Work Text:
THEN, NOW and FOREVER
1968,
Inverness, Scotland
I had been to Craigh na Dun six times before...six times, and each time had led to significant if not unimaginable changes in my life.
If Frank and I had not gone to watch the Druid ritual that morning in May 1946, I would not have noticed the forget-me-nots. How could I have ever guessed that a simple trip to collect a sample of the flower would have had such life-changing consequences. Even today, over twenty years later, it seems so impossible...if it hadn't happened to me, I wouldn't believe it.
Falling through time two hundred years, with everything that followed, sounds mad...but it had been real, and I need only look at Brianna, my daughter, to be reminded of all that I had found and lost in 18th century Scotland. Bree was the living reminder of her father, Jamie, the man I still loved with all my heart even though the last time I saw him was more than twenty years ago.
It was almost six months after I had accidentally fallen through time, and on my fourth visit to Craigh na Dun, that I had realized I did not want to return to my old life. Jamie had taken me back to the stones, after I had finally told him my story...who I was and where I had come from, and how I came to be there. Knowing that ever since I had arrived I had been trying to go home, Jamie had decided the honourable thing to do was to send me home. It was too late. Jamie was my heart and the breath of my body by then. I couldn't leave him. I was staying there, staying with Jamie.
Eighteen months later we found ourselves once more atop that cursed hill. During the intervening time our love had continued to grow to a level I had never even imagined possible. Life had not always been kind to us; Jamie had been tortured and raped at the hands of Black Jack Randall, a sadistic English officer; we had lost our first child when I miscarried whilst we were living in Paris. And we had been unable to stop the Jacobite Rising.
It had been the morning of 16 April 1746, and the Battle of Culloden would occur that day. My limited knowledge was only sufficient to warn us of the outcome of that day; all our attempts to change history had come to naught. Knowing of the coming defeat and the deprivations that the English would force upon the Scots afterwards, Jamie had been desperate to save me. He knew there was no escape for himself; Red Jamie was too well known as a close ally of Prince Charles. I had not wanted to leave him. I didn't want to live without him and even begged him to let me stay with him, die with him. But Jamie had known, what I had only recently come to realize, that I was again with child.
He had been immovable. He would see me and our unborn child safe. The only way to do that now was to send me back...back through the stones.
And so I had returned to my own time...and Frank. I told Frank the truth about where I had been and what had happened to me in those two years, most importantly that I had fallen in love, married another man...and was pregnant. I hoped that he would leave me to find a way forward on my own. But Frank was an honourable man, and whether he actually believed me or not, he would not leave me alone and pregnant. He wanted us to resume our marriage, but he had had two conditions. The first that we would raise the child as our own...that I would not tell the baby of its real father. Secondly, that I must let Jamie go...I must stop searching for any record of what had happened to him.
Jamie had wanted us to be safe and cared for, so I had closed off what remained of my heart and agreed.
Frank had, however, left me with three reminders...my unborn child, which he intended to claim as his own; Jamie's wedding ring which he allowed me to keep (until I was ready, he said); and my memories. I don't think he had understood just what those would mean to me in the coming years.
We had moved to America in an attempt to put what had happened in Scotland behind us. But how could we...seven months later I had given birth to Jamie's daughter. From the first moment I saw her, Jamie was with me again...the reddish glow of the baby's fine sprinkling of hair and the colour of her eyes - the same blue as Jamie's. I had tried to keep the memory of him at bay, to go forward with my life without him...but there was no way I would ever forget Jamie. As Brianna grew, I could see him in her...the light catching her red hair, the way she would smile in her sleep.
For twenty years I kept my word to Frank...I never spoke Jamie's name aloud, never told Brianna of her true father. I had tried to be a good wife to Frank. He was a good man at heart, and had loved Brianna dearly. But there was a large portion of myself, of my heart, that was forever lost to any possibility of loving Frank as he wished me to. It remained in the 18th century...with Jamie. All that was left had been given to Brianna.
No matter how I tried though, I was not able to fully put my time with Jamie behind me. I would often find myself absent from the life going on around me, sunk deep in my memories. It was particularly hard at night, when there was no need to attend to Brianna's needs, or the house, or my studies. I would find myself drifting back...all it needed was a turn of my head and I would see Jamie, not Frank, lying beside me. His soft smile, his love for me shining in his eyes...and my loss would be just as great as it had been on the day he had sent me back through the stones.
Though we didn't normally speak of it, Frank had known where I was in those absent times. We had argued many times over the years, as Frank had pleaded with me to come back from the past. During our last argument he had said, "You couldn't see her without thinking of him, could you? Without that constant memory, I wonder...would you have forgotten him, in time?"
"That amount of time doesn't exist," had been the only possible answer I could give him.
They were, in fact, the last words I would ever say to him. He had dressed in stony silence and stamped out of the room. Moments later I heard the front door close and then the sound of the car starting. I would never see Frank, alive, again...the car skidded on black ice, he was dead on arrival at hospital.
