Well, I think this chapter is pretty much Quintessential D. K. Broster: hurt/comfort, noble enemies who become friends, more hurt/comfort, a horrible dilemma of honour and a bit more lovingly detailed hurt/comfort just for good measure. I hope everyone's enjoying it. :D
Beinn Laoigh/Ben Loy is the second of the novel's main fictional locations, after Ardroy; there is a real mountain with the same name (although Anglicised as Ben Lui rather than Loy), but it's over on the other side of the country, in Argyll & Bute. I haven't done detailed geographical notes for this chapter, but I think you can work out roughly where we are from the references to the Corryarrick/Corrieyairack and Wade's roads.
Right, I'm going to do a bit of wallowing in all the lovely details of this hurt/comfort! Keith starting off by speaking 'gently' to Ewen; Ewen's astonishment on recognising Keith (and initial refusal to believe it's really him), and his continuing light-headed bewilderment over him really being there; Keith noticing the colour of Ewen's eyes; the exhausted Ewen 'gathering together what forces he had' to thank Keith; '“Permit you!” repeated Ewen, gazing at him with a renewal of his former wonder'. Later Ewen, having recovered a little after eating the food Keith has brought him, is 'almost on the point of breaking down' as he tries again to thank Keith and comprehend his kindness, and Keith hurriedly stops him again.
Keith already identifies 'the finger of Fate' guiding his actions, which is interesting. But then he hears about the prophecy properly, and it's also interesting—given Ewen's earlier scepticism, and the fact that Keith even more than Ewen has been set up as so rational and dismissive of barbaric Highland old-fashionedness—that he seems to accept the idea of five fated meetings quite readily and happily. (Also, 'It was not the first time in the last twelve hours that he had remembered the house in the Grassmarket' —ow).
Laughing together over Ewen's beard!
'"we speak as friends"' <333
Ewen's loyalty to Lochiel is once again very prominent—even amidst his own pain and emotion, he's horrified at the thought of Lochiel being captured and desperate for Keith to reassure him that he hasn't been, and he smiles at the thought that he knows Lochiel is safe. Aww, Ewen...
And then, of course, we have Keith's dilemma and Ewen unfortunately falling asleep at just the wrong time to make it worse. I love that Keith doesn't spare himself in deciding whether to tell Ewen what he said about Lochiel—stop making excuses, he tells himself, you're being cowardly—but then when it's a matter of simply waking Ewen up and disturbing him, he can't bring himself to do it. We get a whole page of Keith watching Ewen sleep, while trying to work out this horrible conundrum of honour.
And then at the end of the chapter Keith is still in denial about his own feelings! Beautiful. D. K. Broster, I love you.
This is the BEST chapter, except perhaps certain later chapters. The book takes a while to build to this point, but now that it's here it goes ALL OUT.
I just love the explosion of hurt/comfort here. Ewen: confused, feverish, in pain, not even certain that it's really Keith here; a brief moment of comfort in between the horror of the battle (God, his description of waking up naked and stiff with cold on the field!) and the horror that awaits once he's captured. Keith: in some ways even more confused about his own feelings, but that confusion doesn't stop him from doing everything he can to help Ewen.
The atmosphere in this chapter is also just incredible. I love the burned shielings still smoking when Keith arrives, poor Neil stiff and stark by the door, the darkness and the flickering light in the shieling, Keith sopping the bread in the wine to feed to Ewen... and the incredible sweetness of Ewan's gratitude and affection once he fully grasps who Keith is and what he has done for him, and the fact that Keith just can't quite accept it, partly because he feels the stain on his honor from the things he implied to Guthrie, but also just... he's not used to people being fond of him, or letting himself be fond of other people.
ALL the hurt/comfort! I practically know this chapter by heart, if that's not a too embarrassing admission, but I reread it a lot as a teenager. Broster really knows what she's about here - the undercurrent of Keith's embarrassment and shame around what he's already said to Guthrie and what he then ends up asking Ewen without meaning it that way - it adds some salt to the sweetness of how he's nursing Ewen. You can see how much she's learned as a writer since The Wounded Name, where the hurt/comfort is turned up several more notches but in a way that leaves a little too much of the author's id on the table, and the problem of honour is a lot more forced. Here Keith's awkwardness and his dilemma feel incredibly real, and it balances out the rest of it well.
I love the ending, too, with Keith riding away and realising how much he hopes someone will be along to rescue Ewen before Guthrie gets to him, though his sense of honour prevents him from arranging the rescue directly. Had Ewen been rescued, I expect Keith would have been suspected anyway.
