Текст книги "Written in My Own Heart's Blood"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

Соавторы: Diana Gabaldon
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Текущая страница: 73 (всего у книги 74 страниц)

“Already?” I exclaimed.

“Aye, Matthew MacDonald came down a half hour ago to say her water’s broken. He’s gone to find Ian now.”

He had found Ian; we met the two young men in the dooryard of the cabin, Matthew bright red with excitement, Ian white as a sheet under his tan. The door of the cabin was open; I could hear the murmur of women’s voices inside.

“Mam,” Ian said huskily, seeing Jenny. His shoulders, stiff with terror, relaxed a little.

“Dinna fash yourself, a bhalaich,” she said comfortably, and smiled sympathetically at him. “Your auntie and I have done this a time or two before. It will be all right.”

“Grannie! Grannie!” I turned to find Germain and Fanny, both covered with dirt and with sticks and leaves in their hair, faces bright with excitement. “Is it true? Is Rachel having her baby? Can we watch?”

How did it work? I wondered. News in the mountains seemed to travel through the air.

“Watch, forbye!” Jenny exclaimed, scandalized. “Childbed isna any kind of a place for men. Be off with ye this minute!”

Germain looked torn between disappointment and pleasure at being called a man. Fanny looked hopeful.

“I’m no-t a man,” she said.

Jenny and I both looked dubiously at her and then at each other.

“Well, ye’re no quite a woman yet, either, are ye?” Jenny said to her. If not, she was close. Tiny breasts were beginning to show when she was in her shift, and her menarche wasn’t far off.

“I’ve s-seen babies bor-n.” It was a simple statement of fact, and Jenny nodded slowly.

“Aye. All right, then.”

Fanny beamed.

“What do we do?” Germain demanded, indignant. “Us men.”

I smiled, and Jenny gave a deep chuckle that was older than time. Ian and Matthew looked startled, Germain quite taken aback.

“Your uncle did his part of the business nine months ago, lad, just as ye’ll do yours when it’s time. Now, you and Matthew take your uncle awa’ and get him drunk, aye?”

Germain nodded quite seriously and turned to Ian.

“Do you want Amy’s wine, Ian, or shall we use Grandda’s good whisky, do ye think?”

Ian’s long face twitched, and he glanced at the open cabin door. A deep grunt, not quite a groan, came out and he looked away, paling further. He swallowed and groped in the leather bag he wore at his waist, coming out with what looked like a rolled animal skin of some kind and handing it to me.

“If—” he started, then stopped to gather himself and started again. “When the babe is born, will ye wrap him—or her,”—he added hastily, “in this?”

It was a small skin, soft and flexible, with very thick, fine fur in shades of gray and white. A wolf, I thought, surprised. The hide of an unborn wolf pup.

“Of course, Ian,” I said, and squeezed his arm. “Don’t worry. It will be all right.”

Jenny looked at the small, soft skin and shook her head.

“I doubt, lad, if that will half-cover your bairn. Have ye no seen the size o’ your wife lately?”



AND YOU KNOW THAT

JAMIE CAME HOME three days later, with a large buck tied to Miranda’s saddle. The horse seemed unenthused about this, though tolerant, and she whuffed air through her nostrils and shivered her hide when he dragged the carcass off, letting it fall with a thump.

“Aye, lass, ye’ve done brawly,” he said, clapping her on the shoulder. “Is Ian about, a nighean?” He paused to kiss me briefly, glancing up the hill toward the MacDonald cottage. “I could use a bit of help wi’ this.”

“Oh, he’s here,” I said, smiling. “I don’t know if he’ll come skin your deer for you, though. He’s got a new son and won’t let the baby out of his sight.”

Jamie’s face, rather tired and worn, broke into a grin.

“A son? The blessing of Bride and Michael be on him! A braw lad?”

“Very,” I assured him. “I think he must weigh almost nine pounds.”

“Poor lass,” he said, with a sympathetic grimace. “And her first, too. Wee Rachel’s all right, though?”

“Rather tired and sore, but quite all right,” I assured him. “Shall I bring you some beer, while you take care of the horse?”

“A good wife is prized above rubies,” he said, smiling. “Come to me, mo nighean donn.” He reached out a long arm and drew me in, holding me close against him. I put my arms around him and felt the quiver of his muscles, exhausted, and the sheer hard strength still in him, that would hold him up, no matter how tired he might be. We stood quite still for some time, my cheek against his chest and his face against my hair, drawing strength from each other for whatever might come. Being married.



