Yes, it is my birthday (I’m always astonished when it comes round again, but there it is…), and MANY THANKS for all the kind good wishes! For the record, I’m 72, or will be, as of 6:01 PM tonight (the night of January 11th, I mean). Aside from minor arthritis here and there, I seem to still be in decent working order, so we’ll hope for the best during the coming year! (NO, the book won’t be out this year. No, I don’t know when it will be done. Books have their own time, and I’m not rushing this one, but I hope you’ll enjoy it when you get it. In the meantime…)
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[Excerpt from BOOK TEN (Untitled), copyright © 2024 Diana Gabaldon]
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[Yes, there is a small spoiler, but most people already know it.]
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“So,” I said, sitting up. “You’re proposing to go off for some unknown period of time, to unknown places, to do unknown things that are likely bloody dangerous, fortified only by your memories of my hands and my bottom?”

“They’ll be my shield and buckler,” he assured me, straight-faced.

“What is a buckler? I’ve always wondered.”

“It’s something like a targe,” he said, reaching for his shirt. “A bittie round shield. About the size of your arse,” he added helpfully.

“I’ve seen targes, you know,” I said, somewhat coldly.

“Have ye ever sat on one?”

“No. Have you?”

“Aye, many times. Comes in handy, if you’re tired to death and out in the wet or havin’ to eat your supper in the snow. Mind,” he added fairly, bending to pick up his kilt off the floor, “ye canna do that if ye’ve got one o’ the fancy ones wi’ a spike in the middle. I couldna afford one o’ those, though—not at the time.”

Not at the time. I rather thought the last time he’d held a targe would have been at Culloden. I felt the expected pang at the thought of that—but for once, the memory was tempered by another. He’d come back from that battle. And a good many others. And at least this search would keep him off battlefields. I hoped.

I slid off the table as he turned round, and put my arms around him, comforted by his solid warmth and the taste of salt on his skin.

“I’ll remember your hands, too,” I said. “If I recall what Roger was saying in church last month, though, that psalm says, “His truth shall be your shield and buckler.” If a buckler is a shield, why do you need another?”

“To guard against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Sassenach,” he said, and kissed my brow. “A targe is for swords and knives. The close work, aye?”

[With thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the image of a Scottish targe. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/]

Visit or return to my Book Ten webpage for more excerpts from—and information about—this new book.

This excerpt (“Daily Lines”) was also released on my official Facebook page on January 11, 2024.

The Poisoned Pen, my hometown independent bookstore, asked me to share some special offers on books written by Sam Heughan and Graham MacTavish, two great guys and very talented actors. (And both are quite fetching in kilts. <g>)

For those who are new to the Outlander TV series, Sam Heughan is the actor who plays Jamie Fraser. Graham MacTavish portrays Jamie’s uncle, Dougal MacKenzie. Graham was also cast as Buck MacKenzie, the son of Dougal MacKenzie and Geillis Duncan.

Enjoy!

-Diana

With a new memoir centered on New Zealand coming in November from Sam Heughan and Graham MacTavish, the Poisoned Pen bookstore offers the following:

WAYPOINTS: My Scottish Journey

WAYPOINTS: My Scottish Journey by Sam Heughan (Radar, U.K., $60). This is Special Pricing for the U.K. edition signed by Sam in London on the title page and in Scottsdale by Diana on the title page, too. Click to purchase WAYPOINTS from the Pen.

In this journey of self-discovery, Sam Heughan sets out along the West Highland Way to explore his heritage and reflect on the personal waypoints that define him. The result is a love letter to the wild Scottish landscape that means so much to Sam, and a charming, funny, wise and searching insight to the world through his eyes.

Each of the copies of WAYPOINTS from the Pen comes with a charming little book from a Nova Scotia Press called IAIN OF SCOTLAND. Signed by Diana Gabaldon, who wrote the Introduction to the book. It includes a glossary of terms and tells the story of a boy…

 It’s September 1773, and Iain has just arrived in Nova Scotia with his parents and little sister after the long, disastrous, Atlantic voyage of the ship Hector. They wanted a new life in New Scotland — but the land agent lied to them. With no money, no food, no shelter, and winter fast approaching, how will they survive?

CLANLANDS: Whisky, Warfare, And An Adventure Like No Other

The Pen has a few remaining copies of CLANLANDS: Whisky, Warfare, And An Adventure Like No Other by Sam Heughan and Graham MacTavish (Mobius publishing, $25). These are signed by Diana Gabaldon on the first page of her foreward to the book. Also includes a book plate with a facsimile of Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish’s signatures. A New York Times Number-One Bestseller! Click to purchase CLANLANDS from the Pen.

A road trip book with a difference. Stars of Outlander—Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish—explore Scotland. From their faithful camper van to boats, kayaks, bicycles, and motorbikes, join these two Scotsmen as they explore a land of raw beauty, poetry, feuding, music, and warfare.

Sam and Graham begin their journey in the heart of Scotland at Glencoe and travel all the way to Inverness and Culloden battlefield; along the way they experience adventure and a cast of interesting highland characters. In this journey of finding themselves, friendship, and whisky, they discover the complexity, rich history and culture of their native country.

CLANLANDS ALMANAC: Seasonal Stories From Scotland

And still available: CLANLANDS ALMANAC: Seasonal Stories From Scotland by Graham MacTavish and Sam Heughan (Mobius $19.99). This hardcover edition (red cover) is signed by Diana and includes a book plate with a facsimile of signatures of Sam and Graham. Click to purchase the CLANLANDS ALMANAC from the Pen.

A seasonal meander through the wilds of Scotland.

If CLANLANDS was a gentle road trip through Scotland, this almanac is a top-down, pedal-to-the-metal, up-and-down odyssey through the many byways of a Scottish year. An invitation to anyone who picks up the book to join us on a crazy camper van exploration over 12 glorious, whisky-fueled months. Mountains, battles, famous (and infamous) Scots, the alarming competitiveness of ‘Men in Kilts,’ clans, feuds, flora, fauna, with a healthy sprinkling of embarrassing personal reminiscences thrown in. Much is explored, all is shared. It is a camper van cornucopia of all things Alba.

One U.K. first printing of the CLANLANDS ALMANAC: Seasonal Stories From Scotland signed by Sam Heughan in London remains ($100). Contact the Pen’s friendly sales staff for more information on this last copy with Sam’s signature.

Always In Stock: Outlander and Lord John Books Signed By Diana

The Pen sells new signed copies of Diana’s books online, and will ship anywhere in the world. You pay only for the list price of the book plus shipping. There is no charge for Diana’s signature. See the Pen’s dedicated webpage for Diana’s books. Or contact the Pen.

Social Media Hashtags: #DailyLines, #InHonorOfMemorialDay #AndAllThoseWhoServeTheirCountries, #WRITTENInMyOwnHEARTSBlood, #TwoWarriors

THE FIRST SHOT took them by surprise, a muffled boom from the cider orchard and a slow roll of white smoke. They didn’t run, but they stiffened, looking to him for direction. Jamie said to those near him, “Good lads,” then raised his voice.

“To my left, now! Mr. Craddock, Reverend Woodsworth—circle them; come into the orchard from behind. The rest—scatter to the right and fire as ye can—” The second crash drowned his words, and Craddock jerked like a puppet with his strings cut and dropped to the ground, blood spraying from the blackened hole in his chest. Jamie’s horse shied violently, nearly unseating him.

“Go with the reverend!” he shouted at Craddock’s men, who stood there drop-jawed, staring at their captain’s body. “Go now!”

