Corrag

Corrag Susan Fletcher A novel from Susan Fletcher, author of the bestselling Eve Green and Oystercatchers.The Massacre of Glencoe happened at 5am on 13th February 1692 when thirty-eight members of the Macdonald clan were killed by soldiers who had enjoyed the clan's hospitality for the previous ten days. Many more died from exposure in the mountains.Fifty miles to the south Corrag is condemned for her involvement in the Massacre. She is imprisoned, accused of witchcraft and murder, and awaits her death. The era of witch-hunts is coming to an end - but Charles Leslie, an Irish propagandist and Jacobite, hears of the Massacre and, keen to publicise it, comes to the tollbooth to question her on the events of that night, and the weeks preceding it. Leslie seeks any information that will condemn the Protestant King William, rumoured to be involved in the massacre, and reinstate the Catholic James.Corrag agrees to talk to him so that the truth may be known about her involvement, and so that she may be less alone, in her final days. As she tells her story, Leslie questions his own beliefs and purpose - and a friendship develops between them that alters both their lives.In Corrag, Susan Fletcher tells us the story of an epic historic event, of the difference a single heart can make - and how deep and lasting relationships that can come from the most unlikely places. Corrag Susan Fletcher FOURTH ESTATE • London For those who were there I had an unexpected request the other day; there had been two bad landslides where the bulldozers have been working on the slate banks. Someone…said it was because the workmen had been disturbing the grave of Corrag. Corrag was a famous Glencoe witch…One point of interest about her is that, in spite of reputed badness, she was to have been buried on the Burial Island of Eilean Munda. It was often noticed that however stormy the sea, or wild the weather, it habitually calmed down to allow the boat out for a burial. In the case of Corrag the storm did not cease till finally she was buried beside where the road now runs. By the way, in the Highlands, islands were used for burial very widely. Remember wolves remained here very much later than in the south. Barbara Fairweather Clan Donald Magazine No. 8 1979 More things are learnt in the woods than in books. Animals, trees and rocks teach you things not to be heard elsewhere. St Bernard (1090–1153) Table of Contents Cover Page (#uf1d3e578-127b-571a-8fe7-65288d21bd4a) Title Page (#u77d101dc-2fdf-545a-931f-fb3ccab80016) Dedication (#u72b2e7f3-e0b3-582b-bbd7-757552044dd3) Epigraph (#u8794cfbc-2bc6-5d3d-8b1e-5117eb2bc75f) Map (#uba00cb6b-1210-507f-8bd3-6f0051ff424a) Letter (#u97af6b09-9cfb-5746-b573-575f241cb07e) One (#ue2962b83-b4fa-5740-bcae-3b6d86721032) I (#ua7f9783a-b80f-5a79-9fb9-06f512ff0c51) II (#u3697d4ca-7eda-5f2e-aed0-a14f59a078df) III (#uc263bf66-6d52-535a-ad37-fe3c3aefd7b0) Two (#u4048e680-d770-5485-b0d1-3780dfe80c23) I (#u835a4531-7379-5fec-b6f6-09554de793bc) II (#u4919b045-d2c3-5061-98de-a8b8706f06b3) III (#litres_trial_promo) IV (#litres_trial_promo) Three (#litres_trial_promo) I (#litres_trial_promo) II (#litres_trial_promo) III (#litres_trial_promo) IV (#litres_trial_promo) V (#litres_trial_promo) VI (#litres_trial_promo) VII (#litres_trial_promo) VIII (#litres_trial_promo) IX (#litres_trial_promo) X (#litres_trial_promo) Four (#litres_trial_promo) I (#litres_trial_promo) II (#litres_trial_promo) Five (#litres_trial_promo) Letter (#litres_trial_promo) I (#litres_trial_promo) Afterword (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo) Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo) Also by Susan Fletcher (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Map (#ulink_2e9092e3-4de9-5828-95fb-19a785988e88) Letter (#ulink_17609b84-6e70-5063-a520-b89d0a623773) Edinburgh 18th February 1692 Jane I can’t think of a winter that has been this cruel, or has asked so much of me. For weeks now, it has been blizzards, and ice. The wind is a hard, northern one – it finds its way inside my room and troubles this candle that I’m writing by. Twice it has gone out. For the candle’s sake I must keep this brief. I have news as foul as the weather. Edinburgh shivers, and coughs – but it whispers, too. In its wynds and markets, there are whispers of treachery – of a mauling in the brutish, Highland parts. Deaths are often violent there, but I hear these were despicably done. A clan, they say, has been slaughtered. Their guests rose up against them and killed them in their beds. On its own, this is abhorrent. But there is more. Jane – they say it was soldier’s work. Of all people, you know my mind. You know my heart, and if this is true – if it was soldiers’ hands that did this bloodiness – then surely it was the King who ordered it (or I will say the Orange, pretending one, for he is not my king). I must leave for this valley. They call it wild and remote, and it’s surely snowbound at this time – but it’s my duty. I must learn what I can and report it, my love, for if William is behind this wickedness it may prove his undoing, and our making. All I wish, as you know, is to restore the true King to his throne. Pray for my task. Ask the Lord for its safe and proper outcome. Pray for the lives of all our brothers in this cause, for we risk so much in its name. Pray, too, for better weather? This snow gives me a cough. The candle gutters. I must end this letter, or I shall soon be writing by the fire’s light, which is not enough light for my eyes. In God’s love, and my own, Charles ONE (#ulink_c3a994b8-c6ab-53a6-a614-4feb14930c2b) I (#ulink_04d15bd1-ae46-5837-8833-377022e752a5) ‘The Moon is Lady of this.’ of Privet Complete Herbal Culpeper 1653 When they come for me, I will think of the end of the northern ridge, for that’s where I was happiest – with the skies and wind, and the mountains being dark with moss, or dark with the shadow of a cloud moving across them. I will think of how it is when part of a mountain brightens very suddenly, so it is like that rock is chosen by the sun – marked out by sunshine from all the other rocks. It will shine, and then grow dark again. And I’ll stand with my skirts blowing, make my way home. I will have that sunlit rock in me. I will keep it safe. Or I’ll think of how I ran with the snow coming down. There was no moon, but I saw the morning star, which they say is the devil’s star but it is love’s star, too. It shone, that night – so brightly. And I ran beneath it, thinking let all be well let all be well. Then I saw the land below which was so peaceful, so white and still and sleeping that I thought maybe the star had heard and all was well – no death was coming near. It was a night of beauty, then. For a while, it was the greatest beauty I had ever seen in all my life. My little life. Or I will think of you. In my last, quiet moments, I will think of him beside me. How, very softly, he said you… Some called it a dark place – like there was no goodness to be found inside those hills. But I know there was goodness. I climbed into its snowy heights. I crouched by the loch and drank from it, so my hair was in the water, and I lifted up my head to see the mist come down. On a clear, frosty night, when they said all the wolves were gone, I heard a wolf call from Bidean nam Bian. It was such a long, mournful call that I closed my eyes to hear it. It mourned its own end, I think, or ours – as if it knew. Those nights were like no other nights. The hills were very black, like they were shapes cut out of cloth, and the cloth was dark-blue, starry sky. I knew stars – but not as those stars were. Those were its nights. And its days were clouds and rocks. Its days were paths in grass, and pulling herbs from soggy places that stained my hands and left their peaty smell on me. I was damp, peat-smelling. Deer trod their ways. I also trod them, or nestled in their hollows and felt their old deer-warmth. I saw what their black deer-eyes had seen, before my own. Those were its days – small things. Like how a river parts around a rock and joins again. It was not dark. No. I had to find it – darkness. I had to push rocks from their resting place, or look for it in caves. The summer nights could be so light, so full of light that I curled up like a mouse, hid my eyes beneath my hand so I might find a little dark to sleep inside. It is how I sleep, even now – tucked up. I will think this way. When my life is ending. I will not think of musket shots or how it smelt by Achnacon. Not of bloodied things. I will think of the end of the northern ridge. How my hair blew all about me. How I saw the glen go light and dark with clouds, or how he said you’ve changed me, as he stood by my side. I thought this is the place, as I stood there. I thought this is my place – mine, where I was meant for. It was waiting for me, and I found it, in the end. I was always for places. I was made for the places where people did not go – like forests, or the soft marshy ground where feet sank down and to walk there made a suck suck sound. Me as a child was often in bogs. I watched frogs, or listened to how rushes were in breezes and I liked that – how they sounded. Which is how I knew what I was. See? Cora said, smiling. She was for places too. She trawled her skirts over mud, and wet sand. She was brambled, and fruit-stained, and once she lived in an old waterwheel, upon its soft, green wood. She said she was lonesome there – but what choice did I have? Tell me? Not much. Some people cannot have a peopled life. We try for it. We go to markets, and say hello. We help to bring the hay in, and pick the cider apples from their bee-noisy trees, but it takes very little – a hare, or a strange moon – for hag to come. Whore. They raise an eyebrow, then. They call for ropes to bind us, so that we grow so sad and afraid for our small lives that we turn to empty places – and that makes them say hag even more. She lives on her own. Walks in shadows, I hear…But where else is safe? No towns are. All that was left for Cora was high-up parts, or sunken ones. Places of such wind that trees were bent over, and had no leaves. Normal folk did not go there, so we did – her, and I. I’ve lived in caves, and woods. My feet have been torn up on thorns. When I crept into towns for eggs or milk they crossed themselves, spat. I know spitting. I know its sound, too, like retching, like a cat pulling up the bones of a bird it ate up whole, all sharp parts in with feathers. They hissed, we know what you are…And did they? They thought they did. In my English life, they took old truths – my snowy birth, how I liked marshy places – and pressed them into proper lies, like how they saw me lift a shoulder up and turn into a crow. I never did that. I have lived on open land. On moors, in windy weather. I’ve lived in a hut I made myself, with my own hands – of moss, and branches, and stone. The mountains looked down on me, as I curled up at night. And now? Now I live here. In a cell, with chains. It snows. From the little window, I can see it snows. It’s been months, I think, of snowing – of bluish ice, and cold. Months of clouded breath. I blow, and see my breath roll out and I think look. That is my life. I am still living. I like it – snow. I always did. I was born in a sharp, hard-earth December, as the church folk sang about three wise men and a star through their chattering teeth. Cora said that the weather you are born in is yours, all your life – your own weather. You will shine brightest in snowstorms she told me. Oh yes…I believed her – for she was born in thunder, and was always stormy-eyed. So snow and cold is mine. And I have known some winters. I’ve heard fish knock beneath their ice. I’ve seen a trapdoor freeze so it could not go bang, though they still took the man’s life away, in the end. Once, in these high Scottish passes, I made a hole in the drifts with my own hands, and crept inside, so soldiers ran past not knowing I crouched in it. This saved my life, I think. I’m a hardy thing. People die from the cold, but I haven’t. I’ve not had blue skin, not once – a man said it was the evil fire in me that kept me warm, and bind that harlot up. But it was no evil fire. I was just born in snowy weather and had to be hardy to stay living. I wanted to live, in this life. So I grew strong, and did. Winter is an empty season, too. Safer. For who wanders out on frosty nights, or drifty white mornings? Not many, and none by choice. In my travelling days, with my grey mare and north-and-west in my head, I might see no one for days. Just us, galloping. Me and the mare, with snowflakes in our manes. And when we did see people, it was mostly desperate ones – gypsies, clawing for nuts, or broken men. Drunks. A thief or two. And foxes, running from the hunter’s gun with that look in their eyes – that wild, dread look, which I know. Once I found some people kneeling in a gloomy Scottish wood – they took Christ’s body into their mouths, and a priest was there, saying church things. I watched, and thought, why here? And at night? I did not understand. I have never understood much on God, or politics. But I know these kneeling folk were Covenanters, which is a gunpowder word. They could be killed, for praying – which is why they did it in woods, at night. And I passed a lone girl, once. She was my age, or less. We met in some Lowland trees, in the early hours, and we slowed, brushed hands. We looked on each other for a moment or two, with be careful in our eyes – be safe, and wise. For who else is as hated as we are? Who is more lonesome, than ones called witch? Briefly, we both had a friend. But we were hunted creatures – her, the fox and I. So I took the path she had come by, and she took my old path. Witch. Like a shadow, it is never far. There are other names, too – hag, and whore. Wicked piece. Harlot is common, also, and such names are too cruel to tie upon a dog – but they’ve been tied, easily, on me. I drag them. Vile matter once, like I was a fluid hawked up in the street – like I was