AMID THE GENERAL rejoicing and fuss over the baby—who was still being called Oggy, his parents being spoiled for choice regarding his name—the butchering of the deer, and the subsequent feasting lasting well into the night, it was late morning of the next day before we found ourselves alone again.

“The only thing lacking last night was cherry bounce,” I remarked. “I never saw so many people drink so much of so many different things.” We were making our way—slowly—up to the house site, carrying several bags of nails, a very expensive small saw, and a plane that Jamie had brought back in addition to the deer.

Jamie made a small amused sound but didn’t reply. He paused for a moment to look up at the site, presumably envisioning the outline of the house-to-be.

“D’ye think it should maybe have a third story?” he asked. “The walls would bear it easily enough. Take careful building of the chimneys, though, Keeping them plumb, I mean.”

“Do we need that much room?” I asked doubtfully. There had certainly been times in the old house when I’d wished we’d had that much room: influxes of visitors, new emigrants, or refugees had often filled the place to the point of explosion—mine. “Providing more space might just encourage guests.”

“Ye make it sound like they’re white ants, Sassenach.”

“Wh—oh, termites. Well, yes, there’s a strong superficial resemblance.”

Arrived at the clearing, I piled the nails conveniently and went to bathe my face and hands in water from the tiny spring that flowed from the rocks a little way up the hill. By the time I came back, Jamie had stripped off his shirt and was knocking together a pair of rough sawhorses. I hadn’t seen him with his shirt off for a long time and paused to enjoy the sight. Beyond the simple pleasure of seeing his body flex and move, whipcord muscles moving easily under his skin, I liked knowing that he felt himself safe here and could ignore his scars.

I sat down on an upturned bucket and watched for a time. The blows of his hammer temporarily silenced the birds, and when he stopped and set the sawhorse on its feet, the air rang empty in my ears.

“I wish you hadn’t felt you had to do it,” I said quietly.

He didn’t reply for a moment but pursed his lips as he squatted and picked up a few stray nails. “When we wed—” he said, not looking at me. “When we wed, I said to ye that I gave ye the protection of my name, my clan—and my body.” He stood up then and looked down at me, serious. “Do ye tell me now that ye no longer want that?”

“I—no,” I said abruptly. “I just—I wish you hadn’t killed him, that’s all. I’d—managed to forgive him. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I did it. Not permanently, but I thought I could do it permanently, sooner or later.”

His mouth twitched a little.

“And if ye could forgive him, he needn’t die, ye’re saying? That’s like a judge lettin’ a murderer go free, because his victim’s family forgave him. Or an enemy soldier sent off wi’ all his weapons.”

“I am not a state at war, and you are not my army!”

He began to speak, then stopped short, searching my face, his eyes intent.

“Am I not?” he said quietly.

I opened my mouth to reply but found I couldn’t. The birds had come back, and a gang of house finches chittered at the foot of a big fir that grew at the side of the clearing.

“You are,” I said reluctantly, and, standing up, wrapped my arms around him. He was warm from his work, and the scars on his back were fine as threads under my fingers. “I wish you didn’t have to be.”

“Aye, well,” he said, and held me close. After a bit, we walked hand in hand to the biggest pile of barked timber and sat down. I could feel him thinking but was content to wait until he had formed what he wanted to say. It didn’t take him long. He turned to me and took my hands, formal as a man about to say his wedding vows.

“Ye lost your parents young, mo nighean donn, and wandered about the world, rootless. Ye loved Frank”—his mouth compressed for an instant, but I thought he was unconscious of it—“and of course ye love Brianna and Roger Mac and the weans … but, Sassenach—I am the true home of your heart, and I know that.”

He lifted my hands to his mouth and kissed my upturned palms, one and then the other, his breath warm and his beard stubble soft on my fingers.

“I have loved others, and I do love many, Sassenach—but you alone hold all my heart, whole in your hands,” he said softly. “And you know that.”



WE WORKED through the day then, Jamie fitting stones for the foundation, me digging the new garden and foraging through the woods, bringing back pipsissewa and black cohosh, mint and wild ginger to transplant.

Toward late afternoon we stopped to eat; I’d brought cheese and bread and early apples in my basket and had put two stone bottles of ale in the spring to keep cold. We sat on the grass, leaning back against a stack of timber that was shaded by the big fir, tired, eating in companionable silence.

