The Outlandish Companion Read online

  This plan is scotched when they find upon arrival that the inn has burnt to the ground. Left to themselves on the cliffs, with strict instructions to keep out of the way, Ian and Claire have a ringside seat as events below unfold. What unfolds, in fact, are excisemen, who have lain hidden in the sand, awaiting the smugglers. In the resulting melee, Claire and Ian flee to the road, where Claire nearly runs into another pair of excisemen, these waiting to trap any fleeing smugglers.

  From the Customs officers conversation, it’s apparent that this was not only an arranged ambush, but one designed specifically to trap Jamie Fraser. Claire steals away to warn Jamie, who has managed to escape and is giving his smugglers directions to fade quietly away to their homes. Returning along the road, they find only one Customs officer—hanging from a tree.

  With the print shop in ashes, dead excisemen at every turn, and the obvious fact that someone—and possibly more than one someone—is aware of Jamie’s multiple identities and his less-legal activities, a return to Edinburgh seems unwise. Jamie is not looking forward to a return to Lallybroch, either, but it is necessary to take Young Ian home.

  For her part, Claire is wondering how she will be received by Jenny, the woman who was once her friend. The initial reception is strained, owing to Young Ian’s behavior, and his parents’ hurt at his apparent rejection of them in favor of his uncle. Jamie finds a way for both Young Ian and himself to make atonement, though, and the situation is resolved in warmth.

  Claire rejoices at waking next morning in a place that has been for her the closest thing to home. Rising in the cold to light the fire, though, she sees three riders—all women—coming toward the house. She wonders who they might be, but finds her curiosity distracted by Jamie’s attentions.

  He was interrupted by a sudden bang as the door flew open and rebounded from the wall. Startled, we turned to look. In the doorway stood a young girl I had never seen before. She was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, with long flaxen hair and big blue eyes. The eyes were somewhat bigger than normal, and filled with an expression of horrified shock as she stared at me. Her gaze moved slowly from my tangled hair to my bare breasts, and down the slopes of my naked body, until it encountered Jamie, lying prone between my thighs, white-faced with a shock equal to hers.

  “Daddy!” she said in tones of total outrage. “Who is that woman?”

  Claire is wondering much the same thing, but her curiosity is soon satisfied. The young woman is named Marsali; the daughter of Laoghaire, who meets Claire’s appearance with a horror equal to Claire’s own. Jamie is hers, Laoghaire declares; they were married upon his return to Lallybroch from Ardsmuir. She doesn’t know where Claire has come from, but she ought to return there at once!

  Staggered by this revelation, Claire’s shock is succeeded by fury. Stunned and dismayed by news of the marriage, she is infuriated by Jamie’s failure to tell her of it. He intended to tell her, he insists—but was afraid that her reaction would be exactly what it is. There is a dreadful fight, concluding with Jamie’s stamping out of the house–and Claire’s flight away from Lallybroch and back toward the stones.

  Her steps grow slower and slower, though, as she approaches the end of her dreams.

  Only with Jamie had I given everything I had, risked it all. I had thrown away caution and judgment and wisdom, along with the comforts and constraints of a hard-won career. I had brought him nothing but myself, been nothing but myself with him, given him soul as well as body, let him see me naked, trusted him to see me whole and cherish my frailties—because he once had.

  I had feared he couldn’t, again. Or wouldn’t. And then had known those few days of perfect joy, thinking that what had once been true was true once more; I was free to love him, with everything I had and was, and be loved with an honesty that matched my own.

  The tears slid hot and wet between my fingers. I mourned for Jamie, and for what I had been, with him.

  Do you know, his voice said, whispering, what it means, to say again “I love you,” and to mean it?

  I knew. And with my head in my hands beneath the pine trees, I knew I would never mean it again.

  Sunk in miserable contemplation, Claire is suddenly roused by the unexpected appearance of Young Ian. He has, he says, been sent by Jamie to ask Claire to come back to Lallybroch. Further infuriated by this evidence of Jamie’s callousness—he doesn’t care enough to come himself!—Claire indignantly refuses, trying to free her horse’s reins from Young Ian’s stubborn grip.

