Nor could the thousand-spiked fact of William’s true paternity be fixed. Brought face-to-face with Jamie Fraser, having spent a hellish night with him in the futile hope of rescuing Jane…there was no possible way to deny the truth. He’d been sired by a Jacobite traitor, a Scottish criminal…a goddamned groom, for God’s sake. But. Ye’ve a claim to my help for any venture ye deem worthy, the Scot had said.And Fraser had given that help, hadn’t he? At once and without question. Not only for Jane, but for her little sister, Frances....
William had just thrust little Frances into Fraser’s arms and walked off. And now, for the first time, wondered why he’d done that. Lord John had been there, too, attending at the sad, tiny funeral. His own father—he could certainly have given Fanny safely into Lord John’s keeping. But he hadn’t. Hadn’t even thought about it.No. No, I am not sorry.
First, I understand his anger over being lied to his whole life. But he is also showing the snobbery typical of the nobility in his attitude over Jamie being a groom. The view of Jamie as a theif and a rebel...those are fairly earned. Then cimes the revelation that John Cinnamon is looking for John to find his father. Willie of course thinks this means John is his natural father. Now if you've read The Custom of the Army. you know John is not the man's father. The man's father is Malcolm Stubbs, who is married to John's cousin Olivia. But when John found John Cinnamon, his mother had died and his Indian grandmother sold him to John, who left him to be raised by Father LeCarré, where they agreed the Father would send an update along with a lock of the child's hair to John every year and John would send five pounds for the boy's maintenance. Willie appears to be a bit jealous at the thought that John Cinnamon is John's real son. And again shows how judgmental he can be with one of his thoughts.
And just what will Papa do when he sees this…this…fruit of his whoremongering loins?
Eh.. now hold up boy. John has never been anything but honorable. Well, that he was involved in the intelligence community, which essentially is the spy community, was largely seen as dishonourable* by many in that day and age. But in his personal dealings... <sigh> ok so had his secret gotten out, that would have branded him a criminal and made him be viewed as dishonourable* by that day's standards. But I hardly think John can be accused of whoremongering. I mean Willie had availed himself of the services of whores more recently than John did so... a bit of hypocrisy there Willie.
* I must insert a note here. While I am an American and tend to use the typical AmEng spellings of most things, for some reason my brain supplied the BrEng spelling here. And I decided I am not changing it since it IS a correct spelling.
So Willie and John Cinnamon set off for Georgia to find John. Willie also hopes to find that Hal still has the letter he received about Ben's supposed death.
John Quincy Meyers returns to the Ridge with a present for Claire. Bees! He was actually wearing the bees. He also brings letters for some of the Ridge's residents. A letter to Jamie, Germain, Fanny, and Cunningham. Fanny's is from William. Germain's is from his mother. He disappears and Claire goes to find him. She finds an upset Germain on the roof. He has yet to open the letter because he feels his mother hates him because he killed Henri-Christian. Claire assures him he did not kill his brother. She offers to read the letter for him because by now he says it is too dark to read it. As she goes for a candle...
The truth was that while Marsali naturally didn’t blame Germain for Henri-Christian, he was probably right about her not having been able to look at him without being torn apart by the memory of it. That was why, without much being said about it, we had brought Germain with us to the Ridge, in hopes that both he and his family would heal more easily with a little distance.
Now he probably thought that his mother had written to tell him that she didn’t want him back, ever.
But the letter begins, "“Mon cher petit ami—”
We have just found a new house, but it will never be home until you are here.
Your sisters miss you terribly (they have sent locks of their hair—in case you were wondering what these straggly things are—or in case you’ve forgotten what they look like, they say. Joanie’s hair is the light brown, and Félicité’s the dark one. The yellow ones belong to the cat), and Papa longs for you to come and help him. He forbids the girls to go into taverns to deliver the papers and broadsheets—though they want to!
You also have two new little brothers who—”
“Two?” Germain grabbed the page from me and held it as near the candle as he could without setting it on fire. “Did she say two?”
“Yes!” I was nearly as excited as he was to hear it, and bent over the page, shoulder-to-shoulder with him. “Read the next bit!”
He straightened up a little and swallowed, then read on:
“We were all very surprised, as you might think! To be honest, I had been afraid all the time, to think about what the new baby might be. Because I wanted to see a child just like Henri-Christian, of course—to feel as though we had him back—but I knew that couldn’t happen, and at the same time, I was afraid that the new little one might be a dwarf, too—maybe your Grannie has told you that people who are born like that have a lot of troubles; Henri-Christian nearly died several times when he was very small, and Papa told me long ago about some of the dwarf-children he had known in Paris, and that most didn’t live a long life.
But a new baby is always a surprise and a miracle and never what you expect. When you were born, I was so enchanted that I would sit by your cradle and watch you sleep. Just letting the candle burn down because I couldn’t bear to put it out and let the night hide you from me.
We thought at first, when the babies were born, that perhaps we should name one of them Henri and the other Christian, but the girls wouldn’t have it. They both said that Henri-Christian was not like anyone else, and no one else should have his name.
“Papa and I agreed that they were right”—Germain was nodding his head as he read—“and so one of your brothers is named Alexandre and the other one Charles-Claire…”
“What?” I said, incredulous. “Charles-Claire?”
“…for your Grandda and Grannie,” Germain read, and looked up, grinning hugely at me.
“Go on,” I said, nudging him. He nodded and looked back at the page, running his finger along the words to find his place.
“So,” he read, and his voice choked suddenly, then steadied. “So,” he repeated, “please, mon cher fils, come home. I love you and I need you to be here, so the new house will be home again.
“With my love always…”
He pressed his lips tight together, and I saw tears well in his eyes, still fixed on the paper.
“Maman,” he whispered, and pressed the letter to his chest.
Jamie and Claire are out enjoying the woods one day when Bluebell (the dog), Fanny, Jem, Germain and Mandy all come screeching through after a raccoon. The dog has the 'coon treed and Jamie is readying himself to shoot it when Jem asks if he can do it. Jamie instead chooses Fanny to do the honors. Mandy is in Claire's arm (because she doesn't want it to bite her).
Mandy had put her hands dramatically over her ears but removed them to inquire whether I knew how to shoot a gun.
“Yes,” I said, avoiding any elaborations. I did technically know how, and had in fact discharged a firearm several times in my life. I’d found it deeply unnerving, though—the more so after I’d been shot myself at the Battle of Monmouth and understood the effects on a truly visceral level. I preferred stabbing, all things considered.
After Amy Higgins was killed by the bear, Jamie had sent Germain for Young Ian, Jem for Gilly MacMillan and Roger was with Bobby while Fanny was watching the younger children. Claire is laying out Amy and knows Rachel and Jenny will come with Ian and Gilly's wife will gather the women who live along the creek. She encourages Bree to leave her to her task as she can tell Bree is uncomfortable with it. She does note that Bree said Fanny had the younger children and wondered where Aidan was. He was with Jamie. Aidan, with trembling chin and stuttering speech, tells Jamie he is going with him to hunt the bear. Jamie says. "Of course you are." He then tells Aidan they must prepare themselves. He then recites the "Consecration of the Chase" for him and the "Prayer for Travelling". Aidan wonders whether Bobby will go with them. Jamie says "If he feels he must, then he shall. But I hope he will not." Then he says they must get his rifle and get everything in order. When Ian arrives, he first steps into Claire's surgery and then into the kitchen where Jamie and Aidan are filling cartridges. Ian is shirtless and in his buckskin leggings and loincloth. Jamie also realizes that he had obviously taken time to say his own prayers and paint his face for battle. Aidan was surprised to see the Mohawk side of Ian. Jamie asks if Ian knew where his bear claw was.
“Aye, I do.” Ian had sat down to fold up Aidan’s cartridges, quick and neat, and didn’t look up. “I gave it to my cousin William.”
“Your cou— Oh.” He considered Ian, who still didn’t look up. “And when was this?”
“Ach. Some time ago,” Ian said airily. “When I got him out o’ the swamp, ken. I told him ye wanted him to have it.” He did glance up then, one thin eyebrow raised, just like his father. “I wasna wrong, was I?”
“No,” Jamie said, feeling a sudden warmth, though the hairs prickled on his neck. “No, ye weren’t.”
Surprisingly, Mrs. Cunningham, who doesn't think too highly of Claire, Bree or Mandy (Claire and Bree due to being Catholic, as well as Claire being a conjure-woman and Mandy for a bit of rudeness she displayed). She actually slapped Mandy so she is not exactly the favorite person of the Fraser-MacKenzie families. But when she heard the news, she did go to Bobby and ask for Amy's shroud to bring to the house. Surprisingly, she stays to help Claire finish preparing Amy's body. As they get the hot water ready to bathe the body, Claire adds some bruised lavender and torn sweet basil to the water. Mrs. Cunningham throws in a couple handfuls of salt...
“To wash away sin,” she informed me crisply, seeing my look. “And keep her ghost from walking.”
When Claire mentions that she thought keeping the torn face of Amy covered, Mrs. Cunningham says no. " Ye always want to look upon their faces, one last time. Nay matter what’s happened to them.” And Claire thinks of Frank and that she was glad of the chance to say goodbye to him. So she does what she can to minimize the damage visible.
As the men set off, Ian comments he also went down by the spot the bear attacked and saw where it started off to. Jamie asks is Germain went with him to look for the bear's track. Ian said yes but...and he was sure he was just behind Ian as he came down. Then Jamie asks Gilly if Jem returned with him. He replied he thought so, that he'd run ahead while Gilly was gathering the dogs. But that he hadn't seen him again. Jamie realizes this is not at all good. He arrives to tell Bobby what they are doing and is surprised to find Jem there. He is hoping Bobby won't want to go, whether because he is too shattered to consider going or because he knows it is wiser not to. Jamie also realizes the younger boys would be a good reason for Bobby to stay behind. He is also surprised Jem insists on going too. Jamie points out that Jem's mother was not eaten by a bear and she will not be please if he goes and he does get eaten and that because it was Aidan's mother and he saw it happen, it's his right to see her avenged. Then he sends Jem to get Roger to fill him in on what they're doing. Rogers comes in with his rifle. Jamie says he will not take Jem if Roger doesn't want him to but that he thinks Aidan must go. He tells Robert they are going and says he wants Aidan to go, which surprises Bobbie.
“I swear on my own grandson’s head that I willna let any harm come to him.”
“Your—you mean Jem? You’re taking him as well?” Confusion showed briefly through the deadness in Bobby’s eyes, and he looked over Jamie’s shoulder at Roger Mac. “He is?”
“Aye.” Roger’s Mac’s voice broke on the word, but he said it, bless him. Inspiration blossomed in Jamie’s mind, and with an inward prayer, he rolled his dice.
“Roger Mac will come as well,” he said, hoping he sounded completely sure of it.
“He’ll mind both lads and see them safe.” He could feel Roger Mac’s eyes burning a hole in the back of his head, but he was sure it was the right thing. Blessed Michael, guide my tongue…
“My nephew Ian and Gillebride MacMillan will be with me, with dogs. The three of us—and three dogs—will have the upper hand of a bear, no matter how fierce. Roger Mac and the lads will be there only to bear witness for your wife. At a safe distance,” he added.
Bobby does say he ought to go too and Roger speaks up that he needs to mind the younger boys as he is all they have left. Jamie flashes back to saving Willie from being dropped out the window and thinking "His mother’s dead. I’m all he has." He sees that thought in Bobby as well and when asked where Orrie and Rob were, Jamie says they're with Bree. So Roger offers to go to the house with Bobby and catch up to Jamie and the others. Claire had a houseful of women arrive starting with Gilly's wife, oldest daughters and mother, Rachel, Jenny and Oggy (who was turned over to Fanny), and she knew others would be coming. Jenny commented that Roger and Bobby were coming up the hill. Rachel offered to stay with him and when he entered Claire was surprised to see Bree supporting him. While distressed, she was also a solid rock of support for Bobby. Rachel suggests to Bobby they stay with Amy a bit and Claire follows Bree, who then cracks.
“Da’s gone,” she said. “And he’s taken Roger and Jem and Aidan with him! To hunt that bloody bear!”
"Oh, aye,” Jenny said behind me, before I could speak. She laid a hand on Brianna’s arm and squeezed. “Dinna fash, lass. Jamie’s a hard man to kill, and Ian’s painted his face. And I said the blessing for them both—the one for a warrior goin’ out. They’ll be fine.”
Roger caught up with Jamie and the two boys and was glad to see Germain had shown up as well. Claire sends Bree to Tom MacLeod to see if he has a coffin, which surprises Bree that they're wanting to bury her so fast. Claire uses the warmth and Mrs. Cunningham mentions the flies. Mr. MacLeod has a coffin in progress, says he most always does since he is the only coffin maker between the Cherokee Line and Salem. But he's not sure how quickly he can finish it. Bree surprises him by offering to help him finish building it. His eyes travelled up Bree's length noticing her height and bloodstained clothes and comments that she is Himself's lass and if she can drive a nail straight, then she could do that, otherwise, she could sand the wood.
The men track down the bear and it is treed. Ian shoots it with an arrow to attempt to get it to move so they have a good shot at it. After some back and forth between two trees, Jamie gets a shot and the bear falls to the ground. Aidan got away from Roger and went running up to the bear with the knife from his belt. Gilliebride was running down the slope with his spear and trying to rein in the dogs that were snapping at the bear. And suddenly the bear rose up and swiped at Bluebell. Aidan stuck his knife into the side of the bear. Roger grabbed him and turned away just as the spear hit the bear. Jem runs for Roger to see if he is ok, Jamie comments the dog is fine, maybe a cracked rib and then Roger sees Ian holding Aidan. He has mixed some of the white paint from his forehead and swiped it across Aidan's forehead. Jamie pulled some fabric out of the bear's mouth and then stood, which brought all of the others close. He then led them in the prayer for the soul of one fallen in battle.
Meanwhile, Bree and Mr. MacLeod arrived at the house with the coffin. She and Tom did not speak and as they worked, Bree felt a sense of sorrow, then as she worked felt the fear, shock and worry fall into a sense of peace. This was a service she could provide for her friend. The smell of sweat, balsam fir and pine were like incense. Roger arrives and Bree wondered what they did with the bear. He tells her Jamie gralloched it and they dragged it home and put it in the root cellar where the men would butcher it the following day. It would be a lot of meat. Bree checks on the younger kids who are being watched over by Fanny, who is also comforting Bluey. Then Bree returns to the wake and overhears some women discussing Bobby. Wondering if he owns the cabin and how Himself built it for his family at first but then given it to Bobby and Amy. They also wondered if Jamie had it in mind to marry Bobby to his orphan lass (Fanny). And one of the women said she was too young and another that the children would need a mother but Fanny was too young and mentioned her own 17 yr old cousin. To which the other woman replied,
“Even so, the man’s a murderer,” Peggy interrupted. “I dinna think I want him for a son-in-law, even with a good hoose.”
This outrages Bree who defends Bobby saying he is not a murderer. That he was a soldier who shot someone during a riot. And that Bobby shot someone to protect a group of soldiers. The woman then asks “So why is it he’s got yon M on his face, then?” She ends up running out with Roger following after. At first he cannot find her but finally finds her in the unfinished attic. She tells him she was right beside Amy not five minutes before and they were only about 10 ft apart when the bear attacked. That it could have been her. She also thinks maybe they were wrong to come back. After the burial the following day, Claire goes into the old garden. She had told Jamie she was just going to get... but in reality she didn't need anything but a moment alone. She stopped at the bee skep.
Amy Higgins is gone—is dead. You know her—her dooryard is full of hollyhocks and she’s got—had—jasmine growing by her cowshed and a good patch of dogwood nearby.
I stood quite still, letting the vibration of life come into my hand and touch my heart with the strength of transparent wings.
Her flowers are still growing.
