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

by Diana Gabaldon

“Aye,” he said, a little gruffly, but then he gave me a half smile and the Scottish lad showed through the tattoos. “Maybe another wolf will come find me, sometime.”

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.

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 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 see...

The bond Jamie and Rachel have is lovely, one of my favorite aspects of having her introduced to the plot.

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.

He’d seen those feet and those bursten shoon before—and likewise the dead, broad face, hairy jaw slack and eyes half open, dull and sticky under their lids. Seen it covered with dirt as he filled in the grave, shoveling fast lest he vomit again.

“Ye thought ye might ken him, Uncle?” Ian was looking at him from the opposite side of the table, interested. “I thought that, too.” “Did ye, indeed,” Jamie said, and the pressure in his chest was back. He resisted the urge to turn and look outside. Instead, he said in the Gàidhlig, “A man ye might have seen by firelight once before?” Ian nodded, his gaze steady, and replied in the same language. “The man whose filth defiled your fair one? Yes.” That was as much a shock as finding Ian here, and it must have shown on his face, for Ian grimaced, then looked apologetic. “Janet Murray’s your sister, bràthair-mhàthair, but she’s my mother.” Dropping back into English, he added, “I’ll no say she canna keep secrets, for she does. But if she sees reason to speak, then ye’re going to hear what she has to say. She told me some weeks ago, when I came to say I was going to Beardsley’s trading post, and did she want anything. She told me to keep an eye out for the fellow.”

“Ye didna look like ye needed help, but I said the prayer for ye, Uncle—for a warrior goin’ out.” The knot between Jamie’s shoulder blades relaxed a bit. He found it oddly comforting to know that he had not in fact gone alone on that journey, even though he’d not known it at the time.

“No man is objective about Claire,” Jamie said. “I mean—they’re just not.”

“I wish Jane would haunt me.” The words weren’t much above a whisper, but I heard it clearly enough, and my heart clenched. The memory of that sort of wish—the bone-deep need to have contact of any sort, a longing that harrowed the soul, a hollowness that could never be filled—struck me so hard that I couldn’t speak. Jamie had haunted me—in spite of all my efforts to forget, to immerse myself in the life I had. Would I have found the strength to come back, if he hadn’t remained as a constant presence in my heart, my dreams?

I saw a tall black figure hastening toward the house, skirts and cloak flying in the wind. “You and your little dog, too,” I murmured, and risked a glance at the forest, in case of flying monkeys.

I supposed she must have seen it done on ships—that had to have been the source of the language she was using while I maneuvered the humerus into the correct angle. Fanny snorted with amusement at “grass-combing son of a buggering sod!” as I rotated the arm and the head of the humerus popped back into place. “It’s been a long time since I heard language like that,” Fanny said, her lips twitching.

“I’m not sure whether by my ‘condition’ you mean injured or intoxicated, but in either case, thank you.”

“My husband is the Fraser of Fraser’s Ridge,” I said. “If there should ever be…an emergency of some kind that compelled some of the tenants to leave their homes, they could take temporary refuge here. I’ve had that happen before,” I added. “Had refugees in my kitchen—in the old house, I mean—for months. Worse than cockroaches.”

“Here.” Jamie pulled one of the pistols from his belt and handed it to his sister. Who—to Rachel’s surprise—merely nodded and pointed it at a broken wagon wheel left at the side of the road, checking the sight. “Powder?” Jenny asked, sliding the pistol into her belt. “Here.” Jamie took a cartridge box off his neck and swung the strap of it carefully over Jenny’s white cap. “Ye’ve enough powder and shot to kill a dozen men, and six fresh-made cartridges to give ye a head start.”

Rachel put on a brave face when Jamie bent and kissed her forehead in farewell. “Fare thee well, daughter,” he said softly. “I will see thee safe again.” A smile creased his eyes, and brief as it was, it gave her soul enough peace that she could smile back.

“Mrs. Fraser?

Why Mrs now? What about Friend Claire or just Claire? More weirdness and editing inconsistencies.

Mrs. Fraser

Again🙄

he strongly suspected Amanda, she being the only one of the children who could lie convincingly.

The one time where she's not mini-Claire LOL

He wouldn’t dream of showing gold in a place like this; ne’er-do-wells and chancers would be following him back to the Ridge like Claire’s bees after sunflowers.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach?” “Do I sound like I’m all right? I’ve broken a metatarsal.” “I’ll buy ye a new one next time I go into Salisbury,” he assured me, letting go of my elbow.

These two...🥰

“I brought a few bottles of good wine from Salisbury; I expect one o’ those would make your foot feel better.” It did. It made Jamie feel better, too. I could see that he’d come home carrying something, and I felt a small knot below my own heart. He’d tell me when he was ready.

“I dinna think I want to ken anything about any woman other than you, Sassenach. After all these years. Why, though?”

