Dragonfly in Amber

“’Jonathan Wolverton Randall,’ she said softly. ‘1705-1746. I told you, didn’t I? You bastard, I told you!’ Her voice, so flat an instant before, was suddenly vibrant, filled with restrained fury.”

Claire reacts violently to Jack Randall’s tombstone, surprising those she is with as she acts out of character for a reason that they cannot understand. This foreshadows the story Claire has come to Iverness to tell her daughter and the role Jack Randall plays in it.

“‘JAMES ALEXANDER MALCOLM MACKENZIE FRASER,’ she read aloud. ‘Yes, I know him.’ Her hand dropped lower, brushing back the grass that grew thickly about the stone, obscuring the line of smaller letters at its base. ‘Beloved husband of Claire,’ she read. ‘Yes, I knew him, she said again, so softly Roger could scarcely hear her. ‘I’m Claire. He was my husband.’ She looked up then, into the face of her daughter, white and shocked above her. ‘And your father,’ she said.”

Claire’s revelation is spoken is in the year 1968 while the grave is marked 1746. This moment represents the opportunity Claire has been waiting for to explain to her daughter how she came to be conceived by a man who has been dead more than 200 years. It also foreshadows a time later in the novel when Claire finishes the story begun in the first book of this series, Outlander, and explains her life with Jamie Fraser.

“For the Lord’s sake, Sassenach, you’ve cost the man close on a year’s income! And he doesna look the sort to take such a loss philosophically. Had ye not told the harbor master it was smallpox, out loud in front of witnesses, a few discreet bribes would have taken care of the matter. As it is, why do ye think Jared brought us up here to fast? For the quality of the drink?”

Claire, stubborn and fiercely independent, as well as ignorant of the customs of the time, examines a man who is suffering smallpox and declares her diagnosis in front of witnesses, thinking she has done something admirable without putting herself at risk because she has had the smallpox vaccine. However, as Jamie explains, she has made an enemy of a business rival of Jared’s, Monsieur le Comte St. Germain, a man who will become a thorn in Claire’s side for a large portion of the novel.

“For I had suddenly remembered where I had seen the name of Mary Hawkins. Jamie was wrong. This was my affair. For I had seen the name, written in a copperplate hand at the top of a genealogy chart, the ink old and faded by time to a sepia brown. Mary Hawkins was not meant to be the wife of the decrepit Vicomte Marigny. She was to marry Jonathan Randall, in the year of our Lord 1746.”

When Claire recalls how she knows Mary Hawkins’s name, she is shocked. Claire helped Frank with his family tree in her own time, and she knows that Mary is the mother of Frank’s direct ancestor. Before now, she believed Jack Randall to be dead even though his marriage to this woman is not to take place for nearly two more years. This moment sparks Claire’s obsession with figuring out how Frank’s lineage continues despite the death of Jack Randall, foreshadowing the return of Jack Randall, and a falling out between her and Jamie.

“’But I talk to you as I talk to my own soul,’ he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple. ‘And, Sassenach,’ he whispered, ‘your face in my heart.’”

When Claire becomes jealous of the way Jamie speaks of another woman, a woman he once believed himself in love with, this is how Jamie explains the difference between his feelings for that woman and his feelings for Claire. This statement illustrates the genre of romance to which this series belongs and shows the strength of passion that exists between Jamie and Claire. This moment also gives faith to the reader later in the novel when it appears that Jamie and Claire’s relationship is doomed to end that there is enough love and passion there to help them get past this moment of weakness.

“Jamie was right; while the letters from supporters spoke hopefully of the impending restoration, James’s letters to his son mentioned no such thing, but were all concerned with Charles’s making a good impression upon Louis. Even the loan from Manzetti of Salerno had been sought to enable Charles to live with the appearance of a gentleman in Paris; not to support any military end.”

As Jamie reads letters from Charles’s father, he discovers that Charles’s father only wants his son to be given a good position in France to protect his future. James has no interest in being restored as the rightful king. It appears that the restoration is all on Charles, not his father. This gives Jamie and Claire hope that they can stop the uprising is they stop Charles from finding funding.

“‘It’s all we can do for her, Claire,’ he said. ‘Keep her from harm, heal her as best we can—and find the filthy bastards who did it.’ He turned away and groped in my casket for his stick pin. ‘Christ,’ he added softly, speaking into the green velvet lining, ‘d’ye think I don’t know what it is to her? Or to him?”

