Summary

One in this series of fantasy dramas, based on the novels by Diana Gabaldon, about a World War II nurse transported to 18th-century Scotland. In this episode, in the 1940s, Frank remarks that their situation is "backwards" as Claire departs for the front lines. In 1743, Claire imagines Mrs. Fitz's panicked reaction upon learning that her visitor is a time-travel from the future, and she resolves to keep her secret to herself and escape Castle Leoch by earning the MacKenzies' trust with her medical skills. Dogged by Angus and Rupert, Claire then learns that Colum's maid's son has recently died, apparently killed by "demons" in the ruins known as Black Kirk. Later, Colum angrily informs a frightened tailor who has made him an overlong coat that he is not ashamed of his disability, and he invites Claire to hear a performance by Gwyllyn the Bard as she gives him a medical massage. At the performance, Claire meets Laoghaire, the girl whom Jamie rescued from a public beating, and though Laoghaire is clearly taken with him, Jamie seems to regard her as a mere child.

Jamie and Claire escape to the stables, where Jamie admits that he has been hiding his vicious flogging scars from the other castle residents, noting that only she does not seem to pity him for it. The next day, Claire spends time with Geillis and learns that another boy, Tammas Baxter, who was with the deceased boy at Black Kirk, is apparently now also possessed and in need of an exorcism. Geillis is surprised at Claire's lack of belief in such supernatural matters, and when she is permitted to visit the boy, Claire quickly guesses that he is actually suffering from an accidental poisoning, though the ruthless Father Bain refuses her offers of help. Claire then spots Jamie kissing Laoghaire and teases him about his interest in her, though Murtagh sternly says that the flighty young girl would not make an appropriate wife for the highlander.

Claire's sense of being "a stranger in a strange land" increases when she learns that Father Bain has demanded a harsh punishment for a young boy accused of stealing. At her urging, Geillis uses her influence over her husband Arthur, the procurator fiscal, to hand down a "lesser" sentence: an hour spent nailed by the ear to the pillory. Claire recruits Jamie to help her free the boy as painlessly as possible, and the pair then journeys to the fabled Black Kirk, where Claire realizes that Tammas has likely mistaken the poisonous lily of the valley for wood garlic. She rushes back to the Baxter home and, with Mrs. Fitz's help, firmly stands up to the forbidding Father Bain and administers a dose of belladonna, which "miraculously" revives the boy. Everyone is impressed with her talents, though Jamie points out that Colum is now even less likely to release his prisoner now that she has shown her life-saving abilities. Gwyllyn the Bard's next song seems to describe Claire's dilemma precisely as he sings of a woman who travels through stones to a distant land and then back again, and she resolves to escape the castle and return to her time at any cost.