Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (50 page)

He cast a narrow glance at his own offspring, who were at least clean, and—if not completely subdued—at least closely confined on the bench between him and Brianna. Jemmy was twitching slightly, but reasonably quiescent, and Mandy was occupied in teaching Esmeralda the Lord’s Prayer in a loud whisper—or at least the first line, which was all Mandy knew—pressing the doll’s pudgy cloth hands piously together.

“I wonder how long the sermon’s likely to be,” Bree said, with a glance at the kids.

“Well, he’s used to preaching to sailors—I suppose with a captive audience that doesn’t dare leave or interrupt, ye might be tempted to go on a bit.” He could hear from the shuffle and muttering at the back of the room that a number of older boys were standing back there, similar to the lot who’d loosed a snake during his own first sermon.

“You aren’t planning to heckle him, are you?” asked Bree, glancing over her shoulder.

“I’m not, no.”

“What’s heckle, Daddy?” Jem came out of his comatose state, attracted by the word.

“It means to interrupt someone when they’re speaking, or shout rude things at them.”

“Oh.”

“And you’re never,
ever
to do it, hear me?”

“Oh.” Jem lost interest and went back to looking at the ceiling.

A stir of interest ran through the congregation as Captain Cunningham and his mother came in. The captain nodded to right and left, not precisely smiling, but looking agreeable. Mrs. Cunningham was glancing sharply round, with an eye out for trouble.

Her eye lighted on Esmeralda, and she opened her mouth, but her son cleared his throat loudly and, gripping her elbow, steered her to a spot on a front bench. Her head swiveled briefly round, but the captain had taken his place and she swiveled back, amid the shufflings and shushings of the congregation.

“Brothers and sisters,” the captain said, and everyone straightened abruptly, as he’d addressed them in what Roger thought must be the voice used on his quarterdeck, raised to be heard over the flapping of sails and the roar of cannon. Cunningham coughed, and repeated more quietly, “Brothers and sisters in Christ, I bid you welcome.

“Many of you know me. For those who do not—I am Captain Charles Cunningham, late of His Majesty’s navy. I received a call from God two years ago, and I am endeavoring to answer that call to the best of my ability. I will tell you more about my journey—and yours—toward God, but let us now begin our services this morning by singing ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past.’ ”

“I think he’s actually going to be good,” Bree whispered to Roger as the congregation obligingly rose.

The captain
was
good. After the hymn—which roughly half the congregation knew, but it was a simple tune, and easy enough for the rest to hum along—he opened his worn leather Bible and read them Matthew 4:18–22:

“And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.

And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him.”

After which, he set down his worn leather Bible and told them, with great simplicity, what had brought him here.

“Two years ago, I captained one of His Majesty’s ships, HMS
Lenox,
on the North American Station. It was our charge to blockade the colonial ports and carry out occasional raids against rebellious communities.”

Roger felt the instant wariness that spread through the room like low-lying fog. Some of those present were bound to be secret Loyalists, though most of those who had declared themselves openly had done so as rebels, whether from conviction or from a pragmatic desire to ally themselves with their landlord—the landlord sitting in the third row—he didn’t know.

“My son Simon had recently joined the ship as second lieutenant. I was very pleased, as we had not seen each other for at least two years, he having seen duty in the Channel.”

The captain paused for a moment, as though looking into the past.

“I was proud of him,” he said quietly. “Proud that he chose to follow me into the navy, and proud of his conduct. He was a very young lieutenant—only just eighteen—but enterprising and courageous, and with a great care of his men.”

He pressed his lips together for a moment, then took an audible breath.

“While patrolling the coast of Rhode Island, we encountered and pursued a rebel cutter, and brought her to action. My son was killed in that action.”

There was a muffled sound of shock and sympathy from the congregation, but Cunningham gave no evidence of having heard it, and went steadily on.

“I was no more than a few feet away from him when the shot struck him, and I caught him in my arms. I felt him die.

“I felt him die,” he repeated, softly, and now his eyes searched the congregation. “Some of you will know that feeling.”

Many of them did.

“There is no time to mourn, of course, in the midst of an action, and it was nearly an hour later that we took possession of the cutter and made her crew prisoners. I sent the cutter into port under the command of my master’s mate—normally, that duty would have fallen to my son, as lieutenant. But at that point, all activity, all motion, all the need to lead and command—all of that dropped away. And I went to bid my son farewell.”

Roger glanced involuntarily down at Jemmy, at the soft swirl of hair on the crown of his head, the backs of his clean, pink ears.

“He was below, laid on a cot in the sick bay, and I sat down beside him. I cannot say what I felt, or what I thought; the space within me was void. Of course I knew what had happened to me, the loss of a part of myself, a loss greater than any loss of limb or physical injury—and yet I felt nothing. I think”—he broke off and cleared his throat—“I think I was afraid to feel anything. But while I sat, I watched his face—that face that I knew so well—and I saw the light enter it again.

“It changed,” he said, looking from face to face, urgent that they should understand. “His face became…transcendent. And beautiful, suddenly, the face of an angel. And then he opened his eyes.”

The shock brought every soul in the room upright. Mrs. Cunningham, Roger saw, already
was
as upright as it was possible for someone with a backbone to be. She sat rigid and immobile, her face turned away.

“He spoke to me,” the captain said, and his voice was husky. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, Father. I’ll see you again. In seven years.’ ” He cleared his throat again, harder. “And—then he closed his eyes and…was dead.”

It took several moments for the murmurs and gasps to die away, and Cunningham stood patiently until the silence returned.