  But she must come, he insists. It’s not like she thinks; Jamie really needs her. “Let go!”

  “But Auntie Claire, it’s not that!”

  “What’s not that?” Caught by his tone of desperation, I glanced up. His long narrow face was tight with the anguished need to make me understand.

  “Uncle Jamie didna stay to tend Laoghaire!”

  “Then why did he send you?”

  He took a deep breath, renewing his grip on my reins.

  “She shot him. He sent me to find ye, because he’s dying.”

  Claire’s initial response to this revelation is, “If he isn’t dying when I get there, I’ll kill him myself—and you, too, Ian Murray!” but this doesn’t lessen her anxiety as they hasten back toward Lallybroch. Upon arrival there, she finds Jamie battling infection and high fever, groggy enough with pain and heat to think her appearance a hallucination. He has, he tells her, come close to death from fever twice before; this time it will finish him, and is welcome to do so.

  Claire, however, has brought one other thing from the future besides Brianna’s photographs; a small case, holding hypodermic syringes and penicillin tablets. Informing Jamie that eighteenth-century germs are no match for a modern antibiotic, she tends briskly to his wounds, injects him with the drug, and then sits down to watch over him—at last reluctantly ready to hear what he had tried to tell her before: the story behind his marriage to Laoghaire.

  It was a marriage made of loneliness; a mismatch born of hope and compassion. Jenny, fearing for her brother’s sanity and aching for his need, had tried again and again to induce him to take a wife after Claire’s disappearance. He had refused, again and again—not only because no one could replace her, but because his circumstances did not admit of taking a wife; living in a cave, hiding, endlessly on the run—what sort of life could that be for any woman?

  But now … returning from his long exile in England, he found himself free of the threat of law, but rootless, a stranger in his own place. The estate had passed to Ian’s son; the responsibility and obligation that had sustained Jamie for so long had vanished. His own son was miles away, forever unacknowledged, forever lost to him. With no one and nothing to bind him, he wandered ghostlike through the rooms of the house that had once been his.

  And so, when Jenny once more forced the possibility of marriage upon him, he was at last obliged to listen. Laoghaire was a widow, with two daughters to support. She was also one of the few links remaining to his own youth. And so, he tells Claire, they wed—with no sense of love, but thinking that they might be able at least to help each other.

  It was a mismatch, though; instead of being comfort to one another, there was nothing but misunderstanding and misery, and within a year, Jamie had left to work in Edinburgh, sending back money for the care of Laoghaire and her girls.

  Despite her anger, Claire is moved to understanding; she, too, has had a marriage of obligation, and knows too well the pitfalls of a bond without love.

  “Do ye know?” he said softly, somewhere in the black, small hours of the night. “Do ye know what it’s like to be with someone that way? To try all ye can, and seem never to have the secret of them?”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking of Frank. “Yes, I do know.”

  “I thought perhaps ye did.” He was quiet for a moment, and then his hand touched my hair lightly, a shadowy blur in the firelight.

  “And then …” he whispered, “then to have it back again, that knowing. To be free in all ye say or do, and
know that it is right.”

  “To say ’I love you,’ and mean it with all your heart,” I said softly to the dark.

  “Aye,” he answered, barely audible. “To say that.”

  His hand rested on my hair, and without knowing quite how it happened, I found myself curled against him, my head just fitting in the hollow of his shoulder.

  “For so many years,” he said, “for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men.” I felt him swallow, and he shifted slightly, the linen of his nightshirt rustling with starch.

  “I was ’Uncle’ to Jenny’s children, and ’Brother’ to her and Ian. ’Milord’ to Fergus, and ’Sir’ to my tenants. Mac Dubh’ to the men of Ardsmuir and ’MacKenzie to the other servants at Helwater.

  ’Malcolm the printer,’ then, and Jamie Roy at the docks.“ The hand stroked my hair, slowly, with a whispering sound like the wind outside. ”But here,“ he said, so softly I could barely hear him, ”here in the dark, with you … I have no name.”

  I lifted my face toward his, and took the warm breath of him between my own lips.

  “I love you,” I said, and did not need to tell him how I meant it.