Willie and John Cinnamon have arrived in Savannah where they ran into Col. Archibald Campbell who calls Willie a "coward and whoremonger". Then they arrive at John's where they hear a crying infant. John opens the door saying,
“You woke the baby, damn your eyes,” he said. “Oh. Hallo, Willie. Come in, then, don’t stand there letting in drafts; the little fiend is teething, and catching a cold on top of that won’t improve his temper to any noticeable extent. Who’s your friend? Your servant, sir,” he added, putting a hand over the child’s mouth and nodding to Cinnamon with a fair assumption of hospitality.
“John Cinnamon,” both young men said automatically, speaking together, then stopped, equally flustered. William recovered first.
“Yours?” he inquired politely, with a nod at the child, who had momentarily stopped howling and was gnawing ferociously on Lord John’s knuckle.
“Surely you jest, William,” his father replied, stepping back and jerking his head in invitation. “Allow me to make you acquainted with your second cousin, Trevor Wattiswade Grey. I am delighted to meet you, Mr. Cinnamon—will you take a drop of beer? Or something stronger?”
He then introduces Amaranthus and she takes the baby out to nurse him.
“Ahem,” said Cinnamon, who, ignored, had quietly risen to his feet. “My lord…I hope you pardon my coming here without warning. I didn’t know where to find you, until my friend”—nodding at William—“found out your house just now. I should maybe have waited, though. I…can come back…?” he added, with a hesitant movement toward the door.
“No, no.” Relieved of the presence of Amaranthus and Trevor, Lord John had regained his usual equanimity....
The Indian had gone as pale as it was possible for someone of his complexion to go, and looked as though he was about to be sick.
“I came to say thank you,” he blurted, and clamped his lips shut, as though fearing to say more. “Not at all,” he said, and stopped to clear his throat. “Not at all,” he said again, more strongly. “I’m so happy to meet you again, Mr. Cinnamn. Thank you for coming to find me.”
William found that there was a lump in his own throat, and turned away toward the window, with an obscure feeling that he should give them a moment’s privacy.
“It was Manoke who told me,” Cinnamon said, his voice husky, too. “That it was you, I mean.”
“He told you…well, yes, now that I recall, he was there in Quebec when I took you to the mission—after your mother died, I mean. You saw Manoke—recently?” Lord John’s voice held an odd note, and William glanced back at him. “Where?”
“At Mount Josiah,” William answered, turning round. “I…er…went there. And found Mr. Cinnamon visiting Manoke. He—Manoke, I mean—said to give you his regards, and tell you to come fishing with him again.”
A very odd look flickered in Lord John’s eyes, but then was gone as he focused anew on John Cinnamon. William could see that the Indian was still nervous, but no longer panic-stricken.
“It’s kind of you to—to receive me, sir,” he said, with an awkward nod toward Lord John. “I wanted to—I mean, I don’t want to—to impose upon you, or—or cause any trouble. I would never do that.”
“Oh—of course,” Lord John said, puzzlement clear in his voice and face.
“I don’t expect acknowledgment,” Cinnamon continued bravely. “Or anything else. I don’t ask anything. I just—I just…had to see you.” His voice broke suddenly on the last words and he turned hastily away. William saw tears trembling on his lashes.
“Acknowledgment.” Lord John was staring at John Cinnamon, his face gone quite blank, and suddenly William couldn’t bear it anymore.
“As your son,” he said roughly. “Take him; he’s better than the one you have.” And reaching the door in two strides, he yanked it open and went out, leaving it ajar behind him.
Blinded by his bitterness still, Willie obviously does not think he belongs to John any longer. But he doesn't want to leave John Cinnamon alone in case, depending on how the conversation goes, he might feel rejected and distraught. Then he tells himself, "Don't be a fool. “You know Papa wouldn’t…” “Papa” stuck like a thorn in his throat and he swallowed."
He encounters Amaranthus in the garden and they speak. He asks about if the baby has a nurse to which she says she sacked the nurse. He then asks some rather direct questions and she tells him that if she hadn't already known he was John's son, those questions would have proved it. He explains that as John is his step-father, any resemblance to John or any of the Greys is a "matter of exposure rather than inheritance. "
John's thoughts while speaking to John Cinnamon are interesting.
Manoke, he thought, with mingled exasperation and amusement. No point in being angry; Manoke made his own rules, and always had. At the same time, though…Despite the intermittent and casual nature of their relationship, Grey trusted the Indian more than anyone, with the exception of his own brother or Jamie Fraser. Manoke wouldn’t put Cinnamon on his trail for the sake of mischief; either he’d thought Cinnamon likely was his son and therefore had a right to know it—or having met William as an adult, he’d thought that Grey might need another son....
“I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Cinnamon,” he said, eyes on the brandy as he poured another glass for the young man. “I must begin by apologizing.”
“Oh, no!” Cinnamon burst out, sitting upright. “I would never expect you to—I mean, there’s nothing to apologize for.”
“Yes, there is. I ought to have written down a brief account of your circumstances when I put you in the care of the Catholic brothers at Gareon, rather than simply leave you there with nothing but a name."...He had a passing vision of Cinnamon looked down at his very broad hands, braced on his knees—and then, as though he couldn’t help it, stared at Grey’s slender hand, still wrapped around the brandy bottle. Then he looked up at Grey’s face, searching for kinship.
“You do resemble your father,” Grey said, meeting the young man’s eyes directly. “I wish that I were that man—both for your sake and for my own.”
There was a deep silence in the room. Cinnamon’s face went blank and stayed that way. He blinked once or twice, but gave away nothing of what he felt. Finally he nodded, and took a breath that went to the roots of his soul.
“Can you—will you—tell me of my father, sir?”
Well, that was it, Grey thought. He’d realized the choices instantly: claim the young man as his own, or tell him the truth. But how much of the truth?
The trouble was that Cinnamon’s existence wasn’t purely his own concern; there were other people involved; did Grey have the right to meddle with their affairs without consultation or permission? But he had to tell the boy something, he thought. And reached for his glass.
“He was a British soldier, as Manoke told you,” he said carefully. “Your mother was half French and half…I’m afraid I have no idea of the nation from which her other parent originated.”
John eventually tells him that his father is Malcolm Stubbs and he did not inherit his height from him. Cinnamon picks up on the use of is rather than was. And asks where he lives. John explains that he is in London and married. Cinnamon guesses that his father's wife knows nothing about him. And then assures John he does not wish to cause them discomfort. John acknowledges that is considerate, then continues.
“But also rather prudent. May I ask, had I actually proved to be your father—and let me repeat that I regret the fact that I am not—” He lifted his glass an inch and Cinnamon cast down his eyes, but gave a brief nod of acknowledgment. “What did you intend to do? Or ought I to ask what you had hoped for?”
John Cinnamon says he isn't sure. He hadn't recognition or assistance but was curious. He felt a desire to have a sense of belonging, which might be foolish but at the least a connection. He then asks if John would deliver a letter if he were to write one. John was curious what he would write and he explained he wished to thank him for the kindness of providing his support. Then he realizes... John was the source of support. John explains that badly wounded and on half pay, Malcolm could not have provided that support. Cinnamon then says that Father Charles explained that John gave him a name before he left the mission and asked if he knew what his mother had called him. Then, smiling, he realized that John gave him his own name.
Grey felt an answering smile on his own face, and lifted one shoulder in a deprecating way.
“Oh, well…” he said. “I liked you.”
Still outside and not wanting to interrupt the other two men, Willie begins to walk through the town. He is hailed by a voice he recognizes as his Uncle Hal. They talk as they're walking by the river and Willie asks how one renounces their title. Hal explains he can't.
“I’m not speaking rhetorically, blockhead. I mean it literally. You can’t renounce a peerage. There’s no means set down in law or custom for doing it; ergo, it can’t be done.”
“But you—” William stopped, baffled.
“No, I didn’t,” his uncle said dryly. “If I could have at the time, I would have, but I couldn’t, so I didn’t. The most I could do was to stop using the title of ‘Duke,’ and threaten to physically maim anyone who used it in reference or address to me. It took me several years to make it clear that I meant that,” he added offhandedly.
“Really?” William asked cynically. “Who did you maim?"
[Hal mentions a few writers and spouts off some words about how they're like roaches.]
"Anyone ever tell you that you have a way with words, Uncle?”
“Yes,” his uncle said briefly. “But beyond punching a few journalists, I called out George Mumford—he’s the Marquess of Clermont now, but he wasn’t then—Herbert Villiers, Viscount Brunton, and a gentleman named Radcliffe. Oh, and a Colonel Phillips, of the Thirty-fourth—cousin to Earl Wallenberg.”
“Duels, do you mean? And did you fight them all?”
“Certainly. Well—not Villiers, because he caught a chill on the liver and died before I could, but otherwise…but that’s beside the point.” [He then explains he did use one of his lesser titles.]
“You said you didn’t accept the dukedom’s income. I don’t suppose you also neglected the care of the estates you weren’t profiting from?”
“Of course n—” Hal broke off and gave William a look in which annoyance was tempered by a certain respect. “Who taught you to think, boy? Your father?”
“I imagine Lord John may have had some small influence,” William said politely.
Then they discuss, if one cannot choose to renounce his title, is there any way to lose it. Hal explains basically, that rebellion against the Crown is one sure way of doing so.
“You don’t say.”
William had spoken lightly—or meant to—but Hal stopped and turned a piercing look on his nephew.
“If you consider treason and the betrayal of your King, your country, and your family a suitable means of solving your personal difficulties, William, then perhaps John hasn’t taught you as well as I supposed.”
Willie then returns to John's and speaks with John Cinnamon who explains that John told him about Malcolm Stubbs and he then asks Willie's help writing a letter to Stubbs. Willie agrees and says he imagine Cinnamon will want to stay in Savannah in case a reply comes. And Cinnamon says of course and that John has invited them to stay while waiting.
Back on the Ridge, a small group has went to the cabin that will serve the Ridge:
as schoolroom, Masonic Lodge, a church for Presbyterian and Methodist services, and a place for Quaker meeting, was now finished, and in the afternoon of that day, the reluctant schoolteacher, the Worshipful Master of the Lodge, and the three competing preachers met—spouses brought along as congregation—to inspect and bless the place.
“It smells like beer,” said the nominative schoolteacher, wrinkling her nose.
“Aye,” said the Master. “Ronnie Dugan and Bob McCaskill had a difference of opinion about whether there should be something for the preachers to stand on besides the floor, and someone kicked over the keg.”
“No great loss,” replied the husband of the sole practicing Quaker on Fraser’s Ridge. “Worst beer I’ve had since wee Markie Henderson pissed in his mother’s brew tub and no one found it out before the beer was served.”
“Oh, it wasn’t quite that bad,” the Presbyterian minister said, presumably on the judge-not principle, but he was drowned out by a general buzz of agreement.
“Who made it?” asked Rachel in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder in case the miscreant brewer should be in earshot.
“I blush to admit that I supplied the keg,” Captain Cunningham said, frowning, “but I’ve no notion of its manufacture. It came up with some of my books from Cross Creek.”
Jamie then calls their meeting to order. He says Bree has agreed to teach for two hours of a morning and they discuss supplies needed. Then he moves on to the needs of the Lodge and when they typically meet, on Wednesdays but he knew that Captain Cunningham would like to offer a service on that night, if it does not run afoul of Roger's plans. He assures him it does not and issues an invite to the Lodge meetings, which will now be on Tuesdays. Then it comes time to split up Sundays. Rachel plans on being their every Sunday and given the nature of Quaker meetings, feels an afternoon service would be best. Roger and the Captain also plan weekly services and when asked who will go first, they flip a coin for it. Roger does ask if the Captain can sing and when he replies yes, suggests he go first to lead the singing.
John writes Jamie suggesting Bree come to Savannah to paint a portrait, and speak with Willie about his future. He also will get her to draw Trevor (Hal's supposed grandson). Jamie is unsure about sending her because
“Mac na galladh! First he takes my son, then he swives my wife, and now he’s tryin’ to suborn my daughter!”
Bree, Roger and the children, including Germain set off for Charleston with passes of safe conduct from Hal to get them to Savannah. They have a few different reasons for the trip. Bree has a commission for a painting in Savannah, and wishes to see Willie. Germain is going back home to his parents. Roger wishes to meet some of the Presbyterians of Charleston so that when it is time for them to form a group that can ordain a man, he is known to them and will be able to be ordained. Oh and in part, Bree and Roger will be smuggling guns back to the Ridge. Ian, Rachel, Oggy and Jenny set off for NY where word has come of an attack on the Mohawks that Works With Her Hands is part of. There's a bit of factionalism on the Ridge what with some Loyalists and Patriots.
Oh dear. The MacKenzies go to Charleston for Roger's ordination and to purchase guns before going to Savannah for the commissioned painting. They send the guns to Charlotte inside crates of bat guano. But Fergus did ask Roger to go on an errand with him and to bring a knife. Once he told Roger who they were meeting, the knife made perfect sense. They were meeting one Percival Beauchamp. Yes, that Percy. John's sorta step-brother (more technically John's step-father's step-son by his first wife, where John is a step-son by the step-father's second wife), occasional lover, the French counterpart to John's role in the Black Chamber and all around not sure how much he can be trusted guy. He's said in the past he thinks Fergus is the nephew of Percy's wife and brother-in-law. Which actually it should be noted that Beauchamp is actually Percy's wife maiden name. The sister, Amelie Beauchamp, apparently did marry the Comte St. Germain (who blamed Claire for lost cargo and a lost ship when Claire confirmed smallpox on the ship in 1744. He also tried to poison Claire. And he and Master Raymond were accused of sorcery and put on trial before King Louis, Louis calls on Claire to use her powers as La Dame Blanche to determine who is telling the truth. How much of this Roger Mac knows I cannot recall. Probably very little. Though he does ask if he's a relative of Claire's. Which I admit is high on my list of things to be curious about. It would mean then that Claire is related to Fergus through Amelie. With Percy claiming to know about Fergus's parents, though Fergus questions whether he actually does, Roger wonders why bother meeting with him. And being a practical man, Fergus says that if he loses his livelihood or lose his ability to provide for his family, then maybe Percy is there to show him a different way. Roger was surprised to meet an Englishman rather than a Frenchman. Percy tells Fergus he is the son of the Comte St. Germain and Amélie Élise LeVigne Beauchamp. Fergus apparently does recognize that name.
“J’ai connu une jeune fille de ce nom Amélie,” Fergus said. “Mais elle est morte.”
Percy confirms she is dead and asks if Fergus knew her. Fergus explains he knew Amelie but not that she was his mother. He explains more about how there are many children born in brothel and nursing the children was sometimes done by a woman unrelated to the child who had lost her own child. Percy explains she died during an outbreak of the morbid sore throat. Roger of course asks about the Comte. He has a habit of disappearing and returning to France but it has been twenty years since he was last seen...
"...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, should a petition to that effect to be filed by his heir.”
Roger immediately picks up on the use of the word heir and says last he knew, a bastard child cannot inherit property or did he mean a different heir. Percy then shows them the contract of marriage between Amelie and the Comte. And then congratulates Fergus on not being a bastard. He had asked to call Fergus Claudel but Fergus said no. Fergus actually, due to his past with "Milord Broch Tuarach" had reason to doubt the veracity of the document they handed him. And given Fergus and his past forging activities, he would know how easy it would be to forge. He then plainly asks them what they had in mind, should Fergus not doubt the document, that he could do for them.
The situation, as explained by Beauchamp with minor interruptions from the lawyer, was that the Comte St. Germain, a very wealthy man, had owned—well, still did own, technically—a majority of the stock of a syndicate investing in land in the New World. The main asset of this syndicate was a large piece of land in the very large area known as the Northwest Territory....
Beauchamp’s “interests” had it in mind to take the first steps toward securing at least a foothold on the Territory.