“Ian says he and Rachel will come up tomorrow to help,” Jamie said at last, thriftily eating his apple core. “Are ye going to eat yours, Sassenach?”

“No,” I said, handing it over. “Apple seeds have cyanide in them, you know.”

“Will it kill me?”

“It hasn’t so far.”

“Good.” He pulled off the stem and ate the core. “Have they settled on a name for the wee lad yet?”

I closed my eyes and leaned back into the shade of the big fir, enjoying its sharp, sun-warmed scent.

“Hmm. The last I heard, Rachel was suggesting Fox—for George Fox, you know; he was the founder of the Society of Friends, but naturally they wouldn’t call the baby George, because of the king. Ian said he doesn’t think highly of foxes, though, and what about Wolf, instead?”

Jamie made a meditative Scottish noise.

“Aye, that’s no bad. At least he’s not wanting to call the wean Rollo.”

I laughed, opening my eyes.

“Do you really think that’s what he has in mind? I know people name their children for deceased relatives, but naming one for your deceased dog …”

“Aye, well,” Jamie said judiciously. “He was a good dog.”

“Well, yes, but—” A movement down on the far side of the cove caught my eye. People coming up the wagon road. “Look, who’s that?” There were four small moving dots, but at this distance I couldn’t make out much more than that without my glasses.

Jamie shaded his eyes, peering.

“No one I ken,” he said, sounded mildly interested. “It looks like a family, though—they’ve a couple of bairns. Maybe new folk, wanting to settle. They havena got much in the way of goods, though.”

I squinted; they were closer now, and I could make out the disparity of height. Yes, a man and a woman, both wearing broad-brimmed hats, and a boy and girl.

“Look, the lad’s got red hair,” Jamie said, smiling and raising his chin to point. “He minds me of Jem.”

“So he does.” Curious now, I got up and rummaged in my basket, finding the bit of silk in which I kept my spectacles when not wearing them. I put them on and turned, pleased as I always was to see fine details spring suddenly into being. Slightly less pleased to see that what I had thought was a scale of bark on the timber near where I’d been sitting was in fact an enormous centipede, enjoying the shade.

I turned my attention back to the newcomers, though; they’d stopped—the little girl had dropped something. Her dolly—I could see the doll’s hair, a splotch of color on the ground, even redder than the little boy’s. The man was wearing a pack, and the woman had a large bag over one shoulder. She set it down and bent to pick up the doll, brushing it off and handing it back to her daughter.

The woman turned then to speak to her husband, throwing out an arm to point to something—the Higginses’ cabin, I thought. The man put both hands to his mouth and shouted, and the wind carried his words to us, faint but clearly audible, called out in a strong, cracked voice.

“Hello, the house!”

I was on my feet, and Jamie stood and grabbed my hand, hard enough to bruise my fingers.

Movement at the door of the cabin, and a small figure that I recognized as Amy Higgins appeared. The tall woman pulled off her hat and waved it, her long red hair streaming out like a banner in the wind.

“Hello, the house!” she called, laughing.

Then I was flying down the hill, with Jamie just before me, arms flung wide, the two of us flyng together on that same wind.



AUTHOR’S NOTES

Dams and Tunnels

In the 1950s, a great hydroelectric project was started to bring power to the Highlands, and, in the process, many dams with turbines were built. During the construction of these dams, a good many tunnels were built, a number of them long enough to require a small electric train to transport men and equipment from one end to the other. (If you’re interested in this project and its history, I recommend a book called Tunnel Tigers: A First-Hand Account of a Hydro Boy in the Highlands by Patrick Campbell, though there are several other good sources.)

Now, Loch Errochty does exist, and it does have a dam. I don’t know whether it has a tunnel exactly like the one described in the book, but if it did—that’s what it would look like; the tunnel and train are taken from multiple descriptions of the hydroelectric constructions in the Highlands. My description of the dam itself, its spillway, and its turbine room are based on those at the Pitlochry Dam.

Banastre Tarleton and the British Legion

There will likely be a certain amount of quibbling about my inclusion of Colonel Banastre Tarleton in the Battle of Monmouth, as the British Legion of which he was a commander (a regiment of mixed cavalry and artillery) was technically not in existence until after General Clinton’s return to New York following the battle. However, the British Legion did consist of two separate parts: cavalry, under the command of Banastre Tarleton, and artillery, and these parts were organized separately. The cavalry unit appears to have been in some stage of organization in early June of 1778, prior to the battle, though the artillery unit (reasonably enough, given the problems of equipping and training) was not organized until late July, after the battle, when Sir Henry Clinton had returned to New York.