  Jamie’s recovery is uneventful, save for the appearance of Hobart MacKenzie, Laoghaire’s brother. Charged with wiping out the stain on his sister’s honor, Hobart has brought not the expected sword or pistol, but something far more dangerous—a lawyer. Claire is delighted to find her old friend Ned Gowan still alive and vigorous—though somewhat less pleased at the arrangement he suggests; in dismissal of all claims and charges, Jamie agrees to pay Laoghaire an annual sum for maintenance of her household, and to provide dowries for her two daughters, Marsali and Joan.

  While all right in principle, this arrangement has a slight drawback in practice, insofar as Jamie has no funds with which to meet the obligation. There is, however, a way.

  Jamie tells Claire the story of his time in prison; the appearance of Duncan Kerr, and Jamie’s subsequent escape to find the truth of Kerr’s ravings about treasure and “the white witch.” He found no trace of Claire, but did discover treasure. Not the French bullion of legend, but a box of gemstones and ancient coins, hidden on a rocky isle guarded by seals.

  Returning to Ardsmuir in order to care for his men there, he had concealed the truth from the prison’s governor, swearing to him that the treasure “lies in the sea.” Since then, the existence of the treasure has been held as a secret trust by the Murrays of Lallybroch; in time of great need, one or another of the older boys would journey to the coast with Ian, and then swim out to the seals’ isle in order to abstract a single gem from the hoard. The jewel would then be sold secretly in France, with their cousin Jared’s assistance, and the money used for the help of Jacobite exiles or the support of the Lallybroch tenants.

  These secret journeys had been rites of passage for the two older Murray boys; now it is Young Ian’s turn. Jenny and Ian are hesitant at first, but consent to the expedition. Jamie’s wounded arm makes it impossible for him to make the arduous swim, and Young Ian’s thirst for adventure makes him restless on the farm. The lad would like nothing better than to accompany his beloved uncle on an exciting mission; at the same time, he would be safely under Jamie’s eye. And, as Ian says, “Better to give him his freedom while he still thinks it’s ours to give.”

  The expedition to the seals’ isle is a good bit more exciting than even Young Ian could have hoped. Young Ian’s arrival on the fog-shrouded rock coincides with another—a tough-looking bunch of seamen, who abscond with both the treasure and Ian while Jamie and Claire look on helplessly from the cliffs above.

  Jamie is stricken; beyond his own deep love for his nephew is horror at the thought of having to go back to Lallybroch and tell Jenny what has happened to her youngest son. Vowing instead to recover the boy, no matter what the cost, he takes Claire at once across the Channel to France. Failing to stop the kidnappers, the Frasers had managed to catch a glimpse of the pirates’ ship. With this scanty information, perhaps Cousin Jared, with his contacts among the shipping trade, can find out the ship’s destination—and provide another ship in which to pursue it.

  Fuming at every second’s delay, Jamie has no time to worry over the prospects of seasickness. Instead, once the ship is prepared, he hastily returns to Scotland to gather a small band of men: his companions in smuggling, including Duncan Innes, an ex-prisoner from Ardsmuir, and Mr. Willoughby.

  His foster son, Fergus, is meant to accompany the rescue expedition, but barely makes the sailing—accompanied by Marsali, Laoghaire’s daughter. They are in love, the girl defiantly tells Jamie, and they mean to elope—with him.

  The ship has already left shore; there is no turning back. Jamie, keeping a tight rein on his temper, tells Fergus and Marsali that they will sleep apart on the ship; if, once arrived in the Indies, they are still convinced that they wish to be married, he will find a priest to bless their union. Until then—hands off.

  Fergus and Marsali agree to abide by this dictum, which is as well, since Jamie has little strength left to enforce it. Felled by seasickness, he lies helpless in his bunk, Claire’s herbal remedies useless to combat it. Mr. Willoughby, though, has a suggestion—and Jamie once more appears on the deck of the Artemis, glowering beneath a prickling of gold acupuncture needles.

