Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (88 page)

“Buinneachd o ’n teine ort!”
There was a sharp cry, and the man holding her shoulders dropped her.

Her lungs filled and she jerked her feet free and rolled away, scrambling up onto her knees, groping for a stone, a branch, anything with which to fucking
hit
somebody.

Marsali was breathing hard, teeth clenched, Brianna’s knife in her hand. Brianna’s eyes were still watering, but she made out Joanie and Fizzy on the bank above, each with a melon in her hands, and as she struggled to her feet, Félicité flung her melon as hard as she could. It struck the ground well short of the young men but rolled slowly downhill, coming to rest at the foot of a shrub of some kind.

The vandals roared with laughter, one of them dancing toward Marsali, feinting as though to grab the knife, slapping at her with his other hand as she hesitated.

Bree had got her body back and she rose, a solid rock in one hand, and pasted the jerk who’d held her ankles in the back with it, as hard as she could. The rock thunked home and he made a high-pitched noise and dropped to his knees, cursing breathlessly.

His friend looked back and forth between Marsali and Brianna, then stepped away, careless.

“You best tell your husband to mend his ways and mind what he prints in that paper, missus,” he said to Marsali. The glee of destruction had left him, though the anger hadn’t. He waved a hand at the girls, pressed close together in the shade of a willow. “You got a passel o’ punkin-headed young’uns. Might be as you could spare one, eh?”

Without warning, he darted forward and kicked the melon on the ground, bursting it into juice, seeds, and broken shards.

Brianna was frozen again, but so was everyone. After a long, long moment, the young man she’d hit with the rock got to his feet, gave her an evil look, then jerked his head at his friend. They turned and left, pausing only to pick up the canvas bag and shake the pulp of smashed tomatoes out onto the ground.

ROGER STEPPED OUT OF
the Reverend Selverson’s house into the sound of drums. He was in such a flurry of spirits that for a moment he had no notion of what he was hearing, nor why. But as he stood blinking in the light, he saw a Continental soldier come round the corner and walk toward him, not marching, merely walking in a business-like way, a large drum slung to the side, so as not to impede his stride, and his cadence every bit as pedestrian as his aspect.

A sense of motion in the streets, unhurried footsteps, and as the drummer passed him without a glance, he saw men coming round the same corner, some in uniform, strolling and talking in small groups, and he realized that they were coming from Half-Moon Street, from the taverns and eating houses. This was the evening drum—
surely it’s not called “reveille” at night? Oh, no; it’s “retreat”
—that summoned soldiers to return to their quarters, to eat, and to rest at end of day.

The printshop was in the St. Michael district, while the Reverend Selverson’s house was on the other side of the city. That’s why he hadn’t noticed the evening drum before; the army camp was on this side.

Even with this explanation, he felt a certain stirring at the sound of the drum. And why shouldn’t he? he thought. He was being summoned, too. Smiling at the thought, he put on his hat and stepped into the street.

He didn’t go back to the printshop at once, eager though he was to tell Bree his good news. He needed to be alone for a bit, to open his overflowing heart to God, and make a minister’s promises.

In late afternoon, the heat of the day had pressed the town flat. Only his joy could have made him oblivious to it; even so, the air was like breathing melted butter and he made his way to the waterfront, hoping for a breeze. The waterfront was never deserted, at any hour of the day or night, but at this time of day, most of the ships at anchor in the harbor had been unloaded, their goods receipted, the customs paid, and the sweating longshoremen retired to the nearest place of refreshment—which happened to be the Half-Moon tavern. He was tempted to slake his thirst before embarking on his private devotions—he hadn’t been unloading ships in this heat, thank God, but he wasn’t used to the coast and its tropical fugs, either—but there were priorities.

His priorities suddenly altered when he saw Fergus, who stood at the end of the quay, looking out across the water, this shimmering under the low sun like the surface of a magic mirror.

He heard Roger’s footsteps and turned to greet him, smiling.

“Comment ça va?”

“Ça va,”
Roger replied nonchalantly, but then broke into an enormous involuntary grin.

“Ça va très bien?”
Fergus asked.

“More
bien
than you can imagine,” Roger assured him, and Fergus clapped him on the shoulder.

“I knew it would be well,” he said, and then, digging his hand into his pocket, he came out with a handful of coins and folded warehouse certificates. “Half of this is yours—to buy a new black coat,” he said, looking critically at Roger’s present garment. “And a white neckcloth with the—” His hand and hook both smoothed his upper chest, indicating the presence of a Presbyterian minister’s white lappets.