Jamie speaks to Claire to try to calm her after the attack on her and Mary that resulted in Mary’s rape. In his words, Jamie refers to his own experience as a sexual assault survivor, touching on the theme of The Trauma of Sexual Assault. Not only this, but Jamie’s words also express the limited resources available to Mary and the danger to her reputation should anyone learn of what happened to her, foreshadowing the moment this does happen and Mary finds herself an outcast in both French and English society.

“‘I am called Lord Broch Tuarach for formality’s sake,’ the soft Scottish voice above me said. ‘And beyond the requirements of formality, you will never speak to me again—until you beg for your life at the point of my sword. Then, you may use my name, for it will be the last word you ever speak.’”

Upon discovering Jack Randall is still alive and in France, this is what Jamie says to him. Not only does this show Jamie’s control over his own emotions in a very traumatic situation, but it also shows that he has gained confidence and respectability since the last time he faced Jack Randall. This moment also foreshadows Jamie’s desire to resolve his issues with Jack with a sword.

“For it is a matter of skill, make no mistake. To choke a man to death at the end of a rope—pah! Anyone can do that. To break a neck cleanly, with one quick fall, that requires some calculation in terms of weight and drop, and a certain amount of practice in the placing of the rope, as well. But to walk the line between these methods, to properly execute the sentence of a traitor’s death; that requires great skill indeed.”

Claire and Jamie receive a visit from Monsieur Forez, a professional hangman whom Claire has befriended. Monsieur Forez describes for them the procedure to hang, draw, and quarter a traitor, a punishment that could be meted out against Jamie and Claire if their scheme to stop Charles Stuart were to become public knowledge. This moment is not only a warning, but it highlights the danger Claire and Jamie are courting in their attempt to save the soldiers of the Highland of Scotland.

“I opened my mouth to scream. I had meant to call Jamie’s name, to stop him now, in that moment’s grace between the disarming of his opponent and the killing stroke that must come next. I did scream, in fact, but the sound emerged weak and strangled. As I had stood there, watching, the nagging pain in my back had deepened, clenching like a fist. Now I felt a sudden breaking somewhere, as though the fist had torn loose what it held.”

When Claire arrives and witnesses the end of the fight between Jamie and Jack, she goes into labor with her daughter several months early. As a result of this moment, Claire and Jamie lose their child, compounding the fact that Jamie went through with a duel with Jack Randall after Claire begged him to wait until the conception of Jack’s child and Frank’s ancestor. Claire feels betrayed. At the same time, there is irony in the fact that Claire could die from the trauma of this premature labor even though she has helped deliver several children and healed many more people in her role as a healer in this time.

“‘But it’s all my fault, Madame!’ he burst out, pulling away. His lip was trembling, and tears welled in his eyes. ‘I should have kept quiet; I shouldn’t have cried out! But I couldn’t help it, and milord heard me, and…and he burst in…and…oh, Madame, I shouldn’t have, but I was so glad to see him, and I ran to him, and he put me behind him and hit the Englishman in the face. And then the Englishman came up from the floor with the stool in his hand, and threw it, and I was so afraid, I ran out of the room and hid in the closet at the end of the hall. Then there was so much shouting and banging, and a terrible crash, and more shouting. And then it stopped, and soon milord opened the door of the closet and took me out. He had my clothes, and he dressed me himself, because I couldn’t fasten the buttons—my fingers shook.’”

Fergus describes running into Jack Randall at the brothel where Jamie went to pay for his warehouse foreman’s bill. Claire listens to his story and realizes what caused Jamie to break his promise to her that he would stay away from Jack until after the conception of Jack’s child and Frank’s ancestor. Fergus’s story highlights the theme of The Trauma of Sexual Assault and implies Jamie’s violent reaction as a trauma response based not only on his love for Fergus, but his own sexual assault at the hands of Jack Randall.

“’When it was me,’ he went on, almost whispering, ‘I thought you could not bear the thought of it, and I would not have blamed you. I knew ye must turn from me, and I tried to send you away, so I wouldna have to see the disgust and the hurt in your face.’ He closed his eyes and raised the grass blade between his thumbs, barely brushing his lips. ‘But you wouldna go. You took me to your breast and cherished me. You healed me, instead. You loved me, in spite of it.’ He took a deep, unsteady breath and turned his head to me again. His eyes were bright with tears, but no wetness escaped to slide down his cheeks. ‘I thought, maybe, that I could bring myself to do that for you, as you did it for me. And that is why I came to Fontainebleau, at last.’”