  The wind is fair and the voyage quick and mostly uneventful, save for Mr. Willoughby’s acquisition of a pelican named Ping An (the Peaceful One), whom the Chinese poet tames and teaches to fish. The tedium of sailing is broken by a chance meeting at sea with an English man-of-war, the Porpoise, who poses a substantial danger to the success of the Artemis’s voyage. While England and France are not at war, and the Artemis sails under French colors, half her crew are English or Scottish—and the man-of-war may impress any English subjects, should she prove to be shorthanded. The fact that this would cripple the Artemis, leaving her with insufficient crew to do more than limp slowly westward, is of no concern to His Majesty’s Navy.

  Shorthanded she is; the Porpoise’s very young Captain stumbles aboard, begging for help. An epidemic has broken out onboard; half his crew are dead, dying, or falling sick. Thomas Leonard is himself no more than Third Lieutenant, acting Captain by default, all senior officers having perished. He must have help; does the Artemis boast a surgeon?

  Against Jamie’s wishes, but impelled both by pity for the young lieutenant and by her Hippocratic oath, Claire goes aboard the Porpoise, where she finds conditions much worse even than Captain Leonard’s description; there is a full-fledged typhoid epidemic and the crew quarters are full of dying men. Claire issues such directions and instructions as are possible, all the while knowing that the available measures are largely futile; she cannot save most of the sick, but can only try to prevent the spread of infection.

  Her apparent expertise has an unforeseen consequence; the young acting Captain of the Porpoise, desperate for any help and with an important political passenger aboard, informally impresses Claire, taking her to Jamaica with the promise that he will return her to Jamie and the Artemis upon their arrival—assuming that enough of the crew survive to make such an arrival possible.

  Both frightened and infuriated by this kidnapping on the high seas, Claire has no choice but to do her best to fight the epidemic, with no weapons to hand save distilled alcohol and a basic knowledge of hygiene. In the course of the fight, drained and exhausted by the futility of her efforts, the prevalence of death, and her own isolation from Jamie, she finds consolation from an unexpected source—Lord John Grey, the newly appointed governor of Jamaica. Twenty years past their first meeting in a dark wood, neither recognizes the other, but Claire takes comfort from the meeting with the quiet, compassionate stranger.

  The epidemic at last burnt out, the Porpoise limps toward Jamaica. What should seem deliverance to Claire, though, is instead a new danger; in the course of her stay aboard the Porpoise, she has found a sinister entry in the Captain’s log, and met with one Harry Tompkins, the o
ne-eyed seaman who had—after all—escaped the conflagration of the burning print shop in Edinburgh. With a mixture of brandy and threats, Claire extracts the truth from Tompkins; Jamie’s identity is known— both to Sir Percy Turner, who has political aspirations that would be helped by the apprehension of an important seditionist and smuggler—and to Captain Leonard, who has learned of Jamie’s identity from Tompkins, and who—regretting the necessity imposed by duty—intends to arrest Jamie upon their rendezvous in Jamaica.

  Escape is imperative, but Claire’s attempts to leave the ship at various stops before Jamaica are foiled by the Captain’s watchfulness. At last, desperate to escape, she enlists the help of the gunner’s wife and slips overboard during the night into the Mouchoir Passage, supported by empty brandy casks, to float ashore on the nearby island of Hispaniola. From here, perhaps she can reach Jamaica in time to meet the Artemis, and to warn Jamie of the danger from the Porpoise.

  Arriving wet, hungry, thirsty, and cold, Claire makes her way painfully inland, with no clear idea what to do next—only knowing that she must find water, food, and Jamie, in that order. What she finds is a Jewish naturalist named Lawrence Stern, who provides water and takes her in search of food at the house of a nearby friend: a defrocked—and not quite sane—English priest named Fogden.

  Meanwhile, the Artemis has been in hot pursuit, urged on by Jamie’s fear for Claire’s safety. Catching up to the crippled man-of-war at one port of call, the Artemis hides out of sight, while Jamie crosses a spit of land and boards the Porpoise, unseen, to search for Claire—who has, of course, already left the ship, herself unseen.

  Combing the ship with increasing desperation, Jamie fails to find his wife, but is discovered and imprisoned, left alone in a small cell with the horrifying news that Claire is dead, lost overboard. His presence is noted by the gunner’s wife, though, who deduces his identity and liberates him.