Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (19 page)

Jamie’s face changed and he looked down at the floor, suddenly abashed.

“Ye…read it?” he asked, and cleared his throat.

“We did.” Roger’s voice was soft. “Over and over.”

“And over,” Bree added, eyes warm with the memory. “Mandy could recite some of her favorite stories word for word.”

“Aye, well…” Jamie rubbed his nose. “But what has that to do wi’…”

“She found you,” Roger said. “In the stones. We all were thinking as hard as we could, about you and Claire and the Ridge and—and everything we recalled, I suppose. Too much, maybe—too many different things.”

“I can’t begin to describe it,” Bree said, and of course she couldn’t—but the shadow of it lay on her face. “We—couldn’t get out. We stepped through and we were…it’s kind of like exploding, Da,” she said, trying. “But so slowly you can…sort of feel yourself coming apart. When we did it before—it was like that, but it was over pretty fast. This time…it didn’t stop.”

I felt the memory of it, at her words, and everything inside me lurched as though I’d been thrown off a cliff. Bree had gone pale, but she swallowed and went on.

“I—we—you can’t really
talk,
but you’re sort of aware of who’s with you, who you’re holding on to. But Mandy—and Jem, a little—are…kind of stronger than either Roger or me. And I—we—could
hear
Mandy, saying, ‘Grandda! Blue pictsie!’ And suddenly, we were…all on the same page, I guess you could say.”

Roger smiled at that, and took up the story.

“We were all thinking of you, and of that specific story; it’s the one with the illustration of a blue pictsie. And…then we were lying on the ground, almost literally in pieces, but…alive. In the right time. And together.”

Jamie made a small sound in his throat—the only inarticulate Scottish noise I’d ever heard from him. I looked away and saw that Jem was awake; he hadn’t moved but his eyes were open. He sat up slowly and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“It’s okay, Grandda,” he said, his voice froggy with sleep. “Don’t cry. Ye got us here safe.”

ROGER STEPPED INTO THE
clearing and stopped so abruptly that Bree nearly crashed into him, and saved herself only by gripping his shoulder.

“Bloody hell,” she said softly, looking past him at the ruin that confronted them.

“That’s…putting it mildly.” He’d been told, of course—everyone from Jamie to Rodney Beardsley, aged five, had told him—that the cabin that had served the Ridge as church, schoolhouse, and Masonic Lodge had been struck by lightning and burned down a year ago, during Jamie and Claire’s absence. Seeing it, though, was an unexpected shock.

The timbers of the doorframe had burned but still stood, a fragile black welcome to the charred emptiness on the other side.

“They took away most of the burnt wood.” Brianna took a deep breath, walked up to the empty doorway, and looked around. “Probably charcoal for smoking meat or making gunpowder. I wonder how hard it is to get sulfur these days.”

He glanced at her, not sure whether she was serious or just trying to keep the conversation light until the shock of seeing his first—his only—church destroyed had passed. The only place he’d been—for a little while—a real minister. His chest felt tight and so did his throat—but he put aside his sense of disquiet for the moment and coughed.

“You’re intending to make gunpowder? After what happened with the matches?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, but he could tell now that she was deliberately making light of things.

“You
know
that wasn’t my fault. And I
could.
I know the formula for gunpowder, and we could dig saltpeter out of people’s old privies.”

“Well,
you
can, if digging up ancient privies is your notion of fun,” he said, smiling despite himself. “Did your researches tell you how not to blow yourself up while making gunpowder?”

“No, but I know who to ask,” she said, complacent. “Mary Patton.”

Whether she’d intended it or not, the distraction of her conversation was working. The feeling of having been gut-punched had passed, and if he still felt the pangs of memory, he was able to put them aside to be dealt with later.

“And who’s Mary Patton, when she’s at home?”

“A gunpowder maker—I don’t know if there’s a name for that profession. But she and her husband have a powder mill on the Powder Branch of the Wautauga River—that’s why it’s called the Powder Branch. It’s about forty miles from here,” she said casually, squatting to pick up a blackened chunk of charcoal. “I thought I might ride out there next week. There’s a trail—even a road, part of the way.”

