I laughed, sniffed, and wiped the wrist of my free hand across my eyes.

"And you think you haven't a choice?"

He paused for a moment, then shut the book, though he continued to hold it in his hands.

"No," he said at last, with a queer tone in his voice. "Not now."

He turned in his chair, looking through the window. Nothing was visible but the big red spruce at the side of the clearing, and the deep shade of the oak grove behind it, tangled with the brambles of wild blackberry, escaped from the yard. The blackened spot where the fiery cross had stood was overgrown now, covered with thick wild barley.

The air moved and I realized that it was not silent, after all. The sounds of the mountain were all around us, birds calling, water rushing in the distance-and there were voices, too, speaking in the murmured traffic of daily rounds, a word by the pigpen, a call from the privy. And under and over everything, the sound of children, faint shrieks and giggles borne on the restless air.

"I suppose you're right," I said, after a moment. He was; there was was no choice about it now, and the knowledge gave me a sort of peace. What was coming, would come. We would meet it as best we might, and hope to survive; that was all. If we didn't-perhaps they would. I gathered the tail of his hair in my hand and twined my fingers through it, holding tight, like an anchor's rope. no choice about it now, and the knowledge gave me a sort of peace. What was coming, would come. We would meet it as best we might, and hope to survive; that was all. If we didn't-perhaps they would. I gathered the tail of his hair in my hand and twined my fingers through it, holding tight, like an anchor's rope.

"What about the other choices, though?" I asked him, looking out with him over the empty dooryard, and into the shades of the forest beyond. "All the ones you made that brought you here? Those were real-and bloody well brave, if you ask me."

Beneath the tip of my index finger, I could feel the hair-thin line of his ancient scar, buried deep beneath the ruddy waves. He leaned back against the pull of my hand, and swiveled round to look up at me, so my hand now cupped the bone of his jaw.

"Oh. Well," he said, smiling slightly. His hand touched mine, and drew my fingers into his. "Ye'd know about that, now, wouldn't ye, Sassenach?"

I sat down beside him, close, my hand on his leg, and his hand on mine. We sat thus for a bit, side by side, watching the rain clouds roll in over the river, like a threat of distant war. And I thought that whether it was choice or no choice, it might be that it came to the same thing in the end.

Jamie's hand still lay on mine. It tightened a little, and I glanced at him, but his eyes were still fixed somewhere past the dooryard; past the mountains, and the distant clouds. His grip tightened further, and I felt the edges of my ring press into my flesh.

"When the day shall come, that we do part," he said softly, and turned to look at me, "if my last words are not 'I love you'-ye'll ken it was because I didna have time."

Also by Diana Gabaldon

OUTLANDER

DRAGONFLY IN AMBER

VOYAGER

DRUMS OF AUTUMN

THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION

Read on for a special preview of

The sixth novel in the Outlander series Available wherever books are sold

DUTCH CABIN

March 1773

NO ONE HAD KNOWN the cabin was there, until Kenny Lindsay had seen the flames, on his way up the creek.

"I wouldna ha' seen at all," he said, for perhaps the sixth time. "Save for the dark comin' on. Had it been daylight, I'd never ha' kent it, never." He wiped a trembling hand over his face, unable to take his eyes off the line of bodies that lay at the edge of the forest. "Was it savages, Mac Dubh? Mac Dubh? They're no scalped, but maybe-" They're no scalped, but maybe-"

"No." Jamie laid the soot-smeared handkerchief gently back over the staring blue face of a small girl. "None of them is wounded. Surely ye saw as much when ye brought them out?"

Lindsay shook his head, eyes closed, and shivered convulsively. It was late afternoon, and a chilly spring day, but the men were all sweating.

"I didna look," he said simply.

My own hands were like ice; as numb and unfeeling as the rubbery flesh of the dead woman I was examining. They had been dead for more than a day; the rigor of death had passed off, leaving them limp and chilled, but the cold weather of the mountain spring had preserved them so far from the grosser indignities of putrefaction.

Still, I breathed shallowly; the air was bitter with the scent of burning. Wisps of steam rose now and then from the charred ruin of the tiny cabin. From the corner of my eye, I saw Roger kick at a nearby log, then bend and pick up something from the ground beneath.

Kenny had pounded on our door long before daylight, summoning us from warm beds. We had come in haste, even knowing that we were far too late to offer aid. Some of the tenants from the homesteads on Fraser's Ridge had come, too; Kenny's brother Evan stood with Fergus and Ronnie Sinclair in a small knot under the trees, talking together in low-voiced Gaelic.

"D'ye ken what did for them, Sassenach?" Jamie squatted beside me, face troubled. "The ones under the trees, that is." He nodded at the corpse in front of me. "I ken what killed this puir woman."

The woman's long skirt stirred in the wind, lifting to show long, slender feet shod in leather clogs. A pair of long hands to match lay still at her sides. She had been tall-though not so tall as Brianna, I thought, and looked automatically for my daughter's bright hair, bobbing among the branches on the far side of the clearing.

