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

  Relaxing from the strain of surgery, Claire is further heartened by receipt of two letters from Jamie, one written from Lallybroch, with news of Ian’s death, and another from Paris, telling her that he and Jenny will shortly be embarking aboard a ship called Euterpe, bound for America.

  THINGS BEGIN TO move quickly.

  Roger and William Buccleigh, after hasty preparations, go together to the stone circle near Inverness to rescue Jem, who has evidently been taken through the stones by Rob Cameron.

  Shaken and grieving, Brianna sits alone in Roger’s study, steeling herself for the unknown terrors of the future. Her meditations are interrupted, though, by footsteps in the hall and the unexpected advent of Rob Cameron—who is plainly not in the past, and for good reason: he couldn’t pass through the stones. He tells Brianna that she must force Jem to reveal the location of the Jacobite gold (the secret of which he obtained from reading Claire and Jamie’s letters).

  JAMIE AND JENNY do indeed sail from Brest—but not aboard the Euterpe, which sailed abruptly, leaving them behind. Fuming, Jamie finds another ship that will take them to America. It will leave them at Charleston, and they’ll have to make their way laboriously overland to Philadelphia, but he will get back to Claire, come hell, high water, or seasickness.

  LORD JOHN ARRIVES suddenly at the printshop, startling Claire both by his presence and his appearance: he’s red-eyed, disheveled, and plainly terribly upset. As well he might be; he’s just heard from a friend that the Euterpe (which he knew to be carrying Jamie home) was sunk in a storm, with loss of all hands.

  Claire is shattered by the news and barely pays attention when Lord John returns the next day to inform her that she is about to be arrested by Captain Richardson (the shady intelligence agent), who has been watching the printshop since Fergus’s disappearance and has observed Claire passing packets of information and seditious documents in the streets of Philadelphia. She pays somewhat more attention when Lord John informs her further that she must marry him; he can protect her—and also Marsali and her family—if she is his wife.

  Claire is barely conscious through the marriage ceremony; what does anything matter? Her state does not improve through the following days. She thinks of Jamie constantly, wracked not only by her own tearing grief but also by horrible thoughts of him drowning, pulled down by a vast, indifferent sea. She even thinks of suicide—she knows how.

  I let my hand fall back, exposing my wrist, and placed the tip of the knife midway up my forearm. I’d seen many unsuccessful suicides, those who slashed their wrists from side to side, the wounds small mouths that cried for help. I’d seen those who meant it. The proper way was to slit the veins lengthwise, deep, sure cuts that would drain me of blood in minutes, assure unconsciousness in seconds.

  The mark was still visible on the mound at the base of my thumb. A faint white “J,” the mark he’d left on me on the eve of Culloden, when we first faced the stark knowledge of death and separation.

  I traced the thin white line with the tip of the knife and felt the seductive whisper of metal on my skin. I’d wanted to die with him then, and he had sent me on with a firm hand. I carried his child; I could not die.

  I carried her no longer—but she was still there. Perhaps reachable. I sat motionless for what seemed a long time, then sighed and put the knife back on the table carefully.

  Perhaps it was the habit of years; a bent of mind that held life sacred for its own sake, or a superstitious awe of extinguishing a spark kindled by a hand not my own. Perhaps it was obligation. There were those who needed me—or at least to whom I could be useful. Perhaps it was the stubbornness of the body, with its inexorable insistence on never-ending process.

  I could slow my heart, slow enough to count the beats…slow the flowing of my blood ’til my heart echoed in my ears with the doom of distant drums.

  There were pathways in the dark. I knew; I had seen people die. Despite physical decay, there was no dying until the pathway was found. I couldn’t—yet—find mine.

  Unable to kill herself, she takes to drink as anodyne. She is not the only one left bereft and desperate by Jamie’s death, though—nor the only one to seek surcease in brandy.

  My glass was empty, the decanter halfway full. I poured another and took hold of the glass carefully, not wanting to spill it, determined to find oblivion, no matter how temporary.

