Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (149 page)

I wanted to say,
“I love
you
with all my heart—and I can’t keep you safe.”

But I squeezed back and said, as well as I could for the real tears starting, “I will.”

He lifted my hand and kissed my cold knuckles.

“Tapadh leat, mo chridhe.”

We sat together in silence, listening to the rain pattering through the leaves, water dripping from the trees, distant voices. The infant fire had died a-borning, though we could still smell the ghost of its smoke.

“You said three things,” I said at last. My voice was hoarse. “What’s the third?”

He let go of my hand and opened my fingers, as I’d done for him a few moments before, but his fingertips traced the lines of my palm and rested at the base of my thumb, where the letter J had nearly faded into my skin.

“Remember me,” he whispered.

We made love to each other, under the layers of sodden clothing, finding little warmth save that at the point of connection. We kept on well past the point where it was clear that neither of us could finish. Our bodies slowly left each other and we clung together through the dark until the dawn.

October 3, 1780

IT WASN’T THE FIRST
time he’d gone to a battle knowing he’d die. The difference was that last time, he’d wanted to.

The rain had kept them from lighting fires. They’d eaten what scraps they had left and then huddled in the dark, under what shelter they could find. He’d found a fallen tree, a big poplar whose roots had come up when the tree went down, making a rudimentary shelter. There wasn’t much room; he sat cross-legged, his back to the roots, and Claire was curled up beside him like a dormouse, wrapped in her soggy cloak and covered with half of his, her head resting warm on his thigh under the woolen folds. It was the only place he felt warm.

He wasn’t the sort of soldier who fought old battles over beer and salted bread in taverns. He didn’t seek to summon ghosts; they came by themselves, in his dreams.

But dreams don’t always tell the truth; he’d had dreams of Culloden many, many times over the years—and yet none of his dreams had shown him how Murtagh died or given him the peace of knowing that he’d killed Jack Randall.

Did
you
know?
he thought suddenly, toward Frank Randall. The man was a historian—and Jack Randall had been his ancestor, or at least he’d thought so. That was how it had all begun, Claire had told him: Frank had wanted to go to Scotland, to see what he could find regarding his five-times-great-grandfather. Maybe he
had
found out what happened to him, found some survivor’s account that told about Red Jamie, the Jacobite who’d gutted the gallant British captain. And maybe that finding-out had set Frank Randall on that Jacobite’s trail…

He snorted, watching the breath curl away from him, white in the dark. Claire stirred and huddled closer and he put a hand on her, patting her as he might reassure a dog who’d just heard thunder in the distance.

“Uncle Jamie?” Ian’s voice came out of the darkness near his shoulder, making him start, and Claire shuddered, waking.

“Aye,” he said. “I’m here, Ian.”

Ian’s lanky shape separated itself briefly from the night, and he crouched beside Jamie, dripping.

“The colonels want ye, Uncle,” he said, low-voiced. “Someone’s brought in some Tory prisoners and they’re arguing whether to hang the lot of them, or only one or two as an example.”

“Christ. Ye dinna need to tell me whose idea
that
was.”

“What?” Claire said blearily. She’d lifted her head off his leg, and he felt the sudden chill of the spot where she’d lain. She shook off the fold of his cloak, emerging into the rain-chilled air. “What’s going on? Is someone hurt?”

“No,
a nighean,
” he said. “I’ve got to go for a bit, though. Here, it’s only damp where I’ve been sitting; curl up there, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She cleared her throat—everyone had catarrh from spending day and night in wet clothes beside smoky fires—and shook her head to clear that, too, but Ian was wise enough to keep quiet, and she settled into the little half-warm hollow he’d made, scuttering into the wet leaves and drawing herself up into a ball.

