Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (140 page)

“I have,” Jamie assuredly him gravely, “and aye, that's right. Ye have to tell your captors your name and rank, and the company ye belong to, but that's all.” I heard the chair rock forward, and Jamie's slight grunt as he rose to his feet. “Ye dinna even have to tell me that much, as my guest. But as ye honored me with your name and rank, and Captain Stevens told me your company, you're square either way.”

I blinked at that. Perhaps he'd meant it casually, but
“you're square”
was one of the coded phrases Freemasons used to identify one another; I'd heard it frequently in Jamaica when we had enlisted the local Lodge to help in our search for Young Ian. Were there black Freemasons in this time? Jackson made no reply, though.

“But I dinna suppose ye want to spend the next several weeks on my wife's table. She'll be needing it, sooner or later,” Jamie said.

“So.” His voice was slightly louder; he'd turned toward the door. “Say where ye'd like to go, Corporal, and someone will take ye there. In the meantime, let me go and see where your breakfast has got to.”

AFTER BREAKFAST AND
a further brief discussion with Corporal Jackson, Jamie wrote a note and sent Jem up the hill to Captain Cunningham to deliver it. And two hours later, Lieutenants Bembridge and Esterhazy appeared at our door. I didn't know what either the captain or Mrs. Cunningham had said to them, but neither one was battered, and when seen, they appeared to be working—somewhat uneasily—with each other. Just now, they both appeared rather nonplussed, and announced that they had come to escort our prisoner—er, guest—to the captain's cabin. The captain had agreed—as the leading Loyalist on Fraser's Ridge—to offer Corporal Jackson refuge until such time as he could be reunited with his company.

“He can't walk,” Jamie advised them. “I'll lend ye a mule.”

“He can't ride, either,” I said. “You'll need to make a travois for him.”

While the men went out to do this, I checked the corporal's condition—feverish, but not a high fever, a certain amount of pain and some redness, but—I sniffed his leg discreetly—no overt infection, and I wrote up a medical note for Elspeth Cunningham, with a description of the injury and notes on care of the plaster cast. I offered him elevenses, which he refused, but he did drink another medicinal posset, involving an egg, cream, sugar, extract of willow bark, black cohosh, and meadowsweet, a good slug of whisky—and enough laudanum to fell a horse.

“You're sure you want to go?” I asked, watching as he sipped the posset. “We're happy to take care of you until you're healed enough to rejoin your company.”

The corporal was heavy-eyed and his face was flushed, but he managed a smile.

“It's bettah I go, madam. This Cap'n Cunningham, he can send to Cap'n Stevens, he will make provision for me to go to Charlotte.”

I shook my head dubiously. He was doing well enough, but being dragged uphill for two miles behind a mule while suffering from a broken leg wasn't anything I'd wish on an enemy, let alone an innocent man. Still, it was his choice. I took my amulet bag from round my neck and opened it. The usual scent wafted out as I dipped my finger into it, earthy and unidentifiable but with an odd sense of reassurance.

“Well, let me give you back your High John the Conqueror,” I said, smiling as I plucked it out. “I hope you won't need it on your journey, but just in case…”

“Oh, no, madam.” He waved a slow hand at me, pushing it away. “Its magic remain with me 'cause you have healed me with it—but it is part of your magic now.”

“Oh. Well…thank you, Mr. Jackson. I'll take good care of it.” The hard little root was smooth and glossy, and my fingers caressed it briefly as I tucked it back into the amulet and tied the neck. He nodded approvingly, yawned suddenly and shook his head, then upended the posset cup and drained it. He put out his free hand suddenly, his fingers curling in invitation. I took it, automatically putting a finger on his wrist—pulse a little fast, but strong, and while his hand was very warm, it wasn't alarming…

Then I realized that he was saying something, soft and slurred, but not English.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I bless you,” he said, blinking drowsily. He smiled and his fingers loosened and slid free. A moment later, he was asleep.

When we had seen the travois party safely off, and the girls and Jem had all gone off on their own errands, Jamie and I returned to the kitchen for a second breakfast.

He sat down gingerly, grimacing a little, but shook his head at my inquiring look.

“I'll do. But I'll maybe have a dram wi' my parritch.” I looked at him narrowly.

“Have two,” I suggested, and he didn't argue.

The big black-iron spider was hot in its bed of glowing charcoal, and I laid down several fresh rashers of bacon and broke the last of the eggs from the root cellar one at a time into a bowl to check that they were good before I dropped them into the sizzling fat. I could feel the house gradually settling back around us as the sense of intrusion and disruption faded. Still, the inside of my nose prickled at the smoke from the frying bacon, and the remembered smell of fire was sharp at the back of my throat.

