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

  One night, Claire discovers that Jamie has sent Denny out to play this game and is outraged, saying that Denny is not just a friend but also a trained physician—much too valuable to be risked in this way. Jamie tells her that he indeed tried to stop Denzell going, on just those grounds—but Denny is a Quaker, unable to fight, and therefore felt the need of contributing to the cause of liberty in whatever other way he could.

  Some days later, Rachel comes in panic to find Jamie—her brother has played the deserter game again and had the misfortune to meet the same British officer to whom he had defected before; he’s been captured and will surely hang if not rescued. Jamie and Ian go together to rescue Denny, but Ian is spotted in the process by William—who lets him go, this time out of obligation to Denzell, who saved William from dying of infection.

  BACK AT THE ranch in the twentieth century, Jem is in hot water at school—for the mysterious crime of speaking Gaelic. Roger prevents Brianna from taking on the school’s headmaster, fearing bloodshed, and goes himself to make inquiries. Lionel Menzies, the headmaster, tells Roger that Gaelic is a dying language because so many parents in the forties and fifties refused to teach it to their children, feeling that it was “backward” and would hinder the children in finding their place in the world.

  Menzies and Roger have met before in the Inverness Masonic Lodge, but now take to each other, and Roger ends up with an invitation to come and teach a class in Gaelic at the school. A number of parents and grandparents attend and the class is a roaring success. Afterward, though, as he’s leaving, he’s stopped by Rob Cameron, the uncle of one of Jem’s school-friends, and one of Brianna’s co-workers, whom Roger knows slightly. Cameron, tells him that among the materials he’d handed out for the class to look at was this: this being “The Hitchhiker’s Guide.” Cameron thinks it’s the draft of a science-fiction novel and assures Roger he’d love to read it when it’s finished.

  Building on their acquaintance, Rob mentions to Roger that he has an archaeologist friend who would be happy to come and look at the ruins of what might be an old Bronze Age fort on a hill near Lallybroch; Bree’s told him about it. Roger accepts and, trembling inwardly at the near miss, takes his manuscript back home.

  The archaeologist comes and pronounces the ruins to be an old—but not ancient—chapel, possibly built on the site of an older place of worship but probably not worth excavating.

  Instead of excavating, Roger makes up his mind to rebuild the chapel, finding the slow, patient manual labor calming to his mind.

  THE REFUGEES FROM Ticonderoga have reached the main body of the American army, under General Horatio Gates. There are a number of lesser generals present, too—including Major General Benedict Arnold, a courageous patriot and a gallant man. Claire makes his acquaintance one afternoon, not knowing whom he is, and is very much shaken on learning his identity. Once again, history is handing her a conundrum: Can the past be changed? If so, can she change it? And if so again—what might be the price of interference?

  As usual, though, there are no answers—and the thing about history, as Claire’s noted before, is that things just keep on happening. In the present instance, it’s General John Burgoyne’s attempt to cut the Colonies in two, severing the north from the south and thus starving the north of supplies.

  The Battle(s) of Saratoga were the first major turning point of the American Revolution. These battles are also where the story lines of most of our characters collide: Jamie joins Daniel Morgan’s elite corps of riflemen, while Claire sets up her triage tent; Denzell Hunter works as a surgeon, assisted by his sister, Rachel; and Young Ian (and Rollo) are foragers and scouts. On the British side, William takes command of a company under Brigadier Simon Fraser, with whom he has a close relationship.

  Young Ian begins to notice Rachel Hunter as something more than a skilled nurse. When a minor accident befalls him, he heads for the tent where she is working, and there meets a Scotsman in a kilt, bringing in an injured friend. The man has red hair, and there is something vaguely familiar about him.

  There should be. This is Hamish MacKenzie, son (so far as anyone other than Jamie and Claire knows) of the late Colum MacKenzie of Castle Leoch, and Jamie’s cousin. He has come down from Canada with a company of MacKenzie volunteers to fight with the Continental army.

  There is an emotional reunion between Jamie and Hamish, and we learn the fate of the exiled MacKenzies, who traveled to Prince Edward Island. Meanwhile, Ian finds himself drawn ineluctably back to Rachel Hunter, where he experiences a coup de foudre.

