Just the Outlander chapter
The chapter starts with the talk of the battle to come. Claire has learned from Jamie what’s going on. I love how the other wives don’t want the details, but as a battlefield nurse, of course Claire wants to know. She understands it all, and she needs to know what’s going on so she can be a battlefield doctor in this time period.
Claire talks about the fog and likens it to the bombs dropped in Japan during the Second World War. I’m confused about why she thinks of them. This fog is nothing like that. Is it that the change that is about to come is like that? It doesn’t make a lot of sense when I think the battle is more like Prestonpans or Culloden. They are better echoes for the chapter.
There is a concern for Jamie. He’s going to be a rifleman, and now the previous chapter makes a little more sense. Daniel Morgan is impressed with Jamie’s rifle skills. That leads to Jamie ending up here. He’ll need to take out the officers, and that could mean taking out William. Could Jamie ever justify killing his son for war? I don’t think so.
Jamie is injured. While the British don’t bother with him, scavengers do. Claire has to fight her way to Jamie to save him, and she does that by threatening the life of a child. I think we get to see a side to Claire we wouldn’t usually. It’s not normal for her to put someone else in harm’s way, but she will for Jamie.
Jamie fears that he will lose a hand. That’s the only part that’s injured. Claire makes it clear that she will leave him with a working hand, but there is concern about the finger that was damaged at Wentworth Prison all those years ago. Jamie says that if he loses a finger, he won’t begrudge those who pulled him into that battle.
There is a conversation about whether the men Jamie protected were worth it. Were they good men? I’m not sure why Claire worries about that considering she’s saved plenty of men who probably didn’t deserve it in her career as a doctor. Sometimes she’s such a hypocrite, but that makes her a great character.