  Could I separate entirely? I wondered. Could my soul actually leave my body without my dying first? Or had it done so already?

  I drank the glass slowly, one sip at a time. Another. One sip at a time.

  There must have been some sound that made me look up, but I wasn’t aware of having raised my head. John Grey was standing in the doorway of my room. His neckcloth was missing and his shirt hung limp on his shoulders, wine spilled down the front of it. His hair was loose and tangled, and his eyes as red as mine.

  I stood up, slow, as though I were underwater.

  “I will not mourn him alone tonight,” he said roughly, and closed the door.

  ***

  I was surprised to wake up. I hadn’t really expected to and lay for a bit trying to fit reality back into place around me. I had only a slight headache, which was almost more surprising than the fact that I was still alive. Both those things paled in significance beside the fact of the man in bed beside me. “How long has it been since you last slept with a woman, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  He didn’t appear to mind. He frowned a little and scratched his chest thoughtfully. “Oh…fifteen years? At least that.” He glanced at me, his expression altering to one of concern. “Oh. I do apologize.”

  “You do? For what?” I arched one brow. I could think of a number of things he might apologize for, but probably none of those was what he had in mind. “I am afraid I was perhaps not…” he hesitated. “Very gentlemanly.”

  “Oh, you weren’t,” I said, rather tartly. “But I assure you that I wasn’t being at all ladylike myself.” He looked at me, and his mouth worked a bit, as though trying to frame some response to that, but after a moment or two he shook his head and gave it up.

  “Besides, it wasn’t me you were making love to,” I said, “and both of us know it.”

  He looked up, startled, his eyes very blue. Then the shadow of a smile crossed his face, and he looked down at the quilted coverlet. “No,” he said softly. “Nor were you, I think, making love to me. Were you?”

  “No,” I said. The grief of the night before had softened, but the weight of it was still there. My voice was low and husky, because my throat was halfway closed, where the hand of sorrow clutched me unawares.

  Their brief encounter does little to cure grief for either Claire or Lord John, but the sense of a deeply shared grief does something to steady her, and make it possible for her at least to function.

  MEANWHILE, JEM IS not in the past, but neither is he where Cameron left him. Locked into the maintenance tunnel under Loch Errochty while Cameron goes to speak to Brianna, he remembers his mother telling about the little train, and, discovering it in the dark, he starts it and trundles slowly into the blackness.

  He’s comforted by his sense of Mandy, who glows in his head like the small red light on the train’s console. And pushing the power lever forward, he trundles a little faster, farther into the unknown.

  IN PHILADELPHIA, RACHEL is buying bread when Rollo begins to act strangely. He’s caught a scent, something that excites him, and he tears off in pursuit of it. Rachel runs after him but is unable to catch him. Instead, she runs smack into Arch Bug. Old Arch has evidently seen her with Rollo and demands to know what her relationship with Ian is. Does she love him?

  Some distance away, Rollo finds Ian, whose scent he has been tracking, and there is a joyful reunion. Ian tries to persuade Rollo to backtrack, to find Rachel, but the dog is too delighted at being reunited with his master to think of anything else.

  FERGUS IS IN hiding, moving from one location to another each night, but rousing one morning he
hears that a tall, red-haired man with the bearing of a soldier has been asking for him in the outskirts of Philadelphia. Hardly daring to believe that it can be Jamie, he sets off to find the man.

  WILLIAM COMES UPON Rachel, who is being threatened by Arch Bug, and pulls the old man away. A fight ensues, in which Arch strikes William in the head with his ax and leaves him bleeding on the ground as the old man flees.

  Fortunately, William isn’t dead, and Claire is able to stitch up his head. She then tells Rachel about Ian and Arch Bug.

  “Then that is why—” she said, but stopped.

  “Why what?”

  She grimaced a little, but glanced at me and gave a small shrug.

  “Why he said to me that he was afraid I might die because I loved him.”