  She reached to take the tin from him, and her fingers brushed his. The tin box was smeared with grease and slippery; it fell and both of them bent to retrieve it. She straightened first; her hair brushed his cheek, warm and smelling of her.

  Without even thinking, he put both hands on her face and bent to her. Saw the flash and darkening of her eyes, and had one heartbeat, two, of perfect warm happiness, as his lips rested on hers, as his heart rested in her hands.

  Then one of those hands cracked against his cheek, and he staggered back like a drunkard startled out of sleep.

  Rachel is more than taken by surprise. She’s a Quaker; how can she get involved in any way with a man of such violence? Still…

  She ought to be putting coffee on to boil and getting up some supper; Denny would be back soon from the hospital tent, hungry and cold. She continued to sit, though, staring at the candle flame, wondering whether she would feel it were she to pass her hand through it.

  She doubted it. Her whole body had ignited when he’d touched her, sudden as a torch soaked in turpentine, and she was still afire. A wonder her shift did not burst into flames.

  Disturbed in mind, she tells her brother about the encounter. He sees clearly what she feels and sympathizes with her, though telling her plainly that it will not work for a Quaker to wed someone not a Friend. Rachel presses him, and he admits that he was in love with someone in London—but she was not a Friend, and he came away, back to America.

  Jamie is wounded during the first battle of Saratoga, the Battle of Bemis Heights. Claire finds him unconscious on the field after the battle, on the verge of having his throat cut by a scavenging woman and child who are looting the dead—and the not-so-dead.

  “He’s mine,” she said, thrusting her chin pugnaciously at me. “Go find yourself another.” Another form slipped out of the mist and materialized by her side. It was the boy I had seen earlier, filthy and scruffy as the woman herself. He had no knife but clutched a crude metal strip, cut from a canteen. The edge of it was dark, with rust or blood.

  He glared at me. “He’s ours, Mum said! Get on wi’ yer! Scat!” Not waiting to see whether I would or not, he flung a leg over Jamie’s back, sat on him, and began to grope in the side pockets of his coat. “ ’E’s still alive, Mum,” he advised. “I can feel ’is ’eart beatin’. Best slit his throat quick; I don’t think ’e’s bad hurt.”

  I grabbed the boy by the collar and jerked him off Jamie’s body, making him drop his weapon. He squealed and flailed at me with arms and elbows, but I kneed him in the rump, hard enough to jar his backbone, then got my elbow locked about his neck in a stranglehold, his skinny wrist vised in my other hand.

  “Leave him go!” The woman’s eyes narrowed like a weasel’s, and her eyeteeth shone in a snarl. I didn’t dare take my eyes away from the woman’s long enough to look at Jamie. I could see him, though, at the edge of my vision, head turned to the side, his neck gleaming white, exposed and vulnerable.

  “Stand up and step back,” I said, “or I’ll choke him to death, I swear I will!” She crouched over Jamie’s body, knife in hand, as she measured me, trying to make up her mind whether I meant it. I did. The boy struggled and twisted in my grasp, his feet hammering against my shins. He was small for his age, and thin as a stick, but strong nonetheless; it was like wrestling an eel. I tightened my hold on his neck; he gurgled and quit struggling. His hair was thick with rancid grease and dirt, the smell of it rank
in my nostrils. Slowly, the woman stood up. She was much smaller than I, and scrawny with it—bony wrists stuck out of the ragged sleeves. I couldn’t guess her age—under the filth and the puffiness of malnutrition, she might have been anything from twenty to fifty.

  “My man lies yonder, dead on the ground,” she said, jerking her head at the fog behind her. “ ’E hadn’t nothing but his musket, and the sergeant’ll take that back.” Her eyes slid toward the distant wood, where the British troops had retreated. “I’ll find a man soon, but I’ve children to feed in the meantime—two besides the boy.” She licked her lips, and a coaxing note entered her voice. “You’re alone; you can manage better than we can. Let me have this one—there’s more over there.” She pointed with her chin toward the slope behind me, where the rebel dead and wounded lay.