And I missed last week's discussion, but it has my favourite minor character, Lt Paton, who doesn't like extreme measures and is willing to argue that he couldn't disobey Keith if he gets into trouble - he's a sweetheart.
I don't know if I can extol the virtues of this hurt-comfort scene anymore than other commenters have already done! But it is truly glorious. And I think what makes it so is the complications on both sides: for Ewen, the knowledge that it's his enemy, whom he got the better of the last time they met, who is doing it for him, and Keith...well, for all the complicated reasons already stated.
I think the cold and inadequacy of the shelter is very vivid, to the point where I wonder that Ewen even survives it!
Changing the subject a bit, I have some historical notes for you. I just wrote up a new book about Jacobites that I read, you can read about it here. The most interesting bit is about how the exiled Stuarts' political agenda (going by their political proclamations) actually grew more and more radical over the years, and was soon very far from "absolutist monarchy".
Also I recently learned that George I cheated on his wife (this is par for the course and not the remarkable bit) but that when his wife also took a lover, he and/or his Hanoverian relatives had the lover murdered and then he kept his wife locked up for 30 years. That's some serious double standards...though the locking up was apparently also to prevent her joining his enemies (i e the Jacobites).
Also also, I learned that a Sir William Wyndham was a Tory minister of Queen Anne who, after the Hanoverian succession, did some Jacobite plotting around the '15. A relative of Keith's, or not??
As everyone already says, it's a delicious chapter. Saving Ewen from the firing squad was great, but I figured that was it for meeting three: that Keith went off with Guthrie, leaving Ewen to wait for Lachlan, and that was that, on to meeting four, wherever that should be. (Even as I kept rooting for Keith to come back to nurse Ewen, and even mentally started composing fic in which he does exactly that!)
AND THEN HE ACTUALLY DID. HE DID EXACTLY THAT. HE CAME BACK AND TENDERLY CARED FOR EWEN. JUST LIKE I WANTED.
Thta's all I can come up with, apparently, except that Broster no doubt put something of her her experience as a nurse on the Western Front into this chapter.
Man, that hurt/comfort is something else! I don't know if one can really get much more iddy than Keith tenderly taking care of Ewen and Ewen all hurt-exhausted-grateful-adorably-confused in his care <3
I kept getting worried though about Keith not telling Ewen about what he said about Lochiel. Is this going to be a problem?? Is Ewen going to find out horribly and hold it against Keith?? I hope not! I guess now that I've left this comment I can read on and find out... :)
I enjoyed last week's chapters, mostly because it marks a very different shift in the book's tone than before — I think it's quite interesting putting Culloden as roughly the central point of the story, because it allows for a very nice counterpoint to the tone of the first half. The first half starts out in quite a heroic tone and ends in quite a tragic one: it's interesting to see the fallout from that, and the complexities that arise in the aftermath of military defeat. Guthrie's character (more on him later) is quite interesting in that he is a good example of just how complicated the Rising actually was, a far cry from the simple Scots vs English dichotomy that sometimes seems to be presented.
However, I find Keith's own journey in the aftermath of Culloden very fascinating: how he both despises and also, to a certain extent, permits the atrocities that followed, if only by inaction. While Broster does keep his hands reasonably clean by having him as a staff officer, he seems to feel a sense of culpability that he tries to excuse even as he feels ashamed for it, a really interesting character note. While it's present earlier, V ernyyl guvax gung vg'f ng guvf cbvag jr fgneg gb frr Xrvgu'f nzovgvba orpbzr uvf unznegvn, uvf sngny synj. He feels remorse, certainly, but he seems to be able to rationalise the horrible actions undertaken by the British Army as an awful but inevitable consequence of war. Even the sight of the dead woman and child and knowledge that this is not the first, nor the last, time such a thing will happen doesn't make him question whether the army's actions are really justified — he skirts around facing the question head on, even as he feels branded.
Of course, he does have a weakness, in the form of one Ewen Cameron. I find it fascinating how up until the moment he recognises Ewen he is not willing to stop the execution, but the moment he sees that it's Ewen we find out just where precisely he has drawn the line on allowing horrible things to be carried out. I have to say, I do wonder at the whole recoginising-the-Cameron-tartan thing, as the concept of clan tartans is a semi-fictionalised Victorian concept (damned Sobieski Stuarts), although it's entirely possible that he recognises it on the basis of it being like the one he wore earlier (Keith in a kilt is still the funniest part of the book). The first time I read this chapter I couldn't believe my eyes when Keith throws himself between Ewen and the firing squad. It's so capital-R Romantic, Keith riding in, throwing himself off his horse to protect Ewen, Ewen fainting into his arms... the dirty, bloodstained, half-clothed figure which Keith had last seen so gallant in powder and satin, cool, smiling and triumphant... Keith tending to Ewen in the shieling and feeling guilty that he can't tend to him further. Fetch my fainting couch.
