Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (95 page)

“I can,” she said, sounding breathless.

“Do that, then,” he said. He looked up at the sky; it was the color of tarnished pewter and still spitting a few random snowflakes. He could feel more coming, though; there was a sense of the North Wind on the back of his neck.

“I’ll be back before the evening comes,” he said, turning toward his horse. “Pack what ye can. That horse is his, I expect?” There was a fine-looking bay gelding twitching his ears under the sparse shelter of a leafless tulip tree; clearly it didn’t belong to the Hardman household.

“Yes.”

“I’ll need to use that one to move the body. But I’ll bring another to help carry you and your bairns.”

Silvia blinked and pushed a lank strand of hair behind her ear.

“Where are we going?”

He grinned at her—reassuringly, he hoped.

“I’m takin’ ye to meet my mother.”

IAN TOOK A
bit of time riding toward Philadelphia. There was no shortage of suitable places for what he had in mind, but it was more than likely that he’d have to do it in the dark. Once he’d found it—a thicket of mixed oak and pine, with a towering single pine behind it that would be visible against even the night sky—he dismounted and scrabbled about until he found what he wanted. This he stuffed into his saddlebag and spurred up along the Philadelphia road.

He managed to hire a sturdy horse with a kind eye from a farm two miles out and returned with it to find the Hardmans wearing everything they possessed, with the remainder of their meager belongings wrapped up in a ratty quilt tied with string. Mrs. Hardman, he noticed, had a crudely made knife with a string-wrapped handle thrust through her belt. This seemed slightly odd for a professed Friend, but then he realized that it was likely her only knife, used for chopping vegetables, butchering, and digging in the garden. Likely she’d never considered stabbing anyone with it.

If she had, he thought, grunting with effort as he and Silvia manhandled the Justice over the saddle of his own horse, this fellow would have died long before now.

“All right,” he said, jerking the rope that bound the corpse tight. “Mrs. Hardman—”

“Call me Silvia, Friend,” she said. “And thee is Ian?”

“I am,” he said, and patted her shoulder gently. “Ian Murray. Can ye ride at all, Silvia?”

“I haven’t, for some years,” she said, biting her lip as she examined the horse he intended for her. “But I will.”

“Aye. This fellow doesna seem a bad sort, and ye won’t be galloping at all, so dinna fash too much about it. So. You’ll ride him, wi’ Prudence behind ye and Chastity before.” He thought the three of them together didn’t equal his weight, and he was not a burly man.

“Wait a moment. Thee should take this, I think.” Silvia reached down and picked up a leather valise from the ground. It wasn’t new but had clearly been a piece of some quality in its prime. It smelled of apples.

“Och,” he said, realizing. He glanced at the Justice’s horse, which wasn’t at all happy with its burden, but not disposed to create a ruckus—not yet, anyway. “It’s his?”

“Yes. He—brought us food. Every time he came.”

Her eye lingered on the awkward shape, but her face was unreadable.

“That’s no a bad epitaph,” he told her, taking the valise. “When my time comes, I hope mine is as good. Mount up. I’ll take care of this.”

He helped her up, then lifted Prudence, who squealed with excitement, and Chastity, who just stared, round-eyed, and sucked her thumb hard.

“Patience, ye’ll come wi’ me, aye?” He tied the bundle of possessions at the back of his saddle, boosted Patience up in front, then swung up behind her, a rope to the bridle of the Justice’s horse in one hand. He clicked his tongue to the horses and the grim little cavalcade lurched off into the lightly falling snow. None of the Hardmans looked back.

Ian did, feeling obscurely that a place where people had dwelt for a long time deserved at least a word of farewell.

The house was small and gray and beaten, its hearth cold and the fire long dead. And yet it had sheltered a family, had witnessed a meeting of the Continental generals, had given Uncle Jamie refuge when he needed it.

“Bidh failbh ann a sith,”
he said quietly to the house. “Go back to the earth in peace. You have done well.”

Patience clutched the pommel like grim death and he could feel her shivering against him, despite the several layers of flimsy garments she wore.

“Have ye ever been on a horse before, lass?”

She nodded, breathless.

“Daddy would put me and Pru up on his nag now and then. But we never did more than walk round the yard.”

“Well, that’s something. Ehm…your father’s dead, I take it?”

“Maybe,” she said sadly. “Mummy thinks the militia shot him because they thought he was a Loyalist. Me and Pru think maybe Indians took him. But he’s been gone since before Chastity was born, so he’s likely dead. Otherwise, don’t you think he would have got free and come back to us?”