Roger stared at the money, then at Fergus. “You made book on my passing the interview? What were the odds?”

“Five to three.
Pas mal.
Will you be ordained here, then?” He frowned slightly. “It should be all right if it’s soon.”

“I think it will be in North Carolina, maybe at Davy Caldwell’s church—or maybe here, if we can get enough elders to come. But what do you think is about to happen?”

“I am a
journaliste,
” Fergus said, with a slight shrug. His eyes were fixed on the masts of a distant ship, anchored out in the harbor beyond the river. “People talk to me. I know a few things that I would not put into the newspaper.”

“Such as?” Roger’s heart, still happy, had given an extra thump.

Fergus turned his back on the shimmering water and gave the quay a quick, casual—but very thorough—glance.

“I managed at last to get Monsieur Faucette more or less to himself, and while he was somewhat elevated in spirit, he was still making sense. Have you heard of the island of Saint Eustatius?”

“Vaguely. It’s out there somewhere.” He waved an arm in the general direction of what he thought was the West Indies.

“Oui,”
Fergus said patiently. “It belongs to the Dutch. And the Dutch make and sell arms—on Saint Eustatius. Monsieur Faucette was born on the island and calls there regularly. His mother is a Dutchwoman and he has family there still.”

“So you knew Monsieur Faucette, and he—”

“Non.”
Fergus shook his head. “I knew a shark fisherman from Martinique. He was caught up in a bad storm and his boat damaged; one of the merchantmen picked him up and they brought him here.”

Roger’s elation of spirit didn’t disappear, but it receded quickly from the front of his mind. He and Brianna had discussed both the necessity of telling Fergus and Marsali what the future held—
might
hold, he corrected himself uneasily—and when might be the best time to do that. In the joyous flurry of reunion and the heart-stopping imminence of his interview with the presbytery (the memory made his heart bounce high, in spite of the impending conversation), neither of them had wanted to venture onto the perilous ground of prediction…but clearly, it was time.

“When?” Roger asked warily. He was trying to recall the exact sequence of events that Frank Randall had described. The Siege of Savannah was going to happen soon—in early October—but was going to fail, remaining in British hands. But then came the Siege of Charles Town, and that one was going to succeed—leaving that city also in British hands.

“I spoke with him a week ago,” Fergus said, and smiled. “I bought the story of his adventures for sixpence, and we became friends. I bought him rum and we became
frères de coeur.
He spoke only French, you see, and while that is not uncommon here, real French people are. He hadn’t talked freely with anyone for six months.”

“And what did he freely tell you?” Roger’s fizz had died down again, pushed into the background by curiosity—and a small sense of dread.

“That he spoke a ship somewhere in the Windward Islands—a sloop, he said, a private boat. They had hauled to—are you impressed at my knowledge of nautical terms?”

“Very,” Roger said, smiling.

“Well, it was a lot of rum we drank.” Fergus glanced wistfully at the Half-Moon, but he also had priorities and turned back to Roger.

“Anyway, they had stopped to catch fish; there were schools of…tunny fish, I believe he said. The owner of the sloop drank rum with him, too, and told him that the French were sending a fleet in support of the Americans; he had seen the fleet and heard about them in a bar on Barbados—” He waved his hook, seeing Roger’s expression. “Don’t ask me how word came to be there; you know how gossip works.

“And,” he went on, “that their plan was to go to New York but that they were aware of the British’s machinations, to sever Philadelphia and Boston and New York from their food, so to speak.” He gestured with his hook from the nearby warehouses to a stretch of ripening fields across the river.

“So if it should happen that the British were already coming south, D’Estaing—he’s the French admiral,” he explained, “D’Estaing will sail at once to the south. And if what he told me is correct, the French ships will come
here.
”

Roger swallowed and wished he’d listened to his baser urges and had that drink first. “Actually,” he said, “they’re going to Savannah. The Americans are going to attack Savannah. Quite soon.”

Both of Fergus’s dark brows quirked up at that. Roger coughed.

“So that’s where the French are going,” Roger said. “To support General Lincoln’s troops at—”

“But General Lincoln is
here
!”

Roger waved a hand, still coughing.

“For the moment,” he agreed. “And he’ll leave a garrison here, of course. But he’s taking a lot of men to Savannah. They won’t succeed, though,” he finished, feeling apologetic. “But
then
they’ll come back here. And then General Cornwallis—I think it’s Cornwallis—will be coming down from New York. Clinton and Cornwallis will besiege the city and take it. And…erm…I’m thinking that perhaps you and Marsali might think of not being here when that happens?”

