Campaign
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be,
For my unconquerable soul."
I look out over Loch Ness, experiencing the Stygian Blue of deep, clean water for the first time since my flight in from Skycity 15.
More than ten weeks ago, and in two hundred years yet to be. . .
"In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloody, but unbowed."
Ned comes up beside me, softly quoting,
"Beyond this place of wrath and tears,
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years,
Finds and shall find me unafraid."
The heavy cold of the winter wind ruffles the surface of the water, pushing freezing, oppressive damp into our lungs.
I link an arm though Ned's, and take one last look at the Loch.
"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."
He mouths the words as I say them, gently smiling. "I would not have thought you knoo much of Henley, Mrs. Beauchamp."
As we turn back to the hotel, I pull a smile from somewhere, I have no idea where, and say brightly, "Well, let's just say I have a bit of a weakness for broad-shouldered redheads, Mr. Gowan."
I can't tell him I'd never even heard of Henley until I found a book of his poems in the Leoch library nearly a month ago. . .
"Ach, Ned, please," he waves a thin, imperious hand, "'Mr. Gowan' makes me feel a hundred. Ann'm onlay sixty three, after all."
I pat his arm, "In that case, you must call me Claire. A fortnight's friendship is enough for a first-name basis, I think."
I really can't tell him he's the only friend I have at the moment. . .
"Weel, 's'yer opinion that mattars o'course." He smirks, slyly, "An' aye, I have notissed you bear a certain. . . affinity, as it were. . . for our wee Green Man. . . aye?" He lifts his eyebrows in my direction.
I don't directly acknowledge Jamie's code name, any more than I did the first time I realized the electronic crew listings we must present at all official checkpoints always have one automatically marked box, all alone under the heading "Other" – namely, "The Green Man".
Be he ghost, sprite, fairy or foundling, he's on our side, the listing seems to say. I had brought it up to Ned that day, and he gave me one of his usual lawyerly runaround speeches, but I managed to gather that all official campaign parties are allowed to put a "phantom name" on their roster – only one, and their actual tally of members must never include them. They say it's for "good luck", but legally, as I understand it, it's there to make sure each campaign party receives enough governmental supply requisitions, is booked for enough rooms at each hotel, and maybe gets a little extra network time on their official coms. It's a place-holder of a sort. Gives them some wiggle room.
Un-legally, of course, it's there to make sure Jamie doesn't have to sleep in the hallway every night. . .
"There is something fascinating about a man of mystery, isn't there?", I say, cheerfully but vaguely.
"Weel, I've alwayss found it verry effective, yes."
"I've no doubt you have."
I certainly can't tell him that there's no mystery about it – only the bleak, simple fact that we've been on the campaign trail for fifteen days, and it's been seventeen since Jamie has talked to me. . .
I fell into a deep depression after Willie, waking up the next morning in perhaps the blackest mood I'd been in since my campsite on the Rim. I barely remember handing the farm over to Geordie, and only just recall saying goodbye to Fergus.
I only know one way to run, and only one place to run to, and that is the deep, barren place inside my own heart, where I can exist without feeling, work without thinking, and die without dying.
On the worst days, it is the only place that makes sense – the only part of me I can concede is at all worthwhile.
On the worst days, I barely exist at all.
On the worst days, that is my only comfort.
Perhaps it is the coward's way out, but if it gives me an excuse to keep breathing, however fruitless, however empty, I will take it.
Depression may be a bitch, but sometimes, it is also my saviour. . .
It took nearly six days on campaign for me to realize no one was speaking to me. It took another three for me to realize why.
We are traveling from tiny Highland village to tiny Highland village – places so sparsely populated one might easily assume they aren't worth nearly the effort Dougal and the team is putting in – but then I remember that for the first leg of this stage of the campaign, we've been assigned a Nationwide Broadcast video crew. Every speech, every procession, every parade, and every celebratory moment in the pub afterwards is being recorded, and sent out to viewers everywhere – even population centers like Glasgow, or Edinburgh. International networks will be picking them up too, I have no doubt.
And for any of these broadcasts to land properly, make the right impression, and maybe, possibly garner some voters that aren't Highland clansmen, everyone in our party, without exception, must speak nothing but the Gàidhlig when in front of the cameras. Even pure Scots would be too English for the impression Dougal wants to make, and so, the Gàidhlig, in every case, at all times.
This had been mentioned in the planning meetings, of course, but I did not know then that he meant all times – even when we are shut up in our cars between villages, or in the halls of the hotels late at night, or when the Rover broke down outside a village last week, and when I asked what had happened all I could get was a long string of unintelligible muttering from Angus, and ashamed looks from everyone else.
And then, paradoxically, I understood.
I know how much this generation of Scots are proud of the resurgence of this great keystone of their culture, and I have never and will never grudge them the use of it – but that isn't what's going on. It isn't just a political campaign that's happening here. Dougal is trying to isolate me again.
And this time, he's succeeded.
It isn't the enforced use of a language I don't know that's done it, of course – not only that. I've been picking up bits of the Gàidhlig here and there – and more than bits, in a few crucial areas. So what they're saying isn't a complete blank to me. No, it is the deliberate, calculated othering that comes along with it that's done the damage.
I've been the Sassenach – only the Sassenach – for over two weeks. It's the only thing anyone has called me, and not often then.
