Outlander Book Club: A Breath of Snow and Ashes Chapter 122 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
The chapter starts with Claire heading to Malva’s grave. I love that despite everything Malva lied about, Claire still leaves wreaths at the grave. She doesn’t want this young girl and her baby to feel alone in the cold.
She isn’t the only one visiting the grave. Allan is there with a loaded pistol on the ground. Claire doesn’t fear for her life, despite the pistol. She is worried about Allan, fearful that he is going to kill himself. It turns out that that was his plan.
Allan finally confesses. He shares how he struggled after watching his mom hanged, and the only person he loved in life was Malva. That love was an abomination, though. He sexually abused and raped his sister, and she ended up pregnant from it. Allan forced her to sleep with other men on the Ridge so that she could claim they were the father and force a marriage.
However, when it came to it, Allan couldn’t see his sister married off to someone else. So, he forced her to claim Jamie was the father. This made it like that Jamie would pay Malva off and the two Christies could get away. Eventually, Malva felt bad. She loved Claire and decided to tell Claire the truth. Allan couldn’t allow that to happen, so he killed Malva.
Claire is shocked and angry to learn all this. Rather than allowing Allan to die, she tells Allan that she forbids him from killing himself. He must live with all this pain and guilt.
If only someone else thought the same. Ian shoots Allan in the heart with an arrow, and we’re left to presume that he overheard everything while in the woods. We see that Mohawk side to Ian. He isn’t going to let Malva’s unfortunate life go without justice being served, and to him, justice is killing Allan.
I’ll admit that I wanted to feel for Malva in this chapter. However, I was reminded of the fact that she tried to kill Claire and her own father during the sickness. I’m still not sure she was as innocent as Allan made her out to seem in this chapter.