Chapter 14 - A Marriage Takes Place

Once again, what strikes me about this chapter is its directness;  it moves from Claire's waking out of a hangover, to preparing for the wedding, to the wedding itself, swiftly and seamlessly. 

Also once again, new words unapologetically assault my understanding. A "ewer" and basin (a wide-mouthed pitcher for water); a "sempstress" (another word for seamstress, rather understandable, that one) and "serge" (describing her typical woollen fabric of her day to day clothing). Here are some snippets from this quickly moving narrative:

Claire describes her morning after the whiskey drinking:

I eased myself very carefully back down, closed my eyes and held onto my head to prevent it from rolling off the pillow and bouncing on the floor.

Ha. I remember a doozy of a hangover I once had after a night of (over)drinking after a military base command party many, many years ago. My problem was everything was spinning, and spinning: the room, the bed, the world. And the worst part was nothing would make it go away. Even my eyelashes hurt. My eyelashes. I wondered if anyone had ever died from a hangover.

"A bit later I sat on the bed, fully dressed, feeling dazed and belligerent, but thanks to a glass of port supplied by the goodwife, at least functional. I sipped carefully at a second glass, as the woman tugged a comb through the thickets of my hair."

The fact that she was supplied some port wine to offset her hangover made me think. The few times in my younger days where I may have "overindulged" I've never had additional alcohol the next day; in fact, that would be the last thing I would be willing to do. I know I've heard of "the hair o' the dog", but does that really work?

Dougal caught sight of me slowly descending, and abruptly stopped talking. The others fell silent as well, and I floated down in a most gratifying cloud of reverent admiration."

What a great visualization. The words just seem to conjure the image in real time as Claire, prepared for the wedding, now comes down the stairs, shockingly beautiful to those who have only seen her in her serge.

"Wherever we were going, it was some distance from the village. We made a rather morose wedding party, the bridal pair encircled by the others like convicts being escorted toward some distant prison."

This made me laugh, but also made a striking simile for how Claire must have felt. Prison. An unknown time, practical strangers all around, and here she is tending to one of life's most precious and rare moments with a man she hardly knows. Prison, indeed.

I'm sure this is exactly how Claire and Jamie
would have looked on their wedding day.
If Jamie was a 40-year old, Irish-bred actor from New York.
And if they were 500 years earlier.
And in the movie Braveheart.
Yup. Exactly like that.

"Through the drizzle and mist, I saw the chapel jutting out of the heather. With a sense of complete disbelief, I saw the round-shouldered roof and the odd little many-paned windows, which I had last seen on the bright sunny morning of my marriage to Frank Randall."

Oh, no, she di'int. Really? Diana didn't just go there, did she? Yup. She did. Married in the same chapel as her wedding to Frank?

Ok, gang, this is where I'm havin a wee bit o' disagreement with me wife. Why the heck is Claire never thinking about Frank?! I mean, with the chapel and all, of course she's going to think about Frank, but he's rarely even mentioned in her thoughts up to this point. Here she is, in a strange time and society, undergoing all kinds of strange experiences and forging new and strained relationships, yet she never yearns for her Frank, for the familiar, for the constancy of that shared oneness. Here she is, separated from her husband, her true love, unless...unless, of course he isn't. Hmm. (No spoilers, please.)

“It’s a bit pagan, but it’s customary hereabouts to have a blood vow, along with the regular marriage service...‘Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone. I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One. I give ye my Spirit, ’til our Life shall be Done.’"

A Celtic rite known typically as "handfasting"; it is still practiced in various forms among the Wiccans and nature religions (although not always with the actual blood-letting), and the chant of "blood of my blood, and bone of my bone." But even on it's surface, it can be seen that it is a corruption of the original in the book of Genesis:

Genesis 2:22-23 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. (23) And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

Changing the "flesh of my flesh" into "blood of my blood" of course is necessary for the blood vow portion. However, it is indeed historically accurate for the time of Claire and Jamie. Technically, there is no specific biblical pattern anyway for what we would consider a typical wedding ritual. The rings, vows, and any other accouterments are all traditions of the distant past cultures that have been added over the years as couples have pledged their unity.

And then, as if a harbinger of things to come (of which I know you all are waiting with bated breath), Diana leaves us with this light-hearted couplet:

“Mmmphm. Aye, we’re married, right enough. But it’s no legally binding, ye know, until it’s been consummated.” A slow, fierce blush burned its way up from the lacy jabot.
“Mmmphm,” I said. “Let’s go and find something to eat.”

Well done, Claire. Some protein and carbs will serve ye weel for the comin' chapter...