Wednesday, February 12, 2025
I just got a text from our younger daughter, reading: “Happy Anniversary, you little cuties! Hope you’re celebrating 8 million years being weird together in some lovely way. Love you!”
(As in, today is our 48th wedding anniversary—or 53rd, if you count five years together pre-wedding…)
Which made me remember (when I stopped laughing) that last fall, one of the Outlander actors (name withheld for reasons of confidentiality <cough>) asked me if I had any tips for maintaining a successful marriage.
“Well, er… yeah,” I said, slightly taken aback. “Always be honest with each other, and keep having sex.” He looked rather shocked (doubtless at the thought of people my age having sex…), but intrigued, and thanked me for the advice. I hope he finds it useful.
Many people (irritatingly) insist on calling the Outlander novels (and show) “romance”, presumably because it involves men and women and sex, in various combinations. However, if you look carefully at romantic stories through the ages, the structure is easily identifiable—Hero and Heroine are attracted to each other, go through various vicissitudes that keep them apart, and then get married/have sex/have a baby or some other gesture of commitment—and that’s It. The story is Over. Romances are one-act plays; they don’t have sequels.
Obviously, I was not writing a romance. I enjoy romances (and dozens of other genres; I honestly will read anything), but that’s not what I write. I said (to myself, at the time), “everybody knows what makes people fall in love. I’d rather tell how people stay married, over fifty years or so.” So I did.
After all, every couple has their own ways of being weird together. So, in honor of our whatever-number-it-is anniversary:
Excerpt from BOOK TEN (Untitled), Copyright 2025 © Diana Gabaldon
(yes, there are small spoilers in this, though nothing major)
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I considered the three jars on the counter: ginger root, blackberry leaves, and chamomile (flowers and leaves). All three were reasonably effective anti-diarrhetics, and ginger tea was also good—theoretically—for nausea. The only problem with ginger tea was that Jamie wouldn’t drink it, it being forever associated in his mind with debilitating sea-sickness—to the point that the tea itself made him sick. Or at least he was convinced that it did, which was essentially the same thing.
“Dear Lord,” I muttered, casting (well, rolling) my eyes up to heaven, “please keep him off boats!” It was a sincere prayer, but I doubted it would have much effect, if John Grey was still being held prisoner on a ship.
Still, my prayer was somewhat answered, as my eye caught the large jar of honey on the shelf. Did I have time to make candied ginger? Yes, they wouldn’t leave until the day after tomorrow, as Jamie needed to take Roger and Jemmy to the Spaniard’s cave tomorrow.
I rubbed blackberry leaves and chamomile between my hands, crumbling the dried herbs into a dozen small squares of muslin, which I tied up in tiny bundles that looked absurdly like a row of tiny rabbits with floppy ears. That made me smile, despite the small lead weight that had settled at the bottom of my stomach when William told Jamie why he had come, seeking help.
All right, that was diarrhea taken care of; what about constipation? They’d have a small bag of oatmeal, as well as another of walnuts, but I didn’t trust either of them to refrain from tavern food, the moment they reached civilization. Well, they would eat raisins, and I still had a few left from the winter… aha. I reached for the bottle of caraway seeds and shook it; yes, plenty! A bit of rhubarb and dandelion with caraway, and Bob’s your uncle.
One last thing for the first-aid kit—I’d made a packet of rolled bandages already, but those would be separate—honey. I poured a few ounces into a black bottle, corked it tightly and stuck on a label that said, “For Suppurating Wounds”, in hopes that this would stop them simply eating it on their bread.
I reached for one of the canvas bags I used for transporting medical supplies, and was surprised to see that my fingers were shaking. Ever so slightly, but noticeably.
I clenched my fists, as much to deny as to stop it. A little deep breathing, maybe… perhaps I’d been holding my breath as I made preparations.
“Little bloody wonder,” I muttered, and rubbed my palms briskly together to warm them. I usually did a much better job of not worrying excessively about what Jamie was doing when he left home… No, you don’t, idiot, said the objective part of my brain, though tolerantly. You just keep so busy you haven’t time to think about it. Think of something else, for God’s sake.
For lack of a better notion, I sat down, closed my eyes, and tried to think of something else.
The first thing that popped into my mind was taking leave of Jamie—if you could describe something so unbearable as “taking leave”—at the stones, on the night before Culloden.
