Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (78 page)

September 15, 1779

JUST ONE STEP. THAT’S
all it ever took, all it ever takes. Sometimes you see such a step coming, from a long way off. Sometimes you never notice, until you look backward.

Here it was, right in front of her. The door of her cabin—hers, her home, the home of her marriage, of her baby’s first months, of her realest life—was open to the morning and the round gold leaves of the aspens lay flat on the wood of the stoop, gleaming with dew as the dawn came up.

One step over the threshold that divided her small rag rug, with its quiet, homely blues and grays, from that pagan abandon of golds and greens and red outside, and her life here was over. They might come back—Ian had promised that they would, and she trusted that he’d do whatever he could to make it so—but even if they did, it would be a different life.

Oggy—perhaps he would be walking, talking, might have a different name by then. He wouldn’t recall this early life, the closeness of waking against her body in bed, turning at once to her breast and yielding up his separate existence so easily, becoming one with her as he’d been when she carried him inside, just for those moments while he fed from her again. Somewhere he might be weaned, on the road between now and then. He would be a different person when they came back. So would she.

Jenny came up beside her, her face bright and a pack with food and drink, handkerchiefs, clouts, and clean stockings under her arm. She glanced at Rachel’s face, then at the inside of the cabin, as though making an inventory. There was little enough to take note of: the rug, the bed and its trundle where Jenny slept, Oggy’s cradle. They had already given everything else away; what they needed would be given back or built again if they returned.

“Well, then, laddie,” Jenny said to Oggy. “This will be your first journey from home, aye? It’s my third. Just pay attention to me; I’ll see ye right.”

Oggy promptly leaned out of Rachel’s arms, reaching for his grannie, who laughed and took him.

“Ye’re fettled,
m’annsachd
?” she said to Rachel. “Is the sense o’ the meeting clear? Let’s be off, then, and see what lies ahead.”

THE FIRST STEP
took them from the cabin to the Big House to take their leave. They’d said goodbye to Brianna and Roger and seen them off with their wagon full of children and contraband sauerkraut three weeks before—an experience that had made Rachel’s heart uneasy. Now she was inexpressibly relieved to see Jamie and hear that he intended to accompany the travelers on the three-day journey to Salisbury in the Piedmont, where they would find the Great Wagon Road that would take them north.

“I need to meet wi’ a few men there,” Jamie had said, with a casual reserve that she knew was meant to protect her own feelings. She knew his business was that of war, and he knew how much that troubled her, but she knew how much it troubled
him
and would not force him to say the things he was thinking, let alone the things he knew.

She’d felt moved to speak about it—the war—in general, in meeting. And then she’d talked about her brother, Denzell. A Friend from birth, as she was; a godly man, but also a doctor, and a man of conscience.

“Such men aren’t always comfortable to live with,” she’d said, half apologetically, but more than one woman had smiled in sympathy, knowing what she meant. “But I wouldn’t have him otherwise, thee knows. And he’s of the mind that God has called him to the battlefield—not to fight with a musket or sword, but to fight Death itself, in the name of Liberty.” She’d drawn a deep breath then, and added, “I have had word that my brother was captured, and is in a British prison. I’d ask thee all, please, to pray for him.”

They had nodded, solemn. And Jamie Fraser had crossed himself, which moved her.

Jamie nearly always came to meeting, but seldom spoke himself. He’d come in quietly and sit on a back bench, head bowed, listening. Listening, as any Friend would, to the silence and his inner light. When people felt moved of the spirit to speak, he would listen courteously to them, too, but watching the remoteness of his face on these occasions, she thought his mind was still by itself, in quiet, persistent search.

“I dinna suppose Young Ian’s told ye much about Catholics,” he’d said to her once, when he’d paused afterward to give her a fleece he’d brought from Salem.

“Only when I ask him,” she said, with a smile. “And thee knows he’s no theologian. Roger Mac knows more, I think, regarding Catholic belief and practice. Does thee want to tell me something about Catholics? I know thee must feel seriously outnumbered every First Day.”

He’d smiled at that, and it made her heart glad to see it. He was so often troubled these days, and no wonder.

“Nay, lass, God and I get on well enough by ourselves. It’s only that when I come to your meeting, sometimes it reminds me of a thing Catholics do now and then. It’s no a formal thing—but a body will go and sit for an hour before the Sacrament, in church. I’d do it now and then when I was a young man, in Paris. We call it Adoration.”

“What does thee do during that hour?” she’d asked, curious.

“Nothing in particular. Pray, for the most part. Say the Rosary. Or sit in silence. Read, maybe, the Bible or the writings of some saint. I’ve seen folk sing, sometimes. I remember once, goin’ into the chapel of Saint Joseph in the wee hours of the morning, long before dawn—almost all the candles were burnt out—and hearin’ someone playing a guitar, singing. Very soft, not playing to be heard, ken. Just…singing before God.”

