Outlander Book Club: Written in My Own Heart’s Blood Chapter 11 breakdown

Just the Outlander chapter

The chapter picks up with Lord John Grey with his hands bound. He’s being taken somewhere and finds that Natty Bumppo, also known as Hawkeye, is a friendly enough face to ask about Paoli. What is that? Well, it turns out that it’s called the Paoli Massare, where almost 100 Americans were bayonetted in their beds.

This is a story. There’s no way of knowing if it actually happened. What I love is that Hawkeye makes it clear that he doesn’t view it as a proper massacre as a Mohican Indian. That should say something, I guess.

John is taken to Corporal Woodbine and then to Colonel Smith. It turns out that Smith was with Minnie and a member of the British Army then. He’s now a Patriot. Woodbine explains why John has been taken. The Americans know that he is a cousin of Major General Charles Grey, who was involved at Paoli. It’s a distant connection, but that doesn’t matter.

Smith then learns that John was there with Jamie Fraser. Was it personal? Is John a spy? It’s only once Woodbine leaves that John starts to talk. He shares that Jamie would have arrested John if he was a spy rather than beat him. The reason he was with Jamie was purely personal. That does raise some questions about Jamie.

Smith thinks that John will be hanged. John thinks he would make a better person for a prisoner exchange, but there isn’t a mechanism for that at the time. That means death. It doesn’t help that Smith is taking John to General Wayne, who is connected to Paoli.