Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (150 page)
Read Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone Online
Authors: Diana Gabaldon
THE SHOOTING STARTED
before I had made it a hundred feet up the hill, slipping on dead leaves and grabbing branches to save myself falling. Panicked, I whirled round and ran downhill but slipped almost at once, tripped on a rock and tobogganed a few feet on my stomach, arms flung out.
I slammed into a sapling of some sort; it bent and I rolled over it, ending flat on my back. I lay frozen for a moment, gasping for breath, hearing the battle begin in earnest.
Then I turned over, got to my hands and knees, and started crawling up the mountain.
IT WAS FAST
and it was fierce.
Frank Randall had described it as a “just fight,” and he wasna wrong about that, though maybe he hadn’t been thinking about wringing with sweat and breathing air full of gun smoke.
He gave a sharp whistle, and the few of his men in hearing ran to his side.
“We’ll go up, but go canny,” he said, shouting over the crack of the guns. “The Provincials have bayonets, and they’ll use ’em. If they do, fall away to the side. Come back up somewhere else.”
Nods and they were pushing upward, pausing every few feet to fire and reload, dodge to another tree, and do it again. It wasn’t only gun smoke now, but the smell of battered trees, sap, and burning wood. It wasn’t bayonets yet.
I’D HAD TO
stop, a hundred feet lower than the summit. I stood plastered against a big walnut tree, eyes closed, holding on hard. A ball slammed into the trunk just above my hand and I jerked my arms back in panic. More balls were humming through the trees, shredding leaves, making sharp little
pocks!
as they struck wood. Occasional brief cries and grunts nearby indicated that flesh was being struck, as well.
I’d dug my fingers so hard into the bark that sharp bits were wedged under my nails, but I was much too scared to worry about it. They’d seen me move; an instant later, shots struck the tree in a fusillade that sent bark and wood chips flying; they stung my face and flew into my eyes. I pressed hard to the tree, eyes shut tight and watering, using all my strength not to run downhill, shrieking. I was shaking everywhere and couldn’t tell if it was sweat or urine running down my legs and didn’t care.
It seemed to go on for a very long time. I could hear my heart, booming in my ears, and clung to the sound. I was scared—very scared—but no longer panicked. My heart was still beating; I hadn’t been shot.
Yet.
The memory of Monmouth shuddered through me. My eyes were burning and filled with the dizziness of spinning leaves and an empty sky and I felt my blood draining out, my knees giving way…
“Whoop! Whoop! One more, one more!” It was Campbell’s voice, behind and below me. And in the next second, screams and bellows and shrieks broke out and men rushed close past me, clanking and thumping and bellowing when they could draw enough breath to do it.
Jesus, where’s Roger?
HE RAMMED THE
rod home and home again. Paused to gulp air, and touched the lumpy shot pouch on his belt. How many left? Enough…
They were close enough to the meadow now as to be able to see the enemy. He stepped out from the shelter of his tree and fired. Then he heard a faint, sharp whistle. Ferguson, that was him. Randall said the wee man hadn’t enough voice to call above the roar of battle, so he used a whistle to manage his troops.
Like callin’ in a pack of sheepdogs,
he thought.
A shout came from above, repeated and echoed across the meadow.
“Fix bayonets!”
THERE WERE SCATTERED
shouts from above, distant. Then all of a sudden there was another ragged roar from the besiegers and the forest was moving, men running out from the shelter of their trees, leaping, crawling upward around me, powder horns swinging and rifles in hand. I heard a shrill whistle through the uproar, far above, and then another and another. Ferguson, rallying his troops.
But now I was hearing a fresh outbreak of battle—far above me. A few shots now, and the sort of yelling men do when they’re beyond words. A shrill whistle and the spreading cry of “Bayonets!”
Still shaking, I forced myself to stand up. I wiped a sleeve across my face and saw the forest blurred and shattered around me. Broken limbs dangled from trees, and the air was thick with the smell of crushed plants and powder smoke. And men were still running uphill, panting, flickering through the trees; one knocked into me in passing and I fell back against the big walnut tree.
“Auntie!” Young Ian appeared suddenly, grasping my arm. “What are ye doing here? Are ye all right? What have ye done wi’ Roger Mac?”
I hadn’t managed more than a faint bleat in reply when I heard Colonel Campbell’s voice bellowing somewhere below me.
“One more, boys! One more whoop!”
Answering whoops rose from every man near enough to hear him. Ian disappeared up the hill into the rising smoke, leaving me swaying like one of the broken tree limbs, hanging by a thread of bark.
Suddenly there was a crunch and slither of dirt as someone slipped and a muffled curse, and I turned to look into the face of a woman. She was as startled as I was; we stared at each other for an instant, and I registered nothing but her eyes, black with terror. She ran past me, stumbling and falling and rising in what seemed the same movement, and disappeared down the mountain. I blinked, not sure I’d seen her at all. But I had; she’d ripped her dress and left a strip of her yellow calico gown fluttering from a dogwood. I looked around, dazed.