  Worried about Rachel, Ian, and Arch Bug, Claire can do nothing about any of them. She accompanies Lord John to a “mischianza”—a gala ball put on by the British military and the local Loyalists in honor of General Howe, who has resigned as commander in chief of the army in America, to be replaced by General Clinton. At the ball, Claire meets a number of interesting people, but none more interesting than John André, the British officer who will conspire with Benedict Arnold—and hang for it.

  IAN DECIDES THAT the logical place to begin his search for Rachel is probably Fergus’s printshop, and he goes there. This is a good guess: she is there, minding the shop in Marsali’s absence. Arch Bug is also there, ax in hand, and Rachel is struggling to get away from him. Ian—and Rollo—attack Arch, and there is a terrible fight. Arch is old but still strong, and quite mad. He succeeds in wounding Ian, and Rachel is sure he will kill him. But Arch was seen in the street going into the printshop, and William, who has been looking for him, was informed.

  There seemed to be blood everywhere. Spattered against the counter and the wall, smeared on the floor, and the back of Ian’s shirt was soaked with red and clinging so she saw the muscles of his back straining beneath it. He was kneeling half atop a struggling Arch Bug, grappling one-handed for the ax, his left arm hanging limp, and Arch was stabbing at his face with stiffened fingers, trying to blind him, while Rollo darted eel-like and bristling into the mass of straining limbs, growling and snapping. Fixed on this spectacle, she was only dimly aware of someone standing behind her, but looked up, uncomprehending, when his foot touched her bum.

  “Is there something about you that attracts men with axes?” William asked crossly. He sighted carefully along his pistol’s barrel, and fired.

  CLAIRE AND LORD John are talking casually in his bedroom when a knock sounds on the door. Lord John calls to the knocker to come back later, only to be informed in a Scottish burr that he would, save that there’s some urgency to the matter. Whereupon the door opens to reveal Jamie Fraser—who has, of course, found Fergus and inquired what the status of things in Philadelphia might be, before showing himself abroad. Fergus has told him how matters stand, including the news that he has been assumed to be dead and that Lord John has married Claire to protect her and the rest of the Fraser family. Jamie naturally then hastened to Lord John’s house, to see Claire, but along the way has picked up unwelcome attention in the shape of a small patrol of English soldiers, who are on his heels.

  Claire swoons into his arms, so shattered by his return that she can think of nothing but the fact that he’s there. Lord John is nearly as happy, but the rejoicing is short-lived. Claire rushes out, intending to delay the soldiers while Jamie escapes, only to run smack into Willie on the stairs. And father and son find themselves suddenly face-to-face, no more than ten feet apart, staring into each other’s eyes.

  Jamie stood at the end of the hall, some ten feet away; John stood beside him, white as a sheet, and his eyes bulging as much as Willie’s were. This resemblance to Willie, striking as it was, was completely overwhelmed by Jamie’s own resemblance to the Ninth Earl of Ellesmere. William’s face had hardened and matured, losing all trace of childish softness, and from both ends of the short hall, deep blue Fraser cat-eyes stared out of the bold, solid bones of the MacKenzies. And Willie was old enough to shave on a daily basis; he knew what he looked like.

  William doesn’t take the revelation of his true parentage well.

  Willie’s left hand slapped at his hip, reflexively looking for a sword. Finding nothing, he slapped at his chest. His hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t manage buttons; he simply seized the fabric and ripped open his shirt, reached in and fumbled for something. He pulled it over his head and, in the same motion, hurled the object at Jamie.

  Jamie’s reflexes brought his hand up automatically, and the wooden rosary smacked into it, the beads swinging, tangled in his fingers.

  “God damn you, sir,” Willie said, voice trembling. “God damn you to hell!” He half-turned blindly, then spun on his heel to face John. “And you! You knew, didn’t you? God damn you, too!”

  There is no time for explanation or recrimination, though; the soldiers are in the house and storming the stair. Trapped, Jamie seizes Lord John and claps a pistol to his head, threatening to blow his brains out if the soldiers don’t back off. William struggles with his emotions but tells them to hold—and Jamie retreats to the back stair with Lord John, escaping from the house with his hostage.

