Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (81 page)

“I did, once.” And in fact, while I’d seldom heard any of the sisters of the Hôpital des Anges say anything like “grass-combing bugger,” I’d certainly heard them mutter
“Merde!”
—and a few more colorful sentiments—under their breaths while dealing with the more trying aspects of practicing medicine among the poor of Paris.

And suddenly I had a vivid memory of Mother Hildegarde, who seldom said even
“Merde,”
but who had told me quite frankly that the King of France would expect to lie with me if I went to beg him for Jamie’s release from prison. And then she’d dressed me in red silk and sent me off to do exactly that.

“Merde,”
I muttered, under my own breath. Elspeth didn’t quite laugh—probably because it would hurt her shoulder—but snorted a little.

“It’s been my observation,” she said, “that either sex is much more constrained in language when in the presence of the other than when they are solely in the company of their own kind. Save perhaps in brothels,” she added, with a glance toward the kitchen, where Fanny was singing “Frère Jacques” to herself while rolling quails in clay. “That is a remarkable child, but you must really try to persuade her not to—”

“She knows not to say things like that in public,” I assured Elspeth, and poured some whisky into a cup. “But you’ll be quite free to say anything you like tonight, because I’m not having you go back to your cabin in your condition.”

She gave me a considering look but then shoved a straggle of steel-gray hair behind one ear and acquiesced.

“I’m not sure whether by my
‘condition’
you mean injured or intoxicated, but in either case, thank you.”

“Shall I send Fanny up to your cabin to smother your fire?”

“No. I drowned it before I left, with a pitcher of cold tea. Quite a waste, but I couldn’t tell how soon I should be back.”

“Good.” I took her by her sound arm and helped her off the table. “I’ll help you upstairs to lie down for a bit.”

She didn’t argue, and I saw how much the injury and the journey to reach me had exhausted her. She lifted her feet with slow care, to keep from stumbling on the stairs. I parked her on one of the children’s beds, provided her with a quilt, a pitcher of cold water, and a stiff dram, then went down to help Fanny with the supper preparations.

Brianna had shown her how to pack quails in clay for baking in the ashes, but this was the first time she’d done it alone, and she was frowning at the row of pale clods and smears of mud on the table.

“Do you think that’s
enough
mud?” she asked me, dubiously. There was a long streak of clay down her cheek, and quite a bit in her hair. “If it’s not enough, Bree says, it will crack before they’re cooked and burn the meat, but if it’s
too
much mud, they’ll be raw inside.”

“I expect we’ll be too hungry to care much by the time they’re cooked,” I said, but gave one of the little packages a light squeeze and felt the clay give under my fingers. “I think we may have a few air pockets in the clay, though. Squish them—lightly—with your hands all over, to be sure we’ve got rid of all the air—otherwise, when the steam hits an air pocket, the quail—well, the package, not the actual quail—will explode.”

“Oh, dear,” Fanny said, and began determinedly squeezing the embedded quail. I drew breath and rubbed two fingers between my brows.

“Have you a headache?” Fanny asked, brightening. “There’s fresh willow bark; I could brew you some tea in a moment!”

I smiled at her. She was fascinated by herbs and adored all the grinding, boiling, and steeping.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m fine. Just trying to think what the devil to eat
with
the quail.” Meals were the daily bane of my existence; not so much the constant work of picking, cleaning, chopping, cooking—though those activities were fairly baneful in themselves—but primarily the never-ending chore of remembering what we had on hand, and balancing the effort required to make it edible against the knowledge of what might spoil if we didn’t eat it right away. Bother nutrition; I crammed apples, raisins, and nuts into people more or less constantly, and poked green stuff down their reluctant gullets whenever I got the chance, and no one had died of scurvy yet.

“We have lots of beans,” Fanny said dubiously. “Or rice, I suppose…or maybe turnips? Er…neeps, I mean.”

“That’s a thought. Bashed neeps aren’t bad, so long as there’s butter and salt, and I
know
we have salt.” Two hundred and fifty pounds of it sheltering in the smoking shed, as a matter of fact. Tom MacLeod had brought it by wagon from Cross Creek last week—the year’s supply for the entire Ridge, in time for the hunting, butchering, and preserving. A meager eighty pounds of sugar, but I did have honey…

“Right. Baked quail with buttered bashed neeps, and—dried peas boiled with onion? Maybe a little cream?”

