Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (16 page)

She raised a brow at him, but smiled and handed him a bottle.

“I said, would you please open that?” It was a bottle of last year’s muscat wine that Jimmy Robertson had given Claire in thanks for her setting his youngest son’s broken arm.

“Ye think it’ll be worth drinking?” he asked, taking the bottle and examining it critically. The cork was tight in the bottle-neck, but dry and brittle; Claire had evidently tried to pull it and the greater part had broken off, crumbling in her hand.

“No,” she said, “but since when has that consideration ever stopped a Scot from drinking anything?”

“It hasna stopped any Englishmen I know, either. Maybe a Frenchman would be more choosy.” He held the brown glass bottle up to the light, to see the level of the wine inside, then drew his dirk and struck the neck of the bottle with a ringing tap of the blade. The glass broke cleanly, though at an angle, and he handed it back to her. “It doesna smell corked, at least.”

“Oh, good. I’ll—is that Oggy? Or a catamount?”

“It sounds like a catamount havin’ the griping farts, so it’s likely Oggy.”

She laughed, which made him feel momentarily happy. He took a sip of the wine, made a face, and gave it back to her.

“Who are ye planning to serve that to?”

“Nobody,” she replied, sniffing gingerly. “I’m going to soak a very tough-looking chunk of elk in it overnight with the last of the ramps and then boil it with beans and rice.
What
are they ever going to name that child—and when, do you think?”

“There’s nay rush about it, is there? No one’s going to confuse him wi’ any other bairn on the Ridge.” No one would. Rachel’s wee man had the best lungs Jamie had ever heard, and seldom stopped using them. Right now, he didn’t seem upset, just bellowing for the fun of it.

“I’ll go meet them,” he said. “I want to talk to Jenny before she sees Roger Mac.”

Claire’s face went blank for an instant and then she turned her head quickly toward the trees, where Jamie saw Brianna and Roger Mac standing in close conversation.
Is he telling her what he told me?
he wondered, with a resurgence of the “falling off a staircase” feeling in his wame.

“Goodness,” Claire said, a look of intense interest coming into her eyes like the one she had when she saw the tinker’s anal warts that looked like a fleshy cauliflower growing out of his bum. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, I dinna think she’ll faint, because she never does,” he said. “But ye might have a dram of something ready, just in case.”

AS IT WAS,
his sister wasn’t with Ian and Rachel; Rachel said Jenny had gone aside to thig a wee bit of mother of vinegar from Morag MacAuley, but would be down right after them. That was a bit of luck, and he thanked her, pausing to rub the top of Oggy’s head briskly with his palm, an attention that usually made the bairn laugh. It did this time, too, and he set off up the trail feeling just that wee bit more settled in himself.

He found Jenny sitting on a stump beside the trail, shaking a stone out of her shoe. She heard his step and, looking up to see him, leapt to her feet and flung herself into his arms, ignoring the shoe.

“Jamie,
a chuisle
! Your bonnie lass! I’m fit to burst wi’ joy for ye!” She let go of his ribs and looked up, eyes brimming, and he felt his own sting, too, though he couldn’t help laughing through it, her joy reminding him of his own.

“Aye, me, too,” he said. He wiped his eyes briefly on his sleeve and set her cap straight for her. “How long ago was it that ye met Brianna? She said she’d gone to Lallybroch looking for her mother and me. And met you and Ian and all.
And
Laoghaire,” he added, remembering.

Jenny crossed herself at mention of the name, and laughed, too.

“Blessed Mother, the look on Laoghaire’s face when she saw the lass! And then the one when she tried to claim Mam’s pearls and Brianna shut her up like a writing desk!”

“Did she?” He regretted not seeing that, but then forgot it, recalling why he’d come looking for Jenny.

“Brianna’s man,” he said to the top of her head as she bent to put her shoe back on. “Roger MacKenzie.”

“Aye, what sort of man is he, then? Ye said ye liked him fine, in your letters.”