Now, there is no report that I can find as to the definite whereabouts of Colonel Tarleton during the month of June 1778. While neither he nor his British Legion is listed in the official order of battle, that listing is admitted by every source I could find to be confused and deficient. Owing to the large number of militia units taking part and the irregular nature of the battle (by eighteenth-century standards), various small groups are known to have been there but were not documented, and others were there but under confusing circumstances (e.g., a portion of Daniel Morgan’s Rifle Corps was reported as taking part in the battle, but Morgan himself didn’t. I don’t know whether his absence was the result of illness, accident, or conflict, but apparently he wasn’t there, even though he plainly intended to be).

Now, if I were General Clinton, in the throes of imminent departure from Philadelphia, and more or less expecting the possibility of attack by Washington’s Rebels, and I had this nice new cavalry unit forming up in New York—would I not send word to Colonel Tarleton to bring his men on down, to lend a hand in the evacuation and to have a bit of field experience to meld them together as a new unit? I would, and I can’t think that General Clinton was less soldierly than I am.

(Besides, there is this interesting thing called novelistic license. I have one. Framed.)

The Battle of Monmouth

The battle lasted from before daylight ’til after dark: the longest battle of the Revolution. It was also by far the messiest battle of the Revolution.

Owing to the circumstances—Washington’s troops trying to catch an enemy army fleeing in three widely separated divisions—neither side could choose its ground, and the ground over which they fought was so chopped up and patchworked with farms, creeks, and forests, they couldn’t fight in the usual manner, with lines facing each other, nor was it possible to develop effective flanking maneuvers. Thus it wasn’t so much a classic eighteenth-century battle as a very long series of pitched fights between small groups, most of whom had No Idea what was going on anywhere else. And it ended up as one of those indecisive battles that no one wins and where no one has any idea for some time afterward what the actual effects of the battle were or would be.

With two hundred–odd years of historical perspective, the general take on the Battle of Monmouth is that it was important not because the Americans won but because they didn’t actually lose.

Washington and his troops had spent the preceding winter at Valley Forge, pulling together what men and resources they had and forming those troops into (they hoped) a real army, with the help of Baron von Steuben (who was actually not a baron but thought it sounded better) and other European officers who lent their services either out of idealism (vide the Marquis de La Fayette) or from a sense of personal adventure and ambition. (As the Continental army was a trifle lacking in money, they offered instant promotion as an inducement to experienced officers; a mere captain from a British or German regiment could become a colonel—or occasionally, a general—in the Continental army, no questions asked.)

Consequently, Washington was itching to find an opportunity to try out the new army, and General Clinton provided an excellent opportunity. The fact that the new army did acquit itself very well (bar the occasional snafu such as Lee’s botched encircling maneuver and mistaken retreat) was a shot in the arm for the Rebel cause and gave both army and partisans new heart to continue the fight.

Still, in terms both of logistics and results, the battle was One Big Mess. While there is a tremendous amount of material on the battle, and a great many eyewitness reports, the fragmented nature of the conflict prevented anyone from ever having a clear idea as to the overall state of things during the battle, and the staggered arrival of so many companies of militia from Pennsylvania and New Jersey meant that some companies were not documented as having been there, even though they were. (Sources note “several unidentified militia companies from New Jersey,” for instance. These are, of course, the companies commanded by General Fraser.)

From a historical perspective, the Battle of Monmouth is also interesting because of the participation of so many well-known Revolutionary figures, from George Washington himself to the Marquis de La Fayette, Nathanael Greene, Anthony Wayne, and Baron von Steuben.

Now, when you include real people in a historical novel, you want to balance a realistic and (insofar as is possible) accurate portrayal of them against the fact that the novel is seldom about these people. Therefore, while we do see most of them (and what we do see is based on reasonably accurate biographical information1), we see them en passant, and only in situations affecting the people who are the real focus of the novel.