In the end, the three of us sat down an hour later to a very reasonable dinner—only one of the quails had exploded, and in fact, the smoky meat was very tasty, and the slightly burnt onions actually improved the creamed peas, I thought. There wasn’t much conversation, though; Fanny and I were tired to the bone and Elspeth Cunningham was old, tired, and in pain.

Still, she made an effort to be civil.

“Do you mean to tell me,” she said, looking round the enormous kitchen, “that there are only the two of you left to run this house?”

“The house
and
the livestock and garden,” I agreed, stifling a yawn with a jam-spread bannock. “And the butchering.”

“And the bees,” Fanny put in helpfully. “And all of Mrs. Fraser’s medicines to be made, and all the people she puts back togeth…Er…all the people she helps,” she ended, rather more tactfully than she’d begun.

“And the cleaning, too, of course,” Elspeth added, looking thoughtfully at the expanse of foot-marked wooden flooring that disappeared into shadow at the far end of the room. She glanced at me in a way I recognized at once: diagnosis.

Whatever she saw, she was tactful enough to keep it to herself, but she took the whisky bottle I pushed in her direction, nodded her thanks, and said, “I owe you a great deal, Mrs. Fraser. Please allow me to repay you—in part—by sending down one of my son’s lieutenants to take care of the more…manly chores, while your husband is away. Two of them will be coming next week, to stay with us for a time.”

I opened my mouth to refuse politely, but then met her eye—firm, but kindly—and then Fanny’s, pleading and hopeful.

“Thank you,” I said, and topped up her cup.

TALK WAS SMALL
and desultory, and within half an hour Fanny had begun to yawn, and so had Bluebell, making a loud creaking noise when she did so.

“I think the dog wants to go to bed, Fanny,” I said, clenching my jaw to contain my own contagious yawn.

“Yes’m,” she murmured, and taking the candlestick I shoved into her hand, she wobbled slowly off to bed, Bluebell trudging in her wake with drowsy determination.

Elspeth made no move to go to bed, though I thought she must be dropping with weariness. I certainly was; too stupid with fatigue to think of any sort of conversational gambit. Luckily, none seemed to be needed. We just sat peacefully by the fire, watching the flames and listening to the wind howl through the empty attics overhead.

Suddenly, a door slammed, and we both jerked upright.

No other noise came down the stairs, though, and after a moment, my heart quit pounding.

“It’s all right,” I said.

Elspeth looked at me sharply. “Patrice MacDonald told me your third floor was unfinished. Her husband was intending to come and work on it this Friday.”

“True.”

“That noise didn’t come from the second floor. I’m sure of it.”

“No,” I agreed. “It didn’t.”

She stared at me, eyes narrowed. I sighed, wishing that I had coffee.

“All houses make sounds, Elspeth—especially big houses. My daughter could undoubtedly tell you why—I can’t, though I can guess now and then. All I can tell you is that when the wind’s in the east, we often hear that particular noise from the third floor.”

“Oh.” She relaxed a little, and took another sip of whisky. “Why do you not just leave that door shut, then?”

“There aren’t any doors on the third floor,” I said. “Yet.” I took a sip of my own. The whisky wasn’t Jamie’s special, but it wasn’t at all bad. I could feel it spreading through my middle in a soft cloud of warmth.

“Are you telling me,” Elspeth said, a few moments later, “that you consider an unfinished floor in a new house to be
haunted
?”

I laughed.

“No, I’m not. I don’t know what does make that noise, but I’m sure it isn’t a ghostly door of some kind. Really,” I added, seeing her still dubious. “Dozens of people have worked up there over the last couple of months, and none of them have died there—nor did any of them ever see or hear anything odd. And you know
that’s
true,” I finished, pointing my little finger at her, “because if anyone had, the whole Ridge would know about it by now.”

