 Outlandish Observations
Here are my reactions to Episode 805 of the OUTLANDER TV series, titled "Send for the Devil".
*** SPOILER WARNING!! ***
There are SPOILERS below! If you don't want to know yet, stop reading now.
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The episode opens with Jamie and Claire at the beehive, where Claire has just finished harvesting some honey. This scene is not in the book.
Jamie watches Buck MacKenzie playing with Fanny, Jem, and Mandy in the distance. "He promised to fight wi' me at Kings Mountain," he says. That's good! I have been wondering what Buck's role in the story is going to be, now that he's living on Fraser's Ridge, and this episode goes a long way toward answering my questions.
And speaking of Buck, I loved this exchange:
Claire: "Did you tell him that we killed his father?"
Jamie: "No. Nor did I tell him you killed his mother."
Claire: "Good! Let's keep that to ourselves, shall we?"
Suddenly Buck hears a twig snap in the woods nearby. He orders the children to go back to the house. He and Jamie approach the woods with their guns trained on the intruder. The man calls out, "Don't shoot!" It turns out to be Aaron Whitaker, the free black man whose wife, Susannah, had a very difficult childbirth in Episode 803.
"You know a man named Cunningham, Mr. Fraser? The captain? He's coming for you."
The "title card" for this episode shows a drummer in Continental Army uniform. Very appropriate!
In the next scene, Aaron Whitaker tells Jamie and Buck the story of what he'd seen. He encountered some Loyalists who "let it be known that this Cunningham would soon be in charge of Fraser's Ridge." The rest of what he says is based on this passage from BEES:
"There’s a redcoat officer named Ferguson, set to go to and fro in the mountains, raising Loyalist militias and arresting rebels, hangin’ men and burning houses. Cunningham’s wrote Ferguson a letter, naming your name and saying he ought to come here with his troops, ’cuz you a king beaver ’mongst the rebels and your pelt would be worth the trouble to take it.”
[....]
"The men I talked to say he means to arrest you himself and take you to Ferguson—so’s Ferguson can hang you for show, I mean. They say”—he looked at his hands and folded down the fingers, counting—“eight days from yesterday. Cunningham’s waitin’ on a fellow name of Partland, who’s comin’ from Ninety-Six with some more men.”
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 107, "Away in a Manger". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
Jamie thanks Aaron for the warning, but Aaron says it's his way of repaying them for Claire's help in delivering his wife's twin babies.
In case you're wondering, yes, there really is a place called Ninety-Six in South Carolina, site of a battle in the Southern Campaign later in the Revolutionary War.
In the next scene, we're in Lord John's house in Savannah, where Brianna is painting the portrait of Amaranthus and her baby son, Trevor. She's a very good portrait painter!
Amaranthus leaves to feed the baby, and William comes in to keep Bree company while she continues painting. Bree says the painting helps to keep her mind off the sounds of cannon fire in the distance.
I really enjoyed the conversation between Bree and William about Jamie, and that shared experience of finding out that they'd been lied to all their lives about who their biological father really was. I've been hoping for a long time that we'll see a scene like this in the books, but it hasn't happened yet. This scene is just terrific, very much as I imagined the two of them talking about it.
"Everyone had lied to me all my life," Bree says, "including my mother. and I just lost sense of who I was."
William stares at her in shock, realizing that she does understand exactly how he felt. "How did you overcome it?"
"I got to know our father."
William isn't ready for that yet, but Bree has given him a lot to think about.
Back on Fraser's Ridge, Jamie, Claire, and Buck discuss Cunningham's likely next move. This scene isn't in the book.
"It'll be Lodge," Jamie says. "It's the perfect place for a surprise attack." The Freemasons don't allow weapons in Lodge meetings. Jamie says that Cunningham is a Mason of the 25th degree" who will take his oath seriously. Thanks to Aaron's warning, Jamie and his men will have the element of surprise.
There's just one problem: the Loyalists Aaron mentioned, coming from Ninety-Six. Jamie has to find a way to stop them.
"There's only one way I can see to stop it. I have to make a deal with the devil." Jamie sends Josiah Beardsley off with an urgent message, but we don't know where he's going or who the message is for.
