Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (121 page)

“I want to tell you something,” she said. “I would have waited for Mrs. Fraser to come back, but Lieutenant Esterhazy will be with her.”

“Speak, then,” he said, matching her formality. “Sit, if ye like.” He waved a hand toward the nearby stool and drew in his breath sharply at the resultant sensation. Frances looked at him in concern, but after a moment decided that he wouldn’t die, and sat down.

“It’s Agnes,” she said, without preamble. “She thinks she’s with child.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ!”

“Just so,” she said, nodding. “She thinks it’s Gilbert’s—Lieutenant Bembridge, I mean.”

“She
thinks
it’s him? Who else might it be?”

“Well, Oliver,” she said. “But she only did it once with him.”

“Sasannaich clann na galladh!”

“What does that mean?”

“English sons of the devil,” he told her briefly. He was struggling to get his elbows bent enough to sit up; this wasn’t news he could deal with lying flat. “Did either of the gobshites…er…try to…with you?”

Surprise wiped the frown off her face.

“I’m
never
going to lie with a man,” she said with complete certainty, then looked at him, with a little less. “You said I didn’t have to.”

“Ye don’t and ye never will,” he assured her. “If anyone tries, I’ll kill him. How long have ye kent this—about Agnes?”

“She told me just before I came up here,” Frances said, with a slightly guilty look over her shoulder. “I wath—
wasn’t
sure I should tell you but…she’th—she
is
afraid that Oliver killed Gilbert last night because he found out she was…”

“Does she ken for sure he found out?”

Frances nodded soberly.

“She told him. Yesterday. He asked her to marry him and she said she couldn’t, because…”

He wanted very badly to go downstairs and shake Agnes until her silly head rattled, but something much worse was dawning on him, and he pushed himself upright, disregarding pain and dizziness.

“Go down and get Kenny Lindsay for me,” he said urgently. “
Now,
Frances.”

“YOU DON’T
THINK
so?” I said, staring at Oliver Esterhazy.

“I mean—he’s dead, Mrs. Fraser! Come away, don’t touch him!” Oliver grabbed my arm, but I shook him off.

“He’s not dead,” I said, “but he may well be in the next few minutes, if we don’t get him out. Get down here and help me!”

He looked at me, mouth half open, then looked wildly at Gilbert—who did indeed
look
dead, but…

“Help me!” I said, and began scrabbling at the wet, heavy earth. I dug madly, trying to free enough of Gilbert’s chest for him to draw breath. He was lying mostly on his side, and luckily there wasn’t a lot of earth over his upper body, though his legs seemed to be buried more deeply. If only I could get him free enough to do chest compression and his bones weren’t shattered…

Oliver squatted beside me. He was cursing steadily under his breath, and now nudged me, trying to push me aside.

“Let me do it,” he said curtly. “I’m stronger.”

“I’m—”

“Move!” he said violently, and pushed me to the side. I lost my balance, fell sprawling, and the loose earth moved under me. I rolled in a shower of wet dirt, arms and legs flung out, and skidded to a stop against the exposed root tangle of an uprooted tree, partway down the slope. I was dazed and frightened, my heart pounding. I’d been so concerned with rescuing Gilbert Bembridge that it hadn’t occurred to me that the slipped earth was by no means settled in its new bed and might easily slide further. I rolled onto my hands and knees and began crawling back up the slope, as fast as I could manage without losing my precarious balance.

Oliver Esterhazy was digging, but not around his friend. He pawed a broken pine branch half free of the clinging mud, then stood up and yanked it free. He turned toward Gilbert’s protruding head, and with a determined expression staggered through the mud and swung the branch down on it.

“You…
swine
…” came a sepulchral voice from under the muddy pine needles. It was labored and hoarse, but plainly propelled by breath. Before I could rise to my feet, Gilbert’s free arm swung into the air and grappled the end of the branch.

Completely panicked, Oliver let go and leapt back. I saw one booted foot sink calf-deep in the loose dirt and then he, too, lost his balance and with a muffled shriek toppled over backward and hurtled down the slope like an ungainly toboggan.

I sat back on my heels and breathed for a minute. I’d lost my hat and my hair had escaped. I shoved it out of my face and started my laborious climb once more. I had to reach Gilbert and free him—or arm myself (I had a scalpel and two probes in my emergency pack—to say nothing of a few poisonous toadstools I’d collected last time I was out) before Oliver got hold of himself and caught up with me.

I glanced over my shoulder; Oliver was about forty feet downslope, wrapped around a stout poplar that had withstood the landslide. Someone was standing beside him, looking down at him.

I jerked round to look again. Loyalist or rebel, I didn’t care; either one would help me.

I waved my arms and shouted, “Hallooo!” and the man looked up. It was an Indian, and one I didn’t know. I suffered a brief spurt of panic when I thought that Scotchee Cameron might have failed us after all, but a second glance told me that this man wasn’t Cherokee. He was medium height and quite slender, and his hair was gray, roached and tied in a knot at the back of his neck. He wore a breechclout and leggings, with an embroidered silk vest—and nothing else above the waist but a collection of silver bracelets. He waved a hand to me, clinking audibly.

