Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (51 page)

Evidently satisfied that the stern look would suffice, he opened the book and read from Genesis the story of the angels who visited Abraham, and in receipt of his hospitality, assured him that by the time they came again, his wife, Sarah, would have borne him a son,
“Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”

He glanced up briefly at that line, and his eyes met mine. He said, “Mmphm,” in the back of his throat and ended with
“Is any thing too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”

I heard a tiny snigger from somewhere behind me, but it was instantly drowned by the final verse:
“Then Sarah denied, saying I laughed not: for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.”

Jamie closed the book with neat decision, handed it to Roger, and sat down beside me, folding away his spectacles.

“I dinna ken how people can think God doesna have a wicked sense o’ humor,” he whispered to me.

I was saved from reply by Roger, announcing that they would try a brief hymn, and how many here were familiar with “Jesus Shall Reign”? Seeing a satisfactory show of hands, he started them off, and while his voice cracked like a broken cup in the midst of the first line, enough of them
did
know the hymn to keep them going, with Roger measuring the pitch with a flattened hand, and managing the first few words of each verse.

Even if it hadn’t been ninety degrees and a thousand percent humidity in the small room, I would have been wringing wet in sheer sympathy with Roger.

Bree had brought a canteen, and now rose and handed it to him. He drank deeply, breathed, and wiped a sleeve across his face.

“Aye,” he said, voice still very rough, but working. “I’ve asked my wife to read a bit from the New Testament for ye.” He gestured to Brianna, who was flushed from the warmth of the room, but now went significantly pinker. She looked gravely round the room, though, making eye contact, and then without preliminary opened Jamie’s small green Bible and read the passage describing the wedding feast at Cana, where Jesus, at the behest of his mother, had saved the bridegroom from humiliation by changing water into wine.

She read well, in a strong, clear voice, and sat down to nods of somewhat grudging acceptance. Roger, who had sat during the reading, stood up and—once more—cleared his throat.

“As ye can tell…I won’t be able to talk for long. So the sermon will be short.” That seemed agreeable to the congregation, who all nodded and settled themselves.

“I know ye mostly all heard Mr. Cunningham talk this morning, and ye were moved by his testimony. So was I.” His voice was a sandpaper rasp, but it was understandable. A hum of response, and sober nods.

“It’s important to hear of great events, of revelations and of miracles. These remind us of the greatness of God, and His glory. But most of us—” He paused to breathe. “Most of us don’t live life in situations of great danger or adventure. We aren’t called upon so often to make a grand gesture…to be heroes. Though we have a few among us.” He smiled at them, meeting eyes here and there in the crowd.

“But each one of us is called to live our lives in the smaller moments; to do kindness, to risk our feelings, to take a chance on someone else, to meet the needs of the people we care for. Because God is everywhere, and lives in all of us. Those small moments are His. And He will make of those small things glory…and let His…greatness…shine in…in you.”

He barely made it through the last line, forcing air to support each word, and had to stop, mouth half open, struggling for breath.

“Amen,” said Jamie, in his most decided voice, and the people chorused “Amen!” with great enthusiasm.

Roger was instantly submerged by well-wishers mobbing up to the front. I saw Brianna, off to one side, smiling through tears, and it dimly occurred to me that I was doing the same thing.

I’D THOUGHT THAT
most people would have lost their appetite for religion after the first two rounds, and at least half of them did head back to their homes for dinner, still discussing the virtues and defects of the rival liturgies. But a good twenty people—not counting our family—came back down through the woods in the late afternoon, and—in some cases, visibly girding their loins—prepared to enter the Meeting House once more, clearly wondering what the hell they were about to encounter.

Rachel and Jenny had rearranged the benches so that they stood in a square, facing into the center of the room. In the center was my small instrument table, now holding a jug of water and a tin cup.

Rachel herself stood by the door to welcome people, with Jenny and Ian at her elbows.

“I bid thee welcome, Friend McHugh, and thy family with thee,” she said to Sean McHugh. “It is our custom that women sit on one side of the room and men the other.” She smiled at Mairi McHugh. “So as thee is the first woman, thee may take thy choice.”

“Oh. Well, then. Er…thank thee? Is that right?” she whispered to her husband.

“How would I know?” he asked reasonably. “Do we say ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ when we’re here?” he asked Rachel, who, with a straight face, told them that they needn’t use Plain Speech unless the spirit moved them to do so, but that no one would laugh if they did.

I heard a murmur of relief from the people behind me, and a slight relaxation as the very large McHugh boys passed gingerly through the door, one at a time.

Jamie and I waited until everyone went in.

“Ye’ll do fine, lass,” Jamie said to Rachel, patting her shoulder as he turned to go in.

“Oh, I don’t mean to do anything,” she assured him. “Unless I am moved by the spirit to speak, in which case, I imagine I’ll say something suitable.”

“That doesna necessarily mean she willna start a stramash,” Ian muttered in my ear. “The spirit tends to be very free wi’ its opinions.”

SUPPER WAS SIMPLE,
because there had been no one to stay at home and cook it during the day. I’d made a huge kettle of milky corn chowder in the morning, with onions, bacon, and sliced potatoes to fill it out, and after the usual obsessive checking of hearth and coals had covered the cauldron and left it to simmer, along with a prayer that the house would not burn down in our absence. There was bread from yesterday, and four cold apple pies for pudding, with a little cheese.

