A Breath of Snow and Ashes

On July 4, 1776, Claire sits with Mandy in an inn, looking out over the harbor where ominous ocean liners are anchored. Jamie and Ian burst in, in high spirits after having a scuffle with the Wilmington Chowder and March Society, of which Forbes is a member. They’ve stolen a small Chrysoberyl gem from him; Ian has it in his nostril for safekeeping. The gem gets stuck, and Jamie has the foresight to give Ian a snuff box rather than have Claire extract it with forceps. In her sleep, Mandy reaches for the gem when it’s held near her cradle, a good sign that she can hear the stone sing and will be able to time travel.

The date is July 9, 1776. Roger and Brianna stand on the coast where Bonnet will be executed. They see Lord John speaking with a young British soldier who looks exactly like Jamie. Lord John introduces him as his son, William, the ninth Earl of Ellesmere.

William is indeed Jamie’s son, sired when Claire was gone (time traveled). Roger goes to fetch Jamie and Claire speaks to Lord John privately. Lord John reveals that Jamie shot the eighth Earl of Ellesmere the day William was born because the Earl found out that Jamie was the father and was going to throw William out the window. His mother, Geneva Dunsany, died shortly after the birth of a natural hemorrhage. Lord John married Geneva’s sister, Isobel, solely because he wanted to care for William.

To Lord John’s dismay, Brianna wishes to tell William the identity of his real father. To comfort Lord John, she reveals that she never stopped loving her first father, who she thought was her birth father for most of her life.

She tells him they will all be leaving, never to return, and this is her only chance to tell her brother about Jamie and the rest of his family.

Alongside a crowd of others, on July 10, 1776, Roger and Brianna watch as Bonnet’s sentence is carried out. He’s tied to a mast during low tide to slowly drown as the water rises. Neither one of them can bear to watch Bonnet slowly die. Roger offers to kill him for her, as Jamie killed the bandits for Claire, but Brianna reminds him that he’s taken a vow, even though he didn’t get officially ordained as a minister. He takes Claire out in a rowboat, and Brianna shoots Bonnet in the head, telling him in Gaelic to go with God.

Jamie visits Lord John in a turret above where Brianna is meeting William again and introducing him to her children. Lord John is exhilarated to be in Jamie’s presence again, as he’s still in love with him. Jamie has forbidden Brianna to tell William about him. The price of her promise is getting to see William one last time. Lord John is relieved that Jamie’s wishes are the same as his in the matter.

Jamie asks Lord John to get Jamie a precious gemstone. He reminds Lord John of the sapphire he gave him years ago, musing that Lord John likely doesn’t have it anymore. Lord John does have it; it’s been in his pocket for the last 25 years. Rather than giving Jamie back his sapphire, Lord John promptly removes the sapphire ring his first lover had given him and gives it to Jamie, to his astonishment and gratitude. They watch William and Brianna speak in the bittersweet scene below their window.

In September 1776, back at Fraser’s Ridge, Aiden and Jem run up to Roger as he’s laying Brianna’s clay water pipes. Aiden boasts of seeing Malva’s ghost wandering through the woods. Jem gets increasingly terrified, despite Roger telling them Malva is in heaven. Their departure impending, Roger worries about how their community will fare in their absence. Bobby arrives unexpectedly. He means to stay on the Ridge and hopes to find a wife. Roger invites him to dinner, meaning to introduce him to Mrs. McCallum, despite his own twinge of jealousy.

Jamie and Claire discuss what Jamie could do for employment in the future America to which they’re traveling. He wants to be a farmer, but Claire gently leads him toward city life. He’s confused when she says he won’t have to fight anymore, despite there being terrible wars. That night, he wakes her to make love. After, he tells her how lonely he’d be without her but indicates he can’t live in modern times by handing her a gem, pulsing with heat and energy. She throws it out the window, then tells him she loves him, too, indicating that she’ll stay in the 18th century with her husband.

Walking the same pattern Donner taught them, Brianna and Mandy move through the stones and are gone, in a thunderous crack that Claire feels deep in her mind and heart; it almost makes her faint. When it’s Roger’s turn, he tells Jem that he doesn’t have to go; he can stay here with Claire and Jamie. If he does so, he’ll probably never see his parents again. Jem goes with Roger and they disappear in the same way. Claire loses consciousness. 