THE RAIN HAD
actually stopped, he realized. It was only that the dripping foliage all around made the same sound as the rain itself. The respite had allowed someone to light a tiny fire—no doubt someone had thought to bring a bit of kindling in his pack—but it hissed and fumed in the damp, billowing smoke over the gathered men as the wind changed. Jamie caught a sudden lungful and coughed, squinting through watering eyes at the hulking dark shape of Benjamin Cleveland, who was addressing a number of smaller shapes with violent language and gestures of the same nature.

“Ian,” he said, wiping his face on his sleeve, “go and find Colonel Campbell, aye? Tell him what’s afoot.”

Ian shook his head, the movement visible only because he was wearing a hat.

“No, Uncle,” he said. “Whatever’s afoot is going to happen in the next few minutes.”

“Damn you for a lily-livered pig-son,” Cleveland said—fairly mildly—to one of the smaller figures. “We’ve got no place to keep prisoners, and no need to try ’em in any case. I know the smell of a Tory. We’ll string ’em up and there’s an end to it!”

There was a shuffling and mumbling among the men, but Young Ian was right; Jamie could feel the shift of sentiment among them. The doubters were still trying to make a case for mercy, but were being overwhelmed by a rising flame of anger, lit and encouraged by Cleveland himself, who was visible in the fitful light, brandishing a large coil of rope.

Does he travel about with a dozen nooses, just in case of need?
Jamie thought, unnerved and growing angry himself. He shoved between two men and got close enough to Cleveland to shout loud enough to interrupt him.

“Stad an sin!”
he bellowed. Cleveland, as he’d hoped, turned toward him in puzzlement.

“Fraser?” he said, squinting into the hazy dark. “That you?”

“It is,” Jamie said, still loud. “And I dinna mean to let ye make me a murderer!”

“Why, if that troubles you,
Mister
Fraser,” Cleveland said with elaborate courtesy, “you just turn round and trot back to your wife, and your conscience won’t itch you a bit.”

That made most of the crowd laugh, though there were still dissenters calling out, “Murder! He’s right! It’s goddamned murder, ’thout a trial!” The breeze changed again and the cloud of smoke that had hidden the prisoners fled away, showing a line of six men, each with his hands bound behind his back, swaying to keep his balance. And then the clouds split for an instance, and Jamie saw the prisoners’ faces.

“Holy Mary!” he said, loud enough that Young Ian, at his shoulder, glanced at him, then at what Jamie was looking at, and said something that was probably the Mohawk equivalent.

At the end of the line stood Lachlan Hunt, one of the tenants Jamie had banished from the Ridge. Lachlan hadn’t let his wife go to plead for him; he was among the men who had left. Jamie’s wame clenched into a ball.

Lachlan had seen him, too, and was directing a wide-eyed look of terror at him.

He hesitated, but not more than a few seconds.

“Stop!” he shouted, as loud as he could, and Young Ian backed him up.

“This man—” Jamie said, pointing at Hunt. “He’s one of my tenants.”

“He’s a hell-bound Tory, is what he is!” Cleveland riposted smartly, and lunging forward, dropped a noose over Lachlan Hunt’s head. Jamie flexed his shoulders and felt Young Ian draw up close behind him.

Before he could carry out his plan of butting Cleveland in his massive belly and knocking him over, then jumping on him and enduring whatever Cleveland might do to him long enough for Young Ian to get Hunt away into the darkness, another voice rang out in anguish.

“Locky!” it called. “That’s my brother!” A young man was elbowing his way through the crowd, which was beginning to be amused by this second interruption.

“And I s’pose that’un is somebody’s grandpa, eh?” some wag shouted, pitching a wet pine cone that hit the youngest prisoner in the chest. That caused laughter, and Jamie managed a breath.

“Don’t matter who they are!” someone else yelled. “They’re Tories and they’re gonna die!”

“Not without a trial!”

“Please, please—let me say goodbye to him!” Lachlan’s brother was pushing urgently through the crowd—which, Jamie saw, was letting him. There was even a murmur of sympathy; both prisoner and brother were young men, no more than twenty.