In regard to the novelistic license mentioned above: a special embossed seal (stamped by the Temporal Authority) allows me to compress time when necessary. True battle aficionados (or those obsessive souls who feel compelled to construct timelines and then fret about them) will note that Jamie and Claire meet with General Washington and several other senior officers at Coryell’s Ferry. Some five days later, we find them making preparations on the day of battle, with little or no description of what was happening to them during the interval. That’s because, while there was a tremendous amount of moving around, nothing of dramatic note happened on those five days. While I do strive for historical accuracy, I do also know that a) history is often not very accurate, and b) most people who really care about the logistic minutiae of battles are reading Osprey’s Men-at-Arms series or the transcript of the court-martial of General Charles Lee, not novels.

Ergo: While all the officers mentioned were with Washington’s army, they were not all at dinner on the same night or in the same place. Commanders (and their troops) came to join Washington from several places over the course of the nine days between Clinton’s exodus from Philadelphia and Washington’s catching him near Monmouth Courthouse (the site of Monmouth Courthouse is now the Monmouth Hall of Records, for the benefit of people who choose to read with a map in hand2). The general state of the relations among those officers, though, is as shown during that dinner.

Likewise, it seemed unnecessary to depict the mundane events of five days of travel and military conference, just to prove to the meanest intelligence that five days had, in fact, passed. So I didn’t.

The Court-Martial of General Charles Lee

Lee’s lack of scouting, communications, and (not to put too fine a point on it) leadership led to the massive retreat that nearly scuttled the American attack altogether, this being retrieved by George Washington’s personal rallying of the retreating troops. In consequence, General Lee was court-martialed following the battle on charges of disobeying orders, misbehavior before the enemy, and disrespect to the commander in chief; he was convicted and suspended from military command for a year. There would have been a great deal of talk around Philadelphia regarding this—particularly in the household of a printer who published a regular newspaper. However, the Fraser family had other pressing concerns at the time, and so no mention was made of this.

Quaker Plain Speech

The Religious Society of Friends was founded around 1647 by George Fox. As part of the society’s belief in the equality of all men before God, they did not use honorific titles (such as “Mr./Mrs.,” “General/Colonel/etc.”) and used “plain speech” in addressing everyone.

Now, as any of you who have a second language with Latin roots (Spanish, French, etc.) realize, these languages have both a familiar and a formal version of “you.” So did English, once upon a time. The “thee” and “thou” forms that most of us recognize as Elizabethan or Biblical are in fact the English familiar forms of “you”—with “you” used as both the plural familiar form (“all y’all”) and the formal pronoun (both singular and plural). As English evolved, the familiar forms were dropped, leaving us with the utilitarian “you” to cover all contingencies.

Quakers retained the familiar forms, though, as part of their “plain speech” until the twentieth century. Over the years, though, plain speech also evolved, and while “thee/thy” remained, “thou/thine” largely disappeared, and the verb forms associated with “thee/thy” changed. From about the mid-eighteenth century onward, plain speech used “thee” as the singular form of “you” (the plural form remained “you,” even in plain speech), with the same verb forms normally used for third person singular: e.g., “He knows that/ Thee knows that.” The older verb endings—“knowest,” “doth,” etc.—were no longer used.

If you would like to know a whole lot more about the grammatical foundations and usages of Quaker plain speech than most people normally want to, allow me to recommend to you No Need to be Ashamed of the Plain Language by Kenneth S. P. Morse

You can find this on the QuakerJane.com website, or Google it (in case that website should no longer be extant).

Scots/Scotch/Scottish

As noted elsewhere (Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, see “Author’s Notes”), in the eighteenth century (and, indeed, well into the mid-twentieth century), the word “Scotch” and its variants (e.g., “Scotchman”) were commonly used (by both English people and Scots) to describe an inhabitant of Scotland. The terms “Scottish” and “Scots” were also occasionally used, though less common.

Personally, I don’t think political correctness has any place in historical fiction, and therefore those persons in this book who normally would have used “Scotch” do.

Typos and Terminology

Owing to the interesting idiosyncrasies of Scots dialect, some words may appear to be misspelled—but they aren’t. For instance, while an English cook may have made her flapjacks on an iron griddle, her Scottish counterpart was frying sausages on a hot girdle. (This occasional transposition of sounds results in such entertaining items as a Scottish dessert known as “creamed crud” (“curd” to the less-imaginative English). It also results in the occasional inattentive reviewer denouncing the occurrence of “typos” in my books. This is not to say that there aren’t any typos—there always are, no matter how many eyeballs have combed the pages—just that “girdle” isn’t one of them.

