Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (52 page)

A good deal of warmth having been enkindled by the song—and Bluebell’s contribution—everyone had sat quietly for a few minutes. I’d felt Jamie, beside me, draw himself up a little, as though having made a decision, and he’d then told the congregation about Silvia Hardman, a Quaker woman he’d met by chance at her house near Philadelphia, and who had cared for him for several days, his back having chosen to incapacitate him.

“Besides her great kindness,” he said, “I was taken by her wee daughters. They were as kind as their mother—but it was their names I liked most. Patience, Prudence, and Chastity, they were called. So I’d meant to ask ye, Rachel—do Friends often call their children after virtues?”

“They do,” she said, and smiling at Jemmy, who had started to twitch a little, added, “Jeremiah—if thee wasn’t called Jeremiah, what name would thee choose? If thee were to be named for a virtue, I mean.”

“Whassa virtue?” Mandy had asked, frowning at her brother as though expecting him to sprout one momentarily.

“Something good,” Germain had told her. “Like…” He glanced dubiously at Rachel for confirmation. “…Peace? Or maybe Goodness?”

“Exactly,” she’d said, nodding gravely. “What name would thee choose, Germain, while Jemmy is thinking? Piety? Or perhaps Obedience?”

“No!” he’d said, horrified, and amid the general laughter, people had begun proposing
noms-de-vertu,
both for themselves and for various family members, with ensuing outbursts of laughter or—once or twice—heated discussions regarding the appropriateness of a suggestion.

“You started it, Da,” Brianna said now, amused. “But I noticed you didn’t pick a virtuous name at the meeting.”

“He’s already got the names of three Scottish kings,” Roger protested. “He’ll be gettin’ above himself if ye give him any more to play with.”

“You didn’t pick one, either, did you, Mama?” I could see the wheels turning in Bree’s mind, and moved to forestall her.

“Er…how about Gentleness?” I said, causing many of those at the table to burst into laughter.

“Is Ruthlessness a virtue?” Jamie asked, grinning at me.

“Probably not,” I said, rather coldly. “Though I suppose it depends on the circumstances.”

“True,” he said, and, taking my hand, kissed it. “Resolve, then—or maybe Resolution?”

“Well, Resolution Fraser does have a certain ring to it,” I said. “I have one for you, too.”

“Oh, aye?”

“Endurance.”

He didn’t stop smiling, but a certain look of ruefulness came into his eyes.

“Aye,” he said. “That’ll do.”

To General James Fraser, of Fraser’s Ridge, Colony of North Carolina

From Captain Judah M. Bixby

Dear General Fraser,

I hope as this Letter finds you well and Mrs. Fraser too. I am Captain now of an Infantry Company under General Wayne, whom you know and who said to send his kind Regards, so I do so here. General Wayne told me that he had heard you have returned to your Home in North Carolina. I hope this is true and that you will receive this.

In case you don’t, I will be brief, and write another Letter later which you may receive, with such further News as I may have then.

For the Moment, I wished to tell you first, that we had a skirmish last week with the British, near a British fort called Stony Point, on the banks of the Hudson. We did not attack the fort but we made them run back into it right smart!

Second, I am very sorry to tell you that Doctor Hunter was captured in the course of the fight and he is held Prisoner in the Fort. He was not hurt, so far as I know, and I am sure that with him being a Doctor and also a Quaker who hasn’t fought against them, the British will likely treat him kindly and not hang him.

I know the Doctor is a good Friend to you and to Mrs. Fraser and you would wish to know what has befallen him. I keep you both in my Prayers at Night, and will so keep the Doctor and his Wife as well.

Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant (and Aide),

Judah Mordecai Bixby, Captain in the Continental Army

J
AMIE TOOK THE LETTER
back from me and read it over again, frowning. We were sitting on a log just outside my garden, and now I moved closer to him in order to look over his shoulder. My stomach had clenched into a knot at the word “captured” and rose into my throat at the word “hang.”

“Stony Point,” I said, striving for calmness. “Do you know where that is?” Jamie shook his head, eyes still fixed on the paper.

“Somewhere in New York, I think.” He handed me the letter. “His wife,” he said. “D’ye think Dottie kens where Denny is? Or d’ye think she’s maybe with him?”

“In prison?” I asked, incredulous. It had been nearly a year since we’d last seen Denzell and Dottie, and at sight of the words “Doctor Hunter” my hand had gone involuntarily to my side. The small scar where Denny had removed a musket ball from my liver after the Battle of Monmouth had healed well, but I still felt a deep twinge in my side when I turned to reach for something—and I still woke suddenly now and then in the middle of the night with a sense of deep confusion, my body vibrating with the memory of impact. The body forms internal scars as well as surface scars when a wound heals—and so does the mind.