“Why?” he asked warily. “And what are you planning to do with that charcoal?”

“Draw,” she said, and tucked it into her bag. “As for Mrs. Patton…we’re going to need gunpowder, you know.”

Now
she was serious.

“You mean a lot of gunpowder,” he said slowly. “Not just for hunting.” He didn’t know how much powder the household had; he was no kind of a shot, so didn’t hunt with a gun.

“I do.” She turned her head, and he saw her long, pale throat move as she swallowed. “I read some of Daddy’s book.
The Soul of a Rebel.
”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said, and the qualm he’d suppressed at sight of his ex-church came back with a vengeance. “And?”

“Have you heard of a British soldier called Patrick Ferguson?”

“No. Am I about to?”

“Probably. He invented the first effective breech-loading musket. And he’s going to start a fight
here
”—she waved a hand, indicating their surroundings—“pretty soon. And it’s going to end up at a place called Kings Mountain, next year.”

He searched his memory for any mention of such a place, but came up empty. “Where’s that?”

“Eventually, it’ll be on the border between North and South Carolina. Right now, it’s about a hundred miles or so…” She turned, squinting up at the sun for direction, then stabbed a long charcoal-blackened finger toward a copse of white oak saplings. “…That way.”

“You know the one about how, to an American, a hundred years is a long time, and to an Englishman, a hundred miles is a long way?” he asked. “If the folk hereabout aren’t all Englishmen, they’re definitely not Americans yet. I mean, it
is
a long way. You’re not telling me ye think we’re going to have to go to Kings Mountain for some reason?”

She shook her head, much to his relief.

“No. I just meant that when I said Patrick Ferguson was going to start a fight
here
…I meant…here. The backcountry.” She’d pulled a grubby handkerchief from her pocket and was absently rubbing the charcoal smudges from her fingers.

“He’s going to raise a Loyalist militia,” she added quietly. “From the neighbors. We won’t be able to stay out of it. Even here.”

He’d known that.
They’d
known it. Talked about it, before finally deciding to try to reach her parents. Sanctuary. But even reaching for that sanctuary, they’d known that war touches everyone and everything in its path.

“I know,” he said, and put an arm around her waist. They stood still for a little, listening to the wood around them. Two male mockingbirds were having their own personal war in the nearby trees, singing their little brass lungs out. Despite the charred ruin, there was a deep sense of peace in the little clearing. Green shoots and small shrubs had come up through the ashes, vivid against the black. Unresisted, the forest would patiently heal the scar—take back its ground and go on as though nothing had happened, as though the little church had never been here.

“Do you remember the first sermon you preached here?” she asked softly. Her eyes were fixed on the open ground.

“Aye,” he said, and smiled a little. “One of the lads set a snake loose in the congregation and Jamie snatched it up before it could cause a riot. One of the nicest things he’s ever done for me.”

Brianna laughed, and he felt the warm vibration of it through her clothes.

“The look on his
face.
Poor Da, he’s so afraid of snakes.”

“And no wonder,” Roger said with a shrug. “One almost killed him.” He felt a lingering shudder himself at the memory of an endless night in a dark forest, listening to Jamie telling him—with what both of them thought would be Jamie’s last few breaths—what to do and how to do it, if and when he, Roger, found himself suddenly in charge of the whole Ridge.

“A lot of things have almost killed him,” she said, the laughter gone. “One of these days…” Her voice was husky.

He put a hand round her shoulder and massaged it gently.

“It’ll be one of these days for everyone,
mo ghràidh
. If it weren’t, people wouldn’t think they need a minister. As for your da…as long as your mother’s here, I think he’ll be all right, no matter what.”

She gave a deep sigh, and the tension in her body eased.

“I think everybody feels like that about them both. If they’re here, everything will be all right.”

You feel that way about them,
he thought. And in fairness, so did he.
I hope the kids will feel that way about us.

“Aye. The essential social services of Fraser’s Ridge,” he said dryly. “Your mother’s the ambulance and your da’s the police.”