By establishing Mr. Fraser’s claim to it?” Roger hadn’t said anything to this point, but sheer astonishment compelled him. The lawyer gave him an austere look, but Beauchamp inclined his head gracefully.
“Yes. But the claim of an individual alone would not likely stand against the rapacity of the Americans. Therefore, our interests will assist Mr. Fraser in establishing colonists upon his land—French-speaking colonists, who would thus provide substance for a claim by France, once the war is over.
“Whereupon,” Beauchamp concluded, “our interests would purchase the land from you—for a significant sum.”
“If the Americans win,” Fergus said, sounding skeptical. “If they don’t, I fear your ‘interests’ will be in a precarious position. As would I.”
“They’ll win.” The lawyer hadn’t spoken since greeting them, and his voice gave Roger a start. It was deep, and assured, in contrast with Beauchamp’s light charm.
“You’re a rebel, are you not, Mr. Fraser?” The lawyer raised a brow at Fergus. “That is certainly the impression given by your newspaper. Have you no faith in your own cause?”
Fergus thanks them and says they have given him a lot to think about before taking his leave. Fergus ducks into an alley where he is greeted by a very young prostitute and Fergus wonders if the second floor parlor is free. He explains to Roger that he is "a son of the house, so to speak" and further...
“You needn’t ask if Marsali knows about this place, either,” he assured Roger. “I won’t say I have no secrets from my wife—I think every man must require a few secrets—but this is not one of them.”
Roger is surprised when Fergus explains Percy has approached him before and then surprises Roger more when he calls Percy a "Cheinne".
“Chienne?” Roger asked, careful with the pronunciation. “You think he’s a female dog?”
Fergus looked surprised.
“Well, there are other words,” he said, and wrinkled his brow as though trying to summon a few, “but surely you noticed…?”
“Er…” A wave of heat that had nothing to do with the atmosphere rose behind Roger’s ears. “Actually, no. I just thought he was a, um, Frenchman. Ornamental, you know?”
Fergus burst out laughing.
Roger coughed. “So. Ye’re saying that Percival whatever-he’s-calling-himself is what people in Scotland might call a Nancy-boy. D’ye think that’s got anything to do with…the present situation?”
Fergus jokes that Roger needs more experience in the fields of sin if he is going to be a good minister. And Roger wonders if he should call Miss Marigold back for lessons. Fergus giggles and said that was not what he meant and starts to say "Your wife would" before going a different route. Yeah I think Bree would be a wee bit angry over that. Fergus does acknowledge that one can learn a lot for whores but that's not what he meant by evil. One thing...in front of Percy, Fergus called Roger "mon frère", and when he introduced Roger to Miss Marigold, he did so by saying “Allow me to introduce my brother, the Reverend, mademoiselle. Reverend—Mademoiselle Marigold.” He again calls Roger that in their private discussion. I am sure this is something that touches Roger greatly. A few chapters earlier, Roger had realized Fergus was his brother.
My brother. Thank you for him, Roger thought toward God. Thank you for all the souls you’ve put in my hand. Help me take care of them.
So for Fergus to be echoing that is very touching. After telling Roger he needs more lessons in sin the talk turns to evil people.
"Still,” he said, sobering, “that’s not what I meant by evil."
“No. But you said you’ve had passages with this Percival before. He didn’t strike me as—”
“He’s not. He’s a whore; he has likely been one all his life.” Seeing Roger’s expression, he didn’t smile, but one corner of his mouth lifted. “What is it they say? ‘It takes one to know one.’ ”
“Monsieur Beauchamp is too old to sell his arse, of course, but he will sell himself. From necessity,” Fergus added dispassionately. “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.
“When you say ‘evil,’ though…” he began slowly.
“There were only two men in that room,” Fergus said simply. “Besides us, I mean.”
“Jesus.” He tried to think what the tall man had said or done that might have given Fergus the conviction—and it was a conviction, he could see that much in Fergus’s face—that the man was evil. “I can’t even remember what he looked like.”
“In my experience, the Devil seldom walks up and introduces himself to you by name,” Fergus said dryly. “All I can tell you is that I know evil when I see it—and I saw it on that man.”
Fergus then asks Roger to ask Bree to write Lord John and have him send the escort. Roger says it is not needed. But Fergus says yes it is, he and Marsali and the children will accompany Roger and Bree and the children to Savannah and that in doing that Bonnie (Jamie's printing press) will attract notice.
Later that night, Bree wakes and smells smoke. She then wakes the others and Marsali and Germain are trying to get everyone out of the printshop. This of course is hard on Germain due to the last fire. Thankfully it was a small fire that had been laid at the back door of the shop. And it was quickly extinguished. Roger wondered if it was a competitor. But when they saw the message scrawled on the shop "that said "NEXT TIME" Fergus realized it was Loyalists.
Upon arriving in Philadelphia, Ian goes to find Mrs. Hardman for Jamie and finds a client abusing her. He kills the man and sends Sylvia and her daughters toward town while he gets rid of the body. The next day, Jenny watches the three girls and Oggy while Rachel and Slyvia go to see some of the "weighty Quakers" and when Ian wishes he could go with them, is told he may not be of much help and he has his own business to attend to. Rachel asks what it is and he admits,
“Not my own, no,” he said, and kissed her briefly. “But I promised Auntie Claire I’d pay a visit to a brothel on her behalf.”
She didn’t turn a single dark-brown hair.
“Don’t bring home a whore,” she advised him. “Thee already has too many women.”
Well this is not untrue. He has Rachel, his mother, Sylvia and her three daughters. Plus they're on their way to New York because of his former wife and her children, one of whom is possibly his. Well now. That was interesting. Works With Her Hands is marrying again. Her new husband is a good man but has dreamt that her oldest son, whom Ian named, will kill him. So she asks Ian and Rachel to take him in. They also give Oggy a puppy that is a descendant of Rollo. Sylvia's husband is with the Mohawk's and is a clerk to Joseph Brant. He has remarried and wants to keep the girls..well except for Charity who is not his. He wants nothing to do with a child fathered by another man. But when Works With Her Hands sees the joy of Oggy over the new puppy. she remarks to Ian,
“So,” she said, “you named my son for me; let me do the same for yours.” She spoke gravely, in English, and looked from Ian’s face to Rachel’s and back again.
Ian felt Rachel stiffen and feared that this might be one too much for the inner light. The blue paint had begun to melt with her sweat in the heat of the longhouse and was spreading little blue tendrils and drops down her cheeks like budding vines. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t seem able to form words. He saw her shoulders straighten, though, and she nodded at Emily, who nodded seriously back, before turning her attention to Oggy.
“His name is Hunter,” she said.
“Oh,” Rachel said, and her smile blossomed slowly through the vines.
Interesting and possibly obvious if you think about it. The obvious part is that is Rachel's maiden name. The interesting part is Works With Her Hands would not have known that.
She squeezed back and whispered, “Hunter James, and whatever the Mohawk is for ‘Little Wolf.’ ”
Ohstòn’ha Ohkwàho,” he said. “Done.” He turned to make their farewells.
Roger goes to seek out Gen. Lincoln and (then) Lt. Col. Francis Marion. He ends up in the midst of the Battle of Savannah. John comes to warn Bree and give her an American flag to hang, if she hears the Americans won. Roger ends up trying to rescue some of the wounded off the battlefield and comes across a man who is injured that says, "Bóg i Marija pomóżcie mi,". The man was then picked up by a number of soldiers and rushed off. The guns fell silent but Roger was still rather shaky so he sat until the feeling wore off. Then got up to help bury the dead.
John retuned to the house where Bree and the children were to let her know the battle was over and the Americans were defeated. She yelled something at him that caused his face the set and he squeezed her hands before promising, "I'll find him." He sent a note the next day saying,
"I have walked the entire field, with my aides. We have not found him, neither dead nor injured. A hundred or so prisoners were taken, and he is not among them. Hal has sent an official inquiry to General Lincoln."
And he returned that evening to say he had went to the American camp under a flag of truce and spoke to Lt. Col. Marion who informed him that "Roger came off the field with him, unhurt, and went to help with the burial of the fallen Americans."
An American soldier, under a flag of truce, comes to the house to request Bree go to the camp with her to paint the picture of a General who died. But as she was getting ready to leave, two other men arrived at the house with a commission for her as well. Those men were sent by Lord John and it was John Cinnamon and Willie. They spoke as she was getting ready to go to the American camp. She wondered if he recalled meeting her, Roger and the children. She "wanted you to meet them, see them, even if you didn’t know we were…yours.” To which Willie replies, "Mine?"
“I should probably say something polite about ‘only if you want us,’ ” she said. “But it’s—”
“A bit late for that,” he finished, and looked up at her, his eyes wary but direct. “To lie about the truth, I mean.” His mouth turned up a little at one side, but she wasn’t sure it was a smile. “Particularly when it’s as plain as the nose on your face. And mine.”
She touched her own nose by reflex, and laughed, a little nervously. His nose was hers, and the eyes, too. He was tanned, though, with dark-chestnut hair clubbed in a queue, and while his face was very like her—their—father’s, his mouth had come from somewhere else.
“Well. I do apologize, though. For not telling you.”
He looked at her, expressionless, for the space of four heartbeats; she felt each small thud distinctly.
“I accept your apology,” he said dryly. “Though in all honesty, I’m glad you didn’t tell me.” He paused, then, apparently thinking this might sound ungracious, added, “I wouldn’t have known how to respond to such a revelation. At the time.”
“And you do now?”
“No, I bloody don’t,” he said frankly. “But as my uncle recently pointed out, at least I haven’t blown my brains out. When I was seventeen, I might have.”
A hot flush rose in her cheeks. He wasn’t joking.
“How flattering,” she said, and to avoid looking at him she turned and resumed the ordering of her sketchbox. She heard him snort a little, under his breath, and then his footsteps, close behind her.
“I apologize,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean that with any derogatory reference to—to you, or your family…”
“Your family, you mean,” she said, not turning round.
He then sees her portrait of Jane and asks where she got it. She tells him she made it for Frances, Fanny. He is curious as to how and where she is. Bree explains she is at Fraser's Ridge and was fine in Sept. when Bree left. She explains they stopped first in Charleston to see "my…well, I suppose he’s my stepbrother, and Marsali, well, she’s sort of my stepsister, but they’re not exactly…”
The wariness had come back into William’s eyes. He didn’t pull away from her, though, and she felt the warmth of his arm through the cloth of his coat.
“Are these people also my relations?” he asked, as though fearing the answer might be yes.
“I suppose so. Da adopted Fergus—he’s French, but…well, that doesn’t matter. He was an orphan, in Paris. Then later Da married…well, that doesn’t matter, either, but Marsali—she’s Fergus’s wife—and her sister, Joan, they’re Da’s stepdaughters, so…um. And Fergus and Marsali’s children—they have five now, so they’d be…”
William took a step back, detaching himself, and put up a hand.
“Enough,” he said firmly. He pointed a long forefinger at her. “You, I can deal with. Nothing else. Not today.”
She needs to leave and he asks why so she explains she was asked to do a portrait of a dead calvary commander. He then wonders if portraits of the dead are her specialty. She said no and asked him to hand her her sketchbook. He declines and says he will carry it as he is coming with her. For some reason I think he is feeling it is his duty as his brother to protect her, though he may not realize in the moment that is what it is.
The young soldier sent to accompany her is not happy with the extra riders. But Willie declares,
“I am not allowing my sister to go unaccompanied into an army camp,”... [so maybe he did realize it was a brother's duty he felt]
“Mais oui,” Mr. Cinnamon said, and bent to give Brianna a foot up into her saddle.
“But—I will be escorting her! General Lincoln is expecting me to bring him Mrs. MacKenzie!”
“And Mrs. MacKenzie he will get,” she assured the lieutenant, settling her skirts and taking up the reins. “Though apparently with outriders.”
The Lieutenant was unhappy telling about Gen. Pulaski in front of someone so obviously British. And he told Bree,
"General Pulaski said as how he wanted to go aboard ship. I don’t know why—”
“Because the French aren’t going to hang about much longer,” William interrupted. “It’s hurricane season; D’Estaing will be nervous. I imagine Pulaski knew that, too, and didn’t want to risk being left behind, wounded, if—when, I mean—the Americans abandon the siege.”
Hanson turned in his saddle, pale with rage.
“And what would you know of such matters, you—you dandy prat?”
Willie explains how he knows what will happen especially since he knows that Gen. Pulaski is the Commander of Horse for the whole American Army. In an effort to direct Hanson's attention away from Willie, John Cinnamon asks to hear about the general's cavalry charge and Bree echoes that. A disgruntled Hanson decides to insult Willie and John Cinnamon calling them, "…fine pair of backgammon players…”. Which in that day and age was an insult that could get a man killed. (It is means "one who engages in anal sex", but generally is more specific to homosexual men. Since that was punishable by death, if the wrong person heard the insult an believed it, it could be deadly for the one insulted OR the one insulted could be so enraged by the insult as to demand satisfaction and end up in a duel where either party could wind up dead.)
Hal gets a letter from Denny that a smallpox outbreak led to him breaking his parole and heading to Dottie, who had given birth to their daughter, Minerva Joy, Mina for short. But he could not save the baby. He was able to save Dottie and left her in the care of some Friends in Virginia. So Willie sets off for Virginia to get Dottie, who he finds has left where she was staying. Supposedly with her brother. So he tracks down Denny who he figures is with Washington, since he had escaped. When he finds out that Dottie is with Denny, he is shocked to find his cousin Ben as well. The cousin everyone thinks is dead. He greets Ben with "Hallo Ben" who replies,
“That would be General Bleeker to you, sir.” That might have been taken as humor, but it bloody wasn’t, and wasn’t meant to be.
“Bleeker,” William said, making it almost a question. “All right, if you must. But Ralph?”
Ben’s face darkened, but he kept his temper.
“It isn’t Ralph,” he said shortly. “It’s Rafe.”
“One of Ben’s names is Raphael,” Dottie said pleasantly, as though making conversation over the tea table. “After our maternal grandfather. His name is Raphael Wattiswade.”
As Ben and Willie fought outside, some soldiers happened upon them and Ben did a rather rude thing. He told them Willie was a saboteur and to lock him up. Bad enough he let his whole family, except Amaranthus, think he was dead. Now he puts Willie at risk of being killed. Denzell gets Willie away from the camp and he returns to Savannah. He is unsure who he wants to speak to first. By rights, it should be his Uncle Hal. But he wants his Papa's advice. But then he thinks he ought to speak with Amaranthus.
So much happened. The Loyalists decided to arrest Jamie after Lodge one night so Jamie ends up kicking those who were his tenants off of his land. Cunningham nearly dies and may be paralyzed to some degree. Claire accompanies on of the sailors to look for the other missing out on the news that Agnes is likely pregnant and does not know which of the two men are the father. It appears almost as if one tried to harm the other who then got caught in a landslide. Ian arrives just in time to prevent Claire from fighting with one of the men. He has a large group with him: Rachel; Oggy, who has newly been named Hunter James Murrary, who also has a Mohawk name, Ohstòn’ha Ohkwàho, which means "Little Wolf"; Jenny; Sylvia Hardman and her daughters, Patience, Prudence and Charity; Wakyo'teyehsnonhsa's (Emily) son "Swiftest of Lizard" who was also nicknamed Tòtis (it is unclear whether he is Ian's natural son or not); and Okàrakarakh’kwa, the Sachem who appears to have been Thayendanegea's (Joseph Brant) uncle.
The Sachem tells Claire that she does have ghosts that follow her. He describes two, after noting that because of her healing of others, many follow her for a time before leaving her.
You have a small child sometimes near you, but she is very faint. The only other one I have seen with you more than once is a man. He wears spectacles.” He made circles of his thumbs and middle fingers and held them up to his eyes, miming glasses. “And a peculiar hat, with a short brim. I think he must be from your place across the stones, for I have never seen anything like that.”