One of the men shook himself, grabbed the sleeve of another, pulled him away, and then they all began to move as a body. Woodsworth, bless him, raised his musket overhead and roared, “To me! Follow me!“ and broke into the stork-legged shamble that passed with him for running—but they followed him.

The gelding had settled but was moving uneasily. He was—supposedly—used to the sound of guns, but he didn’t like the strong smell of blood. Jamie didn’t like it, either.

“Shouldn’t we… bury Mr. Craddock?”a timid voice suggested behind him.

“He’s not dead, lackbrain!”

Jamie glanced down. He wasn’t—but it wouldn’t be more than a few seconds longer.

“Go with God, man,” he said quietly. Craddock didn’t blink; his eyes were fixed on the sky, not yet dull but sightless.

“Go wi’ your fellows,” he said to the two lingerers, then saw that they were Craddock’s two sons, maybe thirteen and fourteen, white-faced and staring as sheep.

“Say farewell to him,” he said abruptly. “He’ll still hear ye. Then… go.” He thought for a moment to send them to La Fayette, but they’d be no safer there. “Run!”

They ran—they were a deal safer running—and with a gesture to Lieutenants Orden and Bixby, he wheeled his horse to the right, following Guthrie’s company. The cannon were firing more regularly from the orchard. He saw a ball bounce past, ten feet away, and the air was thickening with smoke. He could still smell Craddock’s blood.

He found Captain Moxley and sent him with a full company to look at the farmhouse on the far side of the orchard.

“At a distance, mind. I want to know if the redcoats are in it or if the family’s still there. If the family’s there, surround the house; go inside if they’ll let ye, but don’t force your way. If there are soldiers inside and they come out after you, engage them and take the house if ye think ye can. If they stay inside, don’t stir them up; send someone back to tell me. I’ll be at the back o’ the orchard; the north side.”

Guthrie was waiting for him, the men lying flat in the long grass behind the orchard. He left the two lieutenants with his horse, which he tied to a fence rail well out of range of the orchard, and scrambled along to the company, keeping low. He dropped to his belly by Bob Guthrie.

“I need to know where the cannon are—exactly where they are, and how many. Send three or four men in from different directions, goin’ canny—ye know what I mean? Aye. They’re not to do anything; see what they can and come out again, fast.”

Guthrie was panting like a dog, stubbled face awash with sweat, but he grinned and nodded and wormed his way off through the grass. The meadow was dry, brown and brittle in the summer heat; Jamie’s stockings prickled with foxtails, and the warm sharp scent of ripe hay was stronger than that of black powder.

He gulped water from his canteen; it was nearly empty. It wasn’t yet noon, but the sun was coming down on them like a flatiron. He turned to tell one of the lieutenants who’d been following him to go and find the nearest water, but nothing moved in the grass behind him save hundreds of grasshoppers, whirring up like sparks. Gritting his teeth against the stiffness in his knees, he scrambled up onto hands and feet and scuttled back toward his horse.

Orden was lying ten feet away, shot through one eye. Jamie froze for an instant, and something whirred close past his cheek. It might be a grasshopper and it might not. He was flat to the earth beside the dead lieutenant, heart pounding in his ears before the thought had fully formed.

Guthrie. He daren’t raise his head to call out—but had to. He got his feet under him as best he could, shot out of the grass, and ran like a rabbit, to and fro, zigging away from the orchard as best he could while still going in the direction he’d sent Guthrie.

He could hear the shots now: more than one sniper in the orchard, protecting the cannon, and the sound was the flat crack! of a rifle. Jaegers? He flung himself down and crawled madly, now shouting for Guthrie.

“Here, sir!” The man popped up suddenly beside him like a groundhog, and Jamie seized Guthrie’s sleeve, pulling him back down.

“Get… your men back.” He gulped air, chest heaving. “Shooting—from the orchard. This side. They’ll be picked off.”

Guthrie was staring at him, mouth half open.

“Get them!”

Shaken out of his shock, Guthrie nodded like a puppet and started to rise. Jamie grabbed him by the ankle and jerked him flat, pressed him down with a hand on his back.

“Don’t… stand up.” His breathing was slowing and he managed to speak calmly. “We’re still in range here. Get your men and retire with your company—back to the ridgeline. Join Captain Moxley; tell him to come round and join me…” His mind went blank for a moment, trying to think of some reasonable place for a rendezvous. “South of the farmhouse. With Woodbine’s company.” He took his hand off Guthrie.

“Aye, sir.” The man scuffed up onto hands and knees, reaching for the hat that had fallen off.

He glanced back at Jamie, eyes full of earnest concern.

“Are you hit bad, sir?”

“Hit?”

“There’s blood all down your face, sir.”

“It’s nothing. Go!”

Guthrie swallowed, nodded, wiped his face on his sleeve, and made off through the grass, as fast as he could go. Jamie put a hand to his own face, belatedly aware of a slight sting across his cheekbone. Sure enough, his fingers came away bloody. Not a grasshopper, then.

He wiped his fingers on the skirt of his coat and noticed mechanically that the seam of the sleeve had burst at the shoulder, showing the white shirt beneath. He rose a little, cautious, looking round for Bixby, but there was no sign of him. Maybe dead in the long grass, too; maybe not. With luck, he’d seen what was happening and run back to warn the companies coming up. The horse was still where he’d left it, thank God, tethered to a fence, fifty yards away.

He hesitated for a moment, but there wasn’t time to lose in looking for Bixby. Woodsworth and his two companies would be coming round the orchard in a few minutes, and right into range of the German rifles. He popped up and ran.

Something tugged at his coat, but he didn’t stop, and reached his horse, gasping for air.

“Tiugainn!” he said, swinging up into the saddle. He turned away from the orchard and galloped through a potato field, though it bruised his farmer’s heart to see what the armies’ passing had done to it already.

CLAIRE

I DON’T KNOW when physicians began calling it “the Golden Hour,” but surely every battlefield medic from the time of the Iliad onward knows about it. From the time of an accident or injury that isn’t immediately fatal, the victim’s chances of living are best if he receives treatment within an hour of sustaining the injury. After that, shock, continued loss of blood, debility due to pain… the chance of saving a patient goes sharply downhill.

Add in blazing temperatures, lack of water, and the stress of running full out through fields and woods, wearing wool homespun and carrying heavy weapons, inhaling powder smoke, and trying either to kill someone or avoid being killed, just prior to being injured, and I rather thought we were looking at a Golden fifteen minutes or so.

Given also the fact that the wounded were having to be carried or to walk—probably more than a mile—to a place where they could find assistance… I supposed we were doing well to save as many as we were. If only temporarily, I added grimly to myself, hearing the screaming from inside the church.

“What’s your name, dear?” I said to the young man in front of me. He couldn’t be more than seventeen and was precious near to bleeding to death. A bullet had gone through the meat of his upper arm, which would normally be a fortuitous location for a wound. Unfortunately, in this instance the ball had passed through the underside of the arm and nicked the brachial artery, which had been spurting blood in a slow but earnest manner until I’d taken a death grip on his arm.

“Private Adams, ma’am,” he replied, though his lips were white and he was shaking. “Billy, they call me,” he added politely.

“Pleased to meet you, Billy,” I said. “And you, sir…?” For he’d been brought in staggering, leaning on another boy of about his own age—and nearly as white-faced, though I thought he wasn’t hurt.

“Horatio Wilkinson, ma’am,” he said, dipping his head in an awkward bow—the best he could manage while holding his friend upright.