“I still do,” he assured her. “It’s just…d’ye recall when Claire and I came to Scotland to bury Simon the General at Balnain?”

“I’m no likely to forget it,” she said, her face darkening. Nor would she; that had been during Ian’s long dying, a terrible time for them all, but worst by far for her. He hated to bring it back to her, even for a moment, but couldn’t think how else to begin.

“Ye’ll remember, then, what Claire told ye all—about…where she came from.”

Jenny looked blankly at him, her mind clearly still shadowed by memories, but then she blinked, frowning.

“Aye…” she said cautiously. “Some taradiddle about stone circles and faeries, as I recall.”

“Aye, that’s the bit. Now—can ye maybe cast your mind back a bit further, to—to the time I was away in Paris, just before Da died?”

“I can,” she said tersely, glaring up at him. “But I dinna want to. Why are ye plaguing me wi’ that, of all things?”

He patted the air with his palm, urging her to hear him out.

“There was a man came to Lallybroch, looking for his kidnapped son. A dark-haired man, called Roger MacKenzie, from Lochalsh, he said. Do ye remember him?”

The sun was coming down, but there was plenty of light left to show him the blood draining from her face. She swallowed visibly and nodded, once.

“His wee lad was named Jeremiah,” she said. “I remember, because Da got a wee bawbee sent him from the garrison commander”—her lips compressed, and he kent she was thinking of Jack Randall—“and when the dark-haired man came back, Da gave it to him, and I heard Mr. MacKenzie talking to his friend later, and saying that it must have belonged to his own father, who was named Jeremiah, like…Jemmy. His son’s name was Jeremiah and they called him Jemmy.” She stopped talking and stared at him, her eyes round as three-penny bits. “Ye’re tellin’ me your grandson is
that
Jemmy, and the dark-haired man is…”

“I am,” he said, and let his breath out.

She sat down again, very slowly.

He let her alone, remembering all too well the mix of incredulity, bewilderment, and fear that he’d felt when Claire, battered and hysterical after he’d rescued her from the witch trial in Cranesmuir, had finally told him what she was.

He also remembered vividly what he’d said at the time.
“It would ha’ been easier if ye’d only been a witch.”
That made him smile, and he squatted down in front of his sister.

“Aye, I ken,” he said to her. “But it’s no really different than if they’d come from…Spain, maybe. Or Timbuktu, say.”

She darted a sharp look at him and snorted, but her hands—clenched in her lap—relaxed.

“So the way of it is that Roger Mac and Brianna were each of them at Lallybroch—then. Ye met Brianna when she came to find us. But ye’d met Roger Mac years earlier, looking for his wee lad. Brianna came again a bit later wi’ the bairns, looking for Roger. Ye didna meet her then, but she saw Da.”

He paused for a moment, waiting. Jenny’s look changed suddenly and she sat up straighter.

“She met Da? But he was already dead…” Her voice trailed off as she tried to juggle it all in her head.

“She did,” he said, and swallowed the lump in his throat. “And Roger Mac spent some time with Da, too, searching. He—told me things about Da. See…for the two o’ them, it was nay more than a few months ago that they saw him,” he said softly, and took her hand, holding it tight. “To hear Roger Mac speak of him so—it was as though Da stood beside me.”

She let out her breath in a small sob, and squeezed his hand tight between her own. The tears were in her eyes again, but she wasn’t afraid, and she blinked them back, sniffing.

“It’s maybe easier if ye think of it as a miracle,” he said, trying to be helpful. “I mean—it is, no?”

She gave him a look, took out a hankie, and blew her nose.

“Fag mi,”
she said. Don’t try me.

“Come,” he said, and stood, pulling her up. “Ye’ve a new nephew to meet. Again.”

ROGER SAW JAMIE
first, stepping out from the shadow of the chimney, a shadow himself, dark against dark—and behind him, another shadow, so insubstantial that for a moment he wasn’t sure she was there at all. Then he found himself on his feet, moving to meet her on the edge of the firelight, the flicker of the flames behind him bright in her eyes and the lovely girl he had known shining out at him.