“What the devil are you doing here?” Colonel Campbell was on foot now, next to me, still in his shirtsleeves, face black with powder smoke. “Go down, go down at once, ma’am!” He didn’t pause to see if I obeyed, but ran upward, shouting. There were cries from above and a wash of men coming down, but only a little way, then moving to the side, following an officer for another try. Two crows came sailing down and landed in a nearby tree, eyeing me with casual interest. One noticed the flapping yellow rag and hopped down, pecking at it.
My mouth was dry, and when I raised a hand to wipe sweat from my forehead, I realized that my face was imprinted with the pattern of the walnut’s bark.
The whistle was shrieking above, then drowned by a tremendous shouting—and the sound of shots again, in great number. The attackers had reached the meadow.
THE KERCHIEF ROUND
his head was sopping, sweat and gun smoke stung his eyes. He blinked hard to clear them, felt the clash and thud of loading in his bones, the weight of the rifle in his hands, butt hard against his sore shoulder.
Green…
The meadow was surging with men, speckled with clots of green uniforms. He fired and one dropped.
Ferguson’s whistle screamed thin and high through the noise. The man was still on his horse, trying to rally his men, though by now it was like rallying fish in a net—they surged to and fro, bayonets still fixed, stabbing air, some firing, but being driven closer in, jostling as they strove to find a target.
Why not?
He coughed again, smoke rasping in his chest, and spat. It was no more than minutes now, and he kent from Randall’s book what would happen to Ferguson.
Spare him knowing what’s coming to him…Let it be a Scot, at least…
He hadn’t time to think more, before his sight fixed on the checked shirt and his finger tightened on the trigger. He took a step sideways, barrel following his target, and something snagged round his foot. He kicked at the clinging shrub, impatient, and a thorn pierced his calf.
“Ifrinn!”
He jerked, and looked down. The large snake that had bitten him was writhing round his leg in panic, and he flung himself away, kicking out in his own panic.
The first bullet struck him in the chest.
IT SEEMED TO GO
on forever, but I knew it was only minutes, would be only minutes more. Shouts from above, yelling, shooting…the crash of fired muskets and the higher-pitched crack of rifles…I felt each shot as though it had hit me and shuddered against my tree.
I HEARD IT
when the tide turned. An instant’s silence and more shooting and yelling, but it was different now. Less noise, the shots were fewer…The whistle fell silent, and the yelling increased, but it had a different tone. Savage. Exultant.
I couldn’t wait any longer. I left the refuge of my tree and scrambled up the mountainside, slipping and falling and scrambling on all fours.
I came high enough to be able to see what was going on. Chaos, but the shooting had all but stopped. I made my way up higher, onto the meadow. I was drenched in sweat, my legs shaking from the tension of the last hour and my heart pounding like a steam hammer.
Where are you? Where are you?
There was a crush of men at one side of the meadow; the Loyalist prisoners, half of them in green Provincial uniforms, the rest farmers like our own men…
Our own—I tried to look in all directions at once, to see, if not Jamie himself, someone I knew.
I saw Cyrus. The Tall Tree, looking as though he’d been struck by lightning, his face black with powder smoke except where the sweat had made runnels. He was standing up, though, looking about him in a dazed sort of way.
People were moving, everywhere, jostling, milling—one young man ran into me, knocking me off-balance. I caught myself and began to say “I beg your pardon” by reflex.
Then I saw that he had Jamie’s rifle.
“Where did you get that gun?” I said fiercely, and grabbed him by the arm, squeezing as hard as I could.
“Who the hell are you?” He was shocked and offended, trying to pull away. I dug my fingers into his armpit, and he yelped and jerked, trying to get away.
“Where did you get it!” I screamed.
I was clinging like grim death and he screamed, too, writhing and cursing. He kicked me solidly in the shin, but he loosed his hold on the rifle and I let go his other arm and snatched it.
“Tell me where you fucking got this, or so help me God I will beat you to death with it!”
His eyes showed white, like a panicked horse, and he backed away from me, hands out in placation.
“He’s dead! He don’t need it no more!”
“Who’s dead?” I hardly heard the words; the blood had surged so hard into my ears that they were ringing. But a big hand clasped me by the shoulder and pulled me away from the boy. He promptly turned to flee, but Bill Amos—for it was he—let go of me and with two giant strides he had hold of the boy, picked him up with both hands, and shook him like a rag.
“What’s going on, Missus?” he asked, setting the boy down and turning to me. The words were calm, but he wasn’t; he was trembling all over with a mixture of bloodlust and reaction, and I thought he might just kill the boy inadvertently; his big fist was squeezing the boy’s shoulder rhythmically, as though he couldn’t stop, and the boy was squealing and begging to be let go.