I had turned the woman's apron up to cover her head and upper body. Her hands were red, rough-knuckled with work, and with callused palms, but from the firmness of her thighs and the slenderness of her body, I thought she was no more than thirty-likely much younger. No one could say whether she had been pretty.

I shook my head at his remark.

"I don't think she died of the burning," I said. "See, her legs and feet aren't touched. She must have fallen into the hearth. Her hair caught fire, and it spread to the shoulders of her gown. She must have lain near enough to the wall or the chimney hood for the flames to touch; that caught, and then the whole bloody place went up."

Jamie nodded slowly, eyes on the dead woman.

"Aye, that makes sense. But what was it killed them, Sassenach? The others are singed a bit, though none are burned like this. But they must have been dead before the cabin caught alight, for none o' them ran out. Was it a deadly illness, perhaps?"

"I don't think so. Let me look at the others again."

I walked slowly down the row of still bodies with their cloth-covered faces, stooping over each one to peer again beneath the makeshift shrouds. There were any number of illnesses that could be quickly fatal in these days-with no antibiotics to hand, and no way of administering fluids save by mouth or rectum, a simple case of diarrhea could kill within twenty-four hours.

I saw such things often enough to recognize them easily; any doctor does, and I had been a doctor for more than twenty years. I saw things now and then in this century that I had never encountered in my own-particularly horrible parasitical diseases, brought with the slave trade from the tropics- but it was no parasite that had done for these poor souls, and no illness that I knew, to leave such traces on its victims.

All the bodies-the burned woman, a much older woman, and three children-had been found inside the walls of the flaming house. Kenny had pulled them out, just before the roof fell in, then ridden for help. All dead before the fire started; all dead virtually at the same time, then, for surely the fire had begun to smolder soon after the woman fell dead on her hearth?

The victims had been laid out neatly under the branches of a giant red spruce, while the men began to dig a grave nearby. Brianna stood by the smallest girl, her head bent. I came to kneel by the little body, and she knelt down across from me.

"What was it?" she asked quietly. "Poison?"

I glanced up at her in surprise.

"I think so. What gave you that idea?"

She nodded at the blue-tinged face below us. She had tried to close the eyes, but they bulged beneath the lids, giving the little girl a look of startled horror. The small, blunt features were twisted in a rictus of agony, and there were traces of vomit in the corners of the mouth.

"Girl Scout handbook," Brianna said. She glanced at the men, but no one was near enough to hear. Her mouth twitched, and she looked away from the body, holding out her open hand. "Never eat any strange mushroom," "Never eat any strange mushroom," she quoted. she quoted. "There are many poisonous varieties, and distinguishing one from another is a job for an expert "There are many poisonous varieties, and distinguishing one from another is a job for an expert. Roger found these, growing in a ring by that log over there."

Moist, fleshy caps, a pale brown with white warty spots, the open gills and slender stems so pale as to look almost phosphorescent in the spruce shadows. They had a pleasant, earthy look to them that belied their deadliness.

"Panther toadstools," I said, half to myself, and picked one gingerly from her palm. "Agaricus pantherinus "Agaricus pantherinus-or that's what they will will be called, once somebody gets round to naming them properly. be called, once somebody gets round to naming them properly. Pantherinus Pantherinus, because they kill so swiftly- like a striking cat."

I could see the gooseflesh ripple on Brianna's forearm, raising the soft, red-gold hairs. She tilted her hand and spilled the rest of the deadly fungus on the ground.

"Who in their right mind would eat toadstools?" she asked, wiping her hand on her skirt with a slight shudder.

"People who didn't know better. People who were hungry, perhaps," I answered softly. I picked up the little girl's hand, and traced the delicate bones of the forearm. The small belly showed signs of bloat, whether from malnutrition or postmortem changes I couldn't tell-but the collarbones were sharp as scythe blades. All of the bodies were thin, though not to the point of emaciation.

I looked up, into the deep blue shadows of the mountainside above the cabin. It was early in the year for foraging, but there was food in abundance in the forest-for those who could recognize it.

Jamie came and knelt down beside me, a big hand lightly on my back. Cold as it was, a trickle of sweat streaked his neck, and his thick auburn hair was dark at the temples.

"The grave is ready," he said, speaking low, as though he might alarm the child. "Is that what's killed the bairn?" He nodded at the scattered fungi.

"I think so-and the rest of them, too. Have you had a look around? Does anyone know who they were?"

He shook his head.

"Not English; the clothes are wrong. Germans would have gone to Salem, surely; they're clannish souls, and no inclined to settle on their own. These were maybe Dutchmen." He nodded toward the carved wooden clogs on the old woman's feet, cracked and stained with long use. "No books nor writing left, if there was any to begin with. Nothing that might tell their name. But-"

"They hadn't been here long." A low, cracked voice made me look up. Roger had come; he squatted next to Brianna, nodding toward the smoldering remains of the cabin. A small garden plot had been scratched into the earth nearby, but the few plants showing were no more than sprouts, the tender leaves limp and blackened with late frost. There were no sheds, no sign of livestock, no mule or pig.

