The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [9]
So, for the use of those who have lent out their books and don’t want to drive to the library to check a plot detail or a character name, or for those who merely wish to refresh their memories…
OUTLANDER
T’S 1946,1 the Scottish Highlands are in bloom, and Claire Randall, an English ex-army combat nurse, has come to Scotland on a second honeymoon with her husband, Frank, from whom she’s been separated by the war.
While she doesn’t share Frank’s passion for genealogy, she’s looking forward to starting the next branch on the family tree. Meanwhile, she occupies her spare time in exploring the countryside, pursuing an interest in botany. On one such expedition, she discovers an ancient circle of standing stones—made the more interesting by Frank’s having heard that the circle is still in use by a local group of women who celebrate the “old ways” there.
In the dawn of the ancient Feast of Beltane—May 1—Claire and Frank creep up to the circle, to see the women dancing and chanting, calling down the sun. The couple steal away unseen, but later Claire returns to the circle to get a closer look at an unusual plant she’s seen growing there.
She touches one of the standing stones and is enveloped in a sudden vortex of noise and confusion. Disoriented and half-conscious, she finds herself on the hill outside the circle, and slowly makes her way down—to find what she assumes is a film shoot in progress at the bottom; a prince-in-the-heather epic, with kilted Scotsmen being pursued by red-coated British soldiers.
Claire carefully skirts the scene, so as not to ruin the shot, and making her way through the woods stumbles into a man in the costume of an eighteenth-century English army officer. This doesn’t disturb her nearly as much as does the man’s striking resemblance to her husband, Frank.
The resemblance is quickly explained; the man is in fact Franks ancestor, the notorious “Black Jack” Randall, of whom Frank had often told her. While very similar in appearance, however, Jack Randall unfortunately does not share his descendant’s personality—the former-day Randall being a sadistic bisexual pervert rather than a mild-mannered history professor.
Claire is rescued from Black Jack’s clutches by one of the Scotsmen she had seen earlier, who takes her to the cottage where his fellows are hiding, waiting for darkness to escape. One of the men has been wounded, and Claire treats his wound—as best she can—meanwhile trying to come to terms with the apparent truth of where—and when—she is.
Bemused not only by Claire’s peculiar dress—or lack of it—but by the sheer impossibility of her presence—English ladies simply aren’t found in the Highlands in 1743—the Scotsmen decide to take her with them when they decamp under cover of darkness.
As Claire remarks, “The rest of the journey passed uneventfully; if you consider it uneventful to ride fifteen miles on horseback through rough country at night, frequently without benefit of roads, in company with kilted men armed to the teeth, and sharing a horse with a wounded man. At least we were not set upon by highwaymen, we encountered no wild beasts, and it didn’t rain. By the standards I was becoming used to, it was quite dull.”
Arriving at dawn at Castle Leoch, seat of clan MacKenzie, Claire meets The MacKenzie, Colum. A courtly man deformed by a hideous genetic disease, Colum is both intrigued and suspicious. He can think of no conceivable reason for an Englishwoman to have been wandering the Highlands, and makes no pretense of believing Claire’s thin story of having been beset by robbers. Not knowing who she may be, or what her purposes are, he makes it plain that he intends to keep her as his guest for the time being—willing or not.
While laying plans for her escape and return to the stone circle, Claire becomes