She’d been on the Ridge long enough to realize the truth of this and nodded, relaxing enough to resume drinking whisky. The tension in the room began to ebb, disappearing up the chimney in a wavering white stream of hickory smoke.

“The attic,” she said, after a few minutes of silence. “Why? It’s a remarkably large house, without adding a third floor.”

“Jamie insisted on it,” I said, with a one-shouldered shrug.

She made a noncommittal noise of acknowledgment and went on sipping. But her sparse gray brows were drawn together, and I knew she wouldn’t stop thinking about it.

“My husband
is
the Fraser of Fraser’s Ridge,” I said. “If there should ever be…an emergency of some kind that compelled some of the tenants to leave their homes, they could take temporary refuge here. I’ve had that happen before,” I added. “Had refugees in my kitchen—in the old house, I mean—for months. Worse than cockroaches.”

Elspeth laughed politely at that, but she wasn’t troubling to hide her thoughts, and I knew that she appreciated exactly what sort of emergency I had in mind.

“Your son,” I said, feeling that I might as well be blunt. “You believe him?”

She swallowed slowly and leaned back, seeming to look at me from a great distance, as one might regard a bear on a mountaintop: interesting, but no great threat.

“You mean, of course, what he told his congregation, about his son’s death. Yes, I believe him. It is a comfort,” she added softly.

I nodded, accepting this. The story had been a comfort to many more people than her—including me, I realized, with a small sense of surprise. But that wasn’t what I was getting at.

“I was thinking specifically of what his son said to him, that he—
your
son, I mean—would see him again in seven years’ time. Do you believe that? Or rather—does your son believe that?”

Because a man who believed beyond doubt that he would die on a certain date might just feel himself able to take risks before that date.

Elspeth made no bones about understanding what I meant. She sat silently looking at me, rolling the empty cup slowly between the palms of her hands, the air between us thick with the ghosts of barleycorn and burning wood. At last she sighed and, leaning forward, gingerly, put the cup on the table.

“Yes. He does. He’s adjusted his will so that I will be taken care of—should I outlive him, which I actually don’t plan to.”

I waited, silent. She must of course know that Jamie—and thus I—knew about the captain’s attempts to raise a militia unit of Loyalists. I didn’t think the captain could have hidden the gunrunning incident from her.

“Jamie won’t let him do it,” I said, and she glanced sharply up at me.

“Perhaps not,” she said, over-enunciating in the way that people do when slightly drunk. “But it won’t be up to your husband, in the end.” A small, lady-like belch interrupted her, but she ignored it. “General Cornwallis is sending an officer—a very
effective
officer, supported by the power of the Crown—to raise Loyalist regiments of militia throughout the Carolinas. To suppress local rebellion.”

I didn’t reply to this, but added an inch of whisky to both our cups, and raised mine to my lips. It seemed to pass straight through my tissues and into my dissolving core.

“Who?” I asked.

She shook her head slowly, and tossed off her whisky.

“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are the beast and the false prophet, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

“Indeed,” I said, as dryly as possible for someone marinated in single-malt Scotch. I wasn’t sure whether the devil she had in mind was Jamie, George Washington, or the Continental Congress, but it probably didn’t matter.

“Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,”
I said, and ceremoniously threw the last few drops from my cup into the fire, which sizzled and spat blue for an instant.

“You know, I really think we should go to bed, Elspeth. You need your rest.”

Salisbury

AT EIGHT O’CLOCK THE
next morning, the Great Wagon Road lay before them, a broad stretch of trampled red dirt, spotted with dung and bits of rubbish, but empty of travelers for the moment.

“Here.” Jamie pulled one of the pistols from his belt and handed it to his sister. Who—to Rachel’s surprise—merely nodded and pointed it at a broken wagon wheel left at the side of the road, checking the sight.

“Powder?” Jenny asked, sliding the pistol into her belt.

“Here.” Jamie took a cartridge box off his neck and swung the strap of it carefully over Jenny’s white cap. “Ye’ve enough powder and shot to kill a dozen men, and six fresh-made cartridges to give ye a head start.”

Jenny caught sight of Rachel’s face at “kill a dozen men” and smiled slightly. Rachel wasn’t reassured.

