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Diana Gabaldon - OutlandereVersion 1.1 ?see revision notes at end of text
Outlander
Diana Gabaldon
Book 1 in the Outlander Series
Contents
Prologue
Part One - Inverness, 1945.
1 - A New Beginning
2 - Standing Stones
3 - The Man in the Wood
4 - I Come to the Castle
5 - The Mackenzie
Part Two - Castle Leoch
6 - Colum's Hall
7 - Davie Beaton's Closet
8 - An Evening's Entertainment
9 - The Gathering
10 - The Oath-taking
Part Three - On the Road
11 - Conversations with a Lawyer
12 - The Garrison Commander
13 - A Marriage Is Announced
14 - A Marriage Takes Place
15 - Revelations of the Bridal Chamber
16 - One Fine Day
17 - We Meet a Beggar
18 - Raiders in the Rocks
19 - The Waterhorse
20 - Deserted Glades
21 - Un Mauvais Quart d'Heure After Another
22 - Reckonings
23 - Return to Leoch
Part Four ?A Whiff of Brimstone
Chapter 24 - By the Pricking of my Thumbs
Chapter 25 - Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live
Part Five ?Lallybroch
Chapter 26 - The Laird's Return
Chapter 27 - The Last Reason
Chapter 28 - Kisses and Drawers
Chapter 29 - More Honesty
Chapter 30 - Conversations by the Hearth
Chapter 31 - Quarter Day
Chapter 32 - Hard Labor
Chapter 33 - The Watch
Part Six ?The Search
Chapter 34 - Dougal's Story"
Part Seven ?Sanctuary
Chapter 35 - Wentworth Prison
Chapter 36 - MacRannoch
Chapter 37 - Escape
Chapter 38 - The Abbey
Chapter 39 - To Ransom a Man's Soul
Chapter 40 - Absolution
Chapter 41 - From the Womb of the Earth
To the Memory of My Mother,
Who Taught Me to Read—
Jacqueline Sykes Gabaldon
People disappear all the time. Ask any policeman. Better yet, ask a journalist. Disappearances are bread-and-butter to journalists.
Young girls run away from home. Young children stray from their parents and are never seen again. Housewives reach the end of their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the station. International financiers change their names and vanish into the smoke of imported cigars.
Many of the lost will be found, eventually, dead or alive. Disappearances, after all, have explanations.
Usually.
HIGH PRAISE FOR
DIANA GABALDON AND
OUTLANDER
“GREAT FUN…marvelous and fantastic adventures, romance, sex…perfect escape reading.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Gabaldon fashions deeply probed characters and a richly textured setting…history comes deliciously alive on the page.”
—Daily News (New York)
“AN OLD-FASHIONED PAGE-TURNER…a mix of history, romance and adventure.”
—The Cincinnati Post
“STUNNING.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
“A feast for ravenous readers of eighteenth-century Scottish history, heroism and romance.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“INTRIGUING…satisfying…when the last page is turned it’s difficult to let the characters go.”
—Daily Press (Newport News)
“INGENIOUS…an exuberant potpourri of romance and historical adventure.”
—Anniston Star
“Gabaldon shows not only a talent with factual detail but also a flair for creating memorable characters and some striking sex scenes.”
—Locus
“HIGHLY IMAGINATIVE AND SUSPENSEFUL…Gabaldon’s ambitious first novel gives the reader a well-researched view of 18th-century life as seen through the eyes of a 20th-century woman.”
—Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“BRILLIANTLY COLORED…Diana Gabaldon is a born storyteller who will leave you breathless…She transports readers into the era with the ease of a master historian and then brings to life characters so real you’ll believe they truly existed.”