“Perhaps.” The frown had faded, but he still looked troubled. “In the town, at least. She could help him,” he added, in answer to my puzzled expression. “Food, medicine, blankets. He got a message out, aye?” He waved the paper.

Dottie could be in the prison, at that, I realized, though probably not as a prisoner herself. It wasn’t unknown for wives—and sometimes children—to go to live with an imprisoned husband, going out by day to beg for food or perhaps to find a little work. Prisoners were normally fed poorly and sometimes not fed at all, being forced to rely on help from families or friends, or from charitably inclined souls in the community, if they were imprisoned far from home. Likely wives wouldn’t be allowed in a military prison, though…

“Have you got any paper in your study?” I asked, sliding off the log.

“Aye. Why?” He folded the letter, raising a brow at me.

“I’m going to write to John Grey,” I said, trying to sound as though this were both a simple and an obvious thing to do. Well, it was obvious. Or so I thought.

“No, you’re not.” He said it calmly, though his answer had come so fast, I thought he’d said it from pure reflex. Then I looked at his eyes. I straightened my back, folded my arms, and fixed him with a stare of my own.

“Would you care to rephrase that?” I said politely.

One of the benefits of long marriage is that you can see quite clearly where some conversations are likely to lead—and occasionally you can sidestep the booby traps and choose another path by silent mutual assent. He pursed his lips a little, looking thoughtfully up at me. Then he took a deep breath and nodded.

“Dorothea will write to her father, if she hasna done it already,” he said reasonably. He tucked Judah’s letter into his sporran and stood up. “His Grace will do whatever can be done.”

“We don’t know that Dottie
can
write to her father. She may not be near Denzell—she may not even know that he’s in prison! For that matter, we don’t know where Hal—er, I mean the duke—is, either,” I added.
Bloody hell, I shouldn’t have called Hal by his first name…
“But he and John can both be found, at least. The British army certainly knows where they are.”

“By the time I sent a message to Savannah or New York, Denzell will likely have been released, or paroled. Or moved.”

“Or died.” I unfolded my arms. “For heaven’s sake, Jamie. If anybody knows what the conditions are like inside a British prison, it’s you!”

He’d turned to go, but at this, his head whipped round like a snake’s.

“Aye, I do.”

Aye, he did. Prison is where he
met
John…

“Besides,” I said, trying to scramble back onto safer ground, “I said
I’d
write to him. Denzell’s more my friend than yours. You needn’t be involved at all.”

The blood was rising up the column of his neck, never a good sign.

“I dinna mean to be ‘involved,’ ” he said, handling the word as though it had fleas. “And I dinna mean
you
to be ‘involved’ with John Grey. At all,” he added as an emphatic footnote, and snatched up the shovel with which he’d been digging the new well for the garden, in a manner suggesting that he would have liked nothing better than to crown John Grey with it—or, failing that, me.

“I’m not suggesting any sort of involvement,” I said, with a fair assumption of calm.

“It’s a wee bit late for
that,
” he said, with a nasty emphasis that sent the blood up into my own cheeks.

“For God’s sake! You
know
what happened.
And
how. You know I—”

“Aye, I ken what happened. He laid ye down in his bed, spread your thighs, and swived ye. Ye think I’m ever going to hear the man’s name and not think of that?” He said something very rude in Gaelic featuring John’s testicles, drove the blade of his shovel into the ground, then pulled it up again.

I breathed slowly through my nose, lips pressed firmly together.

“I thought,” I said after a moment, “that we’d done with that.”

I had rather thought that. Apparently that had been wishful thinking on my part. And quite suddenly, I remembered what he’d said—well, one of the things he’d said—when he’d come to find me in Bartram’s Garden, he risen from the dead and smelling of cabbages, me mud-stained and shattered with joy.

“I have loved ye since I saw you, Sassenach. I will love ye forever. It doesna matter if ye sleep with the whole English army—well, no,”
he had corrected himself,
“it would matter, but it wouldna stop me loving you.”

I drew a slightly calmer breath, though my mind went right ahead and presented me with something else he’d said, later in that conversation:

“I don’t say that I dinna mind this, because I do. And I don’t say that I’ll no make a fuss about it later, because I likely will.”

He moved close to me and looked down into my face, blue eyes dark with intent.