Jamie didn’t wait; he elbowed Ian and slid sideways through the crowd.

The clouds had closed again, and the light beneath the chosen hanging-tree was no more than scattered patches of lighter dark. The tiny fire expired in a final puff of smoke, and Young Ian let fly with the sort of Indian yips and howls that were calculated to startle and freeze the blood of all who heard them. Jamie dived under the tree and grabbed Hunt by his bound arms, propelling him violently away into the nearby forest.

Lachlan staggered, off-balance, but lunged along as well as he could, and within moments they were out of sight of the fire and the stramash that was starting there.

Jamie drew his dirk and sawed at the rope.

“D’ye ken where we are?” he asked Hunt. There was a great deal of racket back by the tree.

“No.” Locky Hunt’s face was no more than a dark oval, but the fear in his voice was clear as day. “Please, sir…please. My—my wife…”

“Shut your gob,” Jamie said, grunting as he wrenched and sawed. “Listen. That way”—he pointed, his finger directly under the man’s nose—“is west. Medway Plantation is maybe three miles in that direction. It belongs to a nephew of Francis Marion; he’ll help ye. I dinna ken where ye live these days, but my advice is to go do it somewhere else. Send for your wife when you’re safe away.”

“She—but she—the big man fired our cabin,” Hunt said, beginning to weep from nerves, relief, and renewed fear.

“She’s no dead,” Jamie said, with a certainty he hoped was justified. Cleveland was a brute, but so far as Jamie knew, he’d never killed a woman, save perhaps by crushing her to death by lying on her. Not on purpose, anyway…“She’ll have taken refuge wi’ someone nearby. Send a note to your nearest neighbor, they’ll find her. Now go!” The last fibers parted and the strands of the rope fell away.

Lachlan Hunt made more noises, babbling thanks, but Jamie turned him and gave him a solid push in the middle of the back that sent him staggering on his way. He didn’t watch to see how the man fared but hared back toward the hanging-tree, where a good bit of what Claire called argy-bargy was going on.

To his great relief, a good bit of the shouting was being done by Isaac Shelby and Captain Larkin, who were taking vigorous issue with Cleveland’s notion of sport. It had also commenced to rain again, which further dampened enthusiasm for the prospect of hanging the Tory prisoners; the crowd was beginning to melt away.

Jamie was beginning to feel that wee bit soluble himself, and when Young Ian turned up at his elbow, he merely nodded, patted Ian’s shoulder in thanks, and walked back through the dark to Claire, feeling very tired.

October 7, 1780

FOUR DAYS LATER, THE
mountain came in sight, and with its appearance, a jolt of expectation ran through the men. Jamie felt his own blood rise and knew every other man felt it, too. It had been a long time since he'd fought with an army, but he recognized the surge of strength and heat that burned away tiredness and hunger. Thoughts of pain and loss were still with him, but now seemed insubstantial. God willing, they'd reach the point in battle where death ran with you and sometimes you could ride it. His mouth was dry; he took a swig of tepid water and glanced at Claire, offering the canteen.

She was white to the lips, but she managed a smile and reached for the canteen. The horses had felt that charge of energy among the men, though, and were snorting and jostling, tossing their heads, and she dropped the canteen. It vanished at once in a trampling of muddy hooves. He thought for a moment she meant to dive after it and grabbed her arm, holding on.

“Dinna fash,” he said, though he knew she couldn't hear him through the rising noise of the men. There was no advantage to silence, and many of the younger ones were whooping and shouting incoherent threats at an enemy too far distant to hear them. She nodded, nonetheless, and patted his hand.

He heard Cleveland's hoarse bellowing up ahead, and the body of men began to slow. Time to fall out and check weapons, have a quick piss, and fettle themselves.