“What do you think Ulysses will do now?” I asked, setting down the plates. My voice was steady, but my hands weren't; the spoon twitched in my fingers as I shook salt onto the eggs and sent a spray of white crystals over the table.

Jamie's eyes were focused on the table, but I thought he hadn't even seen the scattered salt. He'd heard me, though, and after a moment he sat up straight and nodded, as though to himself.

“Kill me,” he said, with a sigh. “Or try to,” he added, seeing my face. The corner of his mouth curled up. “Dinna fash, Sassenach. I dinna mean to let him.”

“Oh, good,” I said, and he smiled, though it was a wry one. The bench creaked with his weight as he leaned forward and brushed the spilled salt neatly into the palm of his hand. He tossed a pinch of it over his left shoulder and carefully poured the rest back into the saltcellar.

I began to relax enough to feel hungry and picked up my fork.

“If he can somehow make away wi' me, though,” he went on dispassionately, taking up the pepper, “he can ride up with his men and turn you and the lassies out and take possession o' the place, wavin' his letter under the noses of the tenants. They wouldna like it, but Cunningham and his men would support him, and while the Lindsays and MacMillans and Bobby are all good fighting men, none o' them are what ye'd call leaders. They'd not stand long, against trained soldiers and Cunningham's lot—and Ulysses wouldna hesitate to burn
them
out, should he feel the need. He wouldna mind a small war, at all.”

“Ian and Roger wouldn't stand for that,” I said.

Jamie cocked a brow at me.

“Ian's a Mohawk and he'd fight to the death, but he's never commanded men,” he pointed out. “Mohawk dinna really fight that way. And while a good many of the men on the Ridge
like
him, just as many are that wee bit afraid of him—and liking's not enough to get a man to risk his life and family. As for Roger Mac…” He smiled a little, ruefully.

“I won't say I've never seen a priest be a bonnie fighter, because I have. And Roger Mac
can
draw folk together and make them listen. But it's no his business to make war and he hasna got any experience in doin' it. Besides—” He straightened his back and stretched, with a muffled popping of vertebrae. “Oh, God. Besides,” he repeated, and gave me a very direct look, “there's nay telling when Roger Mac and Bree will be home from Salem. And I dinna ken when ‘Captain Stevens' may come back—but come back he will, Sassenach.”

I glanced at the window. It was raining again, a speckle of fine droplets.

“I don't suppose,” I said diffidently, “that Frank mentioned His Majesty's Company of Black Pioneers in that book?”

“He did not. Yon bastard was only concerned wi' the Scots,” he said, frowning. “I dinna recall one word in that book about black soldiers.” Then his face went blank for a moment and he made a Scottish noise between disgust and amusement. “Nay, he did say there were black men at the battle of Savannah. They were from Saint-Domingue, though—wi' the French navy.”

He made an impatient gesture, dismissing all this complication.

“What I do ken is that Stevens will try to kill me if he can, and the sooner the better. And I also ken he'll send someone to fetch his corporal sooner than that.”

The kitchen was warm and cozy but the breakfast congealed in my stomach.

“I don't think so. Corporal Jackson said that Cunningham would make provision to send him to Charlotte,” I blurted.

Jamie stared at me for a moment, and I could see the counters falling into place behind his eyes.

“Ah,” he said, plainly thinking what I was: Charlotte must be the place where Ulysses planned to rendezvous with the rest of the Company of Black Pioneers. “That will be where Ian's gone, then. He should be back soon, and then…”

“No!” I said. “You can't take your militia after him!”

“I dinna mean to,” he said mildly, and picked up his fork. “It would be good exercise, but the weather's chancy, and the game's beginning to gather and move. The men need to be hunting deer, not British soldiers. Besides, ken what would happen if I caught him but some of his men got away to tell the tale?”

I did, but I let go the breath I'd been holding; he wasn't going to do it. Then a second thought struck me in the solar plexus. I froze for a moment.

“No,” I said, and stood up suddenly, looming over him. “No! If you go hunting that man alone, Jamie Fraser, you—you—can't.”

He blinked. Bluebell jerked out of sleep with a small, startled
wuff!
but, not seeing anything unusual, she sidled up to Jamie and nosed his leg. He put a hand down to scratch her ears but kept his gaze on me, considering.