“Lovely, Horatio,” I said. “I’ve got him now. Would you pour him out a little water, with a splash of brandy in it? Just there.” I nodded at the packing case I was using for a table, on which one of my brown bottles marked POISON stood, along with a canteen full of water and wooden cups. “And as soon as he’s drunk it, give him that leather strip to bite down on.”

I’d have told Horatio to have a tot, too, save that there were only two cups, and the second one was mine. I was sipping water steadily—my bodice was soaked and clung to me like the membrane inside an eggshell, and sweat ran steadily down my legs—and I didn’t want to be sharing the germs of assorted soldiers who didn’t brush their teeth regularly.

Still, I might have to tell him to take a quick gulp direct from the brandy bottle; someone was going to have to apply pressure to Billy Adams’s arm while I stitched his brachial artery, and Horatio Wilkinson didn’t presently look equal to the task.

“Would you—” I began, but I was holding a scalpel and a suture needle with a dangling ligature in my free hand, and the sight of these overcame young Mr. Wilkinson. His eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped, boneless, into the gravel.

“Wounded?” said a familiar voice behind me, and I turned my head to see Denzell Hunter looking down at Mr. Wilkinson. He was nearly as pale as Horatio and, with strands of hair come loose and clinging to his cheeks, very much the antithesis of his usual collected self.

“Fainted,” I said. “Can you—”

“They are idiots,” he said, so pale—with rage, I now realized—that he could barely speak. “Regimental surgeons, they call themselves! A good quarter of them have never seen a man wounded in battle before. And those who have are barely capable of anything in the way of treatment save the crudest amputation. A company of barbers would do better!”

“Can they stop bleeding?” I asked, taking his hand and wrapping it round my patient’s upper arm. He automatically pressed his thumb to thebrachial artery near the armpit, and the spurting that had started when I took my own hand away stopped again.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Not at all. Yes, most of them can do that,” he admitted, calming down just a little. “But they are so jealous of privilege—and so much affiliated with their own regiments—that some are letting a wounded man die because he is not one of theirs and his own regimental surgeon is otherwise occupied!”

“Scandalous,” I murmured, and, “Bite hard now, Private,” as I thrust the leather between his teeth and made a quick incision to enlarge the wound enough to find the end of the severed artery. He did bite, and made no more than a low grunting noise as the scalpel sliced into his flesh; perhaps he was sufficiently in shock that he didn’t feel it much—I hoped not.

“We haven’t a lot of choice,” I observed, glancing toward the big shade trees that edged the graveyard. Dottie was minding the victims of heatstroke, giving them water and—as time and buckets permitted—dousing them with it.

Rachel was in charge of depressed head fractures, abdominal wounds, and other serious wounds that couldn’t be treated by amputation or binding and splinting. In most cases, this amounted to nothing more than comforting them as they died, but she was a good, steady girl, who had seen a great many men die during the winter at Valley Forge; she didn’t shrink from the job.

“We have to let them—” I jerked my chin toward the church, my hands being occupied in holding Private Adams’s arm and ligating the severed vessel— “do what they’re able to do. Not that we could bloody stop them.”

“No.” Denny breathed out, let go of the arm as he saw I had the vessel tied off, and wiped his face on his coat. “No, we can’t. I just needed to express my anger where it wouldn’t cause more trouble.”

Return to the webpage for WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD to read more excerpts from this novel.

A SLEDGEHAMMER hit me in the side, making me jerk, the needle dropping from my hands. I didn’t feel myself fall but was lying on the ground, black and white spots flashing round me, a sense of intense numbness radiating from my right side. I smelled damp earth and warm grass and sycamore leaves, pungent and comforting. Shock, I thought dimly, and opened my mouth, but nothing but a dry click came out of my throat. What… The numbness of the impact began to lessen, and I realized that I had curled into a ball, my forearm pressed by reflex over my abdomen. I smelled burning, and fresh blood, very fresh. I’ve been shot, then.

“Sassenach!” I heard Jamie’s bellow over the roaring in my ears. He sounded far off, but I heard the terror in his voice clearly. I wasn’t disturbed by it. I felt very calm.

“Sassenach!” The spots had coalesced. I was looking down a narrow tunnel of light and spinning shadow. At the end of it was the shocked face of Corporal Greenhow, the needle dangling by its thread from the half-sewn gash in his forehead.

Center image: The Well of the Dead, Culloden Moor. The commander of the Clan Chattan regiment, Alexander McGillivray of Dunmaglass, and many other Jacobite soldiers died here after engaging the left wing of the Hanoverian army in the Battle of Culloden. From Wikipedia.

The image of Claire, portrayed by Caitriona Balfe in the Outlander TV series, is courtesy of Starz.

This excerpt was also posted as a blog entry titled ‘In Honor of Memorial Day 2022′ on May 30, 2022.

On May 29, 2022, this excerpt was posted on my official Facebook page.

This excerpt webpage was created on Monday, May 30, 2022 at 1:00 p.m. (Central time) by Diana Gabaldon or Diana’s Webmistress.

Social Media Hashtags: #DailyLines, #InHonorOfMemorialDay #AndAllThoseWhoServeTheirCountries, #WRITTENInMyOwnHEARTSBlood, #TwoWarriors

THE FIRST SHOT took them by surprise, a muffled boom from the cider orchard and a slow roll of white smoke. They didn’t run, but they stiffened, looking to him for direction. Jamie said to those near him, “Good lads,” then raised his voice.

“To my left, now! Mr. Craddock, Reverend Woodsworth—circle them; come into the orchard from behind. The rest—scatter to the right and fire as ye can—” The second crash drowned his words, and Craddock jerked like a puppet with his strings cut and dropped to the ground, blood spraying from the blackened hole in his chest. Jamie’s horse shied violently, nearly unseating him.

“Go with the reverend!” he shouted at Craddock’s men, who stood there drop-jawed, staring at their captain’s body. “Go now!”

One of the men shook himself, grabbed the sleeve of another, pulled him away, and then they all began to move as a body. Woodsworth, bless him, raised his musket overhead and roared, “To me! Follow me!“ and broke into the stork-legged shamble that passed with him for running—but they followed him.

The gelding had settled but was moving uneasily. He was—supposedly—used to the sound of guns, but he didn’t like the strong smell of blood. Jamie didn’t like it, either.

“Shouldn’t we… bury Mr. Craddock?”a timid voice suggested behind him.

“He’s not dead, lackbrain!”

Jamie glanced down. He wasn’t—but it wouldn’t be more than a few seconds longer.

“Go with God, man,” he said quietly. Craddock didn’t blink; his eyes were fixed on the sky, not yet dull but sightless.

“Go wi’ your fellows,” he said to the two lingerers, then saw that they were Craddock’s two sons, maybe thirteen and fourteen, white-faced and staring as sheep.

“Say farewell to him,” he said abruptly. “He’ll still hear ye. Then… go.” He thought for a moment to send them to La Fayette, but they’d be no safer there. “Run!”

They ran—they were a deal safer running—and with a gesture to Lieutenants Orden and Bixby, he wheeled his horse to the right, following Guthrie’s company. The cannon were firing more regularly from the orchard. He saw a ball bounce past, ten feet away, and the air was thickening with smoke. He could still smell Craddock’s blood.

He found Captain Moxley and sent him with a full company to look at the farmhouse on the far side of the orchard.

“At a distance, mind. I want to know if the redcoats are in it or if the family’s still there. If the family’s there, surround the house; go inside if they’ll let ye, but don’t force your way. If there are soldiers inside and they come out after you, engage them and take the house if ye think ye can. If they stay inside, don’t stir them up; send someone back to tell me. I’ll be at the back o’ the orchard; the north side.”

