An echo in the bone - Gabaldon Diana (книги без регистрации бесплатно полностью txt) 📗
72. THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS
73. ONE EWE LAMB RETURNS TO THE FOLD
74. TWENTY-TWENTY
75. SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI
76. BY THE WIND GRIEVED
77. MEMORARAE
78. OLD DEBTS
79. THE CAVE
80. OENOMANCY
81. PURGATORY II
82. DISPOSITIONS
83. COUNTING SHEEP
84. THE RIGHT OF IT
PART SEVEN
Reap the Whirlwind
85. SON OF A WITCH
86. VALLEY FORGE
87. SEVERANCE AND REUNION
88. RATHER MESSY
89. INK-STAINED WRETCH
90. ARMED WITH DIAMONDS AND WITH STEEL
91. FOOTSTEPS
92. INDEPENDENCE DAY, II
93. A SERIES OF SHORT, SHARP SHOCKS
94. THE PATHS OF DEATH
95. NUMBNESS
96. FIREFLY
97. NEXUS
98. MISCHIANZA
99. A BUTTERFLY IN A BUTCHER’S YARD
100. LADY IN WAITING
101. REDIVIVUS
102. BRED IN THE BONE
103. THE HOUR OF THE WOLF
Author’s Notes
PROLOGUE
THE BODY IS amazingly plastic. The spirit, even more so. But there are some things you don’t come back from. Say ye so, a nighean? True, the body’s easily maimed, and the spirit can be crippled—yet there’s that in a man that is never destroyed.
PART ONE
A Troubling of the Waters
SOMETIMES THEY’RE REALLY DEAD
Wilmington, colony of North Carolina
July 1776
THE PIRATE’S HEAD had disappeared. William heard the speculations from a group of idlers on the quay nearby, wondering whether it would be seen again.
“Na, him be gone for good,” said a ragged man of mixed blood, shaking his head. “De allygator don’ take him, de water will.”
A backwoodsman shifted his tobacco and spat into the water in disagreement.
“No, he’s good for another day—two, maybe. Them gristly bits what holds the head on, they dry out in the sun. Tighten up like iron. Seen it many a time with deer carcasses.”
William saw Mrs. MacKenzie glance quickly at the harbor, then away. She looked pale, he thought, and maneuvered himself slightly so as to block her view of the men and the brown flood of high tide, though since it was high, the corpse tied to its stake was naturally not visible. The stake was, though—a stark reminder of the price of crime. The pirate had been staked to drown on the mudflats several days before, the persistence of his decaying corpse an ongoing topic of public conversation.
“Jem!” Mr. MacKenzie called sharply, and lunged past William in pursuit of his son. The little boy, red-haired like his mother, had wandered away to listen to the men’s talk, and was now leaning perilously out over the water, clinging to a bollard in an attempt to see the dead pirate.
Mr. MacKenzie snatched the boy by the collar, pulled him in, and swept him up in his arms, though the boy struggled, craning back toward the swampish harbor.
“I want to see the wallygator eat the pirate, Daddy!”
The idlers laughed, and even MacKenzie smiled a little, though the smile disappeared when he glanced at his wife. He was at her side in an instant, one hand beneath her elbow.
“I think we must be going,” MacKenzie said, shifting his son’s weight in order better to support his wife, whose distress was apparent. “Lieutenant Ransom—Lord Ellesmere, I mean”—he corrected with an apologetic smile at William—“will have other engagements, I’m sure.”
This was true; William was engaged to meet his father for supper. Still, his father had arranged to meet him at the tavern just across the quay; there was no risk of missing him. William said as much, and urged them to stay, for he was enjoying their company—Mrs. MacKenzie’s, particularly—but she smiled regretfully, though her color was better, and patted the capped head of the baby in her arms.