Something odd moved in his eyes at the recollection, but then he smiled at her again, a rueful smile.

“I think that may be the last music I remember really hearing.”

“What?”

He touched the back of his head, briefly.

“I was struck in the heid wi’ an ax, many years gone. I lived, but I never heard music again. The pipes, fiddles, singin’…I ken it’s music, but to me, it’s nay more than noise. But that song…I dinna recall the song itself, but I know how I felt when I heard it.”

She’d never before seen a look on his face as she did when he called back that song for her, but now, watching his back, straight and square as he rode before them, quite suddenly she felt what he had felt in the depth of that distant night, and understood why he found peace in silent spaces.

“I'M OLDER THAN THIS
place,” Jenny said, looking about with a disparaging eye as the wagon pulled up outside an ordinary. “This town looks as though 'twas thrown up yesterday.”

“It's been here for the last twenty-five years,” Jamie said, wrapping his horse's reins around the hitching post. “It's older than Rachel, aye?” He smiled at his niece, but his sister snorted, edging backward out of her nest in the wagon.

“No age at all for a city,” she said dismissively.

“Crawling wi' Loyalists, too,” said Young Ian, seizing his mother round the middle and swinging her down. “Or so I hear.”

“I hear that, too,” Jamie said, and gave the main street an eye, as though Loyalists might come darting out of the taverns like mice. “But I hear they havena got guns, nor yet a proper militia.”

Despite its relative youth, Salisbury was the largest town in Rowan County. It was also the seat of Rowan County, the closest town between Fraser's Ridge and the Great Wagon Road—and the military fiefdom of one Francis Locke, a patriot. And one with guns
and
militia. That being so, Jamie settled Jenny, Rachel, and Oggy temporarily at a decent-looking ordinary with an expensive pot of strong coffee and a plate of stuffed rolls, sent Ian to buy provisions for the journey north, then went himself in search of Colonel Locke.

Once met, Jamie found himself disposed to like Francis Locke. A stocky, red-faced Irishman of about his own age, the man had a direct manner that appealed to him. He was a landowner, a businessman—and the commander of the Rowan County Regiment of Militia.

“One hundred and sixty-seven companies of militia we have on our rolls,” Locke said, with a certain grim satisfaction. “At present. From all over Rowan County—though none from the far backcountry as yet. I'd be glad to welcome you and your company, Mr. Fraser, should ye care to join us.”

Jamie gave him a cordial nod but refrained from committing himself, just yet.

“I'll not yet have my company fully equipped, sir—though I expect to accomplish that before the snow flies and be ready for the spring.”

The British army surely would be.

Locke gave him the same kind of nod, with the same look of reservation. Locke knew perfectly well that Jamie wouldn't admit his true state of readiness until he'd made up his mind about Locke
and
his regiment.

“How many men have you?”

“Forty-seven, at present,” Jamie replied equably. “I think we will have more, once the harvest is in.”

They were sitting in the City Tavern, with a pitcher of ale and a platter of small fried fishes. Tasty fare after three days of journeycake and boiled eggs, though the fish were equipped with an inconvenient number of small bones.

“Might I ask, sir—are ye maybe familiar with a man called Partland? Or Adam Granger?”

Locke's heavy gray brows cocked upward.

“Nicodemus Partland? Aye, heard of him. From Virginia. Loyalist gadfly. Troublemaker,” he added offhandedly.

“He is that. But perhaps a bit more than a gadfly.” Jamie gave Locke a brief account of Partland's appearance on his land—his connection with Captain Cunningham—and then of the rifles that Claire and Young Ian had confiscated. Jamie didn't embellish that encounter, but he knew how to tell a story, and Locke was laughing at the end of it.

“Do ye manage the mounting of your men in the same fashion, Mr. Fraser?”

“No, sir. I make fine liquor and trade for horses where I find them.”

Locke blinked, drawing conclusions. Jamie had told Locke where Fraser's Ridge was.

“Indians?”

Jamie inclined his head an inch.

“A few years back, I was an Indian agent for the Crown in the Southern Department—under Mr. Atkins and then Colonel Johnson. I still have friends among the Cherokee.”

The look of amusement came back into Locke's weathered face.

“I take it ye don't number Colonel Johnson among your friends just at present.”

“A friendship requires two parties of like mind, does it not?” When Jamie had resigned his commission, Johnson had threatened to have him hanged as a traitor—and meant it. Jamie chose another fish and bit into it carefully, disentangling small bones with his tongue and laying them neatly on the sheet of greasy, food-spattered newsprint that covered the table in lieu of a cloth. Claire wasn't with him to deal with things if he choked.