“Did I tell ye once that I am a jealous man?”

“You did, but…”

“And did I tell ye that I grudged every hour ye’d spent in another man’s bed?”

I took a deep breath to squash down the hasty words I could feel boiling up.

“You did,” I said, through only slightly clenched teeth.

He glared at me for a long moment.

“I meant it,” he said. “I still mean it. Ye’ll do what ye damn please—God knows, ye always
do
—but don’t pretend ye dinna ken what I feel about it!”

He turned on his heel and stalked off, shovel over his shoulder like a rifle.

My fists were clenched so hard I could feel my nails cutting into my palms. I would have thrown a rock at him, but he was already out of range and moving fast, shoulders bunched with anger.

“What about William?” I bellowed after him. “If he’s ‘involved’ with John, so are you, you pigheaded Scot!”

The shoulders bunched harder, but he didn’t turn round. His shout floated back to me, though.

“Damn William!”

A SMALL COUGH
from behind me distracted me from the mental list of synonyms for “bloody Scot!” I was compiling. I turned round to find Fanny standing there, her apron bulging with dirt-covered turnips and her sweet face fixed in a troubled frown, this directed at Jamie, who was vanishing into the trees by the creek.

“What has Will-iam done, Mrs. Fraser?” she asked, glancing up at me from under her cap. I smiled, in spite of the recent upheaval. Her speech was very fluent now, save when she was upset or talking fast, but she often still had that slight hesitation between the syllables of William’s name.

“William hasn’t done anything amiss,” I assured her. “Not that I know of. We haven’t seen him since…er…” I broke off an instant too late.

“Jane’s funeral,” she said soberly, and looked down into the purple-and-white mass of turnips. “I thought…maybe Mr. Fraser had had a letter. From William. Or maybe about him,” she added, the frown returning. She nodded toward the trees. “He’s angry.”

“He’s Scottish,” I amended, with a sigh. “Which means stubborn. Also unreasonable, intolerant, contumelious, froward, pigheaded, and a few other objectionable things. But don’t worry; it really isn’t anything to do with William. Here, let’s put the turnips in the tub there and cover them with water. That will keep the tops from wilting. I’m making bashed neeps for supper, but I want to cook the tops with bacon grease and serve them alongside. If anything will make Highlanders eat a leafy green vegetable, bacon grease ought to do it.”

She nodded as though this made sense and let down her apron slowly, so the turnips rolled out into the tub in a tumbling cascade, dark-green tops waving like pom-poms.

“You probably shouldn’t have told him.” Fanny spoke with an almost clinical detachment.

“Told who what?” I said, picking up a water bucket and sloshing it over the muddy turnips. “Get another bucket, will you?”

She did, heaved the water into the tub, then set down the bucket, looked up at me, and said seriously, “I know what ‘swived’ means.”

I felt as though she’d just kicked me sharply in the shin.

“Do you, indeed?” I managed, picking up my working knife. “I, um…suppose you would.” She’d spent half her short life in a brothel in Philadelphia; she probably knew a lot of other words not in the vocabulary of the average twelve-year-old.

“It’s too bad,” she said, turning to fetch another bucket; the boys had filled all of them this morning; there were six left. “I like his lordship a lot. He wath—
was
so good to me and—and Jane. I like Mr. Fraser, too,” she added, though with a certain reserve.

“I’m sure he appreciates your good opinion,” I said gravely, wondering,
What the hell?
“And yes, his lordship is a very fine man. He’s always been a good friend to us.” I put a bit of emphasis on the “us,” and saw that register.

“Oh.” A small frown disturbed the perfect skin of her forehead. “I thup-suppose that makes it worse. That you went to bed with him,” she explained, lest I have missed her point. “Men don’t like to share a woman. Unless it’s an ambsace.”

“An ambsace?” I was beginning to wonder how I might extricate myself from this conversation with any sort of dignity. I was also beginning to feel rather alarmed.

“That’s what Mrs. Abbott called it. When two men want to do things to a girl at the same time. It costs more than it would to have two girls, because they often damage her. Mostly just bruises,” she added fairly. “But still.”

“Ah.” I paused for a moment, then picked up the last bucket and finished filling the tub. The smaller turnips bobbed on the surface of the water, hairy roots shedding swirls of dirt. I looked down at Fanny, who met my eyes with an expression of calm interest. I’d really rather she didn’t share her interesting thoughts with anyone else on the Ridge, and I was reasonably sure that Jamie would feel the same.