Outlander

People disappear all the time.

Young girls run away from home.

Children stray from their parents and are never seen again.

Housewives take the grocery money and a taxi to the train station.

Most are found, eventually.

Disappearances, after all, have explanations.

Usually.

Strange, the things you remember.

Single images and feelings that stay with you down through the years.

Like the moment I 'd realised, I'd never owned a vase.

That I'd never lived in any place long enough to justify having such a simple thing.

And how at that moment,

I wanted nothing so much in all the world as to have a vase of my very own.

It was a Tuesday afternoon,

six months after the end of the war.

Oh, god!

Hold him.

Hold him right now! You hear me?

Jesus Christ!

You're going home, right?

Here, quickly!

Doctor, doctor!

Oh, god!

I'll have to clamp the femoral artery before he bleeds out!

It's all right, Jackie boy. You're going home, mate. You're going home.

Oh, my god!

Jesus!

Move.

We've got him now, nurse.

Scalpel!

Claire! Did you hear? It's over!

It's really, finally over!

Hi!

Somehow, in my mind, v-e day,

the end of the bloodiest and most terrible war in human history,

grows fainter with each passing day.

But I can still recall every detail of the day,

when I saw the life I wanted sitting in a window.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened

if I 'd bought that vase and made a home for it.

Would that have changed things?

Would I have been happy?

Who can say?

I do know this.

Even now, after all the pain and death

and heartbreak that followed,

I still would make the same choice.

We were in Scotland on our second honeymoon.

Or at least that's what frank called it.

A way to celebrate the end of the war years and begin our lives anew.

But it was more than that.

I think we both felt a holiday would be a convenient masquerade

for the real business of getting to know the people we 'd become

after five years apart.

- What do you suppose that is? - Huh?

Oh, good lord. Blood.

Are you sure?

I think I should know the look of blood by now.

There's a stain just like it on the house next door.

There's two more over there.

We seem to be surrounded by homes marked with blood.

Perhaps pharaoh has refused Moses,

and the spirit of death will travel the streets of Inverness tonight,

sparing only those who Mark their doors with lamb's blood.

You may be closer than you think.

Could well be some sort of sacrificial ritual,

but I suspect pagan rather than Hebrew.

I had no idea Inverness was such a hotbed of contemporary paganism.

Well, my dear, there's no place on earth

with more magic and superstition mixed into its daily life

than the Scottish highlands.

Shall we?

Lead on.

The blood you saw is that of a black cockerel.

It's an old custom at this time of year

to make such a sacrifice to honour Saint odhran.

Odhran, he was sainted in the eighth century?

You know yer history.

I'm afraid my husband is a historian, mrs baird.

He'd quite happily stand here holding forth for hours

if you encourage him.

Hardly.

Highland folklore is far from my speciality, but am I right in thinking there's an...

Is there an old saying associated with Saint odhran?

Yes. "The earth went over odhran's eyes."

He was buried alive voluntarily.

Charming.

Are ye a professor then, mr Randall?

I will be soon.

He's accepted a post at Oxford beginning in two weeks.

Then this is a last holiday

before settling down to a workaday life again, is it?

Well, you've picked a Bonnie time to be here, just nigh on samhain.

I take it that's Gaelic for Halloween?

Well, Halloween is derived from samhain.

The church often took pagan holidays and renamed them for their own purposes.

Samhain became Halloween,

yule became Christmas, and so on...

Well, you're both welcome at the festival, of course.

Mind you, ghosts are freed on the feast days,

and they'll be wandering about,

free to do good or ill as they please.

Of course. What would Halloween...

Samhain be without a good ghost story?

And we have those for sure.

I'll show you to your room.

Before the war, we were inseparable.

But for the next five years, we saw each other a grand total of 10 days.

It's not without its charms.

Beats an army tent and a cot in the mud.

Indeed.

When the war ended,

we both thought things would return to the way they once were,

but they hadn't.

Gosh!

So much for marital privacy.

Do you think the sound carries?

Well, I think it's fair to say

mrs baird will be kept apprised of any renewed attempt to start a family.

Lazybones.

You'll never manage the next branch on your family tree

if you don't show more industry than that.

Really?

What are you doing?

- Come on. - Mrs Randall,

what am I to do with you?

Right.

What are you doing? You're gonna break the bed.

You know, one of those things

I used to try and remember lying in my cot,

was the sound of my husband's laugh.

I couldn't conjure it no matter what I did.

I couldn't hear it even though I'd heard it a million times before.

- It's the strangest thing. - I know.

I used to...

I used to sketch this.

- My hand? - Well...

The lines, really.

Why exactly, I'm not sure,

but I had a very clear memory of this... this pattern.

Made little doodles everywhere.

There was...

A brigadier once dressed me down

because I drew it in the margin of a report for the minister.

Yeah.

Claire...

Happy?

Yes.

Frank's passion for history

was another reason for choosing the highlands.

You see up there?

The top there, that's cocknammon rock.

And in the 17th and 18th centuries,

you'd have often found a British army patrol up there

lying in wait for Scottish rebels and brigands.

Can you see how it commands the high ground in every direction?

It was a perfect position for an ambush.

Not that I minded.

I was raised by my uncle after the death of my parents.

Uncle lamb was an archaeologist,

so, I'd spent the balance of my formative years

traipsing through dusty ruins

and various excavations throughout the world.

I'd learned to dig latrines and boil water,

and to do a number of other things not suitable for a young lady of gentle birth.

- Uncle? - Yes.

The very thought.

Frank's new-found passion was genealogy.

His personal genealogy, that is.

Mine was botany.

I'd developed a keen interest

in the use of plants and herbs for medicinal purposes.

So, from what I can gather,

castle leoch was the ancestral home

of the laird of the MacKenzie clan

until midway through the 19th century.

Here, take a look.

In a way, burying himself in the distant past

gave frank an ability to escape the recent.

While I was in the army, frank had served in London.

Intelligence, overseeing spies

and running covert operations.

So, I think this might have been the kitchen.

Really?

I would say that's probably a hearth.

Yeah.

Strange.

I have no evidence that my ancestor visited this castle,

but it was within his operational sphere.

So, it is just possible that he walked these very halls.

He 'd sent dozens of men behind the lines on secret missions,

and most never came back.

He didn't talk about it very often,

but I knew it preyed on him.

It won't open.

Come on.

Three, two, one...

What do you think this was used for?

From the lack of proper lighting and ventilation,

I would say province of the castle hermit.