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

  “General Clinton informs me that you are my brother’s wife.”

  “Oh,” I said, scrambling to recover my mental bearings. “Then you must be Hal! Er…I beg your pardon. I mean, you’re the…I’m sorry, I know you’re a duke, but I’m afraid I don’t recall your title, Your Grace.”

  “Pardloe,” he said, still holding my hand and smiling at me. “But my Christian name is Harold; do please use it if you like. Welcome to the family, my dear. I had no idea John had married. I understand the event was quite recent?” He spoke with great cordiality, but I was aware of the intense curiosity behind his good manners.

  “Ah,” I said noncommittally. “Yes, quite recent.”

  Hal is fascinated by his brother’s new wife—and realizes instantly that there’s something fishy going on:

  “You’re a very bad liar,” he remarked with interest. “What are you lying about, though, I wonder?”

  “I do it better with a little warning,” I snapped. “Though, as it happens, I’m not lying at the moment.”

  Hal attempts to take Claire back to his inn in order to question her. This attempt is thwarted by an inopportune attack of asthma, which turns the tables on the duke and results in his being unwittingly kidnapped by Claire, who saves his life, puts him to bed, and, in the course of treating his breathing problems, ends up having a surprisingly intimate late-night conversation with him in a haze of ganja smoke.

  MEANWHILE, A THOROUGHLY inflamed Jamie Fraser has turned his horse’s head for Philadelphia, with no clear idea what he might say or do to his wife when he finds her but needing her like a castaway needs fresh water. He doesn’t reach her, though, being intercepted by an old friend, Daniel Morgan, who persuades him (much against his will) to come for a moment to meet someone important.

  “Someone important” proves to be General George Washington, who impresses Jamie by his personality and presence—and impresses Jamie bodily into the Continental army, appointing him a field general in command of militia, to replace a man who has just died. This is the last thing Jamie expected or wants, but he has no choice and can only hope that he’ll have time to deal with Claire before reporting for duty—because if not, he’ll be shot for desertion: nothing will keep him from her.

  This hope, however, is stymied by a back spasm that temporarily immobilizes him, keeping him fuming and writhing in both physical and mental agony for two days at the home of Mrs. Hardman, the Quaker widow in whose cabin Washington was meeting with his generals.

  JAMIE IS STUCK. Claire is stranded in Philadelphia with the British army leaving, the Americans about to invade the city, and a captive duke hidden in her house. Lord John, though, is having rather more-active adventures.

  Despite John’s assorted bruises and a badly injured eye, his militia captors take him to one Colonel Watson Smith—an erstwhile acquaintance of Grey’s, now a turncoat in the service of the Continental army. This circumstance naturally causes a certain constraint between the men, which is deepened by Captain’s Smith’s observation that Grey is very likely to be hanged as a spy.

  Though John is put in irons to prevent escape, his mood is lifted somewhat by hearing a voice in camp that he’s sure belongs to his niece, Dorothea. Dottie is betrothed to Denzell Hunter, a Quaker physician in service with the Americans. Denzell and Dottie help Lord John escape during the night watches, and life, while still precarious, seems to be looking up.

  But as Hal observe to John, “You have the greatest talent for awkward situations,” and John, having gone to sleep in the hollow of a tree’s roots, is rudely awakened by a party of American militia.

  BY BREAKFAST ON Thursday, I’d come to the firm conclusion that it was the Duke of Pardloe or me. If I stayed in the house, only one of us would remain alive by sundown. Denzell Hunter must have come into the city by now, I reasoned; he’d call in daily at Mrs. Woodcock’s house, where Henry Grey was convalescing. A very kind and capable doctor, he could easily manage Hal’s recovery—and perhaps his future father-in-law would be grateful for his professional attention.

  The thought made me laugh out loud, despite my increasing anxiety.

  To Dr. Denzell Hunter

  From Dr. C. B. R. Fraser

  I am called away to Kingsessing for the day. I surrender His Grace the Duke of Pardloe to your most competent care, in the happy confidence that your religious scruples will prevent your striking him in the head with an ax.