“Dinna fash,
a nighean,
” Jenny said, and patted her arm before settling the cartridge box into place. “I willna shoot anyone unless they mean us harm.”

“I—would greatly prefer that thee didn’t shoot anyone in
any
circumstances,” Rachel said carefully. She hadn’t eaten much for breakfast, but her stomach felt tight. “Not on—on our behalf, certainly.” But she’d cupped Oggy’s bonneted head at the thought, pressing him close.

“Is it all right wi’ you if I shoot them on my own behalf?” Jenny asked, arching one black brow. “Because I’m no standing for anyone molesting my grandson.”

“Dinna be fratchetty, Mam,” Ian said tolerantly, before Rachel could reply to this. “Ye ken if we meet any villains, Rachel will talk them into a stupor afore ye have to shoot one.” He gave Rachel a private smile, and she breathed a little easier.

Jenny made a guttural sound that might have been agreement or mere politeness, but didn’t say more about shooting anyone.

They had two good mules and a horse, a stout wagon filled with provisions, a box of clothes and clouts, and a dozen bottles of Jamie’s whisky hidden in a cache under the floorboards. This would be the center of her world for the next several weeks, and then…the North Country—and Emily. Wishing with all her heart that she and Ian and Oggy were in their snug cabin on the Ridge, Rachel put on a brave face when Jamie bent and kissed her forehead in farewell.

“Fare thee well, daughter,” he said softly. “I will see thee safe again.” A smile creased his eyes, and brief as it was, it gave her soul enough peace that she could smile back.

Jamie took Oggy, helped Rachel up onto the seat, kissed the baby, and handed him up as well. Jenny hopped up at the back and took her place in a cozy nest of blankets amid the provisions, and threw a kiss to her brother, who grinned at her. Ian clapped his uncle on the shoulder, climbed aboard, and with a slap of the reins, they were off.

People said you oughtn’t to look back when you left a place, that it was ill luck, but Rachel turned round without hesitation, watching. Jamie was watching, too, standing like a sentinel in the middle of the road. He raised a hand, and so did she, waving.

You never knew, when you took farewell of someone, whether it might be the last time. The least you could do was say you loved them—and she wished she had. She pressed her fingertips to her lips and, as they swung out to go around the first curve, threw a kiss to the distant figure, still standing in the road.

OGGY HAD FUSSED
all night, and Jenny had stayed up to walk him round the floor. Consequently, as soon as Salisbury and the pang of parting from Jamie had passed, Jenny crawled into the back of the wagon, curled up among the bags and boxes, and fell sound asleep, Oggy cuddled beside her, dead to the world in his blanket.

This was the first opportunity Ian and Rachel had had for private conversation since the day before, and she asked him at once about the dead man that Constable Jones had found.

“Does thee know who he is?”

“Nay, no one does. Seems he was a stranger to the town.”

She nodded and squeezed his arm gently.

“Thee took a great time to learn that.”

“Aye, well. Uncle Jamie thought at first he might ken the man, so we went back to have another keek at him.”

He was always truthful with Rachel, and she with him—but he did take pains not to tell her things he knew she would find distressing, unless he thought it really necessary. What Jamie had told him about Frank Randall’s book could wait for a bit, he thought, but plainly the stranger bothered her, and he told her why the sight of the dead man had disquieted Jamie.

“Mrs. Fraser? Abducted and raped?” Ian could see she was appalled. “And your uncle thinks this stranger might have to do with the—the man who did it?”

“I dinna think it likely, nor does Uncle Jamie,” Ian said, as nonchalantly as he could. It wasn’t a lie, after all…“It’s only that the stranger bears a wee resemblance. If it should be he was the man’s kin, for instance…”

“If this man
was
his kin, then what?” Tiredness had shadowed Rachel’s eyes, but they were still clear as a trout stream.

Well, that was a good question. While he was searching for some reasonable answer, she asked another.

“Do you know where the man—the criminal—
is
? So that you might send him word of a dead kinsman?”

Ian concealed a smile. Rachel naturally would think that even a vicious rapist deserved to hear of a kinsman’s death—and would undoubtedly go herself to tell him, if necessary.