“No, we do have to be going.” She glanced at her son, still struggling to get down, and William saw her eyes flicker toward the harbor and the stark pole that stood above the flood. She resolutely looked away, fixing her eyes upon William’s face instead. “The baby’s waking up; she’ll be wanting food. It was so lovely to meet you, though. I wish we might talk longer.” She said this with the greatest sincerity, and touched his arm lightly, giving him a pleasant sensation in the pit of the stomach.
The idlers were now placing wagers on the reappearance of the drowned pirate, though by the looks of things, none of them had two groats to rub together.
“Two to one he’s still there when the tide goes out.”
“Five to one the body’s still there, but the head’s gone. I don’t care what you say about the gristly bits, Lem, that there head was just a-hangin’ by a thread when this last tide come in. Next un’ll take it, sure.”
Hoping to drown this conversation out, William embarked on an elaborate farewell, going so far as to kiss Mrs. MacKenzie’s hand with his best court manner—and, seized by inspiration, kissed the baby girl’s hand, too, making them all laugh. Mr. MacKenzie gave him rather an odd look, but didn’t seem offended, and shook his hand in a most republican manner—playing out the joke by setting down his son and making the little boy shake hands as well.
“Have you kilt anybody?” the boy inquired with interest, looking at William’s dress sword.
“No, not yet,” William replied, smiling.
“My grandsire’s kilt two dozen men!”
“Jemmy!” Both parents spoke at once, and the little boy’s shoulders went up around his ears.
“Well, he has!”
“I’m sure he is a bold and bloody man, your grandsire,” William assured the little boy gravely. “The King always has need of such men.”
“My grandda says the King can kiss his arse,” the boy replied matter-of-factly.
“JEMMY!”
Mr. MacKenzie clapped a hand over his outspoken offspring’s mouth.
“You know your grandda didn’t say that!” Mrs. MacKenzie said. The little boy nodded agreeably, and his father removed the muffling hand.
“No. Grannie did, though.”
“Well, that’s somewhat more likely,” Mr. MacKenzie murmured, obviously trying not to laugh. “But we still don’t say things like that to soldiers—they work for the King.”
“Oh,” said Jemmy, clearly losing interest. “Is the tide going out now?” he asked hopefully, craning his neck toward the harbor once more.
“No,” Mr. MacKenzie said firmly. “Not for hours. You’ll be in bed.”
Mrs. MacKenzie smiled at William in apology, her cheeks charmingly flushed with embarrassment, and the family took its leave with some haste, leaving William struggling between laughter and dismay.
“Oy, Ransom!”
He turned at his name, to find Harry Dobson and Colin Osborn, two second lieutenants from his regiment, evidently escaped from duty and eager to sample the fleshpots of Wilmington—such as they were.
“Who’s that?” Dobson looked after the departing group, interested.
“A Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie. Friends of my father’s.”
“Oh, married, is she?” Dobson sucked in his cheeks, still watching the woman. “Well, make it a bit harder, I suppose, but what’s life without a challenge?”
“Challenge?” William gave his diminutive friend a jaundiced look. “Her husband’s roughly three times your size, if you hadn’t noticed.”
Osborn laughed, going red in the face.
“She’s twice his size! She’d crush you, Dobby.”
“And what makes you think I mean to be on the bottom?” Dobson inquired with dignity. Osborn hooted.
“What’s this obsession of yours with giantesses?” William demanded. He glanced at the little family, now nearly out of sight at the end of the street. “That woman’s nearly as tall as I am!”
“Oh, rub it in, why don’t you?” Osborn, who was taller than Dobson’s five feet, but still a head shorter than William, aimed a mock kick at his knee. William dodged it and cuffed Osborn, who ducked and shoved him into Dobson.
“Gennelmen!” The menacing cockney tones of Sergeant Cutter brought them up sharp. They might outrank the sergeant, but not one of them would have the nerve to point this out. The entire battalion went in fear of Sergeant Cutter, who was older than God and approximately Dobson’s height, but who contained within his diminutive physique the sheer fury of a full-sized volcano on the boil.