“I say, madam!” he called, in something like an English accent. “Are you in need of assistance?”

“Yes!” I shouted back, and pointed at Oliver’s body. “Is that man dead?”

The Indian glanced down and toed Oliver in the buttock. Oliver twitched, groaned, and reached back to swat away the nuisance.

“No,” he said, and put a hand to his belt, where I now saw that he carried a substantial knife of some sort. “Do you want him to be?”

I got to my feet and edged crabwise down the slope until I was in conversational range of the stranger—and Oliver, whose eyes were squinched shut, but who was plainly conscious and wishing he weren’t.

“Having you dead would solve a good many problems,” I told him. “But I’m told that two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“Really?” said the Indian, smiling. “Who told you that?”

“Never mind,” I said. “At the moment, I need to look at this man and be sure that he isn’t badly hurt, and if not, then I need to go back up there”—I jerked a thumb over my shoulder—“and finish digging up the man who’s buried, so I can take care of him.”

“He’s not dead?” the Indian asked, shading his eyes with his hand as he surveyed the slope. “He looks dead.”

He did, but I was hoping that appearances might be deceiving. I was about to say this when a slight rustle in the wet brush betokened another arrival, and Young Ian stepped out, holding a little boy who was sucking his thumb and regarding me warily.

“Oh, there ye are, Auntie,” said Young Ian, his face lighting at sight of me. “I thought I heard your voice!”

I felt as though I might just dissolve with relief, and flow downhill myself, to puddle at the bottom.

“Ian!” I waded out of the mud and seized him in a one-armed hug. “How are you? Is this Oggy? He’s so big! Where’s Rachel?”

“Ach, all the women are havin’ a pish in the woods,” he said with a shrug. He nodded at the elderly Indian. “I see ye’ve met the Sachem. This is my auntie, Okàrakarakh’kwa; the one I told ye about.”

“Ah,” said the Sachem, and bowed, hand on his embroidered waistcoat. “It is my pleasure, honored witch.”

“Likewise, I’m sure,” I replied politely, twitching my mud-clogged hem in the ghost of a curtsy. Then I turned back to Ian.

“What do you mean,
‘all the women’
? And who,” I added, suddenly catching sight of a larger boy of perhaps seven or eight, hovering shyly in the shadow of the wood, “is this?”

“This is
Tsi’niios’noreh’ neh To’tis tahonahsahkehtoteh,
” he said, smiling as he put his free hand on the boy’s shoulder. “My elder son. We call him Tòtis.”

THE RAIN RESUMED WITH
uncommon force, and it was some time before Gilbert Bembridge was completely excavated, cursorily treated for shock, diagnosed with a minor concussion, and his wound—a long but shallow slash over one shoulder blade, where his friend had tried to stab him—field-dressed. Oliver Esterhazy was treated for shock of various kinds and several cracked ribs. Luckily Kenny Lindsay and Tom MacLeod appeared at this point with two canvas-wrapped rifles and a mule, rain pouring from their hats, and took charge of the two lieutenants with the intent of removing them to Kenny’s cabin, which was no more than a mile away.

“Dinna fash, Missus,” Kenny said, wiping the back of his hand under his big red nose. “My wife can see to them until the rain stops. You’d best go home before Himself has an apoplexy, if he hasna already done it.”

“He hasn’t got enough blood left for a good apoplexy,” I said, and Kenny laughed, apparently thinking I was being witty.

Ian’s party, reassembled from the woods, had trooped down to the road where they’d left their wagon, and were huddling—with the unhitched horses—under the meager protection of a broad limestone shelf and a few pieces of waxed canvas.

I had reached the point of total saturation long since, my hands were a mottled blue with cold, and I couldn’t feel my feet. Even so, I felt a surge of joy at seeing Rachel’s face peering out of the tiny shelter. Her look of anxiety flowered into happiness and she ran out into the rain to grasp my frozen hands and tow me into a warm jumble of bodies, which all burst into questions, exclamations, and intermittent shrieks from what seemed like a large number of children.

“Here,” said a familiar voice beside me, and Jenny handed me a canteen. “Drink it all,
a leannan,
there’s no much left.” Despite being so wet externally, I was parched with thirst and gulped the contents, which seemed to be a dilute spiced wine mixed with honey and water. It was divine and I handed back the empty canteen, now in sufficient possession of myself as to look round.

“Who…?” I croaked, waving a hand.
“All the women,”
Ian had said—and that’s what he’d meant, allowing for age. In addition to Rachel and Jenny, there was a pale, stick-thin woman huddled beside one of the horses, two round-eyed young girls soaking wet and plastered against her legs, and another, perhaps two years old, in her arms.

“This will be Silvia Hardman, Auntie,” Ian said, ducking into the shelter and handing Oggy off to Rachel. “Uncle Jamie asked me to see to her needs in Philadelphia, and what wi’ one thing and another, I thought she and the bairns had best come along wi’ us. So…they did.”

I caught an echo behind that casual
“one thing and another,”
and so did Mrs. Hardman, who flinched slightly but then drew herself up bravely and did her best to smile at me, her hands on her skinny little daughters’ shoulders.