“Miss Fraser,” he said softly, and took her hand in both of his, light-boned and firm as a bird’s foot. “Well met.”

She breathed a laugh, lines creasing round her eyes.

“Last time we met,” she said, “I thought I’d like it if ye kissed my hand, but ye didn’t.”

He could see the rapid beat of her pulse at the side of her throat, but her hand was steady in his, and he raised it and kissed it with a tenderness that was not at all assumed.

“I thought your father might take it amiss,” he said, smiling. A slightly startled expression crossed her face, and her hand tightened on his.

“It’s true,” she whispered, staring up at him. “Ye saw Da, talked to him—only a few months ago? Your voice doesna sound like…Ye dinna talk like ye think he’s dead.” Her voice was filled with wonderment.

Jamie made a soft noise, deep in his throat, and moved out of the shadows, touching her arm.

“Brianna, too,” he said quietly, and tilted his head toward the fire, where Roger saw Bree holding Oggy, talking to the other children, her long red hair lifting in the warm rising air from the fire. She was waving the baby’s podgy little hand in regal gestures, talking for him in a deep, comic voice, and the bairns were all giggling.

“She saw Da, too, though she didna get to speak to him. It was in the burying ground at Lallybroch; she said he knelt by
Mammeigh
’s stone, and he’d brought her holly and yew, bound wi’ red thread.”

“Mammaidh…”

Jenny’s voice caught in her throat with a small click, and Roger saw tears well suddenly in her eyes. He let go of her hand as Jamie put his arm round her and drew her close, and brother and sister clung together, faces hidden in each other, holding love between them.

He was still staring at them when he felt Claire beside him. She was watching them as well, her face smooth and her heart in her eyes. Silently, she took his hand.

IT TOOK A MONTH,
rather than two weeks, but by the time the wild grapes began to ripen, Jamie, Roger, and Bree—with precarious ceremony and a lot of giggling from the groundlings below—tacked a large sheet of stained white canvas (salvaged and stitched together from pieces of the damaged mainsail of a Royal Navy sloop that was refitting in Wilmington when Fergus happened to be strolling along the quay) onto the framing of the New House’s new kitchen.

We had a roof. Of our own.

I stood under it, looking up, for a long time. Just smiling.

People were trooping in and out, carrying things over from the lean-to, up from the Higginses’ cabin, out of the springhouse, in from the shelter of the Big Log, down from the garden. It reminded me, suddenly and without warning, of making camp on an expedition with my Uncle Lamb: the same higgledy-piggledy bustle of objects, good spirits, relief and happiness, expectation.

Jamie set down the pie safe, easing it gently onto the new pine floor so as not to dent or mar the boards.

“Wasted effort,” he said, smiling as he looked up at me. “A week and it’ll be as though we’d driven a herd of pigs through it. Why are ye smiling? Does the prospect amuse ye?”

“No, but you do,” I said, and he laughed. He came and put an arm around me, and we both looked up.

The canvas shone a brilliant white, and the late-morning sun glowed along its edges. The canvas lifted a little, whispering in the breeze, and multiple stains of seawater, dirt, and what might possibly be the blood of fish or men made shadows that shimmered on the floor around our feet, the shallows of a new life.

“Look,” he whispered in my ear, and nudged my cheek with his chin, directing my gaze.

Fanny stood on the far side of the room, looking up. She was lost in the snowy light, oblivious to Adso the cat, twining about her ankles in hopes of food. She was smiling.

JAMIE DUG THE
hole. A shallow groove in the black, mica-flecked soil under the chimney breast, about ten inches long.

He and Roger and Ian had—puffing, gasping, and cursing in Gaelic, French, English, and Mohawk—carried the big slab of serpentine meant for the hearthstone down from the Green Spring the day before. It leaned now against the chimney, waiting.