That made her laugh, and she turned to him, arms about him, smiling.

“And you’re the church,” she said. “I’m proud of you.” Letting go then, she turned back and waved a hand toward the ghostly door.

“Well, if Mama and Da can rebuild from ashes, so can we. Will we rebuild here, or do you want to choose another place? I mean, I don’t know whether people would be superstitious about it being destroyed by lightning.”

He shrugged, feeling warm from her words.

“It’s not supposed to strike twice in the same place, is it? What could be safer? Come on, then; Lizzie and her
ménage
will be waiting.”

“Surely you mean her menagerie,” Bree said, kilting up her skirts for the hike to the Beardsley cabin. “Lizzie, Jo and Kezzie, and…I’ve forgotten how many children Mama said they have now.”

“So have I,” Roger admitted. “But we can count them when we get there.”

It wasn’t until the forest closed behind them and the path rose before them that he thought to ask. She hadn’t wanted to look beyond day-to-day survival during the worst of their journey, but he was sure that her vision of the present wasn’t limited to washing clothes and shooting turkeys.

“What do you think your own job might be? Here.”

He was following her; she turned her head briefly toward him and the sun touched her hair with flames.

“Oh, me?” she said. “I think maybe I’m the armorer.” She smiled, but the look in her eyes was serious. “We’re going to need one.”

Mount Josiah Plantation, Royal Colony of Virginia

WILLIAM SMELLED SMOKE. NOT
hearth fire or wildfire; just an ashy tang on the wind, tinged with charcoal, grease—and fish. It wasn’t coming from the dilapidated house; the chimney had collapsed, taking part of the roof with it, and a big red-tinged creeper shrouded the scatter of stones and shingles.

There were poplar saplings growing up through the buckled boards of the small porch, too; the forest had begun its stealthy work of reclamation. But the forest didn’t smoke its meat.
Someone
was here.

He dismounted and tethered Bart to a sapling, primed his pistol, and made his way toward the house. It could be Indians on a hunt, smoking their game before carrying it back to wherever they’d come from. He’d no quarrel with hunters, but if it was squatters who’d thought to take over the property, they could think again. This was his place.

It
was
Indians—or one, at least. A half-naked man squatted in the shade of a huge beech tree, tending a small firepit covered with damp burlap; William could smell fresh-cut hickory logs, mingled with the thick smell of blood, fresh meat, smoke, and the pungent reek of drying fish—a small rack of split trout stood beside an open fire. His belly rumbled.

The Indian—he looked young, though large and very muscular—had his back to William and was deftly dressing out the carcass of a small hog that lay on a flattened burlap sack beside the firepit.

“Hallo, there,” William said, raising his voice. The man looked round, blinking against the smoke and waving it out of his face. He rose slowly, the knife he’d been using still in his hand, but William had spoken pleasantly enough, and the stranger wasn’t menacing. He also wasn’t a stranger. He stepped out of the tree’s shadow, the sunlight hit his hair, and William felt a jolt of astonished recognition.

So did the young man, by the look on his face.

“Lieutenant?” he said, disbelieving. He looked William quickly up and down, registering the lack of uniform, and his big dark eyes fixed on William’s face. “Lieutenant…Lord Ellesmere?”

“I used to be. Mr. Cinnamon, isn’t it?” He couldn’t help smiling as he spoke the name. The young man’s hair was now little more than an inch long, but only shaving it off entirely would have disguised either its distinctive deep reddish-brown color or its exuberant curliness. A French mission orphan, he owed his name to it.

“John Cinnamon, yes. Your servant…sir.” The erstwhile scout gave him a presentable half bow, though the “sir” was spoken with something of a question.

“William Ransom. Yours, sir,” William said, smiling, and thrust out his hand. John Cinnamon was a couple of inches shorter than himself, and a couple of inches broader; the scout had grown into himself in the last two years and possessed a very solid handshake.

“I trust you’ll pardon my curiosity, Mr. Cinnamon—but how the devil do you come to be here?” William asked, letting go. He’d last seen John Cinnamon three years before, in Quebec, where he’d spent much of a long, cold winter hunting and trapping in company with the half-Indian scout, who was near his own age.