—Rave Reviews
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank:
Jackie Cantor, Editor par excellence, whose consistent enthusiasm had so much to do with getting this story between covers; Perry Knowlton, Agent of impeccable judgment, who said, “Go ahead and tell the story the way it should be told; we’ll worry about cutting it later;” my husband, Doug Watkins, who, despite occasionally standing behind my chair, saying, “If it’s set in Scotland, why doesn’t anybody say ‘Hoot, mon?’ ” also spent a good deal of time chasing children and saying “Mommy is writing! Leave her alone!”; my daughter Laura, for loftily informing a friend, “My mother writes books!”; my son Samuel, who, when asked what Mommy does for a living, replied cautiously, “Well, she watches her computer a lot;” my daughter Jennifer, who says, “Move over, Mommy; it’s my turn to type!”; Jerry O’Neill, First Reader and Head Cheerleader, and the rest of my personal Gang of Four—Janet McConnaughey, Margaret J. Campbell, and John L. Myers—who read everything I write, and thereby keep me writing; Dr. Gary Hoff, for verifying the medical details and kindly explaining the proper way to reset a dislocated shoulder; T. Lawrence Tuohy, for details of military history and costuming; Robert Riffle, for explaining the difference between betony and bryony, listing every kind of forget-me-not known to man, and verifying that aspens really do grow in Scotland; Virginia Kidd, for reading early parts of the manuscript and encouraging me to go on with it; Alex Krislov, for co-hosting with other systems operators the most extraordinary electronic literary cocktail-party-cum-writer’s-incubator in the world, the CompuServe Literary Forum; and the many members of LitForum—John Stith, John Simpson, John L. Myers, Judson Jerome, Angelia Dorman, Zilgia Quafay, and the rest—for Scottish folk songs, Latin love poetry, and for laughing (and crying) in the right places.
PART ONE
Inverness, 1945
1
A NEW BEGINNING
It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. Mrs. Baird’s was like a thousand other Highland bed-and-breakfast establishments in 1945; clean and quiet, with fading floral wallpaper, gleaming floors, and a coin-operated hot-water geyser in the lavatory. Mrs. Baird herself was squat and easygoing, and made no objection to Frank lining her tiny rose-sprigged parlor with the dozens of books and papers with which he always traveled.
I met Mrs. Baird in the front hall on my way out. She stopped me with a pudgy hand on my arm and patted at my hair.
“Dear me, Mrs. Randall, ye canna go out like that! Here, just let me tuck that bit in for ye. There! That’s better. Ye know, my cousin was tellin’ me about a new perm she tried, comes out beautiful and holds like a dream; perhaps ye should try that kind next time.”
I hadn’t the heart to tell her that the waywardness of my light brown curls was strictly the fault of nature, and not due to any dereliction on the part of the permanent-wave manufacturers. Her own tightly marceled waves suffered from no such perversity.
“Yes, I’ll do that, Mrs. Baird,” I lied. “I’m just going down to the village to meet Frank. We’ll be back for tea.” I ducked out the door and down the path before she could detect any further defects in my undisciplined appearance. After four years as a Royal Army nurse, I was enjoying the escape from uniforms and rationing by indulging in brightly printed light cotton dresses, totally unsuited for rough walking through the heather.
Not that I had originally planned to do a lot of that; my thoughts ran more on the lines of sleeping late in the mornings, and long, lazy afternoons in bed with Frank, not sleeping. However, it was difficult to maintain the proper mood of languorous romance with Mrs. Baird industriously Hoovering away outside our door.
“That must be the dirtiest bit of carpet in the entire Scottish Highlands,” Frank had observed that morning as we lay in bed listening to the ferocious roar of the vacuum in the hallway.
“Nearly as dirty as our landlady’s mind,” I agreed. “Perhaps we should have gone to Brighton after all.” We had chosen the Highlands as a place to holiday before Frank took up his appointment as a history professor at Oxford, on the grounds that Scotland had been somewhat less touched by the physical horrors of war than the rest of Britain, and was less susceptible to the frenetic postwar gaiety that infected more popular vacation spots.
And without discussing it, I think we both felt that it was a symbolic place to reestablish our marriage; we had been married and spent a two-day honeymoon in the Highlands, shortly before the outbreak of war seven years before. A peaceful refuge in which to rediscover each other, we thought, not realizing that, while golf and fishing are Scotland’s most popular outdoor sports, gossip is the most popular indoor sport. And when it rains as much as it does in Scotland, people spend a lot of time indoors.
“Where are you going?” I asked, as Frank swung his feet out of bed.
“I’d hate the dear old thing to be disappointed in us,” he answered. Sitting up on the side of the ancient bed, he bounced gently up and down, creating a piercing rhythmic squeak. The Hoovering in the hall stopped abruptly. After a minute or two of bouncing, he gave a loud, theatrical groan and collapsed backward with a twang of protesting springs. I giggled helplessly into a pillow, so as not to disturb the breathless silence outside.
Frank waggled his eyebrows at me. “You’re supposed to moan ecstatically, not giggle,” he admonished in a whisper. “She’ll think I’m not a good lover.”
“You’ll have to keep it up for longer than that, if you expect ecstatic moans,” I answered. “Two minutes doesn’t deserve any more than a giggle.”
“Inconsiderate little wench. I came here for a rest, remember?”