The bottom of the stone was smeared with dirt and rootlets, and I saw a small spider emerge from a hollow, venturing an inch or two, then freezing in bewilderment.

“Wait,” I said to Jamie, who had sat back on his heels and reached up toward Bree, waiting with the black chisel in her hand. He lifted a brow but nodded, and the children clustered round me to see what was the holdup. I picked up the edge of my apron and attempted to move it under the spider without frightening it. It promptly ran straight up the stone, leapt off into thin air, and landed on Jamie’s shirt. He clapped a cupped hand over it, and—still with raised brow—stood carefully, walked to the outer edge of the half-framed room, and, removing his hand, took hold of the hem of his shirt and flapped it vigorously between the studs.

“Thalla le Dia!”
said Jemmy.

“What?” said Fanny, who had been watching this byplay with openmouthed wonder.

“Go with God,” Jemmy said reasonably. “What else would ye say to a spider?”

“What indeed,” said Jamie. Patting Jem on the shoulder, he once more knelt by the open hearth and lifted a hand toward his daughter. Rather to my surprise, Bree kissed the chisel as though it were a crucifix and laid it gently in his hand.

He also lifted it to his lips and kissed it as though it were his dirk, then laid it gently in its burrow and scooped dirt over it with his left hand. He sat back on his heels again and looked deliberately from face to face. It was only the family present: ourselves, Brianna, Roger, Jem and Mandy, Germain, Fanny, Ian, Rachel, and Jenny, holding a sleeping Oggy.

“Bless Thou, O God, the dwelling,”
he said,

“And each who rests herein this night;

Bless Thou, O God, my beloved ones

In every place wherein they sleep;

In the night that is to-night,

And every night;

In the day that is to-day,

And every day.

May this sacred iron be witness

To the love of God and the guarding of this house.”

The solemn attention of the assembly lasted for roughly five seconds of silence.

“Now we eat!” Mandy said brightly.

Jamie laughed with everyone else, but broke off and touched her cheek.

“Aye,
m’annsachd.
But no until the hearthstone’s laid. Stand back a wee bit, out of the way.”

Brianna snared Mandy and moved her well back, gesturing Jem, Fanny, and Germain into a similar, though reluctant, withdrawal. The men flexed their shoulders and hands a few times, then at Jamie’s signal bent and seized the stone.

“Arrrrrgh!”
shouted Jem and Germain, enthusiastically mimicking the men, who were all making similar noises. Oggy sprang awake, mouth a perfect “O” of horror, and Jenny, with perfect timing, stuck her thumb into it. He reflexively closed his mouth and started to suck, though still round-eyed with amazement.

A lot of grunting, maneuvering, muttered directions, cries of alarm as the stone slipped, laughing and chattering among the spectators as it was caught, and, with a final gasp of effort, the stone was turned flat and dropped into place.

Jamie was bent over, hands on his knees, panting. He straightened slowly, red in the face, sweat running down his neck, and looked at me.

“I hope ye like this house, Sassenach,” he said, and took a deep gulp of air, “because I’m never building ye another.”

Gradually, everyone sorted themselves, and we reassembled at the edge of the new hearth for the final blessing. To my surprise—and to theirs—Jamie beckoned Roger and Ian and made them stand on either side of him where he stood before the hearth.

“Bless to me, O God,”
he said,
“the moon that is above me.

“Bless to me, O God, the earth that is beneath me,

Bless to me, O God, my wife and my children,

And bless, O God, myself who have care of them;

—

“Bless to me my wife and my children,

And bless, O God, myself who have care of them.

Bless, O God, the thing on which mine eye doth rest.

Bless, O God, the thing on which my hope doth rest,

Bless, O God, my reason and my purpose.

Bless, O bless Thou them, Thou God of life;

Bless, O God, my reason and my purpose,

Bless, O bless Thou them, Thou God of life.

—

“Bless to me the bed-companion of my love.