For officers, as Major Guthrie must know, were not shot in cold blood — now. That now does a lot of heavy lifting, and it's a great example of how Broster manages to say a lot with very little sometimes. And then Keith having to barter so heavily for Ewen's life — other people commented on it, I believe, but it really makes it understandable why he wishes so badly to go back to Flanders, to 'civilised' war where officers are treated as equals across the lines because they belong to recognised governments. Guthrie is such a bastard, and while I hate him and want to see him thrown off a cliff I also enjoy just how much of an awful man he is. One of the things I find fascinating about Broster's writing is the juxtapositions she sets up: Guthrie's speculations over Keith's guilt over seducing some female relative of Ewen's, and Keith's desire to save Ewen's life for an entirely different reason (well, perhaps not entirely different. But I rather think that Guthrie has the wrong end of that stick, and probably all the best for Keith, because if Guthrie suspected something between Keith and Ewen he would not be kind about it).
The shieling chapter is absolutely gorgeous. I didn't think that Broster would actually have Keith go back to tend to Ewen — surely that was a step too far. And yet she DID. I like how Keith, whose temperament does not seem to run to gentleness, is, in fact, quite capable of tenderness, helping Ewen eat and drink, reassuring him... I find it quite lovely how Keith asks Ewen's permission to tend to his wounds. It's such a quiet, intimate scene. And then, when Ewen faints... But five minutes saw the end of the snatch of feverish slumber, for Ardroy woke with a little cry and some remark about the English artillery which showed that he had been back at Culloden Moor. However, he knew Keith instantly[...]. It's a small shift in their relationship, but a significant one, especially when you consider that ng gur irel raq bs gur abiry, jura Xrvgu vf qlvat, jr unir gur ybiryl dhbgr: Nf ur jnf yvsgrq, Xrvgu pnzr onpx sebz n zbzrag’f qernz bs n fuber jvgu ybat terra ebyyref ebnevat ybhqyl haqre n oybbq-erq fhafrg, gb cnva naq qvssvphyg oerngu naq Rjra’f nezf. Ur xarj uvz.
There is so much I like about this chapter. I'm a little prejudiced towards it because I have sat with it, writing alongside it for my fic, but it's so wonderful, Keith acting as the Good Samaritan, Ewen having his faith in humanity restored somewhat after those awful, heartbreaking weeks. And then Keith trying, and failing, to work out just what his relationship to Ewen is — it's sublime.
Miss Cameron expressed a hope that he [Keith] had not been unduly disturbed by Neil MacMartin’s piobaireachd, adding that he was not as fine a piper as his father Angus had been.
Finally listened to this chapter. Pleasantly surprised because I was like, nooo Keith how could you just leave him there?! But then he went back and had a ton of angst while he was there. Fantastic. The pining and/or denial of feelings in this chapter was strong from Keith's pov.
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Beinn Laoigh/Ben Loy is the second of the novel's main fictional locations, after Ardroy; there is a real mountain with the same name (although Anglicised as Ben Lui rather than Loy), but it's over on the other side of the country, in Argyll & Bute. I haven't done detailed geographical notes for this chapter, but I think you can work out roughly where we are from the references to the Corryarrick/Corrieyairack and Wade's roads.
Right, I'm going to do a bit of wallowing in all the lovely details of this hurt/comfort! Keith starting off by speaking 'gently' to Ewen; Ewen's astonishment on recognising Keith (and initial refusal to believe it's really him), and his continuing light-headed bewilderment over him really being there; Keith noticing the colour of Ewen's eyes; the exhausted Ewen 'gathering together what forces he had' to thank Keith; '“Permit you!” repeated Ewen, gazing at him with a renewal of his former wonder'. Later Ewen, having recovered a little after eating the food Keith has brought him, is 'almost on the point of breaking down' as he tries again to thank Keith and comprehend his kindness, and Keith hurriedly stops him again.
