The Outlandish Companion Read online

  Claire knows that once more the Highlanders will be victorious, but this knowledge is hollow comfort; all around her she sees the beginnings of the dreaded end, the small signs of crumbling confidence, of poor leadership, of scarce resource, that will—perhaps—doom the Stuart cause and those who follow it. But for the moment, victory is once more near; marching on Falkirk at night, the Highlanders meet with a small troop of English soldiers, and the sound of gunfire rends the night.

  Hurried away into a deserted church for shelter, Claire finds herself trapped with a few of the MacKenzies of Leoch—including both Dougal and his lieutenant, Rupert, who has been fatally wounded in the skirmish. Jamie joins the group, but not in time to get Claire away before the church is surrounded. In imminent danger of being burned alive inside the church, Dougal seizes the only expedient: Claire must pretend to be an Englishwoman taken hostage by the Scots. The Highlanders will exchange her for their freedom; once safely away, Jamie can circle back to aid her escape from the English.

  The plan works, at least initially. But things go quickly wrong when Claire discovers that the battle she thought already over has in fact not yet begun. With all the English officers engaged in preparations, no one has time to spare for her—and she is quickly sent South, under guard as a suspicious person. Trying and failing to escape, she is delivered at last to an unexpected destination in northern England— a manor called Bellhurst. Her host is also unexpected: the Duke of Sandringham.

  Hearing of the astonishing case of the Englishwoman held hostage, the Duke has shrewdly guessed who the Englishwoman must be, and arranged to have Claire delivered to him, to serve as bait for Jamie Fraser. In an edgy interview with the Duke, Claire learns the truth—or part of it. It was the Duke who arranged the attacks on Jamie’s life and on Claire’s, in Paris, in an effort to remove an influential source of support for the Stuart cause. The man who led the attack in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré was Albert Danton, the Duke’s valet—an attack that ironically prevented the marriage of the Duke’s goddaughter, Mary Hawkins.

  Jamie does follow Claire, but succeeds in sneaking into the mansion undetected, where he kills Danton and releases both Claire and Mary. The expedition is not without cost: Hugh Munro, a friend of Jamie’s who sought to warn him, is taken by the Duke’s men and hanged. Accompanied by Murtagh, who carries away a bag of loot from the mansion, Jamie and his men head north, pausing for the melancholy duty of delivering Hugh’s body to his wife.

  Murtagh laid the bag on the floor at my feet, then straightened up and looked from me to Mary, to Hugh Munro’s widow, and at last to Jamie, who looked as puzzled as I felt. Having thus assured himself of his audience, Murtagh bowed formally to me, a lock of wet dark hair falling free over his brow.

  “I bring ye your vengeance, lady, ”he said, as quietly as I’d ever heard him speak. He straightened and inclined his head in turn to Mary and Mrs. Munro. “And justice for the wrong done to ye.”

  Mary sneezed, and wiped her nose hastily with a fold of her plaid. She stared at Murtagh, eyes wide and baffled. I gazed down at the bulging saddlebag, feeling a sudden deep chill that owed nothing to the weather outside. But it was Hugh Munro’s widow who sank to her knees, and with steady hands opened the bag and drew out the head of the Duke of Sandringham.

  Returning north with all speed, the Frasers reach Edinburgh. While Jamie is impatient to push on and join the Highland army—where the men of Lallybroch are—Mary Hawkins has one small request: that he and Claire will attend as witnesses to her marriage.

  A marriage not to the dying Alexander Randall, but to his brother, Jonathan. Mary is with child, and Alex wishes her to have the protection of name and family— a protection that he cannot give her himself. As a curate, though, he can perform the marriage between his lover and his brother; a final act of desperation before his death.

  So the mystery of Frank Randall’s descent is solved; but Claire has no time to contemplate it. Disaster is approaching like storm clouds over the Highland peaks. The Highland army is headed for Culloden, and destruction—threatening to take with it the men of Lallybroch. The Frasers hurry northward, hiding, starving, pressing on to their final confrontation with history.

