For an episode supposedly about the profundity of birthing a child, Outlander: Blood of My Blood episode 6 wastes no time wading into dark—and disquieting—places. The latest installment of the prequel begins with relatively standard Blood of My Blood fare (Julia’s voiceover, declaring that no man is born alone). But, from there, the bizarre and uncomfortable barge in.
Upon hearing that Julia’s “waters have broken,” a still-moody Brian sends for the “howdie,” i.e. the midwife. The young Fraser is not so cruel as to deny Julia this aid, but he definitely hasn’t gotten over the sting of his would-be friend “lying” to him last episode. He still believes that Julia’s baby is his half-brother—and that Julia tricked him into helping her, all while seducing his awful father from behind closed doors. Julia admits the seducing-your-dad part is true, but so is the fact that she was already pregnant when she first arrived at Castle Leathers. She slept with Simon as a matter of practicality, so as to convince him the baby was his, thereby saving its life. Julia turns her situation around on Brian, asking, “If Ellen was carrying your baby, don’t you think she would do anything to keep him out of harm’s way?” This sounds like a heavy-handed bit of foreshadowing to me, but perhaps Julia’s simply a clever debater. At the mere mention of Ellen, Brian’s features soften, and he allows the dust to settle on his grudge.
But not everyone in Leathers is so quick to forgive. As the castle prepares for Julia’s confinement, during which only women are allowed in her vicinity, Davina’s long-percolating jealousy hits its boiling point. Now that he’s bound himself to a MacKenzie, her son feels increasingly insecure about his own status as a bastard Fraser, and he tells his mother that he yearns for the approval Simon is already has already granted Julia’s baby-king. No matter her blood, sweat, and tears, Davina can’t give Brian what Julia’s son has earned for free. And her anger only mounts when she learns that Simon plans to marry Julia, solidifying the child as his “legitimate” son and heir.
Davina once hoped Simon might marry her, or so Brian infers as they converse. But some undisclosed “unfortunate business” with the noblewoman Lady Amelia, Davina’s former mistress, apparently dashed Davina’s chances at a Fraser marriage. (We can safely assume this noblewoman is the same one mentioned last episode, the one whom Simon stands accused of “kidnapping and raping.”) But Brian does not necessarily know the extent to which his mother suffered at his father’s hands. In a flashback, we watch a horrible scene in which Simon rapes a younger Davina, impregnating her but blaming her as a “temptress.” Despite this, the present-day Davina tells her now-grown son that “the Lord doesna allow a child to be conceived against a lassie’s will, if that’s what you’re askin’,” she says.
“Then you loved him,” Brian concludes.
Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she merely wished not to be treated like trash. (A reasonable desire!) Either way, Davina is furious to see Julia receive the royal treatment when a posse of local women surround her, cooing over the opportunity to attend the future king of Scotland’s birth. They plump Julia’s pillows; they spoon-feed her gruel and caudle; they set a cake aside for celebrating. Having seen quite enough of this fuss, Davina snaps: “A royal bastard is still a bastard.”
She then proceeds to inform the group of her observations, as well as her suspicions: Julia arrived at Leathers pregnant. Julia sought Simon out and seduced him. She did this while “making eyes at” Brian, spitting in the face of all Davina’s attempts to aid her. At these accusations, the mood in the chamber shifts. And the weirdness sets in.
The women suddenly transform from helpful, tender maternal figures into chanting, maniacal torture weapons. They’re ghoulish. They chant in English and in Gaelic. They hurl insults at Julia: “Jezebel,” “devil’s child,” basically everything short of “fugly slut.” When she groans, they mimic her groans. When she weeps, they cry louder. The sound of this echo is freaky, not to mention cruel, particularly as Julia’s labor develops and her contractions deepen. The women claim it’s their duty to expel the demon from inside the Sassenach, but Julia begs for their mercy—surely they understand how hard it is to be a woman in this world!
This is, unfortunately, not a girlie bonding session. The women will accept no feminist rallying cry. And so Julia attempts another tactic: She’ll fight them all off. “Lord Lovat is the father!” she shouts. “When my son is raised to glory, when he is king, you will all be sorry.” A few of the women at least have the good grace to appear nervous.
Still, no matter how they berate or insult her, Julia refuses to back down. When Davina demands Julia swear on her baby’s life that she’s carrying Lord Lovat’s child, Mrs. Beauchamp’s eyes flash with rage. She will not—would never—do such a thing. She’d condemn herself to hell before she placed her child’s soul in the balance. “Can’t you see?” she pleads with the housekeeper. “Everything I am doing, I’m doing for my baby.”