“I do,” Ian assured her. “But ken, Indians can be good folk. I’m a Mohawk, myself.”

“Thee is?” She turned round in the saddle to stare at him, with a combination of interest and horror.

“I am.” He tapped the tattooed lines that ran across his cheekbones. “They adopted me, and I lived wi’ them for some time. I stayed wi’ them willingly, mind—but I did come back to my family at last. Maybe your da will do the same.”

And if he did,
he wondered, looking at the wraithlike shapes of Silvia Hardman and her daughters on the horse ahead of him,
what would he do when he found out the shifts his absence had put his wife to?

And what shifts has Emily been put to, without a man? She’d have people, though…
A Mohawk woman would never be alone in the way Silvia Hardman was alone, and that thought comforted him slightly.

When they reached the Philadelphia road, he dismounted carefully, led his horse up to Silvia’s, and tied a neck rope to the pommel of her saddle, in case Patience should lose hold of the reins.

“Ye’ll go on ahead,” he said to Silvia, and pointed down the road, which was broad, clear, and empty in the waning light. “Ye mustn’t be anywhere near me while I’m taking care of Mr. Fredericks.”

She shuddered at the name, casting a haunted glance back at the humped shape on the third horse’s back.

“With luck, I’ll catch ye up within half an hour,” he said. “There’s nay moon, but it’s a snow-lit sky; I think ye’ll be able to see the road, even after full dark. If anyone offers to molest ye, tell them your husband is behind ye and ride on. Give them your bundle if they want it, but don’t let them get ye off the horses.”

“Yes.” Her voice was high with fear, and she coughed to lower it. “We will. We won’t, I mean. Thank thee, Ian.”

HE TOOK THEM
half a mile down the Philadelphia road, to be sure they could manage the horses. They were only walking, but ye never kent when something might happen, and he warned them about paying attention and keeping hold of the reins.

Patience’s eyes were round as saucers when he slid off and tucked the reins into her hands.

“Alone?” she said, in a very small voice. “I’m riding…
alone
?”

“Not for long,” he assured her. “And your mam will be holding the rope. I’ll be back, quick as I can.”

He untied Fredericks’s horse then and led the gelding in the other direction, well past the lane that led to the Hardman cottage. It was beginning to snow in earnest, but the flakes were small and hard and only skittered across the hard-packed road, the wind making thin white lines on the dirt.

Being in the open, in possession of a fresh corpse, was never comfortable, but it was particularly uneasy work when in the vicinity of white people, who were inclined to think everyone’s private business was also theirs. Luckily, the cold weather had kept the body from swelling, and it wasn’t making eerie noises yet.

There it was: the tall pine, black against the snow-lit sky. He’d trampled down a patch of brush on his previous visit and now led the horse carefully into it, and between two close-spaced saplings. The horse was suspicious, but did follow, and one of the saplings gave way with a crack.

“Good,
a charaid,
” he murmured. “Nay more than another minute, all right?”

Beyond the scrim of oak and pine saplings, the land plunged down into a small ravine. He’d counted the steps to the edge of it on his first visit, and a good thing; the light was poor and the ravine full of brush and straggly small trees.

He tied up the horse a safe distance from the edge, then untied Fredericks and hauled him off, dropping him to the ground with a thud like a killed buffalo. Ian dragged the late Justice to the edge of the ravine, then went back to the foot of the big pine to retrieve the broken dead branch he’d selected earlier. The stick he’d used before was clearly from a fruit tree; he pulled it out and put it in his pouch for later disposal.

He wondered whether there was a Gaelic charm or prayer to cover the disposal of the body of someone ye’d murdered, but if there was, he didn’t know it. The Mohawk had prayers, all right, but they didn’t bother much wi’ the dead.

“I’ll ask Uncle Jamie later,” he said to Fredericks, under his breath. “And if there is one, I’ll say it for ye. For now, though, ye’re on your own.”

He felt his way over the cold, hard face, located the empty eye socket, and drove the sharp end of his branch into it as hard as he could. The scrape of bark and wood on bone and then the sudden yielding raised the hairs across his shoulders and down his arms.

Then he dragged the body to the edge of the ravine and pushed it over. For a moment, he feared it wouldn’t move, but it slid on the pine needles and, after a long moment, rolled almost lazily, once, twice, and disappeared into the brush at the bottom with a muffled
crunch
that was scarcely to be heard above the rising wind.

