“Well, then.” The sun was coming down fast now; the damp scent of the plants was strong and rays of light knifed between the palisades, vivid amid the rustling shadows of the garden. “Best get on with it, I suppose.”

Given the disparate examples offered by John Quincy, I was fairly sure I could roll my own with regard to the blessing. We filled the four dishes with water and put them under the legs of the stool, to keep ants from climbing up to the hive, drawn by the scent of honey. A few of these voracious insects were already making their way up the stool’s legs and I brushed them away with a fold of my skirt—my first gesture of protection toward my new bees.

John Quincy smiled and nodded at me as I straightened up, and I nodded back, reached out a tentative hand through the veil of bees coming in to the hive, and touched the smooth twisted straw of the skep. It might have been imagination, but I thought I could feel a vibration through my skin, just below the threshold of hearing, a strong and certain hum.

“Oh, Lord,” I said—and wished I knew the name of the patron saint of bees, for surely there must be one—“please make these bees feel welcome in their new home. Help me to protect and care for them, and may they always find flowers. Er … and quiet rest at the end of each day. Amen.”

“That’ll do just fine, Mrs. Claire,” John Quincy said, and his voice was low and warm as the hum of the bees.

We left, closing and fastening the gate carefully behind us, and made our way down, out of the shadow of the towering chimney and along the eastern wall of the house. It was getting dark fast now, and the cooking fire leapt up as we came into the kitchen, shedding light on my waiting family. Home.

“Speaking of news,” I said casually to Myers, “you said you’d brought letters. If one is for Jamie, who are the others for?”

“Why, one for the boy,” he said, skillfully skirting the hole Jamie had dug for the new privy. “Mr. Fergus Fraser’s boy, Germain, I mean. And t’other for some’un called Frances Pocock. You got somebody here by that name?”

14

Mon Cher Petit Ami

I WAS NO LONGER amazed by the quantity of food required to feed eight people at a time, but seeing vast, steaming mounds of rabbit, quail, trout, ham, beans, succotash, onions, potatoes, and cress vanish within minutes into the bellies of twenty-two gave me a fresh qualm of apprehension about the coming winter.

Granted, it was still summer, and with luck, we would have good weather through the autumn … but that was only three or four months, at most. We had almost no livestock, other than the horses, Clarence the mule, and a couple of goats for milk and cheese.