The theme of The Trauma of Sexual Assault is explored when Jamie confronts Claire on her decision to sleep with King Louis to free Jamie from the Bastille for dueling. Jamie explains how he felt after his own sexual assault and tells Claire that he wants to do for her what she did for him, to love her despite the awful thing she had to do to save him. Jamie makes it clear that he does not blame Claire for what happened between her and the king, and that he understands it was not her choice. This ability of Jamie to see the similarities in their different experiences is what allows them to rebuild their relationship and return to the passion that is the hallmark of their marriage despite all that has passed between them.

“The truth of her words penetrated slowly through the layers of shock that wrapped me. The publication of this Bond of Association branded those who signed it as rebels, and as traitors to the English crown. It didn’t matter now how Charles had managed, or where he had gotten the funds to begin; he was well and truly launched on the seas of rebellion, and Jamie—and I—were launched with him, willy-nilly. There was, as Jenny had said, no choice.”

Claire and Jamie have just gotten the news that Jared signed Jamie’s name to a Bond of Association that irretrievably marks him as a Jacobite and a supporter of Charles Stuart’s rebellion against George II. Jamie has spent nearly a year trying to stop Charles and the rebellion, and thought he had, so the news comes as a shock to him. However, he is now committed and must go to war as though he supported Charles all along. Claire knows what’s to come, and she and Jamie both are weary of the final battle that will see the deaths of hundreds of Charles’s supporters on the fields of Culloden.

“After the stunning victory at Prestonpans, Charles had led his triumphant army back to Edinburgh, to bask in the adulation. While he was basking, his generals and chieftains labored, rallying their men and procuring what equipment was to be had, in preparation for whatever was coming next.”

Claire knows that in her time Charles is revered as a hero of sorts even though he lost his bid to win the Stuarts the crowns of Scotland and England. However, she is beginning to see that Charles is inexperienced and naïve. Charles wants to be a great military leader, but his army’s leadership is chaotic with the clan chiefs doing all the work, but with disagreements among them, creating a leadership that is chaotic without a strong leader. This foreshadows what Claire knows is going to happen at Culloden, complete destruction of Charles’s army.

“Whether the idea pleases you or not, my dear, we are linked, you and I. I cannot say it pleases me, but I admit the truth of it. You know, as I do, the touch of his skin—so warm, is he not? Almost as though he burned from within. You know the smell of his sweat and the roughness of the hairs on his thighs. You know the sound that he makes at the last, when he has lost himself. So do I.”

Jack Randall comes to Claire to ask for her help and decides this is the best moment to express his connection to Jamie in terms of romance. This moment explores the theme of Love Triangles and makes it clear that Jack has confused his abuse of Jamie as romance, even love. Jack’s statement makes it clear that Jack is not only in love with Jamie but has a distorted idea of what that love should look like. Jack’s character reveals how broken societies’ view of homosexuality at the time warped Jack’s feelings, not only for the man he loves, but for himself as well.

“‘He went to visit King James in Rome and swear his fealty to the Stuarts,’ Jamie went on, ‘and then turned round and went straight to William of Orange, King of England, who was visiting in France. He got James to promise him his title and estates, should a restoration come about, and then—God knows how—got a full pardon from William, and was able to come home to Scotland.’”

Jamie explains his grandfather, Simon Fraser, to Claire. These statements show that Simon is not loyal to anyone but himself and that he wants only to procure as much land for himself as possible. This evidence of Simon’s willingness to betray one crown for the other foreshadows a moment when he uses a medical condition to keep himself from battle, but sends troops that make him appear to be supportive of the Stuart cause, that can also be made to look like the rash actions of an eldest son at the same time if King George II were to win.

“I send Danton to dispose of you. He and his companions decide to entertain themselves a bit first; that’s all well and good, but in the process, they get a good look at you, leap unaccountably to the conclusion that you’re a witch of some kind, lose their heads entirely and run off. But not before debauching my goddaughter, who is present by accident, thus ruining all chance of the excellent marriage I had painstakingly arranged for her. Consider the irony of it!”

After Claire is taken prisoner by the English, she is confronted by the Duke of Sandringham. This conversation solves a question that has hung over Claire, Jamie, and their friends, but it leaves Claire wondering what the Duke of Sandringham’s goal was. The Comte St. Germain had nothing to do with this attack and his death at Claire and Raymond’s hands was unjust, at least as far as Claire’s motive to participate.

“‘Yes,’ he said. ‘John…Johnny, I need you to take care of her for me. I want…my child to have the Randall name. You can…give them some position in the world—so much more than I could.’”

