A Breath of Snow and Ashes

At River Run, a scared Jem tells Brianna his friend saw of the ghost of Hector Cameron walking through the graveyard. She soothes Jem, telling him to cross himself and say a prayer to his angels when he gets scared. Brianna worries that he’ll cross himself in the Catholic way in front of someone he shouldn’t in Roger’s Protestant flock, and she frets about the possibility of having to convert. She tells Jem to run off and then promptly vomits in a wash bin, thinking perhaps she’s pregnant.

Brianna hears Duncan speaking animatedly with another man in the next room; deep in Loyalist country, many think the violence up north will simply blow over. Duncan bursts in, asking if she’s seen anyone near Cameron’s grave. She tells him about Jem’s friend thinking he’d seen Hector’s ghost. Duncan reveals that the gold in Hector’s coffin has been stolen. General MacDonald has sent for men, ammunition, and the now-missing gold.

Gerald Forbes takes his mother to visit her sister in Edenton.

In Edenton, Roger sits with Reverend McMillan, noting the gender inequality of the time, as the men sit outside in leisure while the women work their hands to the bone inside the hot house, preparing food and such. The men talk of the political situation, including the information that General Washington has taken command of the Continental army. One man was present at the battle on the Charleston Peninsula, wherein the English ships finally arrived and opened fire on the rebels. Roger excuses himself from the gory war details and takes a walk on the beach. He reflects on the men he’s killed. Returning to the house, Jamie waits for him. He tells Roger that someone has taken Brianna.

Brianna finds herself on Bonnet’s ship, having been taken from her horse while riding with Josh, a black servant in Jacosta’s employ. Bonnet comes into her cabin, intending to rape her, but Brianna tells him she’s pregnant, and he loses interest. Forbes has paid Bonnet to take Brianna to London, to get her “out of the way” (1239). Bonnet asks his men to bring him a prostitute, Eppie, with whom he has sex in front of Brianna. When he leaves, Brianna asks Eppie if Bonnet is as evil as she fears, and it seems he is. She pays Eppie with her ruby ring, begging her to go to the reverend’s house, find Roger, and tell him where she is. Falling asleep, Brianna remembers the last time she saw Roger, when they conceived their child on the eve of his becoming a minister. She prays.

Roger and Ian find Forbes and demand to know Brianna’s whereabouts. Forbes plays dumb but is shaken to learn that they know about Bonnet. Meanwhile, Jamie pays a visit to Forbes’s mother in Edenton, inviting her for a picnic. He obtains her brooch and sends it to Roger, who shows it to Forbes and warns him that Jamie will kill his mother if he doesn’t tell them what they need to know. Forbes reveals the name of Bonnet’s ship, which has set sail for England. Roger punches Forbes, and Ian cuts off Forbes’s ear before they depart.

Bonnet still doesn’t rape Brianna, but he makes her sleep in his bed with him for warmth. She has unpleasant recollections of their time spent together before and is grateful that he’s not Jem’s father. She can’t wait for the new moon and their eventual docking, where Roger will hopefully be waiting.

Jamie, Ian, and Roger talk to fisher kin to find out where Bonnet’s ship has been and where it’s heading. One of Roger’s fellow ministers-in-training finds them to say goodbye, as he’s been appointed a congregation in the Indies. Although “both McCorkle and the Reverend McMillan had tried to persuade him to return to them the day before, to take his place at the service of ordination” (1259), Roger can only think of Brianna and his search for her. Meanwhile, Ian has brought Forbes’s ear along with them as a talisman for their quest, as is the Mohawk tradition.

Claire finds the group, bringing Manfred along with her. He lives with Eppie and, when he saw Brianna’s ring, he knew he had to find Jamie and give him Eppie’s message from Brianna. Roger takes the ring back as his personal talisman. Claire tells Manfred, finally, that she can cure his syphilis, as well as Eppie’s, if she has it. Elated, Manfred tells Eppie that they can finally be married and return to his mother’s house. Brianna is awakened in the night by Bonnet, who has had a nightmare about the sea taking him and drowning him. She soothes him back to sleep like he’s her son.