not even human. I cried after that. In the market, once, Cora was Devil’s hole. But witch… The oldest name. The worst. I know its thick, mud-weight. I know the mouth’s shape when it says it. I reckon it’s the most hated word of all – more hated than Highland, or Papist is. Some won’t say William like it’s poison – I know many people don’t want him to be King. But he is King, for now. And I was always witch. That December birth of mine was a troubled one. My mother bled too much, and cursed, and she roared so long that her throat split in two, like it can in painful times. Her roar had two voices – one hers, and one the Devil’s, or so said the folk who heard it from the church. I fell out to this sound. I slipped out upon the glinting, blue-eyed earth, beneath a starry sky, and she laughed. She wept, and laughed at me. Said my life would be like this – cold, hard, outdoors. Witch she said, weeping. She was the first to say it. Later, at daybreak, she gave me my proper name. I say it – look. Witch…And my breath clouds so the word is white, rolls out. I have tried to not mind it. I’ve tried so hard. I have tried to say it does not hurt, and smile. And I can reason that witch has been a gift, in its way – for look at my life…Look at the beauty that witch has brought me to. Such pink-sky dawns, and waterfalls, and long, grey beaches with a thundering sea, and look what people I met – what people! I’ve met some sovereign lives. I’ve met wise, giving, spirited lives which I would not have done, without witch. What love it showed me, too. No witch, and I would not have met the man who made me think him, him, him – all the time. Him, who tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. Him who said you… Alasdair. Witch did that. So maybe it’s been worth it all, in the end. I wait for my death. I think him, and wonder how many days I have left to think it in. I turn my hands over, and stare. I feel my bones under my skin – my shins, my little hips – and wonder what will happen to them when I’m gone. I wonder plenty. Like who will remember me? Who knows my true name – my full one? For witch is what they will shout, as I’m dying. Witch as the dark sky is filled with fiery light. It is like I have lived many lives. This is what I tell myself – many lives. Four of them. Some folk have one life and know no other, which is fine, and maybe it’s the best way of it – but it’s not what I was meant for. I was a leaf blown all over. Four lives, like there are seasons. Which was the best of them? I would live them all again, for all had their goodnesses. I would like to be back in the cottage by the burn, with cats asleep in the eaves. Or to walk in the thick elm wood – which was dappled, full of grubs. Cora called it a healer’s friend, for she found most of her cures in there. It was where I undid my shoulder for the first time, and where the best pheasants were for catching and eating, which sometimes we did. Or I would like to be back in my second life. My second life was like flying. It was empty lands, and wind, and mud on my face from her hooves. I loved that grey mare. My fingers were knotted into her mane as she galloped over miles and miles, snorting and throwing up earth. I held on, thinking go! Go! But it’s my third life I would like again, most of all. My glen one. I lived it too briefly – it was too short a life. Yet it’s the best I’ve known – for where else did I see my reflection and think you are where you should be – at last. And where else were there people who did not mind me, and let me be? They pressed a cup into my hand, said drink. They left hens by my hut, as thank you, and raised a hand in greeting, and I had craved that all my lonesome life. All I’d deeply wanted was love, and human friends. To stand in a crowd and think these are my kind. My people. That was my third life. And my fourth one is this one – in here. Yes I’m for places, mostly. But it is because they made me so – the ones who eyed me, and did not trust herbs or a grey-eyed girl. They made me for places, by hissing witch. They sent me up, up, into the airy parts. But the truth is that I wish I could have been with people more – with those Highlanders who never minded filthy hands, or tangles, or my English voice, and who slowed to look at geese flying south, like I did. So I am for places – wind, and trees. But I am for good, kind people most of all. Like Alasdair. Cora. The Chief of that clan, who is dead now. I think, too, of Gormshuil. I think of how she was, the night before the murders – how she put her hand near my cheek, but not on it, as if she was afraid of touching me. She said there is blood coming – but she said more than that. A man will find you. A man will come to you, and see your iron wrists, your small feet. He will write of things – such things… What were those words? I brushed them away. I thought it was henbane talking, or some half-had dream. I saw Gormshuil in the falling snow, and shook my head. No…My wrists? I looked down upon them and thought they are pink, and flesh. They are fine. It was the herb – surely. Her teeth were green with it. But blood was spilled, in Glencoe, like she said. Blood did come. A man will find you. I hear these words, now. Who says them? I say them. I say Gormshuil’s words, and I remember how she looked at me. I see the deep lines on her face which loss had made, and the scalp beneath her snow-wet hair. I wonder if she is also dead. Perhaps she is. But I think she still lives on that blustery peak. A man will find you. Iron wrists. Some things we know. We hear them, and think I know – like we’ve always had the knowledge waiting in ourselves. And I know. She was right. There was a light in her when she said iron wrists – a wide, astonished light, as if she’d never been so sure. Like how a deer is, when it lifts its head and sees you, and is scared – for it knows you are real, and breathing, and that you’ve crouched there all this while. So I wait. With my shackles, and dirt. I wait, and he comes. A man I’ve never met is riding to my cell. When I tuck up in the straw, I stare into the dark and see my other lives. I see the bogs, the glen. But I also see his face. His spectacles. His neat, buckled shoes, and leather case. The Eagle Inn Stirling Jane I write this letter from Stirling. It is poor ink so forgive the poorer hand. Forgive, too, my bad humour. My supper was barely a crumb and my bed is damp from the cold, or the previous sleeper. What’s more, I was hoping to be further north by now, but the weather remains unkind. We’ve kept to the lower roads. We lost a horse two days ago, which has stolen hours, or days, from us. It’s a wildly unsatisfactory business. Let me go back a while – you shall know each part, as a wife should. I left Edinburgh on Friday, which seems many months gone. I am indebted to a gentleman who lent me a sturdy cob and some funds – though I cannot give his name. I hate to withhold truths from you, but it may endanger him to write much more; I will simply say he is powerful, respected and sympathetic to our cause. Indeed, I glimpsed an embroidered white rose on his coat, which we all know says Jacobite. We drank to King James’ health and his speedy return – for he will return. We are few in number, Jane, but we are strong. My thoughts were to make for a place named Inverlochy, on the Scottish north-west coast. It has a fort, and a settlement. Also it is a mere day’s journey from this ruined Glen of Coe. The gentleman assured me that its governor, a Colonel Hill, is kindly, and wise, and I might find lodgings with him – but I fear the snow prevents this. I travel with two servants who speak of thick blizzards on the moor that lies between the fort and here. They’re surly men, and locals. As I write they are in the town’s dens, drinking. I don’t trust them. I’m minded to insist we take this snowy route, no matter – for we have ridden this far through such weather. But I cannot risk another horse. Nor can I serve God if I perish on Rannoch Moor. So tomorrow, our journey takes us west. Inverlochy must wait. We are headed, now, for the town of Inverary – a small, Campbell town on the shores of Loch Fyne. The coast has a milder climate, I hear. I also hear the Campbells are a strong and wealthy people – I hope for a warmer bed than this one that Stirling provides. There, we might fatten our horses and ourselves, and rest, and wait for the thaw. It sounds a decent resting place. But I must be wary, Jane – these Campbells are William’s men. They are loyal to him, and support him – they would not take kindly to my cause. They’d call it treachery, or worse. So I must hide my heart, and hold my tongue. Wretched weather. My cough is thicker and I worry my chilblains might come back. Do you remember how I suffered from them in our first married winter? I would not wish for them again. I feel far from you. I feel far from Ireland. Also, from like-minded men – I write to them in London, asking for their help, in words or in funds to assist me, but I hear nothing from them. Perhaps this weather slows those letters. Perhaps it slows these letters to you. Forgive me. I am maudlin tonight. It is hunger that troubles me – for food, for warmth, for a little hope in these hopeless times. For you, too, my love. I think of you reading this by the fire, in Glaslough, and I wish I could be with you. But I must serve God. Dear Jane. Keep warm and dry. I will endeavour to do the same, and shall write to you from Inverary. It may be an arduous journey, so do not expect a letter in haste. But have patience, as you have other virtues – for a letter will come. In God’s love, as always, Charles II (#ulink_8f41812a-a80d-5527-bb24-10ad8841bc15) ‘The black seed also [helps] such as in their sleep are troubled with the disease called Ephilates or Incubus, but we do commonly call it the Night-mare.’ of Peony There are ones who wait for me. I know this. I know, too, who they are. They are the ones whose hearts were like my own – wild, unfettered hearts. Cora’s heart was wildest – rushing like clouds can do – and she waits. So does her mother, who I never met, but I know she is tiny and has pondweed in her hair. Mrs Fothers, too – for I once saw her looking at the evening star, and she wept at it, and I thought her heart is like my heart. So I reckon she is waiting. There is the plum-faced man. It was his heart which killed him in the end, I think, for it was a tired heart when I knew him – and that was years ago. Also, the boy I found crouching, who feared the baying dogs, waits patiently for me. So does our pig. I wish I’d never killed him, with his velvety snout, but I did, and now he waits for me as if he never minded dying. He waits, flaps his ears. And my mare. My speckled, big-rumped mare who I loved, and loved, and loved. I see her looking at me and I think I love my speckled mare. And them – of course. The MacDonalds of Glencoe – or the ones I could not save. The newly dead Scots men who wait in a line with their fresh musket wounds sealed up, and their skin uncut, and they will say my name as I cross to them – not witch, not Sassenach. These are the lives I’ve loved, who are dead now. Their bodies are worms – but their souls are free, and in the other, airy world. The realm, Cora called it – where we all go, one day. Our death is a door we must pass through, and it seemed a good thing by how she spoke of it. Calm, and good. Part of life – which it is. But I was wrong to think it was calm. Or I was wrong to think it always happened that way. I was a child, with a child’s mind, and I thought all deaths were by lying down, closing our eyes, and a sigh. I thought that sigh would be lifted by the wind, and carried. But no. Only when I killed the pig and it squealed did I think it can hurt. Be bloody, and sad. That was an awful lesson I learnt. After it, I was wiser. Cora said my eyes turned a darker shade of grey. It can hurt. Yes. And I have seen more hurtful deaths than I’ve seen gentle ones. There was the nest which fell, and all those little feathered lives were licked up by the cats. In Hexham, a man was put in stocks and had stones thrown at him until he was dead – and for what? Not much, most likely. Also, there was Widow Finton, and I don’t know how she died, but it took a week to know that she was gone – they smelt the smell, and found her. A door we must pass through? I believe that part. I believe it, for I have seen souls lift up and move away. But not all deaths are peaceful. They are lucky, who get those. We do not get them. Peaceful deaths. Not us who have hag as a name. Why should we? When they say we worship the devil and eat dead babes? When we steal milk by wishing it? We have no easy ends. For my mother’s mother, they used the ducking stool. All the town was watching as she bobbed like a holey boat, and then sank under. I imagined it, in my infant days – out in the marshes with the frogs and swaying reeds. I crouched until my nose was in the water and I could not breathe, and I thought she died this way, and would it have been a simple death? A painless one? I doubted it. I coughed reeds up. Cora grabbed me, cursed me and plucked frogspawn from my hair. Then there are the twirling deaths. Like the ones the Mossmen had. I saw these ones – how they put the rope on you like a crown that is too big, and your hands are double-tied. Like you are King, the crowds hiss or cheer. And then there is the bang, and maybe some go quickly but I’ve seen the heels drumming, and I’ve thought what sadness. What huge sadness there is, in the world. And pricking. A dreadful word. That is a fate they save only for us – for witch and whore. I’ve been afraid of the pricking men for all my life, for Cora was. She shook when she spoke of them. She made herself small, and hid. Part of a witch does not bleed, she whispered – or so the church says. So men prod our women with metal pins, seeking it…I asked her how big? Are the pins? And she held out her hands, like this – like how fishermen do, when telling their tales. A