  Yours most sincerely,

  C.

  Postscriptum: I’ll bring you back some asafoetida and ginseng root as recompense.

  Post-postscriptum: Strongly suggest you don’t bring Dottie, unless you possess a pair of manacles. Preferably two.

  As Claire makes her way toward Kingsessing, she meets a carriage bearing General Benedict Arnold into Philadelphia as the new military governor of the city. The general offers her a lift to Bartram’s Garden, and she accepts, though disquieted by her knowledge of what she believes will happen to Arnold at some not-very-distant date.

  When? I wondered uneasily. When would it begin to happen? Not yet; I was almost sure of that. What was it, what would it be, that turned this gallant, honorable man from patriot to traitor? Who would he talk to, what would plant the deadly seed?

  Lord, I thought in a moment of sudden, horrified prayer, please! Don’t let it be something I said to him!

  As she’d observed to herself earlier: The hell of it was that I liked the man.

  But the man for whom she harbors a much deeper affection has recovered enough to make his way toward Philadelphia, desperate to reach her.

  IN BETWEEN JAMIE and Claire, though, are Young Ian and his affianced, Rachel Hunter, who are walking through the woods toward the city, deep in conversation. Beyond the natural talk of an engaged pair who are much in love but facing complicated logistics concerning their marriage, Young Ian has a deeper motive for this conversation: he needs to confess a few things to Rachel.

  “Did ye ken…I’ve been marrit before?”

  Her face flickered, surprise overcome by determination so fast that he’d have missed it if he hadn’t been watching so close.

  “I did not,” she said, and began to pleat the folds of her skirt, one-handed, clear hazel eyes fixed intently on his face. “Thee did say been married. Thee isn’t now, I suppose?”

  ——

  RACHEL HANDLES THE news of Ian’s earlier marriage to a Mohawk woman—and the news that Ian’s ex-wife is still alive—with a reasonable amount of equanimity, but it isn’t the marriage that’s causing Ian’s concern: it’s the reason for the marriage ending.

  “I couldna give her children,” he blurted. “The first—we had a wee daughter, born too early, who died. I called her Iseabaìl.” He wiped the back of his hand viciously under his nose, swallowing his pain. “After that, she—Emily—she got wi’ child again. And again. And when she lost the third…her heart toward me died with it.”

  Rachel made a small sound, but he didn’t look at her. Couldn’t. Just sat hunched on the log like a toadstool, shoulders drawn up around his ears, and eyes blurred with the tears he couldn’t shed.

  A small warm hand settled on his.

  “And thy heart?” she asked. “Thine died, too?”

  IAN TELLS RACHEL that Claire thinks he might be able to have children with another woman—but he can’t guarantee that.

  He turned a little on the log, to look at her directly. “And I canna say that it would be different—with us. But I did ask Auntie Claire, and she told me about things in the blood…well, perhaps ye should ask her to explain it; I wouldna make a decent job of it. But the end of it was that she thought it might be different wi’ another woman. That I maybe could. Give ye bairns, I mean.”

  He only realized that Rachel had been holding her breath when she let it out, a sigh that brushed his cheek.

  “Do ye—” he began, but she had risen a little, into him, and she kissed him gently on the mouth, then held his head against her breast and took the end of her ker
chief and wiped his eyes and then her own.

  “Oh, Ian,” she whispered. “I do love thee.”

  BACK IN PHILADELPHIA, the British army is on the verge of departure, and William is having a very bad day. After overseeing the exodus of panicked Loyalists and repelling the overtures of Captain Richardson, the spy whose previous ventures came close to getting William captured or killed, William returns to his billet to find that his orderly has decamped, taking with him all of William’s valuables, including a pearl-encrusted miniature of his two mothers.

  This was so far over the bloody limit of what could be borne that he didn’t even swear, merely sank down on the edge of the bed, closed his eyes, and breathed through clenched teeth until the pain in his stomach subsided. It left a raw-edged hollow.