Bless to me the handling of my hands.

Bless, O bless Thou to me, O God, the fencing of my defense.

And bless, O bless to me the angeling of my rest;

Bless, O bless Thou to me, O God, the fencing of my defense.

And bless, O bless to me the angeling of my rest.”

With a nod of his head, he indicated that we should join him, and we did.

“Bless Thou, O God, the dwelling,

And each who rests herein this night;

Bless Thou, O God, my dear ones

In every place wherein they sleep;

In the night that is to-night,

And every single night;

In the day that is to-day,

And every single day.”

Amid murmured instructions, everyone picked up a stick of wood and brought it to the hearth, where Brianna laid it and carefully pressed handfuls of kindling under her construction.

I took my own deep breath, and, taking the twist of straw she handed me, I thrust it into the firepot from my surgery, then knelt on the new green stone and lit the fire.

WE’D EATEN A
cold supper on our new front stoop, there being no table or benches for the kitchen as yet, but for the sake of ceremony, I had made molasses cookie dough early in the day and set it aside. Everyone trooped inside and unrolled their miscellaneous bedding—Jamie and I did have a bed, but everyone else would be sleeping on pallets before the new fire—and sat down to watch with keen anticipation as I dropped the cookies onto my girdle and slid the cool black iron circle into the glowing warmth of the brick-lined cubbyhole Jamie had built into the side of the huge hearth, to serve as an oven for quick baking.

“How long, how long, how long, Grannie?” Mandy was behind me, standing on tiptoes to see. I turned and lifted her up so she could see the girdle and cookies. The fire we had lighted that morning had been fed all day, and the brick surround was radiating heat—and would, all night.

“See how the dough is in balls? And you can feel how hot it is—don’t
ever
put your hand in the oven—but the heat will make those balls flatten out and then turn brown, and when they do, the cookies will be done. It takes about ten minutes,” I added, setting her down. “It’s a new oven, though, so I’ll have to keep checking.”

“Goody, goody, goody, goody!” She hopped up and down with delight, then threw herself into Brianna’s arms. “Mama! Read me a story ’til da cookies are done?”

Bree’s eyebrows lifted and she glanced at Roger, who smiled and shrugged.

“Why not?” he said, and went to rootle through the pile of miscellaneous belongings stacked against the kitchen wall.

“Ye brought a book for the bairns? That’s braw,” Jamie said to Bree. “Where did ye get it?”

“Do they actually make books now for children Mandy’s age?” I asked, looking down at her. Bree had said she could read a bit already, but I’d never seen anything in an eighteenth-century printshop that looked like it would be comprehensible—let alone appealing—to a three-year-old.

“Well, more or less,” Roger said, pulling Bree’s big canvas bag out of the pile. “That is, there were—are, I mean—a few books that are
intended
for children. Though the only titles that come to mind at the moment are
Hymns for the Amusement of Children, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes,
and
Descriptions of Three Hundred Animals.
”

“What sorts of animals?” Jamie asked, looking interested.

“No idea,” Roger confessed. “I’ve not seen any of those books; just read the titles on a list.”

“Did you ever print any books for children, in Edinburgh?” I asked Jamie, who shook his head. “Well, what did you read when you were in school?”

“As a bairn? The Bible,” he said, as though this should be self-evident. “And the almanac. After we learnt the ABC, I mean. Later we did a bit of Latin.”

“I want
my
book,” Mandy said firmly. “Gimme, Daddy. Please?” she added, seeing her mother’s mouth open. Bree shut her mouth and smiled, and Roger peered into the sack, then withdrew a bright-orange book that made me blink.

“What?” said Jamie, leaning forward to peer at it. He looked at me, eyebrows raised. I shrugged; he’d find out soon enough.

“Read it, Mummy!” Mandy curled into her mother’s side, thrusting the book into Bree’s hands.

“Okay,” Bree said, and opened it.
“Do you like green eggs and ham? I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.”