door, Cora said, that we must pass through. Yes. But why these ways? Why with such pain in them? I wish we could all find a high-up place with clouds and air, and close our eyes, and find a heavy sleep – and that would be our deaths. No ropes or pins. No crowds, or spit. Just the wind, and a knowing that the ones you love are safe, that you’ll be remembered fondly, and all’s as it should be. That’s the death I’d choose. But I cannot choose. It is chosen for me. It has been picked, like fruit. Why fire? I asked the gaoler this. I asked the man who came to see my wounds, and staunch them up. I asked the one called Stair who has always hated witch. I said why fire? Why? Please not by fire…And Stair watched me for a while, through the bars. I pleaded with him. I rambled, begged. But he picked at his teeth, turned slowly on his heel and left this room saying, I think fire is best. Such cold weather…It would warm the town up – don’t you think? I shook the bars. I banged my iron wrists on the bars, and kicked at my pail. I screamed not by fire! Not that way! And come back! Come back! Come back! Come back! I shook, and shook. I heard my words echo and his footsteps die away. So it will be by fire. Outside, they gather wood. I hear them drag it through the snow, and the nails going in. Inside, I look at my skin. I see its scars and freckles. I feel my bones, and I roll the skin upon my knees so that the bones beneath them clunk – back and fro. I follow where my veins run along my arm and hands. I touch the tender places – inside my legs, my belly. The pink, wrinkled skin between my toes. The realm. Where they are waiting. I love them – Cora, the plum-faced one. But I do not want to join them. Not yet, and not this way. I am fretful, tonight. Afraid. Tonight, I breathe too quickly. I walk up and down, up and down. I run my fist along the bars so that my knuckles hurt, and bleed – but the hurt says I am living, that my body still has blood in it and works like it should do. I talk to myself so my breath comes out – white, white – and when I sit, tucked up, I hold my feet very tightly and I rock myself like children do when they have plenty on their minds. I try to say hush now to me, to calm me, but it doesn’t work. I press my eyes into my knees, and tell myself that my mother is waiting for me, and my mare, the Highland men, and won’t it be nice to see her again? So hush now, I say, stroking myself. I have been so afraid that I have retched on me. It made me cry. In my hair, and on my skirts, and I looked upon my hands, and when the gaoler saw it he spat, said ah the devil’s in you, right enough. Foul wretch…like he was all manners himself, all clean – and he’s never been clean. I tried to tidy myself. I tried to quieten down – but I was so afraid, that night. I cried, and hugged myself, and vomited again. Above all, I’m afraid of the pain. For surely it hurts? Surely it is a pain beyond all knowing, and a slow death, too? And such a lonesome one. Fire…And when I think it, it makes me wrap my arms about me, and I wail. My wail has an echo. I hear the echo, and think poor, poor creature, to make such a sound – for it is a desperate, dying sound. It is the wail of such a mauled and mangled thing, with no hope left, no light. No friend. I pull at my chains. Don’t let me die. Don’t let it be by burning. I rock back and forth like this. Still. I have a comfort. It is small, but I have it – I whisper it into cupped hands. People live because of me. They do. They live because I saved them – because I listened to my soul’s voice, to the song of my bones, the words of the world. I listened to my womb, my belly, my breasts. My instinct. The howling wolf in me. And I told them make for Appin! And go! Go! And they went. I watched them running in the snow, with their skirts hitched up, and their children strapped on tightly, and I thought yes – be safe. Live long lives. There. It comforts me. It takes the fear away, and makes my breath slow down. When they tie me to the wood, I will say I have saved lives, and it will be a comfort and I will not mind the flames. For what if that’s the cost? My life for their lives? What if the world asks for that – for my small life, with its lonely hours, in return for the lives of three hundred, or more? I will pay it. If it means they are living, and if it means the stag still treads the slopes, and the herrings still flash themselves in the loch in summer, and if it means the people still play their pipes and still tell their stories of Fionn and his dogs, and the Lord of the Isles, and if the heather still shakes in the wind, and if it means that he – him, him, with hair like how wet hillside is – is still living, and mending, then I will pay it. I will. Does he live? I think he does. In my darkest hours I worry he is dead – but I think he lives. I see him by the sea. On his side, he has the poultice of horsetail and comfrey, and he unpeels it. He sees he is healing, smiles, thinks Corrag…He presses the poultice back on. See? I am calm now. I can see his dark-red hair. I must sleep. It partly seems a waste of final hours, of breath. But even as I think of life, and love, and the stag with his fine branches, I have Gormshuil in my head – how she said a man will come. I think he comes tomorrow. My days grow less and less. Let him come. Let him do his purpose, even if it hurts. Even if it’s pins, or his turn to say whore, or hag. For I am still living. Ones I love are still living, and so what pain can come to me? What is there to fear? Lives mean far more than deaths ever do. It is what we remember – the life. Not how they died, but how warm and bright-eyed they were, and how they lived their lives. The Argyll Inn Inverary 26th February Darling Jane You will be glad, I think, to see where I write this from. I have made it safely to the town of Inverary – though there were times in our journey when I doubted that we would. It was arduous, my love. It was wild with blizzards. We passed such dark, desolate water, and the wind howled like a demon at night. I thought of the stitched kneeler my mother made – remember? It says ‘So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”’ (Hebrews 13.6) – and it is His doing alone, His loving care, which brought us to Inverary, in the end. It is an attractive town, despite the weather. Placed on the edge of Loch Fyne, it has an air of money and civility which is welcome at this time. My lodgings here are warm, and dry. They are by the water, in a coaching inn which seems lively by day and more so at night. My rooms have a fire, and a window which looks out across the loch and its clinking ice (I take a rather childish pleasure in seeing such coldness, whilst I am warm. I write this, and see the blueness) and I wonder at the hardiness of these people, who live amongst such mountains and wind. The Campbells are also generous men. Their allegiance may not be my own, but I have eaten well in this inn, and our two remaining horses which have served us so well seem as happy as I am for the food and rest. I confess to being better in my spirits than I was. I have even eaten venison, Jane. I am still picking my teeth from it, but it is a good, restorative meat. On to my purpose. I have heard plenty of Glencoe. In the corners of the inn, it is all they speak about. I dined, and overheard such things that chilled me – the Chief, they say, was shot as he rose from his bed. His lady wife was injured in such a manner that she died, naked, out in the snow. Her rings, I hear, were bitten from her hands, so that her hands were mauled most savagely. Dreadful, despicable deeds. I know this from my landlord. You’d smile, I think, at him – he has the reddest hair I’ve ever known, and red cheeks. He brims with words, and I have been in Inverary for a mere afternoon – four hours, at most! – yet he has already accosted me more than once. Even as I arrived I felt his stealth. He said, staying long? I replied that I, like all travellers, am at the Lord’s mercy, and that He and the weather will decide on my length of stay. I think he will pry, Jane. But this may prove of use, in its way. For if he pries with me, does he not pry with others? He may know plenty, in time. Thinking this, I asked very casually, is that infamous glen in these parts? How he liked that! He came near, said aye, what remains of it. Burnt and butchered, it was. His eyes blackened, and he leant closer in. Mark me, he said – it is no loss. Those that were cut down in that glen will not be missed…He caught himself then – for I am a stranger to him, so he said what is your name, sir? You have not given it. May God forgive me, Jane – for I spoke falsely. With my true purpose in mind, I did not give my own name – rather, I fashioned a name from scraps that we know. I used, my love, your unmarried name. For what if they had heard of me? And my teachings? And my Jacobite ways? I could not risk the townsfolk learning where my sympathies lie. Charles Griffin, I told him. Reverend. Reverend? And what is your purpose? You are far from home, friend. I said I’ve come to spread the Lord’s loving word in the northern, lawless parts. For I hear the Highlands are full of sin. They are! To the north of here? Catholics and criminals, dishonest men…He polished his glass, shook his head. Brimful with cruelty and barbarous ways. They shame us! And, he said, a finger raised, the north is full of traitors. Ones who plot against the King. William? Aye, King William. God protect him. Thank the Lord he came across – a well-named revolution, was it not? I took a sip of my ale. I would call it far from glorious, but did not say so. He said do you know of the witch? I was surprised at this – who would not be? I swallowed, said, no. I know that this country – indeed, our own – has been troubled in the past times with the matter of witches, and other black deeds on which I do not choose to dwell. But this was brazen talk. He said there’s one here in Inverary. She is chained up in the tollbooth for her malicious ways. I hear, he said, she crawls with lice, and her teeth are gone. She faces her death for her evil. Sir, she was in Glencoe… Jane. My dearest. We have spoken of this matter in the past, you and I – in the gardens in Glaslough, by the willow tree. Do you remember? You wore the blue shawl that makes your eyes bluer, and I talked of enchantment – so we spoke of witchcraft, by that tree. I know we disagreed. Men of my faith and profession know of it – of the Devil’s work. We know there are folk who serve him – perhaps not by choice, but they do. It is bedevilment, and a threat to a safe and civil nation. Some say no one who meddles in such a way must be allowed to live, and so must be purged by fire or water, for their own sake. Plenty think this. You know that I am with them? That such women cannot be endured? It worries you, I know – my feeling on this. But do we not have enough foes at this time, Jane? Do we not have enough to fight against – other faiths, and false kings, and wars – without being troubled by such Devil-lovers too? Who truly knows their power? If there is a God, there is a Devil – and there are both, as we know. There is enough wickedness, my love, in this world. It favours the pure parts of it to rid ourselves of the black. I know your heart. I remember. Your blue eyes filled with water. You do not believe in witch, or rather you don’t trust the men who call it out – I know. You think such women are ill, perhaps. That they suffer delusions, or grief, or fear men. You said you felt sorry for such creatures – in your blue shawl, beneath the willow tree. I love that trusting part of you – that faith in ones you have not met. But there is evil, Jane, in this world – I promise it. It casts its darkness everywhere. It hopes to choke virtue, and decency, and I will spend my life fighting to prevent this – as my father did. There is a righteous path. My life’s purpose is to return all men to it – for us to walk, once more, in God’s light. I hope I stay briefly in this town. It is merely a resting place, before I head north to this ravaged glen. This witch was there, my love. She was at the murders, and saw them with her eyes. I am not keen to visit her, or to spend time with such a cankered, godless piece – nor do I wish to get her lice. But I must remember my cause. If she was at these deaths then she must have her uses. She will have seen the red-coats – and any word, even a witch’s, is a better word than none. It is late. Past midnight – my pocket watch tells me so. I will conclude this letter with assuring you how much I miss you. They are small words. But to look out of my window is to see Loch Fyne, and the sea, and I look west across it, which makes me think of you. I tell myself that Ireland is across that water. You are across it, and our boys, all that I love in the world beside God. Keep strong. I know my absence asks much of you, and you endure a hardship by being alone. Forgive me. I ask this, but I know that I am forgiven already, for your faith and love of God is as mine is. I have slept in damp beds and I will talk to witches for His glory and for James, but I also think of you as I do it. I hope I make you proud. It still snows. I might grumble at it, but it looks soft and beautiful with you, my wife, in mind. My love to you, from across Loch Fyne, and all that is between us. Charles III (#ulink_dfeda849-9197-5601-ba6f-2c2a6c9ff15d) ‘This is a common but very neglected plant. It contains very great virtues.’ of Comfrey The gaoler knows me now. He knows how I talk in the dark. How small I can be when I curl myself up – so small that he thinks I’ve done magick, and gone. Filthy witch he says, when he finds me. I hope they do you slowly…I’ll be there to warm myself. But I also know him. I know his sideways eye, and that chickweed would help the leaf-dry skin on his hands that flakes when he moves. Those hands get worse in this weather. I know he drinks – for his breath is all whisky and old meat, and I’ve heard him snoring when there is daylight outside, or at least a paler sky than night. I think whisky is his best thing of all. I know his footsteps, too. I know he has a limp, so he drags his left leg. No one else walks like that – like the sea coming in. Also, his keys jangle. It is the only music I hear in this tollbooth – no birdsong, no pipes. Just his keys, and his heavy left leg. I know the sound of him, walking. This isn’t him walking. These are the footsteps of a man who is not him. Come in. Sit down? I see that look that you give. They all give me that look, as soon as they see me for the first time. It’s my size, I think – how small I am? I know I am tiny. I’ve been called mouse and little bird, and bairn, though I’m none of these things. The doctor came in and could not see me in the gloom. He was cross, shouted there is no prisoner in here! And then I shifted my chains so that they clinked, and I whispered to him oh there is… Come in from the door. See how locked up I am? Most of the thieves they put here do not wear chains like I do. They are put behind bars, and that’s all. But I have chains because of witch – they think I might turn into a wind, and blow myself away. Or make myself a frog, and hop out through the door. But also, I am chained because of my smallness – my arms like twigs, and my thin body. Stair said I might slip through the bars, so chain her. Shackle her up, and tightly! This one mustn’t go. Therefore come in from the door. I cannot hurt you. There is a stool, by that wall. I knew a woman who dreamt of you. She was half-mad, and as tall as a man can be. In a light, soft snow when the snow did not fall, but lingered in the air, she spoke of you to me. A man she said. After the bloodshed, he will come to you. She talked of my iron wrists, and called you neatly done. She did not talk of spectacles but I imagined them, and I am also right about your shiny buckled shoes. About your wig’s tight curls. What a look you give. The look I know. It says damned slattern. Keep away from me. So I knew you would come. Gormshuil was her name. She had the second sight, though I did not always believe what she said, for she loved her henbane too much to trust her words. Once, she put her finger to my chest and said a wife! As if she saw one in me – that I might become a wife. I told her no…I shook my head, stepped back, but she sang the word as she drifted away – wife! wife! through the glen. That’s the henbane for you – as strong a herb as I know. Too much can kill you, and speedily too. But I believed her when she told me, sir, of you. It’s your purpose for coming that I don’t know. Others have come. You are not the first, sir, to sit on that stool, or frown at the walls. Several have come. And their reasons have been so plentiful, and strange, that it is like plucking herbs – none are the same. To save my soul from Hell’s unending fires, is one. I think my soul is fine, but many try it – to make me speak of God and repent my wicked ways. There were belches from the priest who came to me, like croakings from a toad. He talked to me like all churchmen do, which is like I’m not human, or at best a simple one. Are you a churchman? I see the cross about your neck, and your dislike of me has a high, Godly air. I reckon a thousand Bible words live in your head, and are spoken very solemnly. But save my soul? Maybe not. You don’t sit like the others did. You don’t stare as hard. The priest belched, and stared so intently that I stared back and he hated that – a staring witch-called piece, he said. And he hated my talking. I know I can talk. But I don’t see many people so I talk plenty when I do. He called me harlot, and quarrelsome, too. Said my chatter disrespected him, and that the day I was burnt like a hog on a spit would be a good day. So I get them – churchy ones. Who think that by cursing me they are better men. And lawmen. They have come. But what law is that? I’ve seen no trial, sir. I’ve seen no proper fairness – for when did fairness say its name in law? None of our women ever heard it. If a bird squawks as much as once then cook the bird, or drown it, or maybe string it up and kick away the stool, so it may not squawk again – that is the law. Law, I think, is like hag – it is said so much we are blind to it. Its heart, which is the truest part, is lost, and a wicked lie sits in its heart-shaped place. I’m not the squawking kind, and never was. But that’s no matter. Here I am – chained up. And doctors. There has been a doctor. Just one – a man with his own lice who looked at the wound where the musket caught me. He said it was healing so fast it was the Horned One’s work – which it wasn’t, of course. It was horsetail with some comfrey boiled up and pressed on. He might do well from comfrey himself, for he had very rank sores from his lice. One was all pus and will only grow worse. He was no true doctor. And then there were the rest. The townsfolk from Inverary who just wanted to see – to see and smell a witch, a Devil’s whore. They threw stones through the bars at me. They pressed pennies into the gaoler’s hands as they left, and handkerchiefs to their noses, and I reckon I’ve fed him well. He must have bought many bottles with what he’s made from that witch who was in that damned glen. She was there? In Glencoe? Aye. Saw it all, they say. They say she knelt and did her spells there. Called in the Devil? Oh aye. All that blood and murder…The Devil was there, right enough. A man called Stair, as well. He has come. He has sat where you are sitting now. He looked upon me as a wolf looks on a thing it has stalked too long, but has now. That is all I have to say on him. Reverend Charles Leslie. I feel I know your name. Leslie – like the wind in the trees, or the sea coming in… I saw you flinch at witch. Oh it’s a dark word, for certain. It has caused its damage across the months and years. Many good people have been undone by it – married and unmarried, beautiful, and strange. Women. Men. What did you have, in your head? With witch? I know that all people have a certain creature in their head, when they hear it – a woman, mostly. Pitch-dark and cruel, crooked with age. Did you think she will be mad, this witch? I might be. It’s been said. I prattle, I play with my hands and bring them up to my face when I speak like this, as a mouse may with its paws as it eats or cleans itself. My voice is shrill and girlish – this has been called proof, for they say the devil took my lower voice away and ate it up to make his own voice deeper. Which is a lie, of course. I am small, so my voice is small, too – that’s all. And spells? Oh they’ve tried to pin a thousand things on me – a splinter in a finger, or an owl swooping in. They pinned even more on my mother, but she was a wilder one than me, and beautiful, and brave. A calf with a star on its forehead was her doing, and so were the twins which were as alike as shoes. Cora said, once, that a black cock crowed by a church door so they took it and buried it – the cock, not the door. Buried it alive, too, so that she heard its scrabbles as they held it down. The Devil sent it to us, they hissed. And later that night, Cora unburied the cock with frantic hands, but it was too late – it was earthy, and dead. She buried it again but gently, and in a better, secret place. I hated that story. That poor cock which did no harm – it was just black, and passing by. But Cora said all people bury what it is they fear – so it cannot hurt them. So it is kept from them, locked up in the earth or in the sea. Does it work? I asked her. Burying a feared thing? She pursed her lips. Maybe. If it is done justly, and with an honest, hopeful heart – which it wasn’t with that rooster, I can promise you that. She shook her head, sighed. That was a waste of a fine, cockerel life… So what townsfolk say we do and what we truly do are very different things. I have cast no spells. I’ve never plucked out gizzards or howled at moons. I’ve never turned into a bird, skimmed a night-time loch, or settled on ships to make them drown. I’ve not kissed obscenely or eaten dead babes, and I don’t have a third teat, and nor do I laugh like broth when it’s left to boil over and ruin the fire, and ruin itself for the broth tastes bitter, then. I’ve never seen the future in a rotten egg. I never laughed at murders, or called murders in. I’ve not summoned anything. I’ve only asked – prayed. Pray. Yes. I use that word, too. I pray – not in church and with no Bible, but otherwise I reckon it’s probably like how you pray, which is with the heart’s voice talking, not the mouth’s. Devil child, they’ve called me. Evil piece. But Mr Leslie, I will tell you this. When witch was first thrown at me, as I passed through a market, Cora led me by the hand to an alleyway and sat me down, and wiped my wet eyes, and said listen to me. The only evil in the world is the one that lies in people – in their pride, and greed, and duty. Remember that. And from what I have seen of this world, this life, I think she was right. My telling? Of Glencoe? Mine? Why mine? There are others who, I’m sure, could tell you more. If you are after the truth of that night, of the snowy glen murders, then go to them that survived it. Go to them who live to bury those that do not, and ask for their stories. They know more than me, on many things – like who killed The MacIain, and who ran his wife through. Whose voice said find his damned cubs! Why mine? And here, too, is a question, Mr Leslie – why do you want to know at all? No one else has asked. No others care that so many people died in the glen. They were MacDonalds. Why grieve for MacDonalds? is what they say – for they stole cattle. Burnt homes. Ate their foe. Barbarous clan. The gallows herd. Glencoe? A dark place… I think most are glad that those people were stabbed, and robbed. Like they deserved what happened to them – for their outdoors life, and their language, and their dress were all a blight on the nation, a canker in the rose. So Lowlanders say. So Stair says, and the Campbells. So does this Orange Dutchman who seems to be king. King…That brightens you. I reckon it’s a word to hang with hag and law – a fiery word which can kill a man, if whispered wrongly, or in the wrong ear. But most folk like it. Most folk have a man they call king, and fight for – and such fighting…Two men, with two different faiths, and look what that does! It splits up the world. It makes nations narrow their eyes at themselves, and seethe. Always eyes and ears, in the dark. James is your fellow, I think. Jacobite? I know the word. The MacDonald men were those – that Jacobite clan. Those wretched papists in Glencoe. They wanted what you want, sir – to have James sail back from France and take his throne again, and for all to be as God meant it to be. They fought for that. They went to Killiecrankie and flew his flag, and killed William’s men, and rallied, and sang, and plotted against the Dutchman in their wild, blustery glen, and I was asked by them who is your king, English thing? Whose flag do you stand under? That was in the Chief’s house. There were beeswax candles, and a dog with its head on its paws. And I said I didn’t have a flag – that nobody ruled me. I said I don’t have a king. That brought a silence to the room. I remember that. But it’s true. I think kings can only cause trouble. Too many men die, in their name. Too many fight, and kill, or are killed – and so I think of loss with that word king. With king, I think of lost things. So much is gone. So much. All for kings, or a shiny coin. And I remember so much…The dog’s name was Bran, and the snow lay itself down on every branch of every tree, that night, and I kissed a man – there was a kiss – and I remember so much! I know plenty. And if I do not speak of what I saw, that will also be gone. Stair called me a meddling piece, but he also said you must have seen such things, through those long lashes of yours…In a soft voice. Like he was my friend, which he never was. That’s why he’ll burn me, I think. Get rid of the one who saw it all. The one who saved people, and ruined the plan. She who remembers all things. Yes I will give you my telling. You say tell me what you know – give me names! Soldiers’ names. And I will. I will tell you of the Glencoe massacre, and what I saw – of the musket fire, and the screams, and the herbs I used, and the truth. The truth! Who else knows it, as I know it? I will tell you every part. And I promise you this, Mr Leslie – it will help your cause. It will help you to bring your James back, for what I have to tell makes the Highlanders look wise, and civilised, as they are. It shows their dignity. It says the king we have now is not Orange, but blood-red. I promise you that. And in return? Speak of me. Of me. Of my little life. Speak of it, when I am gone – for who is left to tell it? None know my story. There is no one left it to, so speak of it from your pulpit, or write it down in ink. Talk of what I tell you, and add no lies to it – it needs none, it brims with love and loss so I see it be quite a fireside tale as it is, all truthful. Say Corrag was good. Say that she did not deserve a fiery death, or a lonesome one. All I’ve ever tried to be is kind. Is this fair? A fair bargaining? Sit with me and hear my life’s tale, and I will speak, in time, of Glencoe. On a snowy night. When people I loved fell, and died. But some, also, survived. It is Corrag. Cor-rag. No other name but that. My mother was Cora, sir. But her most common name was hag so she joined them together like two sticks on fire, to make my name. That was her way. Her humour. But Corrag is also what they call a finger in the Highland tongue. I never knew it till I walked into those hills. Many folk have pointed theirs at me, so it’s a fitting name. Also, it’s fitting that some mountains are called the word – the tall and snow-topped ones. There is the Corrag Bhuide, which I never saw because it’s far north of here. But they say it is beautiful – mist-wearing, and wolf-trodden. It’s all height and wonder in my head. Who would believe it? A churchman and a captured witch, helping each other like this? But it is so. The world has its wonders and I will speak of them. Dearest Jane, I have plenty to tell you. There is much to write, for today was full of strangeness – so much strangeness that I wonder where to start. Have I not met sinners before? I have. When I was still a bishop, I met plenty of them – thieves and fornicators, and do you remember the man they strung up for having two wives, and blaspheming? That was a foul business. I had hoped to never step near such wickedness twice, in my life. But I wonder if I have met worse. This afternoon, I sat with the witch. I think I wrote a little to you of how they say she is: savage, dark-hearted, and with lice. He – my landlord, who is the sole source of all I know, thus far – assured me she was quick-tongued and hot-tempered, or so he had heard. I asked how hot-tempered and he said very, I hear. She is the wickedest person that has been in that cell – and that cell’s seen some rogues, sir! And he filled up a tankard. I took my Bible, of course. I do not like being near wickedness, and I confess to you that as I walked through the snow to the tollbooth, I felt an apprehension in me. A nervousness, perhaps. So I recited as I walked, which heartened me. ‘But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and keep you safe from The Evil One.’ (2 Thessalonians 3:3 – as you know.) Let me tell you of the tollbooth where she is kept. It is near the castle, in this town. It’s a sombre prison, certainly – half on the ground and half beneath it. It was built, I am told, to keep the Highland cattle-thieves before they were hung, up on Doom Hill, and perhaps it was anxiousness on my part, but I thought I smelt cows there. It has the smell of a byre – dung and dampness. Also, the odour that comes from soiled bodies and fear – the gallows at Lawnmarket had a milder form of it. I wonder if this is death’s smell, or the smell before death. The gaoler belongs, I think, in the cells as much as the ones he locks there. He curses. He reeks of ale and vices, and insisted on undoing my leather travelling case. He thumbed my inkwell and quill. He glanced at the Bible as if it bored him – I’ll pray for his soul. Then he coughed into his hand, wiped it on his coat, and held out that hand for some pennies. Seeing the witch is-nee free, he said (so they talk, in this country). I gave over a coin, and he smiled a brown smile. The last door? That’s her. The corridor I walked along was not fit for even beasts. I was careful to touch as little as I could. The walls were wet-looking. I am not sure what I trod upon, but it was soft, and soundless. As for the woman herself – Jane, I wonder if even your motherly heart and goodness would feel any warmth for the wretch. I thought she was a child, when I entered. She is child-sized. I barely saw her at all, and thought the cell was empty. But then she shifted in her chains and spoke. You might read child-sized and feel tender for her – but Jane, she’s a despicable thing. Her hair is knots and branches. She is half-naked, dressed in thin rags which are crusted with mud and blood and all manner of filth (the smell in her cell is unpleasant). Her feet are bare. Her fingernails are splintered and black, and she gnaws on them sometimes, and I partly wondered if she was human at all. I was minded to turn, and leave. But she said sit. And I felt the Lord beside me, so I did not leave. I sat – and then, in the gloom I saw her eyes. They were a very pale grey, and gave her a haunted expression, as the dying get. Her stare was brazen. She stared, and said she had expected me – which I doubt. If she knew I’d hoped to visit her, it can only be through prattle – for news is swift, in small towns. Even prisoners have ears. She herself can prattle. The landlord was right about her tongue, for she talked more than I did. She rocked with her knees to her chest like her mind was half-gone – which it may be. She is a witch, and therefore deserves no sympathy, and I give her none, but I will say she has been poorly treated in her time – there were bruises on her arms, a reddened crust above one eye, and there’s a blood-stain on the side of her. The shackles have also broken her skin. I wonder if these wounds will kill her before the flames do. (I’ll also add this – that she is bruised and cut, and mangled, but I saw no bites on her. So rest yourself, Jane – do not worry yourself on lice.) She may have been pretty, once. But the Devil takes hold of a face as much as he does the soul, and she is filthy now. Woe is on her features. This also makes her look older than I will say she is. If she is older than our eldest son, Jane, it can only be by months. So, in short, Inverary tollbooth is a very foul place. Foul, too, is its inmate whose high, girlish voice spoke of kindness and good deeds – but I am not tricked by that. The Devil was speaking. He hides his nature in lies, and when she said I cannot hurt you I heard his voice very clearly. I thought, I will not be fooled by you. I know who you are. He speaks through this half-creature in a feminine way – and it is better for her that she is burnt, and soon. The flames will purge her soul. The fire will clean her of wickedness, and to be purified in death is far better than to live in this manner – unChristian, defiled. It was good to leave. I stepped into the snow, and filled up my lungs with fresh air. I wondered if I’d ever met such a wretched human, as her – and I was minded to not return. But, Jane, I am intrigued – for she spoke of Dalrymple, the Master of Stair. His is not a name you know. But he is a Lowlander. His hatred of the Highlands is as famous as his love of himself, and fine things – and he is William’s wolf. He prowls Scotland, in the King’s name. In short, if he had a hand in the Glencoe murders, then is that not proof? Of William’s own sin? For all her unpleasantness, this witch may help our cause. So I will not be discouraged by her smell, or strangeness. I will endure her, and use her for her knowledge – no more than that. For I believe she may indeed have news that brings James in. I have given her my true name – which I hope I will not regret. But who might she tell? She will die soon. She has promised to speak of the massacre and what she knows, but only if I listen to the years of her life, beforehand. A tiresome task. Who knows what crimes or barbarity she has seen? But she said no one knows my story. She said William is blood-red, not orange – so I agreed to her request. A curious arrangement, indeed. It is not one I could have imagined when I wrote to you, in Edinburgh. But God works as He chooses – we have our tests, and He has His revelations. This is an unearthly winter. I will be glad when spring comes. My love, with this knowledge, and with there being no hasty thaw of snow, I think I may be in Inverary for longer than I thought. Perhaps two weeks, or more. Therefore, if you find the time to write a small note to me, it will reach me here. It would be a joy to have your words. It is the closest I can be to you – and as always, I wish to be close. Charles TWO (#ulink_d2cbb976-9e42-5c67-8b9a-a18bb3e484ee) I (#ulink_e122100d-3ca6-5af4-8f11-b9f34029e56c) ‘Called also Wind flower, because they say the flowers never open but when the wind blows.’ of Anemone How would you like my words? I have so many of them. Like a night sky is starry, so my mind is shining with words. I could not sleep, last night, for thinking. I lay on my straw and thought where do I start, with my story? How? I could speak of the night of the murders itself – how I ran all breathless from Inverlochy with the snow coming down. Or how the loch was dark with ice. Or Alasdair’s kiss – his mouth on my mouth. Or further back? To before the glen? To my English life? I will start there. I’ll start in a town of clover, with my mother’s glossy black hair. For it’s right, I think, that I start with my early days – for how can you tell my tale, if you don’t know me? Who I am? You think I am a stinking, small-sized wretch. No heart in my chest. No skin on my bones. Yes, I will wait a moment. A quill, ink, your holy book. Is it a goose’s feather? Very long and white. I have seen geese flying at twilight, and I have heard them call, and those are good moments. They happened in England, in the autumn days. Where were the geese flying to? I never really knew. But sometimes their feathers would undo themselves, and float down into the cornfields, and Cora and I would find them, take them home. She couldn’t write, but she liked them. So long and white…she’d whisper, fingering it. Like your quill. And a small table, that unfolds? You have brought plenty in that leather bag of yours. There is the saying, sir, that witches are not born at all. I have heard such lies – that their mothers were cats, or a cow whose milk had soured so she heaved her curdle out in human form. A fishwife once said she hatched out from fish eggs, but she cackled, too – she liked the whisky too much. Then there was Doideag. She swore she grew like a tooth on a rock, on the isle of Mull – and she believed her own story, I think. But I didn’t. That one lusted for henbane, like Gormshuil did. Fiercesome pieces, both. They smiled when they heard of a boat being wrecked – and I asked why? It is awful! A boat is gone, and all those lives…But I reckon they smiled at what they knew, from years before – loss, and sorrow. That’s why. A tooth? On a rock? Not me. I had a mother. A proper human one. She was like no other human I have ever known. Her eyelashes brushed her cheekbones. Her laugh was many shrieks in a line, like how a bird does when a fox comes by it. She wore a blood-red skirt, which is why she wore it, I think – for when our pig died, his blood didn’t show on it at all. Nor did berry juices, or mud. When she spun on her toes those skirts lifted up, like a wing – as if she might fly far away. Cora lapped up the morning dew, cat-like. She rustled with all the herbs she’d picked, and she told future times, and most of the men looked twice at her as she passed, and smiled. The blacksmith was in love with her. The baker’s boy would follow her, put his feet where hers had been. And Mr Fothers loathed her – but I won’t talk of him just yet. There was something to her, is what they all said, later. I call it magick, and boldness. But some people are scared of these things. Cora…All of north England knew her name. I ran away when I was nearly a woman, and for many weeks I still heard tales – of a red-skirted beauty in the border country. How she stopped the church clock by pointing at it, or shed feathers in pheasant season. This was her. I knew it. Lies, of course – who sheds feathers? But there is only ever gossip on the brighter, wilder lives. Cora bewitched them – that is how they put it. She courted men with her beauty, and nature with her soul. And she courted her own death too, in the end – for the last tale I heard was how the wind caught her skirts on the gallows, and twirled her round and round. She, also, was human-born. Her mother was no fish egg – she was a Godly woman, with rubies in her ears and a twisted hand. Cora was blamed, for that twisting – for her birth came in with a lightning strike which set fire to the house, and burnt her mother’s hand as she pushed the door to flee. An ill-luck child. Cora – who moved like a spider. Who did not crawl as bairns do, but scrambled – all legs and eyes. She scrambled in church, one Sunday, so that she scratched the pew with her fingernails and the mark was a cross downside-up. A sign! they all cried. Satan’s work! When the witch-hunting fever came to them, as it did, it was her mother they took to the ducking stool. You have fornicated, they told her, with Yon Fellow (for they feared saying his name, but didn’t fear murder, it seems). They said her hand like a hoof was His mark on her. Proof, they tutted, of your sin. What hope did she have? Not even some. My grandmother, who was a God-serving woman all her days, was taken to a dread pool outside the town. Her husband tried to save her. He tried, but who can undo witch? So he stood and wept as they undressed her. He called out I love my wife when she was in her shift, and she called back and I love my husband, very much. And then they tied her thumbs to her big toes so that her chin touched her knees. Then they dropped her in. She floated three times. On the fourth time she went under, and that was her end. Cora saw this. She watched it from the bridge with her witch’s eye. Later, she would swear to me there is no Devil, only man’s devilish ways. All bad things, she hissed, are man-made…All of them! And I know she saw her mother when she said this, sinking down. Afterwards, her father found an inn and never left. As for Cora, they all hoped she might turn her face to the Lord and be saved by him. My mother? No. She had that lightning in her heart, I think, and it could not be stilled. She took to church falsely, smiled to hide her fire. She used the cross round her neck to crush flies and pop out apple seeds, and other casual deeds which had naught to do with God. She ran from the town when she was old enough to run fast. Six or seven years old – no older. This was her wandering time. These were the days and nights which made her the creature she was, in her heart – owl-wise, cat-sly. She prowled in the dark. She slept in lonesome places where no soul had been, for years – caves, forests. A dank waterwheel. She stood by the sea, and crouched in bogs, and she met other people on her wanderings – other hiding people. Witches. Rogues. I learnt my herbs, she said, from those people. I picked them in those places. So Cora learnt herbs, and she grew. She grew tall, and wide-hipped. She took her red skirt from a gooseberry bush it dried upon, as she came into Cumberland. Then she wore it to market for eggs and bread, where a woman said thief! ’Tis my