Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (14 page)

ROGER HAD SEEN
Jamie disappear quietly into the shadows behind the half-built chimney and assumed that he’d gone for a piss. But when he didn’t reappear within a few minutes, Roger detached himself from the conversation—this presently centering on the infinite possibilities for wee Oglethorpe’s eventual real name—and followed his father-in-law into the gloaming.

He found Jamie standing on the edge of a large rectangular hole in the ground, evidently lost in contemplation of its depths.

“New privy?” he asked, nodding into the pit. Jamie looked up, smiling at sight of him, and Roger felt a rush of warmth—on more than one account.

“Aye. I’d only meant it to be the usual, ken, wi’ a single seat of ease.” Jamie gestured at the hole, the last of the sun touching his hair and skin with a golden light. “But with four more—and maybe yet more, in time? As ye say ye mean to stay, I mean.” He glanced sideways at Roger, and the smile came again.

“Then there’s the folk who come to see Claire, too. One of the Crombie boys came down last week to get a remedy for a case o’ the blazing shits, and he spent so long gruntin’ and groanin’ in Bobby Higgins’s privy that the family were all havin’ to trot into the woods, and Amy wasna best pleased at the state of the privy when he left, I can tell ye.”

Roger nodded.

“So ye mean to make it bigger, or make two privies?”

“Aye, that’s the question.” Jamie seemed pleased that Roger had grasped the essence of the situation so quickly. “See, most o’ the places wi’ families have a necessary that will accommodate two at once—the McHughs have a three-hole privy, and a thing of beauty it is, too; Sean McHugh is a canny man with his tools, and a good thing, what wi’ seven bairns. But the thing is—” He frowned a little and turned to look back toward the fire, presently hidden behind the dark bulk of the chimney stack. “The women, ken?”

“Claire and Brianna, you mean.” Roger took Jamie’s meaning at once. “Aye, they’ve notions of privacy. But a wee latch on the inside of the door…?”

“Aye, I thought of that.” Jamie waved a hand, dismissing it. “The difficulty’s more what they think of…germs.” He pronounced the word very carefully and glanced quickly at Roger under his brows, as though to see if he’d said it right, or as if he weren’t sure it was a real word to start with.

“Oh. Hadn’t thought of that. Ye mean the sick folk who come—they might leave…” He waved his own hand toward the hole.

“Aye. Ye should ha’ seen the carry-on when Claire insisted on scalding Amy’s privy wi’ boiling water and lye soap and pourin’ turpentine into it after the Crombie lad left.” His shoulders rose toward his ears in memory. “If she was to do that every time we had sick folk in our privy, we’d all be shitting in the woods, too.”

He laughed, though, and so did Roger.

“Both, then,” Roger said. “Two holes for the family, and a separate privy for visitors—or rather, for the surgery. Say it’s for convenience. Ye dinna want to seem highfalutin by not letting people use your own privy.”

“No, that wouldna do at all.” Jamie vibrated briefly then stilled, but stayed for a moment, looking down, a half smile still on his face. The smells of damp, fresh-dug earth and newly sawn wood rose thick around them, mingling with the scent of the fire, and Roger could almost imagine that he felt the house solidifying out of the smoke.

Jamie left off what he was thinking, then, and turned his head to look at Roger.

“I missed ye, Roger Mac,” he said.

ROGER OPENED HIS
mouth to reply, but his throat had closed as hard as if he’d swallowed a rock, and nothing came out but a muffled grunt.

Jamie smiled and touched his arm, urging him toward a big stone at what Roger assumed would be the front of the house. The stone foundation ran out at ninety-degree angles from the big stone. It was going to be a sizable house—maybe even bigger than the original Big House.

“Come walk the foundation with me, aye?”

Roger bobbed his head and followed his father-in-law to the big stone, and was surprised to see that the word “FRASER” had been chiseled into it, and below that, “1779.”

“My cornerstone,” Jamie said. “I thought if the house was to burn down again, at least folk would ken we’d been here, aye?”

“Ah…mm,” Roger managed. He cleared his throat hard, coughed, and found enough air for a few words. “Lallybroch…y-your da…” He pointed upward, as though to a lintel. “He put—the date.”

Jamie’s face lit. “He did,” he said. “The place is still standing, then?”

“It was last time I…saw it.” His throat had loosened as the grip of emotion left it. “Though…come to think—” He stopped, recalling just
when
he’d last seen Lallybroch.

“I wondered, ken.” Jamie had turned his back and was leading the way down what would be the side of the house. A smell of roasting meat was wafting from the fire. “Brianna told me about the men who came.” He glanced back briefly at Roger, his face careful. “Ye were gone then, of course, lookin’ for Jem.”

“Yes.” And Bree had been forced to leave the house—their house—abandoned to the hands of thieves and kidnappers. It felt like the rock had dropped from his throat into his chest. No use thinking of that just now, though, and he shoved the vision of people shooting at his wife and children down into the bottom of his brain—for the moment.

“As it is,” he said, catching up with Jamie, “the last time I saw Lallybroch was…a bit earlier than that.”

Jamie paused, one eyebrow raised, and Roger cleared his throat. It was what he’d come back here to say; no better time to say it.

“When I went to find Jem, I started by going to Lallybroch. He knew it, it was his home—I thought, if he somehow got away from Cameron, he’d maybe go there.”

Jamie looked at him for a moment, then drew breath and nodded. “The lass said…1739?”

“You would have been eighteen. Away at university in Paris. Your family was very proud of you,” Roger added softly. Jamie turned his head sharply away and stood quite still; Roger could hear the catch in his breath.

