The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [134]
So. Now we come to the chapter of Drums where Roger finds himself aboard the Gloriana, trying to get to the Colonies. He sees an unknown young woman on the dock who attracts him—he envies the closeness between her and her husband, and observes that they have a child (watch that baby). Later, in casual conversation, he learns that her name is Morag MacKenzie (notice the woman who suggests that they might be related [“Perhaps your man is kin to him”]? This is a Clue, awright?).
All right. Some of the passengers—several of them children—contract smallpox. In an effort to keep the contagion from spreading, the crew throw the affected persons overboard (this scene was directly inspired by the story of just such an occurrence, told by an eyewitness). Fearing that her child’s rash will be mistaken for pox, and the baby put over the side, Morag MacKenzie hides in the hold, her escape covered by her husband, who attacks Roger on deck during the melee.
You still watching the baby? Okay. Notice, then, that his mother calls him “Jemmy,” hmm? Jemmy MacKenzie. Are we beginning to suspect anything here? Well, that’s okay, Roger didn’t notice, either. However, moved by compassion, he saves mother and child, risking his own life in the process.
A good deal later, contemplating names for his own son, the name “Jeremiah” is mentioned once again. Roger (finally) makes the connections that have been brewing in his subconscious for lo, these many months (he’s seen his own family tree often enough, after all). To confirm his realizations, he asks Claire if she, too, recalls the name of William Buccleigh’s wife, which she does—Morag.
A fair-haired man with green eyes, named MacKenzie, with a wife named Morag and a son named Jeremiah. Don’t look now; you (and Roger) have just met Geilie and Dougal’s son, William Buccleigh, in the process of emigrating to America—and Roger has just saved his great-great-great-great-grandfather Jeremiah from a watery grave (incidentally saving himself from presumed extinction in the process, and giving those readers so inclined food for thought as to why some people time travel, the circular nature of things, and whether history can be changed).
And that’s why all the fuss about Jeremiah (if you want to observe that Jeremiah was also the name of a rather well-known Biblical prophet with a penchant for unpopular predictions, and make speculations regarding Roger and the oncoming Revolution, that’s fine with me, too, but it won’t be on the test).
PART FOUR
COMPREHENSIVE GLOSSARY AND PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
hen my agent, Perry Knowlton, first read the draft manuscript of Voyager, he wrote to tell me that he thought it was a wonderful, adventurous book—noting, however, that there was a small error in one of the French phrases, for which he helpfully gave me the correct usage. I replied with thanks, adding, “One of these days, I will stop writing books involving places I’ve never been and languages I don’t speak—and then where will we all be?”
Why should one use foreign phrases in the first place? Well, for assorted reasons: to give “flavor” to a character or setting, to convey something of the multilingual aspects of European society in the eighteenth century, to add to the atmosphere of unfamiliarity that must afflict a person thrust suddenly into such strange circumstance—and now and then, for humor or suspense.
People occasionally write to me asking how this or that Gaelic phrase is pronounced, or if I can direct them to good courses of study in Gaelic. One or two bold souls have gone so far as to request that I teach them Gaelic—by mail, presumably.1
Alas, I don’t speak Gaelic. Or French. Or German. Or Swedish. Or Mandarin. Or Yoruba. Or Kahnyen’kehaka (Mohawk).
Now, I do speak English (and fairly well, if I do say so myself). I can also make myself understood in Spanish, but not with any real finesse