  The Frasers arrive at Culloden House on the eve of battle, to find chaos and despair. Starving men lie in mud and rags, sleeping in exhaustion from a long and futile march. Tomorrow they will stand on the moor, to be cut down by English cannon fire.

  Taking refuge in a small attic at the top of the house, Claire tells Jamie that there is one last, desperate measure that can be taken: Charles Stuart is the focus of the rebellion, the leader of the Highland forces, at whose behest the ragged survivors of his army will take the field at Drumossie Moor. If Charles Stuart were to die—here, tonight—the final battle at least could be averted.

  Both struck with horror at the suggestion, nonetheless they contemplate the possibility—Claire has poison, and access to the Prince; it might mean her own life, but is that not worth the lives of the hundreds who will die on the field tomorrow? At last, though, they face the truth—neither Jamie nor Claire can commit murder in cold blood, even knowing what lies at stake.

  This conclusion comes too late; Dougal MacKenzie, seeking Jamie, has overheard their conversation. Denouncing Claire as a treacherous witch who has seduced his nephew, he draws his dirk, intending to kill her on the spot. A desperate fight ensues between Jamie and Dougal, ending with Dougal dead on the floor, Jamie’s dirk socketed at the base of his throat.

  Fleeing from Culloden House, Jamie finds his godfather, Murtagh, and his servant, Fergus. Pulling out a document that he had prepared long before in case of disaster, he asks Murtagh to witness it: a deed of sasine, passing ownership of Lallybroch to his own nephew, James Murray. Antedated, the deed will keep the estate from being seized by the Crown as the property of a traitor.

  The deed is entrusted to Fergus, who is sent with it to Lallybroch, removing him from the danger of the oncoming battle. Jamie then instructs Murtagh to gather the men of Lallybroch; he, Jamie, will see Claire safe—and then return to command his men and see them safely off the field before the battle.

  Arriving at the stone circle the evening before the battle, Claire refuses to leave Jamie; if he dies on Culloden, she will die with him.

  “If you’re not afraid, I’m not either,” I said, firming my own jaw. “It will … be over quickly. You said so.” My chin was beginning to quiver, despite my determination. “Jamie—I won’t… I can’t… I bloody won’t live without you, and that’s all!”

  He opened his mouth, speechless, then closed it, shaking his head. The light over the mountains was failing painting the clouds with a dull red glow. At last he reached for me, drew me close and held me.

  “D’ye think I don’t know?” he asked softly. “It’s me that has the easy part now. For if ye feel for me as I do for you—then I am asking you to tear out your heart and live without it.” His hand stroked my hair, the roughness of his knuckles catching in the blowing strands.

  “But ye must do it, a nighean donn. My brave lioness. Ye must.”

  “Why?” I demanded, pulling back to look up at him. “When you took me from the witch trial at Cranesmuir—you said then that you would have died with me, you would have gone to the stake with me, had it come to that!”

  He grasped my hands, fixing me with a steady blue gaze.

  “Aye, I would,” he said. “But I wasna carrying your child.”

  I tried to fight down the waves of nausea—so easily attributable to fright and starvation—but I felt the small heaviness, suddenly burning in my womb. I bit my lip hard, but the sickness washed over me.

  Jamie let go my hands, and stood before me, hands at his sides, stark in silhouette against the fading sky.

  “Claire,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow I will die. This child… is all that will be left of me—ever. I ask ye, Claire—I beg you … see it safe.”

  I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I he
ard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower’s stem.

  At last I bent my head to him, the wind grieving in my ears.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I’ll go.”

  It was nearly dark. He came behind me and held me, leaning back against him as he looked over my shoulder, out over the valley. The lights of the watchfires had begun to spring up, small glowing dots in the far distance. We were silent for a long time, as the evening deepened. It was very quiet on the hill; I could hear nothing but Jamie’s even breathing, each breath a precious sound.