Two years later I found myself taking Brianna to England. The trip was originally intended as a visit to relatives, but somehow we had found ourselves in Inverness attending the funeral of Reginald Wakefield, the Presbyterian minister and amateur historian who had befriended us and assisted Frank during my disappearance.
Scotland...my ghosts had lived in my heart for twenty years, but now that I was here they seemed to be chasing me. Whilst Roger, the Reverend's adopted son, had taken Brianna on a tour of the local sites, I had allowed myself to fall deep into my memories. I had driven to Lallybroch, to find it now a ruined shell. As I stepped out of the car I could hear voices - memories from our time living in this house; as I sat on the steps I could see Jamie, for a moment, standing clearly in the archway - could hear his voice whispering to me:
"Come and let us live my Deare
Let us love and never feare
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips begin and tell
A Thousand and a Hundred Score
a Hundred and a Thousand More."
I struggled to hold back my tears.
Visiting Culloden Moor had been something I told myself I would never do...but I found myself there, kneeling before the Fraser Clan grave marker, talking to Jamie - telling him of the daughter he had never known.
I hadn't been able to say goodbye when we had stood before the stone on Craigh na Dun, Jamie's left arm holding me close, his right hand pressing my hand closer and closer to the stone. All I had been able to say in those last moments was "I love you."
I didn't cry then as, kneeling before his grave marker, I finally said goodbye to my love. Driving back to the manse though, I had to pull over to the side of the road as I found my eyes awash with tears.
I had recovered my equilibrium and thought I had once again tucked my memories away in my heart where no-one but me could reach them, when suddenly Brianna confronted me with the knowledge that forced everything out into the open. Bree had discovered the old newspaper clippings from when I had reappeared through the stones and had figured out from the dates that she could not have been Frank's daughter.
It was time for the truth. I told Bree everything... about Jamie...her real father...about my trip through time. She didn't believe my fairy tale, as she called it. But she was forced to believe that there had been another man, who I had loved with all my heart, and who was indeed her father. Bree was unable to accept my story and her love and loyalty for Frank made her blame me for what she saw as a life-long deception. She stormed out and Roger had followed her.
While looking at the old newspaper articles and other papers from the time of my disappearance, which Bree had dropped and had obviously been the genesis of her discovery, I stumbled upon a pamphlet from a Scottish Nationalist group and suddenly saw before me a face I had last seen in Cranesmuir Kirk in 1743. Geillis Duncan had been my friend and had caused a distraction so that I could escape when we had both been tried as witches. Geillis had confessed to being a witch and had been burnt at the stake. Jamie and I had escaped due to the uproar caused by Geillis' admissions. It had become evident that she had travelled through time as well; she bore the tell-tale mark of a smallpox vaccination, and her last words to me now made sense. 1968...it must be the year she had gone through the stones...this year. After discovering that Geillis had told Bree and Roger that she was leaving town and would not be back, I managed to convince them that we should go to Craigh na Dun...we needed to stop Geillis, or at least warn her of what might happen. They agreed to go, on the basis, that when nothing happened I would be forced to realise that what I had been telling them could not be true.
We arrived at the stones too late to stop Geillis. All we could do was watch on as she ran toward and then disappeared into the stone. Instead of making me face the impossibility of my story, Brianna and Roger were forced to acknowledge the truth of it.
Brianna and Roger then revealed to me something they had discovered when searching through the Reverend's papers...some research the Reverend had apparently done at the request of Frank...it revealed that a Fraser officer had survived Culloden. There had been five Fraser officers on Culloden field that day, four of them had died and their deaths were recorded on a memorial...the fifth was Brianna's father, James Fraser.
Suddenly all the love I had been hiding away in my heart burst forth. Jamie had survived Culloden. He hadn't died on that bloody field. What had happened to him after that I didn't know...but right then all I could feel was the absolute love I had been hiding from everyone for the past twenty years. It burst from me like the rays of light that could be seen as the sun rose behind the stones.
What did this mean? There were so many questions still to be answered...Jamie had survived Culloden, but that had been twenty years ago? What had happened to him since? Most importantly, could he still be alive? Could I go back and find him? But wait, what about Brianna? Could I leave my daughter?
That had been almost six months ago. Roger had recounted what his father had discovered of the circumstances surrounding Jamie's survival at Culloden. The diary of a Lord Melton had recounted how a number of Jacobite soldiers, all badly wounded, had taken shelter in a small house following the battle. They had been found by Lord Melton and his men and, as per Cumberland's orders, were all executed...all but one, James Fraser. According to Melton's diary Jamie had once spared the life of his brother and in repayment of this debt of honour, Melton had spared Jamie's life and had had him transported back to his home at Lallybroch, though due to the severity of his wounds Melton had thought that Jamie would very likely not survive the trip.