He wondered briefly if Cinnamon had come in search of him, but that was absurd. He didn’t think he’d ever mentioned Mount Josiah to the man—and even if he had, Cinnamon couldn’t possibly have expected to find him here. He’d not been here since he was sixteen.

“Ah.” To William’s surprise, a slow flush washed Cinnamon’s broad cheekbones. “I—er—I…well, I’m on my way south.” The flush grew deeper.

William cocked an eyebrow. While it was true that Virginia was south of Quebec and that there was a good deal of country souther still, Mount Josiah wasn’t on the way to anywhere. No roads led here. He had himself come upriver with his horse on a barge to the Breaks, that stretch of falls and turbulent water on the James River where the land suddenly collapsed upon itself and put a stop to water travel. He’d seen only three people as he rode on above the Breaks—all of them headed the other way.

Suddenly, though, Cinnamon’s wide shoulders relaxed and the look of wariness was erased by relief.

“In fact, I came to see my friend,” he said, and nodded toward the house. William turned quickly, to see another Indian picking his way through the raspberry brambles littering what used to be a small croquet lawn.

“Manoke!” he said. Then shouted, “Manoke!” making the older man look up. The older Indian’s face lighted with joy, and a sudden uncomplicated happiness washed through William’s heart, cleansing as spring rain.

The Indian was lithe and spare as he’d always been, his face a little more lined. His hair smelled of woodsmoke when William embraced him, and the gray in it was the same soft color as smoke, but it was still thick and coarse as ever—he could see that easily; he was looking down on it from above, Manoke’s cheek pressed into his shoulder.

“What did you say?” he asked, releasing Manoke.

“I said, ‘My, how you have grown, boy,’ ” Manoke said, grinning up at him. “Do you need food?”

MANOKE WAS HIS
father’s friend; Lord John had never called him anything else. The Indian came and went as he pleased, generally without notice, though he was at Mount Josiah more often than not. He wasn’t a servant or a hired man, but he did the cooking and washing-up when he was there, kept the chickens—yes, there were still chickens; William could hear them clucking and rustling as they settled in the trees near the ruined house—and helped when there was game to be cleaned and butchered.

“Your hog?” William asked Cinnamon, with a brief jerk of the head toward the covered firepit. He’d seen to Bart, then joined the Indians for supper on the crumbling porch, the men enjoying the soft evening air and keeping an eye on the drying fish, in case of marauding raccoons, foxes, or other hungry vermin.

“
Oui.
Up there,” Cinnamon said, waving a big hand toward the north. “Two hours’ walk. A few pigs in the wood there, not many.”

William nodded. “Do you have a horse?” he asked. It was a small hog, maybe sixty pounds, but heavy to carry for two hours—especially as Cinnamon presumably hadn’t known how far he’d have to go. He’d already told William that he’d never visited Mount Josiah before.

Cinnamon nodded, his mouth full, and jerked his chin in the direction of the sheds and the ramshackle tobacco barn. William wondered how long Manoke had been in residence; the place looked as though it had been deserted for years—and yet there were chickens…

The clucking and brief squawks of the settling birds reminded him suddenly and sharply of Rachel Hunter, and in the next breath, he found the scent of rain, wet chickens—and wet girl.

“…the one my brother calls the Great Whore of Babylon. No chicken possesses anything resembling intelligence, but that one is perverse beyond the usual.”

“Perverse?” Evidently she perceived that he was contemplating the possibilities inherent in this description and finding them entertaining, for she snorted through her nose and bent to open the blanket chest.

“The creature is sitting twenty feet up in a pine tree, in the midst of a rainstorm. Perverse.” She pulled out a linen towel and began to dry her hair with it.

The sound of the rain altered suddenly, hail rattling like tossed gravel against the shutters.

“Hmmph,” said Rachel, with a dark look at the window. “I expect she will be knocked senseless by the hail and devoured by the first passing fox, and serve her right.” She resumed drying her hair. “No great matter. I shall be pleased never to see any of those chickens again.”

