Chapter 11: Conversations With a Lawyer
In this chapter, Claire leaves Castle Leoch and hits the road with Dougal's merry band of tax collectors slash incipient Jacobites.
The thought that I would never again see that grim pile of stone or its inhabitants gave me an odd feeling of regret.
I find myself needing to explain Claire's attitude toward Castle Leoch and her escape therefrom. We've been talking about her ambivalence about leaving for several chapters now, long enough that it's not a blip. This is a big part of her character. On one hand, you could read it as indifference toward her old life. It has been a very, very long time since she mentioned Frank. She certainly does not seem to be pining — her desire to get home is sort of vague, not desperate or focused.
But you could also read it as a strong inclination toward living in the moment. This is a character who has lived rootlessly all her life, never having a home for her vase and all that. She doesn't seem to be overly attached to possessions or places, and is capable of making a life for herself wherever she happens to be. I'm not sure if this is part of her natural temperament or if it's a characteristic honed by long practice during a nomadic childhood and the dislocation of World War II. Perhaps both. I have a friend who travels the world with only a camera and whatever he can fit in his backpack, picking up fantastical jobs like tracking snow leopards in Afghanistan or accompanying volunteer doctors to remote villages in Tibet. Claire Beauchamp reminds me of him — unusually independent, gregarious, able to get along wherever she is and with whomever she encounters. She might survive the next fifty years serving tea and dusting knicknacks in an Oxford parlor, but she'd rather be staunching wounds in a perpetual state of emergency.
On the road, Claire gets to talking with Ned Gowan, the chapter's titular lawyer. He explains the process of gathering Colum MacKenzie's rent, which will be paid in small coins, bags of grain, and livestock. Their party of 20ish will roam the countryside, sleeping rough and transacting the laird's business.
We get to know a bit about Ned, who was once a lawyer:
"As a young man, I had a small practice in Edinburgh. with lace curtains in the window, and a shiny brass plate by the door, with my name inscribed upon it. But I grew rather tired of making wills and drawing up conveyances, and seeing the same faces in the street, day after day. So I left," he said simply.
This is an account of the future that awaits Claire in 1945. Comfortable, respectable, and crushingly boring. Could Claire ever really be happy collecting botanical specimens with theoretical medicinal uses, but never treating patients? If she were trapped behind her own lace curtains, would she just get up one day and walk away, as Ned did?
We also learn a bit about Jacob MacKenzie, Jamie's grandfather. Ned describes him as "a wicked, red auld rascal" who robbed Ned at gunpoint and kept him on for legal advice. There is some suggestion that Jacob only became laird because of some machinations on Ned's part. Ned also helped smooth over the problems of Colum's succession by engineering Colum and Dougal's joint command.
It's also probably important to note the bit said in passing about "all the fuss about his sister's marriage." This is presumably the marriage of Jamie's parents. Ned says that "Dougal did not acquit himself so verra weel over that affair," so I imagine we'll hear more later.
"Ye should really be armed yourself, m'dear," he said in a tone of mild reproof.
Thank you, Ned. Everybody else is armed to the teeth — Claire really does need a knife at the very least.
We passed the rest of the day in pleasant conversation, wandering among his reminisces of the dear departed days when men were men, and the pernicious weed of civilization was less rampant upon the bonny wild face of the Highlands.
It's good to see some self-awareness from the author.
The party wanders around for a few days, collecting rents. Claire seems content enough, spending her time chatting with Ned and wondering why Dougal brought Jamie along.
It was a week after we had set out, in a village with an unpronounceable name, that I found out the real reason why Dougal had wanted Jamie.
Answer: To show off his scarred back as an exhibition of English cruelty, calculated to stir up support for the Stuart uprising. If I recall correctly, Frank and Rev. Wakefield believed that Black Jack Randall was supposed to be stirring up Jacobite sentiments in the Highlands. Was his flogging of Jamie part of a detailed plot? Or just coincidence?
In any case, Jamie seems not to have been in on Dougal's plan. When Dougal rips his shirt off, Jamie is "taken completely by surprise" and leaves in a huff.
The performance is effective. Ned and Dougal collect a few coins for Bonnie Prince Charlie. Claire can't quite control her Englishness, defining Jacobites as "supporters of the Young Pretender against the lawful occupant of the throne of England, George II."
By an absurd coincidence, I am typing this at my kitchen table while my preschooler is upstairs singing "Will ye no come back again?" at the top of her lungs. We are not Scottish. I have never been to Scotland and have no particular interest in Scottish history or politics. However, both my father and father-in-law are folk musicians. They sing to the kids and my daughter's favorite songs are the "Charlie songs." We spent some time with the family recently and, as a consequence, she's sounded like a tiny Jacobite for several weeks. My son, on the other hand, has taught all his little toddler friends to sing "Wild Rover." Luckily, toddlers teaching lyrics to other toddlers is a terrible game of telephone and none of the other parents at daycare have realized that their babies are singing, "I spent all my money on whisky and beer." It could be worse — my youngest brother was very attached to "Whisky in the Jar" when he was a preschooler, and my sister was quite bloodthirsty, preferring "O'Donnell Abu." My brother-in-law loved "Barrett's Privateers" and would just yell "God damn them all!" whenever he felt the urge. I had a good head for lyrics and liked to show off by always taking songs five verses further than they needed to go. This skill is not widely useful, but has served me surprisingly well at various points in my life. I once got a date in high school after demonstrating my ability to sing "Rocky Road to Dublin" with both speed and accuracy (the boy was a Dropkick Murphys fan), and I remember teaching Spouse some lesser-known verses to "Star of the County Down" and "Roddy McCorley" back when we were first dating. All this has very little to do with Outlander, but it seemed important to note that I have an evocative (if somewhat ridiculous) soundtrack for writing this recap (she's on to "Johnny Cope" now).