The next scene, in which Roger writes a farewell letter to Bree just before the Battle of Savannah, comes straight from the book, and I thought it was really well done.
There was only the one thing to say, and he wrote, I’m sorry. But she deserved more, and slowly, he found his way.
I didn’t mean to be here, but I have the strongest feeling that here is where I should be. It wasn’t quite “Whom shall I send? Who shall go for us?”--but something close, and so was my answer.
God willing, I’ll see you soon. For now and for always, I am your husband and I love you.
Roger
The last few words were ghosts on the scrap of rough, rain-spotted paper; the last of the ink. His name was no more than scratches, but he supposed that was all right; she’d know who’d written it.
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 92, "Like Water Spilled on the Ground, Which Cannot Be Gathered Up Again". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
While we hear his words in voiceover, we see Roger preparing for the battle, practicing with his borrowed sword, being issued a Continental Army uniform, and so on.
There's just enough time for a quick prayer:
Lord, help me do what You want me to do--but in the name of Christ Your son, let me live through it.
“Because if You don’t, You’ll have my wife to answer to,” he murmured, and touched the hilt of his borrowed sword.
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 92, "Like Water Spilled on the Ground, Which Cannot Be Gathered Up Again". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
Roger folds the letter carefully and puts it in the breast pocket of his coat, much as soldiers did in the Civil War, so that someone will find it if he should be killed. Just then he hears the drums start up, calling the men to battle.
In the next scene, Roger encounters a young black drummer boy. (I like the cockade the boy is wearing in his hat.) Roger sees how scared he is, and tries to reassure him, and the boy replies in French.
Roger asks him in French if he's ready, and the boy answers, "Je suis prêt," which (spelled a little differently) is the motto of Clan Fraser of Lovat! They head off to join the troops marching to battle.
Back in Lord John's house, Bree is clearly unnerved by the cannon fire in the distance. I'm sure she's having flashbacks of Alamance, and that agonizing wait for word of Roger. William comes in and confirms what she's thinking. "The battle has begun."
In the book, it's Lord John, not William, who fills Bree in on what the army is doing. William asks her where Roger is, and we can see her visibly fumbling for a plausible lie and failing to find one. "He's in the Continental camp," she says, seeming relieved to be able to tell someone about it.
And where is Lord John? "At headquarters, trying to recall what a Lieutenant Colonel is supposed to do. He's been retired for so long." This line isn't in the book, and it strikes me as a flimsy excuse to cover the fact that David Berry doesn't appear in this episode.
William hands her a wrapped parcel from Lord John, containing an American flag.
“If--and I do mean ‘in the extremely unlikely event’--the Americans do get in, hang this out a window, or tack it to the front door.”
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 91, "Besieged". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
The next scene shifts back to Roger's point of view. I thought the battle sequence was excellent! Roger's experience at the Battle of Savannah is one of my favorite parts of the book, and I thought they captured the essence of it very well. Roger starts out looking scared and uncertain what he should be doing, and then as he begins to tend the wounded and dying men, he seems to find his place in their midst.
He didn’t run; he couldn’t. He walked forward, slowly, sword flopping at his side, stopping where he found a man down. Some he could help, with a drink or a hand to press upon a wound while a friend tied a cloth around it. A word, a blessing where he could. Some were gone, and he laid a hand on them in farewell and commended their souls to God with a hasty prayer.
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 92, "Like Water Spilled on the Ground, Which Cannot Be Gathered Up Again". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
This is Roger's role in the battle. Not to fight (despite the sword he carries), but to care for them as a minister, as he does with the young private he finds dying on the field.
"You're not alone, Winslow. Can you hear me? You're not alone. God is with you. And I'm with you, too. I won't leave you."
Suddenly Roger looks up and sees the young drummer boy slumped against a tree, unconscious. He picks the boy up and carries him to the field hospital, where the surgeon he encounters is none other than Denzell Hunter, Rachel's brother, a Quaker doctor serving with the Continental Army.