The newspaper was
The Impartial Intelligencer,
and made him think of Fergus and Marsali. He made an instinctive move to cross himself at the thought of them and Germain, but stilled his hand before it lifted. Locke might well be a Protestant; no need to alienate someone he might need as an ally.

Jamie laid aside the staring head and backbone of the first fish and chose another. Ought he to give Locke one of the Masonic signs? Given his origins and situation, the man was likely Made. Not yet, he decided, watching Locke methodically engulfing his sixth fish. Locke seemed solid enough, but Jamie wanted to talk to a few of the militia colonels presently enrolled in the Rowan County Regiment before deciding whether—and how—to make an alliance. There were the Overmountain men to be considered, too; they were less official, less well armed, and less organized, but a damn sight closer to Fraser's Ridge than Locke was, and if he needed help in a hurry, they could move quickly.

He put that thought aside. He'd do what he could and pray about the rest.

Locke leaned back, considering as he chewed his last fish slowly.

“Well, I trust we may in time be fast friends, Colonel. Given our commonalities, as you might say.”

Before he could agree to this sentiment, the door opened and Young Ian came in on the wings of a chilly draft that lifted the newspapers on the tables. The Murrays had best be on their way quickly, before the weather turned wet, he thought.

He introduced his nephew to Francis Locke, who glanced at Ian's tattoos, then at Jamie with an interested cock of the brow.

“I've found us lodging wi' a widow named Hambly, Uncle,” said Ian, ignoring Locke's examination. “She says her supper will be ready in an hour, should ye care to sit down at her table.”

Locke made a
hem
sound of warning in his throat.

“The widow's a kind woman and her house is clean, but she's no sort of a cook, God bless her. Perhaps ye'd best bring your family to my house for their supper. My land lies outside Salisbury,” he added, seeing Jamie's brow rise, “but I've a small house in town for convenience, and my wife's a famous gossip. She likes nothin' better than to meet new folk and turn 'em inside out.”

Jamie met Ian's eye and they shared a look.
“Five to one on my mother,”
Ian's face said, and Jamie agreed with a slight nod.

“We'll join ye, sir, with great pleasure,” he said formally to Locke, and rose. “We'll go and fettle the women, and join ye by six o'clock, if that suits?”

MRS. LOCKE WAS
a bright-eyed bird of a woman who asked blunt questions with the regularity of a cuckoo clock, but she
was
a good cook, and Jenny kept her engaged in a discussion of cheese making and the virtues of cow's milk versus that of goats or sheep, while Rachel fed the bairn and Jamie and Ian asked questions about the regiment, all of which Locke answered readily.

Too far from the Ridge,
Ian's sidelong glance said, and Jamie looked down in agreement.

Locke seemed well organized, but even with the recent excision of Burke County, Rowan County still covered a vast area. If it was a matter of a large battle, with the militia assisting regular troops, like Monmouth, that was one thing: there'd be time to summon a number of Locke's 167 companies. But for someone to send a rider to Salisbury, appeal to Locke, and from there summon help from surrounding areas to meet an unexpected and imminent threat to the Ridge, a hundred miles away? No.

Ian and Jamie had silently concluded that the Ridge was better off defending itself, and Ian had just raised an eyebrow to ask Jamie whether he meant to tell Locke so when a sound of footsteps came up the front steps and there was a rapid thumping on the door that stopped Mrs. Locke in mid-question.

The caller was a boy of fifteen or so, with the beginnings of a scanty beard creeping along his jaw like a fungus.

“Beggin' your pardon, sir,” he said, bowing to Locke. “Constable Jones sent me to say as he's found a body and will you maybe come and sit on it before it gets any riper?”

“Sit on it?” said Rachel, looking up in surprise.

“Aye, ma'am,” Locke said, getting up from the table. “I'm the county coroner, for my sins. Where's this body, Josh?”

“In Chris Humphreys's stable, sir. But 'twas found behind the Oak Tree tavern, to start with. Mrs. Ford wouldn't let 'em bring it inside the tavern.”

“Oh.” Locke cast a quick look at the landlord, who crossed his arms and lowered his brow. “I suppose our host has similar feelings. I'll go out to the stable and have a look. Will you wait, Mr. Fraser? Likely I won't be long about it.”

“I'll come with ye, if I may.” Jamie rose, making a small gesture indicating that Ian should seize the opportunity to take his leave. Jamie was mildly curious to see the dead man, but his main intent was to have an excuse to break up the party. He could see Rachel at the table, drooping with weariness, Oggy asleep in her lap, and his sister, while still upright, had been radiating waves of impatience in his direction for the last quarter hour.