It had taken a lot of research before we came upon the next clue. In fact, Bree had been the one to find the story of the Dunbonnet. The tale told of a Jacobite laird who had survived Culloden and had hidden in a cave on his estate to avoid the English patrols that were still scouring the land looking for Jacobite traitors and raiding the countryside. Part of the tale told of a place called Leap O' the Cask, and Bree had found the name marked on an old map...the location was not far from Lallybroch. Fiona, Roger's housekeeper, had provided the ending to the tale. After seven years of hiding, the Laird had decided that the only way to save his family and their tenants was to have himself turned into the English for the price on his head.
Roger's face had lit up at this piece of the story. If the man had indeed become a prisoner of the English, they should be able to track him. The English prisons had kept detailed records...if Jamie had indeed been 'Dunbonnet' and had been taken prisoner, we would be able to find him in the prison records.
Bree's loyalty to Frank, who had always been a good and loving father to her, had made it difficult at first, for her to ask about Jamie. But as the months went by and we diligently searched through every available record, looking for some trace of him, Bree and I had finally gotten the chance to really talk about her father. I had been able to finally tell our daughter everything...all I knew of Jamie, and how much he had loved her, how he had sacrificed all so that she and I could survive.
Finally, there it was...proof...in the records of Ardsmuir Prison...his name...James Fraser of Broch Tuarach. He had survived. Further searching had revealed that three years later Ardsmuir Prison was closed and all but one of the prisoners were transported to America there to serve as indentured labour. The exception was Jamie...as a convicted traitor to the crown, Jamie's sentence could not be commuted, save at the King's pleasure. Instead he had been sent to the Lake District to serve out his sentence acting as a groom on the estate known as Helwater.
Bree and Roger had not given up, and eventually they had found the text of an article with handwritten notes and annotations that had been printed in a journal in 1765 by a printer called Alexander Malcolm, of Edinburgh. The article had not been signed when published, the author had used a pseudonym Q.E.D. Comparing the writing to the Deed of Sassine Jamie had signed and I had witnessed on the eve of Culloden it was evident to me that the writing was the same.
There were too many coincidences...the publisher was Alexander Malcolm, Jamie's full name was James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser. The written notations on the article were in what I would swear was Jamie's handwriting. I knew...he was alive, or had been in 1765, and if time goes on in parallel as we thought it did, then I could go back...I could find Jamie.
Samhain was only days away...one of the feast days each year when Mrs Graham had said that access through the stones was at its safest.
My life in America was behind me now, the future I wanted was staring down at me from the top of Craigh na Dun. I had put my affairs in order, and made as many preparations as I could for going back in time. I was not going to be unprepared this time. Bree and Roger were due back from a trip to London where they intended to buy as much 18th century coinage as they could for my trip.
I had not intended on coming here, yet somehow here I was...sitting in the car at the foot of Craigh na Dun.
I wanted so badly to do this...to go back, but I was conflicted as well. What of Brianna? She wasn't a child anymore...she was grown, a college student living on her own. But to leave, with no prospect of returning again...to accept that I would never see my daughter again...was the chance, and it was still only a chance, of finding Jamie again worth it?
It had been twenty years after all, and though I was fairly certain now that he had survived, we had very little knowledge of what his life had been in those years. I had spent those years thinking him dead...married to Frank, raising Brianna, becoming a surgeon...but knowing my heart was still his. I knew how much Jamie had loved me when he sent me through the stones, but, with all he had faced, had he moved on. Believing me forever lost to him, had he found someone else, married again, had another family. My mind had formulated a thousand possibilities of what I might find...should I find him at all.
I didn't trust myself to make the climb up that hill...it wasn't yet time. I found myself lightly caressing my silver wedding ring...I had not removed it, not once in the twenty-odd years since Jamie had placed it on my finger. I could not count the number of times I had found myself touching it over the years, the number of times I had seen Frank glance down as I did so, only to look away. He, thankfully, had never again made any mention of me taking it off.
I closed my eyes and found that the many recent sleepless nights I had known were finally catching up with me.
I walked purposefully through the circle and approached the stones. Gently I placed my gloved hands upon the stone, and slowly bent forward, resting my forehead lightly against the massive rock. My conflicted thoughts and emotions seemed suddenly to be at peace and it was as though I could feel Jamie on the other side...waiting for me.
My head fell and my eyes snapped open. I was still in the car, and had obviously been dreaming. But in dreams you can often see the truth of things. My doubts were gone. Whatever I would find, I was going back.
It would be unbearably hard to say goodbye to Bree, but I knew she would be alright...my friend Joe Abernathy would keep a parental eye on her, and, if my instincts were right, Roger would be there for her also.
Jamie had once said, not long after we married, "You're mine, mo nighean donn, mine...now and forever." Those words had echoed in my dreams so many times down the years. It was true then, I had certainly been his; it was true now...I had never stopped loving him in all our missing years; and I knew in my heart nothing could ever change that...I would be his forever. "
It was time to go and collect Bree and Roger from the train. There were only a few things left to do before I returned to Craigh na Dun for the last time.
I started the car, took one more look at the hill, and whispered to the wind, "I'm coming, my love. Wait for me. I'll be with you soon."
The End