Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

“I see. Why—oh.” He caught sight of Azeel, who had arrived but was waiting respectfully in the doorway to be summoned. “Do come in, my dear; I want you to meet someone.”


Azeel entered but stopped short at sight of General Stanley, the look of happy anticipation on her face turning at once to one of caution. She dropped a low curtsy to the general, modestly lowering her white-capped head.

“General, may I present Mrs. Sanchez, my housekeeper? Mrs. Sanchez, this is General Stanley, my stepfather.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed in surprise, and then blushed—a lovely sight, as the color in her dark cheeks made her look like a black rose. “Your servant, sir!”

“Your most humble, madam.” The general bowed as gallantly as possible while remaining seated. “You must forgive my not standing…” He gestured ruefully toward his bandaged foot.

She made a graceful gesture of dismissal and turned toward John.

“This is—your…” She groped for the word. “He is the next governor?”

“No, he’s not my replacement,” John said. “That’s Mr. Braythwaite; you saw him at the garden party. No, the general has come to give me some disturbing news, I’m afraid. Do you think you could fetch your husband, Mrs. Sanchez? I wish to discuss the situation with you both.”

She looked both astonished and concerned at this and studied him carefully to see if he meant it. He nodded, and she at once curtsied again and vanished, her sandal heels tapping on the tiles in agitation.

“Her husband?” General Stanley said, in some surprise.

“Yes. Rodrigo is…er…a sort of factotum.”

“I see,” said the general, who plainly didn’t. “But if this Braythwaite is already on board, so to speak, won’t he want to make his own domestic arrangements?”

“I imagine so. I, um, had had it in mind to take Azeel and Rodrigo with me to South Carolina. But they may be helpful to the present venture, if…er…if Rodrigo is sufficiently recovered.”

“Has he been ill?” Worry creased the general’s already-furrowed brow. “I hear the yellow jack comes to the West Indies at this season, but I hadn’t thought Jamaica was badly affected.”

“No, not ill, exactly. He had the misfortune to run afoul of a houngan—a sort of, um, African wizard, I believe—and was turned into a zombie.”

“A what?” The look of worry was superseded by one of astonishment.

Grey drew a deep breath and took a long swallow of his drink, the sound of Rodrigo’s own description echoing in his ears.

“Zombie are dead people, sah.”



GENERAL STANLEY WAS still blinking in astonishment at Grey’s brief description of the events that had culminated in his own appointment as military governor—Grey judiciously suppressing the facts that Azeel had commissioned an Obeah man to drive the previous governor mad and that Rodrigo had gone one step further and arranged to have the late Governor Warren killed and partially devoured—when the sound of footsteps echoed once again in the corridor. Two people this time: the clack of Azeel’s sandals but now walking slowly, to accommodate the slightly limping gait of the booted person accompanying her.

Grey stood up as they came in, Azeel hovering protectively behind Rodrigo.

The young man stopped, taking a deep breath before bowing deeply to the gentlemen.

“Your…servant. Sah,” he said to Grey, and then straightened, turned upon his axis, and repeated this process to the general, who watched him with a mixture of fascination and wariness.

Every time he saw Rodrigo, Grey’s heart was torn between regret for what the young man had once been—and a cautious joy in the fact that some of that splendid young man seemed still to be present, intact, and might yet come back further.

He was still beautiful, in a way that made Grey’s body tighten every time he saw that dark, finely carved head and the tall straight lines of his body. The lovely cat-like grace of him was gone, but he could walk again, almost normally, though one foot dragged a little.

It had taken weeks of careful nursing by Azeel—she was the only member of Grey’s household who was not terrorized by Rodrigo’s mere proximity—with help from Tom, who was afraid, too, but thought it wasn’t becoming for an Englishman to admit it.

Rodrigo had been nothing more than a shell of himself when Grey had rescued him and Tom from the maroons who had kidnapped them, and no one had expected that he would survive. Zombies didn’t. Drugged with zombie poison—Grey had little notion what was in the stuff, beyond the liver of some remarkably poisonous fish—and buried in a shallow grave, the person attacked by a houngan woke after some time to find himself apparently dead and buried.

Rising in a state of mental and physical disorientation, they numbly followed the orders of the houngan, until they died of starvation and the aftereffects of the drugs—or were killed. Zombies were (justifiably, Grey thought) viewed with horror by everyone, even by the people who had once loved them. Left without food, shelter, or kindness, they didn’t last long.

But Grey had refused to abandon Rodrigo, and so had Azeel. She had brought him slowly, slowly back to humanity—and then had married him, to the extreme horror of everyone in King’s Town.

“He’s got back most of his speech,” Grey explained to the general. “But only Spanish, that being his first language. He only remembers a few scattered words of English. We”—he smiled at Azeel, who ducked her head shyly—“hope that will improve, too, given time. But for now…he tells his wife things in Spanish, and she translates them for me.”

He explained the situation briefly to Azeel and Rodrigo—the young man could understand some English, if spoken slowly, but his wife filled in the missing bits for him.

“I would like you to go with me to Cuba,” Grey said, looking from one to the other. “Rodrigo could go where I could not go, and hear and see things I couldn’t. But…there might be some small danger, and if you choose not to go, I will give you enough money for passage to the colonies. If you do choose to come with me, I will take you from Cuba to America, and you will either remain in my employment or, if you prefer, I will find you a place there.”

Man and wife exchanged a long look, and at last Rodrigo nodded.

“We…go,” he said.



GREY HAD NEVER seen a black person turn white before. Azeel had gone the color of grimy old bones and was clutching Rodrigo’s hand as though one or both of them were about to be dragged off by slavers.

“Are you given to seasickness, Mrs. Sanchez?” he asked, making his way to them through the confusion of the docks. She swallowed heavily but shook her head, unable to take her eyes off the Otter. Rodrigo was unable to take his eyes off her and was anxiously patting her hand. He turned to Grey, fumbling for English words.