Jamie pulled up, raised his rifle to summon his own band, and swung down from the saddle. Roger Mac was there; he lifted Claire down, her long, bare legs a flash of white in the muddy ruins of her petticoats. Young Ian appeared at Jamie's shoulder. He'd painted his face at dawn, and Jamie saw Roger Mac notice it and blink. He wanted to laugh but didn't, just clapped Young Ian on the shoulder and jerked his head at the men, saying, “See to them, aye?

“Keep Claire with ye,” he said to Roger, and went to confer with the other colonels.

They'd drawn up and dismounted near Campbell, who still sat his big black gelding. John Sevier's younger brother, Robert, and two other young men had left camp in the dark to scout the situation, and Jamie had a brief sense of falling, hearing them say the words that painted in Frank Randall's account and brought it vividly to life.

“You can tell Major Ferguson right off,” Robert Sevier was saying, swiping a hand down his chest in illustration. “He's got on a red-and-white-check shirt and he wasn't wearin' a coat when we saw him. Shows up right well amongst all those green Provincials.” He cocked his thumb and finger in the semblance of a gun, closed one eye, and pretended to aim.

John Sevier frowned at him, but said nothing, and Campbell merely nodded.

“All Provincials, are they?”

“No, sir,” said another young scout, quickly so as to keep Sevier from sticking his neb in. “Near on half of 'em don't have uniforms, at least.”

“But they do all have guns. Sir,” said the third scout, not to be left out.

“How many?” Jamie asked, and felt the words strange in his throat.

“A few more'n us, but not enough to make a difference,” Sevier replied, but in Jamie's mind there echoed another voice: Frank Randall's.

The forces were nearly equal, though Ferguson's troops numbered over a thousand, as compared with the nine hundred Patriots attacking him.

A sort of murmur ran through the men: acknowledgment and satisfaction. Jamie swallowed, a taste of bile in his mouth.

“There's more of 'em, but they're trapped up there.” Cleveland put the sense of the meeting into words. “Like rats.” And he laughed and stamped a large boot as though crushing a rat into bloody mush.

Likely what he does for fun,
Jamie thought. He cleared his throat and spat into the dead leaves.

It took no more than a few minutes to sort out whose men should take which direction. Jamie's band would go with Campbell and several others, and he went back to gather the men and tell them how it would be.

ROGER HAD BEEN
told off to mind me—or, as Jamie put it more politely, to wait until the attackers reached the saddle of the mountain.

“Ye'll do most good comin' in when folk will need ye most,” he'd said to us both, in the firm tone that meant he expected to be obeyed. My face must have expressed what I was thinking, for he glanced at me, smiled involuntarily, and looked down.

“Look after her, Roger Mac,” he said, then cupped my face in his hands and kissed me, briefly. His hands and face were pulsing with heat and I felt a sudden coolness when his touch left my skin.

“Tha gràdh agam ort, mo chridhe,”
he said, and was gone.

Roger and I looked at each other with a perfect understanding.

“He told you, didn't he?” I said, watching him disappear upward into the brush. “About Frank's book?”

“Yes. Don't worry. I'm going after him.”

The brush above was crackling and snapping as though the mountain was on fire. I could see men flickering through the leaves and trunks, reckless and purposeful. It was happening.

“The curse has come upon me, said the Lady of Shalott.”
I hadn't thought I'd spoken aloud, until I saw Roger's startled look. Whatever he might have said, though, was drowned by William Campbell's shout.

“Whoop, boys, whoop! Shout like the devil and fight like hell!”

The mountainside erupted and a panicked squirrel leapt from a branch above me and hit the ground running, leaving a spray of moist droppings behind it.

Roger did the same—minus the droppings—climbing as fast as he could through the trees on the slope, grabbing branches to help himself along.

I saw William Campbell, a little below where I stood, still mounted on his big black horse. He saw me, too, and shouted, but I didn't listen and I didn't stop, but hitched up my skirts and ran. Whatever happened to Jamie in the next little while, I was going to be there.