I could smell the cold stone and dirt of the ruined cottage where we’d lain together for what we’d known was the last time. Half-naked, shivering, groping desperately for the warmth of each other’s flesh—and finding it. Touching, frantically, then slowly, trying to memorize everything, the touch of his body, the cold roughness of his hair, the solid muscle of his back, his legs, the brief sense of cold as I spread my legs and he entered me, then the heat of him, inside me, on top of me, surrounding me… knowing this was all, all there’d ever be…
Well, it wasn’t, was it, ninny? Stop crying, for goodness sake!
I gulped, sniffed, and stopped, breathing and sniffling alternately as I wiped my eyes on my apron. I glanced covertly at the door; luckily, I’d shut it when I came in. I hoped that no one had heard me; I could hear them— voices and pots clanking in the kitchen, a stampede of running footsteps and a lot of giggling overhead, distant voices coming through the open window from outside, too far away to make out words.
I’d stopped crying, but the train of memory was still moving, slow and heavy, laden with remembered grief.
Kings Mountain. He’d thought he would die there (God damn you, Frank!) and lived with that fear for months. And on the night before the battle, the both of us shaking with cold and sodden with rain, he’d asked three things of me: to find a priest and have a Mass said for his soul, to go back through the stones with Brianna and her family. And the last: “Remember me.”
I stuffed a handful of my apron into my mouth to muffle the sound I was making, remembering our attempt to make love on a bank of wet leaves, freezing and sodden, and failing, clinging together through the rest of that night.
“Bloody hell,” I said. “That was only bloody six months ago! Couldn’t you have waited?!”
I wasn’t sure whom I was addressing: Lord John, William, Jamie or God.
I supposed it had started about five minutes after William got off his horse and said to Jamie, “Sir, I need your help.”
Well, of course, was the first thing I thought, and Oh, he’s wonderful! was the second, followed by a wordless surge of delight at seeing the two of them each perceive the echo of himself in the other.
The third thing I thought was, “Oh, my God… he’s going to leave. To do something dangerous. Again.”
And in the far back of my mind, as I gave myself over to greetings and explanations and general excitement, was a tiny voice, a flat, cold statement that brooked no argument.
This time he’s not coming back.
In fact, it was Jamie who came in, clad in shirt and kilt, with his leather tool-bag over his shoulder and a huge stack of what looked like a very plain quilt in his arms.
“What’s that?” I got up and came to look as he set the Thing down on my surgery table and began to unfold it.
“Brianna says it’s a sound-deadening baffle, but surely there’s a better name for it,” he said, flipping back the last fold. It was a small quilt, long and narrow, but very thick, made of canvas dyed with indigo, with very large knots holding the layers together. “It’s stuffed wi’ turkey feathers, rags and bits of deer-hide and bear-skin left over from butchering. Dried,” he added reassuringly, seeing my expression. “It doesna smell much, and ye willna be sleepin’ under it, anyway.”
“Oh.”
“Aye. Here, hold this for me, will ye, Sassenach?” He handed me the heavy tool-bag, which clanked, and picking up the baffle (for lack of a better word), shut the surgery door and held the thing up against it.
“That’s a decent fit,” he said, with satisfaction. “Gie’ me a nail, aye? There’s a packet of sixteen-penny ones on the top there. Aye, thanks—now come and put your hands up here, to hold it in place.”
He plucked a hammer from his belt and set about nailing the baffle firmly to the door. Task completed, he opened and closed the door several times.
“There,” he said, with satisfaction, closing it once more. “That’s no going anywhere.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “Very thoughtful of you.”
There was a swishing noise and a slithering noise and then the soft thud of something hitting the floorboards. I turned and saw Jamie standing there, wearing nothing but his shirt and a wide grin.
“What the…?” I began, but didn’t get any further. He stepped free of his puddled kilt, pulled me to him with one arm and kissed me with considerable enthusiasm.
“I want ye, Sassenach,” he whispered against my mouth. “I want ye bad.”
Judging from the state of things between us, he did. His free hand was gathering up my skirts and before I could make any acknowledgement of his declaration, he whirled me round to face the surgery table.
“Bend over, a nighean.”
“You—”
A big hand in the middle of my back gave me no choice and I found myself with my face half-buried in a stack of linen towels and a chilly draft playing on my bare backside. Then there was the warmth of big hands on my back, untying my skirts, the bigger warmth of him against me and a stronger, harder, smooth heat between my legs, searching.
“I’m comin’ back,” he said softly. “And I didna want to leave ye in tears, this time.”
[end scene]
This blog entry was also posted on my official Facebook page on Wednesday, February 12, 2025.
This blog entry is also listed separately as an excerpt from Book Ten and accessible from my Book Ten webpage along with other excerpts I’ve released so far.
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