Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (21 page)

Our
Englishman, forsooth, William thought, and glanced at Cinnamon. The Indian’s head was bent, absorbed in stuffing his pipe, but William thought he could see a certain stiffening of the big shoulders.

“No,” William said, but honesty compelled him to add, “The last time I saw him, he was with the army in Savannah. That’s in Georgia.” Manoke nodded, but with a certain blankness of expression that betokened complete ignorance of what or where Georgia might be. Wherever Manoke’s private paths might take him, it evidently wasn’t south.

“How far is that?” Cinnamon asked, his voice casual.

“Maybe four hundred miles?” William hazarded. It had taken him nearly two months to make the journey to Virginia, but he hadn’t been moving with any real sense of intent; he asked questions about Ben as he went, but in reality he was just drifting uncertainly toward the only place where he’d always felt happy and at home since leaving Helwater, his home in the Lake District of England.

If he said no more, presumably Cinnamon would set off for Georgia, leaving William to what peace he could find here. William wiped his face with his sleeve; the smell of smoked meat, fish, and tobacco hung heavy in his clothes; Mount Josiah would travel with him for some time.

He could send a letter with Cinnamon, asking Uncle Hal to make inquiries for the American officer who’d sent the notification of Ben’s death. He could do what he’d come to do: sit and think.

And let Papa meet this fellow without warning?
He was honest enough to admit that his disinclination to allow this had nothing to do with the potential embarrassment to Lord John or inconvenience to Cinnamon, but with a mixture of curiosity and…well, simple jealousy. If Lord John was going to meet his natural son as a grown man, he, William, wanted to be there to witness the meeting.

“The army moves a lot, you know,” he said at last, and Manoke smiled at him.

Cinnamon made a soft sound of acknowledgment and bobbed his head, though he kept his eyes fixed on the beaded tobacco pouch on his knee.

“Do you want me to take you to him?” William asked, his voice a little louder than he’d intended it to be. “To Lord John?”

Cinnamon lifted his head, startled, and looked at William for a long, inscrutable moment.

“Yes,” he said at last, softly, and then bending his head again said more softly still, “Thank you.”

Well, what the devil,
William thought, taking the pipe Manoke offered him.
I can think on the way.

Fraser's Ridge, North Carolina

THE FIRST FLOOR HAD
now been walled in from the outside, though much of the inside was still just timber studs, which gave the place rather a nice sense of informality as we walked cheerfully through the skeletal walls.

My surgery had no coverings for its two large windows, nor did it have a door—but it did have complete walls (as yet unplastered), a long counter with a couple of shelves over it for my bottles and instruments, a high, wide table of smooth pine (I had sanded it myself, taking great pains to protect my future patients from splinters in their bottoms) on which to conduct examinations and surgical treatment, and a high stool on which I could sit while administering these.

Jamie and Roger had begun the ceiling, but there were for the moment only joists running overhead, with patches of faded brown and grimy gray canvas (salvaged from a pile of decrepit military tents found in a warehouse in Cross Creek) providing actual shelter from the elements.

Jamie had promised me that the second floor—and my ceiling—would be laid within the week, but for the moment I had a large bowl, a dented tin chamber pot, and the unlit brazier strategically arranged to catch leaks. It had rained the day before, and I glanced upward to be sure there were no sagging bits holding water in the damp canvas overhead before I took my casebook out of its waxed-cloth bag.

“What ith—
is
that?” Fanny asked, catching sight of it. I had put her to work picking off and collecting the papery skins from a huge basket of onions for steeping to make yellow dye, and she craned her neck to see, keeping her onion-scented fingers carefully away.

“This is my casebook,” I said, with a sense of satisfaction at its weight. “I write down the names of the people who come to me with medical difficulties, and describe each one's condition, and then I put down what it was that I did or prescribed for them, and whether it worked or not.”

She eyed the book with respect—and interest.

“Do they always get better?”

