Chapter Text
Raymond, in a version of 1966
Sometimes, Raymond imagines time as a great tapestry. Madonna’s blue threads, so like his own, are easy to trace. He never needs a name to find her—her blue burns so bright. But there are those who call for her as Claire. He can admit this suits her too.
But not when he looks for her in this interval. Here, her light is dim. Though she kneels in a church before the Blessed Sacrament, surrounded by candles and some electric lights. This man her world knows as her husband, he lies more often than anyone knows. Keeps her from the truth about what she could bring into being, the truth about those who she has not lost, could never lose. Frank Randall is not one of his children, and yet he warps the pattern many times.
In every track he follows, Madonna always finds the red-haired man who burns for her, but there is more suffering than she deserves. It is time to try something else. Raymond is not God, but occasionally he asks for favors.
The Greek story of the Fates is about three of Raymond’s children. Though it is not for him, or any of them, to choose who dies by snipping the thread of life—that was added later, the way legends grow layers and obscure their roots. But the spinning of the thread, that he can do.
He resolves to give Madonna more life, in the spinning.
Claire, Lallybroch, 1745, just before Jamie discovers Charles Stuart has forged his name
“A man from Ned Gowan’s brought you these, good-sister, and told me you should read them in the Laird’s Room, after supper. Ned’s comin’ to discuss them tomorrow.”
Jenny’s eyes are bright, but cautious—she no doubt suspects the letters have something to do with Colum and Dougal. She seems to have decided, for once, that it’s safer not to ask questions.
I kiss her cheek, impulsively, hoping she won’t mind. I’m still feeling raw, since Paris, still a bit prone to letting emotions rush out regardless of consequence.
“Och, off with you,” she says. “I’ll see to the rest of the dishes.”
—
I’m naked, by the time I finally remember the letter. Jamie is half asleep beside me, murmuring about how sweet I tasted between my legs. I’m freshly relieved Fergus sleeps on the other end of the house— his obscene Gaelic is improving at a much faster rate than his socially acceptable speech, and that’s just from spending time in the stables.
I sit up in bed to read.
January 1, 1964
Dear Claire,
As disconcerting as it is to write to oneself across centuries, I find I am more anxious than anything— is the handwriting enough proof for you? It would be for me, I think. But just in case, here are three things only I (we? you?) know, at the time I hope this letter should find you. None of the information below will endanger anyone if this falls into the wrong hands, and I have no concern about scandalizing you, or any thieves:
1. Sex with Frank was usually good, occasionally excellent (by the standards you had at the time). But twice, you only let him believe you finished, just to avoid an argument. It was a few weeks before the war began. You should have taken it as a sign. Perhaps that’s my hindsight talking and not yours.
2. Going through the stones, you thought you heard our mother call for you. She sounded gentler than the screaming voices. That, and her singing, are the sounds of her you remember best.
3. You shouldn’t be particularly shocked this is happening—remember when Geillis Duncan showed you her smallpox scar, when she said the year, 1962? Well, she wasn’t the only one, and some of them are a bit more fanatical than others.
Now that I’ve established my credentials (I hope), on to the point. To the best of my current knowledge, you will have to keep your promise to Jamie and go back to the twentieth century. Not so much back to Frank as back into a battlefield. A good spy always needs places to wait out a siege.
But I should have begun at the beginning— the most important thing to know is that Frank took you to the Highlands on purpose. Except he assumed he’d be the one going through the stones. It was probably the shock of his life when he finally learned you went instead.
You see, MI-6 has a short roster of people like us, dating back to the Great War, the one our father fought in that was supposed to be the last. Another one of Frank’s damnable cousins went through in 1939, and so he assumed he’d go too.
The middle of the story is the life you’re living now. Ned Gowan’s coming to see you and Jamie tomorrow. Hopefully you are at Lallybroch, after Paris, when he does.
Ned will tell you he is like us, and that Jamie will survive Culloden, if you cannot avert it. (Ned was born in 1885, but he did take a brief trip to 1940, and consequently does a rather good Churchill impression. You may ask for a demonstration). He will tell you very little, compared to how much you want to know.
The most important part of Ned’s plan is a rather large bundle of letters for Jenny and Fergus, dated in the years after Culloden. Ned’s essentially the Royal Mail for time travelers—couriers visit him often, so the present can speak to the past, and that’s how this got to you.
The letters for Jenny and Fergus are based on my journal entries from my years here in Boston. They will explain that you fled to the colonies and will return when you can escape your first husband, who tracked you there. Ned calls this “an efficiency and compassion measure” that Raymond has agreed to carry out. Yes, that Raymond, from Paris. Ned will take the letters back from you. He will get them to Lallybroch if, or as, needed.
