Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (122 page)

BY THE TIME WE
reached the dooryard, I had so far recovered myself as to have devised a plan of action. And a good thing, too, as the door opened and Bluebell shot out, barking as though an invading army had just arrived. Not far from the truth, either, I thought, climbing down from the wagon. I paused to shake as much half-dried mud as I could from my skirts, then shooed everyone up the steps.

“Jenny, will you take everyone through to the kitchen? Fanny will be here in a mo— Oh, there you are, sweetheart! We have company, and all of it is hungry. Will you and Agnes rummage the pantry and the pie safe and see if you can find at least bread and butter for everyone? And have you put on anything for supper yet?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Fanny said, casting an interested eye over the serried ranks bunching up at the front door—and lingering speculatively on Prudence and Patience—and then the new puppy, which squatted at her feet and made a puddle.

“Oh, you’re so
sweet
!” she cried, and forgetting everything else she squatted down herself to pet Skénnen, with Bluebell lurking behind her, nosing her elbow with discontented grunts.

“Kitchen,” I repeated to Jenny, who was already marshaling everyone. “Except you,” I said, catching Young Ian by the arm.

“I’m only goin’ up to see Uncle Jamie,” he protested, gesturing toward the stairs.

“Oh, good,” I said, and broke into a smile. “That’s what I wanted you to do. I just want to be there when he sees you. Wait just one second, though—” The quilt was covering the surgery door, and I didn’t hear voices on the other side. I lifted the quilt far enough to put my head in and saw the captain, apparently dozing on the table, and Elspeth asleep in my big chair, her head fallen backward and her long gray hair undone from its pins and reaching nearly to the floor.

Poor things,
I thought, but at least they could wait a few moments.

The bedroom door was shut, and I rapped lightly. Before I could open it, though, a firm male voice from the other side called out, “I’m havin’ a pish, Frances, and I dinna want help with it! Go up to the springhouse and fetch down some milk, aye?”

Young Ian turned the knob and opened the door, revealing Jamie, who was sitting on the side of the bed in his shirt, the bed linens rumpled and shoved aside. He was in fact
not
using the chamber pot, but was pale and sweating, fists pushed hard into the mattress on either side, apparently having tried to rise but been unable to gain his feet.

“Lyin’ to wee lassies, is it, Uncle?” Ian said with a grin. “Ye can go to hell for that sort o’ thing, I hear.”

“And where the bloody hell do you think you’re
going
?” I demanded of Jamie. He didn’t answer. I didn’t think he’d even heard me. His face suffused with delight at sight of Ian and he stood up. Then his eyes rolled up and he turned dead white and fell with a crash that shook the floor.

JAMIE CAME ROUND
again in his bed, surrounded by a number of women, all frowning at him. There was a sharp pain in his chest, where Claire was repairing some stitches that had apparently torn loose when he fell over, but he was too happy to be bothered about either the needle or the scolding he was plainly about to get.

“Ye’re back, then,” he said, smiling at his sister, and then at Rachel, standing beside her. “How’s the wee mannie?”

“Bonnie,” she assured him. “Or ought it to be ‘braw,’ if it’s a boy we’re speaking of?”

“I suppose it could be both,” he said, waggling one hand in equivocation. “Braw’s more a question of fine character—brave, ken? Which I’m sure the laddie must be, wi’ such parents—and bonnie means he’s well favored to look at. And if he still looks like you, lass— Ach, Jesus!” Claire had reached the end of her stitching and without a word of warning had sloshed a cupful of her disinfectant solution over the raw wound.

Wordless only because he couldn’t say the words that came to his tongue in front of Rachel, Frances, and Agnes, he panted through the blinding sting. The women were looking at him with expressions ranging from sympathy to strong condemnation, but all with faces—even Rachel’s—tinged with the sort of smugness women were apt to display when they thought they had the upper hand of a man.