Keith already identifies 'the finger of Fate' guiding his actions, which is interesting. But then he hears about the prophecy properly, and it's also interesting—given Ewen's earlier scepticism, and the fact that Keith even more than Ewen has been set up as so rational and dismissive of barbaric Highland old-fashionedness—that he seems to accept the idea of five fated meetings quite readily and happily. (Also, 'It was not the first time in the last twelve hours that he had remembered the house in the Grassmarket' —ow).
Laughing together over Ewen's beard!
'"we speak as friends"' <333
Ewen's loyalty to Lochiel is once again very prominent—even amidst his own pain and emotion, he's horrified at the thought of Lochiel being captured and desperate for Keith to reassure him that he hasn't been, and he smiles at the thought that he knows Lochiel is safe. Aww, Ewen...
And then, of course, we have Keith's dilemma and Ewen unfortunately falling asleep at just the wrong time to make it worse. I love that Keith doesn't spare himself in deciding whether to tell Ewen what he said about Lochiel—stop making excuses, he tells himself, you're being cowardly—but then when it's a matter of simply waking Ewen up and disturbing him, he can't bring himself to do it. We get a whole page of Keith watching Ewen sleep, while trying to work out this horrible conundrum of honour.
And then at the end of the chapter Keith is still in denial about his own feelings! Beautiful. D. K. Broster, I love you.
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I just love the explosion of hurt/comfort here. Ewen: confused, feverish, in pain, not even certain that it's really Keith here; a brief moment of comfort in between the horror of the battle (God, his description of waking up naked and stiff with cold on the field!) and the horror that awaits once he's captured. Keith: in some ways even more confused about his own feelings, but that confusion doesn't stop him from doing everything he can to help Ewen.
The atmosphere in this chapter is also just incredible. I love the burned shielings still smoking when Keith arrives, poor Neil stiff and stark by the door, the darkness and the flickering light in the shieling, Keith sopping the bread in the wine to feed to Ewen... and the incredible sweetness of Ewan's gratitude and affection once he fully grasps who Keith is and what he has done for him, and the fact that Keith just can't quite accept it, partly because he feels the stain on his honor from the things he implied to Guthrie, but also just... he's not used to people being fond of him, or letting himself be fond of other people.
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I love the ending, too, with Keith riding away and realising how much he hopes someone will be along to rescue Ewen before Guthrie gets to him, though his sense of honour prevents him from arranging the rescue directly. Had Ewen been rescued, I expect Keith would have been suspected anyway.
And I missed last week's discussion, but it has my favourite minor character, Lt Paton, who doesn't like extreme measures and is willing to argue that he couldn't disobey Keith if he gets into trouble - he's a sweetheart.
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I think the cold and inadequacy of the shelter is very vivid, to the point where I wonder that Ewen even survives it!
Changing the subject a bit, I have some historical notes for you. I just wrote up a new book about Jacobites that I read, you can read about it here. The most interesting bit is about how the exiled Stuarts' political agenda (going by their political proclamations) actually grew more and more radical over the years, and was soon very far from "absolutist monarchy".
Also I recently learned that George I cheated on his wife (this is par for the course and not the remarkable bit) but that when his wife also took a lover, he and/or his Hanoverian relatives had the lover murdered and then he kept his wife locked up for 30 years. That's some serious double standards...though the locking up was apparently also to prevent her joining his enemies (i e the Jacobites).
Also also, I learned that a Sir William Wyndham was a Tory minister of Queen Anne who, after the Hanoverian succession, did some Jacobite plotting around the '15. A relative of Keith's, or not??
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AND THEN HE ACTUALLY DID. HE DID EXACTLY THAT. HE CAME BACK AND TENDERLY CARED FOR EWEN. JUST LIKE I WANTED.
Because D.K. Broster loves me, apparently.
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Thta's all I can come up with, apparently, except that Broster no doubt put something of her her experience as a nurse on the Western Front into this chapter.
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I kept getting worried though about Keith not telling Ewen about what he said about Lochiel. Is this going to be a problem?? Is Ewen going to find out horribly and hold it against Keith?? I hope not! I guess now that I've left this comment I can read on and find out... :)
ETA: Oh, and dead Neil by the door :((
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I enjoyed last week's chapters, mostly because it marks a very different shift in the book's tone than before — I think it's quite interesting putting Culloden as roughly the central point of the story, because it allows for a very nice counterpoint to the tone of the first half. The first half starts out in quite a heroic tone and ends in quite a tragic one: it's interesting to see the fallout from that, and the complexities that arise in the aftermath of military defeat. Guthrie's character (more on him later) is quite interesting in that he is a good example of just how complicated the Rising actually was, a far cry from the simple Scots vs English dichotomy that sometimes seems to be presented.