"New emigrants," Roger said softly. "Not bond servants; this was a family. They weren't used to outdoor labor, either; the women's hands have blisters and fresh scars." His own broad hand rubbed unconsciously over a homespun knee; his palms were as smoothly callused as Jamie's now, but he had once been a tender-skinned scholar; he remembered the pain of his seasoning.

"I wonder if they left people behind-in Europe," Brianna murmured. She smoothed blond hair off the little girl's forehead, and laid the kerchief back over her face. I saw her throat move as she swallowed. "They'll never know what happened to them."

"No." Jamie stood abruptly. "They do say that God protects fools-but I think even the Almighty will lose patience now and then." He turned away, motioning to Lindsay and Sinclair.

"Look for the man," he said to Lindsay. Every head jerked up to look at him.

"Man?" Roger said, and then glanced sharply at the burned remnants of the cabin, realization dawning. "Aye- who built the cabin for them?"

"The women could have done it," Bree said, lifting her chin.

"You could, aye," he said, mouth twitching slightly as he cast a sidelong look at his wife. Brianna resembled Jamie in more than coloring; she stood six feet in her stockings and had her father's clean-limbed strength. could, aye," he said, mouth twitching slightly as he cast a sidelong look at his wife. Brianna resembled Jamie in more than coloring; she stood six feet in her stockings and had her father's clean-limbed strength.

"Perhaps they could, but they didn't," Jamie said shortly. He nodded toward the shell of the cabin, where a few bits of furniture still held their fragile shapes. As I watched, the evening wind came down, scouring the ruin, and the shadow of a stool collapsed noiselessly into ash, flurries of soot and char moving ghostlike over the ground.

"What do you mean?" I stood and moved beside him, looking into the house. There was virtually nothing left inside, though the chimney stack still stood, and jagged bits of the walls remained, their logs fallen like jackstraws.

"There's no metal," he said, nodding at the blackened hearth, where the remnants of a cauldron lay, cracked in two from the heat, its contents vaporized. "No pots, save that- and that's too heavy to carry away. Nay tools. Not a knife, not an ax-and ye see whoever built it had that."

I did; the logs were unpeeled, but the notches and ends bore the clear marks of an ax.

Frowning, Roger picked up a long pine branch and began to poke through the piles of ash and rubble, looking to be sure. Kenny Lindsay and Sinclair didn't bother; Jamie had told them to look for a man, and they promptly went to do so, disappearing into the forest. Fergus went with them; Evan Lindsay, his brother Murdo, and the McGillivrays began the chore of collecting stones for a cairn.

"If there was was a man-did he leave them?" Brianna murmured to me, glancing from her father to the row of bodies. "Did this woman maybe think they wouldn't survive on their own?" a man-did he leave them?" Brianna murmured to me, glancing from her father to the row of bodies. "Did this woman maybe think they wouldn't survive on their own?"

And thus take her own life, and those of her children, to avoid a long-drawn-out death from cold and starvation?

"Leave them and take all their tools? God, I hope not." I crossed myself at the thought, though even as I did so, I doubted it. "Wouldn't they have walked out, looking for help? Even with children ... the snow's mostly gone." Only the highest mountain passes were still packed with snow, and while the trails and slopes were wet and muddy with runoff, they'd been passable for a month, at least.

"I've found the man," Roger said, interrupting my thoughts. He spoke very calmly, but paused to clear his throat. "Just- just here."

The daylight was beginning to fade, but I could see that he had gone pale. No wonder; the curled form he had unearthed beneath the charred timbers of a fallen wall was sufficiently gruesome as to give anyone pause. Charred to blackness, hands upraised in the boxer's pose so common to those dead by fire, it was difficult even to be sure that it was was a man- though I thought it was, from what I could see. a man- though I thought it was, from what I could see.

Speculation about this new body was interrupted by a shout from the forest's edge.

"We've found them, milord!"

Everyone looked up from contemplation of this new corpse, to see Fergus waving from the edge of the wood.

"Them," indeed. Two men, this time. Sprawled on the ground within the shadow of the trees, found not together, but not far apart, only a short distance from the house. And both, so far as I could tell, probably dead of mushroom poisoning.

"That's no Dutchman," Sinclair said, for probably the fourth time, shaking his head over one body. no Dutchman," Sinclair said, for probably the fourth time, shaking his head over one body.

"He might be," said Fergus dubiously. He scratched his nose with the tip of the hook he wore in replacement of his left hand. "From the Indies, non non?"

One of the unknown bodies was in fact that of a black man. The other was white, and both wore nondescript clothes of worn homespun-shirts and breeches; no jackets, despite the cold weather. And both were barefoot.

"No." Jamie shook his head, rubbing one hand unconsciously on his own breeches, as though to rid himself of the touch of the dead. "The Dutch keep slaves on Barbuda, aye- but these are better fed than the folk from the cabin." He lifted his chin toward the silent row of women and children. "They didna live here. Besides ..." I saw his eyes fix on the dead men's feet.

The feet were grubby about the ankles and heavily cal-lused, but basically clean. The soles of the black man's feet showed yellowish pink, with no smears of mud or random leaves stuck between the toes. These men hadn't been walking through the muddy forest barefoot, that much was sure.