This, at last, Davina can understand. She, too, has done everything imaginable for Brian’s behalf. She has lived with her rapist for all of Brian’s 20-some years (and then some). She has endured the stigmatization and scorn that comes with birthing a bastard in 18th-century Scotland. I mean, the woman has had to clean Simon’s disgusting chamber pot, what, thousands of times? She recalls her own horrible birthing experience, during which her own attending womenfolk tried to convince her the “kindest thing to do” would be to “get rid of the bastard.” Like Julia, Davina shrieked and wailed and cursed—anything to ensure no one so much as touched her child. Strange and ferocious is a mother’s love indeed.
Finally convinced of Julia’s good intentions, Davina banishes the other women from the chamber; she even fights off Simon when he bursts into the room, attempting to wed Julia mid-contraction. (The man truly knows no shame.) The laird smacks Davina across the face in retaliation for her insubordination, which prompts Brian to reel on his father in a rare display of fury. Later, Brian quietly endures the lashes that land as his punishment, but the resolution on his face makes it clear he’s done brooding over his daddy issues. From here on out, he’s his own man.
When Baby Beauchamp finally arrives, both Davina and Brian welcome the bouncing baby boy as one of their own. Brian tells Julia that the baby might not be his brother, “but he will always have a friend in me.” It’s been less than an hour—plus the kid’s not even his!—and Bri’s already a better dad than Lord Lovat will ever be.
Even as the scenes at Leathers close with this happy, candlelit vision of Frasers and Beauchamps in union, the horror elsewhere has only just begun. Over at Castle Grant, Henry’s search for Julia has become downright feverish. He knows his wife is “due to give birth any day now, if she hasn’t already,” and he’s not about to let Arch Bug keep him from questioning the local midwives about the whereabouts of a pregnant Sassenach. Arch is temporarily cowed at the mention of a baby; his wife delivered a stillborn son, and thus Arch’s sympathies are triggered when he hears of Julia’s plight. He volunteers to speak to Isaac Grant on Henry’s behalf, gathering the midwives to the Grant household for Henry to interview.
Little does Henry know, Isaac will use this opportunity to make his bladier’s search obsolete altogether. One by one, the women march through the Grant dining hall without so much as a scrap of intel to provide. Only after seemingly hours of this fruitless questioning does one of them finally mention the name Henry’s been so desperate to hear: “Julia Beauchamp?” Yet her report is a terrible one. She claims that the Sassenach died in childbirth, as did her baby, and both were soon buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.
Almost immediately upon hearing this news, Henry begins to tremble and disassociate. He has no way of understanding that, just outside, Arch is paying the midwife handsomely for her lies. While Julia enjoys the arrival of their long-awaited son, Henry gets to enjoy a crash-out of epic proportions. After he collapses to the ground, sobbing and retching with despair, his PTSD morphs his surroundings into an England-Scotland timeline hybrid. He sprints through the forests outside Castle Grant as if he’s Paul Revere, proclaiming to the (imagined) neighbors that the war is finally over. The horror is done! Peace at last!
When he comes home to Julia, he gives her a strange, surprised look. I took this as an instant indicator that the scene is not a flashback; this “Julia” is a figment of Henry’s imagination. Indeed, the camera reveals her as the sex worker from the brothel in Inverness. Henry kisses her, then sleeps with her, all the while believing her to be his (supposedly deceased) wife. This man is not okay. The brain’s impulse to protect itself under duress is a powerful thing, I suppose! But what happens when he wakes up? Will he still see Julia with him in bed? Or will he finally have to face the cold light of reality?
The problem is, right now both Henry and Julia’s realities are malleable. For one thing, they’re both time-travelers. That’s enough reality-bending to deal with on its own merits. But then there’s the matter of the fictions they’re caught up in. Henry is trapped in a lie in which his wife and baby are dead. Julia is trapped in a lie in which her baby, the future king of Scotland, belongs to Simon Fraser. Even if they’ve managed to stay alive this long, neither Henry nor Julia are free. They desperately need help. And what better allies than the parents of their daughter’s future husband? Ellen and Jamie, you better have some brilliant scheme up your sleeve next episode. The Beauchamp family’s collective sanity might not last much longer.