However, I find Keith's own journey in the aftermath of Culloden very fascinating: how he both despises and also, to a certain extent, permits the atrocities that followed, if only by inaction. While Broster does keep his hands reasonably clean by having him as a staff officer, he seems to feel a sense of culpability that he tries to excuse even as he feels ashamed for it, a really interesting character note. While it's present earlier, V ernyyl guvax gung vg'f ng guvf cbvag jr fgneg gb frr Xrvgu'f nzovgvba orpbzr uvf unznegvn, uvf sngny synj. He feels remorse, certainly, but he seems to be able to rationalise the horrible actions undertaken by the British Army as an awful but inevitable consequence of war. Even the sight of the dead woman and child and knowledge that this is not the first, nor the last, time such a thing will happen doesn't make him question whether the army's actions are really justified — he skirts around facing the question head on, even as he feels branded.
Of course, he does have a weakness, in the form of one Ewen Cameron. I find it fascinating how up until the moment he recognises Ewen he is not willing to stop the execution, but the moment he sees that it's Ewen we find out just where precisely he has drawn the line on allowing horrible things to be carried out. I have to say, I do wonder at the whole recoginising-the-Cameron-tartan thing, as the concept of clan tartans is a semi-fictionalised Victorian concept (damned Sobieski Stuarts), although it's entirely possible that he recognises it on the basis of it being like the one he wore earlier (Keith in a kilt is still the funniest part of the book). The first time I read this chapter I couldn't believe my eyes when Keith throws himself between Ewen and the firing squad. It's so capital-R Romantic, Keith riding in, throwing himself off his horse to protect Ewen, Ewen fainting into his arms... the dirty, bloodstained, half-clothed figure which Keith had last seen so gallant in powder and satin, cool, smiling and triumphant... Keith tending to Ewen in the shieling and feeling guilty that he can't tend to him further. Fetch my fainting couch.
For officers, as Major Guthrie must know, were not shot in cold blood — now. That now does a lot of heavy lifting, and it's a great example of how Broster manages to say a lot with very little sometimes. And then Keith having to barter so heavily for Ewen's life — other people commented on it, I believe, but it really makes it understandable why he wishes so badly to go back to Flanders, to 'civilised' war where officers are treated as equals across the lines because they belong to recognised governments. Guthrie is such a bastard, and while I hate him and want to see him thrown off a cliff I also enjoy just how much of an awful man he is. One of the things I find fascinating about Broster's writing is the juxtapositions she sets up: Guthrie's speculations over Keith's guilt over seducing some female relative of Ewen's, and Keith's desire to save Ewen's life for an entirely different reason (well, perhaps not entirely different. But I rather think that Guthrie has the wrong end of that stick, and probably all the best for Keith, because if Guthrie suspected something between Keith and Ewen he would not be kind about it).
The shieling chapter is absolutely gorgeous. I didn't think that Broster would actually have Keith go back to tend to Ewen — surely that was a step too far. And yet she DID. I like how Keith, whose temperament does not seem to run to gentleness, is, in fact, quite capable of tenderness, helping Ewen eat and drink, reassuring him... I find it quite lovely how Keith asks Ewen's permission to tend to his wounds. It's such a quiet, intimate scene. And then, when Ewen faints... But five minutes saw the end of the snatch of feverish slumber, for Ardroy woke with a little cry and some remark about the English artillery which showed that he had been back at Culloden Moor. However, he knew Keith instantly[...]. It's a small shift in their relationship, but a significant one, especially when you consider that ng gur irel raq bs gur abiry, jura Xrvgu vf qlvat, jr unir gur ybiryl dhbgr: Nf ur jnf yvsgrq, Xrvgu pnzr onpx sebz n zbzrag’f qernz bs n fuber jvgu ybat terra ebyyref ebnevat ybhqyl haqre n oybbq-erq fhafrg, gb cnva naq qvssvphyg oerngu naq Rjra’f nezf. Ur xarj uvz.
There is so much I like about this chapter. I'm a little prejudiced towards it because I have sat with it, writing alongside it for my fic, but it's so wonderful, Keith acting as the Good Samaritan, Ewen having his faith in humanity restored somewhat after those awful, heartbreaking weeks. And then Keith trying, and failing, to work out just what his relationship to Ewen is — it's sublime.
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Miss Cameron expressed a hope that he [Keith] had not been unduly disturbed by Neil MacMartin’s piobaireachd, adding that he was not as fine a piper as his father Angus had been.
And now he never will be, either. :-(
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