The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [15]
Increasingly fond of both women, Roger is uncertain what to do in order to prevent either of them being hurt. There seems nothing he can do, save stick close to them, and be ready to help, whatever happens.
Meanwhile, his quest is bearing unexpected fruit. He has found her Jacobites, he tells Claire; the odd thing is that none of them appears to have been killed at Culloden—extraordinary, in view of the great slaughter that took place there. Nearly one man in two on the field was killed; it’s remarkable that none of the thirty men on Claire’s list was among them.
Claire’s response to this news is as puzzling as her other reactions; she turns pale and nearly collapses with relief. What difference can the fate of men dead two hundred years make to her? Roger wonders.
The mystery deepens when Brianna helps Roger disinter some of the Reverend’s journals from the garage—journals that refer obliquely to Claire’s reappearance, to some dreadful secret that she seemed to be hiding—and to a mysterious request made by Frank Randall. The Reverend writes that he has done as Frank wished with regard to the gravestone—but of James Fraser, there is no record. Who is this mysterious James Fraser—and what has he to do with Claire?
In an effort at distraction, Roger has taken Brianna to view the battleground at Culloden, with its mute and moving testament to the slaughter of the Highland clans; Claire, pleading a spurious illness, stays home. She agrees, however, to go along on another jaunt, to an old and long-deserted church some distance out of town.
Claire plans to enjoy the Highland scenery, collect a few plants, and keep an eye on the budding relationship between Roger and her daughter. Brianna and Roger have other plans; looking through the Reverend’s papers, Roger has found a mention of a Captain Jonathan Randall, an ancestor of Brianna’s father—or supposed father—Frank. Thinking to surprise Claire, they lead her to Randall’s grave— and are not only surprised, but shocked, at Claire’s reaction, which is one of sudden and irrational fury.
St. Kilda’s Cemetery.
Leaving Claire to collect herself, the two baffled young people go into the deserted church, only to be yanked outside almost at once by the sound of a scream. They find Claire, incoherent and shaking, standing over a grave in the shadow of the yews. The stone on the grave is a “marriage stone”; a quarter-circle of granite, meant to be paired with another, forming a semicircle to mark the resting place of husband and wife.
Only the husband lies here, though; the other half of the stone is missing.
“What is it?” Roger said urgently, trying to rouse her from the staring trance she had fallen into. “What is it? Is it a name you know?” Even as he spoke, his own words were ringing in his ears. No one’s been buried here since the eighteenth century, he’d told Brianna.
No one’s been buried here in two hundred years.
Claire’s fingers brushed his own away and touched the stone, caressing, as though touching flesh, gently tracing the letters, the grooves worn shallow, but still clear.
“JAMES ALEXANDER MALCOLM MACKENZIE FRASER, “she read aloud. ”Yes, I know him. “Her hand dropped lower, brushing back the grass that grew thickly about the stone, obscuring the line of smaller letters at its base.
“Beloved husband of Claire, ”she read.
“Yes, I knew him,” she said again, so softly Roger could scarcely hear her. “I’m Claire. He was my husband.” She looked up then, into the face of her daughter, white and shocked above her. “And your father,” she said.
In the wake of Claire’s revelation, the three return to the manse, where Claire reveals the bare bones of her secret: that twenty-three years before, she had stepped through the stones of Craigh na Dun— and disappeared into the past. Struggling to survive in the barbarous