“Lazybones. You’ll never manage the next branch on your family tree unless you show a bit more industry than that.”
Frank’s passion for genealogy was yet another reason for choosing the Highlands. According to one of the filthy scraps of paper he lugged to and fro, some tiresome ancestor of his had had something to do with something or other in this region back in the middle of the eighteenth—or was it seventeenth?—century.
“If I end as a childless stub on my family tree, it will undoubtedly be the fault of our untiring hostess out there. After all, we’ve been married almost eight years. Little Frank Jr. will be quite legitimate without being conceived in the presence of a witness.”
“If he’s conceived at all,” I said pessimistically. We had been disappointed yet again the week before leaving for our Highland retreat.
“With all this bracing fresh air and healthy diet? How could we help but manage here?” Dinner the night before had been herring, fried. Lunch had been herring, pickled. And the pungent scent now wafting up the stairwell strongly intimated that breakfast was to be herring, kippered.
“Unless you’re contemplating an encore performance for the edification of Mrs. Baird,” I suggested, “you’d better get dressed. Aren’t you meeting that parson at ten?” The Rev. Dr. Reginald Wakefield, vicar of the local parish, was to provide some rivetingly fascinating baptismal registers for Frank’s inspection, not to mention the glittering prospect that he might have unearthed some moldering army despatches or somesuch that mentioned the notorious ancestor.
“What’s the name of that great-great-great-great-grandfather of yours again?” I asked. “The one that mucked about here during one of the Risings? I can’t remember if it was Willy or Walter.”
“Actually, it was Jonathan.” Frank took my complete disinterest in family history placidly, but remained always on guard, ready to seize the slightest expression of inquisitiveness as an excuse for telling me all facts known to date about the early Randalls and their connections. His eyes assumed the fervid gleam of the fanatic lecturer as he buttoned his shirt.
“Jonathan Wolverton Randall—Wolverton for his mother’s uncle, a minor knight from Sussex. He was, however, known by the rather dashing nickname of ‘Black Jack,’ something he acquired in the army, probably during the time he was stationed here.” I flopped facedown on the bed and affected to snore. Ignoring me, Frank went on with his scholarly exegesis.
“He bought his commission in the mid-thirties—1730s, that is—and served as a captain of dragoons. According to those old letters Cousin May sent me, he did quite well in the army. Good choice for a second son, you know; his younger brother followed tradition as well by becoming a curate, but I haven’t found out much about him yet. Anyway, Jack Randall was highly commended by the Duke of Sandringham for his activities before and during the ’45—the second—Jacobite Rising, you know,” he amplified for the benefit of the ignorant amongst his audience, namely me. “You know, Bonnie Prince Charlie and that lot?”
“I’m not entirely sure the Scots realize they lost that one,” I interrupted, sitting up and trying to subdue my hair. “I distinctly heard the barman at that pub last night refer to us as Sassenachs.”
“Well, why not?” said Frank equably. “It only means ‘Englishman,’ after all, or at worst, ‘outlander,’ and we’re all of that.”
“I know what it means. It was the tone I objected to.”
Frank searched through the bureau drawer for a belt. “He was just annoyed because I told him the ale was weak. I told him the true Highland brew requires an old boot to be added to the vat, and the final product to be strained through a well-worn undergarment.”
“Ah, that accounts for the amount of the bill.”
“Well, I phrased it a little more tactfully than that, but only because the Gaelic language hasn’t got a specific word for drawers.”
I reached for a pair of my own, intrigued. “Why not? Did the ancient Gaels not wear undergarments?”
Frank leered. “You’ve never heard that old song about what a Scotsman wears beneath his kilts?”
“Presumably not gents’ knee-length step-ins,” I said dryly. “Perhaps I’ll go out in search of a local kilt-wearer whilst you’re cavorting with vicars and ask him.”
“Well, do try not to get arrested, Claire. The dean of St. Giles College wouldn’t like it at all.”
* * *
In the event, there were no kilt-wearers loitering about the town square or patronizing the shops that surrounded it. There were a number of other people there, though, mostly housewives of the Mrs. Baird type, doing their daily shopping. They were garrulous and gossipy, and their solid, print-clad presences filled the shops with a cozy warmth; a buttress against the cold mist of the morning outdoors.
With as yet no house of my own to keep, I had little that needed buying, but enjoyed myself in browsing among the newly replenished shelves, for the pure joy of seeing lots of things for sale again. It had been a long time of rationing, of doing without the simple things like soap and eggs, and even longer without the minor luxuries of life, like L’Heure Bleu cologne.