Guthrie was waiting for him, the men lying flat in the long grass behind the orchard. He left the two lieutenants with his horse, which he tied to a fence rail well out of range of the orchard, and scrambled along to the company, keeping low. He dropped to his belly by Bob Guthrie.

“I need to know where the cannon are—exactly where they are, and how many. Send three or four men in from different directions, goin’ canny—ye know what I mean? Aye. They’re not to do anything; see what they can and come out again, fast.”

Guthrie was panting like a dog, stubbled face awash with sweat, but he grinned and nodded and wormed his way off through the grass. The meadow was dry, brown and brittle in the summer heat; Jamie’s stockings prickled with foxtails, and the warm sharp scent of ripe hay was stronger than that of black powder.

He gulped water from his canteen; it was nearly empty. It wasn’t yet noon, but the sun was coming down on them like a flatiron. He turned to tell one of the lieutenants who’d been following him to go and find the nearest water, but nothing moved in the grass behind him save hundreds of grasshoppers, whirring up like sparks. Gritting his teeth against the stiffness in his knees, he scrambled up onto hands and feet and scuttled back toward his horse.

Orden was lying ten feet away, shot through one eye. Jamie froze for an instant, and something whirred close past his cheek. It might be a grasshopper and it might not. He was flat to the earth beside the dead lieutenant, heart pounding in his ears before the thought had fully formed.

Guthrie. He daren’t raise his head to call out—but had to. He got his feet under him as best he could, shot out of the grass, and ran like a rabbit, to and fro, zigging away from the orchard as best he could while still going in the direction he’d sent Guthrie.

He could hear the shots now: more than one sniper in the orchard, protecting the cannon, and the sound was the flat crack! of a rifle. Jaegers? He flung himself down and crawled madly, now shouting for Guthrie.

“Here, sir!” The man popped up suddenly beside him like a groundhog, and Jamie seized Guthrie’s sleeve, pulling him back down.

“Get… your men back.” He gulped air, chest heaving. “Shooting—from the orchard. This side. They’ll be picked off.”

Guthrie was staring at him, mouth half open.

“Get them!”

Shaken out of his shock, Guthrie nodded like a puppet and started to rise. Jamie grabbed him by the ankle and jerked him flat, pressed him down with a hand on his back.

“Don’t… stand up.” His breathing was slowing and he managed to speak calmly. “We’re still in range here. Get your men and retire with your company—back to the ridgeline. Join Captain Moxley; tell him to come round and join me…” His mind went blank for a moment, trying to think of some reasonable place for a rendezvous. “South of the farmhouse. With Woodbine’s company.” He took his hand off Guthrie.

“Aye, sir.” The man scuffed up onto hands and knees, reaching for the hat that had fallen off.

He glanced back at Jamie, eyes full of earnest concern.

“Are you hit bad, sir?”

“Hit?”

“There’s blood all down your face, sir.”

“It’s nothing. Go!”

Guthrie swallowed, nodded, wiped his face on his sleeve, and made off through the grass, as fast as he could go. Jamie put a hand to his own face, belatedly aware of a slight sting across his cheekbone. Sure enough, his fingers came away bloody. Not a grasshopper, then.

He wiped his fingers on the skirt of his coat and noticed mechanically that the seam of the sleeve had burst at the shoulder, showing the white shirt beneath. He rose a little, cautious, looking round for Bixby, but there was no sign of him. Maybe dead in the long grass, too; maybe not. With luck, he’d seen what was happening and run back to warn the companies coming up. The horse was still where he’d left it, thank God, tethered to a fence, fifty yards away.

He hesitated for a moment, but there wasn’t time to lose in looking for Bixby. Woodsworth and his two companies would be coming round the orchard in a few minutes, and right into range of the German rifles. He popped up and ran.

Something tugged at his coat, but he didn’t stop, and reached his horse, gasping for air.

“Tiugainn!” he said, swinging up into the saddle. He turned away from the orchard and galloped through a potato field, though it bruised his farmer’s heart to see what the armies’ passing had done to it already.

CLAIRE

I DON’T KNOW when physicians began calling it “the Golden Hour,” but surely every battlefield medic from the time of the Iliad onward knows about it. From the time of an accident or injury that isn’t immediately fatal, the victim’s chances of living are best if he receives treatment within an hour of sustaining the injury. After that, shock, continued loss of blood, debility due to pain… the chance of saving a patient goes sharply downhill.

Add in blazing temperatures, lack of water, and the stress of running full out through fields and woods, wearing wool homespun and carrying heavy weapons, inhaling powder smoke, and trying either to kill someone or avoid being killed, just prior to being injured, and I rather thought we were looking at a Golden fifteen minutes or so.

Given also the fact that the wounded were having to be carried or to walk—probably more than a mile—to a place where they could find assistance… I supposed we were doing well to save as many as we were. If only temporarily, I added grimly to myself, hearing the screaming from inside the church.

“What’s your name, dear?” I said to the young man in front of me. He couldn’t be more than seventeen and was precious near to bleeding to death. A bullet had gone through the meat of his upper arm, which would normally be a fortuitous location for a wound. Unfortunately, in this instance the ball had passed through the underside of the arm and nicked the brachial artery, which had been spurting blood in a slow but earnest manner until I’d taken a death grip on his arm.

“Private Adams, ma’am,” he replied, though his lips were white and he was shaking. “Billy, they call me,” he added politely.

“Pleased to meet you, Billy,” I said. “And you, sir…?” For he’d been brought in staggering, leaning on another boy of about his own age—and nearly as white-faced, though I thought he wasn’t hurt.

“Horatio Wilkinson, ma’am,” he said, dipping his head in an awkward bow—the best he could manage while holding his friend upright.

“Lovely, Horatio,” I said. “I’ve got him now. Would you pour him out a little water, with a splash of brandy in it? Just there.” I nodded at the packing case I was using for a table, on which one of my brown bottles marked POISON stood, along with a canteen full of water and wooden cups. “And as soon as he’s drunk it, give him that leather strip to bite down on.”

I’d have told Horatio to have a tot, too, save that there were only two cups, and the second one was mine. I was sipping water steadily—my bodice was soaked and clung to me like the membrane inside an eggshell, and sweat ran steadily down my legs—and I didn’t want to be sharing the germs of assorted soldiers who didn’t brush their teeth regularly.

Still, I might have to tell him to take a quick gulp direct from the brandy bottle; someone was going to have to apply pressure to Billy Adams’s arm while I stitched his brachial artery, and Horatio Wilkinson didn’t presently look equal to the task.

“Would you—” I began, but I was holding a scalpel and a suture needle with a dangling ligature in my free hand, and the sight of these overcame young Mr. Wilkinson. His eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped, boneless, into the gravel.

“Wounded?” said a familiar voice behind me, and I turned my head to see Denzell Hunter looking down at Mr. Wilkinson. He was nearly as pale as Horatio and, with strands of hair come loose and clinging to his cheeks, very much the antithesis of his usual collected self.

“Fainted,” I said. “Can you—”

“They are idiots,” he said, so pale—with rage, I now realized—that he could barely speak. “Regimental surgeons, they call themselves! A good quarter of them have never seen a man wounded in battle before. And those who have are barely capable of anything in the way of treatment save the crudest amputation. A company of barbers would do better!”

“Can they stop bleeding?” I asked, taking his hand and wrapping it round my patient’s upper arm. He automatically pressed his thumb to thebrachial artery near the armpit, and the spurting that had started when I took my own hand away stopped again.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Not at all. Yes, most of them can do that,” he admitted, calming down just a little. “But they are so jealous of privilege—and so much affiliated with their own regiments—that some are letting a wounded man die because he is not one of theirs and his own regimental surgeon is otherwise occupied!”