On a chartered ship, Claire, Jamie, Ian, and Roger arrive at Ocracoke, the island where Bonnet will dock by the new moon, as Brianna’s note indicated. After spreading out to look for Bonnet’s hideaway, Roger alone finds one of the time travel portals, a place where “five men had chanted, walked their pattern, and turned, passing to the left of the inscribed stone. And here at least one of them had died” (1269). Claire speaks with the captain of the ship as the men search the island. He shows her the deepest part of the island’s shoreline, where a large ship might dock. The next night, a slave ship appears off the coast. Looking for Brianna, they try to speak to its captain, but he threatens to open his cannons on them.

Bonnet’s ship finally reaches Ocracoke. The servant Josh is taken somewhere else, to Brianna’s horror; Bonnet intends to sell him to the slave ship. Brianna is taken to another house, where she finds Phaedre working in the kitchen. She’d been abducted by a smuggler named Butler and sold to Bonnet. Bonnet means to sell both Phaedre and Brianna to a slave trader, who’s coming tomorrow to buy pretty women.

Emmanuel, Bonnet’s main muscle man, takes Brianna to her room, and she washes up and thinks about the concept of predestination. Phaedre brings her supper and tells her that Ulysses was the one to sell her from River Run. When he discovered her affair with Duncan and told her to stop, she said she wouldn’t and would tell everyone about his affair with Jocasta if he said anything; in response, he sold her.

Brianna asks her if Ulysses is capable of stealing the gold in Hector’s coffin. Phaedre wouldn’t put it past him: “See, I thought Mr. Duncan, he the master. Ain’t true, though; Ulysses be the master at River Run” (1286).

Emmanuel gives Brianna a silk dress to wear and then Bonnet parades her for the slave trader, Mr. Howard. When Mr. Howard tries to inspect her teeth, Brianna bites his thumb off. Nevertheless, he makes an offer which Bonnet refuses, saying he wants her to go to auction for the highest price. He imagines she’ll be sold in a few days. Later that night, she takes a stay (boning from her corset) out from her underclothes and starts sharpening it into a weapon.

Roger, Jamie, Claire, and Ian watch the second slave ship drop anchor and send their captain to shore. Preparing to murder Bonnet, Roger envies Jamie and Claire, who pray to a vengeful Catholic God, and Ian, who streaks his face with mud as war paint. He has qualms about praying to his God to ask for aid in sinning.

Brianna awakens to rain dripping through the ceiling onto her face. She stands on the bed and pushes the soggy spot in the ceiling, creating a hole easily, and she crawls out onto the thatched roof. She sees Josh being taken to one of the slavers, along with the other Africans she’d glimpsed in the bowels of the ship. She sees Phaedre run to him just as Emmanuel’s head pops up through the hole she’d created and crawled through.

Brianna manages to slash Emmanuel a few times with the sharpened stay before she tumbles off the roof. He thinks she’s dead and follows her. When he bends over her body, Brianna stabs him in the armpit, then runs into the woods. She hears screams coming from the beach. Emmanuel catches her but then promptly dies of his stab wound. Bonnet appears out of nowhere and grabs Brianna. She screams for Roger, who, along with Jamie, comes to her aid. Bonnet lets her go and runs, with Jamie and Roger in pursuit. Brianna wanders in the woods and then returns to the house, where she finds Ian on the porch. He’s saved Phaedre, but Josh was taken. Brianna hears Phaedre weeping inside.

Roger finally returns, taking Brianna into the woods where they’ve captured Bonnet. He’s gotten a few knife slashes into Jamie and Roger but for the moment is unconscious, slumped against a tree. Roger hands Brianna the knife, and she knows it’s her responsibility to decide what happens to him. She can’t subject her husband or father to another murder on her account. She decides to turn him over to a Committee of Safety they trust and see him hanged for his crimes. She tells Roger she’s pregnant with his child.

An article from Fergus’s paper from September 25, 1775, reads that King George has declared the American colonies in open rebellion. It details a conflict between an English ship and two American schooners. Also, Bonnet is tried and convicted, receiving a penalty of death by drowning. A group of black men have been looting farms, and Congress has enacted a plan for currency redemption.