  William being a young male, the only thing that occurs to him to do is to fill the hollow with alcohol, and the end of the evening finds him accompanying his friends to a brothel, where he collapses into a chair and a near-stupor, in both of which he remains until he becomes slowly aware that a dragoon captain nearby—a Captain Harkness—is enjoying himself by describing various degrading things that he proposes to do to a young woman who works in the establishment.

  William is roused from his stupor and revolted by this—and still more roused in the next instant, when he realizes that the young woman being threatened is the girl with whom he had the embarrassing and discreditable encounter the day before. With vague notions of gallantry and redeeming himself, he makes it to his feet and claims the girl for the night—hastily yanking off his silver gorget and handing it to the madam in payment, having belatedly remembered that he has no money.

  Arabella (aka Jane; as she tells William, the “fancy pieces” are given ladies’ names for marketing purposes) is more than wary of William—but he’s definitely the lesser of two evils, and she takes him to her room, where he astonishes her by telling her that his intent is not what she supposes:

  “My…um…my stepfather…told me once that a madam of his acquaintance said to him that a night’s sleep was the best gift you could give a whore.”

  “It runs in the family, does it? Frequenting brothels?” She didn’t pause for a response to that. “He’s right, though. Do you really mean that you intend for me to…sleep?” From her tone of incredulity, he might have asked her to engage in some perversion well past buggery.

  Arabella–Jane has a sense of honor, too, though, and succeeds in proving it.

  “Unhand my…” Damn, what is the bloody word? “Unhand my testicles if you please, madam.”

  “Just as you like,” she replied crisply, and, doing so, put her head back inside his damp, smelly shirt, seized one nipple between her teeth, and sucked so hard that it pulled every last word out of his head.

  Matters thereafter were unsettled but largely pleasant, though at one point he found himself rearing above her, sweat dripping from his face onto her breasts, muttering, “I’m a bastard, I’m a bastard, I’m a bastard, don’t you understand?”

  She didn’t reply to this but stretched up a long white arm, cupped her hand round the back of his head, and pulled him down again.

  THE BRITISH EXODUS from Philadelphia begins the next day, with General Clinton’s army proceeding in three separate bodies, shepherding a large number of Loyalists who feel unsafe remaining in the city and who evacuate on foot, carrying what they can of their possessions.

  Ian and Rachel come upon the moving column of troops and camp followers as they reach the Philadelphia road. They also come upon William, hot, dusty, and clearly sharing the prevalent mood of disgruntlement.

  While William’s mood is momentarily lifted by sight of Rachel, things rapidly go downhill when she tells him that she and Ian are engaged—and things go from bad to worse when the name of Jamie Fraser enters the conversation:

  Despite his resolve to be patient, Ian felt his own dander start to rise.

  “Criminal, forbye!” he snapped. “Any man might be proud to be the son of Jamie Fraser!”

  “Oh,” said Rachel, forestalling William’s next heated remark. “That.”

  “What?” He glared down at her. “What the devil do you mean, ‘that’?”

  “We thought it must be the case, Denny and I.” She lifted one shoulder, though keeping a close watch on William, who looked as if he were about to go off like a twelve-pound mortar. “But we supposed that thee didn’t wish the matter talked about. I didn’t know that thee—how could thee not have known?” she asked curiously. “The resemblance—”

  “Fuck the resemblance!”

  Ian forgot Rachel and hit William on the head with a double-fisted thump that knocked him to his knees, then kicked him in the stomach. Had the kick landed where he’d meant it to, it would have finished the matter right there, but William was a good deal faster than Ian expected him to be. He twisted sideways, caught Ian’s foot, and yanked. Ian hit the ground on one elbow, rolled up, and got hold of William’s ear. He was dimly aware of Rachel screaming and was momentarily sorry for it, but the relief of fighting was too great to think of anything else, and she disappeared as his fury surged.

  The fight ends with the advent of several of William’s soldiers, who haul Ian off toward the column, presumably to be taken along to the evening camp, where punishment is routinely dealt out to those convicted of crimes such as assaulting an officer.