The scent of Rachel’s wet hair was strong in his memory—and the sight of it, dark and straggling in tails down her back, the wet making her worn shift transparent in spots, with shadows of her soft pale skin beneath.

“What? I mean—I beg your pardon?”

Manoke had said something to him, and the smell of rain vanished, replaced by hickory smoke, fried cornmeal, and fish.

Manoke gave him an amused look but obligingly repeated himself.

“I said, have you come to stay? Because if so, maybe you want to fix the chimney.”

William glanced over his shoulder; the vine-shrouded rubble was just visible, past the edge of the porch.

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. Manoke nodded and went back to his conversation with Cinnamon; the two of them were speaking French. William couldn’t make the effort to listen, suddenly overcome by a tiredness that sank to the marrow of his bones.

Would
he stay? Not now; but maybe later, when he’d done his work, when he’d found either his cousin Ben or absolute proof of his death. Maybe he’d come back. He didn’t know what he’d intended by coming here now; it was just the only place he could go where he could think in peace and wouldn’t be obliged to make constant explanations. His stepmother—though he’d always thought of her as simply Mother Isobel—had left the place to him. He wondered suddenly whether she had ever seen it.

He’d found more of the Virginia militiamen who’d been at Middlebrook Encampment while Ben was a prisoner there. Most of them had never heard of Captain Benjamin Grey, and those few who had knew only that he was dead.

Except he wasn’t. William clung stubbornly to that conviction. Or
if
he was, it wasn’t from the ague or pox, as reported by the Americans.

He was going to find out what had happened to his cousin. Once he had…well, there were other things to be thought about then. He needed to clear his mind. Make sense of things, decide what to do. First, of course, Ben. But then he’d need to rise up and take action, to make things right.

“Right,” he said under his breath. “Hell and death.”
Nothing
could be made right.

Rachel was married now, to bloody Ian Murray—a man who was something between a Highlander and a Mohawk, and was
also
William’s bloody cousin, just to rub salt into the wound.
That
couldn’t be fixed.

Jane…
His mind shied away from his last sight of Jane. That couldn’t be fixed, either—nor erased from his memory. Jane was a small, hard pebble that rattled sometimes in the chambers of his heart.

Nor could the thousand-spiked fact of William’s true paternity be fixed. Brought face-to-face with Jamie Fraser, having spent a hellish night with him in the futile hope of rescuing Jane…there was no possible way to deny the truth. He’d been sired by a Jacobite traitor, a Scottish criminal…a goddamned
groom,
for God’s sake. But.
Ye’ve a claim to my help for any venture ye deem worthy,
the Scot had said.

And Fraser had given that help, hadn’t he? At once and without question. Not only for Jane, but for her little sister, Frances.

William had barely been able to speak when they’d buried Jane. Remembered grief clutched him now and he bent his head over the half-eaten chunk of fish in his hand.

William had just thrust little Frances into Fraser’s arms and walked off. And now, for the first time, wondered why he’d done that. Lord John had been there, too, attending at the sad, tiny funeral. His own father—he could certainly have given Fanny safely into Lord John’s keeping. But he hadn’t. Hadn’t even thought about it.

No. No, I am not sorry.
The words echoed in his ear, and the touch of a big, warm hand cupped his cheek for an instant. An overlooked fish bone caught in his throat and he choked, coughed, choked again.

Manoke looked briefly at him, but William waved a hand and the Indian returned to his intense Algonquian conversation with John Cinnamon. William got up and went, coughing, round the corner of the house to the well.

The water was sweet and cold, and with a little effort he dislodged the bone and drank, then poured water over his head. As he sluiced the dirt from his face, he felt a gradual sense of calm come over him. Not peace, not even resignation, but a realization that if everything couldn’t be settled right now…perhaps it didn’t need to be. He was twenty-one now, had come into his majority, but the Ellesmere estate was still administered by factors and lawyers; all those tenants and farms were still someone else’s responsibility. Until he returned to England to claim and deal with them. If he did. Or…or what?