Claire awakens in the night to find Jamie staring out the window. He’s dreamed of Brianna and Roger taking the kids to a home with big windows and bowl-like lamps. Claire knows this is the home Roger grew up in. Fiona, the housekeeper, welcomes them in, and Jem asks to use the telephone to call his grandpa.

As she does every week, Claire creates a bouquet in offering for Malva and takes it to her grave. To her surprise, Allan is there, with a loaded pistol. She sits with him, taking the pistol out of his reach. He tells her how much he loved Malva and that they were taken to see their mother’s execution when he was 10 and Malva was two: “They held her wee head and made her watch, and Auntie Darla saying in her ear that this was what happened to witches, and pinching her legs ’til she shrieked” (1406).

Allan reveals that he was in love with Malva and serially raped her, violently at times, since she was a child. When she became pregnant with his baby, she took as many lovers as she could so that one of them might claim and care for them. It was Allan’s idea to pin it on Jamie, hoping for a payout so they could leave together and start a life somewhere where no one knew them. He killed Malva because she was going to admit everything out of love for Claire. Claire empties the gun and forbids Allan from killing himself, which would make Christie’s sacrifice moot. Ian suddenly shoots Allan in the back with an arrow, disposing of him on Malva’s grave.

Claire makes a house call to old Grannie Abernathy, née Fraser, to treat a scraped leg, and she returns with a bag of turnips. Haunted by the memory of Malva’s death, she’s barely been able to garden. Much of their grain has also gone to waste without Brianna’s and Roger’s help. Returning to the Big House, Claire finds Donner and a group of young men rifling through the house, breaking everything, and looking for the gems. Claire insists she doesn’t have any more, but Donner doesn’t believe her. He’s sick, tattered, and desperate to leave this time period.

Jamie finally arrives just as one of the thugs knocks over the ether in the surgery. Arch and Mrs. Bug arrive. Two more of Donner’s gang appear holding a solid gold ingot they found in Mrs. Bug’s purse. Trying to open a window, Claire finds herself face to face with Goose. Ian bursts in with Light. The ether begins to affect everyone; all feel as though they are fighting in slow motion. Jamie manages to stab Donner in the stomach. Ian lights a match, and the ether catches fire. Jamie drags Claire outside, and everyone escapes except for Donner and his crew. Scotchee appears in the yard. Goose throws things from the upstairs bedroom window as the house burns slowly. They laugh about the fated newspaper article getting so many facts wrong.

Claire finds out Jamie and Ian had run into Goose, Light, and Scotchee while hunting; she invites them back for supper. They all spend the night in Brianna’s and Roger’s old cabin. Claire sadly watches the Big House burn to ashes.

Jamie interrogates Arch about the golden ingot. It was part of Jocasta’s stolen horde. The gold came from France and was divided among the three Scottish heads in America. Jocasta kept Cameron’s share after his death, and Arch thought it better in the hands of the people—specifically, himself and Mrs. Bug. Every time they went to River Run, he took one ingot. Everyone was so afraid of Cameron’s ghost that they stayed away from his coffin. Arch eventually got everything. Later, Mrs. Bug killed Lionel because he’d discovered the stolen ingot.

Arch details the oaths he’s made to various leaders and kings and how he can’t break any of them. Jamie releases Arch from his oath to Jamie himself, and bids Arch begone. Arch leaves without a word, fetching Mrs. Bug to depart from the Ridge forever. Jamie and Claire reflect on the resilience of the Scottish people and the oaths they’ve taken to fighting for survival, and for good. Watching their house smolder, they reaffirm their commitment to such oaths. They will go to Scotland for Jamie’s printing press, Jamie asserts. Then they’ll come back to continue their fight.

Back in her own time, Brianna has some builders looking at rafters in her house. Jem and Mandy are fighting, interrupting their work. Fiona has left for the day, and her children are in Brianna’s care, too. The builders remark on the age of the house, which was built in 1720, and Brianna defends the wood’s worn old marks of historic conflict.

Roger arrives home with a package: an old wooden box with Jem’s full name on it. The attached note says it comes from Edinburgh and must be held for the person whose name is on the box. Brianna splits open the beeswax seal to find a small wooden snake (carved by Roger many years ago and rescued from the Big House after it burned) and bundles of letters from Claire, from 1776 on.

Amos Crupp, editor of the fated newspaper, receives a small story about a fire and the deaths of the Frasers. He needs a little space filler since General Washington’s speech was so brief, so he decides to print it, even though the capital D key has been chewed up by the dog. He changes the date from December to January.