The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood

by Diana Gabaldon

  He then seizes Claire by the elbow and hastens her into the wood, where, once out of sight, he collapses onto a log, caught between laughter and tears. When Claire demands to know what he can have been thinking, he replies, “I’ve lost a kinsman and found one, all in the same moment—and a moment later realize that for the second time in my life, I’ve come within an inch of shooting my son…. I shouldna have done it, I ken that. It’s only—I thought all at once, What if I dinna miss, a third time? And—and I thought I must just…speak to him. As a man. In case it should be the only time, aye?”

  The death of General Fraser, significant as it is to the general, his men, and his kin, is minor by comparison with the other effects of the battles. The largest British army ever to be assembled in North America has been defeated—by a ragtag rebellion whose leaders have been nothing but gallows bait for the last year. No decent bookmaker would have given them odds of a hundred to one—and yet…they’ve won.

  General Burgoyne has no option but to surrender and does so, reluctantly. The process is complex, though, and takes days, during which the Continental army relaxes in camp.

  Claire’s relaxation is disturbed by the sudden appearance of a strange Scotsman—a Lowlander in the uniform of a Continental officer, who inquires for Jamie and makes obnoxious innuendos. Claire walks away from him, which insult he repays by spitting in the soup she’s making.

  She’s therefore less than pleased to see him return to her fireside that evening but is reassured by the presence of both Jamie and Ian. The stranger has more than innuendo on his mind this time; he means blackmail.

  As an overseer on a West Indies plantation years before, he had taken delivery of a consignment of transported Jacobite prisoners. All the men were in poor condition and had died soon after arrival—but one man, Willie Coulter by name, had had a strange story to tell, regarding the death of his chieftain, Dougal MacKenzie. The overseer has noted the presence of Hamish MacKenzie and knows who he is. What if, he inquires pleasantly, Hamish were to learn what Willie Coulter had to say—i.e., that Dougal (Hamish’s putative uncle; in fact, his father) didn’t die on the field at Culloden but rather the night before, in the attics of Culloden House, killed by his other nephew, Jamie?

  Ian, who had quietly excused himself a moment before, comes back at this delicate point in the conversation with his own point—which he drives between the stranger’s ribs. Satisfying as this intervention is, it’s unfortunately timed; someone sees and raises the cry of “Murder!”

  Ian and Rollo are pursued through the camp, and Rollo is shot by one of the pursuers. Unwilling to leave his wounded dog, Ian hovers over him, torn between the desperate need to fly and the conviction that Rollo will be mistreated and killed if Ian leaves him. On the point of slitting the dog’s throat himself, he’s stopped by the breathless arrival of Rachel, who throws herself on Rollo, begs Ian to flee, and tells him she will mind his dog until he comes back. With little choice at this point, Ian vanishes into the dark.

  Next day, Jamie is summoned once again by a British army emissary and taken to see General Burgoyne himself. Braced to hear that the army has captured or killed Ian, he’s relieved—though taken aback—to have Burgoyne ask him, as General Fraser’s nearest kinsman, to accompany the brigadier’s body back to Scotland. Jamie swallows hard and says yes.

  A few days later, the surrender is concluded. The British troops pile their weapons by the river and march off to captivity, parole, or eventual transport back to England; none will fight again in this war. The American victors line the road in salute, each man with his gun, silently watching the companies go past. From her vantage point behind Jamie, Claire sees William’s company go past—and Jamie’s head shift just slightly, watching his son out of sight. Then his shoulders slump a little, in relief.

  William is safe. And the Frasers are bound—at last—for Scotland, including Ian, smuggled aboard the ship, disguised as an Indian scout accompanying the brigadier’s body.

  ROGER IS ALONE in the ruined chapel on the hill, putting stones in place and thinking:

  Was God opening a door, showing him that he should be a teacher now? Was this, the Gaelic thing, what he was meant to do? He had plenty of room to ask questions, room and time and silence. Answers were scarce. He’d been at it most of the afternoon; he was hot, exhausted, and ready for a beer.

  Now his eye caught the edge of a shadow in the doorway, and he turned—Jem or maybe Brianna, come to fetch him home to tea. It was neither of them.