“Where’s Ian?” he said, forestalling the rebuke he saw rising to his wife’s lips. An odd shimmer of some feeling he couldn’t name ran through the women. Amusement? He frowned, looking from face to face, and raised his brows at his sister. She smiled at him, and he saw relief and happiness in her face, though it was lined with tiredness and her hair was straggling out of her wilted cap.

“He went outside to talk to a man who came lookin’ for you,” she told him. “I dinna ken what he—”

He heard Ian’s footsteps running up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, and struggled to sit up, causing cries of alarm from the women.

“Let it bide, Sassenach,” he said, taking the cloth out of Claire’s hand. “I’ll do.”

Ian came in, a letter in his hand, and a bemused look on his face.

“Were ye expecting a visit from Mr. Partland, Uncle?” he asked.

“I was,” Jamie replied guardedly. “Why?”

“I dinna think he’s coming.” Ian handed over the letter, which was written on decent paper and sealed with someone’s thumb and a glob of candle wax. Jamie broke the seal, what was left of his blood prickling along his jaw as his heart sped up.

To Colonel James Fraser of Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina

Dear Sir,

I write to tell you that when I received your Instruction of the 10th inst., I assembled a Party of some twenty Men and rode toward Ninety-Six without Delay, to see if the Gentleman you named should be abroad there and in a Way of causing Mischief.

The Gentleman was known to me by Sight, and when I perceived him riding down the Powder Mill Road with some Men, I accosted him and desired to know his Errand. He curst me with some Heat and desired me to go to Hell before he would tell me Anything that was not my Business to know. I said any Business involving a Group of armed Men a-horse near my Land was mine to know and he had best tell me the Truth of the Matter at once.

At this, one of his Men, whom I also recognized, drew his Pistol and fired at one of my Men, with whom he had a long-standing Disagreement over a Woman. His shot missed its Mark, but several of the Horses were unsettled by the Noise and began to dance, so it was hard to come at the Fellows and engage with them. The Gentleman, attempting to raise his Rifle and fire upon me, had the Misfortune to be unseated when his own Horse collided with Another, and he was dragged some little Way, his Horse taking Fright and himself trapped by his Bootheel having become entangled with his Stirrup.

Seeing this, his Minions mostly fled, and my Boys rounded up three that were slower than the Rest, as well as the Gentleman, whom we rescued from his Predicament.

I have sent these Men under Guard to Mr. Cleveland, who acts as Constable of the District, with a Note informing him of your Interest.

I remain, sir, Your Most Obedient Servant,

John Sevier, Esq.

Jamie took a long, slow breath, folding the letter neatly, and closed his eyes, silently thanking God. So it was over. For the moment, the Ridge was safe, Ian and Rachel and Jenny had come back, and while it would seem that there were a few loose ends to tidy up…He opened his eyes; Ian had just said something to him.

“What?”

“I said,” Ian repeated patiently, “that there’s someone who wants to pay her respects, Uncle.” His eye passed critically over Jamie, assessing. “If ye’re fit to meet her.”

TO JAMIE, SILVIA
Hardman looked like a splinter of rock maple: a lovely subtle grain, but thin, sharp, and hard enough to serve as a needle, could one poke a hole in her for thread. He didn’t think anyone could, and smiled at the thought.

The smile seemed to ease her slightly, though she went on looking as though she expected to be eaten by a bear at any moment. Without her daughters around her, she seemed terribly alone, and he stretched out a hand to her in impulse.

“I’m glad to see ye, Friend Silvia,” he said gently. “Will ye not come and sit by me, and take a little wine?”

She glanced to and fro in indecision, but then nodded abruptly and came and sat by his bed, though she didn’t meet his eyes until he took her hand in his.

They sat, he propped up on his pillows and she on her stool, and looked at each other for some moments.

“Thee does not seem in much better case than thee did when last I saw thee, Friend,” she said at last. Her voice was hoarse, and she cleared her throat.