skirt! So she moved on with no eggs, or bread. She lived as gypsies live – selling cures, and people’s future times. She did not always speak the truth, for bad futures did not pay well. I think her purse jingled. She could talk very well when she buttoned her wild tongue, and only used her other. A troublesome piece. So she was called at her birth and so called, too, once I was born. She was definitely that – troublesome. But was she made to be? By others? Maybe – for if you kick a dog for barking it will only bark more, in the end. I’ve wondered if I take after her, that way. I know some would say so – troublesome hag. But I have saved trouble too, yes I have. So I am English-born. You know that from my voice. Thorneyburnbank. A long name, and a fitting one – for its burn had thorns to its southern side. There was also an elm wood, and a field so brackish that the cows were haunch-high when they fed on its clover. They did that in the spring – it was sweetest then. Their milk, too, was sweeter, and the village was happier for the sweet milk. More hats were raised in the street, at me. Not many knew of our village. Most knew of Hexham, though – with it being near the wall that the Romans made. Hexham’s abbey had bells which rang from the south, and if the wind was also southern we would hear them. I remember it like that – the cows in the marsh, and the bells ringing. It’s a pretty sight, in my head. But it was not always pretty. And Cora was not fooled by pretty, gentle things. She was tired of wandering, that’s all. How many years can a person walk and walk, and sleep on bare earth? She was tired by now. She’d thought to try Hexham for a wholesome life, since she’d dreamt of its name very clearly – but the gaol upset her, I think. Justice was a word she scowled at, and was black for. The gaol hissed it to her – or at least, man’s meaning of it, which was Jeddart’s justice, mostly. She’d seen plenty of that, in a dark pool. She looked for less people to live by, for less people can mean more sense. A hearth. A proper sleeping place. A den for her feral heart. The border country had a wild and unbridled way of life. It was filled with unkind weather, and as many ghosts as there was rain in the sky. There were rains so heavy the burn came up and ate the bridge like a fish does a fly – rain on rain. That meant trouble for the bats, too – for there were some bats that liked the bridge for roosting, and hung upside-down from it. We put our pig in the cottage with us one early spring for the mud was too thick for even a pig. So three of us snored at night, and sat by the hearth, but not so close that we might smell pork roasting. Winters could kill folk, there. They froze the earth so that all things in it – beasts, bushes – froze too. I knew the story of Old Man Bean. They only found his boots. Reiving weather, Cora said. Oh yes. Reiver, Mr Leslie. Ree-ver. That was a whispered word. An old one, too. She knew it. She knew that in reiver there had been spoiled homes and outrageous foraging, and cattle stolen away into the northern woods. She’d heard these stories of olden days, but she’d seen it too – in her head, in the strange roamings when her eyes went wide. Their hats, she said, were shiny-shiny…She called them crook-hearted, and cruel. Cora told me, as a bedtime tale, that these reivers had ridden on moonless nights, and damp autumn ones when the cattle were fat, and worth reiving. The air might have had thick, swirling mists in it, so they came forth like ghosts. They’d charged on to farmsteads with their bonnets and daggs, roaring for what they had no right to have – hens, coins, leather. They maimed as they chose and left homes burning, so that if the night began itself moonless it ended fiery, full of light. I thought of them when I was small. I thought of how I might fight them if they came for our pig, or three scrag hens. I thought I might fight them with a flaming cloth tied to bones, or stones. I fell on this distraction – I liked it more than working hard. But one day Mother Mundy spied me burning turf as March-wardens did. She beckoned me. She was a grizzled old crone whose teeth were gone, save for a peg or two. She told me of a night in which she’d been young and fair, unknown to any man, but was made known to a reiver as the thatch burned above her. The town raised hue and cry, she said. She was left extremely hurt and mangled, but with her life. I was lucky she slurred – others were slew…Oxen gone and horses too. She said I was to keep her secret safe in me. She said she’d told no other soul in all her years, not even her man Mundy who was a long time boxed under the earth. He’d stepped on a nail, or so I heard. It turned his blood bad, and that took him. I don’t know why she told me of the reiver. I only half-caught her meaning, but did not forget. Most were gone by my birth. They did their crimes before this Dutch Orange king, or the witch-hating one. The red-haired queen was on the English throne when they fought with most splendour or the least shame – whichever you’d have it. Before the war people called civil, when no war is such. They were caught and banished, or strung up like rats, so that these northern parts could sleep well on autumn nights. The second Charles king talked of border peace then. But he was wrong, as kings can be. There was no proper border peace. The sons of reivers and their sons were still alive. They were fewer, but vengeful. And when my mother first came to Thorneyburnbank she knew the last reivers still rode out at night, and lurked in blind turnings, for the witch in her could smell their blades and fires, and sheep fat. She could hear their hobblers’ teeth upon their bridles in the dark. Wise Cora. She was. For she reasoned that if a village had one eye on the Scotch raiders, they would not say witch so much. Folk need a foe, she told me, and they have their foe already. See? I saw. Some people fight Campbells, or Papists, or the English, or women who live on their own. But Thorneyburnbank? They fought these night-time marauders, these varlots. These Mossmen. A week before an unknown lady with a blood-red skirt came into the village, a farmstead was reived. A dozen geese were thrown in a sack, and stolen. Local men rode after the sound of a dozen white geese in foul tempers, but the Mossmen knew the windings, the places no one knew. The geese were gone, plucked, roasted before the men had saddled up, most likely. And the farmer had no beasts now, except for an old bull. So when Cora slipped through the falling light, with her tangled hair, she heard halt! Stay there! Show yourself! She wept. She talked of her own bereaving ten miles away – her lost cows, her dead man. May I find shelter with you? In the Lord’s name? Cora could jaw well, and lie better. And the men saw her prettiness, and how long her lashes were – how she looked from behind in those skirts of hers. So she lived in Thorneyburnbank with its wild, cold wind and singing water. Our cottage was by a burn. It was a reedy, whispering burn which met the River Allen and later the River Tyne – rivers meet rivers like fingers meet hands. It was so close to the water that its floor was marshy, and its roof was bright with fish that had jumped, stuck. Cora found it half-lost to holly and liked this, for holly is said to hold the lightning back. So she let the holly grow. She swept the floor of fishes’ scales and she went to church – for to not go to church was to shine a light upon her. It was darkness she wanted, and peace. This is how she was in the beginning. Tidy, and quiet. She made her pennies from reeds and rushes for thatch – for there were many growing by the burn. And there is always a need for rushes in a land where the wind is hard, and so are the men who come raiding. She sold them in Hexham, and smiled at men. She was as sweet as a pear, or let them think it. Cora wore her cross on its chain, to fool them, and she took Christ’s body into her mouth on Sundays, kept it under her tongue for an hour or two until she could spit it out. What a piece. Who would have known that as she was seated on her pew, with her head bowed, she thought of full moons and thumbs-and-toes tied? It is a shame Cora did not stay pear-sweet – for she did not. She was always a night-time lady. The wolf in her howled for night air, and so she took herself away into the unknown parts. If she was seen, she’d say I am a widow. I grieve out in the darkness…and this would satisfy them for a while. But it was an odd grieving – lifting her skirts, throwing back her hair. I won’t talk too much of it. Nor did she – snapping out hush up! What I do is what I do, not you…before running bright-eyed into the night. All I will say is what harm did she do? What trouble? She had a beauty which lured men to meet her by the Romans’ wall, and they grappled in the gloaming or held each other back. They sought themselves, somehow. And when the sky lightened, she re-tied her bodice, shrugged, and wandered home with the birds singing about her, and her hair undone. I never knew my father, Mr Leslie. Nor did Cora. Or not for more than a moment or two. I know this says whore to you. Slattern. Old jade. They are names she gave herself sometimes, and laughed, and how she is remembered in Hexham is as a witch and a whore. They think it’s right that they stretched her neck like they did. But I don’t think these things. What she did, Mr Leslie, was not bad. More badness was done years before, when she was a little one – in a river, with her mother snared like a bird. Cora had her feelings on love. Do not feel it, she told me. She took my wrist, or my chin in her hands and said never feel it. For if you love, then you can be hurt very sorely and be worse than before. So don’t love, she said. Do you hear me? She made me repeat what she said. That’s a sad story, is it not? It is to my ears – a woman as fair-faced as Cora being afraid of love. So don’t call her a whore, thank you. Not my mother. She found her comfort in deep-furred cats, and the moon, and the fireside, but also in kisses from unknown men. Who did this hurt? Nobody. We all need our comforts. Things which say hush…and there, now. So her belly swelled. It fattened like the berries did. But what filled her head? Some fierceness. She took off her cross and stepped out from the cottage of fish and holly as she was – not a widow, but a woman of bad weather. A person who did not like God. His word was justice, she said, and what a ripe lie that was, with its trapdoors and screws. Mr Pepper in the church spoke of forgiveness. On the Sabbath he said we are all from the Lord – but folk ignore what doesn’t suit them. They hissed, her? With child? And without a man by her side? They bought their rushes from someone else after that – a lazy wife who cut them wrong, so they cankered. But this wife prayed and read the Bible, so her bad reeds were better than clean ones from that slattern in the dark-red skirt. It did not matter. Cora had her means. She told future times in Hexham’s wynds and shadows. She gave herbs to the women who needed them – fern, lovage. It’s always the women. That was a merciless winter. One of frosts and white breath. Old Man Bean left to hunt the pheasants and was not seen again. Cora knew the cold called out to the Mossmen. They came for food and wood to burn, and a Scotchman with a yellow beard stole two cows away, and a dog, and a kiss from the milkmaid. Cora was glad. It was all eyes to the north once more, and none on her belly like a bramble fattening up. Oh, she loved the Mossmen. She tightened her fists with glee at the sound of their hooves on the frost – da-da, da-da. She loved their moonless nights, and the smell of their torches flaming as they rode. And on Christmas Eve, as they galloped to Hexham with their backswords held high, my mother took her body out into the yard. She roared with two voices. She steamed in the dark, and I fell on to the ice. Witch, she called me, for she knew it would follow me for all my days. Then, she cradled me, kissed me. Said but Corrag’s your true name. That was me. My beginning. I lived on old fish and sour milk, for months. If I cried, she lay me down amongst the reeds and I would sleep – maybe it was wind sounds, or the wet. Ghost baby she called me, because of my eyes, which are pale and wide. I crawled in the spring-time elm wood. I walked in the next summer, by the cherry tree. Later, still, I’d sit on a fallen log by the church and ride it – my wet, wooden horse. I had ivy for reins, and a saddle of leaves. Autumn was also good for mushrooms. She showed them to me like she showed me herbs – this one is for sickness. This brings poisons out. And these ones…she’d say, twirling a stalk before my eyes, are for supper! Let’s run home and cook them! And we would run, hair out. Still. Winters were best. And they were hard ones in Thorneyburnbank. A duck froze on the burn – it squawked until a fox came, and left its webbed feet in the ice. There were icicles we sucked, Cora and I. The millpond could be walked on, and once, a tree broke from all its snow and buried a cow – they had to dig for it with spades and hands. All night they dug, and the cow lowed so crossly that they did not hear the Mossmen taking horses from the forge. Also, one winter, there was a wooden box – put beneath the yew tree, and not buried, for the ground was too dark, iron-hard. The box was broken by dogs and crows who knew meat when they neared it. Poor Widow Finton. But she was dead and never felt it. All things must eat. I saw the crows again in Hexham square. That was the day they hung the Mossmen by the neck. Five of them. I was maybe twelve years old when Cora came to me, her eyes on fire, and said this is bad, very bad…She meant for us – but not so bad that we stayed away from it. She knotted my cloak, and we trod through the snow to the town. And the sound! There were more folk in the square than when the judge came, or when the Christmas market did. All jeering and