  For a moment, he stared at the newcomer, searching his memory. Ragged jeans and sweatshirt, dirty-blond hair hacked off and tousled. Surely he knew the man; the broad-boned, handsome face was familiar, even under a thick layer of light-brown stubble.

  “Can I help you?” Roger asked, taking a grip on the shovel he’d been using. The man wasn’t threatening but was roughly dressed and dirty—a tramp, perhaps—and there was something indefinable about him that made Roger uneasy.

  “It’s a church, aye?” the man said, and grinned, though no hint of warmth touched his eyes. “Suppose I’ve come to claim sanctuary, then.” He moved suddenly into the light, and Roger saw his eyes more clearly. Cold, and a deep, striking green.

  “Sanctuary,” William Buccleigh MacKenzie repeated. “And then, Minister dear, I want ye to tell me who ye are, who I am—and what in the name of God almighty are we?”

  This is the Nuckelavee: the visitor who has been living in the broch, keeping an eye on Lallybroch, is none other than William Buccleigh MacKenzie, the son of Dougal MacKenzie and the witch Geillis Duncan, last seen at the battlefield of Alamance—in 1771.

  SCOTLAND. AFTER A brief interlude in Edinburgh, during which Jamie is reunited with his beloved printing press (named, as he self-consciously admits to Claire, “Bonnie”) and both Frasers buy spectacles, they journey at last into the barren Highlands, where they bury Simon Fraser in the presence of his family at the cairn of Corrimony. And then…it’s time to go home. To Lallybroch.

  Young Ian, unsure of his reception after his precipitous departure and long absence, has chosen to brazen it out and appears in full Mohawk dress, scalp lock and all. His mother, Jenny, takes one look at him, steps back, staggers—and bursts into laughter born of joy, relief, and astute recognition of her son’s hesitance. This welcome disconcerts Ian but not nearly as much as her words of greeting as she embraces him: “Oh, God, Ian. My wee lad…. Thank God ye’ve come in time.” Ian the elder is dying.

  Phthisis, they called it now. Or doctors did. It meant “wasting,” in the Greek. Laymen called it by the blunter name “consumption,” and the reason why was all too apparent. It consumed its victims, ate them alive. A wasting disease, and waste it did. Ate flesh and squandered life, profligate and cannibal.

  I’d seen it many times in England of the thirties and forties, much more here in the past. But I’d never seen it carve the living flesh from the bones of someone I loved, and my heart went to water and drained from my chest.

  Winter lies cold on the Highlands and on the hearts of those at Lallybroch. Still, they have come in time. Time for Jamie to walk the hills—slowly—with the man who has always been closer than a brother, to share with him the burdens and secrets of his life. Time for Young Ian and his father to become close, in the way they never had—close enough to say the things that must be said.

  In these close conversations, Young Ian tells his father everything—his short-lived marriage to a Mohawk woman, and the child she bore who is the child of his spirit, if not his body. His love for Rachel Hunter, and his fears that he may not prove worthy of her, either in soul or body.

  The elder Ian listens, in sorrow and joy, and urges Young Ian not to hang about waiting for his own death but to return to America as soon as possible, find Rachel, and marry her.

  The chance to return comes sooner than anyone expects. Since Jamie is making peace with his past, he determines to take care of one lingering loose end and goes one day to Balriggan, where Laoghaire live
s. He means to make peace with her and to apologize for his part in their disastrous and ill-omened brief marriage. Things don’t go quite as planned, but he does achieve the peace he sought—discovering in the process that Laoghaire has formed an attachment to her hired man.

  While telling Claire about this interesting encounter, Jamie takes her up into the hills behind Lallybroch, to show her the cave where he hid for years after Culloden. Coming down from the cave, they meet Joan, Marsali’s younger sister, Laoghaire’s other daughter. Joan greets Jamie affectionately as a father—and tells him bluntly that he must do something about Laoghaire and Joey, the hired man.