He was tempted to keep the horse; if anyone noticed it, he could just say he’d found it wandering on the road. But if he—and the horse—were to remain in company with Silvia Hardman and her weans in Philadelphia, it was too dangerous, and he took the horse back to the road and bade it farewell with a slap on the rump. He watched it go, then turned round and began to jog up the road in the thickening snow.

IAN HAD COME IN
quietly—
like an Indian,
Rachel thought—sometime past midnight, crouching by the bed and blowing softly in her ear to rouse her, lest he startle her and wake Oggy. She’d hastily checked the latter, then swung her feet out of bed and rose to embrace her husband.

“Thee smells of blood,” she whispered. “What has thee killed?”

“A beast,” he whispered back, and cupped her cheek in his palm. “I had to, but I’m no sorry for it.”

She nodded, feeling a sharp stone forming in her throat.

“Will ye come out wi’ me,
mo nighean donn
? I need help.”

She nodded again and turned to find the cloak she used for a bedgown. There was a sense of grimness about him, but something else as well, and she couldn’t tell what it was.

She was hoping that he hadn’t brought the body home with the expectation that she would help him bury or hide it, whatever—or whoever—it was, but he
had
just killed something he considered to be evil and perhaps felt himself pursued.

She was therefore taken aback when she followed him into the tiny parlor of their rooms and found a scrawny woman with a battered face and three grubby, half-starved children clothed in rags, pressed together on the sofa like a row of terrified owls.

“Friend Silvia,” Ian said softly, “this is my wife, Rachel.”

“Friend?” Rachel said, astonished but heartened. “Thee is a Friend?”

The woman nodded, uncertain. “I am,” she said, and her voice was soft, but clear. “We are. I am Silvia Hardman, and these are my daughters: Patience, Prudence, and little Chastity.”

“They’ll be needing something to eat,
mo chridhe.
And then maybe—”

“A little hot water,” Silvia Hardman blurted. “Please. To—to wash.” Her hands were clenched on her knees, crumpling the faded homespun, and Rachel gave the hands a quick look—possibly she had helped Ian in his killing? The stone was hard in her throat again, but she nodded, touching the smallest of the little girls, a pretty, round-faced babe somewhere between one and two, more than half asleep on a sister’s lap.

“Right away,” she promised. “Ian—get thy mother.”

“I’m here,” Jenny said from behind her. Her voice was alert and interested. “I see we’ve got company.”

RACHEL WENT AT
once to the sideboard and found bread and cheese and apples, which she distributed to the two older girls; the little one had fallen sound asleep, so Rachel lifted her gently and took her into the bedroom, where she tucked her in beside Oggy. The little girl was grimy and thin, her dark curls matted, but she was otherwise in good condition, and her sweet round face had an innocence that Rachel thought her sisters had long since lost.

The why of
that
became apparent directly.

Jenny had ignored food and brought Silvia Hardman hot water, soap, and a towel. Silvia was washing herself, slowly and thoroughly, her brows drawn together in concentration, looking at nothing.

Ian glanced briefly at her, and then explained the situation to Rachel and his mother simply and bluntly, despite the presence of the children. Rachel glanced at the little girls and raised her brows at her husband, but he merely said, “They were there,” and continued.

“So I got rid of him,” he concluded. “Ye dinna need to ken how or where.” One of the girls let out a little sigh of what might have been relief or sheer exhaustion.

“Aye,” Jenny said, dismissing this. “And ye couldna leave them where they were, in case someone came looking for the man and found him too close.”

“Partly that, aye.” Despite the hour and the fact that he had spent the previous day and half the night engaged in what must have been very strenuous activity, Ian seemed wide awake and in full possession of his faculties. He smiled at his mother. “Uncle Jamie told me that if Friend Silvia was to be in any difficulty, I was to take care of it.”

Silvia Hardman began to laugh. Very quietly, but with a distinct edge of hysteria. Jenny sat down beside her, put her arm around Silvia’s shoulders, and Silvia stopped laughing abruptly. Rachel saw that her hands, still wet and slippery with soap, were shaking.

“Does thee believe in angels, Rachel?” Silvia asked. Her voice was low and slightly distorted because of her swollen lip.

“If thee means Ian or Jamie, they would firmly abjure any such description,” Rachel said, smiling reassuringly and trying not to look away from the wide bruise that cut across Silvia’s face and made her eyes look strangely disconnected from the rest of her features. “But having known them both for some time, I do think God occasionally finds some use for them.”