A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Claire finds Marsali working alone in the distillery. Germain walks with her, giving his mother a nest of robin’s eggs. They have a sweet moment together: Marsali tells him he used to be in her belly too, as did his sisters. Once he leaves, Claire presses Marsali, asking if Fergus is beating her. She admits the finger bruises on her arm are from him but says it only happened because she threw a log at him when he yelled at one of the children out of frustration. Marsali remembers a traumatic night when a father figure had yelled at her for spilling milk and then slapped her and hit her mother. Marsali misses her mother terribly, she admits, cradling her pregnant stomach.

Claire finishes Marsali’s work for her, intending to walk her home and speak to Fergus before deciding whether to tell Jamie. She doesn’t like feeling empathy for Marsali’s mother, Laoghaire. Laoghaire was married to Jamie when he thought Claire was dead. A group of men, led by Arvin Hodgepile (a clerk Claire met years before, although she can’t place him until later) suddenly emerges from the woods, asking ominously for a drink. When Claire only has one keg to offer, one man slaps her across the face. Marsali axes one man in the shoulder, and the men attack. Claire loses consciousness.

When Claire regains consciousness, she is on a horse. The men aren’t comfortable kidnapping Jamie Fraser’s wife, but the Brown brother takes her anyway because she knows where the rest of the whisky is. Claire pulls out strands of hair, leaving them in the bushes as they pass; she hopes Jamie will track which group has taken her, as the group has split up.

When they stop, the men argue for a while. A man called Hodge asks Claire where the whisky is. When she responds that she doesn’t even know where they are, he cuts her chest with a blade. Another African man (either a former slave or slave trader) warns them not to mess with Claire, as she’s a witch and will curse them. She wipes her blood on Hodge’s face, and he almost hits her again. Claire tries to flee but they catch her.

The group moves on eventually, reaching a clearing to spend the night. Hodge threatens to cut parts of Claire’s body off if she tries to run. Tebbe, the man who wanted to let her go, gives her a piece of bread and tells her to remember he was kind to her and to keep her evil spirits off him. Hodge ties her hands and feet and they all go to sleep. She wriggles away in case one bandit might try to kill or rape her in the night, eventually falling asleep under a tree: “I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jamie would come. My job was to survive until he did” (310).

The group leaves the next morning. Claire recognizes a few men, including Lionel Brown. She knows he’ll try to kill her at his first opportunity to keep Jamie from discovering the marauding he’s been doing.

They reach a river. Tebbe takes Claire, who tells him to let her go in the water, as a water horse will carry her away. Brown tries to get her, but Tebbe pushes him and he falls halfway down the gorge, injuring himself badly. Claire treats his wounds, muttering to herself. They think she is cursing him, causing a panic. They gag her and tie a noose around her neck, the other end fastened to a tree.

Some young members of the band creep around later that night. One of them tries to rape Claire but doesn’t know what he’s doing; he barely makes any intimate contact at all. The other man she recognizes, Boble, creeps up to her next. She fights back when he starts to undress her. He beats her instead, punching then kicking. Then he ejaculates onto her where she lays.

Claire’s face is so broken and bloodied that she starts to have serious trouble breathing. She thrashes against her gag, slowly suffocating, when someone approaches her and takes it off, saving her life. It’s the young half-Indian half-black man who asks her if the name Ringo Starr means anything. The man, Wendigo Donner, is another time traveler who knows someone named Otter-Tooth. He unties Claire, and she tells him where and when she came from: 1946 and 1968. He’s come from 1968, astonished that she’s traveled more than once and that she made it home. She tries to convince him to help her escape, but he’s terrified of Hodge. He agrees to come back later to help her. He begs her not to leave without him, realizing she can steer time travel.

Claire falls asleep finally only to be awakened by another rapist who weeps and calls her by his dead wife’s name as he forces himself on her. The next time she’s awakened is by Celtic war drums. Roger and Jamie have finally found them. Chaos ensues. Hodge finds Claire and tries to take her hostage. Jamie grabs him and snaps his neck.

Arch gives Claire an axe, telling her there are some alive and giving her the chance to enact vengeance on her captors. Jamie takes the axe, saying there’s an oath upon her: “She may not kill, save it is for mercy or her life. It is myself who kills for her” (349). Ian appears at her back, saying he kills for her, too. Smelling the men on her, Jamie asks who and how many, which Claire can’t answer. He orders Fergus to kill them all.

Jamie’s group leaves the dead bandits without words or prayer. When they stop to rest and for Claire to bathe, Jamie asks Roger if he would love Jem if he was his mother’s rapist’s offspring; he fears that Claire is pregnant from one of the bandits. Roger advises Jamie to take the chance to try to impregnate Claire, himself.

Lionel has been left alive for questioning. The group brings him back to Fraser’s Ridge, where Mrs. Bug tends to his wounds. Brianna bathes Claire, then leaves her alone with Jamie, who is deeply concerned. Claire tries to tell him she isn’t traumatized by the event, although she clearly is. Jamie knows this, bringing up the instance when he was raped by Randall.

He tells Claire they should have sex so that if she’s pregnant, the child might be his after all. As she is near the age of menopause, Claire doesn’t think pregnancy is likely, but she worries about sexually transmitted infection. She decides to take a round of penicillin, and Jamie joins her despite his fear of needles. This show of solidarity changes her mind, and she agrees to have sex.

Brianna returns home to Roger. She feeds and tends to him. He remembers what it was like after Brianna was raped and understands how desperate Jamie must be feeling to keep Claire present with him, to keep her from drifting away emotionally from the brutalizing. Claire rages at men, to Jamie. Her fury intimidates him. When they do have sex, it’s violent and aggressive, on both sides. After, Claire feels safe again and drifts off to sleep in Jamie’s arms.

