Outlander (Outlander, #1)

by Diana Gabaldon

People disappear all the time. Ask any policeman. Better yet, ask a journalist. Disappearances are bread-and-butter to journalists.

while golf and fishing are Scotland’s most popular outdoor sports, gossip is the most popular indoor sport. And when it rains as much as it does in Scotland, people spend a lot of time indoors.

The Rev. Dr. Reginald Wakefield, vicar of the local parish, was to provide some rivetingly fascinating baptismal registers for Frank’s inspection, not to mention the glittering prospect that he might have unearthed some moldering army despatches or somesuch that mentioned the notorious ancestor.

“Jonathan Wolverton Randall—Wolverton for his mother’s uncle, a minor knight from Sussex. He was, however, known by the rather dashing nickname of ‘Black Jack,’

“I distinctly heard the barman at that pub last night refer to us as Sassenachs.” “Well, why not?” said Frank equably. “It only means ‘Englishman,’ after all, or at worst, ‘outlander,’ and we’re all of that.”

Quentin Lambert Beauchamp. “Q” to his archaeological students and his friends. “Dr. Beauchamp” to the scholarly circles in which he moved and lectured and had his being. But always Uncle Lamb to me. My father’s only brother, and my only living relative at the time, he had been landed with me, aged five, when my parents were killed in a car crash.

“There’s no place on earth with more of the old superstitions and magic mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Highlands.

“Old Days?” “The ancient feasts,” he explained, still lost in his mental notes. “Hogmanay, that’s New Year’s, Midsummer Day, Beltane and All Hallows’. Druids, Beaker Folk, early Picts, everybody kept the sun feasts and the fire feasts, so far as we know. Anyway, ghosts are freed on the holy days, and can wander about at will, to do harm or good as they please.”

Life among academics had taught me that a well-expressed opinion is usually better than a badly expressed fact, so far as professional advancement goes.

Black Jack Randall, had not been merely a gallant soldier for the Crown, but a trusted—and secret—agent of the Duke of Sandringham.

Legible or not, the date at the top of the page sprang out at me as though written in letters of fire: 20 April, 1743.

While Jamie also wore a hunting tartan in shades of green and brown, the colors were different than that of the other men present. It was a deeper brown, almost a bark color, with a faint blue stripe.

“Aye. She’s verra young. She would ha’ been shamed before everyone as knows her, and it would take a long time to get over it. I’m sore, but no really damaged; I’ll get over it in a day or two.” “But why you?” I asked. He looked as though he thought this an odd question. “Why not me?” he said.

Toulouse-Lautrec syndrome. I had never seen a case before, but I had heard it described. Named for its most famous sufferer (who did not yet exist, I reminded myself), it was a degenerative disease of bone and connective tissue. Victims often appeared normal, if sickly, until their early teens, when the long bones of the legs, under the stress of bearing a body upright, began to crumble and collapse upon themselves.

Because of the poor circulation and the degeneration of connective tissue, victims were invariably sterile, and often impotent as well. I stopped suddenly, thinking of Hamish. My son, Colum had said, proudly introducing the boy. Mmm, I thought to myself. Perhaps not impotent then. Or perhaps so. But rather fortunate for Letitia that so many of the MacKenzie males resembled each other to such a marked degree.

“I suppose … it’s that ye seem to have a knack for letting me know you’re sorry for it, without makin’ me feel pitiful about it.”

It was on one of the fruit-picking expeditions to the orchard that I first met Geillis Duncan.

I enjoyed Geilie’s company immensely; she had a wry-tongued, cynical viewpoint that was a refreshing contrast to the sweet, shy clanswomen at the castle, and clearly she had been well educated, for a woman in a small village.

