Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (154 page)

“Here’s water and the saltcellar.” Amaranthus spoke behind him, breathless. “Moira’s gone for Dr. Erasmus. What’s wrong with him?”

“Oh, God, he must have drunk the brandy!” The pulse—if that’s what it was—was getting slower, and Wainwright’s body twisted, mouth gaping open, looking for air. “His heart, I think, maybe…Here, give me it!” He took the carafe from her hand and sloshed some over Wainwright’s face, making him open his eyes, then poured a little into his open mouth. It ran out at the side, and so did the next try.

“Salt?” Amaranthus said, very doubtfully.

“You give it to soldiers with heatstroke,” William said, and having no other possibility to hand, grabbed the saltcellar and spooned salt onto the back of Wainwright’s tongue, trying to wash it down with water.

That worked, to the point that it did make Wainwright come to himself sufficiently as to swallow, but within a few moments a new spasm seized him and he belched everything up in a spew of salt, water…and blood. Not a
lot
of blood, but the sight alarmed William beyond anything he’d seen so far.

“Brandy,” he said urgently, and sat back on his heels. It was the most popular remedy for almost anything, maybe…He spotted the bottle on the floor and grabbed it, hearing Amaranthus’s cry even as his fingers touched the round black glassy curve.

“Not
that
one!” she said, and bent to snatch it from his hand. It slipped and rolled across the rug, spilling the last of its aromatic reddish drops and displaying its label:
Blut der Märtyrer.

Wainwright made a soft gurgling noise that faded into a sigh, echoed by the faint sputter of his loosened bowels.

There was a deep silence in the room, but beyond it, William heard the faint cries of distant gulls.

“Jesus,” he said softly. “The ship will have sailed by now.”

I WAS IN THE
garden, sowing turnips and talking to the bees, who were beginning to float through the air in ones and twos, following the elusive scents of early dogwood and redbud, when I heard the faint rumble of a wagon coming up the road to the dooryard. Then I heard an unmistakable yodeling hail, borne on the breeze.

“That’s John Quincy!” I said to the bees, and laying down my trowel I hurried to the house, rubbing dirt from my hands with my apron.

It was indeed John Quincy, beaming with delight.

“Brung you-all a special delivery, Missus,” he said, and pulled the canvas off the load in his wagon, revealing the excited faces of Germain, Joanie, and Félicité, where they had been hiding, packed in amongst his boxes and barrels like heads of cabbage.

“Grand-mère!”
“Grannie!” “Grandma!” The children leapt out of the wagon and rushed to me, all talking at once. I was hugging everyone, overwhelmed by the gangly, long-legged bodies of the girls and the sweetly grubby scent of unwashed children. Germain stood back, smiling shyly, but then Jamie came round the corner of the house and shouted, “Germain!” and Germain broke into a run and leapt into his grandfather’s arms, nearly knocking him flat.

Jamie grunted from the impact, laughed and kissed him, then looked up at John Quincy, the question clear in his eyes.
Where are the rest of them? What’s happened?

“Fergus and Marsali send ye their kind love,” John Quincy assured him, interpreting his look. “And they’re all well. They thought as how it might be healthier for the little’uns to have some mountain air, though, so when I passed through Wilmington, they asked would I bring ’em on. Fine company they’ve been, too!”

“Healthier,” Jamie repeated, eyes still fixed on John Quincy, who nodded. Germain’s arms were still locked around Jamie’s waist, his face buried in Jamie’s shirt. He patted the boy’s back. “Aye. I expect so. Come along in and hae a bite and a whet. There’s fresh buttermilk and the girls have made beer.”

GERMAIN HAD CHANGED.
Children
do,
of course, and with astonishing rapidity, but he had taken that abrupt step across the chasm into puberty while he was away, and seeing the new edition was something of a shock. It wasn’t only that he was taller—though he was, by a good four inches—it was that the bones of his face now framed a man’s eyes, and those eyes kept careful watch on his sisters, and on any threat to them.

We’d made a fuss of everyone and brought them and John Quincy in to eat. The girls kissed me, then flung themselves on Jamie with cries of joy, questioning and exclaiming in horror at the bandage round his knee and the raw scar on his arm, the healed and half-healed ones on his chest…

“
Grand-père
will be fine,” I said firmly, luring them away with molasses cookies. “All he needs is rest.” I flicked my eyebrows upward, indicating that he might decamp to the bedroom, but he smiled and shook his head.

“I’ll do,
a nighean.
And surely ye dinna think I’d leave whilst ye have a bowlful of sweeties in your hand?”

Fanny poured milk for everyone, smiling—with a special smile for Germain, who went pink in the face and buried his nose in his cup—and I passed out cookies.

“I thank ye kindly, Missus,” John Quincy said, and nibbled his cookie like a mouse, his teeth not allowing for more robust eating. “Germain, did ye give your grandpa and grannie what you brought for ’em?”

“Oh!” Germain clapped a hand to the small leather bag he carried, with a strap across his chest. He gave Jamie a slightly guilty look, but reached into the bag and handed the letter to me, as I was closest. It was written on good rag paper and sealed with green wax.

“For you and
Grand-père,
” he said, frowning as his voice soared and broke in the middle of the last word.
“Grand-père,”
he repeated, in a voice as deep as he could make it. I kept my face as grave as possible, and broke the seal.

Milord, Milady—

There was an Event last Month, here in Wilmington, that disturbed us greatly. I will not describe this because while I trust all my Children entirely, it is not at all uncommon for the Seals of Letters to be broken by Accident. Leave it that two Men were killed, and in a way that caused us great Uneasiness. It is somewhat ironic that we left Richmond, feeling it Unsafe, and returned to the familiar Ground of North Carolina.

