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

by Diana Gabaldon

“Yes, imbécile,” Cinnamon replied mildly. “I know. Didn’t you tell me that the last time you were in the army you got hit on the head by a German deserter and thrown into a ravine, where you almost died and had to be rescued by your Scottish cousin that you hate?”

Points to John😂

“Mind yourself, and do what my sister tells you.” Cinnamon widened his eyes and crossed himself. “You think I would dare to do otherwise?” he said. “That is a fearsome woman. Beautiful,” he added thoughtfully, “but large and dangerous. And besides, I want my portrait to look like me. If I made her angry…” He crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth.

winter quarters in New Jersey.

Was 1779 Jockey Hollow? I never remember, need to look it up.

“I know you will, Willie,” he said, with affection. “Thank you.”

Hal still calls him Willie, seems fitting for him, Harold!

That’s why he’d stopped. Because it had suddenly occurred to him that what he was doing might in fact cause someone real to be born. And that it somehow wasn’t right that he should oblige that someone to take on burdens that were—rightfully or not—his own to bear.

And where have we heard this before? Oh yes, Grandda Brian Fraser's early lessons to Jamie - variations on a theme.

“Goodness, young man,” he said reprovingly. “ ’Tisn’t manners to shout indoors. That’s what I was always taught as a young’un.”

Jesus, grant Willie patience🙂🙃🙂

Morristown.

Yes! It was Jockey Hollow, just drove past there a couple weeks ago and said we haven't gone there for several years. Wonder if Diana will work Tempe Wick into the story? She and William can talk horses 😉

a large mansion near the edge of town.

The Ford Mansion

Thanking his informant, he strode to the head of one line and, tipping his hat to the person at the door, pushed his way inside as though he had a right to be there.

“He’s at Jockey Hollow today,” he said. “Probably at the Wick House, but might be among the cabins.”

New Jersey history 🤷‍♀️

“Where is the Wick House?”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jockey_Hollow

William made a low sound that wasn’t quite a growl.

She looked admiringly up William’s body, and he smiled at her. “I’ll take you!”

Lol! If it was the show she would offer him pie🥧

“Hallo, Ben,” he said flatly.

Aha! I was hoping it was him

“That would be General Bleeker to you, sir.”

Daammmmmmnnn

William thought she might either burst into tears or brain Denzell with the poker, which was near at hand.

Large gaps showed where meat had been taken away—to feed the officers occupying Wick House, he supposed, and wondered how Washington proposed to feed his troops through the winter. From his hasty appraisal of the camp-building in the hollow, there must be nearly ten thousand men here—many more than he’d thought.

Hence the later revolt by some PA and then NJ troops

“How the fuck dare you?” William said, fury rising suddenly out of nowhere. “Never mind being a traitor, you’re a fucking coward! You couldn’t just change your coat and be straight about it—oh, no! You had to pretend to be fucking dead, and kill your father with grief—and what do you think your mother will feel when she hears it?”

“I repeat—none of your business. It wasn’t political, though,” he added, and wondered briefly why he had.

“You pompous twat.” The urge to hit Ben was growing stronger. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to go round smelling like a smoked ham, even if you don’t mind.”

“Amaranthus,” he said suddenly, and Ben flinched. He bloody flinched, the lousy poltroon!

“Do tell,” said William, with as much sarcasm as he could manage. “Was it her idea to pretend you were dead? I can’t say I blame her, if so.”

“Someone did,” William said, anger hot in his chest. “I did, you bastard! I dug up the body in that grave, in the middle of the night, in the fucking rain. If you hadn’t picked a thief to bury in your stead, you might have got away with it, damn you—and I wish to God you had!”

“You want to know?” William’s voice came low and venomous, and he leaned toward Ben, fists clenched. “You want to know what I’ve had to do with her?”

Ben was shorter and slighter, but he had the Grey family’s inclination to fight like badgers and count the cost later. William crashed backward onto one of the big guns, Ben at his throat, and heard the blue coat rip as his cousin tried seriously to throttle him. William was furious; Ben was insane.

“A saboteur,” Ben rasped, and spat blood. It struck one of the cannon and dripped slowly down the cold iron curve, falling onto William’s wrist. “Take him to the stockade. He’s to speak to no one. Take him, I said!”

Oh fucking A, not again, Buck and Roger take 2

“And you couldn’t think of anything better than to call me a saboteur,” he said aloud to his cousin. “That’ll make everybody curious, you nit.”

“Moaning loudly and soiling thyself will be adequate, I think.”

But he’d had enough of lies and lying, and he’d be damned if he lied now to himself. She’d made a fool of him and damn near dragged him into her web.