I’ve written separately to Jamie since we parted, though not often, since it depends on people coming back to his time, or close enough to be useful. The steering is difficult, even for those who go to Raymond for support. It helps if you include some of your hair to wrap a gemstone in. I know, it’s all a bit Victorian, but it helps them to have something Jamie thinks of often.
I can hear you insisting none of those details matter because you will never go back, or that you’d only consider it to save a baby, and you don’t, of course, have to have one. Abstinence, after all, is foolproof, to say nothing of the other kinds of shared gratification. And you’re right, but you still want a baby, and we both know it.
I’m procrastinating, since this is the part that requires some discussion of temporal mechanics and prophecies, such as they might be. The problem, essentially, is that we don’t yet know if time is an infinite loop, a straight line one cannot fundamentally alter, or if there are many universes producing a constant…music of the spheres (that’s for you, Jamie, my love, as the one who has read Pythagoras).
In any event, there is mounting evidence that in both past and future, parent or not, you are hunted, because an obsession with genes and superior blood didn’t die out with the likes of Hitler and Oswald Mosley. MI-6 and the CIA have their own preoccupations with it.
Some of them want to study your blood as much as that of any child you might have. Though it turns out even spies are interested in prophecies about the last heir of Lovat who is technically two hundred years old. But you might as well choose a child, if you want to—there’s no way to make yourself uninteresting to them, and you deserve joy in all this. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. No wonder I’m tired. The agency acronyms alone could be the death of me.
The only good news for me is that lately the spies on both sides of the Atlantic have started to run out of people to send after us. The modern Jacobites are a…different problem. They may not agree on what the prophecies say about last heirs of Lovat or babies born two hundred years old, but they agree on finding you and we don’t yet know who’s leading them. Not yet, anyway. Do feel free to roll your eyes at how absurd they sound, if it helps you manage the terror.
There are already some indications my own return plans will succeed, or that other versions of us will carry it off. Ned’s contacts have found no trace of me or our child beyond 1971. There are also some signs of medical miracles near Broch Mhordha in the 1760s. Don’t worry too much—one of us will always manage to find Jamie again, or never leave to begin with. It’s a comfort, isn’t it?
Instead of sentimental claptrap that will add to the cramp in my hand (I am less used to quills in my forties), I will tell you:
You have always loved yourself enough for every version of you there could ever be. And loved Jamie more. That never changes.
C
“What is it, Sassenach? Something from Louise?” When I don’t answer, Jamie adds, “I’ve never seen paper of that sort before.”
“You wouldn’t have—it’s from a stationary set I bought in 1945. Just before.” I let him fill in the rest of the sentence for himself. “It’s from…me. It has to be.” I hand it to him, he reads it too.
When he sets it down, I explain, in a rushed voice, “MI-6 are…men of espionage, of secrets and blackmail. But as brutal as The Watch, in their way. If they want me for who I am, what I am, this is a nightmare.”
Jamie nods, and cups my face in his hands. “Let’s think about the rest, Sassenach. About our choices, aye? Not those of men you never saw even in your own time.”
I nod, and he goes on.
“It seems likely, much as I dinna wish it, that we need to plan for when we part, whether the men responsible are that fool Charles or others of your time.” He sounded surprisingly calm, but it was the guarded sort that reminded me of when he spoke with Colum, not the voice he most often used with me.
“I…do sound surprisingly sure that whatever separation there is will be temporary, if I go back after Culloden. And I’m right about one thing, I know.”
“Oh, aye?” He sounded faintly amused. “’Tis no surprise to me you agree tis yourself— you dinna need letters from the future for that, mo nighean donn.”
“If I do need to leave, lI would never want Jenny to think I abandoned her. Or for Fergus to think I’m not his mother anymore. There was just no solution to it, before. There seems to be one now.”
“I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow. Whenever Ned arrives.” He kisses me, thoroughly, as if to change the subject.
“You don’t want to talk more about it, then.”
“If there were aught for us to do now, the letter would say. As it is…I’m no’ inclined to waste a moment alone wi’you.”
He moves his mouth down my neck, nipping gently. “If you’re too troubled, mo ghraidh, you’ve only to say,” he offers, his breath warm against my skin.
“I’ve never found..”I gasp as he keeps moving, his mouth tugging firmly on one nipple. “That abstinence clarified my thinking.” He sucked harder, until my next words are sharp staccato rasps. “Don’t…stop, for God’s…sake.”
I feel his next words against my thigh. “Never. I promise.”
I’m not surprised when he puts my hand on his cock, that he finishes on my stomach, not inside me. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.
—
The Next Day
“I can tell from your expression, my dear, that you’ve gotten a letter from yourself. The first time is always…disconcerting.”
I felt my eyebrows climb my hairline. We’re lucky Ian’s in the fields with Fergus, and that Jenny is away in Broch Mordha.
“I suppose, before I say anything else, I should ask you for your Churchill impression.” Jamie had suggested this, and asked me to explain who Churchill was.