I did wonder at first why Roger couldn't come up with a suitable Presbyterian prayer to use when comforting the injured boy, but then it occurred to me that this is exactly what happened in the book:
He groped for words, frantic. It was all gone. All the comforting words he’d gleaned, all his stock-in-trade...
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 92, "Like Water Spilled on the Ground, Which Cannot Be Gathered Up Again". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
I just love watching Richard Rankin through this whole sequence. He did an excellent job, very much as I imagined from the book.
As harrowing as that sequence was to watch, it's only the beginning of the battle. Roger runs back toward the fighting, and a cannon blast throws him backward.
As he starts to fall, we see a brief, unexpected glimpse of memory from his early childhood: the memory of falling like that, as his mother tossed him over the wall of the staircase in the Bethnal Green tube station, moments before it collapsed -- and a stranger's arms reached out to catch him. Roger describes this fragment of memory to Bree in FIERY CROSS:
“She let go my hand,” he said. The words came more easily now; the tightness in his throat and chest was gone. “She let go my hand ... and then she picked me up. That small woman--she picked me up, and threw me over the wall. Down into the crowd of people on the platform below. I was knocked mostly out by the fall, I think--but I remember the roar as the roof went. No one on the stair survived.”
(From THE FIERY CROSS by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 98, "Clever Lad". Copyright © 2001 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
If you want to know more, I highly recommend Diana Gabaldon's short story, "A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows", which tells the story of Roger's parents. Look here for more information.
In the next scene, we're back on Fraser's Ridge, as Jamie prepares for the confrontation he knows is coming at the Lodge meeting. Jamie turns to Claire, dressed in his kilt and looking like the fierce Highland warrior he's always been. Claire's line, "You'd scare the devil himself," comes straight from the book (BEES chapter 80), but the next part does not.
"Dinna fash, Claire. We have a plan."
"Plans fail. That's why they call them plans."
And then Jamie quotes a bit from Robert Burns: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley." But that line comes from a poem Burns wrote in 1785, six years from now! I can only conclude that Claire must have told Jamie about it years ago.
Jamie is determined to fight, but it's very dangerous, and his men could easily be outnumbered. Claire is, naturally, worried that he could be killed.
“Will it be today?” I blurted. Twice before, he’d left me on the edge of a battlefield, telling me that while the day might come that he and I would part--it wouldn’t be today. And both times, he’d been right.
He cupped my cheek in one hand and looked at me for a long moment, and I knew he was fixing me in his memory, as I had just done to him.
“I dinna think so,” he said at last, soberly. His hand fell away, my cheek suddenly cool where he’d touched it. “But I willna lie to ye, Claire; I think it will be an evil night.”
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 80, "Lodge Night". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
Jamie's Ardsmuir men are waiting for him outside the Lodge. They're easy to identify, as they're the ones who refer to him as "Mac Dubh". Captain Cunningham greets him politely enough, but the tension in the air is palpable.
“Worshipful Master,” he said.
“Captain,” Jamie replied, and his heart thumped hard in his ears as he bowed, because Cunningham was no card player and the truth was written in the narrowing of his eyes and the hardness of his mouth.
[....]
“Dèan ullachadh, mo charaidean,” he said casually to the men who stood with him. Stand ready.
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 80, "Lodge Night". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
Back in the house, Claire is in the surgery, preparing her instruments and making sure everything is ready for any casualties from the upcoming fight. Suddenly she sees Elspeth Cunningham approaching the house on foot.
The Lodge meeting begins just like the last one, with the usual rituals and business of the Lodge. One of the men has a dispute with his neighbor over a well. As they discuss the situation, notice a number of the men filing silently out of the building, obviously preparing for the fight that's about to happen.
Cunningham volunteers to help the man settle the dispute. "Tomorrow, noon, shall we say? I have no other plans." Remember what Jamie and Claire said about plans!
The next scene, between Claire and Elspeth Cunningham, comes straight from the book, and it was just as I imagined.
“We know everything,” I said, quite gently. “And Jamie knows that the captain doesn’t mean him immediate harm. He won’t kill your son.”
Unless he has to.