“ ’Snot a pudding,” Mandy had said, frowning when she heard me say that. “Issa pie!”

“True, darling,” I said. “It’s just an English manner of speech, to call all desserts ‘pudding.’ ”

“Why?”

“Because the English dinna ken any better,” Jamie told her.

“Says the Scot who has ‘creamed crud’ for his dessert,” I replied, making Jem and Mandy roll on the floor with laughter, repeating “creamed crud” to each other whenever they paused for breath.

Germain, who had been eating creamed curd for pudding—and pronouncing it “crud” in the Scottish fashion—since he was born, shook his head at them and sighed in a worldly fashion, glancing at Fanny to share his condescension. Fanny, who had likely not encountered anything beyond bread-and-butter or pie in the dessert line, looked confused.

“Regardless,” I said, ladling chowder into bowls. “Get the bread, will you please, Jem? Regardless,” I repeated, “it’s good to be able to sit down to supper, isn’t it? It was rather a long day,” I added, smiling at Roger and then at Rachel.

“Thee was wonderful, Roger,” Rachel said, smiling at him. “I hadn’t heard of lined singing before. Had thee, Ian?”

“Oh, aye. There was a wee Presbyterian kirk on Skye that I stopped by wi’ my da once, when I went with him to buy a sheep. There’s nothing else to do on Skye on Sunday,” he explained. “Kirk, I mean, not buying sheep.”

“It seems familiar,” I remarked, shaking a large pat of cold butter out of its mold. “That kind of singing, I mean, not Skye. But I don’t know why it should.”

Roger smiled faintly. He couldn’t talk above a whisper, but happiness glowed in his eyes.

“African slaves,” he said, barely audible. “They do it. Call and response, it’s called sometimes. Did ye maybe…hear them at River Run?”

“Oh. Yes, perhaps,” I said, a little dubiously. “But it seems more…recent?” A lift of one dark eyebrow indicated that he took my meaning as to “recent.”

“Aye.” He took up his beer and took a deep swallow. “Aye. Black singers, then others…took it up. It’s one of”—he glanced at Fanny and then Rachel—“one of the roots you see, in, um, more modern music.”

Rock ’n’ roll, I supposed he meant, or possibly rhythm and blues—I was no kind of a music scholar.

“Speaking of music, Rachel, you have a beautiful voice,” Bree said, leaning across the table to wave a bit of bread under Oggy’s nose.

“I thank thee, Brianna,” Rachel said, and laughed. “So does the dog. She added greatly to our first meeting, though perhaps she gave substance to the argument that singing in meeting is a distraction.” She took the bread and let Oggy squash it in his fist. “I was pleased that so many people chose to share our meeting—though I suppose it was mostly curiosity. Now that they know the terrible truth about Friends, they likely won’t come again.”

“What’s the terrible truth about Friends, Auntie Rachel?” Germain asked, fascinated.

“That we’re boring,” Rachel told him. “Did thee not notice?”

“Well, except for Bluebell, it was kind of boring,” Jem agreed, poking his bowl of chowder in search of crispy bits of bacon. “But not in a bad way,” he added hastily, catching Ian’s eye upon him. “Just—you know—peaceful.” He slurped soup and lowered his head.

“That’s the point, is it not? Have we any pepper?” Jamie had salted his soup and passed the cellar down the table, but the pepper mill had rolled away and fallen to the floor.

“Yes, we have. Oh—Bluebell’s got it. Here, dog…” I bent to reach under the table, where Bluey was sniffing cautiously at the pepper mill. She sneezed explosively, several times, and I came up with the snot-spattered pepper mill, which I gingerly wiped on my apron.

“You want to watch that pepper, dog,” Roger rasped, peering under the table. “Bad for your vocal cords.”

Bluebell uttered an amiable
garoo,
and wagged her tail in reply. Rachel had assured Fanny that Bluebell—who had been left outside during the morning services to ramble in the woods with other dogs who had accompanied their owners—was welcome to come to meeting, too, a courtesy Bluey had repaid lavishly by joining in enthusiastically on the chorus of the simple hymn Rachel had been moved to sing. She’d told me that meetings generally had no music, owing to a presumption that it would interfere with the spontaneousness of worship—but that it was acceptable for one person to sing, if they felt so moved. It had certainly done as much as the captain’s and Roger’s sermons to lift the spirits of the congregation.

“I liked your meeting,
a leannan,
” Jamie said, smiling at Rachel as he ground a generous amount of pepper over his soup. “And I think ye’ll be surprised, come next week. Folk talk, ken.”

“I do,” she assured him. “And the Lord knows what they will say. But thank thee, Jamie, for coming—and all of you, too,” she added, smiling round to include me, Bree and Roger, and the assorted children, all of whom had been compelled to attend all three services. Unlike at the earlier services, though, they had been allowed and even encouraged to talk.

Rachel had explained the basic working of a Friends meeting to the attendees—that you sat in silence, listening to your inner light, unless or until the spirit moved you to say something—whether that was a worry you wished to share, a prayer you wanted to make, a song to sing, or a thought you might want to discuss.

She’d added that while many meetings both began and ended in silence, she felt moved of the spirit to begin today’s meeting by singing, and while she did not pretend to do so with the skill of Friend Cunningham or Friend Roger (the MacKenzies had come, of course, but the Cunninghams had not, which didn’t surprise me), if anyone wished to join her, she would be grateful for their company.