The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [29]
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