Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (83 page)

“They’ll be home safe,” Jamie said firmly. “All of them.”

“I hope so,” I said, and leaned back against him, wanting his firmness, of belief as well as body. “Do you think Bree and Roger have got to Charles Town yet?”

“Oh, aye,” he said at once. “It’s a bit more than three hundred miles, but the weather should have been fine for the most part. If they didna lose a wheel or meet a catamount, they’d make it in two weeks or so. I expect we’ll have a letter soon; Brianna will write to say that all is well.”

That was a heartening thought, in spite of the catamounts, but I thought the force of his belief was a little less.

“It will be fine,” I said, reaching back and wrapping a hand round his leg in reassurance. “Marsali and Fergus will be so happy to have Germain back again.”

“But—?” he said, having picked up the unspoken thought that came in the wake of my remark. “Ye think there’s something else that’s maybe amiss wi’ them?”

“I don’t know.” Looking over the vast spaces into which our family had vanished made the separation suddenly frightening. “There are so many things that could happen to them—and us unable to help.” I tried to laugh. “It reminds me of Brianna’s first day at kindergarten. Watching her disappear into the school, clutching her pink lunch box…all alone.”

“Was she afraid?” he asked quietly, gathering my flying hair into a bundle and tying his handkerchief round it.

“Yes,” I said, my throat tight. “She was very brave. But I could see she was afraid.” I leaned down and picked up the bottle of wine. “She’s afraid now,” I blurted.

“Of what,
a nighean
?” He came round in front of me and squatted down to look me in the face. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s her heart,” I said. And taking a deep breath, I told him about the atrial fibrillation.

“And ye canna fix it?” His brow was furrowed, and he looked over his shoulder, into the endless forest. “Is she like to die on the road?”

“No!” The sudden panic was clear in my voice, and Jamie grabbed my hand, squeezing tight.

“No,” I said, willing myself back into calm. “No, she isn’t. It’s almost never fatal; particularly not in a young person. But it’s—unpredictable.”

“Aye,” he said, after studying my face for a moment. “Like war.” He nodded toward the distant mountains, though his eyes didn’t leave mine. “Ye never ken for sure what will happen—maybe nothing, maybe not for a long time, maybe not here, not now—” His fingers tightened on mine. “But ye ken it’s there, all the time. Ye try to push it away, not think of it until there’s need—but it doesna ever go away.”

I nodded, unable to speak. It lived with both of us; with everyone, these days.

The wind had dropped, but so high up, there was still a cold breeze, breathing through my clothes. The warmth of the wine had faded from my blood, and Jamie’s hand was as chilled as mine—but his eyes were warm and we held on.

“Dinna be afraid, Sassenach,” he said at last. “There’s still the two of us.”

DESPITE THE COLD
wind, we didn’t go down again immediately. While it was an exposed and vulnerable location, there was something comforting in the knowledge that if something was coming toward us, we’d see it in time to prepare.

“So what else did you do in Salisbury?” I asked, leaning back against him. “I know you bought cinnamon, because I can smell it. Was there any cinchona?”

“Aye, about half a pound. I took it all, as ye told me. I couldna get more than two loaves of sugar; it’s scarce, wi’ the blockade. But I did get pepper, too, and…” He let go of me to fumble in his sporran and came up with a tiny round brown thing, which he held out to me. “A nutmeg.”

“Oh! I haven’t smelled nutmeg in years!” I took it from him, cold-fingered and careful lest I drop it. I held it under my nose and breathed in. My eyes were closed but I could clearly see Christmas cookies and taste the thick sweetness of eggnog. “How much was it?”

“Ye dinna want to know,” he assured me, grinning. “Worth it, though, for the look on your face, Sassenach.”

“Bring me some rum tonight, and I’ll put the same look on yours,” I said, laughing. I handed back the nutmeg for safekeeping, noticing as he put it back a small, ragged-edged piece of paper sticking out. “What’s that? A secret communiqué from the Salisbury Committee of Safety?”