Claire has worried throughout the novel that Frank will cease to exist in her time because Jack Randall supposedly died in Wentworth Prison, and because Jamie wounded Jack so that he could no longer father a child. However, Claire is a first-row witness to Mary and Jack’s marriage, a fact she knew took place because of Frank’s research on his family tree. However, the child is not Jack’s, but his brother Alexander’s, something Claire never took into consideration.

“If he were to die…now. Today. Or tonight. Jamie, without Charles, there’s nothing to fight for. No one to order the men to Culloden. There wouldn’t be a battle.”

Claire and Jamie are despondent because they have reached the moment they knew was coming, the moment they have been trying to avoid for nearly two years. Claire is desperate to find a way to keep Jamie and his men from fighting there, and her solution is to kill Charles Stuart, the son of the one true king and the leader of this rebellion. However, killing Charles is not honorable, it is treasonous. This idea shows Claire’s desperation and her willingness to do anything to save Jamie and those he loves.

“Jamie’s face was ashen; apparently he could tell what Dougal was saying. He struggled violently, trying to hold the thrashing body still. There was a final spasm, then a dreadful rattling sound, and Dougal MacKenzie lay still, Jamie’s hands clenched tight upon his shoulders, as though to prevent his rising again.”

Jamie is forced to kill Dougal MacKenzie, his uncle and surrogate father, when Dougal overhears Claire suggest the murder of Charles Stuart. Dougal believes Claire to be a traitor and the punishment for traitors is death. However, Jamie cannot allow Claire to be harmed partially because he knows that her heart is in the right place and partly because she is his wife. Jamie chooses Claire over his family, proving his deep love for her. Killing the chief of a clan is also punishable by death, and Jamie understands this. Dougal’s death foreshadows Jamie’s death, but it is also the catalyst for Claire’s return to her own time.

“He turned my palm upward, examining it carefully, then raised it to his lips. A soft kiss in the well of the palm, then he seized the base of my thumb in a hard, sucking bite. Letting go, he swiftly cut into the numbed flesh. I felt no more than a mild burning sensation, but the blood welled at once. He brought the hand quickly to his mouth again, holding it there until the flow of blood slowed. He bound the wound, now stinging, carefully in a handkerchief, but not before I saw that the cut was in the shape of a small, slightly crooked letter ‘J.’”

Before Jamie sends Claire back to the safety of her own time, he marks her with a letter J for his name. It is a romantic gesture meant to keep them each close to one another. It hints at a moment when Claire will need some proof of her story of Jamie but is also discounted because it could have been self-inflicted. In the end, it is a romantic gesture that prolongs Jamie and Claire’s time together before they are to part for what they both believe will be forever.

“’There are words in it,’ she said wonderingly. ‘I never realized that he’d…Oh, dear God.’ Her voice broke, and the ring slipped from her fingers, rattling on the table with a tiny metal chime. Roger hurriedly scooped it up, but she had turned away, fists held tight against her middle. He knew she didn’t want him to see her face; the control she had kept through the long hours of the day and the scene with Brianna had deserted her now.”

Claire takes off the wedding ring Jamie gave her for the first time in many years to see if it has a jeweler’s mark. Instead, she finds that Jamie has had it engraved with the words from a poem given to them as a gift for their wedding. Claire is so surprised and touched by Jamie’s gesture that she has an overwhelming emotional reaction, something that Roger notices and takes as proof that she truly does believe her story of time travel. The ring is a symbol of Claire and Jamie’s devotion to each other that takes on a new meaning to Claire as she is reminded of Jamie’s fierce love for her.

“’His own mother was dead—so he was given to a family that had lost a baby. They called him by the name of the child they had lost—that was common—and I don’t suppose anyone wanted to call attention to his ancestry by recording the new child in the parish register. He would have been baptized at birth, after all; it wasn’t necessary to do it again. Colum told me where they placed him.’ ‘Geillis Duncan’s son,’ he said slowly. ‘The witch’s child.’”

At the beginning of the novel, Claire suggests there is a reason why she chose to go to Roger Wakefield for help beyond his experience as a historian. It is after she tells her unbelievable story and sees that Roger believes her that she finally reveals what that reason is. Roger is a descendant of the child Geillis Duncan had with Dougal MacKenzie. Not only that, but Claire believes Geillis is about to go through the circle of stones and that they might have a chance to warn her of her fate, something that could cause Roger to no longer exist, or exist in an altered way. This information quickly draws Roger into Claire’s world, whether it be fantasy or reality.