“No,” I admitted. “I'm afraid they don't always—but very often they do. ‘
I'm a doctor, not an escalator,
' ” I quoted, and laughed before remembering that it wasn't Brianna I was talking to.

Fanny merely nodded seriously, evidently filing away this piece of information.

I coughed.

“Um. That was a quote from a, er, doctor friend of mine named McCoy. I think the general notion is that no matter how skilled a person might be, every skill has its limits and one is well advised to stick to what one's good at.”

She nodded again, eyes still fixed in interest on the book.

“Do you…think I might read it?” she asked shyly. “Only a page or two,” she added hastily.

I hesitated for a moment, but then laid the book on the table, opened it, and paged through to the spot where I had made a note about using gallberry ointment for Lizzie Wemyss's malaria, as I hadn't any Jesuit bark. Fanny had heard me talk about the situation to Jamie, and Lizzie's recurrent ague was common knowledge on the Ridge.

“Yes, you may—but only the pages before this marker.” I took a slim black crow's feather from the jar of quills and laid it next to the book's spine at Lizzie's page.

“Patients are entitled to privacy,” I explained. “You oughtn't to read about people that are our neighbors. But these earlier pages are about people I treated in other places and—mostly—a long time ago.”

“I prrromise,” she said, her earnestness giving emphasis to her r's, and I smiled. I'd known Fanny for only a few months, but I'd never once known her to lie—about anything.

“I know,” I said. “You—”

“Ho there, Missus Fraser!” A distant shout from outside interrupted me and I glanced through the window, down at what was becoming a well-marked trail running from the creek to the house. I blinked, then looked again. I knew that tall, thin, shambling figure…

“John Quincy!” I said, and thrusting the casebook into Fanny's surprised hands hurried outside to meet him.

“Mr. Myers!” I nearly threw my arms around him but was abruptly checked by the fact that he was carrying a large, battered straw basket in his arms, and was surrounded—well, quite covered, in fact—by a swarm of bees, these buzzing so loudly that I could barely make out what he was saying. He saw this and courteously leaned down toward me, bringing the bees into uncomfortably close proximity.

“Brought ye some bees, Missus!” he shouted over the rumbling thrum of his passengers.

“I see!” I hollered back. “How lovely!” Fuzzy striped bodies were bumping and waggling in a brownish carpet over the threadbare homespun of his coat, and streaks and grains of yellow pollen in his beard, this somewhat longer, grayer, and stragglier than when I had first met him on the streets of Wilmington, twelve years ago.

Bree and Rachel—with Oggy—had heard the noise and come from the kitchen. They were staring at Myers in fascination.

“My daughter!” I shouted, pointing and standing on tiptoe in hopes of reaching his ear—Myers stood a good six foot seven in his stocking feet, and towered even over Brianna. “And Rachel Murray—Young Ian's wife!”

“Young Ian's woman?” Myers's smile, always sweet, if half toothless, widened into a delighted grin. “And his young'un, too, I expect? It's a pleasure, ma'am, a real pleasure!” He reached out a long arm toward Rachel, who went pale at sight of the heaving mass of bees, but swallowed and edged close enough to take his proffered hand, holding Oggy as far behind her as she could with one hand. I hastily stepped aside and took the baby from her, and she took a long breath.

So did I. The noise was making my skin twitch, memories of the sounds I'd heard amongst the standing stones burrowing toward the surface.

“I'm pleased to meet thee, Friend Myers,” Rachel said, raising her voice. “Ian speaks of thee in the warmest terms!”

“Much obliged to him for his good opinion, Missus.” He shook her hand warmly, then turned to Bree, who anticipated him by reaching for his hand herself, a wary eye on the bees.

“So pleased to meet you, Mr. Myers,” she shouted.

“Oh, no need to be ceremonious, ma'am—John Quincy'll do fine.”

“John Quincy it is. I'm Brianna Fraser MacKenzie.” She smiled at him, then nodded delicately at his living waistcoat. “Can we offer your bees some…er…hospitality, as well as yourself?”