“Scandalous,” I murmured, and, “Bite hard now, Private,” as I thrust the leather between his teeth and made a quick incision to enlarge the wound enough to find the end of the severed artery. He did bite, and made no more than a low grunting noise as the scalpel sliced into his flesh; perhaps he was sufficiently in shock that he didn’t feel it much—I hoped not.

“We haven’t a lot of choice,” I observed, glancing toward the big shade trees that edged the graveyard. Dottie was minding the victims of heatstroke, giving them water and—as time and buckets permitted—dousing them with it.

Rachel was in charge of depressed head fractures, abdominal wounds, and other serious wounds that couldn’t be treated by amputation or binding and splinting. In most cases, this amounted to nothing more than comforting them as they died, but she was a good, steady girl, who had seen a great many men die during the winter at Valley Forge; she didn’t shrink from the job.

“We have to let them—” I jerked my chin toward the church, my hands being occupied in holding Private Adams’s arm and ligating the severed vessel— “do what they’re able to do. Not that we could bloody stop them.”

“No.” Denny breathed out, let go of the arm as he saw I had the vessel tied off, and wiped his face on his coat. “No, we can’t. I just needed to express my anger where it wouldn’t cause more trouble.”

A SLEDGEHAMMER hit me in the side, making me jerk, the needle dropping from my hands. I didn’t feel myself fall but was lying on the ground, black and white spots flashing round me, a sense of intense numbness radiating from my right side. I smelled damp earth and warm grass and sycamore leaves, pungent and comforting. Shock, I thought dimly, and opened my mouth, but nothing but a dry click came out of my throat. What… The numbness of the impact began to lessen, and I realized that I had curled into a ball, my forearm pressed by reflex over my abdomen. I smelled burning, and fresh blood, very fresh. I’ve been shot, then.

“Sassenach!” I heard Jamie’s bellow over the roaring in my ears. He sounded far off, but I heard the terror in his voice clearly. I wasn’t disturbed by it. I felt very calm.

“Sassenach!” The spots had coalesced. I was looking down a narrow tunnel of light and spinning shadow. At the end of it was the shocked face of Corporal Greenhow, the needle dangling by its thread from the half-sewn gash in his forehead.

In honor of Memorial Day 2022, and all of those who serve their countries. This is an excerpt (aka “Daily Lines”) from my book, WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD.

Top image: A pair of surgical amputation kits used during the Revolutionary War by Dr. John Warren. The two kits, which feature gruesome implements such as rusted bone saws (for amputations) and bullet forceps, were used on wounded soldiers by Warren as he served with the Continental Army. Doctors had to provide their own surgical tools. Warren’s older brother was Dr. Joseph Warren, the celebrated American patriot whose death at the Battle of Bunker Hill served as an inspiration to soldiers throughout the conflict. These two medical kits were in the collection of Harvard Medical School for over 200 years until sold at auction to a private collector.

Center image: The Well of the Dead, Culloden Moor. The commander of the Clan Chattan regiment, Alexander McGillivray of Dunmaglass, and many other Jacobite soldiers died here after engaging the left wing of the Hanoverian army in the Battle of Culloden. From Wikipedia.

The image of Claire, portrayed by Caitriona Balfe in the Outlander TV series, is courtesy of Starz.

MANY thanks to the National Trust for Scotland Foundation (USA) for naming me as the recipient of the 2022 “Great Scot” award! I’m Extremely Honored and very grateful!

They’ve asked me to share their press release on my official social media accounts and website.

-Diana

Diana Gabaldon, Best-Selling Author of Outlander Novels, To Be Honored as NTSUSA’s 2022 Great Scot

• Gabaldon’s novels, and the Starz television series they inspired, tell the story of a British army nurse who mysteriously travels back in time to 18th-century Scotland.
• The ninth Outlander novel, the New York Times #1 Bestseller GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE, was published in November 2021.
• The Great Scot Award will be presented on April 14, 2022, at The National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA’s first in-person fundraising gala since 2019.

January 18, 2022, New York City—American author Diana Gabaldon has brought the romance and drama of Scottish history to life for more than 50 million readers worldwide with her best-selling Outlander novels.

Now, The National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA will recognize her extraordinary contributions to Scotland and America’s shared heritage by presenting Diana Gabaldon with the 2022 Great Scot Award at their 15th annual fundraising gala, A Celebration of Scotland’s Treasures, on April 14, 2022.

“2022 has been designated Scotland’s Year of Stories, and so it seems especially appropriate to honor Diana Gabaldon, whose stories have come to embody Scotland and Scottish culture for millions of readers and television watchers around the world,” said Helen E.R. Sayles CBE, The National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA’s chair. “We are delighted to have the opportunity to thank her for inspiring so many to explore and fall in love with Scotland.”

Ms. Gabaldon’s first novel, OUTLANDER, was published in 1991, and the story has extended across eight additional New York Times bestselling volumes. The latest, GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE, was published in November 2021.

Largely set in 18th-century Scotland, many of the Outlander novels use actual historic events as the backdrop for Claire and Jamie Fraser’s romance. Some of these, including the 1746 Battle of Culloden, are historic sites now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland.

In addition, National Trust for Scotland properties including Falkland Palace, Preston Mill, and the Village of Culross, have been used in filming the Sony / Starz television series based on Ms. Gabaldon’s work. The series stars Catriona Balfe and Sam Heughan, and its sixth season premieres on March 6, 2022.

“I have seen firsthand how American readers have embraced Scottish culture through their love of Outlander,” said Kirstin Bridier, executive director of NTSUSA. “Many of her readers have contributed generously to the preservation of National Trust for Scotland sites associated with the novels and television show—sites like Preston Mill. We could not ask for a better ambassador for our work.”

The presentation of the Great Scot Award is at the heart of a black-tie event that raises funds to support Scotland’s largest conservation charity. Past recipients of the award include documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, comedian Sir Billy Connolly, Golden Globe-winning actor Brian Cox, endurance athlete and world-record breaking cyclist Mark Beaumont, sculptor Andy Scott, and authors Denise Mina and Alexander McCall Smith.

A Celebration of Scotland’s Treasures is a festive evening that features a whisky tasting by The Macallan; the recitation of Burns’ Ode to a Haggis by Alasdair Nichol, Chairman of Freeman’s auction house and a frequent appraiser on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow; Scottish country dancing; and live and silent auctions. Before heading home, guests form a circle, clasp hands, and sing Auld Lang Syne.

The National Trust for Scotland cares for 100 natural and cultural heritage properties across Scotland, including several sites that commemorate historic events described in Outlander or used for filming the Sony / Starz television show.

About The National Trust For Scotland Foundation USA

The National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA (NTSUSA) exists to support the work of Scotland’s largest conservation charity. NTSUSA makes grants for projects that protect Scotland’s natural, built, and cultural heritage on behalf of future generations. Since 2000, NTSUSA has committed more than $10 million in funding for the National Trust for Scotland’s most urgent conservation priorities.

To learn more about the A Celebration of Scotland’s Treasures gala, visit:

http://www.ntsusa.org/about-us/celebration-gala/

To buy tickets, go to:

https://ntsusa.org/about-us/gala-payment-form/

Prices and ticket options are listed in detail there, and range from $600 to $2,500, with proceeds benefiting the organization’s foundation efforts.

