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

by Diana Gabaldon

“Do they, er, hear you?” He shook his head. “Nay, I asked. She says I’m a different color in her head. She kens when I’m near her, but canna feel me at a distance.” “What color are you?” I asked, fascinated. He made a small sound of amusement. “Water,” he said.

“You should ask Jem if that’s what he thinks,” I said, and slid my fingers between his, pressing his fingers back to stretch the knuckles. “I will,” he said, with a slightly odd note in his voice. “If I see him again.”

“If I die this week, I’d ask ye three things, a nighean,” he said quietly. “Three things that I want. Will ye give them to me?”

find a priest and have a Mass said for my soul.”

I’ll stick it out in Purgatory ’til ye manage. I’ve been there before; it’s none sae bad.”

“Wee Davy,” he said. “Amanda says that he’s like me. The color o’ water. He’s not the same as she and Jem are…and I think that maybe means he canna pass through the stones.”

“I’ve said this before, but I say it now again, and I mean it. If I’m dead, ye should all go back. If it should be that Davy canna travel, give him to Rachel and Young Ian. They’ll love him wi’ all their hearts and keep him safe.” I wanted to say, “I love you with all my heart—and I can’t keep you safe.”

“You said three things,” I said at last. My voice was hoarse. “What’s the third?” He let go of my hand and opened my fingers, as I’d done for him a few moments before, but his fingertips traced the lines of my palm and rested at the base of my thumb, where the letter J had nearly faded into my skin. “Remember me,” he whispered.

But dreams don’t always tell the truth; he’d had dreams of Culloden many, many times over the years—and yet none of his dreams had shown him how Murtagh died or given him the peace of knowing that he’d killed Jack Randall.

Claire stirred and huddled closer and he put a hand on her, patting her as he might reassure a dog who’d just heard thunder in the distance.

Does he travel about with a dozen nooses, just in case of need?

Cleveland was a brute, but so far as Jamie knew, he’d never killed a woman, save perhaps by crushing her to death by lying on her.

a good bit of what Claire called argy-bargy was going on.

It had been a long time since he’d fought with an army,

Only 2 yrs 😉

Young Ian appeared at Jamie’s shoulder. He’d painted his face at dawn, and Jamie saw Roger Mac notice it and blink.

“Keep Claire with ye,” he said to Roger,

Yeah sure

in Jamie’s mind there echoed another voice: Frank Randall’s. The forces were nearly equal, though Ferguson’s troops numbered over a thousand, as compared with the nine hundred Patriots attacking him.

“Ye’ll do most good comin’ in when folk will need ye most,” he’d said to us both, in the firm tone that meant he expected to be obeyed. My face must have expressed what I was thinking, for he glanced at me, smiled involuntarily, and looked down.

Roger did the same—minus the droppings—climbing

🤣🤣🤣💀

“YE’LL HELP NOBODY if ye’re dead, and ye may be useful if ye’re not. Ye may be God’s henchman, but ye’ll follow my orders for now. Stay here until it’s time.”

Jamie looked after them, then turned suddenly and pressed his hand over the cross on Roger’s breast. “Pray for me,” he said in a low voice, and then was gone.

Like callin’ in a pack of sheepdogs, he thought.

Great now I see Babe 🐖

“Auntie!” Young Ian appeared suddenly, grasping my arm. “What are ye doing here? Are ye all right? What have ye done wi’ Roger Mac?”

What a question!

The large snake that had bitten him was writhing round his leg in panic, and he flung himself away, kicking out in his own panic. The first bullet struck him in the chest.

Goddammit another snake. Would he have been shot without it?? What kind?

“Tell me where you fucking got this, or so help me God I will beat you to death with it!”

“How much of this blood is yours?” I demanded.

Frequent question

“All of it.” His eyes were closed, his lips barely moving. “Bloody fucking hell. Where are you hit?” “Everywhere.”

DIfferent answer than usual

“Dinna…fash, Sass…” He wheezed deeply.

🥺

“Do you think I’m just going to sit here and watch you die by inches?” “Aye.” His eyes closed, and the word was no more than a whisper. His lips were white. He sounded completely certain about it, and the fear that was swarming over my skin burrowed suddenly inward and seized my heart with its claws.

His face was closed and white and the rumble of the crowds reached me like distant thunder from a clear blue sky. I felt the sound move through me and I fixed my mind on the blue, vast and empty, patient, peaceful—waiting for him.

BLUE. IT’S NOT empty. It’s beautiful.

Jamie?

I knew it was the Hail Mary and realized slowly that I had the vision of a vast blue space in my mind. “Blue, like the Virgin’s cloak…”

“Ye can’t die, mate. Presbyterians don’t do Last Rites.” I might have laughed, if I’d had any breath to spare. My hands and arms were red to the elbows.

BLUE. So beautiful. It’s not empty.

I felt it, though, when he knelt by Jamie and laid a hand on him. Something flickered through him and through me, and I breathed it in like oxygen.

Suddenly I was aware that there was something warm and round in my mouth, a metal taste, stronger than blood. I coughed, lifted my head enough to spit, and found that it was a musket ball, warm from his body.

Wtf

Young Ian rested a hand on my shoulder, tentative, not sure what he should do, but he was there. There. A solid shape with no form, glowing with a fractured light; Ian was hurt, but not badly, I could feel his strength pulse and fade, pulse and fade…

“The battle’s over. You’re not dead.” He regarded me for a long moment, his mouth slightly open. “Not…yet,” he said, in what I thought was a rather grudging tone.

But if I’m going to die by your hand, I want to be awake.” My hands were shaking; I folded them under my apron, both to hide the trembling and to control the urge to throttle him.

He immediately sat up and swung his feet off the table, apparently intending to make a break for it, cracked kneecap or no.

“Lie down, Uncle,” he said soothingly, tightening the choke hold and pulling Jamie back against him. “It will be all right. Auntie Claire willna kill ye, and if by accident she does, Roger Mac’s a proper minister now and he’ll give ye a fine funeral.”

“If you lie down by yourself, I’ll put you out before they tie you,” I said. “And I’ll untie you as soon as I’ve finished the surgery. I won’t let you wake up bound. I promise.”

🥺

“Aye, well. I’ve been a gambler since I was wee. I suppose this is no time to quit.”

A boiled napkin lay on the counter behind me, displaying four narrow strips of hammered gold. Bree had made them and had painstakingly bored the tiny holes I would use to screw them to the bone—the steel screws courtesy of Jenny’s watch, offered immediately when I asked.

That was what I was happiest about; he’d fought me, and even though he’d been forced to give in, he wasn’t giving up his right to be cranky about it.

Probably Fanny had made it; she was the best of the family bakers.

fetched his stick from the corner where he’d thrown it last night,

I hadn’t revisited those memories in a long time. I didn’t want them back now, either—but it was actually a small comfort to remember that they’d happened…and that I’d survived being uprooted, losing everything I’d known and loved—and yet, I’d bloomed anew.

My hair was white. Jamie had told me my hair was the color of moonlight, once, but then it was no more than streaks of white around my face. It was not entirely white now; the mass of curls that foamed around my shoulders was still a mix of brown and blond and silver—but the newer growth above my ears was a pure and simple white that shimmered in the morning sun.