“Got any beer, have ye?” Myers lowered his basket and I saw that it was a stained and ragged bee skep, upside down, with a chunk of dripping honeycomb inside it. This also was crawling with bees, not surprisingly.

“Well…yes,” I said, exchanging glances with Bree. “Of course. Um…do bring them up to the house site. We'll get them…settled,” I said, watching the swarm warily. They didn't seem hostile at all; I saw several of them lighting on Bree's shoulders and hair. She saw them, too, and tensed a little but didn't swat at them. One sailed lazily past Oggy's nose; he followed it in a cross-eyed sort of way and made a grab at it, but luckily only got a handful of my hair.

The children had grouped together on the trail above, goggling, but Jem and Mandy had come down to join their mother. Mandy was clinging to Brianna's leg, but Jem was pressing close, fascinated by the swarm.

“Do the bees drink beer?” he called up at their proprietor.

“That they do, son, that they do,” Myers replied, beaming down at him out of a cloud of bees. “Bees is the smartest kind of bug they is.”

“So they are,” I said, disentangling Oggy's chubby fingers and taking a deep breath of the honeyed air. “Jem, go find Grandda, will you?”

IN THE END,
I found Jamie myself, spotting him coming down through the trees with four rabbits he'd snared.

“Very timely,” I said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him. He smelled of fresh game and damp fir trees. “We've company for dinner, and as it's John Quincy…”

His face lighted.

“Myers?” he said, handing me the bag of rabbits. “Did ye inquire after his balls?”

“I did not,” I said. “But he told me, anyway. Apparently everything is still where I put it. And functioning well, he assures me. He's brought us a swarm of bees, among other things.”

“Has he? How did he carry them?”

“He wore them,” I said with a shrug.

“Oh, aye,” he said. “What other things did he bring?”

“Letters. He says one is for you.”

Jamie didn't break his stride, but I caught the faint hesitation as he turned his head to look at me.

“From whom?”

“I don't know. He was busy divesting himself of the bees, and Jem couldn't find you, so I came to look for you.” I nearly added,
“Perhaps it's from Lord John,”
because for several years it might have been, and a welcome letter, too, reinforcing the bonds of a long friendship between Jamie and John Grey. Fortunately, I bit my lip in time. While the two of them were on speaking terms—just barely—they were no longer friends. And while I would, if pushed, deny absolutely that it was my fault, it
was
undeniably on my account.

I kept my eyes on the trail, just in case Jamie might catch a wayward expression on my face and draw uncomfortable conclusions. He wasn't the only person who could read minds, and I'd been looking at his face. I had a very strong impression that when I had said “letter,” Lord John's name had leapt to his mind, just as it had to mine.

“I'll have a bit of a wash at the creek before I come in, Sassenach,” he said, touching my back lightly. “Shall I bring ye some cress for the supper?”

“Please,” I said, and rose on tiptoe to kiss him.

As the house came in sight a moment later, I saw Brianna coming up the slope from the Higgins cabin with several loaves of bread in her arms, and I pushed all thoughts of Jamie and John Grey hastily out of my mind.

“I'll do that, Mama,” she said, nodding at the bag of rabbits. “Mr. Myers says the sun is coming down and you should go and bless your new bees before they go to sleep.”

“Oh,” I said, uncertainly. I'd kept bees now and then, but the relationship hadn't been in any way ceremonial. “Did he happen to say what sort of blessing the bees might have in mind?”

“Not to me,” she said cheerfully, taking the bloodstained bag from my hand. “But he probably knows. He says he'll meet you in the garden.”

THE GARDEN STOOD
like a small, spiky brown fortress inside its deer-proof palisades. The fence wasn't proof against everything, though, and as always, I opened the gate cautiously. Once I had caught three huge raccoons debauching themselves amidst the remains of my infant corn; on another the intruder had been a huge eagle, sitting atop my water barrel, wings spread to catch the morning sun. When I opened the door suddenly, the eagle had uttered a shriek nearly as loud as mine before launching himself past my head like a panicked cannonball. And…