  “I will find you,” he whispered in my ear. “I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you—then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one small thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest.”

  His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me.

  “Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.”

  One final night together, in the ruined cottage on the hill below Craigh na Dun—and the two prepare in the morning to part, forever.

  “They say …” he began, and stopped to clear his throat. “They say, in the old days, when a man would go forth to do a great deed—he would find a wisewoman, and ask her to bless him. He would stand looking forth, in the direction he would go, and she would come behind him, to say the words of the prayer over him. When she had finished, he would walk straight out, and not look back, for that was ill-luck to his quest.”

  He touched my face once, and turned away, facing the open door. The morning sun streamed in, lighting his hair in a thousand flames. He straightened his shoulders, broad beneath his plaid, and drew a deep breath.

  “Bless me, then, wisewoman,” he said softly, “and go.”

  Claire’s blessing is interrupted, though, by the sudden arrival of English soldiers.

  He kissed me once more, hard enough to leave the taste of blood in my mouth. “Name him Brian,” he said, “for my father.” With a push, he sent me toward the opening. As I ran for it, I glanced back to see him standing in the middle of the doorway, sword half drawn, dirk ready in his right hand.

  The English, unaware that the cottage was occupied, had not thought to send a scout round the back. The slope behind the cottage was deserted as I dashed across it and into the thicket of alders below the hillcrest.

  There was a crashing in the brush behind me. Someone had seen me rush from the cottage. I dashed aside the tears and scrabbled upward, groping on all fours as the ground grew steeper. I was in the clear space now, the shelf of granite I remembered. The small dogwood growing out of the cliff was there, and the tumble of small boulders.

  I stopped at the edge of the stone circle, looking down, trying desperately to see what was happening. How many soldiers had come to the cottage? Could Jamie break free of them and reach his hobbled horse below? Without it, he would never reach Culloden in time.

  All at once, the brush below me parted with a flash of red. An English soldier. I turned, ran gasping across the turf of the circle, and hurled myself through the cleft in the rock.

  1968

  And that, Claire tells her daughter, was the final part of Jamie Fraser’s story; the thing she came to Scotland to learn; whether he had succeeded in his final quest—in saving his men before returning himself, to die in battle. Having done that, he would not have felt his life entirely wasted. And knowing now the end of his story, she is able at last to tell his daughter the truth.

  Hearing the conclusion of her mother’s story, Brianna Randall bursts into angry denial. It can’t be—Frank Randall is her father! Furious at what she sees as Claire’s betrayal, and refusing to believe her story, Brianna storms out, leaving Claire and Roger in stunned silence.

  With the evidence to hand, and no emotional stake in disbelief, Roger does believe Claire’s story. In answer to her tentative questions, he tells her the final chapter—what happened to the men she knew: those who died at Culloden. Knowing what disaster she left behind, and seeking to build a new life with Frank and Brianna, Claire has tried never to look back; never sought to know the details of the death of the Highland clans. But now the time of denial is over—she can mourn the fallen, make peace with the past.

  And the present. As she and Roger walk together through the rain-drenched evening, she tells him that there is one final part to her story—something she must tell him, for his own sake. And a decision that only he can make.

  Roger bent over the genealogical chart, then looked up, moss-green eyes thoughtful.

  “This one? William Buccleigh MacKenzie, born 1744, of William John MacKenzie and Sarah Innes. Died 1782.”

  Claire shook her head. “Died 1744, aged two months, of smallpox.” She looked up, and the golden eyes met his with a force that sent a shiver down his spine. “Yours wasn’t the first adoption in that family, you know,” she said. Her finger tapped the entry. “He needed a wet nurse,” she said. “His own mother was dead—so he was given to a family that had lost a baby. They called him by the name of the child they had lost—that was common—and I don’t suppose anyone wanted to call attention to his ancestry by recording the new child in the parish register. He would have been baptized at birth, after all; it wasn’t necessary to do it again. Colum told me where they placed him.”

  “Geillis Duncan’s son,” he said slowly. “The witch’s child.”