  The two make their way out of Philadelphia, finally reaching refuge in the woods outside the city, where they stop for water. Lord John has been contemplating the state of things while they ride, and realizes a) that he will have to mention to Jamie, pretty much immediately, that he’s slept with Claire—because Claire will certainly mention it at the first opportunity, and b) Jamie will undoubtedly kill him upon receipt of this news. Lord John is more or less resigned to this, merely wondering whether Jamie will shoot him or break his neck.

  Likely bare hands, he thought. It was a visceral sort of thing, sex.

  He therefore musters his courage and, at the first opportunity, blurts out, “I have had carnal knowledge of your wife.” What he’s not expecting is Jamie’s reaction.

  “Oh?” said Jamie curiously. “Why?”

  MEANWHILE, BACK AT Lord John’s house, William demands the truth from Claire—and gets it. He isn’t pleased, and his shock rapidly turns to anger—both at the truth of his parentage and at the duplicity practiced upon him.

  “Best for me,” he repeated bleakly. “Right.” His knuckles had gone white again, and he gave me a look through narrowed eyes that I recognized all too well: a Fraser about to go off with a bang. I also knew perfectly well that there was no way of stopping one from detonating but had a try anyway, putting out a hand to him.

  “William,” I began. “Believe me—“

  “I do,” he said. “Don’t bloody tell me any more. God damn it!” And, whirling on his heel, he drove his fist through the paneling with a thud that shook the room, wrenched his hand out of the hole he’d made, and stormed out. I heard crunching and rending as he paused to kick out several of the balusters on the landing and rip a length of the stair railing off, and I made it to the door in time to see him draw back a four-foot chunk of wood over his shoulder, swing, and strike the crystal chandelier that hung over the stairwell in an explosion of shattering glass. For a moment, he teetered on the open edge of the landing and I thought he would fall, or hurl himself off, but he staggered back from the edge and threw the chunk of wood like a javelin at the remnant of the chandelier with a burst of breath that might have been a grunt or a sob.

  Then he rushed headlong down the stairs, thumping his wounded fist at intervals against the wall, where it left bloody smudges. He hit the front door with his shoulder, rebounded, jerked it open, and went out like a locomotive.

  I stood frozen on the landing in the midst of chaos and destruction, gripping the edge of the broken balustrade. Tiny rainbows danced on walls and ceiling like multicolored dragonflies sprung out of the shattered crystal that littered the floor.

  Something moved; a shadow fell across the floor of the hall below. A small, dark figure walked slowly in
through the open doorway. Putting back the hood of her cloak, Jenny Fraser Murray looked round at the devastation, then up at me, her face a pale oval glimmering with humor.

  “Like father, like son, I see,” she remarked. “God help us all.”

  SOMETIME LATER, WE join Ian and Rachel, on the banks of the Delaware River. The British are withdrawing from Philadelphia, and they are watching an artillery team removing the cannon that have guarded the city. The war and its outcome are not what concerns them just now, though. They are intensely conscious of each other, unsure how to say what they have to say. At last Ian takes the bit between his teeth, though, and, telling her that he thinks he cannot be a Quaker, asks whether she might ever be at peace with the idea of loving him.

  She pointed at Rollo, who was lying couchant now, motionless but alert, yellow eyes following every movement of a fat robin foraging in the grass.

  “That dog is a wolf, is he not?”

  “Aye, well, mostly.”

  A small flash of hazel told him not to quibble.

  “And yet he is thy boon companion, a creature of rare courage and affection, and altogether a worthy being?”

  “Oh, aye,” he said with more confidence. “He is.”

  She gave him an even look.

  “Thee is a wolf, too, and I know it. But thee is my wolf, and best thee know that.”

  He’d started to burn when she spoke, an ignition swift and fierce as the lighting of one of his cousin’s matches. He put out his hand, palm forward, to her, still cautious lest she, too, burst into flame.

  “What I said to ye, before…that I kent ye loved me—”

  She stepped forward and pressed her palm to his, her small, cool fingers linking tight.

  “What I say to thee now is that I do love thee. And if thee hunts at night, thee will come home.”