But then he adds the following:
“You shouldn’t worry,” he assured me. “He is a man who loved you; he means you no harm.”
“Oh. Good.” I’d broken out in a cold sweat and groped for a handkerchief. I was wiping my face and neck with it when the Sachem got to his feet and offered me a hand.
“What is strange,” he said as I rose, “is that this man often follows your husband, too.”
Uhhh. Wait, what? Frank, based on the description, often follows Jamie? Who has said he feels Frank talking to him after reading the book Bree brought back from the future? That's definitely an interesting thought. And at one point after speaking to the Sachem, Claire thinks, "For the first time, it occurred to me that even if Jamie was right, and Frank was making an attempt to tell him something—it might be a warning, rather than a threat." Which, admittedly is an interesting thought. We know he definitely loved Claire. It may have changed after her return. We know he cheated on her, after her return, though I would be charitable and say that any relationship he had after her disappearance and before her return would NOT be considered such. Possibly an unpopular opinion. We know he felt like she cheated on him, I mean he raised Bree, who he knew who not biologically his. Which is a theme in Outlander. Frank raises Jamie's daughter, John raises Jamie's son. He also takes over monetary support for the child fathered by his cousin's husband. Jamie adopts Fergus. Roger is raised by his great-uncle. Jenny also is responsible for some of Fergus's upbringing, especially when he was in Ardsmuir and at Helwater. Jamie takes on Marsali and Janet, and Ian to a big extent. Ian takes his first wife's oldest child, who may or may not be his. Even Dougal and Colum fostered Jamie as did Murtagh to an extent. It's definitely the embodiment of "It takes a village". Jamie and Claire also raised Lizzie and then Fanny and brought Agnes into their home.
Willie stops to have a shave and his hair trimmed and bound again before going... to the home where John, Hal and Amaranthus are living. He tells her he found Ben. She asks if he means his grave. He said no, and mentioned Ben's new name. She says, “Father Pardloe said the rebels had gone to winter quarters in New Jersey.” Which to me is a bit odd that she calls him a mix of Father and his title. Willie says that Ben told him it was her idea he be "dead".
“I couldn’t stop him.” She spoke to the yellow toile de Jouy wallpaper, through her teeth by the sound of it. “I begged him not to do it. Begged him.” She turned around then and glared at him. “But you know what they’re like, these Greys of yours. Nothing matters to them when they’ve made up their minds—nothing. And nobody.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” William said. His heart had slowed down a bit after his first sight of her, but it was speeding up again. “It’s true that you can’t change their minds—but they do care, sometimes. Ben cared.” He cleared his throat. “For you.” He had the bruises to prove it.
And still does. He didn’t say it out loud, but he saw from her face that he didn’t need to.
“Not enough,” she said shortly, though there was a quiver in her voice. “Not nearly enough. It was only my telling him what it would do to Trevor—having a traitor for a father—that finally made him agree to disappear quietly, instead of having a blazing row with his father and stamping off to glory with his precious rebels. That’s what he would have liked,” she added, with a twitch of the mouth that might have been either bitterness or reluctant amusement.
She also tells him she wanted a coward who would stay away from the danger. This causes him to query if she thought he would be a coward. Apparently, Willie resigning his commission led her to think that. He then asks if she still loves Ben, but before she answers, he hugs her and John comes in.
“I found Ben,” William said, and his father’s eyes sharpened at once. “He’s alive, and he’s joined the Americans. Under an assumed name,” he added.
“Thank God for small mercies,” Lord John said, half under his breath, then tossed his hat onto one of the gilt chairs and went to Amaranthus, who was still facing the wall, her head bowed. Her shoulders were shaking.
They have seen John Cinnamon off on a ship bound for London to meet his father. Willie has moved back in with Lord John and the rest of the family. Charleston has fallen to the British. Amaranthus deserts her son and returns to her fathers house. She leaves Trevor in part because Ben is Hal's heir and Trevor is Ben's. She also overheard Hal's dark humor, which caused her to be very upset.
“At least Ben wasn’t there,” Uncle Hal added, in a tone that made Papa look sharply at him. “Save me having to shoot him myself to keep him from being hanged.” One corner of his mouth jerked up, in an apparent attempt to make this sound like a joke. Neither his brother nor his nephew was fooled....
...“Do you truly mean you would prefer him to be dead?” she said, in a voice like cut glass. “Is his being a traitor more important than his being your son?”
Hal grimaced slightly and opened his eyes, pale blue and cold as winter.
“He made his choice,” he said, speaking directly to Amaranthus. “I can’t change that. And I would rather have him killed cleanly than captured and executed as a traitor. A good death might be the only thing I still could give him.”
Harsh as it sounds, Hal has a point. The capture and death of a traitor was horrific. So, as a loving parent, I can see him wanting to spare him the torture. Not a decision to make lightly. And one no parent could ever not feel guilty about. But sometimes a merciful quick death is kinder and more humane than one that will be drawn out. But the result of that is Amaranthus leaves Trevor. She writes to John that she knows Trevor will be safe in his care, safer than she likely will be. That she trusts Hal to provide the knowledge the boy will need to his heritage and the attendant responsibilities. And that Lord John will be there to provide "the constant Love and Security that a Child requires." She promises to write once she reaches her destination. So, while Hal is not a bachelor, he is currently in a bachelor's house with two other bachelors and a cook and housekeeper. Yeah that's going to work out well with an infant.
Back on the Ridge, Bree, Roger and the children have returned. A pregnant Agnes, who is unsure which of the two lieutenants, Bembridge or Esterhazy, is the father of her child, has decided to accompany the Cunninghams back to England. But their departure has been delayed to a set back in Cunningham's recovery. One morning as Jamie and Claire are eating breakfast, the boys come running in. “Grandpa!” “A Mhaighister!” “Mr. Fraser!” It was Jem, Aidan and two of their friends. They were letting Jamie know that there were three Redcoats approaching the house and that they were black. Jamie and Claire greeted them, after Jamie told the boys to get into the kitchen but if they heard any sounds of a stramash, to get the women outside and up a tree. Claire thinks one of the men looks familiar, then Jamie greets one of the men with,
“I bid ye welcome, sir,” he said, his voice pleasant, but neutral. “Ye’ll pardon my not using your surname; I never kent what it was.”
“Stevens,” said our visitor, and taking off his laced hat, bowed to me. “Captain Joseph Stevens. Your servant, Mrs. Fraser. And…yours, sir,” he added, in a distinctly ironic tone that made me blink.
Finally, the penny drops. It's Ulysses. They invite him in while the other men wait and Claire pours them a wee dram. When Jamie toasts with "Slàinte." Capt. Steven says:
“Slàinte mhath,” he said.
“Ye’ll have kept your Gàidhlig, then,” Jamie said, a deliberate reference, I thought, to River Run, where most of the servants had had at least a passing acquaintance with the language of the Highlands.
“Not surprising,” Ulysses replied, not at all discomposed. He took a sip of the whisky, paused to let it spread through his mouth, and shook his head with a small “mm” of approval. “I joined Lord Dunmore’s company in ’74. You’ll know his lordship, of course.”
Jamie tells Claire that she also knows Lord Dunmore. They knew him prior to Culloden when he was John Murray, a page to Charles Stuart. Capt. Stevens mentions serving in Ohio in a major force against the Shawnee. Jamie takes this to mean he is visiting the Cherokee, perhaps with their allotment of powder and bullets? No, Capt. Stevens assures him that his business is not army business with the Cherokee, and in fact he is thinking of retiring from the Army. He's considering becoming a landlord like Jamie. And that this is a personal call rather than official. He wants to know if Jocasta still lives and where to find her. After he had fled when he killed a man, and possibly had killed Hector Cameron, Duncan and Jocasta fled to Nova Scotia and then St. John's Island. Claire knew Jocasta had freed him years before but at the time, a freed slave had to leave North Carolina within 10 days or be recaptured and sold. By joining Dunmore's company, he earned his freedom. Claire thinks about how he was now truly free though for 20 years he had been the "unknown master of River Run". He had killed Daniel Rawlings, had loved Jocasta and she returned that love, and now was ready to look for her. Jamie informs him that he had not heard from Jocasta in five years and that last he had heard from his cousin Hamish, she was still alive and well, but it was at Saratoga, three years he last had that news. Now Jamie also knew but failed to tell him, that Jo communicated with Farquard Campbell still who lived at Cross Creek. Jamie then gets up to see him out, and he says not so fast and calls him General Fraser. Jamie says he has resigned his commission with the Continental Army and has no connection to it. Joseph says some things are harder to renounce than a commission. Jamie tells him to say what he has to say, if there's more and then leave. Capt. Stevens says he apologizes but, he does have business with him. And hands him "a very official-looking document, sealed with red wax. Red wax, in [Claire's] experience, was usually a bad sign." It was from Lord Germain and noted that Jamie had "fraudulently obtained a grant of land in the Colony of North Carolina, by misrepresenting and disguising to Governor William Tryon his identity as a Catholic". And since there was no governor now appointed for North Carolina, Lord Germain, as Sec. of State, was ordering James Fraser to surrender the lands fraudulently obtained to Captain Ulysses Stevens and to vacate the premises. Tenants could remain for one year. Ulysses decides Jamie needed a threat apparently.
“As I was saying, sir, I should obey that order promptly. For if you choose to ignore it, the army will have more than sufficient justification to come and burn this house over your head.” He paused, and turned to look deliberately at the door where Fanny had vanished. “Over all your heads.”
Claire is not pleased and calls him a reptile. Jamie tosses the letter into the fire but Ulysses pulls it out and leaves. Ulysses claimed to have the original agreement signed by Jamie, where he stated he was not Catholic. Jamie asks if Claire thought Ulysses had more than two men with him then answered his own question by saying he did. And promptly hollers for Aidan. Bobby shows up first, and Jamie tells him Ian will be coming down and that he had sent for the Lindsays, Gilly MacMillian and the McHughs. And that they'll spread the word further but arrive as soon as they could. He and Bobby will set out to track Ulysses and his men and then Bobby will circle back to let the others know where to go. Jamie knew his men were not quite up to taking on a troop of trained soldiers but he stopped to consider what he wanted. First to separate Ulysses from the others and search his saddlebags for the letter and the deed Ulysses claimed to have. Then some of the men arrive. Anson McHugh, Tom's oldest, had come with his father and a younger brother. the Lindsay brothers and a handful of others. Anson asks what they're doing and when Jamie explains, Anson asks,
“Is it treason we’re going to commit, then?” Anson asked. A faint gleam of excitement came into his eyes at the thought.
“Very likely,” Jamie said, and suppressed an inappropriate smile at the thought. He’d had a flash of memory: a contentious conversation between himself and John Grey, on a road in Ireland. Grey, annoyed by Jamie’s refusal to tell him what he knew about Tobias Quinn’s aims, had said, “I suppose it is frivolous to point out that assisting the King’s enemies—even by inaction—is treason."
To which he had himself replied evenly, “It is not frivolous to point out that I am a convicted traitor. Are there judicial degrees of that crime? Is it additive? Because when they tried me, all they said was ‘treason’ before putting a rope around my neck.”
Jamie, with Kenny Lindsay at his back, go after Ulysses, who had helpfully separated himself from his men. Jamie tells them he wants the saddlebags from Ulysses. Lindsay replies, "Aye Mac Dubh!" and then Jamie lets out a Highland yell that caused his horse, who was not yet used to such a sound, to swerve. The soldiers jumped up but were not mounted and their horses liked the sound no better than Phin. After getting soaked and knocked down into the creek, Jamie mounts Phin, who is not happy about it and especially being dripped on and tries to bite Jamie. A gun went off but before Jamie could see if anyone had been hit, the ground in front of him moved. It was a large boar. And Phin decided to charge the boar.
Claire heard horses and men and was wondering what she would feed them all. But the Lindsays split off for home saying as how Kenny's wife would have food ready for them. Murdo tells her the rest went on ahead and they only came in case Mac Dubh needed a hand. She saw he was speaking to one of the black soldiers and Jamie introduced her to Corporal Scipio Jackson of His Majesty's Company of Black Pioneers. Claire noticed he had a broken tib/fib and Jamie said he had given him some whisky for the shock. When she asked how he broke his leg, Cpl. Jackson said he fell off his horse when it was startled by a pig. He said he had never seen one so big. Jamie agrees it was a large pig, but not the White Sow...one of her descendants though. And it was in the smoke shed. Claire asks if Fanny is in the house as she will need her help but Jamie offers to do it. She wonders if Ulysses will return for his injured man. Jamie says “Ye still think they’re honorable men, don’t ye, Sassenach? The British army?” To which she replies, some are, like Lord John and his brother. Jamie asks,
“Did I ever tell ye what His Grace did to me twenty years ago?”
“Actually, no, I don’t think so.” I wasn’t surprised that he should still carry a grudge about it, whatever it was, but that could wait. “As for the army in general…well, I suppose you have some small point. But I fought with the British army, you know—”
“Aye, I do,” he said. “But—”
“Just listen. I lived with them, I fought with them, I mended them and nursed them and held them when they died. Just—just as I did when we fought—” I had to stop and clear my throat. “When we fought for the Stuarts. And…” My voice faltered.
“And what?” He stood very still, leaning on his fists on the kitchen table, eyes fixed on my face.
“And a good officer would never leave his men.”
Claire realizes Jamie did exactly that at Monmouth. Didn't matter that their term of service was up the following day and many had already left, Jamie still felt like he let his men down. Jamie asks if the Corporal will be able to ride. And when Claire says yes, within limits, Jamie said he will think on what to do.
“Jamie.” He’d turned to go, but stopped and turned round to face me.
“Aye?”
“You’re honorable. I know it, and so do you.” He smiled a little at that.
“I try to be. But war’s war, Sassenach. Honor only makes it a bit easier to live wi’ yourself, afterward.”
Claire explains she is going to put the Corporal to sleep and he looks worried she means to kill him. Jamie points out if that was his intention, he would have just killed him at the creek rathe than hauling all the way uphill. Then he sees Claire's leather bag that hangs from her neck. He asks what it is and she explains how she got it but she is not sure what all is in it because she thought it might be disrespectful to pour everything out to see what was in it. She had added items, an herb here or a stone there. He then tells her,
“It is your moco,” he said softly and nodded, certain.
“Moco?” I said, not certain at all, but having some notion what he meant. Surely he hadn’t said mojo…
“Yes.” He nodded again and took a long, deep breath, his eyes still fixed on the bag. “My great-grandmama, she is Gullah. She is a hoodoo. I think you are one, too, madam.”
He turned his head abruptly to Jamie.
“Will you help me, sir? In my sack—a piece of red flannel cloth, with a pin stuck through.”
He unpins the cloth and looks through it taking out something dark and hard. He explains it is High John the Conqueror, a man's medicine and it was given to him by his great-grandmother who said it would heal him. He asked Claire to please put it in her moco before she touched him.
Claire then goes to Jamie, her second patient, to make sure he is fine after the adrenaline drop. She leaves him napping and returns downstairs to a melange of voices...English, Gaelic, Mohawk and even a bit of sign language regarding food. Ian and Tòtis had arrived. She explains what had happened. He is curious what Jamie wants to do. She said he hadn't told her but he didn't set out after Ulysses. Ian points out that with the number of men with Ulysses, a skilled tracker is not needed. Ian also says it will take half a day to gather all of Jamie's men and he likely doesn't want that many people knowing about the letter. She realizes how true that is given the number of Loyalists in the area. She then offers Tòtis some pie and he says, “Yes, please, Great-auntie Witch”.
“Great-auntie Witch?” I said, giving Ian an eye as I got up to fetch the pie.
He shrugged. “Well, the Sachem calls ye…”
The Sachem lived by himself, in a small dwelling he’d built that looked like part of the forest, but I gathered that he spent a great deal of time with the Murrays.