  Rachel is horrified, outraged, and not inclined to take the situation lying down.

  “If thee allow this to be done, William Ransom, I will—I will—”

  William could feel the blood pool in his belly and thought he might faint, but not because of her threats.

  “You’ll what?” he asked, half breathless. “You’re a Quaker. You don’t believe in violence. Ergo, you can’t—or at least won’t”—he corrected himself, seeing the dangerous look in her eye—“stab me. You probably won’t even strike me. So what did you have in mind?”

  She did strike him. Her hand whipped out like a snake and slapped him across the face hard enough to make him stagger.

  “So now thee has doomed thy kinsman, repudiated thy father, and caused me to betray my principles. What next?!”

  “Oh, bloody hell,” he said, and grabbed her arms, pulled her roughly to him, and kissed her. He let go and stepped back quickly, leaving her bug-eyed and gasping.

  The dog growled at him. She glared at him, spat on the ground at his feet, then wiped her lips on her sleeve and, turning away, marched off, the dog at her heels casting a red-eyed look at William.

  “Is spitting on people a part of your bloody principles?” he shouted after her.

  She swung round, fists clenched at her sides.

  “Is assaulting women part of thine?” she bellowed back, to the amusement of the infantrymen who had been standing still by the road, leaning on their weapons and gaping at the show provided.

  Flinging her cap on the ground at his feet, she whirled on her heel and stamped away, before he could say more.

  JAMIE, HAVING HITCHED a ride into Philadelphia on a wagon filled with cabbages, is startled to see his nephew Ian being dragged off by redcoats. Ian is more than startled to see his uncle apparently risen from a watery grave, but there is no opportunity for conversation. Jamie spots Rachel and Rollo, haring toward the city, and swings down to investigate.

  Having ascertained the facts of the matter from Rachel, Jamie then goes to have a word with William:

  He was reasonably sure Rachel hadn’t told him everything about the recent stramash and wondered whether she herself had been partly the cause of it. She had said the trouble began just after she’d told William about her betrothal to Ian. Her account had been slightly confused overall, but he’d got the gist of it well enough, and his jaw tightened as he came up to William and saw the look on his face.

  Christ, do I look like that in a temper? he wondered briefly. It was off-putting to speak to a man who looked as though he asked nothing more of the world than the chance to rend someone limb from lim
b and dance on the pieces.

  “Well, rend away, lad,” he said under his breath. “And we’ll see who dances.” He stepped up beside William and took off his hat.

  “You,” he said baldly, not wishing to call the lad by either title or name, “come aside wi’ me. Now.”

  The look on William’s face changed from incipient murder to the same look of startled horror Jamie had just surprised on Ian’s. Had matters been otherwise, he’d have laughed. As it was, he gripped William hard by the upper arm, pushed him off-balance, and had him into the shelter of a scrim of saplings before he could set his feet hard.

  WILLIAM IS, NOT surprisingly, in No Mood to have a conversation with his very unwelcome progenitor, let alone to do what he says—but Jamie has a fairly convincing argument:

  “You’re going to catch up the men ye sent Ian with and tell them to set him free,” Jamie said evenly. “If ye don’t, I go down under a flag of truce to the camp where they’re taking him, introduce myself, tell the commander who you are, and explain the reason for the fight. Ye’ll be right there beside me. Do I make myself clear?” he asked, increasing the pressure of his fingers.

  “Yes!” The word came out in a hiss, and Jamie let go suddenly, folding his fingers into a fist to hide the fact that they were trembling and twitching from the effort.

  “God damn you, sir,” William whispered, and his eyes were black with violence. “God damn you to hell.” His arm hung limp and must have hurt, but he wouldn’t rub it, not with Jamie watching.

  Jamie nodded. “Nay doubt,” he said quietly, and went into the forest.

  ——

  THE ATMOSPHERE OF Bartram’s Garden is soothing to Claire’s soul, and after restocking her supplies of herbs, seeds, and roots, she accepts Miss Bartram’s invitation to dig her own arrowroot by the river.