Question: If Dougal thinks Claire is a spy, why is he letting her sit in on his little fundraiser? She may not speak Gaelic, but, as she says,
"I've the sense I was born with, and two ears in good working order. And whatever 'King George's health' may be in Gaelic, I doubt very much that it sounds like 'Bragh Stuart.'"
As they wander about, Claire has some time to reflect on the mystery of time travel. In particular, she wonders whether the circles of standing stones were erected to mark places where strange and magical things happened. If so, that might mean that Craigh na Dun is just one of many "gates" through time. That can't be all there is to it — maybe only certain people can travel? At certain times? It was Beltane when Claire traveled, so that makes sense. And can one travel to the future? Probably, if the legends of people returning are true. But can you travel further forward than your own life? That is, it might be possible to travel backward in time and forward to your own time, but is it possible to go forward initially? And how many travelers are there, hiding among us at any given time? I can only imagine that there will be answers to some of these questions in future books.
In the midst of her musings, Claire overhears a fight between Jamie and Dougal over the matter of using Jamie as Exhibit A to raise money for the Stuart cause. Jamie objects, Dougal sneers. They kindly decide to hold this conversation in English so that both Claire and the reader can understand them.
Question: Has this book been published in Gaelic? That would change the dynamic, I imagine.
Claire goes out to talk with Jamie, who is very upset.
"Hit something," I advised. "You'll feel better for it."
This seems unlikely. Like the 20-something soldier who can't go five pages without being shot/stabbed/whipped/punched never thought of hitting anything out of frustration before this random lady suggested it? Also, punching a tree must hurt. I have, on occasion, after a particularly stressful bedtime whine-a-thon, gone into my backyard and beaten hell out of a tree with bamboo canes, but never my own fists. The bamboo canes shatter in a very satisfying manner.
After Jamie's tree-punching, we learn that he is left-handed. I did not pay enough attention in the show to notice whether Sam Heughan portrays this accurately, but after Maisie Williams learned to fight left-handed like Arya, I expect nothing left from my premium cable actors. We also get, "I use a sword well enough in either hand," which I can only hope is setting us up for a Princess Bride reference at some later point.
Jamie explains some of the basics of fighting with bladed weapons to Claire, who probably will not be fighting with a broadsword anytime soon.
The seam of his shirt had been mended neatly, I saw, if without artistry. Even a rip through the fabric had been catch-stitched together.
I wish the show had found a way to draw our attention to Jamie's sewing skills.
Claire knows that Dougal will rip the shirt again, though, and so does Jamie.
"And you'll let him do it? Let him use you that way?"
I'm not going to pretend that this early-1990s romance novel is a great work in the field of gender studies. But an exploration of consent is clearly a major theme and I am interested in the amount of attention paid to violations of Jamie's person and privacy. There's plenty of rape in this book without needing Jamie's scars to serve as an analogy, but doing so allows Gabaldon to ponder the continuing trauma of victims who have their assaults dragged out in a public forum, be it a court or a tavern. When some asshole bystander says, "Christ, I'd die in my blood before I let a whey-faced Sassenach to use me so," I think of people I know who have decided not to report sexual assaults because they don't want the casual judgment of cruel spectators. It's good to see a fantasy novel address the long tail of trauma.
It is not surprising that Jamie eventually hits someone during one of Dougal's speeches. He didn't even need Claire to tell him to do it. No deaths, though, so the body count remains steady.
"You're black and blue - again. Why do you do such things? What in God's name do you think you're made of? Iron?"
Make up your mind, Claire. Five minutes ago you were telling him that hitting something would make him feel better.
As usual, Jamie likes to chat about his family while Claire fixes up his scrapes. This time, it's his father.
Things we learn about Jamie's father:
- he is dead
- he was a farmer
- he bred horses
- he taught Jamie to fight at age 9-10
"He said, 'If you're sizeable, half the men ye meet will fear ye, and the other half will want to try ye. Knock one down,' he said, 'and the rest will let ye be. But learn to do it fast and clean, or you'll be fightin' all your life.' So he's take me to the barn an knock me into the straw until I learned to hit back."
In a better world, this would be setting up a fight between Jamie and Brienne of Tarth, who heard the opposite advice from Ser Goodwin.
He suddenly seemed very young, and I wondered just how old he was. I was about to ask when a raspy cough from behind announced a visitor to the shed.
Claire's doing some quick half-plus-seven math here.
Murtagh was one of those men who always looked a bit startled to find that women had voices, but he nodded politely enough.
I do like her, though. Silliness aside, I will keep on reading a book written from this perspective.
The chapter ends with a note of mystery as Jamie and Murtagh plan some sort of secret rendezvous, perhaps involving Horrocks. Having been spoiled by the show, I am not all that interested. If the show chronology matches the book (and it has been remarkably faithful so far), we are getting near to the sexy bits of this novel and I am tempted to just skip ahead.
Body Count:
Jamie: 3 + assorted redcoats