Friday, January 1, 2021

Social Media Hashtags: #DailyLines #HappyHogmanay

The year turns
And the moon fills and wanes
Some things go
Some things stay the same
Life waxes and ebbs
But love shines like the stars
Constant at night

[This excerpt is from VOYAGER, Copyright ©1994 by Diana Gabaldon]

The house was bright that night, with candles lit in the windows, and bunches of holly and ivy fixed to the staircase and the doorposts. There were not so many pipers in the Highlands as there had been before Culloden, but one had been found, and a fiddler as well, and music floated up the stairwell, mixed with the heady scent of rum punch, plum cake, almond squirts, and Savoy biscuits.

Jamie had come down late and hesitant. Many people here he had not seen in nearly ten years, and he was not eager to see them now, feeling changed and distant as he did. But Jenny had made him a new shirt, brushed and mended his coat, and combed his hair smooth and plaited it for him before going downstairs to see to the cooking. He had no excuse to linger, and at last had come down, into the noise and swirl of the gathering.

“Mister Fraser!” Peggy Gibbons was the first to see him; she hurried across the room, face glowing, and threw her arms about him, quite unabashed. Taken by surprise, he hugged her back, and within moments was surrounded by a small crowd of women, exclaiming over him, holding up small children born since his departure, kissing his cheeks and patting his hands.

The men were shyer, greeting him with a gruff word of welcome or a slap on the back as he made his way slowly through the rooms, until, quite overwhelmed, he had escaped temporarily into the laird’s study.

Once his father’s room, and then his own, it now belonged to his brother-in-law, who had run Lallybroch through the years of his absence. The ledgers and stockbooks and accounts were all lined up neatly on the edge of the battered desk; he ran a finger along the leather spines, feeling a sense of comfort at the touch. It was all in here; the planting and the harvests, the careful purchases and acquisitions, the slow accumulations and dispersals that were the rhythm of life to the tenants of Lallybroch.

On the small bookshelf, he found his wooden snake. Along with everything else of value, he had left it behind when he went to prison. A small icon carved of cherrywood, it had been the gift of his elder brother, dead in childhood. He was sitting in the chair behind the desk, stroking the snake’s well-worn curves, when the door of the study opened.

“Jamie?” she had said, hanging shyly back. He had not bothered to light a lamp in the study; she was silhouetted by the candles burning in the hall. She wore her pale hair loose, like a maid, and the light shone through it, haloing her unseen face.

“You’ll remember me, maybe?” she had said, tentative, reluctant to come into the room without invitation.

“Aye,” he said, after a pause. “Aye, of course I do.”

“The music’s starting,” she said. It was; he could hear the whine of the fiddle and the stamp of feet from the front parlor, along with an occasional shout of merriment. It showed signs of being a good party already; most of the guests would be asleep on the floor come morning.

“Your sister says you’re a bonny dancer,” she said, still shy, but determined.

“It will ha’ been some time since I tried,” he said, feeling shy himself, and painfully awkward, though the fiddle music ached in his bones and his feet twitched at the sound of it.

“Its ‘Tha mo Leabaidh ’san Fhraoch’ — ‘n the Heather’s my Bed’ — you’ll ken that one. Will ye come and try wi’ me?” She had held out a hand to him, small and graceful in the half-dark. And he had risen, clasped her outstretched hand in his own, and taken his first steps in pursuit of himself.

“It was in here,” he said, waving his good hand at the room where we sat. “Jenny had had the furniture cleared away, all but one table wi’ the food and the whisky, and the fiddler stood by the window there, wi’ a new moon over his shoulder.” He nodded at the window, where the rose vine trembled. Something of the light of that Hogmanay feast lingered on his face, and I felt a small pang, seeing it.

“We danced all that night, sometimes wi’ others, but mostly with each other. And at the dawn, when those still awake went to the end o’ the house to see what omens the New Year might bring, the two of us went, too. The single women took it in turns to spin about, and walk through the door wi’ their eyes closed, then spin again and open their eyes to see what the first thing they might see would be—for that tells them about the man they’ll marry, ye ken.”

There had been a lot of laughter, as the guests, heated by whisky and dancing, pushed and shoved at the door. Laoghaire had held back, flushed and laughing, saying it was a game for young girls, and not for a matron of thirty-four, but the others had insisted, and try she had. Spun three times clockwise and opened the door, stepped out into the cold dawnlight and spun again. And when she opened her eyes, they had rested on Jamie’s face, wide with expectation.

“So… there she was, a widow wi’ two bairns. She needed a man, that was plain enough. I needed… something.” He gazed into the fire, where the low flame glimmered through the red mass of the peat; heat without much light. “I supposed that we might help each other.”

They had married quietly at Balriggan, and he had moved his few possessions there. Less than a year later, he had moved out again, and gone to Edinburgh.

“What on earth happened?” I asked, more than curious.

He looked up at me, helpless.

“I canna say. It wasna that anything was wrong, exactly — only that nothing was right.” He rubbed a hand tiredly between his brows. “It was me, I think; my fault. I always disappointed her somehow. We’d sit down to supper and all of a sudden the tears would well up in her eyes, and she’d leave the table sobbing, and me sitting there wi’ not a notion what I’d done or said wrong.”

His fist clenched on the coverlet, then relaxed. “God, I never knew what to do for her, or what to say! Anything I said just made it worse, and there would be days — nay, weeks! — when she’d not speak to me, but only turn away when I came near her, and stand staring out the window until I went away again.”

His fingers went to the parallel scratches down the side of his neck. They were nearly healed now, but the marks of my nails still showed on his fair skin. He looked at me wryly.

“You never did that to me, Sassenach.”

“Not my style,” I agreed, smiling faintly. “If I’m mad at you, you’ll bloody know why, at least.”

He snorted briefly and lay back on his pillows. Neither of us spoke for a bit. Then he said, staring up at the ceiling, “I thought I didna want to hear anything about what it was like — wi’ Frank, I mean. I was maybe wrong about that.”

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” I said. “But not just now. It’s still your turn.”

He sighed and closed his eyes.

“She was afraid of me,” he said softly, a minute later. “I tried to be gentle wi’ her—God, I tried again and again, everything I knew to please a woman. But it was no use.” His head turned restlessly, making a hollow in the feather pillow.

“Maybe it was Hugh, or maybe Simon. I kent them both, and they were good men, but there’s no telling what goes on in a marriage bed. Maybe it was bearing the children; not all women can stand it. But something hurt her, sometime, and I couldna heal it for all my trying. She shrank away when I touched her, and I could see the sickness and the fear in her eyes.” There were lines of sorrow around his own closed eyes, and I reached impulsively for his hand.

He squeezed it gently and opened his eyes.

“That’s why I left, finally,” he said softly. “I couldna bear it anymore.”

I didn’t say anything, but went on holding his hand, putting a finger on his pulse to check it. His heartbeat was reassuringly slow and steady. He shifted slightly in the bed, moving his shoulders and making a grimace of discomfort as he did so.

“Arm hurt a lot?” I asked.

“A bit.” I bent over him, feeling his brow. He was very warm, but not feverish. There was a line between the thick ruddy brows, and I smoothed it with a knuckle.

“Head ache?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go and make you some willow-bark tea.” I made to rise, but his hand on my arm stopped me.

“I dinna need tea,” he said. “It would ease me, though, if maybe I could lay my head in your lap, and have ye rub my temples a bit?” Blue eyes looked up at me, limpid as a spring sky.

“You don’t fool me a bit, Jamie Fraser,” I said. “I”m not going to forget about your next shot.” Nonetheless, I was already moving the chair out of the way, and sitting down beside him on the bed.