“Jamie,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling. “If you love me…don't.
Please
don't. I can't bear it.” I couldn't. I couldn't bear the thought of his being killed, but nor could I bear the thought of his hunting, performing execution. The sound of a rifle shot echoed in my head whenever I thought of the man he had killed, rousing other echoes—of that night, a heavy body in the dark, pain and terror and helpless suffocation.

“And I don't even bloody know if you shot him,” I said abruptly, and sat down. “The man…whose name I don't know.”

He looked at me for a moment, head on one side, then reached out delicately and scooped up a bit of yellow with a fingertip. He touched this to my lower lip and I licked it off by reflex: warm, savory, delicious.

“I love you,” he said softly, and his hand cupped my cheek, big and warm. “As an egg loves salt. Dinna fash,
mo chridhe.
I'll think o' something else.”

Fraser’s Ridge

July 8, A.D. 1780

From: Captain William C.H.G. Ransom

To: Mrs. Roger MacKenzie of Fraser’s Ridge

Dear Sister—

Such an odd Feeling to write that; my first Time of doing it.

I haven’t much—Time, I mean—but I have recently been involved in a number of strange Circumstances, one of which invoked your Name—or rather, not your Name; the Fellow only said, “I know your Sister.”

Possibly he does. However, I have known this Man—his Name is Ezekiel Richardson—over the Course of several Years, during which he has arguably attempted on one or more Occasions to kill or abduct me, or otherwise to interfere with my Actions. I first knew him as a Captain in His Majesty’s Army, and much more recently, as a Major in the Continental Army.

Upon our most recent Meeting (near Charles Town), he looked at me oddly and remarked that he knew you. His Manner—and indeed, his saying such a Thing at all—was Peculiar in the Extreme and aroused a profound Feeling of Unease in me.

I will not presume to instruct you, as I haven’t the vaguest Notion as to what Advice I should give. But I felt that I must warn you—though against What, I have no Idea.

With my Deepest Respect and Affection,

Your Brother (damn, I’ve never written that before, either),

William

PostScriptum: Such was my Sense of Disquiet, I undertook to try to sketch Major Richardson’s Likeness, in Case he should seek you out. He has a most undistinguished Face; the only Distinction I remarked in it is that his Ears are placed unevenly—possibly not to the Extent in which they appear in this crude Sketch, but if he is telling the Truth, you may perhaps recognize him, should he ride up to your Door one Day, and be on your Guard.

BRIANNA’S HANDS HAD GROWN
sweaty in the reading, and a trickle of perspiration ran down the side of her neck. She knuckled it absently away and wiped her wet hand on her skirt before unfolding the smaller paper.

It
was
a crude sketch, a face-on portrait with the ears comically oversized and attached asymmetrically to the head, like butterflies about to take flight. She smiled for an instant, and then looked closer at the face between those ears. It
wasn’t
distinctive at all—which might have made the drawing better than it otherwise might have been, she thought, frowning. There was simply nothing complicated about the major’s very ordinary face, though she was pleased to see that William did indeed have at least some basic skill in drawing: he’d added a deep chiaroscuro to the left side of the face and quick thumb-shading to add hollows beneath the small, clever-looking eyes that…

She stopped, something tickling at her brain, and looked closer. Could anyone actually have ears that noticeably off-kilter? Big ears were one thing, but displaced ears…Perhaps if the man had had an accident that severed one ear and a surgeon had sewed it back on awry…The notion made her smile, despite her uneasiness, but another thought was pushing up behind the first, triggered by the thought of surgery.
Plastic surgery.

She looked again, closer, at that very ordinary face, lacking most of the normal lines of expression. Alarm was flooding through her, even before her mind had dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s.

She felt suddenly ill and sat down abruptly, eyes closed. She hadn’t eaten lunch and now felt nauseated on an empty stomach. Common with morning sickness, her mother had said—but this wasn’t morning sickness. She opened her eyes and looked again.

And this time she breathed cold air smelling of pine and heather and burning rubber and hot metal and the acrid ghost of gunpowder. Remembered the hail-like sound of shotgun pellets pattering through gorse and heather. And the warm, greasy feel of an old wool cap in her hand, pulled off the head of a man whose face she hadn’t quite seen, as he tried to kidnap Jem and Mandy from the dark dooryard of Lallybroch. But now she saw him plain and saw through his disguise. Both of them.

Someone will come.

She leaned over and threw up.

ROGER WAS SITTING
under a tree on the creek bank, theoretically writing a sermon about the nature of the Holy Trinity but in actuality hypnotized by the clear brown water gurgling past, letting random quotes about streams and water and eternity roll round inside his skull like rocks being dragged downstream, clacking into each other as they went.

