

Be each day glad for thee,

No day ill for thee,

A life joyful, satisfied.

It was only as he left the mountaintop and started the slippery, rocky, awkward descent through the fluttering new leaves of the sugar maples that it occurred to him how much of that blessing had in fact been his. Had one of his parents said this charm for him when he was small?

“A life joyful, satisfied,” he murmured to himself, and let peace fill him.

It wasn’t until he’d reached the bottom of the mountain that he wondered whether, when he came to die, Da or his mother might be there to greet him.

“Or maybe Murtagh,” he said, and smiled at the thought.

Fraser’s Ridge

WE HAD ACQUIRED TWO
yearling heifers in the summer, one mostly white with black splotches and the other mostly red with white splotches. Their names, according to Mandy, were Moo-Moo and Pinky, but Jemmy had been browsing my
Merck Manual
and had nicknamed them Leprosy and Rosacea. Jamie said practically that it scarcely mattered what they were called, as he’d never met a cow that would answer to its name, in any case;
he
called them Ruaidh and Ban—“Red” and “White,” in Gaelic.

At the moment, he was calling the red one something in Gaelic that I translated roughly as “Misbegotten daughter of a venomous caterpillar,” but I supposed that I might be missing the finer shades.

“It’s not
her
fault,” I said reprovingly.

He made a Scottish noise like a cement mixer, and gritted his teeth. He had one arm inserted into Rosacea’s backside up to the elbow, and his face in the flickering lanternlight was as red as her hide.

It truly
wasn’t
the poor cow’s fault—she’d been bred too young, and was having a lot of trouble delivering her first calf—but I didn’t blame him, either. He’d been trying for a quarter of an hour to get hold of both feet so he could pull the calf out, but Rosy was skittish and kept swinging her rear end away. The calf’s nose poked out now and then, nostrils flaring in what I thought must be panic. I felt much the same way, but was fighting it down.

I wanted to help, get my own much smaller hands into the cow and at least locate the hooves. I’d cut my right hand badly during the day, though, and couldn’t countenance exposing a raw wound to what Jamie was handling at the moment.

“Nic na galladh!”
he said, jerking back and shaking his hand. In the scrum and poor light, he’d accidentally shoved his hand into the wrong orifice, and was now flapping his arm to dislodge a coating of very wet, fresh manure. He caught sight of my face and pointed a slimy, menacing finger at me.

“Laugh, and I’ll rub your face in it, Sassenach.”

I put my bandaged hand solemnly over my mouth, though I was quivering internally. He snorted, wiped his filthy hand on his shirt, and bent again to his labors, muttering execrations. Within moments, though, the execrations had turned to urgent prayers. He’d got the feet.

I was praying myself. The poor cow had been in labor since the night before, and was beginning to sway, her head hanging in exhaustion. That
might
help. If she was tired enough to relax…Jamie snatched up the rope bracelets he had made—essentially two small nooses joined by a common rope—and shoved them over the tiny hooves before they could slip out of his hand. Then was squatting behind Rosy, pulling for all he was worth. He stopped when the contraction eased, panting, resting his forehead against the cow’s haunch.

It was dark in the byre; it was a small cave with a gate across the front, and there was no light save a small oil lantern hung from a nail pounded into the rock. Even so, I saw the ripple of a new contraction start and leaned toward Jamie, trying to will my own strength into him, to help.

He set his feet hard in the straw and pulled, making an inhuman noise of effort, and with a squashy sort of
glorp!
the calf slid out in a cascade of blood and slime.

Jamie got up, slowly. He was panting from the effort, face and clothes smeared dark with blood and manure, but his eyes never left the calf and his face was alight with the same joy I felt as we watched the new mother—remarkably placid, considering recent events—sniff her new offspring and then begin to lick it with long, rhythmic swipes of her tongue.

“She’ll be a good mother.”