“Ach,” he said comfortably, “I’ll do. It’s no but a few drops of blood spilled. Are your wee lassies well?”

At last she smiled, though tremulously.

“They are awash in pancakes with butter and honey,” she said. “I expect they will have burst themselves by now.” She hesitated for a moment, but then burst out herself, “I cannot thank thee enough, Friend, for sending thy nephew to me. Has he told thee of—of the straits in which he found us?”

“No,” Jamie said mildly. “Does it matter? Ye took me in without question and tended me—will ye not let me do the same for you?”

A dull red washed her face and she looked down at her battered shoes. The side of one had come unstitched and he could see her grimy little toe. She would have taken back her hand, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Thee means…”

“I mean that I offer ye the succor and refuge of my home, just as ye did for me. Of course, ye rubbed hellfire into my backside, too, and I dinna think ye require any such service, thank God. But I hope that ye might find the Ridge pleasant, and if so, I should be honored if ye would consent to live among us.”

The red burned more fiercely.

“I could not. I—I should be a scandal to thy tenants.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Were ye planning to get up in Meeting and tell everyone what ye were obliged to do to save your bairns from starvin’?”

She gaped at him.

“Meeting? There are
Friends
here?” She looked as though she wanted to stand up and run, and he tightened his grasp a little.

“Just Rachel,” he assured her. “But we do have a Meeting House, and she’s there for Meeting on First Day with anyone who chooses to join her. She isna going to be shocked, is she?”

The flush faded slightly from her thin cheeks.

“No,” she admitted, and a tiny, rueful smile touched her lips. “She already knows the worst. So does thy nephew, thy sister, all of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Joseph Brant, and any number of Mohawk Indians.”

“Well, then,” he said, and letting go of her hand, patted it. “Thee has come home, Friend.”

BEYOND OUR CORDIAL INTRODUCTION
on the landslide, I’d seen little of the Sachem. Fanny and Agnes were in what we called the children’s room, Silvia and her girls were occupying Brianna and Roger’s room, and the third bedchamber on the second floor was a guest room, though more often used for patients who needed to be kept longer than overnight. I’d offered him a bed in the third-floor attic, which was now weatherproofed and walled; we could tack hides or oiled parchment over the unglassed windows. He’d declined with grace, though, saying that he would remain with the wolves for now—that, apparently, being his term for the miscellaneous Murrays. I wasn’t sure whether he was drawn by having Ian to speak Mohawk with—or by Jenny.

“SHALL I SPEAK
to yon man?” Jamie had asked Ian, a week or two into the Sachem’s visit. Jamie had come with me on a visit to the Crombies, and we’d stopped to pass the time of day with Ian and Rachel on our way home, finding the Sachem sitting in the rocking chair on the porch, watching Jenny churning buttermilk.

“If ye mean ye think I should ask him his intentions,” Ian said, “I did. He laughed, and told my mother.
She
laughed.”

“Och, aye, then,” Jamie muttered, but cut his eyes sideways at the Sachem, who smiled cheerfully at him. He turned and said something to Jenny, who nodded and went on churning. He got up and came down the steps toward us.

“Honored witch,” he said, bowing. “Are you at leisure?”

“Yes,” I said, warily. “Why?”

“I have found a strange thing—an
ohnekèren’ta,
but one I do not know. Would you come with me to look at it? I think it has some power, but I can’t tell whether it is for good or for evil.”

“A toadstool,” Ian said, in answer to my questioning glance. “Or maybe a mushroom; I havena seen it.”

Jamie was radiating caution, but Ian nodded to him.

He gave a one-shouldered shrug, saying in Gaelic, “If he was up to something, I’d know by now.”

“Exactly so,” said the Sachem, beaming.

Jamie’s brows went up. “Ye have the
Gàidhlig
?”

“Why, no,” said the Sachem. He glanced over his shoulder at Jenny. “But perhaps I will learn.”

HE TOOK ME
to the Saint’s Pool, the spring with a large white stone at its head.