She looked up at me, a nerve twitching the corner of her mouth.
“Unless he has to? Let me offer you the same assurance, Mrs. Fraser.”
“Claire,” I said. “Please.” The surgery smelled of hickory smoke and healing herbs. “Do you know any good prayers suitable to the occasion?”
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 109, "De Profundis". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
Back in the Lodge, Cunningham is talking about loyalty. "[My son] was loyal unto death, as we all must be, or it is not loyalty." Jamie's response comes straight from the book, quoting the famous Declaration of Arbroath from the year 1320.
“I will say but one thing to ye all, a charaidean. And that is not my own, but a thing said by our forefathers, four hundred years ago.” A faint stir broke the sense of ice, and men shifted on their stools, drawing themselves up to hear. Glancing sideways, to see how matters lay.
It had been a long--a very long--time since he’d read the Declaration of Arbroath, but they weren’t words you’d forget.
“As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, that we are fighting...” He paused and looked Cunningham straight in the eyes. “...but for freedom--for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”
He didn’t wait for the deep rumble of response but turned on his heel and went out the door, as quick as he could, and broke into a run as soon as he was outside, knife in hand.
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 80, "Lodge Night". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
I loved that! Very powerful, just as it is in the book.
As Evan Lindsay recites the closing prayer of the Lodge meeting, Jamie slips quietly out the door. Cunningham looks up at the end of the prayer, notices Jamie is gone, and says, "Goddamn it!" He and his men run outside, but Jamie is nowhere in sight.
Just as in the book, Jamie had the foresight to hide a pistol under a rock nearby. He heads for the woods, where he summons Buck and Kezzie Beardsley, who have been watching for the men from Ninety-Six. No sign of them, or Josiah, as yet.
Jamie and his men list the names of the Loyalists -- including Hiram Crombie! That's a disappointment, as Hiram, in the books, definitely had Patriot sympathies, but I think it's understandable. He had evidently been working closely with Cunningham at the trading post for some time, so he may have abvorbed some of the man's Loyalist views. I was glad to see Hiram paying attention when Jamie quoted the Declaration of Arbroath, though. Maybe that will cause him to go back to the Patriot side? We'll see.
"Any man in these woods is a traitor to me," Jamie says.
Back at the house, Claire and Elspeth wait for news, listening to the sounds of an approaching thunderstorm. Elspeth is thinking about her grandson's prediction, that he'll see his father in seven years. Five years left now.
[Elspeth] tried to offer comfort, saying that Charles didn’t mean to kill Jamie, only to take him prisoner, and...
“And take him off to Patrick Ferguson to be hanged,” I finished, nastily. “For the sake of his own bloody advancement!”
“For the sake of his King and his honor as an officer of that King!” she snapped, glaring at me. “Your husband is a pardoned traitor and now he has forfeited the grace of that pardon! He has earned his own--” She realized what she was saying--what she plainly had been thinking for quite some time--and her mouth snapped shut like a trap.
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 80, "Lodge Night". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
But here we see Elspeth say it out loud, to Claire's face: "He has earned his own execution."
You can see from her reaction that she regrets those words instantly, knowing how much they will hurt Claire, but she doesn't apologize or take it back.
The fight at the trading post is not in the book. I found it riveting and suspenseful, if a little hard to follow in places because it's happening at night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, with only flashes of lightning to illuminate the area. The first man Jamie encounters is Hiram Crombie.
Crombie barely gets out a few words ("Mr. Fraser, I can explain--" he starts to say) before Jamie hits him with the pistol, knocking him unconscious. Jamie makes his way inside, and a moment later Cunningham appears. He tries to be conciliatory at first, putting his gun down and indicating his willingness to talk. But Jamie isn't interested in talking.
"Not much to talk about, save you leaving my land. On foot or in a box is up to you."
"You forget, Mr. Fraser, I have a box waiting for me. But not for five more years."
Cunningham suddenly pulls a knife and lunges at Jamie. In the course of the fight that follows, Cunningham slashes Jamie in the chest with the knife, then makes a serious attempt to strangle him. Jamie eventually manages to get to his feet, but Cunningham grabs the pistol.