For an instant, I thought Jamie had said it, but he was facing me, looking surprised, and there was a faint movement behind me. I swung round with a small yelp and saw the man who had stepped soundlessly into the byre with us.

“Who the
hell
—” I began, groping for a weapon, but Jamie had raised his hand in greeting to the man.

“Mr. Cloudtree,” he said, and paused to wipe his forearm across his blood-slimed face. “I trust we see ye well, and your family?”

“They’re well enough,” the young man answered, keeping a wary eye on me and the wooden shovel I’d seized. “And since I got the chance, ma’am, I meant to thank you for it. For my babies, I mean.”

“Oh,” I said, rather blankly.
Cloudtree.
The pieces of memory fell into place around that name. The fecund smell of the byre, the swamp of blood and birthwater, brought back that night out of time in a small cabin, the endless effort, and the timeless forever when I held a small blue light in my hands, praying with heart and soul for it not to go out. I swallowed.

“You’re very welcome, Mr. Cloudtree,” I said.
Aaron.
That was the name of Agnes’s nasty stepfather: Aaron Cloudtree. I eyed him with much less favor, but he didn’t notice, his attention fixed on Jamie and the scene before us.

“A nice bit of work there, man,” he said to Jamie, nodding approvingly at Rosy and her calf, the latter looking round-eyed and bewildered, its hair swirled in all directions. “Near as good as your wife’s.”

“Taing,”
Jamie said, and bent to pick up the grimy linen towel, wiping his face as he stood. “What brings ye to us at this time o’ the night, Mr. Cloudtree?”

“I come earlier, but you was at table,” Cloudtree said, shrugging. “You had the old witch there; I couldn’t’ve spoke before her.”

Jamie glanced at me and settled himself, slowly wiping his hands.

“Speak now,” he said.

“The old witch’s son, Cunningham. You know he’s been trading, down to the Cherokee villages, just the other side o’ the Line?”

Jamie nodded, eyes fixed on Cloudtree’s face. He was mixed blood, a handsome man with silky long brown hair, though with a petulant curve to his mouth.

“Not everybody listens to him,” Cloudtree assured him. “But he’s got some few men down there, maybe twenty, will follow him. He calls ’em his militia, but he ain’t fought Indians before or he’d know better. They take his guns, his powder, and his medals, though, and they’d likely do what he asked—for a while.”

“What is it that he’s asking?” Jamie had stopped wiping his hands and now held the towel twisted between them.

“I ain’t heard this from him,” Cloudtree said, leaning in and lowering his voice, “but I heard it from two o’ the men in Keowee, ones he paid. There’s a redcoat officer named Ferguson, set to go to and fro in the mountains, raising Loyalist militias and arresting rebels, hangin’ men and burning houses. Cunningham’s wrote Ferguson a letter, naming your name and saying he ought to come here with his troops, ’cuz you a king beaver ’mongst the rebels and your pelt would be worth the trouble to take it.”

All the air seemed to have been sucked out of the byre. After a moment, though, Jamie took a long breath and let it out slowly.

“Do you know when?” he asked calmly.

Cloudtree shrugged.

“I don’t know ’bout Ferguson. Seems he’s got plenty to keep him busy where he is. But Cunningham’s got tired o’ waitin’ for an answer. The men I talked to say he means to arrest you himself and take you to Ferguson—so’s Ferguson can hang you for show, I mean. They say”—he looked at his hands and folded down the fingers, counting—“eight days from yesterday. Cunningham’s waitin’ on a fellow name of Partland, who’s comin’ from Ninety-Six with some more men.”

Jamie’s eyes met mine, and I knew we were thinking the same thing: Seven nights from now was Lodge night. If they were coming for Jamie, that would be the logical time to do it. It was a good two hundred miles from the settlement of Ninety-Six to the Ridge, but Partland and friends might well make it.

“That bloody
snake
!” I said. I was alarmed and angry, but anger was definitely on top. “How dare he?”

“Well, I did take their guns away, Sassenach,” Jamie said mildly. “I told ye they’d resent it.”