“Who is the saint of this place?” he asked, kneeling in the grass to drink from a cupped hand. “I heard stories of many saints, in London. You know the one called Lawrence? I saw him in a window. He was roasted alive on a gridiron, but made jokes as his flesh steamed and split and his blood fried. He would have been a good Mohawk,” he said with approval.

“I expect he would,” I said, trying to swallow the thought that his very specific description left little doubt that he’d actually
seen
someone being burned alive. For that matter, so had I….I swallowed harder.

“As for the saint of this pool…in the Scottish Highlands, a pool like this would…er…belong to the local saint. Here, I think it’s only that people sometimes come to pray, because it reminds them of places like this in Scotland. But I suppose they might pray here to whoever they thought might help them.”

“And do you think the dead concern themselves with the living?”

I hesitated for a moment, but while I was in total ignorance of the mechanics, I didn’t doubt the fact.

“Yes, I do. So do most Highlanders. They have a very intimate relationship with their dead.” Out of curiosity, I asked, “Do you? Think that the dead concern themselves with the living?”

“Some of them do.” Rising, he beckoned me to follow him. The fungus in question was growing a short distance away, in a crevice in a dead beech log. There was a large cluster, the individual mushrooms balanced on long, delicate stems, both crimped caps and stems a noticeable shade of purplish crimson.

“I’ve seen these before,” I said, gathering up my skirt in order to squat beside him in front of the log. “People call them bleeding fairy helmets, or sometimes just blood-spots.” They were, in fact, just about the shade of venous blood, and if you cut the stems, a very convincing bloodlike liquid oozed out of them.

“I don’t know if they’re poisonous, but I wouldn’t feed them to anyone.” Assuming any of the Highlanders on the Ridge would try one. Having grown up in a food-deprived habitat where oatmeal was not just for breakfast, most of the older people were deeply suspicious of anything strange-looking or unfamiliar—particularly things of a vegetable nature.

“No,” the Sachem said thoughtfully. “Their blood is sticky—like real blood, you know—and I’ve seen that used to help seal small wounds, but I’ve never seen animals eat them. Not even pigs.”

“So you
are
familiar with them?”

“Oh, yes. It’s
that,
that I have never seen before.” Crouching beside me, he extended a long, knobbly finger toward an isolated patch of the mushroom. The caps had opened fully, like tiny umbrellas, but each one sported a tangled headdress of thin, slightly iridescent pale spikes, as though the cap had suddenly grown a crop of tiny needles.

I didn’t touch them, but took out my spectacles for a closer look.

The Sachem smiled at me. “You know the big owls?” he said, sticking his forefingers up beside his ears. “The ones who call
Hoo-hoo,
and then another answers
Hoo
? You hear them most in the early days of winter, when they breed.”

“Hoo,”
I said gravely, and bent closer. Seeing in better focus, I could just make out tiny ball-shaped sporangia at the ends of the tiny spikes.

“I don’t know what it’s called, but it looks like a parasite—you know what a parasite is?”

He nodded gravely.

“I can see little…fruiting things…on the ends here. It might be a different kind of fungus that feeds off the larger ones.”

“Fungus,” he said, and repeated it happily. “Fungus. What a pleasant word.”

I smiled.

“Well, it is rather better than ‘saprophyte.’ That means a…they’re not quite plants…but growing things that live on dead things.”

He blinked and looked speculatively from the blood-spots to me.

“Do not all living things live on the dead?”

That made
me
blink.

“Well…I suppose they do,” I said slowly, and he nodded, pleased.

“Even if you were to swallow oysters—which are often alive when you eat them—they die in your stomach very quickly.”

“What a very disagreeable notion,” I said, and he laughed.

“What does it mean to be dead?” he asked.

I’d risen to my feet and crossed my arms, feeling just slightly unsettled.

“Why are you asking
me
?”