Fergus’s eyes were as close to round as they could possibly get.

“I mean,” Roger said. “It’s not like you can easily hide.”

That made Fergus smile, just a little.

“I have not forgotten how to become invisible,” he assured Roger. “But it’s much more difficult to make a wife and five children disappear. And I cannot leave Marsali to run the newspaper alone, not with two infants to feed and the town alive with soldiers.” He wiped a sleeve across his sweat-shiny face, blew out his cheeks, and sat down on a stack of white-dusted crates crudely labeled
Guano
with a slapdash brush.

“So.” He gave Roger a sidelong glance. “You are telling me that the British will possess
both
Savannah and Charles Town?”

“For a while. Not permanently—I mean, you, er,
we
will in fact win the war. But not for another two years.”

He saw Fergus’s throat move as he swallowed and the hairs rise on his lean forearms, bared by turned-back sleeves.

“You…um…Bree said she thought you…er…knew,” he said carefully. “About—Claire, I mean. And, um, us.” He sat down beside Fergus on the crate, careful to lift the skirts of his black coat away from the white dust.

Fergus shook his head—not in negation, but as one trying to shake its contents into some pattern resembling sense.

“As I said,” he replied, the smile returning briefly to his eyes, “I know a lot of things I don’t publish in the newspaper.” He straightened up, hand—and hook—on his knees.

“I was with milord and milady during the Rising, and you know”—he raised a brow in question—“that milord hired me in Paris, to steal letters for him? I read them—and I heard milord and milady talk. In private.” A brief smile twitched his mouth and disappeared.

“I didn’t truly believe it, of course. Not until the morning before the battle, when milord gave me the Deed of Sasine to Lallybroch and bade me take it to his sister. And then, of course…milady vanished.” His voice was soft, and Roger could see what he hadn’t realized before—the depth of Fergus’s feeling for Claire, the first mother he remembered. “But milord would never say that she was dead. He didn’t talk about her—but when someone pushed him—”

“His sister?” Thought of Jenny made Roger smile. So did Fergus.

“Yes. He would never say that she was dead. Only…that she was gone.”

“And then she came back,” Roger said quietly.

“Oui.”
Fergus looked at him, thoughtfully examining his face, as though to make sure of the man he was talking to. “And plainly, Brianna and you are…what milady is.” A thought struck him, and his eyes widened. “
Les enfants.
Are they…?”

“Yes. Both of them.”

Fergus said something in French that was well beyond Roger’s ability to translate, and then fell silent, thinking. He reached absently between the buttons of his shirt, and Roger realized that he was touching the small medal of St. Dismas that he always wore. The patron saint of thieves.

Roger turned away, to give him some privacy, and looked out across the river, then farther, to the harbor itself and the invisible sea beyond. Oddly enough, the sense of peace with which he’d left the Reverend Selverson’s house was still with him, immanent in the drifting clouds of a mackerel sky, just going pink round the edges, and the quiet lapping of the water against the pilings beneath them.

Immanent, too, in the still figure of Fergus, hook gleaming on his knee and his shadow growing long across the quay.
My brother. Thank you for him,
Roger thought toward God.
Thank you for all the souls you’ve put in my hand. Help me take care of them.

“Well, then.” Fergus sat up straight and reached into his bosom for a large ink-stained handkerchief, with which he wiped his face. “Wilmington, do you think? Or New Bern?”

“I’m not sure.” Roger sat down beside him on the crate and took out his own handkerchief, freshly washed this morning, now grubby with the day’s efforts. “There weren’t a lot of Scots there…” He broke off and cleared his throat. It was harsh with so much talking today, and explaining Frank—let alone his book—was well beyond his powers at the moment. “I think perhaps the British had a go at New Bern—some officer named Craig, he was Scottish—but if so, it’ll be quite late in the war.”

“Scots?” Fergus raised one brow at that, then brushed it away. “
C’est bien faite.
Perhaps Wilmington, then. Do you know when the British will arrive here?”

Roger shook his head.

“In the spring sometime, May, maybe. I don’t remember exactly when.”

Fergus sucked his lower lip for a moment, then nodded, decision made. He took his hand away from the medal.

“Perhaps Wilmington, then. But not yet.” He stood up and stretched himself, lean body arched toward the sky.