On October 2, 1775, Jocasta, Duncan, and Ulysses show up at the Big House and are reunited with Phaedre. Duncan tells Jamie and Claire that they’re fleeing to Arcadia, Canada. The tide has turned abruptly, and Loyalists are being charged and beaten, their property seized. River Run has been taken. Duncan agrees to sell Phaedre to Jamie, who will immediately free her and send her to New Bern to Fergus and Marsali.

Claire tends to Jocasta’s eye and is surprised when Jocasta pulls out a bag of hemp and rolls a joint for the pain. She tells Claire that Duncan knows about Ulysses and about Phaedre. Just then, Ulysses sneaks out the door and into the night, presumably to disappear from her life. Claire asks if she’s ever seen her lover’s face, to which Jocasta replies no, but she’s known him always: “He smelled of light” (1317). Jamie is waiting in the stable when Ulysses comes in to steal a horse and flee. Jamie confronts him about committing adultery and getting rid of Phaedre. He is prepared to kill Ulysses but lets him leave on his own to die as a free man.

On January 21, 1776, the day the fated newspaper proclaimed the Frasers dead and their house burned down, the Frasers lock up all the animals in the barns and take the cat, Adso, to Brianna’s and Roger’s. They triple-check to make sure that all the candles and lamps are out in the Big House. Once they’re there, Brianna wonders aloud if the article refers to her house, rather than the Big House, which freezes everyone. Claire suggests they just be very careful with the fire.

Major MacDonald arrives, temporarily plunging the scene into confused chaos as Brianna accidentally drops a shirt into the fire. MacDonald has come to ask Jamie to command a group of militia to march to Wilmington and meet more British troupes. Adso eyes the major’s wig, so Claire puts it on a high shelf behind the white phosphorus in the kitchen.

Jamie refuses the major’s offer; the major calls Jamie a traitor. Jamie knows most of his fellow Scottish Highlanders are Loyalists and will remain that way, but he must do what he knows is right. The major says they’ll never meet again as friends, and he turns to leave.

Just then, there’s a crash in the kitchen, and Adso runs by with the major’s wig in his mouth. The kitchen is in blue flames from the white phosphorous. After extinguishing the fire and sorting through the confusion. Jamie and Claire return to the Big House to sleep, and the major begrudgingly agrees to stay the night at Roger’s request.

On February 2, 1776, Jamie summons all the men of Fraser’s Ridge (and some of their wives) to the Big House. He tells them he will join the militia at Wilmington as a rebel and urges them to come with him. Crombie and a few others murmur about the oath Jamie had taken to the King, but Jamie asserts that it’s not a true oath if it wasn’t given by a free man, and they are indentured to the Crown. For the first time, he truly believes this is the right decision, not because Brianna and Roger and Claire have foretold the future, but because he feels it to be right. A week later, he rides to Wilmington, accompanied by his Ardsmuir men and Crombie, as well as a few others. Many stay behind, remaining loyal to the Crown.

To his surprise, a group of 40 men join him along the road. They are led by Brown, who acquiesces readily to Jamie’s leadership (to Claire’s disapproval): “War made strange bedfellows; Roger Mac knew that as well as he did—and for himself, he had fought with worse than Brown, during the Rising” (1336). They accrue more rebels as they travel, hearing word of a Loyalist militia traveling to Wilmington nearly alongside them, but refraining from combat until they get reinforcements—reinforcements Jamie doesn’t believe are coming. It is MacDonald’s militia, heading into an ambush by the rebels, as Jamie’s crew has two cannons. On the eve of the battle, Jamie tells Claire he’s felt the presence of the ghost of his godfather, Murtagh. Claire hopes he’s not there to guide Jamie’s spirit into the afterlife, but Jamie seems comforted by the spirit of his kin.

The battle is over in minutes. The cannons and the creek kill off most of MacDonald’s charge. Jamie himself shoots his old friend, Major MacDonald, in the throat, with the ghost of Murtagh by his side. In their moment of assured victory, Jamie dissociates, seeing the battlefield at Culloden and his nemesis, Randall, coming toward him. Then, Murtagh is the one stabbing Randall.