She then suggests maybe he could call her the Mohawk word for witch. Ian says no that's not such a good idea as they do have a word but
"... but it’s a word that means ye have powers, without sayin’ quite what kind of powers.”
She decides just Great-Auntie is fine and Ian leaves to see where Ulysses went and that he really left the mountain and to see where he was going so he'd be easier to find if they should decide to do so.
In the night, Claire finds herself awake and checking on her patient. As she does, she thinks about how Bree got to meet Willie. And realizes that was John's aim. The commission for Bree was just a bonus. As was the chance to get the rifles Jamie needed.
From John’s carefully composed letter, it had been clear that that meeting was what he really wanted. Not that he wouldn’t want to help Bree to a fat commission, or have her there for the sake of her own company—but I recognized the commission as being merely the shimmering fly on the surface of his pond. Jamie, who probably knew John a lot better than I did, quite clearly saw that, too—and yet he’d simply picked up the baited hook, examined it, and then deliberately swallowed it.
Yes, he’d needed guns, urgently. Yes, he wanted to restore Germain to his parents. To some extent, he probably also wanted Roger to be ordained. But I knew what he wanted most, and knew that John wanted it just as badly. They wanted William to be happy.
She knew that, much as both men wanted to help William come to terms with the news, that because he viewed it as them lying to him that they could not help him. Truthfully, only William could help himself. But Bree was part of it all, part of his identity and possibly could be "something for him to hang on to while he fitted the rest of his life together." Claire would have loved seeing that meeting between Bree and William. But she also wanted, possibly more, to watch Jamie seeing that meeting.
Willie writes to Bree in July 1780 that he had recently been in some odd circumstances, one involving her name, and he wanted her to know. The one was when Richardson said to him, "I know your sister." He explains how Richardson has tried to kill, abduct or interfere with his plans in the past and how he first met him as someone in the British Army but most recently as a Major in the Continental Army.
His Manner—and indeed, his saying such a Thing at all—was Peculiar in the Extreme and aroused a profound Feeling of Unease in me.
I will not presume to instruct you, as I haven’t the vaguest Notion as to what Advice I should give. But I felt that I must warn you—though against What, I have no Idea.
He includes a crude sketch and she notices the ears are not only large but oddly placed. Almost as if one had been cut off and sewn back on, but not quite level with the other. This made her think it was plastic surgery. And that led her to think of someone from the future. And how when she fought off Rob Cameron and the others, who told her "Someone will come." (the group concerned with "the last Fraser" prophecy that said the last Fraser of Lord Lovat's line would rule Scotland). That would, as of book 9, be Mandy. Though it does appear Bree is pregnant again and just doesn't know it. However, Richardson may be thinking it has to do with Willie as he too is of Lord Lovat's line. She shows the drawing to Roger and he asks, "Who is it?" "And what's wrong with him?" She tells him “Try imagining him with longer, curly, sandy-colored hair, light eyebrows, and a sunburn.” He asks if it is a time traveler.
“I know so,” she said flatly. “Do you remember, when we lived at Lallybroch, a guy named Michael Callahan—he went by ‘Mike’—who was an archaeologist who worked on Orkney? He came to look at the Iron Age fort on the hill above the—our—graveyard.” He saw her throat swell as she swallowed, hard. “Maybe he wasn’t looking at the fort. Maybe he was looking at the graves—and us.”
And what I forget is also, not only would the last of Lord Lovat's line include Bree's children and any of Willie's in the future, but also any of Jenny's grandchildren, including Oggy and Tostis (well assuming he is actually Ian's). According to Archibald Campbell in Voyager (ch. 61) '"the prophecy states that a new ruler of Scotland will spring from Lovat's lineage," and it will happen after "the eclipse of 'the kings of the white rose'", or the Stuart line.' Geillie thought that was Bree. The show has a slightly different take on it where:
Margaret Campbell holds the three sapphires and makes a prophecy:
When twice twelve hundred moons have coursed
'Tween man's attack and woman's curse
And when the issue is cut down
Then will a Scotsman wear a crown
Archie Campbell interprets the words as meaning, "A new king will rise in Scotland upon the death of the child that is two hundred years old on the day of its birth." (S3, E12, "The Bakra").
Willie ends up in Philadelphia, where he has found the bookshop of F. Cowden, the father of Amaranthus. Cowden threatens him, saying, "Stay away from my daughter," then realizing Willie's size, "Or I shall... Break your knee." Willie explains he is just there to bring a message to the man's daughter, from the Duke of Pardloe.
“I decline to leave until I’ve spoken with…um…well, whatever the bloody hell she’s calling herself these days. The Viscountess Grey? Mrs. General Bleeker? Or has she gone all the way back to Miss Cowden?”
He leaves the letter, folded in such a way that it would be obvious if someone opened it and tried to refold it, and says he will return the next day, without manacles, to speak with her. Mr. Cowden tells him, "Never have daughters...They don't listen worth a damn."
Willie is thinking what he wants to accomplish the next day. The letter from Hal, dictated to John because John thinks "Hal’s normal style of correspondence would drive any sane woman to instant flight—made it clear that he regarded her as a daughter and that she would always find protection and succor under his roof, for herself and her son."
The next day, he sees Amaranthus is wearing black and has her wedding ring on her right hand. Willie wonders if this means she has found that Ben is truly dead. No. She went to see him and found him with "black-haired whore who was sucking his—” She was livid. Tried to make him swallow her wedding ring but took it back when she found out Ben had "married" the woman. She didn't want her to have it. He tells her to marry him. She asks if he means a "marriage blanc", one without consummation. No. He intends it to be real, saying he wants to bed her, repeatedly. And asks, "What kind of marriage do you call that?" To which Amaranthus replies, "Bigamy." He then says she should come back to Savannah with him and kisses her. She chides him saying she hadn't said she'd do it. They leave for Savannah. She was surprised that his beard was a dark red and then more so when he put on his Captain's uniform, thinking he'd resigned his commission. He had but Hal gave him a temporary one as a ruse de garre, along with a pass for safe travel. He also tells her that he was not joking, Hal really had been worried about her. She comments that as an Earl, he should have been afforded a certain level of respect anyway. He said he was not an earl and if that was required for her to marry him, "I'm afraid that's off." She said it was not important. But she also said she thought Hal said he had to speak to the king and she wasn't aware he had. He said he hadn't but he was not the Earl of Ellesmere, if he ever was. She is confused by this and he admits, "I'm a bastard." But further explains, not legally as his mother was married to the old earl but that he was not William's father.
“Well, whoever he was, he must have been a, um…very striking gentleman. Is that where—” She pawed vaguely at her chin, still staring at him.
“Yes,” he said, not quite between his teeth. “And not ‘was’—he’s still alive.”
“You’ve met him?” She’d turned entirely to face him, her eyes alive with interest. He had the sudden illusion that he could feel the touch of her eyes on his face, tickling his skin.
“I have. He—knows me. And that I know about him.”
She asks if he means to tell her who it is. He says no but if she were to marry him...
“I am not accepting your proposal. Not now. Probably not ever,” she added, giving him a look. “But even if I don’t, you should know that I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Good of you,” he said. “His name is James Fraser. A Highland Scot, and a Jacobite—or was, I should say. He has some land in North Carolina; I visited there when I was quite young—didn’t have the slightest clue that he was…what he is.”
“He’s acknowledged you?” Amaranthus had never been one to hide what she thought, and the direction of her thoughts just now was easy to make out.
“No, and I don’t want him to,” William said firmly. “He owes me nothing. Though if you’re wondering how I shall support you without the Ellesmere estates,” he added, “don’t worry; I have a decent small farm in Virginia that my mother—well, my stepmother, really; Lord John’s first wife—left me.” There was Helwater, as well, but he thought that might disappear along with Ellesmere, so didn’t mention it.
Ugh. He told her. Now just because she said she wouldn't tell anyone, doesn't mean he should have told her. That's bordering on TSTL behavior! Idjit.
“Lord John’s first wife?” Amaranthus stared at him. “I hadn’t thought he’d been married at all. How many wives has he had?”
“Well, two that I know of.” He hesitated, but in fact, he rather enjoyed shocking her. “His second wife was—well, she still is—the wife of James Fraser, just to make things interesting.”
She thinks he is making fun of her. Yeah the theme of bigamy definitely comes up a lot here. Claire, Lizzie Beardsley, Jamie, John, Ben, though Lizzie is the only one who intended to be bigamous. Well...Ben possibly, if he really married the black haired woman. But he may have also figured he was considered dead and had changed his name so...
They arrive back in Savannah and rather than going to Hal's quarters (I thought he had been living at John's), they find he went to Charleston and was due back in two weeks but sent a letter saying he had been detained at "my Lord Cornwallis's pleasure". They explain they wanted to see John and asked if he went with Hal. The housekeeper says no but he went out the day before yesterday and hasn't been back.
Yeah that's giving me Supernatural vibes right there. Obviously different circumstances but... (They do say SPN has a gif for every occasion and this is a good one for this one.)
John had gotten a letter from a Captain John Doyle of the ship the Pallas. It was about a former employee of John's named Thomas Byrd, who had paid for his passage on the ship and then formed an attachment to a young stowaway who had not paid for her passage. Byrd offered to pay for the passage so the woman would not be jailed but didn't have the necessary funds. Byrd, when asked by the captain if he had any friends who could help, was reluctant to name anyone. But Doyle had heard Byrd mention Lord John, so he was taking the liberty to make John aware of the situation. He then explained where the ship was docked, the eastern-most warehouse quay, if John wished to speak to Byrd. He left, telling the cook he would be back in time for supper. John, in thinking of the message, fully realizes it could be true. He knew Byrd and that while Byrd had a "marked susceptibility to young women" it was usually held off during his marriages. Though he had heard that Byrd's second wife had recently died and he had it in mind to go to Germany. He asked if John "would be so kind as to extend his regards to the graf, when Lord John might be in communication with the same." But John also realizes, this tale "had a distinct smell of fish, and it wasn’t turbot." (Which is what Moira had been breaking down as he left home.)
John, went to the docks and along the way had memories of sailing with Jamie whose seasickness was legendary. He wisely avoided the eastern-most dock and asked a fruit seller about a ship without a flag. He was told it was the Castle, no, the Palace. He was then hailed by a "runty sailor with a red beard" who told him there was something on his hat.
Grey clapped a hand over his head, then seized the hat and brought it down for inspection. Suddenly his vision went dark and something light tickled his face. Then something exploded in his head and everything went dark.
John awakened with his arms bound at his sides and on a boat with a burlap sack over his head. (Yeah that's generally a sure sign something bad is happening.) Oh good, he recognizes the TSTL behavior.
Before he could congratulate himself on the acuity of his suspicions or berate himself for stupidity in not paying sufficient attention to them, the sound of the oars ceased, and the next moment the boat came to a stop with a thump that jarred his throbbing head. More rocking and strong hands seized him and stood him up. A shout from whoever was holding him, and a rope dropped from above, hitting his shoulder. The kidnapper—was there only one?—wrapped this round his middle and knotted it, then shouted, “Heave away!” and he was jerked into the air and hauled up like a side of beef.
He then gets untied and comes face to face with out good buddy (you can hear my sarcasm there, right?) Ezekiel Richardson. I will be so glad when he is no longer a problem for anyone! I also think Bree and Roger are right about him. Apparently, Richardson tries for being polite.
“My apologies,” Richardson said, and reaching down, pulled him to his feet and held him by the elbows while someone undid the ropes. “I told them to bring you, but I didn’t think to specify the means. Come below and sit down; I imagine you could use a drink.”...
“I really do apologize,” Richardson said, and sounded as though he meant it. “I have no personal animus against you at all, and if I could have managed this without involving you, I would have.”
Grey shifted his gaze reluctantly to Richardson, who wore the uniform of a British infantry major.
“I have heard of double agents, and met them, too,” he said, more or less politely. “But damned if I’ve seen one less able to make up his mind. Would you care to tell me which side you’re really on?”
He thought the expression on Richardson’s face was meant to be a smile, but it wasn’t altogether succeeding.
“That,” Richardson said, “is not as simple a question as you might think.”
“Well, it’s as good a question as you’re likely to get, under the circumstances.”
“Let me ask you one, then.” Richardson was sitting in the captain’s chair; it creaked as he leaned forward. “When I asked you whether you had any personal interest in Claire Fraser, you replied that you didn’t, and then promptly married her. Why did you do that?”...
...“I could tell you that it’s none of your business,” he said, wiping his fingers on his breeches. “But as it is, there’s no reason for secrecy. You had threatened to have the lady arrested for sedition. She was the widow of a good friend. It seemed to me that keeping her out of your clutches was perhaps the last office I could perform for Jamie Fraser.”
Richardson nodded.
“Just so,” he said. “A gallant gesture, my lord.” He seemed slightly amused, though it was hard to tell. “I understand that the marriage was necessarily of short duration, owing to Mr. Fraser’s unexpected return from a watery grave. But did the lady tell you, in some exchange of marital confidences, anything regarding her antecedents?”
“No,” Grey said, without hesitation.
“That seems rather remarkable,” Richardson said, “though given what those antecedents are, perhaps the lady’s reticence was justified.”
A ripple of unease crept down the back of Grey’s neck—or perhaps it was just a dribble of blood, he thought. Antecedents, my arse. He leaned back a little, careful of his tender head, and gave Richardson what he hoped was an inscrutable stare.
“Are you familiar with a man named Neil Stapleton?” Richardson asked, cocking one brow.
“In what sense, familiar?” Grey asked, raising both of his. “I might have heard the name, but if so, it’s been some time.” It had been some time, but the name “Neil Stapleton”—better known to Grey as Neil the Cunt—had struck him in the pit of the stomach with the force of a two-pound round shot. He hadn’t seen Stapleton in many years, but he certainly hadn’t forgot the man.
“Perhaps I should have inquired as to whether you knew him…in the biblical sense?” Richardson asked, watching Grey’s face. He pushed the document toward Grey, whose eyes fixed at once on the heading: Confession of Neil Patrick Stapleton.
No, he thought. Bloody hell, no…
John was not happy to read "read a moderately detailed and quite accurate account of what had occurred between himself and Neil Stapleton on the night of April 14, 1759, and again on the afternoon of May 9 of the same year." And asked what Richardson did to Neil, because no man would write that of his own free will. Richardson confirmed Neil was still alive and in London but how long he'd stay alive...he could not guess. But then he said he had "additional testimony, nearer to hand." And called out for someone to enter the room. Percy entered but looked "dreadful". Percy apologizes says, “I’m sorry, John. I’m not brave. You’ve always been brave, but I never have.”
John asks if Richardson got him to sign a confession too. And thinks how it would be longer given how long they had been lovers.
“Unnatural acts and incest,” Richardson remarked, turning over the pages of the new document. “Dear me, Lord John. Dear me.”
“Sit down, Percy,” Grey said, feeling unutterably tired. He caught a brief glimpse of the document’s heading, though, and his spirits rose a fraction of an inch. Confession of P. Wainwright, it said. So Percy had kept that one last bit of self-respect; he hadn’t given Richardson his real first name. He tried to catch Percy’s eye, but his erstwhile stepbrother was looking down at his hands, folded in his lap like a schoolchild’s.
You did try to warn me, didn’t you?
“You’ve gone to rather a lot of trouble for nothing, Mr. Richardson,” he said coolly. “I don’t care what you do with these documents; a gentleman does not submit to blackmail.”
“Actually, almost all of them do,” Richardson said, almost apologetically. “As it is, though, I’m not blackmailing you.”
“You’re not?” Grey waved a hand at the folder and its small sheaf of papers. “What on earth is this charade in aid of, then?”
Richardson folded his own hands on the desktop, leaned back, and looked at Grey, evidently assembling his thoughts.
“I have a list,” he said, finally. “Of persons whose actions have led—either directly or indirectly, but without doubt— o a particular outcome. In some cases, the person him—or her—self performs the action; in others, he or she merely facilitates it. Your brother is one who will facilitate a particular course of action that in turn will decide this war.”