He’d stood up, too, but was quite relaxed. At the same time, something new had entered his eyes. They were still lively, and undoubtedly friendly—but there was something else behind them now, and my hands felt suddenly cold.

“Wolf’s Brother said to Thayendanegea that his uncle’s wife was a
Wata’ènnaras.
But he also said that you have walked through time and that you have walked with a Mohawk ghost. Wolf’s Brother does not lie, no more than his Quaker wife nor his virtuous mother, so I believe that he thinks this is a true thing that you have done.”

Under the circumstances, I wasn’t sure whether his belief was a good thing or not, but I managed a small nod.

“It’s true.”

He nodded back, unsurprised but still interested. “Thayendanegea told Wolf’s Brother to tell this to me, and he did. That’s why I said I would come with him when he returned here. To hear this from your own lips, and to know whatever else you can tell me.”

“Rather a tall order,” I said. I felt cold and breathless, and my inner ears rang with the aftermath of thunder. “Let’s…walk while I tell you. If you don’t mind.”

He nodded at once and offered me his arm, calico-shirted and ringed with silver bracelets, with as much style as Lord John or Hal might have done it, and I laughed, despite my unease.

“A story for a story. I’ll tell you what happened, and you tell me why you went to London.”

“Oh, that’s simple enough.” He handed me carefully over one of the small gravelly rivulets that ran down this part of the mountain. “I went because Thayendanegea went. He would need a friend to talk with in a strange place, someone who could counsel him, judge men for him, guard him in case of danger, and…perhaps offer another view of the things we saw and heard.”

“And why did
he
go?”

“The King invited him,” the Sachem said. “When a King invites you to go somewhere, it’s not usually a good idea to refuse, unless you already know you will make war against him. And that is not something we knew.”

“Sound judgment,” I said. It had been, on the King’s part, as well as Brant’s. The King—or at least the government—wanted to keep the Indians on their side, as help in suppressing an incipient rebellion. And Brant, naturally, would like to be on the winning side of that rebellion, and at the moment of going to press, the British undeniably looked like the best bet.

We had reached level footing, and I led the way onto a trail that wound gently down toward the small lake where we fished for trout.

“So,” I said, and took a deep breath. “It was a dark and stormy night. Isn’t that how ghost stories usually begin?”

“Do your people often tell such stories?” He sounded quite startled, and I looked over my shoulder. The trail had narrowed at this point, and he was walking behind me.

“Ghost stories? Yes, don’t yours?”

“Yes, but they don’t usually start that way. Tell me what happened next.”

I did. I told him all of it, from my being trapped in a storm at night on the mountain, to coming face-to-face with Otter-Tooth; what I had said to him, and he to me. And with some hesitation, I told him about finding Otter-Tooth’s skull, and with it, the large opal that he had kept as his ticket back—his token of safe return through the stones.

And then, of course, I had to tell him
about
the stones. It isn’t, in the nature of things, possible for a person possessing epicanthic folds to actually grow round-eyed, but he made a good attempt.

“And the reason why I knew that the ghost—I didn’t know his name until much later—why he was from…er…my time, was that his teeth had silver fillings: metal that’s put in the tooth to strengthen it after you remove a pocket of decay. That’s not done now; it won’t be done commonly until…I forget, but more than…say, two or three generations from now. But look…”

I opened my mouth and leaned toward him, hooking my cheek away with a finger so he could see my molars. He leaned down and peered into my mouth.

“Your breath is sweet,” he said politely, and straightened up. “How did you learn his name? Did he come back and tell you?”

“No. He left behind a journal that he had written, while living with the Mohawks near Snaketown. He wrote down who he was—his English name was Robert Springer, but he had taken the name ‘Ta’wineonawira.’ Do you read Latin?”

He laughed, which relieved the tension a little. “Do I look like a priest?”

That surprised me somewhat. “Aren’t you one? Or something like that? A—a healer?” I had vague memories of Ian telling me about the False Face Society, healers who would gather to offer prayers and songs over a sick person.