“I met thy husband two years ago, by chance, Friend Fraser. It was most kind of him to have sent his nephew to inquire as to our circumstances, which were…difficult. I—I hope our momentary presence here will not discomfit thee.”

This last was not quite a question, but I managed a smile, though my face was stiff with cold and fatigue. I could feel a lukewarm trickle of water running slowly down my spine, finding its way through the layers of sodden cloth sticking to my skin.

“Oh, no,” I said. “Um. The more the merrier, don’t they say?” I blinked hard to clear water from my lashes, but it didn’t seem to help. Everything was gray and blurring round the edges, and the wine was a small red warmth in my stomach.

“Claire,” said Jenny, grabbing my elbow. “Sit down before ye fall on your face, aye?”

I DIDN’T FALL
on my face, but did end up being transported by wagon with my head in Rachel’s lap, surrounded by soggy but cheerful children. Lizard, who so far had not uttered a word, chose to walk with Ian, Silvia, and the Sachem, while Jenny drove the wagon and kept up a running stream of commentary over her shoulder, pointing out things of interest to the little girls and reassuring them.

“Ye’ll have a wee cabin to live in with your mam,” she assured them. “And no man will trouble her, ever again. My brother will see to it.”

“What happened?” I said to Rachel. I spoke in a low voice, but one of the ragged little girls heard me and turned to look at me seriously. She wasn’t pretty, but both she and the sister close in age had an odd dignity about them that was at odds with their years.

“Our father was taken by Indians,” she said to me, speaking precisely. “My mother was left with no way to keep us, save her garden and small gifts from men who came to call.”

“Some of them were not kind,” her sister added, and they both pursed their lips and looked out into the dripping woods.

“I see,” I said, and thought I probably did. Jamie had told me, very briefly, about the Quaker widow who had taken care of him for a day or two when his back had seized up while he was in her house, having met there with George Washington—and I did wonder what the hell George Washington had been doing there, but hadn’t asked, owing to the press of events at the time.

“Mrs. Murray is right,” I assured them. “Mr. Fraser will find a place for you.” After all, we would shortly have a number of cabins vacated by Jamie’s evicted tenants…

Patience and Prudence—those were the oldest girls’ names, and the little one was Chastity—glanced at each other and nodded.

“We told Mummy that Friend Jamie would not see us starve,” one of them said, with a simple confidence that moved me.

“It would have been fun to stay with the Indians,” her sister said, a little wistfully. “But we couldn’t do that, because of Father.”

I made a sympathetic noise, wondering exactly what had happened to their father. Rachel wiped my face with the edge of her flannel petticoat, which was damp but not sopping.

“Speaking of Friend Jamie,” she said, smiling down at me, “where is he? I can’t wait to hear how you came to be in a landslide with two English— Are they soldiers? I think one said he was a lieutenant. But is Jamie at home, then?”

“I sincerely hope so,” I said. “There was what he’d call a stramash of sorts last night, and he was wounded. But it isn’t bad,” I added hastily. “Everything’s all right. For the moment.”

Hearing this, Jenny turned round and gave me a piercing look. I looked as reassuring as possible, and she snorted slightly and turned back, snapping the reins to hurry the horses along.

I sat up, cautiously, bracing myself against the side of the wagon. My head swam briefly, but then things steadied. The sky was still dark gray and turbulent, but at ground level, the air had stilled, and I heard the cautious chirps and calls of birds pulling their heads out from under their wings and looking about to see what of the world was still left.

“I seem to recall someone telling me that Oggy’s finally got a name,” I said to Rachel, nodding toward Oggy himself, who was curled up with his head in the lap of either Patience or Prudence. The other girl had a large, thick-haired puppy in her lap, also soaking wet with its coat in spikes, but sound asleep. Rachel laughed, and I thought how pretty she was, her face fresh from the cold air, and her lightness of spirit rising with the road toward home.

“He has,” she said, and touched the round of his bottom affectionately. “His name is Hunter James Ohston’ha Okhkwaho Murray. ‘James’ for his great-uncle, of course,” she added.

“Jamie will love that,” I said, smiling myself. “What does the Mohawk part of his name mean?”

“Son of the Wolf,” she said, with a glance behind the wagon. “Or Little Wolf, if you like.”

“
The
Wolf?” I asked. “Not just any old wolf, I mean?” She shook her head, glancing at Ian, who was explaining the concept of a blood pudding to Tòtis, who seemed intrigued.

“You can’t really tell, in Mohawk, but I’m reasonably sure there’s only one Wolf of importance here,” Rachel said. I thought a slight shadow crossed her face at that, but if so, it cleared when I asked if she had chosen the name Hunter for her brother.

“No,” she said, and her smile blossomed again. “Ian’s first wife chose that name. Being guided of the spirit, no doubt,” she added circumspectly. She stretched out a hand and scratched the puppy’s head, causing it to wiggle with ecstasy and scramble into her lap, licking her fingers.

“But I chose
his
name,” she said, ignoring the muddy paw prints on her skirt. “He’s called Skénnen.”

“Which means?”

“Peace.”