Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone (Outlander, #9)

by Diana Gabaldon

there was no further conversation between me and Jamie about Frank’s book. And if anyone stood behind me, he was considerate enough to give me elbow room.

One of them was a woman, and her posture—arms folded and head bent, but in a way that suggested not submission, but a barely restrained urge to butt her interlocutor in the nose—argued that here was The Boss.

“But each one of us is called to live our lives in the smaller moments; to do kindness, to risk our feelings, to take a chance on someone else, to meet the needs of the people we care for. Because God is everywhere, and lives in all of us. Those small moments are His. And He will make of those small things glory…and let His…greatness…shine in…in you.”

“Ye’ll do fine, lass,” Jamie said to Rachel, patting her shoulder as he turned to go in. “Oh, I don’t mean to do anything,” she assured him. “Unless I am moved by the spirit to speak, in which case, I imagine I’ll say something suitable.” “That doesna necessarily mean she willna start a stramash,” Ian muttered in my ear. “The spirit tends to be very free wi’ its opinions.”

She nodded toward the trees. “He’s angry.” “He’s Scottish,” I amended, with a sigh. “Which means stubborn. Also unreasonable, intolerant, contumelious, froward, pigheaded, and a few other objectionable things.

What would I say to him, he wondered, if I should find myself called to accompany a man to his execution? He’d seen men killed, seen people die, certainly; much too often. But these were natural—if sometimes sudden and catastrophic—deaths. Surely it was different, a healthy man, sound of body, filled with life, and facing the imminent prospect of being deprived of that life by the decree of the state. Worse, having one’s death presented as a morally elevating public spectacle. It struck Roger suddenly that he’d been publicly executed, and the milk and French toast shifted at the sudden memory. Aye, well…so was Jesus, wasn’t He? He didn’t know where that thought had come from—it felt like something Jamie would say, logical and reasonable—but it flooded him at once with unexpected feeling. It was one thing to know Christ as God and Savior and all the other capital-letter things that went with that. It was another to realize with shocking clarity that, bar the nails, he knew exactly how Jesus of Nazareth had felt. Alone. Betrayed, terrified, wrenched away from those he loved, and wanting with every atom of one’s being to stay alive. Well, now you know what you’d say to a condemned man on his way to the gallows, don’t you? He was sitting there in the hot sunshine, trying to digest everything from French toast to the revelations of memory, when the printshop door opened beside him.