  My grasp must have loosened slightly as I listened, for the boy, who had hung quiescent in my grasp, made a sudden lunge and burst free, diving over Jamie’s body to roll at his mother’s feet. He got up beside her, watching me with rat’s eyes, beady-bright and watchful. He bent and groped about in the grass, coming up with the makeshift dagger.

  “Hold ’er off, Mum,” he said, his voice raspy from the choking. “I’ll take ’im.”

  From the corner of my eye, I had caught the gleam of metal, half buried in the grass. “Wait!” I said, and took a step back. “Don’t kill him. Don’t.” A step to the side, another back. “I’ll go, I’ll let you have him, but…” I lunged to the side and got my hand on the cold metal hilt.

  I had picked up Jamie’s sword before. It was a cavalry sword, larger and heavier than the usual, but I didn’t notice now. I snatched it up and swung it in a two-handed arc that ripped the air and left the metal ringing in my hands. Mother and son jumped back, identical looks of ludicrous surprise on their round, grimy faces. “Get away!” I said. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t say anything. “I’m sorry for your man,” I said. “But my man lies here. Get away, I said!” I raised the sword, and the woman stepped back hastily, dragging the boy by the arm. She turned and went, muttering curses at me over her shoulder, but I paid no attention to what she said.

  The boy’s eyes stayed fixed on me as he went, dark coals in the dim light. He would know me again—and I him.

  They vanished in the mist, and I lowered the sword, which suddenly weighed too much to hold. I dropped it on the grass and fell to my knees beside Jamie. My own heart was pounding in my ears and my hands were shaking with reaction, as I groped for the pulse in his neck. I turned his head and could see it, throbbing steadily just below his jaw. “Thank God!” I whispered to myself. “Oh, thank God!”

  Jamie’s wound is not serious but is maiming: half his fourth finger is gone, and the sword cut has gone down into the palm of his hand, nearly bifurcating it. While Claire worries over the mending of the wound, Jamie suddenly asks her to amputate the mangled finger—it’s been little use to him for the last twenty years and a constant source of pain and irritation.

  When the other wounded have been cared for, and she has time to concentrate properly, she does as he asks.

  A small scalpel, freshly sharpened. The jar of alcohol, with the wet ligatures coiled inside like a nest of tiny vipers, each toothed with a small, curved needle. Another with the waxed dry ligatures for arterial compression. A bouquet of probes, their ends soaking in alcohol. Forceps. Long-handled retractors. The hooked tenaculum, for catching the ends of severed arteries.

  The surgical scissors with their short, curved blades and the handles shaped to fit my grasp, made to my order by the silversmith Stephen Moray. Or almost to my order. I had insisted that the scissors be as plain as possible, to make them easy to clean and disinfect. Stephen had obliged with a chaste and elegant design, but had not been able to resist one small flourish—one handle boasted a hooklike extension against which I could brace my little finger in order to exert more force, and this extrusion formed a smooth, lithe curve, flowering at the tip into a slender rosebud against a spray of leaves. The contrast between the heavy, vicious blades at one end and this delicate conceit at the other always made me smile when I lifted the scissors from their case.

  Strips of cotton gauze and heavy linen, pads of lint, adhesive plasters stained red with the dragon’s-blood juice that made them sticky. An open bowl of alcohol for disinfection as I worked, and the jars of cinchona bark, mashed garlic paste, and yarrow for dressing.

  “There we are,” I said with satisfaction, checking the array one last time. Everything must be ready, since I was working by myself; if I forgot something, no one would be at hand to fetch it for me.

  “It seems a great deal o’ preparation, for one measly finger,” Jamie observed behind me. I swung around to find him leaning on one elbow, watching, the cup of laudanum undrunk in his hand.

  “Could ye not just whack it off wi’ a wee knife and seal the wound with hot iron, like the regimental surgeons do?”

  “I could, yes,” I said dryly. “But fortunately I don’t have to; we have enough time to do the job properly. That’s why I made you wait.”

  “Mmphm.” He surveyed the row of gleaming instruments without enthusiasm, and it was clear that he would much rather have had the business over and done with as quickly as possible. I realized that to him this looked like slow and ritualized torture, rather than sophisticated surgery.

  “I mean to leave you with a working hand,” I told him firmly. “No infection, no suppurating stump, no clumsy mutilation, and—God willing—no pain, once it heals.”