He made a small grunting sound of content as I moved his head into my lap and began to stroke it, rubbing his temples, smoothing back the thick wavy mass of his hair. The back of his neck was damp; I lifted the hair away and blew softly on it, seeing the smooth fair skin prickle into gooseflesh at the nape of his neck.

“Oh, that feels good,” he murmured. Despite my resolve not to touch him beyond the demands of caretaking until everything between us was resolved, I found my hands molding themselves to the clean, bold lines of his neck and shoulders, seeking the hard knobs of his vertebrae and the broad, flat planes of his shoulder blades.

He was firm and solid under my hands, his breath a warm caress on my thigh, and it was with some reluctance that I at last eased him back onto the pillow and reached for the ampule of penicillin.

“All right,” I said, turning back the sheet and reaching for the hem of his shirt. “A quick stick, and you’ll—” My hand brushed over the front of his nightshirt, and I broke off, startled.

“Jamie!” I said, amused. “You can’t possibly!”

“I dinna suppose I can,” he agreed comfortably. He curled up on his side like a shrimp, his lashes dark against his cheek. “But a man can dream, no?”

*****

I didn’t go upstairs to bed that night, either. We didn’t talk much, just lay close together in the narrow bed, scarcely moving, so as not to jar his injured arm. The rest of the house was quiet, everyone safely in bed, and there was no sound but the hissing of the fire, the sigh of the wind, and the scratch of Ellen’s rosebush at the window, insistent as the demands of love.

“Do ye know?” he said softly, somewhere in the black, small hours of the night. “Do ye know what it’s like to be with someone that way? To try all ye can, and seem never to have the secret of them?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of Frank. “Yes, I do know.”

“I thought perhaps ye did.” He was quiet for a moment, and then his hand touched my hair lightly, a shadowy blur in the firelight.

“And then…” he whispered, “then to have it back again, that knowing. To be free in all ye say or do, and know that it is right.”

“To say ‘I love you,’ and mean it with all your heart,” I said softly to the dark.

“Aye,” he answered, barely audible. “To say that.” His hand rested on my hair, and without knowing quite how it happened, I found myself curled against him, my head just fitting in the hollow of his shoulder.

“For so many years,” he said, “for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men.” I felt him swallow, and he shifted slightly, the linen of his nightshirt rustling with starch.

“I was Uncle to Jenny’s children, and Brother to her and Ian. ‘Milord’ to Fergus, and ‘Sir’ to my tenants. ‘Mac Dubh’ to the men of Ardsmuir and ‘MacKenzie’ to the other servants at Helwater. ‘Malcolm the printer,’ then, and ‘Jamie Roy’ at the docks.” The hand stroked my hair, slowly, with a whispering sound like the wind outside. “But here,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him, “here in the dark, with you… I have no name.”

I lifted my face toward his, and took the warm breath of him between my own lips.

“I love you,” I said, and did not need to tell him how I meant it.

Go to my official VOYAGER webpage.

The image above shows my Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera), a plant native to Brazil which blooms near Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere.

This excerpt was also posted as a blog entry on this website, and posted on my official Facebook page on Friday, January 1, 2021.

Social Media Hashtags: #DailyLines #HappyHogmanay

The year turns
And the moon fills and wanes
Some things go
Some things stay the same
Life waxes and ebbs
But love shines like the stars
Constant at night

[This excerpt is from VOYAGER, Copyright ©1994 by Diana Gabaldon]

The house was bright that night, with candles lit in the windows, and bunches of holly and ivy fixed to the staircase and the doorposts. There were not so many pipers in the Highlands as there had been before Culloden, but one had been found, and a fiddler as well, and music floated up the stairwell, mixed with the heady scent of rum punch, plum cake, almond squirts, and Savoy biscuits.

Jamie had come down late and hesitant. Many people here he had not seen in nearly ten years, and he was not eager to see them now, feeling changed and distant as he did. But Jenny had made him a new shirt, brushed and mended his coat, and combed his hair smooth and plaited it for him before going downstairs to see to the cooking. He had no excuse to linger, and at last had come down, into the noise and swirl of the gathering.

“Mister Fraser!” Peggy Gibbons was the first to see him; she hurried across the room, face glowing, and threw her arms about him, quite unabashed. Taken by surprise, he hugged her back, and within moments was surrounded by a small crowd of women, exclaiming over him, holding up small children born since his departure, kissing his cheeks and patting his hands.

The men were shyer, greeting him with a gruff word of welcome or a slap on the back as he made his way slowly through the rooms, until, quite overwhelmed, he had escaped temporarily into the laird’s study.

Once his father’s room, and then his own, it now belonged to his brother-in-law, who had run Lallybroch through the years of his absence. The ledgers and stockbooks and accounts were all lined up neatly on the edge of the battered desk; he ran a finger along the leather spines, feeling a sense of comfort at the touch. It was all in here; the planting and the harvests, the careful purchases and acquisitions, the slow accumulations and dispersals that were the rhythm of life to the tenants of Lallybroch.

On the small bookshelf, he found his wooden snake. Along with everything else of value, he had left it behind when he went to prison. A small icon carved of cherrywood, it had been the gift of his elder brother, dead in childhood. He was sitting in the chair behind the desk, stroking the snake’s well-worn curves, when the door of the study opened.

“Jamie?” she had said, hanging shyly back. He had not bothered to light a lamp in the study; she was silhouetted by the candles burning in the hall. She wore her pale hair loose, like a maid, and the light shone through it, haloing her unseen face.

“You’ll remember me, maybe?” she had said, tentative, reluctant to come into the room without invitation.

“Aye,” he said, after a pause. “Aye, of course I do.”

“The music’s starting,” she said. It was; he could hear the whine of the fiddle and the stamp of feet from the front parlor, along with an occasional shout of merriment. It showed signs of being a good party already; most of the guests would be asleep on the floor come morning.

“Your sister says you’re a bonny dancer,” she said, still shy, but determined.

“It will ha’ been some time since I tried,” he said, feeling shy himself, and painfully awkward, though the fiddle music ached in his bones and his feet twitched at the sound of it.

“Its ‘Tha mo Leabaidh ’san Fhraoch’ — ‘n the Heather’s my Bed’ — you’ll ken that one. Will ye come and try wi’ me?” She had held out a hand to him, small and graceful in the half-dark. And he had risen, clasped her outstretched hand in his own, and taken his first steps in pursuit of himself.

“It was in here,” he said, waving his good hand at the room where we sat. “Jenny had had the furniture cleared away, all but one table wi’ the food and the whisky, and the fiddler stood by the window there, wi’ a new moon over his shoulder.” He nodded at the window, where the rose vine trembled. Something of the light of that Hogmanay feast lingered on his face, and I felt a small pang, seeing it.

“We danced all that night, sometimes wi’ others, but mostly with each other. And at the dawn, when those still awake went to the end o’ the house to see what omens the New Year might bring, the two of us went, too. The single women took it in turns to spin about, and walk through the door wi’ their eyes closed, then spin again and open their eyes to see what the first thing they might see would be—for that tells them about the man they’ll marry, ye ken.”

There had been a lot of laughter, as the guests, heated by whisky and dancing, pushed and shoved at the door. Laoghaire had held back, flushed and laughing, saying it was a game for young girls, and not for a matron of thirty-four, but the others had insisted, and try she had. Spun three times clockwise and opened the door, stepped out into the cold dawnlight and spun again. And when she opened her eyes, they had rested on Jamie’s face, wide with expectation.