Ned’s eyes twinkled as he began, “‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’ In his own voice he added, “And we won’t. I give you my word. I should apologize, also, for my skepticism when we were out collecting the rents: it was only at Cranesmuir I became certain you and Geillis Duncan were both like myself.”
“The letter said…” I couldn’t bring myself to call it “my letter.” I don’t know the author, not the way she knows me.
“It’s not as if I can go back and scold Dr. Fraser for any ambiguity. There are only so many safe trips one has, you know. Three or four’s about the limit, unless you respond to Raymond’s treatment as well as you did, and more than once. And even the ones who live through four…often can’t do much. It’s why I’ve been here so long—that, and I’m happy to function as a very remote post of the Royal Mail, as I’ve done for you.”
“Maitre Raymond is…”
“In a sense, part of the reason we are all here.”
Jamie breaks in. “You did say he’d saved you, Sassenach. And you didna ken how.” His voice is soft, laced with regret he has to speak of that time in front of someone else. I can tell, too, that he’s noticed my future self is a doctor— she’s been gone for long enough to acquire a new title.
“I suggest you read the letters, then pose your questions. Though I’m not sure what I can safely add.”
I take the bundle, and begin reading, pushing those emotions down. The letters are mostly short— the first is in better Gaelic than I currently have and says only, “Dearest Jenny, I am alive, but my first husband has found me. More when I can. C.” There are seventeen of them. The last few say I am safe, in Boston, but watched, and hoping to come soon. There are separate missives in French, for Fergus.
I pass the stack to Jamie, and ask the first question I can think of that won’t spoil what he is reading.
“Are you certain, that I’ll come back, and live a full life here? Do you know how long I’ll have to be away? Is that why the letters stop in January of 1762?”
“What I can say is that I have seen sufficient evidence of various returns. Just as there are signs you might stay together, but be under threat. I hope you’ll meet others who may know more than I do.”
Jamie speaks then. “Ned, there are few who know more about the law than you, and I canna see how this would be different.”
I break in. “I have one more question. How much danger am I in, with Frank?”
I know, when I see him again, if I do, that we will be strangers to each other, even more than we were when I left. My future self had not written of him with love, or hatred, merely…a kind of cynicism.
“Given what the couriers have told me…some of them know him, you know. I’d say, trust him as much as you would either MacKenzie brother.”
Jamie laughs first, a bitter note in it.
“Thank you, Ned,” I say, meaning it.
He inclines his head, then. “Thank you, Lady Broch Tuarach. I must take my leave, now. Just because Doctor Fraser is unlikely to come find me personally doesn’t mean she won’t find a way of taking revenge if I stay too long.”
I give him back the sheaf of letters for Jenny and Fergus. I’ll burn the one from my future self after I memorize it.
—
My head spins.
I ask the question we’ve been avoiding.
“If I’m pregnant when we we can’t stop Culloden, would you want me to go?”
“Want isna the word, Sassenach,” Jamie says, ever so gently. “But…I think I’ll ask if you could bear to. You canna be your own midwife, and fewer children die of smallpox in your time. I’d spare our bairn Willie’s fate, if history turns against us.”
I am tucked up against him, like a spoon in a drawer. Though it hurts to think of spoons. Of Faith. The ache is becoming welcome, the more my memories dim at the edges.
“I admit I’m afraid to stay, Jamie, depending on what happens. We might have to escape two versions of the British government, if we can’t stop the Rising, or win it. We might have to outwit the redcoats here and the men in suits from my time who come here looking for me.”
“What ye do ken, it seems, is that they don’t find you and Frank…or take you anywhere, if you go back.”
“If I can even trust Frank. But he’s a potential source of information, and I’m the only one who can get to him. God, it’s like I’m the queen on the bloody chessboard. Or a goddamned pawn. And…Frank may expect me to sleep with him. I may not be…in a position to refuse.”
“Wherever we are, whatever you decide, I trust you.” Jamie kisses my forehead, and I breathe him in. “I ken a wife canna often refuse a husband, perhaps better than you do. Only, guard your soul, mo nighean donn.”
I weep, for a while, and Jamie holds me.
“Claire. I must ask. Whatever comes, or doesna. Do you truly still want another child? Can you bear to take only part of me wi’you, for a time, if it comes to it?”
I can hear in his voice that he hopes I’ll say yes. But I already would have, already will. I can’t bear letting my dream of our family go entirely.
“It’s bloody foolish to say it, but I do.” After all, one can be a fool for more than one kind of love.
“I’d rather be a fool wi’you than wise with anyone else, mo ghraidh.”
After that, we stop speaking in words, and undress one another, slowly, like it’s the first time. Jamie is still on the pillow, watching me as I slide onto his cock. I set a slow pace, smiling down at him.
“I want this. I promise.”
I repeat it a few times, but soon I can’t speak, too overcome by the tenderness on his face.