A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Ian Murray is resting and arguing with God in the middle of the night. His dog, Rollo, senses someone coming. The forest is filled with the passing of 23 poor, dirty white men who smell of hunger and “the sweat of bad drink” (6). Their mule smells Rollo and tries to bolt. Ian runs, but an unknown object strikes him in the head, and he falls to the ground. He orders Rollo to run away and then hides himself in the leaves. The men corral their mule and depart, still without noticing Ian. Ian resumes his conversation with God, seeing the close encounter as a divine sign in response to a question he’d just posed.

In March 1773, on the outskirts of Fraser’s Ridge, Dr. Claire Fraser, or Sassenach, has come upon a burning cabin in the woods. She’s with her husband, Jamie Fraser, their daughter Brianna, Brianna’s husband Roger, Tom Christie, Fergus, and multiple others. They speak Gaelic and are Highlanders who followed Jamie from Scotland to North America. The cabin belongs to a newly emigrated Dutch homesteader family. A Highlander saw the flames first and pulled the bodies from the cabin before it collapsed in the fire. The family, poisoned after eating toxic toadstools, was already dead when the fire started.

A knife falls out of the father’s body; the bodies of two other men lie in the woods nearby. Claire speculates that marauders stabbed the father and robbed the other men. Then, the mother made stew out of the toxic toadstools and fed it to her children and to the two other men, one of whom is black and most likely a slave. They bury the bodies. Jamie and Claire share a moment of uncanny knowledge: They remember a newspaper article from three years in the future. The article laments the deaths of James Fraser and his wife, Claire Fraser of Fraser’s Ridge, and their house burning to the ground on January 21, 1776.

Claire and her family return home the next day to find Major Donald MacDonald of His Majesty’s Army. MacDonald says he has come straight from New Bern, where the colony’s new royal governor, Josiah Martin, has taken residence. Claire distrusts the government and ruling authorities. Suddenly, an agitated Rollo emerges from the woods. Claire immediately follows him back down the path, where she finds her nephew Ian sitting, nearly unconscious. Jamie joins them, and they bring Ian back to Claire’s surgery table. MacDonald stresses that it could have been an Indian’s tomahawk wound, but Ian’s injury is likely from a branch falling from a shot tree. Ian stresses that they weren’t Indians, and MacDonald presses the issue aggressively. Claire tends to Ian’s concussion.

Brianna and Roger arrive home to find a raccoon destroying their kitchen and eating their precious maple syrup. Brianna chases it away. They decide not to go to the Frasers’s home for dinner, despite the news they would get from MacDonald, and they stay in and enjoy each other’s intimate company instead. A sense of foreboding comes over them both. Together, they decide to go fetch their young son, Jem, rather than wait for the McGillivray’s to deliver him in the morning.

The Major reports three other raids by the same group of armed men to Claire and Jamie. One of the stories came from a prostitute he’d visited in Edenton. To Claire’s sadness and disgust, the woman was kidnapped from her homestead by the bandits and sold to a river trader, who later sold her to the brothel. With ambitions to become governor, Tryon has charged MacDonald to keep “an ear to the ground, as it were, in the backcountry, for signs of unrest” (35). He’s begun to think this instance of unrest was not a coincidence.

MacDonald entreats Jamie and Claire to welcome a group of newly arrived Scottish Highlanders, fisher kin, into their community. MacDonald suggests establishing a Committee of Safety, led by Jamie, who protests against the idea. Claire sees why MacDonald is calling Jamie “Colonel, and what Governor Martin is trying to set up:

Inviting Jamie to set up a Committee of Safety meant that he would call upon those men who had served under him in the militia—but would commit the government to nothing, in terms of paying or equipping them—and the Governor would be clear of any responsibility for their actions, since a Committee of Safety was not an official body (43).

The risk to Jamie, and all in the community, would be considerable.

Ian’s concussion seems severe; he has difficulty finding his words and remembering his name. He fluently switches between English, Gaelic, and Mohawk in his responses to Claire.

Ian overhears MacDonald ask Jamie if Jamie will be an Indian agent. Meanwhile, Brianna and Roger make their way in the dark to get their son. Hearing a sound in the woods, Brianna fears immediately that it’s the bandits. Fortunately, it’s only the Beardsley twins, Josiah (Jo) and Kezzie (who is nearly deaf). They’ve taken it upon themselves to stand watch to protect a girl from the community named Lizzie Wemyss. Brianna and Roger continue on, talking about their youths. They’re both from the future. Roger speaks of a school friend he remembers who drowned, but who hasn’t yet been born or drowned. Brianna tries to keep him talking. He hasn’t spoken much since a botched hanging he experienced; his voice is rough.

They arrive to a huge engagement party at the McGillivray’s. Brianna greets Jem and sits with the McGillivray sisters, talking about the matriarch, Ute McGillivray. Jem and his best friend, Germain, stumble up to Brianna, dead drunk. They’ve gotten into the Cherry Bounce (fermented cherry juice and whiskey). Brianna makes a bed out of hay in the barn and lies down with the boys. Drunk, Roger joins them and amorously tries to initiate sex with Brianna. She turns him down, but he forces himself on her there. In the middle of it, Germain’s father, Fergus, comes and quietly takes his sleeping son away.

Claire and Jamie discuss MacDonald’s proposal of Jamie becoming an Indian agent. Jamie hasn’t yet decided if he’ll take the job. With their foreknowledge of the impending revolution and its unfavorable-to-the-British outcome, they know that appearing as Loyalists for the crown would not be a good move. Claire initially wonders if working as an Indian agent would help Jamie recruit natives to fight for the American side, but she realizes that would be worse for them in the end. Under British rule, at least the native people wouldn’t be almost entirely exterminated, as was fated to happen after the revolution. The couple make love, and as they’re drifting into sleep, Jamie asks Claire if she would kill herself and their family if he were to die, as the Dutch woman had. Claire assures him that will not happen.