jabbering. I climbed on a barrel to see what they saw, which was the word scaffold. Five ropes in neat circles. It chilled me in a way no snow had done. And the crowd laughed at the men who stood by their ropes with their hands trussed up behind. These I thought are Mossmen. Just men with scars, and sad eyes. The yellow-bearded one was there. He saw the crows, like I did – perched on the scaffold, cleaning their wings. I felt so sorry for him. I thought I could hear his thumping heart, his quick breath, and the crowd cheered when the ropes were put over the Mossmen’s heads. Bang went the door, and bang went the next, and bang and bang and the last man was crying for mercy. Sorry for my sins, he pleaded, and shook. And maybe the door was bolted still or the cold had frozen it, I don’t know, but it didn’t open – so they took him to a rope that had a Mossman hanging from it, and they cut the dead man down and strung the live one up and used that rope again. Folk need a foe. Cora muttered this. She also said, I should have known…For did you see the bats? Did you, Corrag? All gone…They’d flown away the day before. They’d streamed out from beneath the bridge with their leathered wings, and not come back – and Cora said that creatures do this, before a death. Like weather, they feel it coming. They sense trouble in their wings, their paws, their hooves – and flee. Foe…she said. She scattered bones by the hearth that evening, tore herbs so our cottage smelt green. I knew what troubled her. All my life, she had sung let them raid! But they did not raid as they hung with the frost on them, and crows pecking by. Later, Cora fell on the floor and arched her back up. She had the second sight this way – the sight I didn’t have. I knew to stay by her, and stroke her hair until it passed. When she sat up, she whispered, Do I have a gallows neck? It was late. I was sleep-heavy, and she looked strange to me – fear, I think it was. She held up her thick, black hair, said do I? Say the truth. I always did. So with the hearth being the only sound, for the burn was frozen and the owl was silent that night, I said the truth to her. She knew it, too. A pretty neck, but yes – it was gallows-made. Spring came in. Water sounds all over – the burn roared with snowmelt. Up came the clover in the marshy parts which made milk-sweet, and cattle fat. This is when I took the knife to the pig and killed it – a terrible thing. I think I was taken with some spring madness, or it was the Mossmen’s deaths in me. I don’t know. But Cora was cross. She said why kill it in spring when we had made it through the winter, and was I a simpleton? The meat did not sit well in my mouth, or my stomach. Poor pig. Full of shame, I ran away. I hid in the elm wood all day, crouching by a log, and when I rose up in the dusky half-light I did not see the log, and fell. Pop! A neat sound by my shoulder. Then, a pain – a huge, hot pain, so that I stumbled back to Cora with my right arm very mangled, and my shoulder pushed high up. I wailed, as I ran. The pig’s revenge said Cora dryly, and she pressed my bone back in its proper place. Pop again. And marjoram was laid upon it, which can help. And things grew. The crops grew well, that year. That made Cora’s purse clink, for women were making babies with all that corn in them. Mostly it was feverfew, for the easy birth. Comfrey dried up old milk. She sent me out for fern, also, and told me how to cut it – with a single slice, and thinking kind thoughts. Fern has its dark powers – for the secret cleansing of a woman, shall we say. And creatures made babies too – calves, and chicks that went peep. There was a striped cat too whose teats were like thumbs, who purred when I stroked her. She was good. But one day, with dandelions blowing, I saw her lying on the ground. There was a bucket by her, and Mr Fothers in his hat. He was staring at the bucket, and then he marched away – and I thought why is the striped cat so still? The lovely striped cat? I straightened my back. So very still…And then I thought run! I had such a fear in me that I threw my dandelion away and ran, and in the bucket I found water, and five dark newborn kittens mewling for their lives. Their paws scraped the metal. Their eyes were closed, so I pushed the bucket over, said wake up! Don’t die! They rolled into their mother, who was dead and not purring now. Cora, when I carried them home, said what happened to them?So tiny…And in a lower voice she hissed who did this? For she had a proper hatred of people drowning things. We fed them. We laid them by the fire and dropped cow’s milk on their tongues. I sang ancient songs to them like they were my own, and Cora said how dare that man? How dare he? A life is a life – each life…She narrowed her eyes at his name. She kicked the kettle and it bounced outside. But she softened when she stroked the kittens, and felt their grainy tongues against her hand. Mr Fothers hated creatures, but we never did. They lived – all five. They were meant to drown on a dandelion day but they did not. Instead, they grew into quick, ash-coloured cats with eyes as green as mint is, and they rubbed against our shins, tails up. I liked how their gentle heads would butt against my own. In time, they sniffed out the fish in the thatch. I remember them that way – high up in the rafters, crunching the bones of the stranded fish, their noses silvery with scales. Maybe I should not have saved them – those cats. They brought more than dead mice to the doorstep, in the end. Mr Fothers started it. Maybe he didn’t like how I saved those five. Cats? he said. Green-eyed? And he spoke bad words about me, like how I squatted in bogs. Like how, one twilight, I’d shifted into a half-bird and screamed my way home from the elm wood. Her right arm was a wing…This is true. So it went. Small things which once meant reivers – no moon, or worms in the miller’s flour – no longer meant reivers, for the reivers were dead. Who, then, caused this? Where was the blame? People were quiet, at first. People bit on their tongues. It was king that made it worse. The proper trouble started then – in the year that King James fled away to France, and in his place came the Orange, Protestant one with his very black wig. He sat on the throne still warm from James, and England called this glorious. What a revolution! They said. But Cora didn’t think so. She sucked her bottom lip. She looked at stars for a long, long time. One night, I tugged her sleeve. I asked what does this mean? And she shook her head, said trouble, I reckon – that’s what it means. Kings always do. And it did. For king makes blood boil over. It makes the air feel thick, and strange, and so just as the wind spun the weathervane, so eyes turned to look at the cottage by the burn with its holly and bog-water. Slowly, there was more. Small doings. A calf was born with a white star on its head – neat, and clear. Very pretty. But curious, too, so it was talked of – a marked calf…said the men. How uncommon. And then Mr Dobbs, whose field the calf was in, took to sneezing all day and all night. Cora said it was the air being full of flowers – but no one else thought so. And an owl screeched down from the church tower at midnight, and the cherries from the cherry tree were tarter than most years. A rat was seen on the half-moon bridge. And in late summer, when the air was heavy with heat and no wind, and the skies flashed with a storm, Mr Vetch’s affections moved away from his wife and on to the fair-haired buxom girl who sold ribbons in Hexham. Mrs Vetch was distraught. He’s lost his mind, she wailed. Out in the street, wringing her doughy hands, she wailed, it’s a bewitching! A madness! Surely, it is… We watched this. Cora and me. That word…she whispered. And she glanced up at the rumbling skies. It took a day or so. But witch came in. Whore, said Mr Fothers, as my mother walked by. In church, Mr Pepper did his best. He said we are God’s children and He loves us all the same. But it stopped nothing. It did not calm Cora, who stood outside at night. She said what is coming? Something comes…I feel it. Then Mr Fothers said that Cora stole his grey mare when the moon was full. He said the horse sprouted wings, and they flew to the devil and back. A flying horse? A flying lie is better. But he locked the mare up every full-moon night, and rode a brown cob instead. It kicked out at shadows, and snorted – but Mr Fothers preferred to risk his neck on the brown horse than his eternal soul on the mare. Hate her? Cora? Oh he did. I don’t know why. Her beauty perhaps. Her power, and her knowledge of the world, which was so strong that I felt it, as she passed – it brushed my skin, like breath. Maybe he heard of her meetings with unknown men by the Romans’ wall and he longed for that – to be such a man. To untie her bodice in the northern dark. But how could he? Being married, and church-going? Nor would my mother have let him. She said he had a chicken’s look about him – with a loose chin, and a look like everything was worth a peck or two. Foul man she called him. Fowl. I see the goodness in most people, for most people are good. But his was hard to see. He drowned the striped cat in a bucket. He threw stones at me. His wife was meek as a duckling is, and once she bought groundsel from Cora for a bruise that was damson-dark. It was hand-shaped, too – Cora told me. Mrs Fothers blushed, said she had fallen – clumsy me! – but we knew this wasn’t from falling. The poor lady tried for hemlock once but Cora didn’t keep it. That’s a very final herb – it kills you, and not kindly. Cora felt very sorry for Mrs Fothers’ lonely life. These are proofs of Mr Fothers’ wickedness. He beat his grey mare also. And he killed my mother. I know it – here, inside. I shall bring this all together like if I was sewing. William sat on the throne. He was a wheezy king, and like he’d sent his wheezing out on horseback to the north, a consumption came up northern parts. Word came of people dying foully in York. Cora said she had no herb to cure it if it came to Thorneyburnbank. So we waited. It never came to my knowing. But Mr Pepper fell down dead in church – from a tired heart, most likely – and folk muttered pest. Cora was restless and stood waist-deep into the burn. She eyed me very strangely and had no sleep in her. They buried Mr Pepper under an oak which dropped its leaves on his box, like it was crying. And the new church man who came in wore eye-glasses above a dark moustache. He was young and had the look of rats in him – all whiskers and quick-moving. Ah said Cora, seeing him. There is worse than pestilence in our mortal world. There is falling from the sight of the God. There is the Devil’s work. There are those who know the Devil’s ways and is it not our duty to cleanse the earth? To rid it of such sinners? Then there was a baby which came out blue, and dead. Also, a hare was seen in the fields, washing its ears, and the moon rose behind it so that the whole village saw it – a hare, and a full, white moon… Cora sniffed. She took me in her arms. She kissed me over and over, and in my heart I thought not long now. For I had also seen the starlings flying west – a ball of them, rolling far away from us – and we slept side by side in those last few nights. Our hair tangled up, and blue-black. A dog barked in the village. And that night, Cora pushed the cats from my bed, grasped my hair in her fist and said Wake up! Wake now! I woke. I saw her eyes were very wide. She pulled me from my bed by my hair and I cried out, and was scared. She said take my cloak. Take this bread. Take this purse, Corrag – it has all my herbs in it. Every herb I ever picked, or knew, is in this purse, and it is yours now. Keep it safe. Promise me? I looked at the purse. Then I looked at her – into her eyes which were shining. And Corrag, a horse waits – outside, in the marsh. She grazes there, and you must take her and ride her. Go north-and-west. Ride fast, and hard, and you will know the place that’s meant for you, when you find it – and on finding it, stay there. She put her hand against my cheek. My little ghost baby…she said. The dog’s bark came again, but closer. I said are you coming too? She shook her head. You are going alone. You are leaving me now, and you must not come back. Be careful. Be brave. Never be sorry for what you are, Corrag – but do not love people. Love is too sore and makes life hard to bear… I nodded. I heard her, and knew. She fastened her cloak on me. She smoothed my hair, put up the cloak’s hood. Be good to every living thing, she whispered. Listen to the voice in you. I will never be far away from you. And I will see you again – one day. I wore her herby purse about me. I wore her dark-blue cloak which dragged on the ground, and I hid crusts and a pear in its sleeve. Outside, in the cold night-time air, I found Mr Fothers’ grey mare hock-high in the rushes. I mounted her, and looked to the cottage with the fish in the roof and the holly and my mother stood before it, red-skirted and black-haired, with a grey cat sitting by her, and that was my mother. That is Cora for always now. Ride, she said. North-and-west! Go! Go! We galloped into the dark, over heath and moor. I took the mare’s mane for she had no reins on her, or saddle. I saw the ground beneath us rushing by. I was all breathless and afraid. At the Romans’ wall we rested for a time. The world was very quiet, and the mist was less. The stars were out and I never saw such a starry night – it was like all the sky was with us as we went north and all the earth’s magick also. I spoke to the wall. I told it of Cora, and I told it I was scared. Keep us safe? I asked it. I am scared. I think the mare heard me, for her ears were forwards, and her mouth was very gentle when she took the pear from my hand. We crossed the wall by a lone sycamore. Then we rode amongst trees for a very long time. I don’t know when we crossed into Scotland, but it was somewhere in those woods. I patted the horse, and saw that