“As I rose from my son’s side,” he said, “I realized that the Lord had given me both a blessing and a sign. The knowledge—the
sure
knowledge,” he emphasized, “that the soul is not destroyed by death, and the conviction that the Lord had called me to go forth and give this message to His people.

“So I have come among you in answer to God’s call. To bring you the word of God’s goodness, to humbly offer guidance where I may do so—and to honor the memory of my son, First Lieutenant Simon Elmore Cunningham, who served his King, his country, and his God always with honor and fidelity.”

Roger rose for the final hymn in a flurry of feeling. He’d been with Cunningham through every word, totally absorbed, filled with sorrow, pride, warmth, uplifted—and even putting aside the purely emotional aspects of the captain’s sermon, he had to admit that it was a really good bit of work in terms of religion.

Roger turned to Brianna, and under the rising song, said, “Jesus Christ,” meaning no blasphemy whatever.

“You can say that again,” she replied.

I DID WONDER
just how Roger proposed to follow Captain Cunningham’s act. The congregation had scattered under the trees to take refreshment, but every group I passed was discussing what the captain had said, with great excitement and absorption—as well they might. The spell of his story remained with me—a sense of wonder and hope.

Bree seemed to be wondering, too; I saw her with Roger, in the shade of a big chinkapin oak, in close discussion. He shook his head, though, smiled, and tugged her cap straight. She’d dressed her part, as a modest minister’s wife, and smoothed her skirt and bodice.

“Two months, and she’ll be comin’ to kirk in buckskins,” Jamie said, following the direction of my gaze.

“What odds?” I inquired.

“Three to one. Ye want to wager, Sassenach?”

“Gambling on Sunday? You’re going straight to hell, Jamie Fraser.”

“I dinna mind. Ye’ll be there afore me. Askin’ me the odds, forbye…Besides, going to church three times in one day must at least get ye a few days off purgatory.”

I nodded.

“Ready for Round Two?”

Roger kissed Brianna and strode out of the shade into the sunlit day, tall, dark, and handsome in his best black—well, his only—suit. He came toward us, Bree on his heels, and I saw several people in the nearby groups notice this and begin to put away their bits of bread and cheese and beer, to retire behind bushes for a private moment, and to tidy up children who’d come undone.

I sketched a salute as Roger came up to us.

“Over the top?”

“Geronimo,” he replied briefly. With a visible squaring of the shoulders, he turned to greet his flock and usher them inside.

Back inside, it was noticeably warm, though not yet hot, thank God. The smell of new pine was softer now, cushioned by the rustle of homespun and the faint scents of cooking and farming and the messy business of raising children that rose in a pleasantly domestic fog.

Roger let them resettle for a moment, but not long enough for conversations to break out. He walked in with Bree on his arm, left her on the front bench, and turned to smile at the congregation.

“Is there anyone here who doesna ken me already?” he asked, and there was a slight ripple of laughter.

“Aye, well, the fact that ye do ken me and ye’re here anyway is reassuring. Sometimes it’s the things we know that mean a lot, in part because we ken them well and understand their strength. Will ye be upstanding then, and we’ll say the Lord’s Prayer together.”

They rose obligingly and followed him in the prayer—some, I noticed, speaking it in the
Gàidhlig,
though most in variously accented English.

When we all sat down again, he cleared his throat, hard, and I began to worry. I was sure that his voice was better than it had been, whether from natural healing or from the treatments—if something so simple and yet so peculiar as Dr. McEwan’s laying on of hands could be dignified by the name—I’d been giving him once a month. But it had been a long time since he’d spoken at length in public, let alone preached—let alone
sung,
and the stress of expectation was a lot to deal with.

“Some of ye are from the Isles, I know—and from the North. So ye’ll ken what lined singing is.”

I saw Hiram Crombie glance down the bench at his assembled family, and felt the interested stir of others in the crowd who did indeed know.

“For those of ye who’ve come lately from other parts—it’s nay bother; only a way of dealing wi’ things like Psalms and hymns, when ye havena got more than one prayer book amongst ye. Or most of one.” He held up his own battered hymnal, a coverless wodge of tattered pages that Jamie had found in a tavern in Salisbury and bought for threepence and two pig’s trotters, the latter having been recently acquired in a card game.

“Today, we’re going to sing Psalm One Thirty-three. It’s a short one, but one I like. I’ll sing—or chant, maybe”—he smiled at them and cleared his throat again, but shortly—“the first line, and then ye sing it back to me. I’ll do the next, and so on we go, aye?”

He opened the book to his marked page and managed—in a voice that was at least powerful enough to be heard and rhythmic enough to follow—the first phrase:

“Behold how good!”

An instant’s pause, and several voices, confident, took it up:

“Behold how good!”

A look of joy rose up in his face, and it was only then that I realized he hadn’t been sure it would work.

“And how pleasant it is…”

“And how pleasant it is!”

More voices, a spreading confidence, and by the third phrase, we were sharing Roger’s happiness, moving into the words and their meaning.

It was a fairly short psalm, but they were having such a good time that he went through it twice, and stopped, finally, wringing with sweat and flushed with heat and effort,
“Even life for evermore!”
still ringing in the air.

“That was good,” he said, in a croak, and they laughed, though kindly. “Jamie—will ye come read to us from the Old Testament?”

I glanced at Jamie in surprise, but apparently he was ready for this, for he picked up his small green Bible, which he’d brought along with him, and came to the front of the room. He was wearing the best of his two kilts, with the only sober-looking coat he possessed, and taking his spectacles from the pocket, put them on and looked sternly over the tops of them at the boys in the back, who instantly ceased their whispering.