Outlander Book Club: Voyager Chapter 27 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
We start with Claire and Jamie getting dinner. They go to a tavern for better food, and it’s clear that this is for those with a little more money. It is more like a higher-class restaurant for the time instead of the usual tavern food that everyone would be used to.
The two discuss the names Jamie uses. To Madame Jeanne, Jamie is Jamie Fraser and Claire is Mrs. Fraser. To those coming into the print shop and to some of the officials, he is Sawney Malcolm, with Sawney short for Alexander. It connects back to the nickname Willie gave him as a kid. When he is Mr. Malcolm, Claire is Mrs. Malcolm.
Sir Percival is there, but Jamie doesn’t want to talk to him. Of course, Jamie doesn’t get a choice. Percival comes over and offers Jamie congratulations on his marriage. Clearly, there doesn’t need to be an explanation as to how Claire has just shown up after 20 years, not to those who didn’t know her in the first place, anyway.
Percival tells Jamie not to go to Perth, where he is intending to go for business. Jamie tells Percival it’s to see a new style of printing press, but he later tells Claire that it’s to see Tom Gage about seditious material. Gage is how Jamie fully got into the printing press and how that article came about that Roger had found.
We get to know more of what Jamie did in the years before Claire found him. It’s a chance to learn why he got into the printing business in the first place when he had no idea about it.
Things don’t stay quiet in the chapter. There’s a fire at the print shop, and Jamie has to go in to save his printing press. The print shop is the way for him to continue his smuggling business, so it’s not surprising that he wants to save it.
He then goes back in over the door in the roof to save Young Ian, who is trapped in the building. That’s when Ian catches up with Claire and finds out that Young Ian is in there. Ian wants to help but there’s nothing he can do.
Fortunately, Jamie saves his nephew and they get back to Madame Jeanne’s. That’s when Ian finds out that Jamie knew Young Ian was in Edinburgh after all. Young Ian had been helping with the smuggling business, but he ended up following a man who was asking for Jamie Fraser and Jamie Roy. Roy is the name Jamie uses at the docks, so Young Ian knew that there was something up.
Sure enough, the seaman went to the print shop in search for the seditious material. Young Ian, who was drunk by this point, did manage to stop the man but he was responsible for the fire.
There is an amusing moment in the chapter when Young Ian is disgusted that Ian would lay with a prostitute. He’s still sure that Claire is a prostitute. Claire tells him that he’d left the room before learning the truth, and it leads to Young Ian asking if Claire is a fairy like everyone said she was.
When an unhappy Ian leaves the group, Young Ian now tells Jamie a little more of what happened in the print shop. He killed a man, and he’s terrified that his soul will go to hell because of it. Jamie explains that Ian did it to protect himself, so he’s not going to hell. However, he can confess the events and say a prayer for the deceased.
It’s a beautiful moment between nephew and uncle. I know it’s a moment that many readers missed in Outlander Season 3, but it wasn’t completely forgotten about. I’ll get to that shortly.