To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct. And I feared I did not have it, and fearing, was ashamed.

gathered he was referring to the infamous Glencoe Massacre, when one John Campbell, on government orders, had put thirty-eight members of the MacDonald clan to the sword and burned the house above them. I calculated rapidly. That would have been only fifty-some years before;

The badge was round and the engraving surprisingly fine. It showed five volcanos in the center, spouting most realistic flames. And on the border was a motto, Luceo non Uro. “I shine, not burn,” I translated aloud. “Aye, lassie; the MacKenzie motto,”

“D’ye ken my own motto, lass?” he asked. “My clan’s, I mean?” “No,” I answered, startled. “What is it?” He flipped the badge once in the air, caught it, and dropped it neatly into his sporran. He looked rather bleakly toward the open archway, where the MacKenzie clansmen were massing in untidy lines. “Je suis prest,” he replied, in surprisingly good French.

“Je suis prest.” I am ready. I hoped he was.

“Colum MacKenzie, I come to you as kinsman and as ally. I give ye no vow, for my oath is pledged to the name that I bear.” There was a low, ominous growl from the crowd, but he ignored it and went on. “But I give ye freely the things that I have; my help and my goodwill, wherever ye should find need of them. I give ye my obedience, as kinsman and as laird, and I hold myself bound by your word, so long as my feet rest on the lands of clan MacKenzie.”

“Jacob MacKenzie. That would be Colum and Dougal’s father?” I asked. The elderly lawyer nodded. “Aye. Of course, he was not laird then. That happened a few years later …

“But they did choose Colum, after all?” I said. I marveled once again at the force of personality of Colum MacKenzie. And, casting an eye at the withered little man who rode at my side, I rather thought Colum had also had some luck in choosing his allies. “They did, but only because the brothers stood firm together. There was nae doubt, ye see, of Colum’s courage, nor yet of his mind, but only of his body. ’Twas clear he’d never be able to lead his men into battle again. But there was Dougal, sound and whole, if a bit reckless and hot-headed. And he stood behind his brother’s chair and vowed to follow Colum’s word and be his legs and his sword-arm in the field. So a suggestion was made that Colum be allowed to become laird, as he should in the ordinary way, and Dougal be made war chieftain, to lead the clan in time of battle. It was a situation not without precedent,” he added primly.

And from the little I remembered of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender to the throne, part of his support had come from France, but part of the finances behind his unsuccessful rising had come from the shallow, thread-bare pockets of the people he proposed to rule. So Colum, or Dougal, or both, were Jacobites; supporters of the Young Pretender against the lawful occupant of the throne of England, George II.

It must be a saint’s pool, I realized. These small shrines to one saint or another dotted the Highlands, and were often to be found in such secluded spots, though even up here, tattered remnants of fabric flapped from the branches of a rowan tree that overhung the water; pledges from visitors who petitioned the saint, for health or a safe journey, perhaps.

“Jamie met Randall’s eye straight on then, and said, ‘No, but I’m afraid I’ll freeze stiff before ye’re done talking.’

Even with suspicion, he could no remove a Scottish subject from clan lands without the permission of the laird concerned.”

A Highlander in full regalia is an impressive sight—any Highlander, no matter how old, ill-favored, or crabbed in appearance. A tall, straight-bodied, and by no means ill-favored young Highlander at close range is breath-taking.

His tartan was a brilliant crimson and black that blazed among the more sedate MacKenzies in their green and white.

Two hundred years ahead, more or less, I had been married in this chapel, charmed then by its ancient picturesqueness. The chapel now was creaking with newness, its boards not yet settled into charm, and I was about to marry a twenty-three-year-old Scottish Catholic virgin with a price on his head,

“Oh. It’s Fraser. James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.”

“It’s a bit pagan, but it’s customary hereabouts to have a blood vow, along with the regular marriage service. Some priests won’t have it, but I don’t suppose this one was likely to object to anything. He looked almost as scared as I felt,” he said, smiling. “A blood vow? What do the words mean?” Jamie took my right hand and gently tucked in the last end of the makeshift bandage. “It rhymes, more or less, when ye say it in English. It says: ‘Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone. I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One. I give ye my Spirit, ’til our Life shall be Done.’ ” He shrugged. “About the same as the regular vows, just a bit more … ah, primitive.”

It was no romantic pledge he had made me, but the blunt promise to guard my safety at the cost of his own.