Fortunately, it wouldn’t
be
necessary.

“I dinna ken exactly what happened to him, but we’ve had certain word that he’s dead.” He made a quick note to get his mother alone and make sure she kent what was going on, lest she inadvertently tell Rachel just
why
they were sure the rapist was dead.

Rachel’s sigh lifted her breasts briefly, so the swell of them showed above her shift; Ian had the fleeting thought that when he talked to his mother when they stopped at an inn tonight, she might be induced to take Oggy out for air at some point.

“May God have mercy on his soul,” Rachel said, but her face had relaxed. “Does Mrs. Fraser know?”

“Aye, she does. I didna speak to her about it, but I think she’s…better in her mind for knowing it.”

Rachel nodded soberly.

“It would be terrible for her, to know he was alive. That he might…come back.” A small shudder passed through her, and she hugged her wrapper around her shoulders. “And terrible for Jamie, too. He must be relieved that God has taken the burden from them.”

“God works in mysterious ways, to be sure,” Ian said. She looked sharply at him, but he kept his face calm and after a moment, she nodded, and they left the subject of dead fat men behind them in the dust.

JAMIE HAD LITTLE
business left to conduct in Salisbury; he’d got what he came for, in terms of making a connection with Francis Locke, and learned what he needed to. Still, Salisbury was a large town, with merchants and shops, and Claire had given him a list. He felt his side pocket and was reassured to hear the crinkle of paper; he hadn’t lost it. With a brief sigh, he pulled the list out, unfolded it, and read:

Jamie shook his head as he strolled down the street, mentally adding:

Someone had taken his and snapped the tip off it, and he strongly suspected Amanda, she being the only one of the children who could lie convincingly.

Aye, well, he had Clarence and the new mule, a sweet-paced light bay called Abednego, to carry it all home. And enough in miscellaneous forms of money and trade to pay for it all, he hoped. He wouldn’t dream of showing gold in a place like this; ne’er-do-wells and chancers would be following him back to the Ridge like Claire’s bees after sunflowers. Warehouse certificates and whisky would cause much less comment.

Making calculations in his head, he nearly walked straight into Constable Jones, coming out of an ordinary with a half-eaten roll in his hand.

“Your pardon, sir,” they both said at once, and bowed in reflex.

“Heading back to the mountains, then, Mr. Fraser?” Jones asked courteously.

“Once I’ve done my wife’s shopping, aye.” Jamie had the list still in hand and gestured with it before folding it back into his pocket.

The sight of it, though, had brought something to the constable’s mind, for his eyes fixed on the paper.

“Mr. Fraser?”

“Aye?”

The constable looked him over carefully, but nodded, apparently thinking him respectable enough to question.

“The dead man ye came to look at last night. Would ye say he was a Jew?”

“A what?”

“A Jew,” Jones repeated patiently.

Jamie looked hard at the man. He was disheveled and still unshaven, but there was no smell of drink about him, and his eyes were clear, if baggy.

“How would I ken that?” he asked. “And why would ye think so?” A belated thought occurred to him. “Oh—did ye look at his prick?”

“What?” Jones stared at him.

“D’ye not ken Jews are circumcised, then?” Jamie asked, careful not to look as though he thought Jones
should
know that. He was trying hard not to wonder whether Claire might have noticed if the man who had touched her…

“They’re what?”

“Ehm…” Two ladies, followed by a maid minding three small children and a lad with a small wagon for parcels, were coming toward them, skirts held gingerly above the mud of the street. Jamie bowed to them, then jerked his head at Jones to follow him round the corner of the ordinary into an alley, where he enlightened the constable.

“Jesus Christ!” Jones exclaimed, bug-eyed. “What the devil do they do that for?”

“God told them to,” Jamie said, with a shrug. “Your dead man, though. Is he…”

“I didn’t
look,
” Jones said, giving him a glance of horrified revulsion.

“Then why d’ye think he might be a Jew?” Jamie asked, patient.

“Oh. Well…this.” Jones groped in his clothes and eventually came out with a grubby much-folded slip of paper, handing it to Jamie. “It was in his pocket.”