“Jenny,” he said. “Ye met Jenny.
Then.
”

“Aye, I did. She was maybe twenty. Then.” And
then,
for him, was less than a year in the past. And Jenny now was what, sixty? “I thought—I thought I should maybe say something to ye, before I met her again.”

“In case the shock of it knocked her over?”

“Something like that.”

Jamie had turned back to him now, his expression wavering between a smile and a considerable shock of his own, Roger thought. Roger could feel it, the sense of disbelief, disorientation, not knowing where to put your feet down. Jamie shook his head like a bull trying to dislodge a fly.
I know the feeling, mate…all of them.

“That’s…very thoughtful of ye.” Jamie swallowed, and then looked up, the next thought penetrating the shock—and renewing it. “My father. Ye said—my family. He…” His voice died.

“He was there.” The voices from the distant fire had settled into the steady hum of women working: clanking and splashing and scraping noises, voices on the far side of hearing, punctuated by small bursts of laughter, an occasional sharp call to an errant child. Roger touched Jamie’s arm and tilted his head toward the path that led up toward the springhouse and the garden. “Maybe we should go somewhere and sit for a bit,” he said. “So I can tell it to ye before your sister comes.”
So you can handle it without witnesses.

Jamie let out a deep sigh, compressed his lips briefly, then nodded and turned, leading the way past the big square cornerstone. Which, Roger suddenly thought, looked very much like the clan stones he’d seen on Culloden field, big gray stones casting long shadows in the evening light, each bearing the chiseled memory of one name: McGillivray, Cameron, MacDonald…Fraser.

ROGER STOOD WITH
Jamie on a mossy bank above the creek, dutifully admiring the fledgling springhouse on the opposite side of the rushing water.

“It’s no much yet,” Jamie said modestly, nodding at it. “But it’s what I’ve had time for. I’ll need to build a bigger one soon, though—maybe by the spring—the summer rains will flood this one.”

The springhouse was little more at present than a rocky overhang to which rough stone walls had been added on either side, with openings at the foot of each wall to let water pass through. Wooden slats ran between the walls, suspended a couple of feet above the clear brown water of the creek. At the moment, these supported three pails of milk, each covered with a weighted cloth to prevent flies or frogs from dropping in, and half of a waxed wheel of Moravian cheese the size of Roger’s head.

“Jenny’s a fine cheese maker,” Jamie said, with a nod at the latter object. “But she hasna yet found a good starter, so I brought that from Salem.”

Below the slats, a modest array of stoneware crocks were half sunk in the creek, these—Jamie said—holding butter, cream, soured cream, and buttermilk. It was a peaceful spot here, the air cool with the breeze off the water, and the creek busily talking to itself. On the bank beyond the rocky lump of the springhouse, a thick growth of willows let their slender branches flow with the water.

“Like young women washing their hair, aye?” Roger said, gesturing at them, and Jamie smiled a little, but his mind was plainly not on poetry at the moment.

“Here,” he said, turning away from the creek and pushing aside the branches of a red oak sapling. Roger followed him up a small slope and onto a rocky shelf, where two or three more enterprising saplings had established themselves in crevices. There was room enough to sit comfortably at the edge of the shelf, from whence Roger found that they could see the opposite bank and the tiny springhouse, and also a good bit of the trail leading up from the house site.

“We’ll see anyone coming,” Jamie said, settling himself cross-legged, with his back against one of the saplings. “So, then. Ye’ve a thing or two to tell me.”

“So, then.” Roger sat down in a patch of shade, took off his shoes and stockings, and let his legs dangle in the cool draft at the edge of the shelf, in hopes that it would slow his heart. There was no way to begin, except to start.

“As I said, I went to Lallybroch in search of Jem—and of course he wasn’t there. But Brian—your father—”

“I ken his name,” Jamie said dryly.

“Ever call him by it?” Roger said, on impulse.

“No,” Jamie said, surprised. “Do men call their fathers by their Christian names in your time?”

“No.” Roger made a brief dismissive motion. “It’s just—I shouldn’t have said that, it’s part of my story, not yours.”

Jamie glanced at the fading sky.

“It’s a good while ’til supper,” he said. “We’ve likely time for both.”

“It’s a tale for another time,” Roger said, shrugging. “But…the meat of it is that while I came in search of Jem, I found—well, my father, instead. His name was Jeremiah, too—folk called him Jerry.”

Jamie said something in Gaelic and crossed himself.

“Aye,” Roger said briefly. “As I said—another time. The thing was—when I found him, he was only twenty-two. I was the age I am now; I could have been
his
father, just. So I called him Jerry; thought of him that way. At the same time, I kent he was my…well. I couldn’t tell him who I was; there wasn’t time.” He felt his throat grow tight again and cleared it, with an effort.

“Well, so. It was before, that I met your father at Lallybroch. I nearly fell over with the shock when he opened the door and told me his name.” He smiled a little at the memory, rueful. “He was about my own age, maybe a few years older. We met…as men. Mr. MacKenzie. Mr. Fraser.”

Jamie gave a brief nod, his eyes curious.

“And then your sister came in, and they made me welcome, fed me. I told your father—well, not the whole of it, obviously—but that I was looking for my wee lad, who’d been kidnapped.”

Brian had given Roger a bed, then taken him next morning to all the crofts nearby, asking after Jem and Rob Cameron, without result. But the next day, he’d suggested riding all the way to Fort William, to make inquiries at the army garrison.

Roger’s eyes were fixed on a patch of moss near his knee; it grew in rounded green clumps over the rocks, looking like the heads of young broccoli. He could feel Jamie listening. His father-in-law didn’t move at all, but Roger felt the slight tension in him at mention of Fort William.
Or maybe it’s my own…
He thrust his fingers into the cool, wet moss; to anchor himself, maybe.