  Her mother feels she can’t marry Joey, as remarriage would put an end to the money Jamie pays for her maintenance, and Joey, who is disabled, can’t keep them. However, being unable to marry does not stop their feelings for each other, which manifest themselves in embarrassing physicality—embarrassing to Joan, whose strong desire is to become a nun but who feels that she can’t leave home with her mother in such an immoral position. Rather bemused, Jamie promises to see what he can do about this.

  Claire is inclined to find the whole situation more than funny, but her humor is quenched a few days later when her writing is interrupted by the abrupt appearance of Laoghaire herself.

  “I’ve come to ask ye a favor,” she said, and for the first time I heard the tremor in her voice. “Read that. If ye will,” she added, and pressed her lips tight together.

  Laoghaire has brought with her a letter from Marsali, who writes from the family’s new home in Philadelphia, begging her mother to go to Claire, if Claire has in fact arrived at Lallybroch, and tell her of Henri-Christian’s dire straits. Born a dwarf, the little boy suffers frequent respiratory problems; these have been increasingly aggravated by inflamed and overgrown tonsils and adenoids, which are blocking his throat to such a degree that he can only breathe when his head is upright—which means that he stops breathing several times each night and is only kept alive by one or the other of his family staying up with him, to wake him and readjust his position before he suffocates. Claire had told Marsali that the adenoids and tonsils could be removed surgically, but plainly there is no one in Philadelphia equipped to do this. Will Claire come back, as quickly as may be?

  There is no ground on which Claire and Laoghaire are ever likely to see eye-to-eye—save the welfare of the grandchildren they share. Heart-struck at leaving Ian, in the certain knowledge that she’ll never see him again, and agonized by parting from Jamie—who feels that he must stay and see his sister through Ian’s passing—Claire packs her medical kit and returns to America with Young Ian, hoping she will be in time.

  AT THE LALLYBROCH of 1980, the strange visitor is making himself at home. William Buccleigh MacKenzie tells Roger how he came to pass accidentally through the stones and, unable to get back, made his way to Inverness, where he sought help from the rector of the church he knew. Later, sitting dazed on the street as cars rushed past, he was shocked to recognize Roger, whom he followed to Lallybroch, where he took up residence in the broch, warily observing the family (and scaring the pants off Jem by claiming to be a Nuckelavee when the boy discovered him), until he could be sure that Roger was not in fact a supernatural being but a person like himself.

  Brianna is more than suspicious of William B., who has quickly become “Uncle Buck” to the children—but even she is moved by his account of his difficulties and disasters in the past and his strong desire to return to his wife. She’s a little less sympathetic when it comes to his interfering in her life, recalling the day he went with her to her work at Loch Errochty, where he met Rob Cameron and warned her against him.

  “Yon man’s got a hot eye for you. Does your husband know?”

  Roger does not know, and Brianna has no intention of telling him Buck’s opinion at the moment. Rob has become friendly with Roger, through the local Masonic lodge and through the children’s choir, where Rob’s fatherless nephew, Bobby, is a member. Jem and Bobby are friends, too, and Jem occasionally goes to the pictures with Bobby or to Bobby’s house for supper. In fact, Jem is spending the night with Bobby.

  At home that evening, the MacKenzies discuss William Buccleigh but put that subject aside until the morning, more interested in each other. Long before morning, though, Amanda wakes, screaming.

  “Jemmy, Jemmy!” she sobbed. “He’s gone, he’s gone. He’s GONE!”

  No matter how her parents try to console her, she won’t be comforted but keeps insisting that Jem is gone, thumping her head with her hand and insisting that he’s “Not here…Not here wif me!”

  Disquieted, Brianna goes to phone Bobby’s mother—only to hear that Jemmy was not expected for the night; he isn’t there. Really alarmed now, Bree asks Bobby’s mother to go to her brother’s house down the street and fetch Rob. Bobby’s mother hurries back to report that Rob is not home—the old blue truck he drives is gone.

  Amanda has suddenly stopped screaming and fallen asleep, but her parents—and William Buccleigh—are wide awake. Roger and William B. drive to the stone circle, where they find Cameron’s blue truck, evidently abandoned on the road below. Panicked, Roger climbs frantically to the summit of the hill. The circle of stones is empty, but the stones themselves are live and screaming. He collapses in the circle, losing consciousness as the emptiness of time surrounds him.

