Outlander Book Club: Book 1, Chapter 35 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
We pick up shortly after Rupert and the others agree to join Claire in the fight to save Jamie from Wentworth Prison. Claire is at the prison, visiting Sir Fletcher, who is the commander at the prison.
It seems he’s a fair man, as later we learn that he wouldn’t be happy about the way Black Jack Randall has treated Jamie. However, there’s no way that Claire could go to Sir Fletcher about the mistreatment. How had she found Jamie in the first place?
More on that in a bit. First of all, Claire needs to learn where Jamie is likely to be kept. She wants to speak to Jamie, pretending to be a close family friend. Fletcher doesn’t want that to happen, viewing Jamie as too dangerous of a man. However, he does agree to send Claire away with Jamie’s belongings. Usually, they’d be sent onto the family but Jamie refused to tell Fletcher anything about his family.
Fletcher also agrees to Jamie writing a letter to his family. It gives Murtagh and Claire another reason to go back to Wentworth Prison.
Once out, Claire relays everything to Rupert and the others. It’s Rupert who finds out more details of the prison (and of Sir Fletcher). It’s all thanks to playing cards with the prison guards in another inn. This is all the information they need to bide Murtagh and Claire some time to find out where Jamie is being kept.
Murtagh leaves Claire with keys to search for Jamie, who has been taken to one of the deeper dungeons. There, Jamie has been mistreated. His hand has been smashed and broken and Jamie’s hands had been bound at some point.
Jamie does help Claire try to get the manacle off his ankle. It’s the type that should spring open with blunt force against a piece of straight metal. However, Claire accidentally catches Jamie’s ankle, knocking him out from the pain.
Black Jack Randall turns up with an orderly. Of course, it’s him who has removed Jamie from the prison cell of other men (men who Claire allowed to escape). After a fight with the orderly, knocking him out and likely killing him, Jamie realizes he can only do one thing: he can protect Claire.
He offers himself to Black Jack Randall as long as Claire is allowed to go free. He also agrees not to say anything when it comes to the gallows since this is something Black Jack Randall would fear.
Randall sticks to his word, taken Claire out. He does want to know who she is though, suspecting that she’s a Jacobite and probably linked to Lovat. However, Claire tells him that she’s a witch and curses him by telling him the date of his death. He believes her.
When she’s thrown out of the prison, she’s at a different part of the building to where Murtagh and the others will be waiting for her. She has to get to them, which leads to her being attacked by a wolf. Fortunately, she knows enough about dogs to protect herself while she fights this one off. She manages to kill the wolf but realizes there will be others.
Just as she’s being surrounded by other wolves, someone kills two with arrows. She’s saved by a man in a bearskin cloak, which is where we leave her in this chapter.