Besides dialectical idiosyncrasies, there are also the oddities due to obsolete (but entirely accurate) usage. For example, at one point in this book, you will find someone hiding behind a pile of “spiled” barrels. I do not mean “spoiled,” and it isn’t a typo. “Spiled” means that a spile (a small wooden peg or spigot) has been driven into a cask in order to broach it and draw off liquid. So the pile is composed of barrels that have been drained of their contents. (Yes, I could indeed have said “a pile of empty barrels” instead, but what fun would that be?)

Bibliography/LibraryThing

Having been an academic for a good long time, I appreciate the virtues of a good bibliography. Having been a reader of novels for a lot longer, I sort of don’t think extensive bibliographies belong in them.

Still, one of the side effects of reading historical fiction often is a desire to learn more about events, locations, flora, fauna, etc., described therein. I have a goodish number of references (about 1,500, last time I counted), acquired over the last twenty-odd years of writing historical fiction, and am happy to share the bibliographic information for these.

As it’s not convenient to do that individually with a large number of people, I’ve put my whole reference collection (as of the beginning of 2013, at least) on LibraryThing—this being an online bibliographic site, where people can catalog and share their personal library information. My catalog is public, and you should be able to access all of it using my name as a keyword. (Individual references also include keywords like “medicine,” “herbal,” “biography,” etc.)



1 For example, Nathanael Greene’s remarks about Quakers are taken from his own letters, as is his reference to his father’s discouraging reading as “tending to separate one from God.”

2 With regard to maps and distances, etc., it’s worth noting that such things as township boundaries did change between the eighteenth century and the twenty-first. Ergo, Tennent Church is now in Manalapan, New Jersey, whereas originally it was in Freehold Township. The church didn’t move; the township did.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It takes me about four years to write one of the Big Books, what with research, travel, and the fact that they are … er … big. During that time, LOTS of people talk to me and kindly offer advice on everything from How to Reseat an Eyeball to what kind of a mess indigo-dyeing really makes, entertaining trivia (such as the fact that cows do not like daisies. Who knew?), and logistical support (mostly in terms of remembering when the people in my books were born and how far it is from point A to point B and in which direction—I went to a parochial school that stopped teaching geography in the fifth grade, so this is Not One of My Strong Points, and as for personal chronology, I just don’t care whether a given character is nineteen or twenty, but apparently lots of people do, and more power to them).

This being the case, I’m sure I’m leaving out dozens of kindly people who have given me useful information and assistance over the last four years and I apologize for not having written down their names at the time—but I surely do appreciate said information and assistance!

Among those whose names I did write down, I’d like to acknowledge …

… My literary agents, Russell Galen and Danny Baror, without whom my books would not be published as successfully and widely as they are, and I would not have the edifying experience of opening cartons of books written in Lithuanian with my name on the front—to say nothing of the Korean edition of Outlander with the pink bubbles on the cover.

… Sharon Biggs Waller, for information about the Scots Dumpy and for bringing this charming chicken to my attention.

… Marte Brengle, for telling me about the forensic reconstruction of George Washington’s face, and Dr. Merih O’Donoghue, for notes on his disastrous dental history.

… Dr. Merih O’Donoghue and her ophthalmologist friend, for technical commentary and useful gruesome details concerning Lord John’s eye. Also for the teaching model of an eyeball, which adorns my bookshelves and gives interviewers who enter my office the willies.

… Carol and Tracey of MyOutlanderPurgatory, for their lovely photos of the battlefield at Paoli, which drew my attention to the Rebel rallying cry “Remember Paoli!” and the discovery of Lord John’s unpopular cousin.

… Tamara Burke, for bits of homestead and farming lore, most particularly for her vivid description of a rooster valiantly defending his hens.

… Tamara Burke, Joanna Bourne, and Beth and Matthew Shope, for helpful advice on Quaker marriage customs and absorbing discussions regarding the history and philosophies of the Society of Friends. Any error or license taken with regard to such customs is mine, I hasten to add.

… Catherine MacGregor (Gaelic and French, including gruesome lullabies about beheaded lovers), Catherine-Ann MacPhee (Gaelic, phraseology and idiom, besides introducing me to the Gaelic poem “To an Excellent Penis” (see below), and Adhamh Ò Broin, Gaelic tutor for the Outlander Starz television production, for emergency help with exclamations. Barbara Schnell, for providing the German and occasional Latin bits (If you want to know how to say “Shit!” in Latin, it’s “Stercus!”).