Jamie called me that from the first, of course – nearly always with affection – but to the rest of the men, it has always been a club of a word, used to bludgeon me back into my place, or attempt to do so, anyway. Dougal has taken advantage of that, and spent these first days on the road deliberately, surgically isolating me, in a mad, desperate bid to get me dependent on him. He's the candidate here – the provider, the one with all the power. This far away from Colum, I have nothing to hold over Dougal at all – if the spy cameras are still something I could use to do that, and if I even knew where the cameras ended up. . .
It's a classic siege. By-the-book tactics to starve out your prey. I can't even be mad. He's flying his colours, declared his intent, and even trumpeted his attack that day in the Manager's barn when he told me to modify the coms. His turn has come, and he's known it for weeks. No wonder our attacks on him at Leoch gave him such annoyance, but made so little actual effect.
So now I am besieged, a lone island of English womanhood, surrounded by swirling waves of untamed Scottish men - who roar and crash to the tune that Dougal pipes, as easily and as naturally as the tides beat against the shore. It is elemental that they should abandon me. I'm an Outlander. I am not of them.
I have no idea what Dougal has made of my blank, effortlessly neutral acceptance of the situation.
I do know it has utterly baffled the other men I know – Angus, Rupert, Alain, Peter, and three or four or Colum's general duty men.
And Murtagh.
And as for Jamie. . .
I have to admit it. I've only known the man a little over two months. I don't know him very well.
Or at all. . .
My sweet, gentle Ghillie Dhu has not been in evidence much this past two weeks, no matter how many people have been referring to him as The Green Man lately. Of course he's had to avoid the cameras like the plague, and I've been in such a dark place I'd have hardly noticed if a Skycity crashed in front of my face, but he hasn't even glanced my way, or made any attempt to contact me in secret.
I've considered sending him a packet of Jammie Dodgers, just to see if it got a reaction out of him, but such a thing seems childish when. . .
When. . .
I have suspected it for some time, but the ease with which he seems to live without me has only confirmed that he. . .
That he doesn't. . .
I cry myself to sleep for three nights in a row before I can let myself think the word.
He doesn't love me.
I never expected him to, of course, but it is still a blow to realize that all I ever was to him was an infatuation. A sort of living dream he could touch at will, a pretty piece of bewitching womanhood - an embodiment of his ideals.
Love wouldn't abandon me like he has. Love wouldn't leave me in the dark canyons of my despair with never a word, with never a look, with never a whisper. . .
Of course he never pretended to love me either. He never said it. He never even implied it.
And I. . .
I've never had the mental or emotional capacity to fully analyze just what I feel about him, not in all the weeks I've been here. So I haven't tried.
I'm certainly not going to try now.
I'm tired, and he hasn't earned it.
And so I'm alone, in a group of men that either don't like or actively hate me, and everything I stand for – admittedly not without reason, from their perspective. I'm powerless, nameless, and voiceless, with all my gains forgotten, all my allies neutralized, and all my progress to do over again.
The only bright spark has been Ned.
He'd introduced himself, in English, in the second village we were at, while all the important people were parading through the streets, making a good show of themselves, and the camera crews were paying all their attention to them, not to us.
I'd asked him why he wasn't using the Gàidhlig like everyone else was.
"Jusst old enough not tae ha' learnt it in school, Lassie," he smiled and gestured with his hands, palm up, "Simple'a s'that. I c'n get along fine in the more formal applications, but in the day-tae-day? Ach."
He'd shrugged, and went back to tapping away on his e-padd – what I have learned this time calls an info-screen. After a few minutes, he grunted, complaining about the padd's slow processes and poor data transfers.
I'd smiled, and gave him a data-compression app to download, one I'd written myself, just a few weeks ago.
"So, you want me tae download more data, tae help me with a congestion of data?" He'd shaken his head, and chuckled grimly, but he'd done it. And it had worked, too.
We've been fast friends ever since – him offering me any and all lawyering services that I happen to need, and me offering all computer maintenance chores that I can reasonably perform.
On a whim, I filled out my application for Scottish citizenship and gave it to him to file.
I don't know why.
I'm not going to stay. . .
Ned sees me to the door of my hotel room, and salutes me as he turns to go to his. I close my door quietly behind me, and go over the bedside table, where a large, homemade rucksack sits. It isn't full of food this time, but a clean linen dress, a dark green woolen cloak, a pair of soft leather shoes, a woven bag of raw woolen yarn, and a steel bottle with chipped enamel.
Iona told me to take them with me everywhere, and now I'm glad I did.
In nineteen days, we will be in Inverness.
Craigh na Dun beckons to me. In my sleep, and before my waking eyes. . .
I'll have to write a letter to Jamie and Fergus, explaining. . .
Explaining. . .
Well, explaining everything.
They probably won't believe me, but I do know they will be better without me.
They belong here. I do not. Dougal has made that very clear, if it wasn't abundantly clear already.
Yes. . .
Dougal. . .
My hands form into fists, and somewhere, deep behind the empty, howling void of my heart, Warrior Claire pleads to be let off her chain.
Well.
I do have nineteen days to spend. . .
If Dougal wanted a tame surrender, it's high time he knew he's dealing with the wrong Sassenach. . .
I stay awake for hours, planning my campaign.