The feel of sand underfoot and the sight of his own footprints, long and high-arched, like a series of commas following him down the beach,

He didn’t care who he was—but he wasn’t the Earl of Ellesmere. He’d have to do something about that, but not now.

so his da had let him stay, now curled up next to Da on the settle, warmed by the fire and the heat of his father’s solid body, the big hand that wasn’t holding a whisky glass resting absently on Jamie’s back.

Jamie smiled to himself, hearing the two of them talking, clear as day, and feeling in his bones the memory of the comfort of sleep coming for him, wrapped in the warmth of the firelit room at Lallybroch.

Strange to think of this man, this Ferguson, minding his own business somewhere just this minute, having no notion what was coming for him. But you know the same is coming for you. A strange quivering ran down the backs of his legs, and he tensed his back and curled his fists to make it stop. “Nay, I don’t,” he said defiantly to the shade of Frank Randall. “Ye’ve not been here; ye won’t be here. I’m no going to believe you just because ye wrote it down, aye?”

“A life joyful, satisfied,” he murmured to himself, and let peace fill him.

Their names, according to Mandy, were Moo-Moo and Pinky, but Jemmy had been browsing my Merck Manual and had nicknamed them Leprosy and Rosacea.

At the moment, he was calling the red one something in Gaelic that I translated roughly as “Misbegotten daughter of a venomous caterpillar,” but I supposed that I might be missing the finer shades.

“Nic na galladh!” he said, jerking back and shaking his hand. In the scrum and poor light, he’d accidentally shoved his hand into the wrong orifice, and was now flapping his arm to dislodge a coating of very wet, fresh manure. He caught sight of my face and pointed a slimy, menacing finger at me. “Laugh, and I’ll rub your face in it, Sassenach.” I put my bandaged hand solemnly over my mouth, though I was quivering internally. He snorted, wiped his filthy hand on his shirt, and bent again to his labors, muttering execrations. Within moments, though, the execrations had turned to urgent prayers. He’d got the feet.

The fecund smell of the byre, the swamp of blood and birthwater, brought back that night out of time in a small cabin, the endless effort, and the timeless forever when I held a small blue light in my hands, praying with heart and soul for it not to go out. I swallowed.

“A nice bit of work there, man,” he said to Jamie, nodding approvingly at Rosy and her calf, the latter looking round-eyed and bewildered, its hair swirled in all directions. “Near as good as your wife’s.”

“You had the old witch there; I couldn’t’ve spoke before her.”

Lol!!!

There’s a redcoat officer named Ferguson, set to go to and fro in the mountains, raising Loyalist militias and arresting rebels, hangin’ men and burning houses. Cunningham’s wrote Ferguson a letter, naming your name and saying he ought to come here with his troops, ’cuz you a king beaver ’mongst the rebels and your pelt would be worth the trouble to take it.”

I’d been trying to distract my mind by reading The Two Towers, which Jamie had left by the bed, but kept imagining Captain Cunningham as Shelob in a gold-laced hat and wondering whether I might nickname my syringe Sting.

Mr. Cloudtree had departed, full of whisky and pickle, with a sealed note—written in Gaelic and carefully unsigned, in case of interception or indiscretion—in his pocket,

“I dinna ken,” Jamie admitted. He rubbed both hands over his face, then shook his head, leaving his hair rumpled and flyaway, short hairs rising from his crown, red in the firelight.

“Oh, good,” she said, and the line between her brows eased a bit. “So after you start a small war over the Treaty Line, the captain will just have to kill you all by himself.” Jamie shrugged. He hadn’t thought that far, but it didn’t matter. “He can try.” She didn’t look much less worried, but she smiled at him, despite herself. Seeing that made him want suddenly and urgently to have her, and it plainly showed on his face, for her smile deepened—though her sidewise glance at the door convinced him that she wasn’t going to let him bend her over the table and try to finish before wee Aggie came in.

when I came up to our bedroom, I found him facing away from me, on the far side of the room. He didn’t turn round; I thought perhaps he hadn’t heard me come in. His face was reflected in the window he stood in front of, but I could see that he wasn’t looking at his reflection. He wasn’t looking anywhere. His eyes were fixed and full of darkness, and his fingers moved swiftly, twitching buttons free, unwinding his neckcloth, loosening his breeches—all as though he were somewhere else, completely unaware of what his hands were doing. He was preparing to fight.

“Ye look as though ye’ve seen a ghost, Sassenach,” he said, in a voice that was almost normal. “I ken I’ve aged a bit, but surely it’s none sae bad as all that?” “You’d scare the Devil himself,” I said. I wasn’t joking, and he knew it. “I know,” he said simply. “I was remembering how it was, just before the charge. At Drumossie. Folk were shouting and I could see the gunna mòr across the field, but it didna mean anything. I was shedding my clothes, because there was nothing left but draw my sword and run across the moor. I kent I’d never make it to the other side, and I didna care.”