The clan territories of MacKenzie and Fraser, it turned out, adjoined each other for some distance along their inner borders, running side by side from the seacoast past the lower end of Loch Ness. This shared border, as borders tend to be, was an unmapped and most uncertain line, shifting to and fro in accordance with time, custom and alliance. Along this border, at the southern end of the Fraser clan lands, lay the small estate of Broch Tuarach, the property of Brian Fraser, Jamie’s father.

So, Lallybroch—that’s what the folk that live there call it—was deeded to my father, but there was a clause in the deed stating that the land was to pass to my mother, Ellen’s, issue only. If she died without children, the land would go back to Lord Lovat after my father’s death, whether Father had children by another wife or no. But he didn’t remarry, and I am my mother’s son. So Lallybroch’s mine, for what that’s worth.”

I had heard of the famous Black Watch, that informal police force that kept order in the Highlands, and heard also that there were other Watches, each patrolling its own area, collecting “subscriptions” from clients for the safeguarding of cattle and property.

“Being half MacKenzie is one thing,” he explained. “Being half MacKenzie wi’ an English wife is quite another. There isna much chance of a Sassenach wench ever becoming lady of Leoch, whatever the clansmen might think of me alone. That’s why Dougal picked me to wed ye to, ye ken.”

“I—I knew ye didna wish to wed. I wanted to make it … as pleasant as might be for you. I thought ye might feel a bit less … well, I wanted ye to have a decent dress, is all.”

“I meant it, ye know,” he said softly. “I will protect you. From him, or anyone else. To the last drop of my blood, mo duinne.”

Unfolding it carefully, I found a large chunk of rough amber. One face of the chunk had been smoothed off and polished, and in this window could be seen the delicate dark form of a tiny dragonfly, suspended in eternal flight.

But there’s a difference between understandin’ something with your mind and really knowing it, deep down.”

Jamie. Jamie was real, all right, more real than anything had ever been to me, even Frank and my life in 1945. Jamie, tender lover and perfidious black-guard.

“So you married me,” I teased, “to avoid the occasion of sin?” “Aye. That’s what marriage is good for; it makes a sacrament out of things ye’d otherwise have to confess.” I collapsed again. “Oh, Jamie, I do love you!”

“He wasna much of a doctor,” Jamie said, “but he was kindly enough. The second day he came, along wi’ the goose grease and charcoal, he brought me a small Bible that belonged to a prisoner who’d died. Said he understood I was a Papist, and whether I found the word of God any comfort or not, at least I could compare my troubles with Job’s.” He laughed. “Oddly enough, it was some comfort. Our Lord had to put up wi’ being scourged too; and I could reflect that at least I wasna going to be hauled out and crucified afterward. On the other hand,” he said judiciously, “Our Lord wasna forced to listen to indecent proposals from Pontius Pilate, either.”

“What’s a silkie?” I asked. Alec’s eye slanted toward me, crinkling at the corners. “Ye call them seals in English. For quite a bit after that, even after they knew the truth of it, folk in the village would tell the tale to each other that Ellen MacKenzie was taken to the sea, to live among the seals. Did ye know that the silkies put aside their skins when they come ashore, and walk like men? And if ye find a silkie’s skin and hide it, he—or she—” he added, fairly, “canna go into the sea again, but must stay with ye on the land. It’s thought good to take a seal-wife that way, for they’re very good cooks, and most devoted mothers.

“You care for him as though he were your own, don’t you?” I asked. The grey eyes blazed suddenly into mine with the most extraordinary expression of alarm. For an instant, there was no sound in the study but the ticking of the glass clock on the shelf. Then a drop of water rolled down Colum’s nose, to hang glimmering from the tip. I reached involuntarily to blot it with my handkerchief, and the tension in his face broke. “Yes,” he said simply.

“Neither mad nor depraved,” she said, decisively. “I’m a patriot.” The light dawned. I let out the breath I had been holding in expectation of a deranged attack. “A Jacobite,” I said. “Holy Christ, you’re a bloody Jacobite!”