“It might be, if any of them are Jews.” He handed me the paper, and I blinked at it. I hadn’t seen Hebrew writing any time in the last forty-five years, but I recognized it. What was more peculiar, though, was the fact that it was
Jamie’s
handwriting.

“What on earth…?”

“I dinna ken,” he said apologetically, and took back the note. “A constable in Salisbury found it—not this, I dinna mean, but the original—on a dead body, and he asked me did I ken aught about it. I told him it was Hebrew, and I read it to him in English, but neither of us could tell what it had to do wi’ anything. I thought it was queer enough, though, that I wrote it out for myself when I got back to my lodgings.”

“Queer is a good word for it.” I couldn’t read Hebrew myself—Jamie had learned it in Paris, studying at the
université,
but there was one English word at the bottom of the note. “What does ‘ambidextrous’ have to do with anything, do you suppose?”

He shrugged and shook his head.

“The Hebrew bit is a sort of blessing for a house. I’ve seen it before, in Jewish houses in Paris; they put it in a wee thing called a
mezuzah
by the door. But ‘ambidextrous’…” He hesitated, looking at me sideways. “The only thing I can think of, Sassenach, is that it’s a long word wi’ no repeating letters.”

The mention of Paris had at once reminded me of his cousin Jared’s house, where we had lived in the year before the Rising—and where he had spent his days selling wine and his nights—all too often—in intrigue and—

“Spying?” I said, incredulous. I knew almost nothing about codes, ciphers, and secret writing—but he did. He looked mildly embarrassed.

“Aye, maybe. I’m sorry, Sassenach; I shouldna have brought such a thing home. I was only curious.”

It was no more than a scrap of paper, and whatever message it might hold was certainly not meant for us—but it brought back those anxious days and nights in Paris, full of glamour, fear, and uncertainty—and then of sorrow, grief, and anger. I swallowed, hard.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, very softly, his eyes fixed on my face. Still looking at me, he opened his hand and held it out. The wind snatched the little note at once and whirled it away like a leaf, flying off the roof and into the deep woods beyond. Gone.

His hand was still open, and I took it. His fingers were as cold as mine.

“Forgiven,” I said, just as softly.

The slam was so sudden that I jerked my hand out of Jamie’s and whirled round.

“What
did
that?” I demanded, looking wildly to and fro.

“Likely a tree,” he said mildly. “Over there, I reckon—” He gestured toward the distant trees. “I’ve only heard it when the wind’s out of the east.”

“I’ve never heard a tree make a noise like a slamming door,” I said, unconvinced.

“If ye spent much time sleeping in the forest, Sassenach, ye’d hear them make as many sounds as there are animals on the ground near ye—and it’s often hard to tell the difference, if the wind’s blowing. They groan and scream and clatter and drop their limbs and hiss and squeal when they catch fire from lightning, and now and then they fall over with an almighty crash that shakes the ground. If ye paid attention to the racket, ye’d never sleep.”

“For one thing, I wouldn’t be sleeping much if I were in a forest, regardless. And for another, it’s broad daylight now.”

“I dinna think that matters to a tree.” He was openly laughing at me, and it absurdly made me feel better. He bent, picked up the bottle, and handed it to me. “Here, Sassenach. It will settle your nerves.”

I took a solid gulp, and it did. Somewhat.

“Better now?” he asked, watching.

“Yes.”

“Good. I said I had something to tell ye, aye?”

“Yes,” I said, eyeing him. “Why do I think it’s bad news?”

“Well, it’s no exactly
bad,
” he said, tilting his head. “But I didna want to be talking about it wi’ the sailors in earshot.”

“Oh, just dangerous, then. That’s a relief.”

“Well, only a wee bit dangerous.” He took back the bottle, had a quick swig, and told me about his meetings with Colonel Locke and his conclusions regarding the Rowan County militia.

“So,” he finished, “I said I’d got everything on my list, save the one thing—gunpowder.”