“What?”…actions have led…will facilitate…will decide…He shot a sideways glance at Percy, who was looking up, but with an attitude of complete bewilderment, and no wonder.
“What, indeed?” Richardson had been watching the play of thoughts on Grey’s face. “I may be mistaken, but I believe that your brother intends to make a speech to the House of Lords. And I further believe that the effects of that speech will affect the will of the British army—and hence Parliament—to pursue this war.”
Percy was listening to this in total bewilderment, and Grey didn’t blame him.
“I desire that your brother not make that speech,” Richardson concluded. “And I think that your life and honor are probably the only things that would prevent him doing so.” He cocked his head to one side, watching Grey.
Grey blinked.
“If you think that, plainly you don’t know my brother.”
Richardson smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant expression.
“You’ve seen a man hanged for sodomy.”
“I have.” He had, in fact, not only attended that hanging but had pulled on Bates’s legs in the desperate hope of hastening his end. He found that one hand was idly rubbing his chest, in the place where Bates had kicked him.
“The American colonies are no more tolerant of perversion than is England—probably less. Though you might have the luck to be stoned to death by a mob rather than formally hanged,” he added judiciously, and nodded toward the papers on the desk. “Your brother will appreciate the position, I assure you. You—and Mr. Wainwright—will remain aboard as my guests, while copies of these statements are delivered to your brother. What happens to you after that will depend upon His Grace.”
He closed the folder, picked it up, and bowed.
“I’ll have some food brought. Good day, gentlemen.”
Ok, if I didn't already dislike Richardson, that would have done it. I am truly wondering if he is a time traveler now.
Willie and Amaranthus go to the General Prevot's quarters where no one had seen John but people were looking for him as, with Hal in Charleston, he had left John in charge of his troops. They did have capable executive officers but appreciated "more specific orders".
“But if Papa doesn’t turn up here quite soon…”
“Yes,” she said, biting her lip. “I suppose you’ll have to go find Father Pardloe in Charles Town. If he…” Her voice died away.
“If he what?” he demanded, in no mood for obfuscation. She didn’t reply at once, but went to the sideboard and took down a bulbous black bottle. He recognized it; it was the German brandy Papa and Uncle Hal called black brandy, though the name was really “Blood of Martyrs.” He waved it away impatiently.
“I don’t need a drink.”
“Smell it.” She’d uncorked the bottle and now held it under his nose. He took an impatient sniff, then stopped. And sniffed again, more cautiously.
“I don’t pretend to be a judge of brandy,” Amaranthus said, watching him. “But Father Pardloe did give me a glass of this once. And it didn’t smell—or taste—like this.”
“You tasted it?” He raised a brow at her and she shrugged.
“Only a fingertip. It tastes much as it smells—hot, spicy. And that’s not how it should taste.”
William dipped a fingertip and tried it. She was right. It tasted…wrong, somehow. He wiped the drop of wine on his breeches, staring at her.
“Do you mean to say you think someone’s poisoned this?”
“A few weeks ago, Father Pardloe asked me did I know what foxglove is. I told him I did, and that he’d seen it—Mrs. Anderson has quite a lot of it bordering the front walk of her garden.” She took a short breath, as though her corset was too tight, and met William’s eye. “I told him it was poisonous. And I found that”—she nodded at the bottle—“locked up in the strongbox in his office. He gave me a key some time ago,” she added pointedly, “because all of my jewelry is in it.”
William looked at the bottle, black—and menacing. The fingers of the hand that had touched the stuff felt suddenly cold and seemed to be tingling. He rubbed them impatiently against his sleeve...
...“Do you think he might have meant…to kill himself with it?” she asked quietly.
William...didn’t think Harold, Duke of Pardloe, would seize upon suicide as an escape, but…
“Well, he didn’t take it with him to Charles Town,” he said firmly. “It’s no more than a three-day ride. I’ll go and find him. Put that stuff somewhere safe.”
Willie goes to Charleston and meets with Sir Henry Clinton, who does not exactly like Willie due to the circumstances of his resignation of his commission.
“I am come with a message for the Duke of Pardloe,” William said.
Sir Henry looked mildly surprised.
“Pardloe? But he’s gone.”
“Gone,” William repeated carefully. “Has the duke returned to Savannah?”
“He didn’t say he meant to,” Clinton replied, beginning to be impatient. “He left more than a week ago, though, so I imagine he’ll have got back to Savannah by now.”
He then runs into Dennys Randall. (I'm still not quite sure about him, I have a feeling we'll either end up finding him a hero or thoroughly hating him.) He learns from Dennys that he crossed paths with Hal as he was on the way down to Charleston from Charlotte. William asks if he was alone and Dennys said yes, which he thought was odd. He didn't speak to Hal because he doesn't know him well enough to do that.
North. And what lay to the north that might lead the colonel of a large regiment to depart suddenly and without word to anyone, riding alone?
Ben. He’s going to see Ben. The vision of a black bottle rose in the back of his mind. Had Hal thought of poisoning himself, his son, or both of them?
“Too bloody Shakespearean,” William said aloud, turning his horse to the south. “Fucking Hamlet, or would it be Titus Andronicus?” He wondered whether his uncle ever read Shakespeare, for that matter—but it didn’t matter; wherever he’d gone, he hadn’t taken the bottle. At the moment, all he could do was go back to Savannah and hope to find his father there.
Three days later he arrives back in Savannah to find John not returned. He tells Amaranthus that Hal has went north. She too thinks he means to find Ben. She also tells William a letter had arrived for Hal from Richardson.
William snatched the letter up and read it quickly. Then read it again, unable to make sense of it. And a third time, slowly.
“Who is that man?” Amaranthus had retreated a little, eyeing the letter as though it might suddenly spring to life and bite. William didn’t blame her.
“A bad man,” William said, his lips feeling stiff. “God knows who he really is, but he seems to be—I don’t know, exactly. ‘Major General Inspector of the Army’? I’ve never heard of such an office, but—”
“But he says he’s arrested Lord John!” Amaranthus cried. “How could he? Why? What does he mean ‘infamous and scandalous acts’? Lord John?”...
“He wants Father Pardloe to go and speak to him. What the devil shall we do?”
A week later, still aboard the Pallas, John has recovered from his abduction. He gets brought in to Richardson who says he has had no word from the Duke. John informs him it make take awhile for him to hear but also privately wonders where Hal is and what is taking him so long.
“Oh, I can wait,” Richardson assured him. “I’ve been waiting for years; a few weeks doesn’t signify. Though it would, of course, be desirable for you to tell me where you believe him to be.”
“Waiting years?” Grey said, surprised. “For what?”
Richardson didn’t answer at once, but looked at him thoughtfully, then shook his head.
“Mrs. Fraser,” he said abruptly. “Did you really marry her simply to oblige a dead friend? Given your natural inclinations, I mean. Was it a desire for children? Or was someone getting too close to the truth about you, and you married a woman to disguise that truth?”
“I have no need to justify my actions to you, sir,” Grey said politely. Richardson seemed to find that amusing.
“No,” he agreed. “You don’t. But you do, I suppose, wonder why I propose to kill you.”
“Not really.”....
...“One of my great-grandmothers was a slave,” he said abruptly.
Grey shrugged. “Two of my great-grandfathers were Scotch,” he said. “A man can’t be responsible for his ancestry.”
“So you don’t think the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children?”
“If they were, I should think humanity would have ceased to exist by now, pressed back into the earth by the accumulated weight of inherited evil.”
“Your wife. Or your ex-wife, if you prefer…”
“If you mean Mrs. Fraser,” Grey said politely, “she was in fact never my wife, the marriage between us having been arranged under the false impression that her husband was dead. He’s not.”
“I’m well aware of it.” There was a note of grimness in that remark, and it gave Grey an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The clock on the distant table uttered a clear ting!, then did it four more times, just to make its point. Richardson looked over his shoulder at it and made a displeased noise.
“I’ll have to go soon. What I want to know, sir, is whether you know what Mrs. Fraser is.”
Grey stared at him.
“I realize that being struck over the head has somewhat impaired my thought processes…sir…but I have the strong impression that it’s not I who am suffering from incoherence. What the devil do you mean by that?”
“I think you have a good idea what I mean, Colonel. She told you, didn’t she? She’s the most intemperate woman I’ve ever met, in this century or any other.”
Grey started involuntarily at that, and cursed himself as he saw the look of satisfaction in Richardson’s eyes.
What the devil did I just tell him?
“Ah, yes. Well, then—” Richardson leaned forward. “I am also—what Mrs. Fraser, and her daughter and grandchildren, are.”
“What?” Grey was honestly gobsmacked at this. “What the devil do you think they are, may I ask?
“People capable of moving from one period of time to another.”
Grey shut his eyes and waited a moment, sighed deeply, and opened them.
“I’d hoped I was dreaming, but you’re still there, I see,” he said. “Is that my brandy? If so, give me some. I’m not listening to this sort of thing sober.”
Richardson then monologues about the slaves and how Britain abolished it. Meanwhile,
Grey ceased listening, recognizing that the tone of Richardson’s speech had shifted from conversation to lecture. He dropped his hands to his lap, pulling inconspicuously to test the stretch of the rope….
“I’m sorry?” he said, noticing that Richardson had stopped talking for a moment and was glaring at him. “My apologies; I must have dozed off again.”
Richardson leaned over, took the brandy glass from the table, and dashed the dregs in his face. Taken unaware, Grey inhaled some of the liquid and coughed and spluttered, eyes burning.
“My apologies,” Richardson said, politely. “No doubt you’ll need a bit of water with that.” There was a pitcher of water on the desk; he picked that up and poured it over Grey’s head.
“No.” Grey shook his head and straightened up a little. “Just thinking. I gather that you’re telling me that you mean to cause the current rebellion to fail so that the Americans remain British subjects, is that right? Yes. All right. How do you mean to do that?” Plainly the man wasn’t going to shut up until he’d got his entire theory laid out—such people never did.
Richardson mentions a speech Hal is due to give in the House of Lords and how they wish to prevent that as Hal will insist that while the war could be won by the British, doing so would cost more than it would benefit. John realizes if Hal gives that speech it will be for Ben because if the war stops and the Americans win, Ben won't be hanged as a traitor. Richardson assures him it isn't only Hal, they have a list of others who will advocate for ending the war. John asks how many "they" are and is told he doesn't need to know that, which John assumes to be "very few" or "only me". Richardson hopes Hal's concern for John's health will stop him from giving that speech but if not, John's character and activities will be brought to light, which will result in enough scandal that even Hal would be discredited. Richardson ends with:
“But you will have the comfort of knowing that your death will mean something. You will have saved millions of lives—and, incidentally, prevented the British empire from making the greatest economic blunder in history by abandoning America. That’s more than most soldiers get, isn’t it?”
There are not enough words to say how horrible that man is. Possibly more so than BJR. He at least was not a turncoat. Rapist, all around horrible man. Sure. But...
We go back to the Ridge. It is now September 1780. Jamie has an admittedly odd dream about a bunch of dead men, like Murtagh, Alex Kincaid, Ronnie MacNabb, Brian Fraser, the elder Simon Fraser (Jamie's grandfather), Jack Randall (who was stark naked as was Jamie). Jamie had no clue why they were either.
Next we have Bree giving birth.
“Jesus, it looks like a coconut,” Roger blurted from his spot kneeling on the floor behind me.
“ARRRGHHHH! NGGGGHHH! I’m going to kill you! You—effing—” Brianna stopped, panted like a dog, then drove her blood-streaked legs hard into the straw-covered floor, half-rose from the birthing chair, and the baby shot out and fell heavily into my hands.
“Oh, my God,” said Roger.
“Don’t faint back there,” I said, busy swabbing the little boy’s nose and mouth. “Fanny? If he falls over, drag him out of the way.”
“I won’t faint,” he said, his voice trembling. “Oh, Bree. Oh. Oh, Bree!”
Bree's birth is a real family affair with Claire, Roger, Fanny (acting as nurse) and Jamie, who had been "lurking in the doorway". Then Patience and Prudence arrive. As they're all discussing and then discounting certain names, Bree declared, "emphatically that she wasn’t having little Anonymous going without a name for months, like Oggy-cum-Hunter". Jamie suggests there's David, which was Brian's second name and a king...well two, a Scottish one and a Hebrew one, who was a great warrior, though given to adultery and fornication. Then Bree asks,
“Could we give him William for his second name, Da? I’d like that.”
Jamie cleared his throat and nodded.
“Aye,” he said, his voice husky. “If ye like. Roger Mac?”
“Yes,” Roger said. “And Ian, maybe?”
“Oh, yes,” Bree said. “Oh, God, is that food?”
Roger lays the baby in Jamie's arms and says his name is David William Ian Fraser MacKenzie.
Jamie receives a letter dated 26 Aug 1780 from Col. Francis Locke about the Battle of Musgrove Mill. Locke was renewing his invitation to Jamie to join his men with the Rowan County Regiment of Militias.
The temptation was great. He could take his men and join Locke, rather than fight with the Overmountain men at Kings Mountain. Locke and his regiment had routed a substantial group of Loyalists at Ramseur’s Mill in June and made a creditable job of it, from what he heard. Randall’s book had mentioned the incident briefly, but what it said matched the accounts he had heard—down to mention of an unlikely group of Palatine Germans who had joined Locke’s troops.
Beyond that, though…nothing more was said in the Book (for he couldn’t help thinking of it as that) regarding Locke until a skirmish at a place called Colson’s Mill in the following year. Kings Mountain lay between now and then, casting its long shadow in his direction. And Jamie couldn’t leave the Ridge undefended for any great span of time, regardless. He knew there were still Tories amongst his tenants, and he thought of Nicodemus Partland.
Jamie went walking in Claire's garden for the ability to sit with his thoughts. He found it a comfort to him even without her there. Though he saw there were nine beehives. This triggered a memory for him.
Something was in the back of his mind, a poem Claire had told him once, about nines and bees. Only a bit of it had stuck: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, and live alone in the bee-loud glade. [Yeats, The Isle of Innisfree]
Though Jamie was not too keen on the number nine thanks to the Parisian fortune teller who predicted, “You’ll die nine times before your death”. He asks the bees
“Ye’ll take care of her, aye?” he said at last, speaking soft to the bees. “If she comes to you and says I’m gone, ye’ll feed her and take heed for her?” He stood a moment longer, listening to the ceaseless hum.
“I trust ye with her,” he said at last, and turned to go, his heart easier in his chest. It wasn’t until he’d shut the gate behind him and started down toward the house that another bit of the poem came to him. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow…
He then gets a letter from Sevier dated 20 Sept 1780 that tells him Patrick Ferguson is on the move and proposes to burn settlements along the way. Sevier asks Jamie and his men to join them on 25 Sept at Sycamore Shoals. On 21 Sept. 1780, Ferguson had made an appeal to Loyalists for aid. On 22 Sept 1780, Jamie made out his will.
I leave to my wife, Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp (damned if I’ll put his name in this) Fraser, all Property and Goods of which I die possessed, absolutely, with the Exception of certain individual Bequests as listed here beneath:
To my Daughter, Brianna Ellen Fraser MacKenzie, I leave two hundred Acres of Land from the Land Grant known as Fraser’s Ridge....
He continued with similar bequests to Roger, Jeremiah, Amanda, and—after a moment’s thought—Frances. Whether she might be his blood or not, he couldn’t leave her without resources, and if she had land here, perhaps she’d stay nearby, where Brianna and her family could take care of her, help her to find her way in life, make a good match for her…
Oh, a moment—Brianna’s new bairn; David, he added, smiling.
Fifty acres to Bobby Higgins; he’d been a good henchman, Bobby, and deserved it.
To my Son Fergus Claudel Fraser and his Wife, Marsali Jane MacKimmie Fraser, I leave the Sum of five hundred Pounds in Gold.
