Today/Tonight is the First Sunday of Advent. Tonight’s candle is usually called “Hope”—though it’s also called “The Candle of Prophecy” in some circles. Regardless of name, our purpose is to turn away from the Dark—to let discord, fear, violence and sadness vanish like dry leaves in the flame of our hearts, that hope may rise with the quiet light.
Advent Excerpt from A BLESSING FOR A WARRIOR GOING OUT
Copyright © 2025 Diana Gabaldon
WEIGH, HEY, AND UP SHE RISES….
Minnie had always liked uncertainty. Not knowing whether the books she’d rummaged out of an attic in Paris were trash or splendid treasure, not knowing whether the next person to walk through the bookshop’s door was a customer or a Jacobite spy. Not knowing what the babies she’d carried for months inside her would be like in her arms, let alone what they might grow up to be.
And not knowing what her husband would do next. Domestic bliss was, of course, blissful—but living on a knife’s-edge now and then suited her. Now and then, being, of course, the important bit.
“Nobody wants to sit on a bloody knife-edge,” she said, not realizing that she’d spoken aloud until she heard a low Irish laugh behind her.
“Because it’s sharp, or because it’s boring?”
“Well, it does stop you dancing.” She glanced at Rafe O’Higgins, who had come up to the rail beside her. He wore a caped greatcoat of fine blue wool, and kept a hand on his new hat to save it flying away. At a glance, he looked like a gentleman, which he most certainly was not. “Can you smell the land?”
He sniffed deeply, then shook his head.
“Not yet, darlin’. Captain says it’ll be three days yet, maybe four.”
She stamped her foot with impatience. Only a small stamp, but he laughed at her and lifted his face, inhaling deeply.
“Fish,” he said. “I smell fish. And a whale.”
“And what does a whale smell like, pray?” she asked, diverted despite herself. “And don’t say ‘fish.’”
“Oh, whales have a strange smell about them,” he said, narrowing his eyes against the wind. “Ye don’t get close enough to smell it often, mind, but now and again, one will come up beside your wee boat when ye’re fishin’ in the Irish Sea and let out his breath in a mighty blast. It smells of hot and cold, rot and life, wracks of seaweed and thousands and millions of rancid little things that have thin shells like the nail of your smallest finger. They stick in the whale’s teeth—or what pass for teeth in a whale. And,” he added practically, “tons of seaweed and the odd fish. Your usual whale’s not picky.”
“You don’t say.” She’d engaged the O’Higgins brothers as much for their conversation as for their protection while traveling and their ability to ask questions in the sorts of places a middle-aged woman couldn’t go, let alone a duchess. “The usual whale, you say. Are there unusual ones?” She didn’t bother asking how he might know; the O’Higginses got around.
“Oh, well.” He considered. “There’s your sperm whale, sure. A great huge fellow, and he eats great huge squid, or so I’m told. And given the stink of even a small squid that’s been left out too long, I think the smell of the big fella’s breath must be one to knock ye off your feet.”
“I hope I live to smell one, if only for the experience.”
“Ye’ve always been a great one for experience, your grace,” he said, laughing.
“You should talk,” she said, unoffended. “Tell me again how you came to lose your finger?”
“Which one?” He lifted both hands, as though in surrender, to show a missing little finger on his left hand, and a missing top joint on the ring-finger of the right.
“That one,” she said, pointing to his right hand.
“Ah, that. I had a sweet wee ring, see, gold, with a blue stone in it, and a whore went to suck it off my finger, and I caught her at it. Just in time.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that for a moment,” she said gravely. “That she was sucking your finger, I mean.”
“Well, she was suckin’ a number of things,” he said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “I daresay I lost track.”
Minnie herself had long since lost track of the number of stories he’d told regarding the loss of his digits, but he could always think of a new one. And he had, as usual, succeeded in distracting her mind, if only for a few precious moments, from the thoughts that weighed upon it. Even now, her hand was creeping under her cloak and into the slit in her petticoat to find her pocket and touch the letter inside.
Adam seldom wrote a proper letter. Her second son had inherited—or possibly consciously imitated, though she didn’t want to suspect him of that—his father’s habit of seldom either addressing or signing letters, and using the minimum number of words to convey whatever was on his mind.
But he’d addressed this one — “Dear Mother” — and signed it as well, adding “Your most Obedient, Humble and Loving Son,” which frightened her, as did the body of the letter, as much for what he was leaving out, as for what he did say.
She already knew that Dottie’s baby girl had died—Minerva Joy, named for herself, and she swallowed the lump in her throat for the thousandth time.
Hal had sent her the grievous news months ago, and she had wanted to go to her daughter at once, but it was November by the time she’d received that letter, and no ships would sail until March. Adam’s letter had come in February, presumably having been delayed on the way—it was battered and rain-spotted and he hadn’t put a date on it, blast him… and had added the news that caused her to send for Rafe and Mick O’Higgins at once.
“There he is.” Rafe spoke suddenly, jerking her from her thoughts.
“Who?”
“The big fella,” he said, respect in his voice.
Minnie had now and then seen a whale in the Channel, but seldom more than one, and always at such a distance as to look like nothing more than an intermittent gray lump, spouting steam before disappearing, like a small and very mobile volcano.
The Big Fella rose slowly up from the depths beside the ship, a huge—truly, huge—blue-gray ghost, great flukes wider than the ship, rising and falling under the waves, keeping silent time to a song she sensed but couldn’t hear. And slowly—it seemed forever, but could have been no more than three breaths—it dived, smooth as the water itself, and vanished into the depths.
“Oh,” she said, very softly, and Rafe nodded.
“That’s a very lucky thing to see, your grace. We’ll have good fortune, see if we don’t.”
[end section]
NB: This is a rather hasty First Candle, as Thanksgiving was so chaotic that I didn’t have a chance to drive up into the pines and fetch wreath materials, as I usually do. But tomorrow is another day…. and I wish a Spiritual and Beautiful Advent Season to you all.
Please visit my official webpage for A BLESSING FOR A WARRIOR GOING OUT (Book Ten of my Outlander series of major novels) to access more excerpts from this book, and information about it.
Image by me, © 2025 Diana Gabaldon.
This content was also released as “Weigh, Hey, and Up She Rises”, an excerpt for A BLESSING FOR A WARRIOR GOING OUT on November 30, 2025.