Chapter 20: Deserted Glades

In this chapter, Action Claire, engage!

Two days after the raid, we turned again to the north.

They are getting closer to Jamie's meeting with Horrocks. Hugh Munro is hanging around and leaves a wedding gift for Claire: a metaphor!

Munro wraps the dragonfly-in-amber in a bit of Latin love poetry that makes Jamie blush as he translates it:

Then let amorous kisses dwell

On our lips, begin and tell

A Thousand and a Hundred score

A Hundred, and a Thousand more.

I know I've gone on record as anti-romance, but I find this both sweet and believable. People do quote love poems when they give wedding gifts. And it is appropriate to blush while reading them out loud. So I'm on Jamie's side here and could do without Claire's fortune cookie comment (though I appreciate her dedication to keeping our feet firmly on the ground).

Jamie is a bit nervous about the meeting with Horrocks, but takes comfort in the presence of his kinsmen. Claire does, too, until this:

"I don't suppose Dougal would take the opportunity to shoot you, at least."

"He did shoot me," Jamie said cheerfully, buttoning his shirt. "You should know, ye dressed the wound."

There follows a convoluted discussion of MacKenzie family politics that boils down to this: Dougal and Colum have various reasons for wanting Jamie dead (mostly to secure Hamish's claim to clan leadership) and various reasons for wanting to keep him close (mostly to retain access to his strategically important estate). Dougal sort of wants Jamie dead, but doesn't want it to be a public thing, so he had Rupert shoot him during the skirmish with the English way back in chapter 2 or 3. If you want more detail than that, you can just read it yourself, because I can't be bothered.

Also of importance:

"That's right," he said, nodding at me with a lopsided grin. The morning sun lit his hair with flames of gold and copper. "If I'm killed now, Sassenach, Lallybroch is yours."

It's a lovely morning and Claire and Jamie decide to ditch the others for a romp in the titular deserted glade. The men are undeceived by their pretense of gathering water, but nobody cares, so off they go.

Feeling absurdly self-conscious after that fierce and primitive encounter on the rock, I had been shy about letting him make love to me near the camp, and the woods were too thick to safely move very far from the campsite. Both of us were feeling the mild and pleasant strain of abstinence, and now, safely removed from curious eyes and ears, we came together with an impact that made my lips and fingers tingle with a rush of blood.

Wait a minute. *scrolling back* This chapter begins, "Two days after the raid . . ." Two days. There is maybe one more night in there. Call it three days. That is not abstinence, Claire. That is a refractory period. How are you two not headlining the TV Tropes page on Insatiable Newlyweds?

Then, disaster.

Two redcoat deserters catch them unawares, holding Jamie at musketpoint while getting ready to rape Claire. Is there some sort of training in the British army where they learn to rape on sight? The majority of British soldiers with speaking parts have attempted to rape Claire within a minute of encountering her.

Pressing my skirts down, I became aware of a hard object in the right-hand pocket. The dagger Jamie had given me. Could I bring myself to use it? Yes, I decided, looking at Harry's pimpled, leering face, I definitely could.

Claire tries to signal to Jamie that she's got this, though he is still, understandably, keyed up. Harry slaps Claire and assaults her. In the TV show, it was unclear just how far the attempted rape goes, but it really doesn't matter. Far enough. 

Claire puts her recent training to good use and stabs the rapist in the back. Unfortunately, she hits a rib, but rallies admirably.

Luckily, my legs were free of the entangling skirts. I wrapped them tightly around Harry's sweating hips, holding him down for the precious seconds I needed for another try. I stabbed again, with a desperate strength, and this time found the spot.

Claire has killed someone with her own hands, but she doesn't spend much time fretting over the fact. She is too shaken up by the rape.

Jamie slits the other soldier's throat and rushes to Claire.

Jamie knelt beside me, pulling me out from under the corpse.

Yikes.

They are both in bad shape, trembling, silent, and shocked. Unable to speak, they reassure one another in the language they share: sex.

I'm not a counselor of any sort. To me, having sex with your husband mere minutes after being sexually assaulted sounds like it could go terribly wrong, but I am not here to judge other people's reactions to trauma. Both Claire and Jamie seem to find some consolation in it. In Claire's description they were,

driven by a compulsion I didn't understand, but knew we must obey, or be lost to each other forever. It was not an act of love, but one of necessity, as though we knew that left alone, neither of us could stand. Our only strength lay in fusion, drowning the memories of death and near-rape in the flooding of the senses.