To my Son…He set the quill down carefully, so as not to make blots on the paper—though he’d have to redo it in any case, because of the scratchings-out....
To my Natural Son, William James Fraser, known also as William Clarence Henry George Ransom, known also as the Ninth Earl of Ellesmere…
He bit the end of his quill, tasting bitter ink, then wrote:
…one hundred Pounds in Gold, the three Casks of Whisky marked with JFS, and my green Bible. May he find Succor and Wisdom in its Pages.
Ten pounds each to all of the grandchildren, by name. It made him happy, seeing the whole list. Jem, Mandy, Davy, Germain, Joanie, Félicité—he made a small cross on the paper for Henri-Christian, and felt his throat grow tight—and the new wee boys, Alexandre and Charles-Claire. And any further issue of…any of my children.
He smiled at the thought, but thinking of children brought yet one more to mind.
Damn, he’d forgotten Jenny, Ian, and Rachel, and wee Hunter James Little Wolf—and Rachel’s new unknown, who wasn’t due until the spring.
He rubbed two fingers between his eyes. Perhaps he should think more, finish this later.
The trouble was that he didn’t dare go to Kings Mountain without making disposition of his property, in case he was right about what he thought Frank Randall was telling him.
Would he lie? A historian, sworn—to himself, at least—to tell the truth as far as he could?
Any man would lie, under the right circumstances—and given what Frank Randall had certainly known of Jamie Fraser…
He couldn’t risk it. He picked up the quill again, and wrote.
To my Sister, Janet Flora Arabella Fraser Murray, I leave my Rosary…
On 3 Oct. 1780, Claire, Jamie, and Ian were camped awaiting the battle. Ian woke Jamie to say the colonels wished to speak with him because they had some Tory prisoners and were debating whether to hang them all or just a few as examples to the others. Cleveland was advocating for hanging them all. Jamie tells him to stop, that he won't let Cleveland make him a murderer. Cleveland tells Jamie "trot back to your wife, and your conscience won’t itch you a bit.” One of the condemned was Lachlan Hunt, one of the men Jamie had banished. Jamie said that was one of his tenants, to which Cleveland replied that he was a "hell bound Tory!" He then looped a noose around Hunt's neck and before Jamie could do anything, Lachlan's brother arrived and begged to speak to him. Ian caused a distraction that let Jamie roll Lachlan away and cut his bonds. Jamie sends his west to Medway Plantation, which is owned by Francis Marion's nephew. Lachlan tells him that Cleveland fired their cabin. Thankfully by the time Jamie sent Hunt away, he found the shouting was being done by Isaac Shelby and Captain Larkin, who took exception to Cleveland's idea of fun.
On 7 Oct. the POV quickly switches between Jamie and Claire and at one point Roger. As Jamie nears the top of the mountain he thinks he a thorn has stuck into his leg. He looks down and sees a snake writhing around his leg in a panic. Jamie flung it away and his own panic kicked in. It was then that he got shot in the chest. Claire heard when the tide turned and went searching for Jamie. She hadn't seen anyone she knew for a bit. Then saw Cyrus, he was standing but looked dazed. Then she saw a young man with Jamie's rifle. She asked where he got it. When the man asked who the hell she was, she demanded again to know where he got the rifle. He told her,
“He’s dead! He don’t need it no more!”
“Who’s dead?” I hardly heard the words; the blood had surged so hard into my ears that they were ringing. But a big hand clasped me by the shoulder and pulled me away from the boy. He promptly turned to flee, but Bill Amos—for it was he—let go of me and with two giant strides he had hold of the boy, picked him up with both hands, and shook him like a rag.
“What’s going on, Missus?” he asked, setting the boy down and turning to me.... “This—” I couldn’t hold the rifle; it slipped from my grasp and I barely caught it, its butt jolting into the ground. “It’s Jamie’s. I need to know where he is!”
Amos blew out a long breath and huffed air for a moment, nodding.
“Where’s Colonel Fraser?” he asked the boy, shaking him again, but more gently. “Where’s the man you took this’n from?”
The boy was crying, head wobbling and tears making tracks through the dirt and powder stains on his face. “But he’s dead,” he said, and pointed a shaking finger toward a small rocky outcrop near the edge of the saddle, maybe fifty yards away.
“He’s bloody not!” I said, and slapped him. I shoved past him, hobbling—his kick had bruised my shin, though I didn’t feel pain—leaving Bill Amos to deal with whatever he felt like dealing with.
I found Jamie lying in a patch of dry grass, just behind the outcrop. There was a lot of blood.
When Claire sees Jamie, she asks how much of the blood is his. He claims all of it. He answers he question of where he had been shot with "Everywhere" then assured her he was not afraid.
“For…give me…” he said, his voice no more than a thread, and I didn’t know whether he spoke to me or to God.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, tasting cold iron on my tongue. “Jamie—please. Please don’t go.”
His eyelids fluttered, and closed.
But Claire began noticing things, not as a wife tending her beloved husband, but as a doctor.
The bullet wound in his chest was evident, slightly left of center, welling blood. Welling, not spurting. And I didn’t hear the distinctive sound of a sucking chest wound; wherever the ball was, it hadn’t—yet—penetrated a lung....
I was doing a dozen things at once: yanking tight a tourniquet around his thigh (the femoral artery was all right, thank God, because if it wasn’t, he’d already be dead), applying pressure to the chest wound, shouting for help, palpating his body for other injuries, one-handed, shouting for help…
“Auntie!” Ian was suddenly on his knees beside me. “Is he—”
“Push on this!” I grabbed his hand and slapped it on the compress over the chest wound. Jamie grunted in response to the impact, which gave me a small jolt of hope. But the blood was spreading under him.
I worked doggedly on.
She continued to work on Jamie and noticed Jamie's face was white and the sound moved through her like distant thunder from a blue sky.
“Listen!” I said, and shook his arm, hard. “You think you’re going to die by inches, but you’re not. You’re going to live by inches. With me.”
“Auntie, he’s dead.” Ian’s voice was low, rough with tears, and his big hand warm on my shoulder. “Come. Stand up now. Let me take him. We’ll bring him home.”
She refused to let go. She stopped speaking, stopped listening to anyone speaking to her. Eventually, she found four bullet wounds.
A ball had gone clean through his thigh muscle but missed both bone and artery. Good. Another had scored his right side, below the rib cage, a deep furrow, bleeding profusely, but it hadn’t penetrated his abdomen, thank God. Another had struck him in the left kneecap. Fortunate as to minimal bleeding, and as to his walking in future, that could take care of itself. As to the chest wound…
It hadn’t penetrated his sternum entirely or he’d be dead, I thought. But it might have gone through and torn his pericardium or one of the smaller vessels of the heart, its momentum killed by the sternum but still allowing damage.
“Breathe,” I said to him, realizing that his chest wasn’t rising noticeably anymore. “Breathe!”
Ian stayed at her side, handing her things she needed from her pack. She thought he was saying a Hail Mary, though how she knew because he was speaking either Gaelic or Mohawk, she did not know.
You are losing your mind, Beauchamp,” I muttered, and kept working, willing the bleeding to stop. “Feed him honey-water,” I said to Ian.
“He canna swallow it, Auntie.”
“I don’t bloody care! Give it to him!”
Roger comes up and leans over saying that Jamie cannot died because Presbyterians do not give last rites. At one point, Roger was there again.
I heard Roger’s voice, but didn’t, couldn’t spare enough attention to know what he was saying. 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.
Then Claire realized...
JAMIE’S SMELL HAD changed, and that frightened me badly. I could smell hot dust and horses and hot metal and gun smoke and the muddy stink from puddles of horse piss and the panicked sharp smell of broken plants and the shattered tree trunks on the hillside below. I could smell Jamie’s sweat and his blood—God, the blood, it had saturated my bodice and stays and the fabric stuck to me and to him, a thin crust of hot stickiness, not the cut-metal smell of fresh blood but the thick stink of butchery. The sweat was cold on his skin, slick and nearly odorless, no vital reek of manhood in it anymore.
His skin was cold beneath the film of sweat and blood and I pressed myself as hard against him as I could, holding tight to the shapes of his back, trying to force myself into the fibers of his muscle, reach the heart inside the bony cage of his chest, make it beat.
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.
He was breathing still…only a faint waft of air on my forehead, perceptible only because it cooled my own sweat.
They stayed where they were the rest of the day, that night and most of the next day. When she became aware again...
“Here, Auntie.” Young Ian’s hands slid under my arms, and he lifted me gently into a sitting position.
“What…?” I croaked, and he put a canteen to my mouth. I drank. It was cider and I had never tasted anything better. Then I remembered.
“Jamie?” I looked blearily round for him, but couldn’t make my eyes focus.
“He’s alive, Claire.” It was Roger, squatting next to me, smiling. Bloodshot and black-stubbled, but smiling. “I don’t know how you did it, but he is alive. We were afraid to move you—the two of you, I mean, because you wouldn’t let go of him.”
Ian wonders if it is safe to move him. He tells her Roger Mac found a farm house a few miles away where they could stay until they were both strong enough to travel. Jamie stirs and Claire asks if he can hear her.
“Aye,” he whispered.
“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.
“We’re going home,” I said.
He breathed for a minute, then said, “Good,” and closed his eyes again.
22 Oct.
They are back at the Ridge. Jamie is not the best patient. He and Claire are having a difference of opinion over her putting him under for surgery. He says he is not dying in his sleep. Well, barring that the Lord takes him in his bed. But if he is dying by Claire's hand, he will be awake. She informs him that his leg must be immobile and she cannot manage that if he is awake.
I don’t care how strong you think you are, you can’t keep still enough, and even tying you to the table—which I fully intend to do”—I glared at him—“wouldn’t be enough to completely immobilize you.
“So.” My hands had stilled, thank God, and I brought them out from under the apron, picked up the ether mask, and pointed a finger at him. “Either you lie flat right now and take it, or I get Roger and Ian to tie you down and then you take it. But you’re getting it, like it or not.”
Roger and Ian both agree with him doing what Claire says and when he goes to fight them and swing his legs off the table as if to leave, they restrain him. Ian assures 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.”
Claire tells them to let him go and says if he will lie down she will put him out before they tie him to the table and untie him as soon as she is done, she will not let him awaken if he is tied.
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.
This was going to be a tricky, painstaking bit of surgery, but I was smiling behind my mask as I soaped and shaved, then swabbed the skin of his knee with alcohol. The situation reminded me strongly of the day I had prepared to amputate his snakebitten leg—this leg; I could still see the narrow groove the bite had left, just above his ankle, nearly hidden by the furze of red-blond hair. Today, I wasn’t afraid for his life, and I rejoiced in the knowledge that what I was going to do to his knee wouldn’t hurt him while I was doing it. I glanced up the table at him; he met my eye, and scowled at me.
I wiggled my eyebrows at him and scowled, too, mocking him. He snorted and lay back, but his face relaxed. 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.
Over the years, I’d seen a lot of sweet, amiable, biddable patients, who succumbed within hours to their ailments. The angry, irascible, difficult sons of bitches (of either sex) almost always survived.
She then sees Jamie awake and gives him enough laudanum to knock him back out. She then wonders down the hall.
The surgery had gone beautifully; he had good, dense bones that would knit well, and while recovery would undoubtedly be painful, I was sure that he would walk easily again, in time.
She finds Jenny in the kitchen and assures him Jamie will be well. Jenny tells her the Sachem came to her house that day. Then she admits, HE KISSED HER! Claire asks if she kissed him back and if she liked it. She said yes to both but then wondered what would be next. He is going back north to his nephew Jenny says. Claire asks if he asked her to go with him. Jenny says no and he didn't need to ask and she didn't need to answer. If it had been just her and him that would be one thing, but it is not so... And she said, there's Ian.
The softness in her voice told me that it was Ian Mòr she meant; her husband, rather than her son.
“I ken he wouldna mind,” she said, “and no just because the Sachem told me so,” she added, giving me a direct blue look. “But he sees Ian with me, and I didna need to hear it; I know he’s with me. He always will be,” she said, more softly. “One day, it may be different. Not that Ian will leave me, but…it may be different. I said so, and the Sachem says he’ll come back. When the war is over.”
When the war is over. I felt a huge lump in my throat. I’d heard that before, long ago, caught in the jaws of another war. Spoken in that same tone of longing, of anticipation, of resignation. Knowledge that if the war should ever end—it never truly would end. Things would be different.
“I’m sure he will,” I said.
11 Feb. 1781
Claire feels Jamie awaken next to her and she comments that injuries of the knee and foot seem to hurt more lying down than when standing. He grumbles it hurts plenty when standing. Claire notes that they had lost two men in the Battle at King's Mountain: Tom McHugh's second eldest son, Greg and a man who had only lived on the Ridge about a year named Balgair Finney. She realized Jamie was inclined to sit in his study and stare into the fire. He'd set out for his still but turn back. She thought how Davy had helped somewhat with Jamie's recovery. He's sit with Jamie telling him things in Gaelic. She also thought about how they had not made love in over two months after they had come home from the battle. To be expected to an extent given his injuries but something in Jamie was missing. She beings brushing her hair and notices her reflection. Her hair was white. Not entirely so, the curls around her shoulders were still a mix of brown, blonde and silver. But the new growth above her ears was pure white. She recalled how Nayawenne said, When your hair is white…that is when you will find your full power.”
I hadn’t thought of it in some time and felt a tingle down my spine now. The memory of holding Jamie’s soul on that mountaintop, calling him back to his body…Roger had said to me, quietly, when no one was nearby to hear, that he thought he had seen a faint blue light come and go in my hands as I touched Jamie, flickering like swamp fire.
Claire went up to her garden, accompanied by Jamie. She prayed for the two lieutenants who had dug good trenches for her the previous year, Gilbert and Oliver, and wondered which of them Agnes married. She now had 11 hives. Jamie could hear the bees. She said yes they don't die off in winter nor do they hibernate exactly. They cluster together and hum for warmth and as long as they have enough honey stored they survive the winter. John Quincy Myers stops. He stopped pretty routinely on his trips back from wintering with the Cherokee. He had a package for Claire. Said it was given to him by a women who keeps a tavern near Charlotte. Said she got it from a black man who left it for the conjure-woman of Fraser's Ridge. He figured they meant her as there aren't many conjure-women around.
Puzzled, I opened the little parcel to find a sheet of thick paper, carefully folded around a hard object. I unfolded it and a rock the size of a hen’s egg—and roughly the same shape—fell out into my hand. It was a mottled gray in color, with white and green splotches. It was smooth and felt remarkably warm, considering the chilliness of the air. I handed it to Jamie and unfolded the large sheet of paper it had been wrapped in. The note was written with quill and ink, the writing a little straggly but quite legible.
I have left the army and returned to my home. My grandmother sends this for you, in thanks. It is a bluestone from an old place and she says it will heal sickness of spirit and of body.
I read this, astonished, and was about to tell Jamie that it must be from Corporal—evidently now ex-Corporal—Sipio Jackson, when he suddenly reached over and took the paper out of my hand.
“A Mhoire Mhàthair!”
John Quincy craned his neck to see, interested.
“I be damned,” he said. “That there’s your name, ain’t it, Jamie?”
It was substantially battered; it was torn at one corner, rubbed and dirty, some of the ink had evidently got wet and run, and the red wax seal had fallen off, leaving a round red stain behind—but there was no doubt at all what it was.
It was a copy—the original copy, signed by Governor William Tryon—of the grant of ten thousand acres of land in the Royal Colony of North Carolina, to one James Fraser, in recognition of his services to the Crown. And sewn to it with thick black pack-thread was the letter from Lord George Germain.
Back aboard the Pallas, John has been allowed to exercise on deck twice a day, but otherwise kept in his cabin with a shackle around his ankle. He was given "Reasonably adequate meals", books, a bottle of port, a chamber pot. He thinks how he had been held captive before but not for long, though there was the night when he was 16 that he spent tied to a tree at the hands of Jamie.