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in,” he murmured, trying it out. He wasn’t worried about plagiarizing words that hadn’t been written yet. Besides, Davy Caldwell had assured him that quotation was the backbone of many good sermons—and a good place to start, if you found yourself without a thought in your head.

“Which is the case, roughly nine times out of ten,” Davy had said, reaching for a mug of beer. “And the tenth time, ye should write your brilliantly original thought down and put it aside and read it through next day, to be sure ye’re not talking out your arse.”

“I always thought Ralph Waldo Emerson was talking out his ass, but surely you aren’t going to say
that
in your next sermon, are you?”

“What?” He looked up from his notebook to see Bree making her careful way down the bank, and his heart lifted at the sight of her. She looked pregnant.

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you,” he said.

“What?” she said, startled. “Who said that?”

“Should I be hurt that you didn’t think it was me?” he said, laughing. “It’s A. A. Milne. From
Winnie-the-Pooh,
if you can believe it.”

“At this point,” she said, and sat down, sighing heavily, “I’ll believe anything. Look at this.”

She handed him an odd-looking drawing of a man’s head, the sheet showing the marks of having been folded.

“My brother sent it to me,” she said, and smiled, despite her apparent uneasiness. “He’s right, it does feel strange to say it. ‘Brother,’ I mean.”

“What is it? Or rather, who?” He could see
what
it was; a quick sketch of a man’s head, done in heavy graphite pencil. He frowned at it. “And what’s wrong with him?”

“Well, there’s a pair of good questions.” She took a deep breath and settled herself. “That’s a drawing of a man named Ezekiel Richardson. William says he’s a turncoat—started with the British, switched to the Continentals. He’s also some kind of skunk, who’s tried to do William harm of various kinds, but hasn’t yet succeeded. Does he look familiar to you?”

Roger glanced up at her, puzzled.

“No. Why should he?” He returned his gaze to the paper and slowly traced the outline of the face. “His ears aren’t quite straight, but I suppose William doesn’t have quite your artistic talent.”

She shook her head.

“No. Not that. Try imagining him with longer, curly, sandy-colored hair, light eyebrows, and a sunburn.”

Now slightly alarmed and wondering why, Roger frowned at the portrait of a man with slicked-back dark hair, level dark brows, and small eyes that gave away nothing.

“He certainly hasn’t got much expression…”

“Think bad plastic surgery,” she suggested, and there was a split second of incomprehension before it hit him. His mouth opened, and his throat closed, hard, and for an instant he was hanging, falling through a foot of air and ending with a heart-stopping jerk.

“Jesus,” he croaked, when his throat finally let go its death grip. “A time traveler? You really think so?”

“I know so,” she said flatly. “Do you remember, when we lived at Lallybroch, a guy named Michael Callahan—he went by ‘Mike’—who was an archaeologist who worked on Orkney? He came to look at the Iron Age fort on the hill above the—our—graveyard.” He saw her throat swell as she swallowed, hard. “Maybe he wasn’t looking at the fort. Maybe he was looking at the graves—and us.”

He looked from her tight lips to the drawing, back again.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” he said carefully. “But—”

“But I saw him again,” she said, and he saw that she was clutching the fabric of her skirt, bunched in both hands. “At the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral.”

A surge of searing-hot vomit hit the back of his throat, and he forced it down. She saw his face and let go the bunched fabric to take his hand in both hers, holding hard.

“I wouldn’t have thought of it at all—but looking at the ears, and suddenly it just came to me that the only thing I could think of that would make someone’s ears be like that would be if they’d had some kind of surgery that didn’t quite come out the way it was supposed to…and the way his face is so blank—and just all of a sudden I remembered that night. He—he tried to get into the van where the kids and I—I grabbed the woolly hat off his head, and yanked out some of his hair with it, and I caught just a glimpse of his face—and then I didn’t think about it again, because we were trying to get away and then I got the kids to California, and…But just now.” She swallowed again, and he saw that the paleness of her face had given way to a flush of rage. “It’s him. I know it’s him.”

“Holy buggery,” he said, staring back at the expressionless face, trying to match it to Callahan’s mobile, always smiling face. But everything was beginning to fall into place, like dominoes paving a path to hell.

“He knew Rob Cameron,” he said. “And Cameron read the book. He knew what we were.”

“Rob couldn’t travel,” she said. “But maybe Mike Callahan can. And he knew we’d recognize his real face.”