“So… there she was, a widow wi’ two bairns. She needed a man, that was plain enough. I needed… something.” He gazed into the fire, where the low flame glimmered through the red mass of the peat; heat without much light. “I supposed that we might help each other.”

They had married quietly at Balriggan, and he had moved his few possessions there. Less than a year later, he had moved out again, and gone to Edinburgh.

“What on earth happened?” I asked, more than curious.

He looked up at me, helpless.

“I canna say. It wasna that anything was wrong, exactly — only that nothing was right.” He rubbed a hand tiredly between his brows. “It was me, I think; my fault. I always disappointed her somehow. We’d sit down to supper and all of a sudden the tears would well up in her eyes, and she’d leave the table sobbing, and me sitting there wi’ not a notion what I’d done or said wrong.”

His fist clenched on the coverlet, then relaxed. “God, I never knew what to do for her, or what to say! Anything I said just made it worse, and there would be days — nay, weeks! — when she’d not speak to me, but only turn away when I came near her, and stand staring out the window until I went away again.”

His fingers went to the parallel scratches down the side of his neck. They were nearly healed now, but the marks of my nails still showed on his fair skin. He looked at me wryly.

“You never did that to me, Sassenach.”

“Not my style,” I agreed, smiling faintly. “If I’m mad at you, you’ll bloody know why, at least.”

He snorted briefly and lay back on his pillows. Neither of us spoke for a bit. Then he said, staring up at the ceiling, “I thought I didna want to hear anything about what it was like — wi’ Frank, I mean. I was maybe wrong about that.”

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” I said. “But not just now. It’s still your turn.”

He sighed and closed his eyes.

“She was afraid of me,” he said softly, a minute later. “I tried to be gentle wi’ her—God, I tried again and again, everything I knew to please a woman. But it was no use.” His head turned restlessly, making a hollow in the feather pillow.

“Maybe it was Hugh, or maybe Simon. I kent them both, and they were good men, but there’s no telling what goes on in a marriage bed. Maybe it was bearing the children; not all women can stand it. But something hurt her, sometime, and I couldna heal it for all my trying. She shrank away when I touched her, and I could see the sickness and the fear in her eyes.” There were lines of sorrow around his own closed eyes, and I reached impulsively for his hand.

He squeezed it gently and opened his eyes.

“That’s why I left, finally,” he said softly. “I couldna bear it anymore.”

I didn’t say anything, but went on holding his hand, putting a finger on his pulse to check it. His heartbeat was reassuringly slow and steady. He shifted slightly in the bed, moving his shoulders and making a grimace of discomfort as he did so.

“Arm hurt a lot?” I asked.

“A bit.” I bent over him, feeling his brow. He was very warm, but not feverish. There was a line between the thick ruddy brows, and I smoothed it with a knuckle.

“Head ache?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go and make you some willow-bark tea.” I made to rise, but his hand on my arm stopped me.

“I dinna need tea,” he said. “It would ease me, though, if maybe I could lay my head in your lap, and have ye rub my temples a bit?” Blue eyes looked up at me, limpid as a spring sky.

“You don’t fool me a bit, Jamie Fraser,” I said. “I”m not going to forget about your next shot.” Nonetheless, I was already moving the chair out of the way, and sitting down beside him on the bed.

He made a small grunting sound of content as I moved his head into my lap and began to stroke it, rubbing his temples, smoothing back the thick wavy mass of his hair. The back of his neck was damp; I lifted the hair away and blew softly on it, seeing the smooth fair skin prickle into gooseflesh at the nape of his neck.

“Oh, that feels good,” he murmured. Despite my resolve not to touch him beyond the demands of caretaking until everything between us was resolved, I found my hands molding themselves to the clean, bold lines of his neck and shoulders, seeking the hard knobs of his vertebrae and the broad, flat planes of his shoulder blades.

He was firm and solid under my hands, his breath a warm caress on my thigh, and it was with some reluctance that I at last eased him back onto the pillow and reached for the ampule of penicillin.

“All right,” I said, turning back the sheet and reaching for the hem of his shirt. “A quick stick, and you’ll—” My hand brushed over the front of his nightshirt, and I broke off, startled.

“Jamie!” I said, amused. “You can’t possibly!”

“I dinna suppose I can,” he agreed comfortably. He curled up on his side like a shrimp, his lashes dark against his cheek. “But a man can dream, no?”

*****

I didn’t go upstairs to bed that night, either. We didn’t talk much, just lay close together in the narrow bed, scarcely moving, so as not to jar his injured arm. The rest of the house was quiet, everyone safely in bed, and there was no sound but the hissing of the fire, the sigh of the wind, and the scratch of Ellen’s rosebush at the window, insistent as the demands of love.

“Do ye know?” he said softly, somewhere in the black, small hours of the night. “Do ye know what it’s like to be with someone that way? To try all ye can, and seem never to have the secret of them?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of Frank. “Yes, I do know.”

“I thought perhaps ye did.” He was quiet for a moment, and then his hand touched my hair lightly, a shadowy blur in the firelight.

“And then…” he whispered, “then to have it back again, that knowing. To be free in all ye say or do, and know that it is right.”

“To say ‘I love you,’ and mean it with all your heart,” I said softly to the dark.

“Aye,” he answered, barely audible. “To say that.” His hand rested on my hair, and without knowing quite how it happened, I found myself curled against him, my head just fitting in the hollow of his shoulder.

“For so many years,” he said, “for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men.” I felt him swallow, and he shifted slightly, the linen of his nightshirt rustling with starch.

“I was Uncle to Jenny’s children, and Brother to her and Ian. ‘Milord’ to Fergus, and ‘Sir’ to my tenants. ‘Mac Dubh’ to the men of Ardsmuir and ‘MacKenzie’ to the other servants at Helwater. ‘Malcolm the printer,’ then, and ‘Jamie Roy’ at the docks.” The hand stroked my hair, slowly, with a whispering sound like the wind outside. “But here,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him, “here in the dark, with you… I have no name.”

I lifted my face toward his, and took the warm breath of him between my own lips.

“I love you,” I said, and did not need to tell him how I meant it.

The image above shows my Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera), a plant native to Brazil which blooms near Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere.

This blog entry was also posted on my official Facebook page on Friday, January 1, 2021.

September 29th, 2020 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Eastern Time or EDT in the U.S.A.) — is the first Virtual Trust for Scotland/USA Gala! (i.e., it’s the first time they’ve had to do it virtually—it happens every year, normally in New York, but physically.) It’s a fundraiser to help support Scotland’s natural and cultural heritage, and includes a live auction.

They’ve asked me to share the link with you all (below), and note that while the usual donation asked is $150 (which will, among other things, sponsor a puffin), you can go ahead and register without donating. The website for the event is:

https://ntsusa.org/about-us/celebration-gala/

You do need to sign up before the event on the website. If you don’t want to donate, click the box that says “No, thanks” when it asks for a credit card number.

   -Diana

From The Scotland Treasures Website

From the National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA website:

Each April, The National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA’s A Celebration of Scotland’s Treasures gala raises thousands of dollars to support the conservation of Scotland’s natural and cultural heritage. Because we were unable to gather in New York this spring – our milestone 20th anniversary year – due to the coronavirus pandemic, we missed the opportunity to raise vital funds on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland.

Proceeds from A (Virtual) Celebration of Scotland’s Treasures will support the international campaign to Save Our Scotland. This year, the Trust is expected to lose over $35 million in earned income from the closure of our historic sites due to the coronavirus pandemic. Together, we can ensure the future of the Trust and its irreplaceable natural and cultural treasures.

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