Claire faces her first day back in freedom. To her disappointment, Mrs. Bug isn’t there; she’s tending to the prisoner, Lionel. Planning her day, Claire starts to feel autonomous and like herself again. She has breakfast with Ian. He’s been kidnapped, too, and understands the fear of losing oneself. He comforts Claire, saying, “It’s still you, isn’t it?” (383).

Fergus arrives. Marsali survived the raid thanks to Germain, who climbed a tree as the bandits approached and pulled his mother to safety. Claire learns that Jamie will question Lionel today and then kill him. To Claire’s surprise, Ian and Fergus have been ordered to keep her away from Lionel. She tells them he wasn’t the rapist. She reflects on how much Ian has been through and how much he’s changed, and she remembers Fergus making his first kill as a 10-year-old orphan on the battlefield.

While fixing a leak in the roof, Jamie drives a piece of wood through his fingernail. As Claire tends to it, she confronts Jamie about possibly torturing Lionel and killing him. He admits they may execute Lionel, but only in front of witnesses. They also may keep Lionel alive for ransom. When the other half of the bandits find out soon that their men have been killed, Jamie fears they may seek Claire for vengeance. Claire’s modern, English sensibilities make it hard for her to agree with vigilante justice. Jamie bars her from seeing Lionel because he knows she’ll treat him, as her oath as a doctor dictates, and then it will be harder to execute him.

Claire tells Jamie about Wendigo Donner. Neither saw his body. He may have fled and joined the rest of the bandits in Brownsville, as they’d intended; thus, they may already know of the slaughter and assume that Lionel is already dead. Christie comes to Claire the next day, his post-operative hand a wreck after the battle. Claire treats him, and they talk about fiction. Christie was so against reading that he burned all his deceased wife’s books. In prison, however, he learned the value of escaping and easing one’s current situation through reading (or being told stories). Claire lends him the book she’s been reading.

Claire's alone, edgy, and fearful after Christie leaves. She loads a pistol and aims it at the door until Ian arrives. Jamie follows, telling Claire he’s having the house guarded. He apologizes for leaving her alone. Ian tells Claire about Lionel’s admissions (no torture was employed); Lionel blamed everything on Hodge. Brownsville’s Committee of Safety was composed mostly of Browns, who controlled all of the local courts and government. Some Regulators (supporters of the Regulation movement, which challenged the corrupt colonial government for better distribution of resources to other white colonizers) began speaking out against the Browns.

Hodge was a former British army man who faked his own death and started a gang. His gang looted, murdered, and eventually started trafficking women and children. He held up a trading post in Brownsville, holding a young Brown child hostage, and had a standoff with the Committee of Safety. They eventually reached a truce. Hodge’s crew agreed to stay away from Brownsville and in turn had the chance to inconspicuously sell their spoils for profit at Brown’s trading post. Sometimes, they also sold their captives there, to river pirates and natives.

Lionel claims he had nothing to do with the slavery ring, but all know he’s lying. Claire seals his fate by telling them how Lionel was going to kill her. Jamie plans to hang him. Jamie tells Claire about Bird sending naked women to his bed. It keeps happening every time he visits, and he doesn’t know the meaning of the gesture. Claire laughs, to Jamie’s embarrassment. That night, Jamie has a nightmare about Randall, wherein he says: “Kill me. My heart’s desire” (413). He sees Randall’s face in the mirror before fearfully going back to sleep.

Claire throws up Mrs. Bug’s breakfast the next morning. Fearing she could be pregnant, she distracts herself with the decision to go check on Christie and to see if Malva will spend the day with her, searching for roots and learning how to prepare penicillin.

Claire is healing but still experiencing moments of panic and fear. Lionel shows up at her door, having dragged himself, tearing his clothes and skin and broken leg. Mrs. Bug knocks him out. Having taken an oath of healing, Claire decides to treat him.

When Lionel begs Claire to save him, Claire responds that he tried to kill her. The smell of him brings her back to that night, and she almost faints in horror. She thought he wasn’t the rapist because of his broken leg, but now she questions this. She asks about Donner, who called himself Wendigo, after a northern tribe’s myth. Lionel says Wendigo had stayed with a widow in Brownsville. Claire gets a hot flash and steps out, and Mrs. Bug smothers Lionel to death with a pillow. Claire tries to stop it when she comes back inside, punching and kicking Mrs. Bug. She performs CPR on Brown. Still, he dies.

Jamie is furious when he comes home. Mrs. Bug is terrified, but says Lionel told her wicked things when they were alone, about coming back to kill them and burn their house down. Lionel thought he’d tricked Claire into saving him and was boasting his threats when Mrs. Bug had enough and suffocated him.

Claire tries to apologize, telling Jamie he was right about her empathy getting in the way of judgment about Lionel. They worry about Lionel’s brother seeking vengeance. Jamie decides to handle it in the Scottish way, as their tactics are the same as the Scottish Watch. Ian arrives, suggesting they just tell everyone Lionel died of natural causes, as his freshly bandaged corpse could easily indicate.

Arch returns with Mrs. Bug. He gives Jamie his axe and kneels, offering his life for his wife’s. Jamie gives them their lives back, respecting the gesture. Mrs. Bug was at the battle that killed Jamie’s father. She tells Jamie, proudly, that she sees his father in him.

Jamie, Claire, Ian, Bird, and two of Bird’s men accompany Lionel’s body to Brownsville. They tell Brown what happened, and they return his brother’s body. Bird’s presence shows Brown that the Cherokee back Jamie and the Crown, and they won’t trade with Brown if the violence continues. Claire looks for Donner but doesn’t see him.