  His eyebrows went up at that. He had never mentioned it, but I was well aware that his right hand and its troublesome fourth finger had caused him intermittent pain for years, ever since it had been crushed at Wentworth Prison, when he was held prisoner there in the days before the Stuart Rising.

  “A bargain’s a bargain,” I said, with a nod at the cup in his hand. “Drink it.” He lifted the cup and poked a long nose reluctantly over the rim, nostrils twitching at the sickly-sweet scent. He let the dark liquid touch the end of his tongue and made a face.

  “It will make me sick.”

  “It will make you sleep.”

  “It gives me terrible dreams.”

  “As long as you don’t chase rabbits in your sleep, it won’t matter,” I assured him. He laughed despite himself, but had one final try.

  “It tastes like the stuff ye scrape out of horses’ hooves.”

  “And when was the last time you licked a horse’s hoof?” I demanded, hands on my hips. I gave him a medium-intensity glare, suitable for the intimidation of petty bureaucrats and low-level army officials.

  He sighed.

  “Ye mean it, aye?”

  “I do.”

  “All right, then.” With a reproachful look of long-suffering resignation, he threw back his head and tossed the contents of the cup down in one gulp. A convulsive shudder racked him, and he made small choking noises.

  “I did say to sip it,” I observed mildly. “Vomit, and I’ll make you lick it up off the floor.” Given the scuffled dirt and trampled grass underfoot, this was plainly an idle threat, but he pressed his lips and eyes tight shut and lay back on the pillow, breathing heavily and swallowing convulsively every few seconds. I brought up a low stool and sat down by the camp bed to wait.

  “How do you feel?” I asked, a few minutes later.

  “Dizzy,” he replied. He cracked one eye open and viewed me through the narrow blue slit, then groaned and closed it. “As if I’m falling off a cliff. It’s a verra unpleasant sensation, Sassenach.”

  “Try to think of something else for a minute,” I suggested. “Something pleasant, to take your mind off it.” His brow furrowed for a moment, then relaxed.

  “Stand up a moment, will ye?” he said. I obligingly stood, wondering what he wanted. He opened his eyes, reached out with his good hand, and took a firm grip of my buttock.

  “There,” he said. “That’s the best thing I can think of. Having a good hold on your arse always mak
es me feel steady.”

  DURING THE SECOND battle, Morgan’s Rifles are lurking in a wood at the foot of the battlefield, sniping at British officers, when Major General Benedict Arnold (still a patriot at that point) rides up and demands that someone shoot the British brigadier within range. This is General Simon Fraser, a distant cousin of Jamie’s, and as Jamie thinks to himself, he’d kill any other man on the field, but not that one. He shoots deliberately high and wild, missing the general but knocking the hat off a young British officer, who shakes his fist and shouts, “You owe me a hat, sir!”

  Other riflemen lack Jamie’s inhibitions, though, and one of them shoots General Fraser, who is led off the field, seriously wounded. During the night following the battle, an emissary comes across the lines under a flag of truce, seeking Jamie. The general is dying, has heard of his kinsman in the American lines, and wishes to speak to him. Claire accompanies Jamie to the cabin of Baroness von Riedesel, where the general is indeed dying, laid out on the dining table. More alarming to Claire than the sight of the dying general, though, is the young officer crouching by his side—William, Lord Ellesmere.

  In the flicker of firelight and the distraction of grief, neither Jamie nor William notices the other, though Claire is on tenterhooks lest anyone else notice the resemblance. No one does, though, and she is counting the moments until escape, as the officers stand outside the cabin in the dim, wet dawn, soberly discussing what to do with the general’s body. Suddenly a voice from behind her inquires of Lieutenant Ransom as to what has become of his hat?

  “…rebel whoreson shot it off my head,” mutters Lieutenant Ransom, in a deep, English-accented approximation of his father’s voice. Distraction intervenes, though, and Claire is left palpitating, counting the seconds until they can make their escape. Jamie does take his leave of the British officers but is no more than few steps into the safety of the wood when he whirls suddenly on his heel, walks back, and, taking off his hat, thrusts it into William’s hands, saying, “I believe I owe ye a hat, sir.”