THE BENEFICIAL EFFECTS of half a bottle of wine were sufficient to get me up the stairs with Jamie’s supportive elbow, and I emerged into the open space of the third floor with a sense of exhilaration. There was a strong, cold breeze blowing from the east, and it swept away the last remnants of cooking, dog, sweaty young men, and left-too-long laundry from the house below. I spread my arms and my shawl flared out behind me like wings, my skirts pressed flapping round my legs.

“Dinna be afraid, Sassenach,” he said at last. “There’s still the two of us.”

hadn’t seen Hebrew writing any time in the last forty-five years, but I recognized

With lamb??? (Quick math- 1981-45 = 1936 that's before the war)

“She’s likely bringing us something from her mother,” I said. “Aye, she is.” Jamie’s eyes were fixed on her, interested. “Herself.” He glanced down at Fanny, who wore a slight frown. “Frances is right, Sassenach. Something’s happened, and the lass has left home.”

“Yes’m,” Fanny said. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Agnes since she’d entered the house, and was still eyeing her as though suspecting she might have come to steal the spoons, but she got up at once and went to get the pie.

Fanny got up suddenly, came over to Agnes, and squatted down in front of her. She took Agnes’s hand in both of hers and patted it. “Can you cook?” she asked hopefully.

Judith MacCutcheon says the scar on his cheek is an M, and that stands for ‘Murderer.’ I think I’d be afraid to lie with a man who’s killed someone.” “It’s easier than you think, child,” I said under my breath, recalling this.

I kept them to prove to myself that I was, in fact, accomplishing something, though if I looked over my shoulder, it was apparent that the weeds were gaining on me. Jamie referred to the little heaps as my scalps—which, while he meant it to be funny, was actually not wrong.

Joanie giggled and said something in Gaelic that Brianna interpreted as a speculation as to whether her sister’s head was filled with parritch.

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.

So more than Ch 134 of moby

“You…um…Bree said she thought you…er…knew,” he said carefully. “About—Claire, I mean. And, um, us.”

“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.

Oddly enough,” he added, holding out his glass for whatever was being poured at the moment, “it was your da who made the difference.” “As he often does,” Brianna said dryly. “What on earth did he do this time?”

“He didn’t care. That’s what he was trying to make me do—try to kill him—so I’d believe I couldn’t do it, and so I’d have to believe that I couldn’t have done it. He humiliated me and he scared me and he didn’t mind if I hated him for it, as long as I understood that it wasn’t my fault.

A Fraser in an unleashed temper was a substance to be treated with caution, whether it was Mandy or Jamie.

“Do you know this Beauchamp?” Roger asked curiously. The name rang a faint bell. “He can’t be a relative of Claire’s, can he?” Fergus gave him a startled glance. “Surely not,” he said, though his tone wasn’t quite that sure. “It isn’t an uncommon French name. But, yes, I know him.”

“J’ai connu une jeune fille de ce nom Amélie,” Fergus said. “Mais elle est morte.”

But the last time he was seen was more than twenty years ago, and the circumstances of his disappearance so remarkable that the probability that he really is dead this time is sufficient that a magistrate would undoubtedly declare him to be defunct,

Mmhmm, DIA; Seven Stones/Space Between has more details

before skipping off down the hall—which, he saw, was not unlike that of the house they had just come from, though the art on display was considerably better.

Percy's art must be inferior!

“Actually, no. I just thought he was a, um, Frenchman. Ornamental, you know?”

Better than a gargoyle, as in Voyager

“A person who has lived like that for a long time ceases to believe that they have any value beyond what someone will pay for.” Roger was silent, thinking not so much of the recent Percival Beauchamp but of Fergus—and of Jane and Fanny Pocock.

Fergus has always has doubts, but little by little overcame most, but Henri-Christian brought many back

These crétins offer me ridiculous daydreams. But”—he raised a monitory hook to stop Roger butting in—“they do have money, and they do mean business. I just don’t know what sort of business, and the guardian angel on my shoulder thinks I don’t want to find out.”

he saw that Marsali was carrying several slugs of type, evidently snatched from the type-case, under one arm. They looked heavy, and she let him take them from her, sighing with relief as he did. “Ye do wonder what ye’d take, if the house was afire,” he said, trying to be humorous. “Aye, well,” Marsali said, tucking in the blanket wrapped around the twin she was holding. “It smells that wee bit better than sauerkraut, aye?”

Claire was still asleep, her breathing slow and even and her hair pouring over the pillow like smoke.

Love the imagery here

“You sent me back to him,” I said, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “When you thought it would be dangerous for me and the baby to stay. He knew you weren’t dead, and didn’t tell me.” I lifted his hand and kissed it. “I’m going to burn that bloody book.”

“Jamie Fraser? A very large Scottish man with red hair and a bad back?”

His finger hurt—he’d jammed it—and his hand was slimy. He wiped it on his breeches, recalling too late that they were his good pair.

Oh Ian, priorities 😉