  He comes to himself some time later, outside the circle, having been pulled out by William Buccleigh, and they go home to tell Brianna—and to plan what to do next.

  LORD JOHN HAS arrived in Philadelphia with his niece, Dottie, discovered the whereabouts of his wounded nephew Henry, and taken what steps are possible for Henry’s treatment. The young man has been gutshot and retains two bullets deep in his abdomen. In his search for a doctor, Lord John sends William to the American camp at Valley Forge, twenty miles outside Philadelphia, to find Dr. Hunter and ask him whether he will come.

  William is charmed afresh by Rachel Hunter, whom he insists upon bringing back into the city with her brother, not wanting her to suffer the privations of the derelict army. Denny Hunter succeeds in removing one bullet, thus saving Henry’s life at least momentarily, but is unable to deal with the other.

  One snowy night, while the Hunters are alone in the inn William has found for them, a visitor arrives. A woman, clad in ermine, and dazzlingly glamorous. She enters their room, drops her ermine cloak to disclose a shapeless gray dress, and announces that she has become a Quaker. Dottie has arrived.

  Dazed by the appearance of his long-lost love, Denny Hunter tries to persuade Dorothea to leave, to go back to her uncle’s house, but he’s up against what may possibly be the most stubborn member of a famously strong-willed family. The Greys are also logical: Dorothea suggests that the three of them hold a Quaker meeting and allow God to speak to them on the matter. Denny is even more taken aback by this suggestion, but Rachel finds it sensible, and they sit in silence by the fire, waiting for discernment and wisdom to be found.

  Rachel finds herself thinking not of her brother’s situation but her own. Where is Ian? Will he ever come back—and if he does, what then? How can she think of marrying a man of blood and violence? For maybe Lady Dorothea Grey will make a Quaker, but Ian Murray never will.

  She’s pulled from these contemplations when her brother straightens a little on his stool.

  “I love thee, Dorothea,” he said. He spoke very quietly, but his soft eyes burned behind his spectacles, and Rachel felt her chest ache. “Will thee marry me?”

  CLAIRE ARRIVES IN Philadelphia with Ian. Hurrying to the printshop where Fergus and Marsali live, Claire finds that she is, thank God, in time; Henri-Christian is alive and in sufficient health to survive the operation on his throat. However, Fergus has left home—not willingly but a half step ahead of arrest for sedition—and is living secretly, moving from one location to another in Philadelphia, passing information in and out of the British-occupied city.

  Preparing for Henri-Christian’s surgery, C
laire goes in search of vitriol—the sulfuric acid she requires for the making of ether. Informed that there is none to be had in the city, she’s told by one apothecary that the last of his own stock was sold to a British officer—Lord John Grey. Lord John is overjoyed to see Claire and instantly makes a bargain—she can have his vitriol and anything else she requires, if she will undertake to operate on Henry.

  Henri-Christian’s surgery goes successfully; then it’s Henry’s turn. Lord John insists on attending the operation—performed by Claire with Denzell Hunter assisting—and is struck both by the miraculous effects of ether and by the surgeon herself.

  The air filled at once with a pungent, sweet aroma that clung to the back of Grey’s throat and made his head swim slightly. He blinked, shaking his head to dispel the giddiness, and realized that Mrs. Fraser had said something to him.

  “I beg your pardon?” He looked up at her, a great white bird with yellow eyes—and a gleaming talon that sprouted suddenly from her hand.

  “I said,” she repeated calmly through her mask, “you might want to sit back a little farther. It’s going to be rather messy.”

  While the surgery is in progress, William sits on the stoop outside, with Rachel Hunter and his cousin Dorothea. He thinks to himself how strange this is: the three of them both friends and relatives, united in concern for Henry, and yet Rachel and Denny—and even Dorothea—are officially his enemies. These musings are interrupted, though, by Rollo, who stiffens, seeing a man down the street. The man—Arch Bug—vanishes, though, and the friends think no more of him, caught up in relief that the operation is over and Henry is alive.