  “That’s right.” She gazed at him appraisingly, head cocked to one side. “I knew it must be, when I saw you. The eyes, you know. They’re hers.”

  Claire tells Roger that the decision must be his; this is 1968, the year of Geillis Duncan’s disappearance into the past, and the feast of Beltane is fast approaching. Shall they try to find the woman, and stop her? For if she goes, she goes to meet a fiery death in the past, condemned as a witch. But if she does not go—

  “I’ll leave it to you,“ Claire said quietly. ”It’s your right to say. Shall I look for her?”

  Roger lifted his head off the table and blinked at her incredulously. “Shall you look for her?” he said. “If this—if it’s all true—then we have to find her, don’t we? If she’s going back to be burned alive? Of course you have to find her,” he burst out. “How could you consider anything else?”

  “And if I do find her?” she replied. She placed a slender hand on the grubby chart and raised her eyes to his. “What happens to you?” she asked softly.

  If Geilie Duncan returns to the past, she will bear the child who is Roger’s ancestor—and she will die in a barrel of pitch, burned as a witch. If she does not go back through the stones, presumably she will be saved from a ghastly death … but what then of her child … and of Roger?

  Reeling from the shocks of the day, Roger is staggered by this final, personal revelation. Still, he decides that they must find the woman known as Geillis Duncan— find her, talk to her, and—perhaps—prevent her return to a deadly past.

  Accompanied by a reluctant and suspicious Brianna, Roger sets out to help Claire find Geillis Duncan—known in this time as Gillian Edgars. As they search out the trail of the mysterious witch whose green eyes look mockingly out of Roger’s mirror each day, he realizes Claire’s stake in the matter: not just a feeling of obligation toward Geillis Duncan, who saved her life in the past. Geillis/Gillian is the only real proof of the truth of Claire’s story—for seeing someone actually disappear through the standing stones would convince even Brianna.

  Roger and Brianna find Gillian’s husband, Greg Edgars, but too late—Gillian has left home a week before, and no one knows where she is. With her friends, the Scottish Nationalists and neo-Jacobites, Greg gloomily suggests; his wife’s obsession with Scotland’s past has led her away from home before.

  Claire has traced the missing woman to a local school, where she finds Gillian’s
notebooks—a mixture of raving lunacy and reasoned logic.

  The notebook suggests what Claire has suspected; that the door to the past stands widest open on the ancient feasts of sun and fire—and one such feast is hard upon them; it is Beltane, the date upon which Claire herself disappeared in 1946.

  Going to the sinister hill of Craigh na Dun at night, they find Gillian/Geillis’s car, but no sign of the woman. Climbing the hill to the circle of standing stones, Roger smells petrol—and a sudden whiff of fire illuminates the circle. Gillian Edgars has lured her husband to the hill, and in the belief that a blood sacrifice will open the door to the past, has killed him and set fire to the body.

  He pushed past Brianna, focused only on the tall, slim girl before him, and the image of a face that mirrored his own. She saw him coming, turned and ran like the wind for the cleft stone at the end of the circle. She had a knapsack of rough canvas, slung over one shoulder; he heard her grunt as it swung heavily and struck her in the side.

  She paused for an instant, hand outstretched to the rock, and looked back. He could have sworn that her eyes rested on him, met his own and held them, beyond the barrier of the fire’s blaze. He opened his mouth in a wordless shout. She whirled then, light as a dancing spark, and vanished in the cleft of the rock.

  At once, Roger is struck by a wave of noise and chaos like nothing he has ever experienced. Dazed, blinded, deafened, he is crawling toward the cleft himself when Brianna succeeds in rousing him. Deeply shaken by the experience, he is unhurt. But where is Claire?

  Knocked unconscious by the shock wave of Gillian Edgars’s passage through the stones, Claire lies in the grass of Craigh na Dun. Roger and Brianna get her back to the manse, where she slowly regains consciousness, to meet her daughter’s questions.