𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐖𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐁𝐞 | 𝐉𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐫 ✅

27 - Without A Shoulder To Cry On

I rejoined Brian in the courtyard, escorted by Captain Randall, of course, who was beside me until the very last moment. When Randall was gone, Brian turned to me. He was ashy white and it was only then that I thought to look ahead at what he had been staring at. It was a podium, and on it, a flogging post.

Brian took me into his arms as I began to cry again, and then he asked me, "is he a'right?"

I shook my head because no, Jamie was most certainly not alright and it was about to get worst.

We stood in silence for several seconds surrounded by the crowd of people who had come to watch my Jamie be tortured, and then Brian spoke again, "I saw him, ye ken. Just a few minutes ago. They were taking him to the doctor for an examination."

Only minutes after I had left him, he had seen his father.

"What did ye say to him? Did he say much to ye?" I asked, wiping my tears and wishing that today would be over.

"I gave him a kiss." Brian told me gently, "there was nothing that I could do. I wasna even supposed to meet him, ye understand? There was a guard on either side of him as if he was a danger -"
"He tried to escape," I reminded Brian quietly, "that's why they're punishing him again."
"Again?" Brian echoed in horror, "ye mean that it's happened before?"
I nodded, "this is his second flogging."

Brian opened his mouth to say something in reply, but then the English drums started and Jamie was pushed across the courtyard by two soldiers.

The bravery which my Jamie displayed was beautiful, but that did not stop me from sobbing fitfully into Brian's arms as they whipped him. I tried to be quiet so Jamie did not hear me because he had asked me not to watch his punishment, but I could not. Every slice that appeared down Jamie's back appeared on my heart. Despite how Captain Randall had acted in his office and on the way to Jamie's cell, I had never thought that he would be capable of delivering such pain to anybody - I had never thought that anybody would be capable of carrying out such a sentence.

Jamie was silent, and his feet were slipping on the wooden boards, slick with his own blood. His legs looked like they were barely holding them up. My stomach turned and I fought the urge to throw up. Captain Randall brought the flog down again and a piece of Jamie's skin fell open, a fresh river of blood running down his back and into the fabric of his kilt.

Brian Fraser fell to his knees, and I fell along with him. He laid on his back, his eyes staring coldly upwards at me and the sky above. I screamed.

"Eira?!" Jamie yelled from the podium, looking around frantically.

I kept quiet, not wanting to draw his attention. His father was laying dead on the floor in front of me and I did not want him to know that. I didn't want him to worry about me at a place like Fort William with nobody to protect me because I knew that there was nothing that he could do and that would pain him more than the flogging. Instead, I cried quietly, wincing everytime Captain Randall brought down the flog again.

I didn't know how much time had passed - seconds, probably - but strong arms went around me and pulled me to my feet and away from Brian's body, and then English soldiers were surrounding the man who had raised me as his own since my mother had died.

I turned my head, burying it in the stranger's chest and crying.

"Ah, it's a'right, lass." The stranger, a man, stroked my hair. "Dinna fash, it'll all be over soon." He kept leading me away from Jamie and Brian, and I didn't object.

We were in a small alcove. Nobody could hear us but we could hear them - or rather, we could still hear Jamie taking his punishment.

Eventually, after a few minutes, I pulled away from the stranger and looked up at him. He looked vaguely familiar.

"Ye're Jamie's lass?" The man asked me in a gruff tone of voice.

Wordlessly, I nodded, wiping some of my tears away with the back of my hand.

"I'm Dougal MacKenzie." He laid his forearm flat against his chest, his fist pounding against his body as he did so.

"Jamie's uncle." I said to myself, realising that the man in front of me was indeed familiar - I had not seen him since I had been a child of thirteen and had watched Jamie ride away to Beannachd, but I recognised him nevertheless.

"Aye, ye ken who I am, then."

"Aye." I sniffled, "why are ye here, Mr MacKenzie?"

"Dougal's well enough to ye, lass." He smiled, reaching into the pocket of his coat and producing a handkerchief that might once have been white. I took it from him gratefully and wiped my face and nose. "And I'm here because I owe it to the young lad to watch, ye ken." He paused, "he's brave, that one."

I nodded, "of course he is," I paused, "stubborn as any a Fraser there is." It was a Fraser family trait, I knew. "How did ye ken who I was?"
"Well I recognised Brian, 'course, standing beside ye, though I didna ken who ye were until the lad called out to ye. He used to talk about ye, ye ken, when he was fostering with me." Dougal paused, "Eira this and Eira that and the other. So when he called out for ye, I kent that ye meant a deal to him and I had to get to ye afore the English did."

At that, I asked him where Brian's body was.

"Reckon it's being wrapped ready for transporting."

"Back to Lallybroch?"

"Aye," Dougal paused, "I'll ride with ye if ye'd like?"

I nodded slowly, giving him a small smile as the flogging stopped and Randall addressed the crowd, though what he was saying was inaudible to us in our alcove.

"Aye, please, Dougal. The carriage is fixed outside if ye'd prefer?"
He shook his head, "no, lass, I prefer to be on the back of a horse."

I didn't blame him. At least on the back of a horse you could think about the countryside, the cold or how numb your backside was... in a carriage, all you had to do was think, and I didn't want to think in that moment.

"Mr MacKenzie," the English soldier who appeared in the doorway of our alcove was young - a year or so younger than me, even. He bowed his head and held his hands in front of him in respect, "Mr Fraser has been prepared. Are you ready to ride, sir?"

"Aye," Dougal replied, wrapping an arm around my waist. I let him. I just wanted to be looked after in that moment, "aye, I reckon we are."