He looked thoughtfully at Aaron and absently wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He grimaced, rubbed the hand on his breeches, and spat into the straw.

“Aye,” he said. “Ye’ve done me a service, Mr. Cloudtree, and I will remember it. Tell me—d’ye ken a man named Scotchee Cameron?”

Aaron had been looking around the byre, interested, but came to attention at that name.

“Everybody does,” he said, switching the interest to Jamie. “Indian superintendent, ain’t he? Friend of yours?”

“We’ve shared a pipe now and then. I was an Indian agent, for a time.”

I glanced at Jamie. I knew he’d smoked with the Cherokee when he visited with them, but I’d never asked him what sort of conversation this involved. I’d likewise never met Alexander Cameron, but like everybody else, knew of him. A Scotsman, he’d married and chosen to live among the Indians, hunting and trading. He’d become an Indian superintendent after Jamie’s resignation, though, and as it was now widely known that Jamie was a rebel, he had therefore courteously not sought Scotchee out when he traded in the Cherokee lands. Cameron was still respected, though, Jamie said, trusted and known everywhere.

“Do you ken where he is just now?” Jamie asked.

Aaron pursed his lips, thinking.
Is he thinking where Cameron is?
I wondered.
Or wondering what he can make out of the situation?

“Yes,” he said, though with a tinge of doubt in his voice. He scratched his head to assist thought.

“He lives with the Overhill people, but he was in Nensanyi last week, so he’s likely come to Keowee by now. That’s where we live,” he said, turning to me. “Susannah and the young’uns and me.” He seemed to want to justify himself to me, possibly remembering—as I certainly did—his slapping Agnes on the night her mother gave birth. And he might be afraid of what Agnes had told me about him.

“I’m glad to hear that you have a place,” I said, smiling a little stiffly at him. “Do please give my regards to Susannah and tell her that if she should ever need a doctor again, please send to me and I’ll come.”

His expression lightened and he nodded to me.

“That’s real good of you, Missus. Ah…d’you want me to find Scotchee and tell him ’bout this trouble o’ yours…sir?” he added to Jamie, looking uncertain. “Might be as he could talk sense to any of the Cherokee that have dealings with Loyalists.”

“I do,” Jamie said. He gave the cows a quick look-over, but the new calf had staggered to its feet, shaking its head. He nodded to himself, then bent and picked up the filthy towel he’d been using.

“Come down to the house, will ye, Mr. Cloudtree? My wife will find ye something to eat while I write a wee word for Scotchee. We can find a bed for ye, too, if ye like?”

Cloudtree shook his head.

“I like to walk in the night,” he said simply. “It talks to me. But I wouldn’t say no to a sup and a bite, Missus.”

I HAD COME
up to our bedroom—after providing Jamie and Mr. Cloudtree with a plate of rolls stuffed with cheese and my backwoods version of Branston pickle—but I was in no mood for sleep. My backbone had gone cold at Aaron’s story and hadn’t thawed a bit, though my innards were pulsing with an angry heat.

I’d been trying to distract my mind by reading
The Two Towers,
which Jamie had left by the bed, but kept imagining Captain Cunningham as Shelob in a gold-laced hat and wondering whether I might nickname my syringe Sting.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I muttered, putting the book aside and flouncing out of bed. The floor was cold underfoot, but I didn’t care. I paced round the room like a dog in a kennel, fuming. I did realize that I was stoking my anger in order not to be overwhelmed by fright, but it was a losing battle. How the bloody hell was I going to look Elspeth Cunningham in the face? I was bound to see her on Sunday, if not before. Bunking off church wouldn’t help; if she thought I was ill, she’d be round promptly to dose me.

Did she know what the captain was up to? I wondered, stepping over Adso, who was stretched out on his side on the rag rug in front of the hearth, flattened in sleep. If she did—what might she do?

Likely nothing.
She’d warned me, after all. And I’d warned
her.