Significance
This square relates to the flogging Jamie had to endure at the command and later the hand of commander Jack Randall.
It represents the scars on Jamie’s back and reminds us how the love to and from his father makes him a stronger man. Although he can’t see them, he is very much aware of how people react to the sight of his back.
Later in the story these scars and what they stand for will be used as a powerful weapon during a journey with his uncle Dougal.
Background
1740 – When British soldiers come to Lallybroch, Jamie is arrested during the attempt to defend his sister’s honour. He is taken to Fort William where the commander, Jack Randall, orders that Jamie is brutally flogged.
Afterwards, Randall offers Jamie to become his lover in order to avoid a second hard flogging. Jamie is still weak and in pain from the first punishment and has oozing, open wounds. The dread and fear of going through the same torture again makes him consider (and almost accept) Randall’s offer. Imagining what his father would think of him if he did so however, gives him the strength to decline the commander’s proposal.
Jack Randall, furious and disappointed, intends to break Jamie and takes matters in his own hands. During the second chastening he keeps on flogging even after Jamie faints. To Jamie’s father Brian, who is watching in the crowd, it looks as if his son has died. He suffers a heart attack while watching Randall hitting his son again and again and dies a few days later.
Some friends manage to rescue Jamie from Fort William. During the escape, the soldier who gave Jamie his first flogging is killed by Jack Randall, who blames the murder on Jamie. A price of ten pounds sterling (a fortune in this time) is put on Jamie’s head. He is forced to live as an Outlaw and to stay away from the home he is supposed to run as the new Laird.
Designer's Thoughts
This square needs to be rough and ragged, to feel and look ‘raw’, almost irregular, but still be symmetrical.
The special stitches are reduced to only long treble and double treble, which triple in meaning as
- the strands of the punishment inflicting weapon
- the long and powerful strokes of the punishment’s executioner
- the criss-cross of (later) healed tissue on the punished man
Those stitches are pushed even further forward by ‘padding’ them with dcbb’s. In contrast to other squares, where the resulting open top loops are mostly smoothed out or hidden through various techniques, they are left open and visible here.
This creates a certain ‘roughness’, like a badly healed wound.
Of course the Storyteller colourway requests red for the square. For one this is in representation of the blood that has been spent during and after the floggings. There is another meaning though that lies in the reference to the broken heart Jamie is left with when he hears of his father’s death.
The pattern could possibly be extended by repeating elements of Round 7 to Round 13, which would give a nice and densely textured carpet, bath mat or door mat if made in the appropriate material.
The link to this pattern, photo and video tutorial can be found here
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You can read more background stories here:
The Background of Square 1 – Year Of The Ox
The Background of Square 2 – Sawny
The Background of Square 3 – Goodbye, Mama
The Background of Square 4 – Guarding His Right
The Background of Square 5 – Manners and Chess
The Background of Square 6 – L’Université
The Background of Square 7 – The Duel
The Background of Square 8 – Scars – this post
The Background of Square 9 – Rebekah
The Background of Square 10 – Hunting
The Background of Square 11 – Next of Kin
The Background of Square 12 – Sassenachs