Do we need more examples of these characters' faith in physical experience over rational thought?  

Jamie starts babbling apologies and Claire tries to soothe him, but can't make much headway.

Shock, too, I thought fuzzily. Funny how it takes some people in talk. Others just shake quietly. Like me. I pressed his mouth against my shoulder to quiet him.

Ugh. This brings up some nasty memories. I'm one of those people who shakes uncontrollably for hours after surgery, even wrapped in multiple warming blankets. It is a very unpleasant sensation, even when it's not connected to a terrible trauma.

Dougal shows up and starts lecturing them, which sends Claire into hysterics.

Except for a lingering tendency to laugh hysterically over nothing, I seemed to suffer no ill effects from our encounter with the deserters, though I became very cautious about leaving the campsite.

It's important that Claire is feeling both fragile and vulnerable after her "near rape." She has been happily cocooned with Jamie for much of the last few chapters, but now she is reminded that she is in a dangerous place and even her best protection is fallible. She is on edge, "starting nervously at sounds in the wood" and feeling "somewhat fearful."

And what does Jamie do? Leaves her alone in the woods! Good job reading the situation here, bro.

There is some blather about it being too dangerous to take Claire along to Jamie's meeting with Horrocks, but Jamie is not picking up on Claire's current state of mind. He digs in his heels and reminds us that his expectations about wifely submission differ from Claire's:

"Did ye no promise to obey me?"

"If ye wilna do as I say, I shall tie ye to a tree until I come back."

"If you leave that copse before I come for ye, I'll tan your bare arse wi' my sword belt."

On the one hand, I am a 21st-century woman, so I aim a hearty "Fuck You" in Jamie's general direction. On the other, I am a reader, and I appreciate this reminder that, oh wait, the 18th century is a dangerous, confusing place inhabited by people who do not believe that women are autonomous adults with the rights and responsibilities of adults. And no matter how sweet Jamie is or how good he is in bed, staying with him means living in the 18th century with an 18th-century man. You've still got a few lifetimes to go before the anti-wife-beating movement gets going. Not, of course, that 1945 is going to be a feminist utopia. But there will at least be some moderate social stigma against beating a woman for disobedience.

It is in this moment, nervous, alone, with the threat of a beating hanging over her, that Claire realizes that she is near Craigh na Dun. And goes for it.

My stomach gave a sudden lurch as I thought of Jamie. God, how could I do it? Leave him without a word of explanation or apology? Disappear without a trace, after what he had done for me?

This is important, too. Claire does not actually love Jamie at this point. She feels bad about betraying him, but the pang she feels is on his account, not her own. At least, that's what the character tells us. This is undercut somewhat by a sudden blaze of jealousy at the thought of Jamie going back to Laoghaire, but even that is not enough to stop her. Claire is going home.

I hoped Jamie would forget me. I knew that I would never be able to forget him. But for now, I must put him out of my mind, or I wouldn't be able to concentrate on the job at hand, which was tricky enough.

What would happen if Claire actually got back to 1945 at this point? She has been gone for about two months. Long enough that she would have to come up with some explanation, but probably not long enough for Frank to have given up on her. If she got back and resumed her old life, would she regret it? I tend to think that the tedium of a faculty wife's life would be reassuring at first, though probably stifling in the long run for a character who thrived as a combat nurse and adapted quickly to her time travel adventure.

And what about Frank? After only two months,their relationship would probably have a chance. Or, at least, as much of a chance as it would have had after the war. Claire has been with Jamie for a month. She's talked about the passionate, but brief, flings she observed during the war — maybe this would be the same for her. Something to remember fondly, but not a crushing loss.

In any case, this is a situation where Claire's rational mind is in control. She's remembering her plan and deciding to put it into action. She's consciously setting aside "senseless reflections" and making deliberate choices. Even when she slips into a deep pool and starts to drown, she relies on rational thought to make a lifesaving plan and execute it. 

Would this episode end in a body-over-mind demurral at the last moment? Alas, we will never know.

Coughing and spluttering, I groped blindly with my free hand, too glad of rescue to regret the interruption of my escape attempt. Glad, at least until, wiping the hair out of my eyes, I looked up into the beefy, anxious Lancashire face of young Corporal Hawkins.

Well, shit.

Body Count:

Jamie: 4 + assorted redcoats + two years as mercenary in France

Claire: 1