"How did you know it was coming?" Cunningham asks.
"It's my ridge. I ken everything!" - Great line!
Cunningham makes it clear that he intends to kill Jamie. Suddenly we hear a gunshot, and Cunningham falls to the ground. Buck MacKenzie shot him from behind with a musket, saving Jamie's life.
The next scene is not in the book. We're back in Lord John's house, where William has come to see Bree, who is still worried sick over Roger's fate. There's been no word from him since the battle, and Bree is plainly done with waiting helplessly for news. She announces her intention to go to the Continental Army camp, and William at once agrees to go with her. They'll leave at first light the next day. In the book, the circumstances leading to Bree and William going to the Continental camp are quite different, but I think it works pretty well here, condensing things so as to keep the plot moving.
Back on Fraser's Ridge, Jamie and Buck have returned with Captain Cunningham on a stretcher, alive but badly injured. This scene comes mostly straight from the book, and I thought it was done very well.
The minute Elspeth hears that her son has been shot in the back, she reacts with fury, slapping Jamie across the face.
"Coward! He had no intention of killing you!"
"You can ask your son what his intentions were," Jamie says coldly.
But Elspeth's fury is soon forgotten in the urgency of her son's condition.
I glanced at his feet. One of them twitched and Elspeth gasped. She was stanching the blood from his arm, but at this stopped and bent over him.
“Move the other, Charles,” she said urgently.
“I am,” he whispered. His eyes were closed and water ran from his hair. I looked down the table. Neither foot was moving.
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 110, "Confused Noise and Garments Rolled in Blood". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
Claire says the ball entered "between L3 and L4". In a modern hospital, with modern medical care, perhaps he would eventually recover from an injury like that. Here, under these primitive conditions, I'm not so sure. Just thinking about the practical realities of caring for a man with a severe spinal cord injury under 18th-century conditions rather takes my breath away, though I'm sure these things happened back then.
And this is where Charles Cunningham learns a major lesson about what happens (in Diana Gabaldon's fictional world, at least) when you Make Assumptions: Just because you think you're immortal for the next few years doesn't (AT ALL) mean that horrific, potentially life-altering things can't happen to you!
Fanny reports that Jamie has a bad cut across his chest. All of Fanny and Claire's dialogue here comes verbatim from the book.
“He wants whisky; is that all right?”
“Make him stand up,” I said, reaching the waistband of the captain’s breeches. “If he can stand upright for thirty seconds, he can have whisky. If not, give him honey-water and make him lie down flat on the floor. No matter what he says.”
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 110, "Confused Noise and Garments Rolled in Blood". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
I had to laugh at the mental image of Fanny, approximately twelve or thirteen years old, physically forcing Jamie to do anything at all that he doesn't want to do. But I suppose Buck can help with that.
Watching Claire give Elspeth an honest assessment of her son's chances of recovery, I'm reminded that she must have had this sort of conversation with a patient's family hundreds of times. I think Cait gets her tone just right here. Matter-of-fact, but not without sympathy.
The next scene, with William and Amaranthus in the gazebo, is very close to the book. But there are a few additions, like this:
"I should like to see you in my beetle waistcoat again. There are a few species I had not -- touched on -- taxonomically."
William says he has been thinking about her suggestion that they should get married, and if they should have a son, William could give him his title.
“You needn’t marry me straight off, you know. We’d give it a go, and if the result is male, then you marry me, acknowledge the child, and—” She gave a flick of her hand in a silent “voilà.”
“I don’t believe I am having this conversation,” he said, shaking his head violently. “I really don’t. But for the sake of argument, just what the devil do you propose doing if the result, as you so casually put it, is female?”
“[If] the child were to be a girl, I should simply come back with the little darling (for I’m sure any child of yours would be adorable, William) and announce that a good friend of mine had died in childbed and that I had adopted her daughter, out of charity, of course, but also to give my darling Trevor a sister.”
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 46, "By the Dawn's Early Light". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
So Amaranthus isn't concerned about the possibility of getting pregnant out of wedlock. For the first time, we see her conniving side. She appears to be after his money, title, or both, and I don't trust her at all.