I wished Marsali and the Children all to return to you, and if Things become worse, she promises that she and the Twins will go to the Ridge. But for now, she says that she will not leave me—and I cannot leave undone the Work of Freedom to which I am called. You put the Sword into my Hand, milord, and I will not lay it down.

Votre fils et votre fille,

Fergus Claudel Fraser

Marsali Jane MacKimmie Fraser

“Oh,” I said softly. Germain’s lips were pressed tight and his eyes were shiny. “Germain,” I said, and kissed his forehead. “We’re
so
glad to see you. And what a wonderful job you’ve done, seeing your sisters safely all this way.”

“Mph,” he said, but looked somewhat happier.

TWO DAYS LATER,
we were up in our bedroom in midafternoon, me attempting to read
Manon Lescaut
in French while preventing Jamie from executing a quiet sneak to avoid what he referred to as the third level of Purgatory.

“Have any o’ the bairns told ye what Fergus’s unpleasant event was, Sassenach?” Jamie paused in the midst of a set of the exercises I had set for him, and I frowned at him.

“You’re just trying to get out of the lunges,” I said. “I
know
it hurts. Do it anyway, if you ever expect to walk without a stick again.” He gave me a long, level look, then shook his head.

“When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou,”
he muttered.

I laughed.

“O, Woman, in our hours of ease,”
I quoted back, “
uncertain, coy, and hard to please.
Where the devil did you get that one?”

“Roger Mac,” he said, gingerly bending his bad knee while easing his weight onto it.
“Ifrinn!”

“Someone—or several someones—shoot you full of holes and fracture your sternum and you don’t make a peep,” I observed. “Ask you to stretch a few muscles…”

“I was busy dying,” he said through gritted teeth. “And if ye think it’s simple to talk wi’ a fractured sternum…Oh, God…”

“Just three more,” I coaxed. “If you promise to do your arm rotations and push-ups next, I’ll go and talk to Fanny. Germain’s spent a lot of time with her since he came back; if he’s told anyone, it will be her.”

He made a noise that I took for agreement, and I sponged his face with a damp towel and went to find Fanny. She was luckily in the root cellar, and alone.

“Oh,” she said, when I explained my curiosity. “Yes, he did. I asked him,” she added honestly. “He said he didn’t mind telling me, but he didn’t want his little sisters or the other girls to find out. I’m sure he didn’t mean you, though,” she assured me.

War was everywhere, and so it was no surprise to hear that Fergus’s new printshop in Wilmington had suffered the same sort of petty vandalism and anonymous threats shoved under the door as had happened in Charles Town. Nothing worse had happened, though, and the town as a whole was fairly quiet.

The family took good care to bolt their doors at night and latch their shutters, but they felt safe in the daytime.

“Germain and Mr. Fergus were working the press, he said, and his mam and the girls had gone out. Two men came in, and Germain went to the counter to see what they wanted.”

One man had said he wanted to see the proprietor, well enough. But the other had a short fowling piece under his coat and Germain saw it. He didn’t know what to do, but stuttered out that he’d fetch his father. He’d turned to go back to the press, when the first man quickly opened the hatch in the counter and pushed Germain to the floor. Both men ran through toward the back room where Fergus was working, but Germain managed to cling to the leg of the second man and shriek at the top of his lungs.

“He said he was looking straight up into the barrel of the gun,” Fanny said, her eyes wide with the telling. “He thought he’d be kilt any moment, and I suppose he might have been, save Mr. Fergus shot out of the back room with a ladle full of hot lead from the forge and flung it at the first man.”

Not unreasonably, the man had bellowed in pain and panic, turned and tried to run, blind, had tripped over Germain, still on the floor, and crashed into the second man, who was trying to raise his gun.

“Mr. Fergus grabbed hold of the gun with his one hand, Germain said, and they fought over it and the other man was crawling about the floor screaming. Then the gun went off and blew a hole in the ceiling, and there was plaster and pieces of wood everywhere. Germain was too scared to move, but his father had a big pistol in a holster and got it out and shot the man right in the head.” Fanny swallowed, looking a little ill. “And…then he told Germain to go in the back room and he did, but he looked out and saw his father kneel down and shoot the other man in the head, too. He said Mr. Fergus’s gun was a special two-barreled
canon,
” she added, obviously impressed by this detail. “Because he only has one hand.”

“Oh, dear Lord.” I felt almost as shocked as though I had seen it myself—the printshop splattered with blood and broken plaster, Fergus white-faced and shaking with reaction, and Germain frozen with shock.

“Germain and his papa had to haul the bodies out the back door into the alley before his mama and the girls came back. He said his little brothers were screeching in their cradle, but they couldn’t stop to do anything about it.”

They had put the bodies under some rubbish and then swept the shop and cleaned things as well as they could, and when Germain’s mama came home with the girls, his papa told Germain to take the girls to the ordinary and bring back food for supper. Mr. Fergus must have told Germain’s mama what happened, because she was gone when he came back, and then she came in a little while later and said something quiet to Mr. Fergus, and Germain heard a wagon in the alley that night and when he peeked out in the morning, the men were gone.

“Germain thinks it was the Wilmington Sons of Liberty who came and took the men away,” Fanny said seriously. “His papa knows all of them.”

“I…would suppose so,” I murmured, feeling somewhat thankful that at least Fergus and Marsali weren’t completely without support and protection. That knowledge did nothing for the ball of ice that had formed in my chest.

“I cannot leave undone the Work of Freedom to which I am called.”

“Oh, Marsali,” I said, under my breath. “Oh, dear.”