The one thing he was reasonably certain of, regarding Richardson and that gentleman’s singular motives, was that he, Grey, wouldn’t be killed until Richardson managed to locate Hal, as his life had value—to Richardson—only as a lever to affect Hal’s actions.
But John was fairly sure Hal went north to find Ben. Richardson had moved the ship a few times, once to Charleston, a few times to harbors he did not recognize, and now back to Savannah. He hears the lock turn and whirls to face Percy.
Who, to add insult to injury, stood staring at him for a moment, openmouthed, and then dissolved in laughter.
“What?” John snapped, and Percy stopped laughing, though his mouth still twitched. He hadn’t seen Percy in weeks. Evidently Percy had served his purpose, and was allowed ashore.
“I’m sorry, John,” he said. “I didn’t expect—I mean…” He giggled. “You look like Father Christmas. I mean—a very young Father Christmas, but—”
“God damn your eyes, Perseverance,” John said crossly. He touched his beard, self-conscious. “Is it really white?”
Percy nodded and edged closer. “Well, not entirely white; it’s just that your hair is so fair anyway that it, um, blends in, rather.”
John made a gesture of irritation and sat down.
“What are you doing here, anyway? I take it you haven’t come to liberate me.” Someone had accompanied Percy; he’d heard the key click in the lock again when the door closed behind his visitor.
“No,” said Percy, suddenly sobered. “No. I would if I could, John. Please believe me.”
“If it helps you to sleep at night, I believe you,” John said, with as much vitriol as he could put into the words, and had the bleak satisfaction of seeing Percy’s face fall. John sighed.
“What the devil do you want, Perseverance?”
“I—well.” Percy steeled himself enough to look up and meet John’s eyes directly. “I wanted to say two things to you. First… hat I’m sorry. Truly sorry.” John stared at him for a moment, then nodded.
“All right. I believe that, too, for what it’s worth. Which is not all that much, as I’ll likely be dead soon, but still. And the second.”
“That I love you.”
Percy asks if he has anything to say to him. John does make a request that he go to John's home and tell William that John loved him. Percy nodded, stood up and left, saying
“Goodbye, John,” he whispered.
“Goodbye, Perseverance.”
Willie returned to the house after an unfruitful search of the docks to find a man waiting on him.
“Your servant, sir. Puis-je vous aider?” William asked, in as neutral a voice as he could manage. The man turned round and his face changed as he saw William, going from exhaustion and strain to something like relief.
“Lord Ellesmere?” he said, in a thoroughly English accent.
William was too tired and in much too bad a temper to make either inquiries or explanations.
“Yes,” he said brusquely. “What do you want?” The fellow was much less soigné than when last seen; minus his wig, his hair was short and curly, frosted with gray and matted with sweat, and his linen was soiled, his expensive suit crumpled.
“My name is—Percy Wainwright,” the fellow said, as though not quite sure that it was. “I am…I was…well, I suppose I still am, come to think…I’m Lord John’s stepbrother.”
“What?”
“What the devil do you mean, stepbrother? I’ve never heard of a stepbrother.”
“I don’t suppose you would have.” A faint grimace that might have started as a smile faded, leaving Wainwright’s face pale and exhausted.
“The family no doubt did their best to expunge me from memory, after…well, that’s of no account. There was a rupture, and a parting of ways—but I still consider John my brother.” He swallowed, swaying a little, and William thought the man was unwell.
“Sit down,” he said, grabbing one of the small armchairs and turning it round, “and tell me what’s going on. Do you know where Lord John is?”
Wainwright shook his head.
“No. I mean…yes, but he’s not…”
“Filius canis,” William muttered. He glanced round and saw Amaranthus, lurking curiously just outside the door, and jerked his chin at her as though she were the maid. “Get us some brandy, please.”
He tells William he was being held on a ship and he had seen John just before coming to the house but as he left the ship, they were pulling anchor to move it as they frequently did. He says it is his fault John was kidnapped and he didn't intend for it to happen. William and Amaranthus ask Percy to wait and step out to discuss what Percy said. That Richardson is a turncoat and a madman. "The Americans do not seem to be too choosy." is how Amaranthus puts it. Willie says they made Jamie a general if that tells her anything. She says she hope Jamie is not mad. William says no.
“Mr. Fraser may be a good many things, but he’s not mad. And I agree with you about Mr. Wainwright. He may be telling the truth about being Papa’s stepbrother; my grandmother Benedicta married a widower, and he may well have had a son. But his being Papa’s stepbrother is just an explanation for his concern, isn’t it?”
“You mean he might have another reason for coming to find you?” Amaranthus leaned to the side, looking round William toward the house.
“Maybe.” William dismissed this with a wave of the hand. “But the basic facts are—according to him and the letter, now—these: one, Papa is actually in the hands of Richardson, who is bloody dangerous. Two, Richardson apparently is holding him hostage in order to compel Uncle Hal to do—or rather, not do something. And three, no matter whether it’s possible for anyone whatever to compel Uncle Hal to do anything whatever—he bloody isn’t here to do it, anyway.”
“Well, but that’s good, isn’t it?” Amaranthus objected. “Presumably, if the only reason this Richardson is keeping your father is to make the duke do what he wants, then Lord John is safe, as long as the duke can’t be found. Isn’t he?”
William makes what Claire would call the Scottish sound like Jamie does. They go back in so William can ask where the ship had been docked and find the door to the parlor ajar.
The source of both was Percy Wainwright, who was lying on the floor, curled up like a hedgehog, his back heaving as he retched. He’d thrown up profusely already, but the smell was overlain by the stronger reek of spilled brandy.
They realize he drank the poisoned brandy. William notes his pulse is nothing like a pulse should be. He asks for salt, which they give soldiers who have sunstroke. Willie gets some salt water in him and he throws it up along with a bit of blood. He then asks for brandy and begins to reach for the bottle nearby. Amaranthus stops him because it is the bottle of Blut der Märtyrer.
John Quincy Myers makes another visit to the Ridge, again bringing a special delivery for the Frasers. This time he has a wagon. When he uncovers it, it's definitely a surprise. It's Germain, Joanie and Félicité. John Quincy explains,
"Fergus and Marsali send ye their kind love,” John Quincy assured him, interpreting his look. “And they’re all well. They thought as how it might be healthier for the little’uns to have some mountain air, though, so when I passed through Wilmington, they asked would I bring ’em on. Fine company they’ve been, too!
“Healthier,” Jamie repeated, eyes still fixed on John Quincy, who nodded. Germain’s arms were still locked around Jamie’s waist, his face buried in Jamie’s shirt. He patted the boy’s back. “Aye. I expect so. Come along in and hae a bite and a whet. There’s fresh buttermilk and the girls have made beer.”
In the time Germain had been gone, Claire noticed he had crossed the threshold of puberty and was looking through the eyes of a man. One who kept a close watch on his sisters, ever ready to protect them if need be. He was also a good four inches taller than he had been. Though after Bree gave birth to Davy and Fanny swearing she was never going to have children, her reaction to Germain is interesting.
Fanny poured milk for everyone, smiling—with a special smile for Germain, who went pink in the face and buried his nose in his cup—and I passed out cookies.
John Quincy reminds Germain he has a letter for Jamie and Claire, from Fergus, as evidenced by the greeting of "Milord, Milady". He explains there was an incident that he would not detail because of fears of someone reading the letter but that it would be safest for the children. He would have preferred Marsali and the twins to go to the Ridge as well. But she refused for the time being, saying she will go to the Ridge if things worsen but for now she will not leave Fergus. And...
I cannot leave undone the Work of Freedom to which I am called. You put the Sword into my Hand, milord, and I will not lay it down.
Votre fils et votre fille,
Fergus Claudel Fraser
Marsali Jane MacKimmie Fraser
Claire tells Germain he did a wonderful job seeing his sisters safely there. And like many Scottish men before him his reply was “Mph,” but he looked happier.
While doing what we would know call his physical therapy, but what Jamie referred to as the third level of purgatory, Jamie asks Claire (who is reading while watching him to prevent him from sneaking away and avoiding the exercises) if any of the children told her what the incident was. She does tease Jamie about how when someone or several someones shot him full of holes and fracture his sternum he doesn't make a sound but when he is asked to do a simple stretch of a few muscles... He grumbles he was too busy dying to talk and plus, talking isn't exactly easy with a fractured sternum. She bribes him to finish his exercises and do the ones she has prescribed for his arms. If he will do them, she will speak to Fanny, who has been spending a lot of time with Germain, to ask if he said something to her about it. Turns out. Germain had told Fanny but he didn't want his sisters or the other girls to know. The printshop had vandalism and threats similar to what happened in Charleston but they were careful, barred the door at night, kept the shutters closed. They felt safe during the day. One day while Marsali and the girls were out, with Germain helping Fergus with the press, two men came in seeking the proprietor. Germain noticed one man was armed under his coat. And he said he would go get his father. But the men opened the hatch in the counter and went to the back. Germain had clung to the leg of the second man, while screeching. He was looking into the barrel of a gun thinking he'd be shot any moment. Fergus, hearing the commotion, came from the back with a ladle full of hot lead and flung it at the first man who tried to run in a blind panic. He tripped over Germain. Fergus grabbed the gun from the second man and in wrestling over it, it went off into the ceiling. Fergus was able to unholster his own pistol and shot the second man in the head. Fergus sent Germain to the back room but he turned and looked to see Fergus shoot the first man in the head as well. They hauled the men out of the shop before Marsali came back and cleaned up. After Marsali returned, Fergus sent Germain with the girls to the ordinary to bring back supper. She was gone when the children returned but came back a bit later. She quietly had a word with Fergus and Germain heard a wagon in the alley that night. The bodies were gone the next morning. He told Fanny he thought it was the Wilmington Sons of Liberty who removed the body as Fergus knows all of them.
Claire wakes one morning to a light snow. She doesn't wake Jamie, knowing Roger Mac will care for the livestock with the help of the children. Sylvia and Fanny were starting breakfast and Bree was dozing in the settle while trying to get Davy to nurse. When Claire took a warm drink up for Jamie, he was awake. I will skip the description of what happens next.
Later Jamie finds Claire in her surgery and asks her to come with him saying he wants her to be a witness. She asks what she is witnessing. He says that right now it is a wee stramash but it might be a wedding. That's not puzzling at all. There was a good sized group in the parlor. Rachel, Ian and Jenny were there as were the Hardman and Higgins families. They were lined up like opposing armies. Sylvia, Patience, Prudence, and Charity on one side, sitting on the settee; Bobby was in Jamie's chair with Aidan, Orrie, and Rob sitting at his feet. Rachel, Ian and Jenny were standing at the end of the settee and everyone was quarrelling. Jamie asks what Sylvia was saying when he left. She said she was explaining to Friend Higgins that she has the name of a whore. Bobby said he had been told that but, that since he was literally branded a murderer, he thought she should be more bothered than him.
“I didn’t need telling,” she said, “but I thank thee for thy consideration. While as a Friend, I must naturally deplore violence, I understand that thy circumstances were such as to cause thee to believe that thee did no more than thy duty.”
Bobby agrees that is true and supposes she was also doing her duty. He points out he is no longer a soldier, he will willingly swear, if it does not offend her, to not pick up arms again, except to feed them. And he reckons that she does not intend to return to her...former circumstances. Jamie answers that for her saying she will not. Bobby then asks her to marry him. She starts to answer, but Aidan speaks up.
“Please do marry him, Mrs. Hardman,” he said urgently. “He can’t cook anything but porridge and beans with burnt bacon.”
“And thee thinks I can?” she said, the corner of her mouth twitching.
“She’s not a good cook, either,” said Prudence, as one required to be truthful. “But she can bake bread.”
“And we know how to make stew out of turnips and potatoes and beans and onions and a pork bone,” Patience put in. “We wouldn’t let thee starve.”
Sylvia figures if Bobby provides the meat, she can butcher it and get it in the pot. Aidan says, "So it's a bargain, is it?" Bobby chides him a bit saying it might be if Aidan stops talking. Then Charity holds out her arms to Bobby saying, "Daddy?"
Jamie thinks back to the first Quaker wedding he attended in Philadelphia. It was mostly Friends, who were the ones who went for Liberty, as well as two Englishmen, in full uniform. They had left their swords off in deference of the Quakers. Jamie was surprised at the number of children at the wedding. There were three Hardman girls, the three Higgins boys, Davy, Fanny, Jem, Mandy, Tòtis, Germain, Joanie, and Félicité. Oddly, not mentioned were the other Murrays, Ian, Rachel, Jenny and Hunter. Apparently the Murrarys were there because once they returned to the house, they had a wedding feast. Jamie, Roger, and Ian had brought down three barrels of the two-year old whiskey, and Lizzie and Rachel had made a large quantity of beer. So apparently the Beardsley family was also in attendance. Fanny told Patience and Prudence they were lucky to have brothers. She didn't. The girls said they would share their new brothers with her and would be her sisters as well. The Crombies chose not to attend the wedding because they felt marrying without the benefit of the clergy was wrong and when Roger pointed out it was the same as being handfasted, Hiram asked how Roger, as a Reverend, was not offended at the ceremony. Ian had stopped to let the Crombies know they were welcome at the feast, even if they didn't attended the wedding, but Claire didn't see any of them showing up. Surprisingly, Cyrus did. Claire sends Fanny to take Cyrus to congratulate the happy couple and Prudence and Patience wonder if Fanny has a suitor and whether Jamie approves and if Fanny is old enough.
Claire hears a slight rumble amongst the noise of the crowd. She wonders if it is the rest of the Crombie family. But when she looks,
"..it was a rider on a gray horse, a single tall man in a tricorne and a dark greatcoat that flapped like wings as he rode, coming up the wagon road and doing so at the gallop."
She remarks to Jamie if it is Benjamin Cleveland she's going to...and Jamie interrupts and says it is not. He was gripping his walking stick tightly enough his knuckles were white. They see the rider is William.
[He] snatched off his hat and bowed from the saddle. He was breathing hard, his dark hair was pasted to his head with sweat, and there were hectic patches of red across his broad cheekbones. He gulped air, his eyes fixed on Jamie.
“Sir,” he said, and swallowed. “I need your help.”
Fin. Yes, Herself cliff hangared us! A bit more than two and a half years later, we have gotten snippets of the as yet unnamed book 10, which will be the last one according to Diana Gabaldon. We obviously know William needs Jamie's help rescuing John. But we don't know how that will play out and who will answer that call. I can see a number of people going back to rescue John. Jamie and Claire, Bree and Roger, maybe even Ian. But exactly how it will happen, no one knows. I do hope that it doesn't take as long as the wait between MOBY and BEES took. That was 9 years. Granted, Virgins, A Space Between, A Fugitive in Green, & A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows were all written in that time period as well.
But all in all, an excellent series. Took me just short of a month. Though this time I did skip all of the short stories, novellas and LJG books. I'm now going to crash into a major book hangover. I'm not 100% sure what I will read next and it won't involve a long series or anything historical, that's for sure. I also won't be blogging my weird thoughts.
I did have one I shared with my DH tonight. How in the show, they did a really good job with Dougal and Buck MacKenzie and making them not look exactly like they're the same actor. They made Buck look different enough than Dougal. I mean obviously there are similarities, but they're father and son, so that's expected. Graham McTavish did a really good job making the distinction. I have tried to stay away from the differences between the book and the show for the most part. Ignoring the changes to John was impossible and in spite of him not at all looking like he does in the book, David Berry makes an excellent John. I enjoyed the show a lot. But as a reader, if I said I didn't like the books better, I'd be lying. The books, barring a few exceptions, are always better. The one exception I firmly stand by where the movie is better is The Princess Bride.
Quotes from Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone © 2021 Diana Gabaldon