“This—” I couldn’t hold the rifle; it slipped from my grasp and I barely caught it, its butt jolting into the ground. “It’s Jamie’s. I need to know where he is!”
Amos blew out a long breath and huffed air for a moment, nodding.
“Where’s Colonel Fraser?” he asked the boy, shaking him again, but more gently. “Where’s the man you took this’n from?”
The boy was crying, head wobbling and tears making tracks through the dirt and powder stains on his face.
“But he’s
dead,
” he said, and pointed a shaking finger toward a small rocky outcrop near the edge of the saddle, maybe fifty yards away.
“He’s bloody
not!
” I said, and slapped him. I shoved past him, hobbling—his kick had bruised my shin, though I didn’t feel pain—leaving Bill Amos to deal with whatever he felt like dealing with.
I found Jamie lying in a patch of dry grass, just behind the outcrop. There was a lot of blood.
I FELL TO
my knees and groped frantically through his heavy clothes, wet with sweat—and blood.
“How much of this blood is yours?” I demanded.
“All of it.” His eyes were closed, his lips barely moving.
“Bloody fucking hell. Where are you hit?”
“Everywhere.”
I was deeply afraid he was right, but I had to start somewhere. I could see that one leg of his breeks was sodden with blood. No arterial spurting, though, that was good…I started feeling my way down his thigh.
“Dinna…fash, Sass…” He wheezed deeply. With tremendous effort, he opened his eyes and turned his head enough to look up at me.
“I’m…no…afraid,” he whispered. “I’m not.” A bout of coughing seized him. It was nearly silent, but the violence of it shook his whole body. He wasn’t coughing
up
blood…
Why is he coughing? Pneumothorax? Cardiac asthma?
His shirt was sodden. If a ball had touched his heart but not penetrated…
“Well,
I’m
bloody afraid!” I snapped, and tightened my hold on his thigh, digging my fingers into his unresisting flesh. “Do you think I’m just going to sit here and watch you die by inches?”
“Aye.” His eyes closed, and the word was no more than a whisper. His lips were white.
He sounded completely certain about it, and the fear that was swarming over my skin burrowed suddenly inward and seized my heart with its claws.
His blood was spreading slowly, dark and venous. I was kneeling in the blood-soaked mud and there were huge splotches of it on my apron, black-red; it felt warm on my skin, though that must only be the heat of the day.
“You can’t,” I said, helpless. “Jamie—you can’t.”
His eyes opened and I saw them look past and through me, as though fixed on something far, far away.
“For…give me…” he said, his voice no more than a thread, and I didn’t know whether he spoke to me or to God.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, tasting cold iron on my tongue. “Jamie—please.
Please
don’t go.”
His eyelids fluttered, and closed.
I COULDN’T SPEAK.
I couldn’t move. Grief overwhelmed me and I curled into a ball, still grasping his arm, holding it with both hands, hard, to keep him from drowning, from going down into the bloody earth, away from me forever.
Beneath the grief was fury, and the sort of desperation that lets a woman lift an automobile off her child. And with the thought of a child and the reek of blood, I was for a split second not kneeling in Jamie’s blood on a blistering plain of surrender but on splintered floorboards by a sputtering fire, hearing screams and smelling blood, with nothing to hold on to but a wet scrap of life and that one phrase:
Don’t let go.
I didn’t let go. I seized him by the shoulder and managed to roll him onto his back, shoved the soaked coat back, and ripped his shirt down the middle. The bullet wound in his chest was evident, slightly left of center, welling blood. Welling, not spurting. And I didn’t hear the distinctive sound of a sucking chest wound; wherever the ball was, it hadn’t—yet—penetrated a lung.
I felt as though I were trudging through molasses, moving with unutterable slowness—and yet I was doing a dozen things at once: yanking tight a tourniquet around his thigh (the femoral artery was all right, thank God, because if it wasn’t, he’d already be dead), applying pressure to the chest wound, shouting for help, palpating his body for other injuries, one-handed, shouting for help…
“Auntie!” Ian was suddenly on his knees beside me. “Is he—”
“Push on this!” I grabbed his hand and slapped it on the compress over the chest wound. Jamie grunted in response to the impact, which gave me a small jolt of hope. But the blood was spreading under him.
I worked doggedly on.
“LISTEN TO ME,”
I said, after what seemed a long time. His face was closed and white and the rumble of the crowds reached me like distant thunder from a clear blue sky. I felt the sound move through me and I fixed my mind on the blue, vast and empty, patient, peaceful—waiting for him.
“Listen!” I said, and shook his arm, hard. “You think you’re going to die by inches, but you’re not. You’re going to live by inches. With me.”
“Auntie, he’s dead.” Ian’s voice was low, rough with tears, and his big hand warm on my shoulder. “Come. Stand up now. Let me take him. We’ll bring him home.”