“Ah,” I said. “So you have guns—some, at least—courtesy of Captain Cunningham—”

“And with any luck, Roger Mac will get me more in Charles Town,” he interrupted. “But I’ve barely enough powder to keep us in meat for the winter. I couldna buy any in Salisbury, for Colonel Locke has requisitioned all of it for military use.”

“And if you joined the Rowan County super-militia, Colonel Locke would supply you. But you don’t want to do that, because then you’d need to answer his call and take orders from him.”

“I dinna mind taking orders, Sassenach,” he said, giving me a faintly reproachful look. “But it does depend who from. And if it were to be Locke…he’ll be taking the companies under his command toward battle, God knows where—but not anywhere near the Ridge. And I will not leave my home—or you—unprotected while I mind Locke’s business a hundred miles away.”

His mind was plainly made up, and for once I was in complete agreement with him.

“I’ll drink to that,” I said, lifting the bottle in salute to him. He smiled, took it, and drained it.

“Elspeth Cunningham and I shared a bottle of your second-best whisky,” I said, taking the empty bottle and setting it down under the stool. “We talked about her son. I told her that you wouldn’t let the captain raise a Loyalist militia under your nose, so to speak.”

“Nor will I.”

“Naturally not. But what she said in reply—and mind you, she was exhausted, in pain, and fairly well intoxicated by that time, so I don’t think she was lying—she said that it wouldn’t be up to you, in the end. Because General Cornwallis is sending an officer—a very
effective
officer, she said, and one supported by the power of the Crown—to raise Loyalist regiments of militia throughout the Carolinas. To suppress local rebellions.”

He stood quite still for a long moment, eyes creased against the wind, which had risen again.

“Aye,” he said at last. “Then it will have to be the Overmountain men—Cleveland and Shelby and their friends.”

“It will have to be them for
what
?”

He picked up the stool and empty bottle and shook his head, as though thinking to himself.

“I’ll have to make alliance wi’ them. They have an understanding wi’ Mrs. Patton to provide powder for them from her mill, and if I agree to stand with them in need, they’ll let her know to supply me. And they’ll presumably come to my aid, should I call.” I heard that “presumably” and moved close to him, feeling suddenly colder than before. He was essentially alone, without Roger or Young Ian at hand, and he knew that all too well.

“Do you trust Benjamin Cleveland and the rest?”

“Sassenach, there are maybe eight people in the world I trust, and Benjamin Cleveland isna one o’ them. Luckily, you are.”

He put an arm around me and kissed my forehead. “How’s your foot?”

“I can’t feel either of my feet.”

“Good. Let’s go down and warm ourselves wi’ a bit of the sailors’ burgoo.”

“That sounds di—” The word died on my lips as I saw a movement on the far side of the clearing below, at the head of the wagon road that led down behind Bobby Higgins’s cabin. “Who’s that?”

I groped automatically for my spectacles, but I’d left them in the surgery. Jamie looked over my shoulder, squinting against the wind, and made an interested noise.

It was a person on foot; I could see that much. And a woman, moving slowly, in the manner of someone putting one foot before another out of sheer determination.

“It’s the lassie who came to fetch ye to her mother’s childbed,” he said. “Agnes Cloudtree, was it?”

“Are you sure?” I squinted, too, but it didn’t help much; the figure remained a blur of brown and white against the darker dirt of the road. A stab of fear went through my heart, though, at the name “Cloudtree.” I’d thought often of the twins I’d delivered, of their mother’s stoic heroism…and the very peculiar circumstance of that birth; a circumstance made the more peculiar by the simplicity of it. I could feel the sense of that small body in my hands now. Nothing dramatic; no tingling or glowing. Just the sure and certain knowledge of life.

If this was indeed Agnes Cloudtree coming toward us, I hoped against hope that she hadn’t come to tell me that her small sister was dead.

“I think it’s all right, Sassenach.” Jamie had continued watching the small, dogged figure, his arm still round my middle. “I can see she’s weary—and no wonder, if she’s walked all the way from the Cherokee Line—but her shoulders are square and her heid’s unbowed.” The tension in his arm relaxed. “She doesna come in sorrow.”