William's actions here, putting his hand up her skirts and so on, are straight from the book:
At one point, he’d slid his hand up the long bare thigh under her skirts, taken her mound in the palm of his hand, and felt the fullness, the slickness of her, wanting him. The pads of his fingers rubbed half consciously against his palm, tingling.
He swallowed and tried to put the memories of Amaranthus away. For now.
But the tenderness remained--and the thought of the baby. That’s why he’d stopped. Because it had suddenly occurred to him that what he was doing might in fact cause someone real to be born.
And that it somehow wasn’t right that he should oblige that someone to take on burdens that were--rightfully or not--his own to bear.
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 102, "The Winds of Winter". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
Watching this, I had the impression that they weren't about to stop there, as they did in the book. It's dark outside, they are alone, there's very little chance of being interrupted, and Amaranthus plainly isn't worried about getting pregnant. What's stopping them from having sex right then and there, after the scene ends and the camera turns away? This is only speculation, but I think it's possible.
To my dismay, William seems to be falling for her. "We will get married. That's what we'll do," he says. And Amaranthus says, "I accept." No!! I really think William deserves better.
In the next scene, which is not in the book, we're back at the battlefield, where Roger is conducting a funeral for some of the men killed during the battle. As he finishes his prayer, he turns and sees Brianna a few yards away. Awkwardly he excuses himself, and they run to embrace one another.
Bree slaps at him, furious and relieved all at once. "You scared the shit out of me, Roger! I thought you were dead!" Before Roger can say much by way of explanation, Denzell Hunter appears. The young drummer boy, Christophe, is doing well.
Roger introduces Bree and Denzell, and just then William appears. He's glad to see Denzell, and the feeling is mutual; they haven't seen one another in quite a while.
Bree says to William, "You know, for a Loyalist, you sure have a lot of Rebel friends." I had to laugh at that. She's right!
William and Denzell walk through the camp together, catching up on family news, about Rachel and Ian and baby Oggy. As they approach the commander's tent, you can faintly hear Denzell saying, "I have a list of casualties for General Bleeker", and then he steps inside.
A few moments later, Denzell emerges from the tent accompanied by a tall young man in a General's uniform. William is stunned to recognize the officer as his long-lost cousin, Ben!
Ben and William go back in the tent, and William, overcome with joy at finding him, hugs him tightly. Then William appears to notice the uniform for the first time, complete with a general's epaulets.
"Hello, cousin," Ben says, and William, enraged, hits him, saying, "You son of a bitch!"
Meanwhile, on Fraser's Ridge, everyone is recovering from Cunningham's attack. Claire tends Jamie's injuries, filling him in on what happened while he was otherwise occupied. Jamie says he sent Cunningham's men home, without their weapons. He asks Claire for a piece of paper, to write down a list of names.
“It’s a list of the Loyalists who were wi’ Cunningham last night. Put down Geordie Hallam, and Conor MacNeil, Angus MacLean, and--”
“Wait, not so fast.” I picked up the pencil. “Why do you want a list of these men? You obviously remember who they are.”
“Oh, I kent who they were, well before last night,” he assured me, with some grimness. “The list is for you and Bobby and the Lindsays, in case they kill me in the next few days.”
(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 112, "We Met on the Level". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)
Jamie says he doesn't intend to keep those men on as tenants, and I don't blame him!
Suddenly one of the men announces that a large group of riders is approaching, ten men or more. Everyone, including Jamie and Claire, grabs their guns and aims at the newcomers, but as they draw closer, a familiar voice cries out, "Hallo the house!" It's Josiah Beardsley, and he's brought Benjamin Cleveland and some of his Over-Mountain Men with him!
For the first time, Cleveland acts friendly toward Jamie, even saying that he's heard good things about Jamie's whisky. So perhaps this Cleveland is not "the devil", after all. They go inside the house to talk. And with that, the episode ends.
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I hope you enjoyed this recap. Please come back next w.eek for my recap of Episode 806, and look here for my recaps of all of the previous OUTLANDER episodes.
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