all I had now in the whole world was a cloak, a purse, two crusts of bread and Mr Fothers’ old grey mare. This is my final stitch tonight. Cora. Who thought the pricking men might take her but no, the gallows did. I don’t know this for certain. But I think they snared her that night, and a few weeks later they tied her thumb-to-thumb. I think she said nothing. I think she was strong, and defiant, and knew the realm was waiting for her so why be afraid? I don’t think she was afraid. I think she shook her hair free from the rope around her neck, and looked up at the sky, for she always looked up at the windy autumn skies. And then the trapdoor banged twice against its hinges, and she heard a crunch in her ears, and I wonder what she saw, in her last mind’s eye – if it was me, or her mother sinking under. I also think that Mr Fothers saw it. I think he went home with a quietness inside him that had no name, and it grew in the weeks that followed. He saw Cora’s cottage be lost to the holly and storm-water. He thought of her with newborn calves or cherries, or with a lightning bolt that lit up the fields very briefly so that all things looked white and strange. He found his stable empty and thought Cora did this. When her cats slunk by him, his heart creaked open like a door. Dear Jane, I am tired tonight, my love. Not in body, as such – as I was when we rode here, through the drifts and wind. But my mind is tired, which some may say is a far greater fatigue. I was grateful to leave that cell, and looked forward to the peace that a good fire and solitude can bring – and does bring, as I write this. I am glad of the hearth – a little light and warmth. I am also glad of this proper chair, for that three-legged stool that I perch upon in there is low, and may trouble my back, in time. I was also glad of a meal. I did not think I had an appetite, after such an unsavoury place, but when I ate it restored me. Sometimes we are hungry when we think we are not. You are, I am sure, anxious to hear of my latest encounter with the witch. I will tell you of it – but I will use less words than she did, for she talked more than I’ve ever done. I preach, Jane – I have preached, and written my pamphlets, and have I not been called the orator of the age? A generous name, perhaps. Yet I wonder if I have ever spoken as much as she speaks. Her talking is like a river – running on and bursting into smaller rivers which lead nowhere, so she comes back to her starting place. I listened to her and thought, is this madness? How she uses her hands asks this question, as well – for she is rarely still. She talks with her hands up by her face, like she’s catching her words, or feeling them as she speaks them. Can you see that? I am not one for description. My strength is in sermons, and not in decorative talk. I think this is what has tired me – her manner of speaking. It is chatter. But also, what she speaks! I am glad you were not there, my love. Such blasphemy! Such wicked ways! She sat there like a beggar – all rags and large eyes – and told me of so many ungodly things that I felt several feelings, amongst them revulsion and rage. Her mother sounds a dire piece – slatternly, is the kindest word. She (the mother) saw some unkind sights in her youth, but it does not excuse the wrong path she walked along in such a wanton way. Herbs are not to be dallied with. Prayer is the best cure, and a true physician – not this greenish alchemy that I won’t abide. And this woman told lies, and hid her false face behind a church smile! She took the communion to hide her debauched ways. I do not recall her name. I do not wish to recall it – for it is poisonous. But I’ll say that the world is well to be rid of her. Corrag defends her, of course. What harm did she do? I was minded to say plenty – an unfettered woman brings much trouble in. But I held my tongue. I think this is why my mind is so tired, my love: I have endured an afternoon of rambles and offences which were of no benefit to our Jacobite cause. How can an English childhood bring James to the throne? Or some gabble on half-drowned kittens take William away? Still. She promises she has news to help us – on Glencoe, and the deaths. If so, it is worth the endurance. And how else might I fill my afternoons, in such weather? It snows even more, now, Jane. My landlord has the fine trick of appearing from air, spectre-like. On the stairwell this evening, he expressed shock at finding me upon there – when I am certain he was well aware. We exchanged pleasantries. But as I turned I heard and how is the wretch in the tollbooth? Helpful? Foul-smelling? They say she can turn into a bird…I was polite, Jane, but did not indulge him – not tonight, for his interest is rather tiresome, and the hour is late, and your husband is not as young as he was. I will say this much more on Corrag. For all her wounds and sadness, and her squalid condition, and for all her prattling, her wickedness, and her restless hands, she can tell a tale. She has an eye which sees the smaller parts of life – how a tree moves, or a scent. It means I felt, briefly, as if I was in this Thorneyburnbank where she lived. But I’ll call this bewitchment – and resist it. It is further proof of her sin. Moreover, I hope this will not offend you, but her hair is like your hair. Not in its knots or thorns – of course not. But it has the same dark colour, the same length. I think of your hair’s weight, when I last untied it. I watched her twist a strand of it about a finger, as she spoke, and I imagined you as a child – before we met. If our daughter had lived, I am sure she’d have had this same hair. I will write more tomorrow. What would I do, in these hours, if I did not write to my wife? I would sit in the half-dark, and dream of you instead. If I did not have you at all, I would imagine the woman I’d wish for, as wife – and she would be you. Exactly as you are. I marvel at your patience. I worry that you, too, worry – for my health, and protection. But do not be troubled. Am I not protected? Do I not have a shield? ‘The Lord Himself goes before you, and will be with you; He will never leave you, nor forsake you.’ (Deuteronomy 31:8) Write if you can. Charles II (#ulink_a9bd8201-7850-5f16-9f18-d6675e1165d5) ‘It is commonly found under hedges, and on the sides of ditches under houses, or in shadowed lanes and other waste grounds, in almost every part of this land.’ of Ground Ivy Last night, she was with me. When you had gone, she sat on the stool and looked at me with her shiny bird-eyes. I said to her I spoke of you to a man today and I reckon she knew. I thought of all the things which belong to her, which make me think of her when I see them, or hear them – thunder, rope. Every herb I ever used, Mr Leslie, has had my mother in it. She taught them to me. In the elm wood she plucked them, rubbed their leaves. She boiled their roots, pressed their stems, and she said do not think that the small leaves are not useful. Sometimes they are the most useful leaves of all…I know what I know about leafy plants because she knew them, and passed them on. So when I saved lives, Cora saved them. When I cured an ache, or sealed up a wound, Cora also sealed it. Never love is what she told me. Sometimes I thought then she surely does not love me? If she says ‘do not love’? I know she could be black-tempered. I know that mostly she was daydreaming, and had a half-smile to give – but sometimes a cloud came down upon her. It made her hiss in the cottage. She would run out into the rain to curse, and roar. She hated the word justice, and churches, and tore at her nails, and she smacked me, too, sometimes. When I said a bad word against her she put a teasel in my mouth and said chew, so that I’d learn the soreness of such words – and I’d think, chewing teasels, this isn’t kind. I also thought this isn’t her…Not the proper Cora. Do not love…But I think she did love me. I think so. For she combed my hair at night, and when my shoulder popped itself she’d kissed it, said poor old bones…And one winter in Hexham we caught snowflakes and ate them, left our shapes in the deeper drifts. We sang old and naughty witch songs on our way home, and that was good. There was love in that. But there was no other love – not for people, sir. She loved no man. Instead, she packed her heart away and let them take her like bulls take their cows – sighing on to the back of her neck. She never met the same bull twice. Nor did she ever meet them by day, in case they were handsome, and what if her heart broke out, and was free? I blame the ducking stool for that. Ride north-and-west. Don’t come back. They may not sound much, to your ear – those words. But she did not have to say them. She could have let me sleep, on that night of dog-barking. Or she could have mounted the grey mare with me, and we could have fled together into Scotland, and forests, with our hair flying out. But she said ride north-and-west – because she knew she would die. She knew they would follow her – hunt her till they found her, and on finding her, hang her, and whoever she was with. Be good to every living thing she said. She died alone. Which was better in her eyes than dying with her daughter by her side. Miss her? Sometimes. Like how I miss the soft, dreamless child’s sleep that I once knew but don’t, now. And I wish her death had not been murder, and I wished for a time that we’d had a better, true goodbye. But she is in the realm, now. It is a good place to be. She said her own goodbye, much later. It was dusk, in a pine forest. I looked up to see her ghost passing by. I knew she was a ghost, for ghosts are pale and very quiet, which she never was in life. She trod between the trees and glanced across at me. She looked so beautiful, and thankful, and this was her goodbye. I thought of her at the Romans’ wall. With the stars and silence. With the mare working quietly on the pear. I thought of her too in the forest. There were small sounds like the wind high up, or a pine cone dropping down – and I thought maybe these sounds were Cora, like she was speaking to me. I listened for a while, thinking is it you? Are you there? And the wind shushed the trees, which was like I am here. Yes. I thought of how she’d crouched in wynds, selling herbs and secrets. How she loved blackcurrants. But what good are backward glances? They do not help. They cannot be helped, or do any proper helping. I had her with me. I will never be far away from you. So I said on with it – I had to. I knew a life awaited me. Mr Leslie. I am glad to see you. I thought perhaps you’d not return today. For I know how my talking can be. I was always one for going on and on – for saying so much a person’s eyes grow fish-like, and dead. Maybe it’s the lonesome life I’ve had. I’ve been mostly out of doors, on my own, with no soul but my own to talk to – so when I have a person with me I talk and talk and talk. Was I that bad? Were you tired last night? I am glad that you are here again. With your folding table and your goose quill. I know you do not care for what I tell you very much. What does a James-loving man want Hexham for, or grey mares, or Mossmen? He doesn’t want them, I know. But I will give you what you need, in time. The forest, then. The mare. Mr Fothers’ mare, the grey one who he’d called bewitched, his grizzled old nag. He had locked her up with every full moon and given her no water to drink, for Mr Fothers thought water called the devil in. So she’d licked the walls, whinnied for rain. We took a pail to her, Cora and I. One night we held it to the mare and she sucked and sucked the water up. She blew hard through her nostrils, scratched her rump on the doorpost and Cora said she’s too fine a horse for him. Which was true. Now I rode her. I was on her back. Me. I looked down. I had not fully looked on her before. I had patted her nose at the Romans’ wall, and I’d pressed my cheek to her neck and clutched at her mane as she’d galloped. But we were not galloping now. We were treading through a forest, and I saw that she was a pretty horse – white-coloured on top, but with brown flecks on her hind parts and belly, like she’d trodden on soft apples and they’d burst, speckled her. I felt how she swayed. She was wide like barrels, so my legs stuck out. And she was tall. Maybe not to most people, but I am tiny-sized – so she was big as a house to me. The ground seemed far, far down. I learnt, in time, how mounting her it was best to run a little, grab her mane and heave. If she minded this she never said so. She might even hold her foreleg up for me to step on, which could be useful in hurried times when folk were shouting witch – and later I’d find hay or fistfuls of mint and offer them to her, kind thing. I think my clambering up was far better than a fat man on her back with whips and spurs. I’d once seen him jab her in the mouth so much with a horrid metal bridle that her mouth frothed pink and her eyes rolled wild. Wicked man. All I did to her mouth was fill it up with pears. Nor was she quiet. I learnt this in those trees. She whickered at things that pleased her and at things that did not. She blew through her nose when I patted her, and sometimes she snored in her deep, horse-sleep. And most of her life she was eating – brambles, nettles, dock – so most of her life her belly grumbled at itself with all that food inside it. Food makes air, as we know. She could be very noisy when that air found freedom. It’s not decent to speak of this, but she could toot. Yes, I talk fondly. So would you. Creatures do not care for hag or witch. It is what makes them so wise and worthy – how they only mind if they are treated well or not. That is how we should all live. The mare shook off witch like it was a fly or a leaf that fell on her. She kicked the ones who tried to hurt me, and she had a way of rubbing her head on my shoulders when I felt lonesome. This made her nice to be with. I was glad of her. I rode her through the forest and told her so. I called her my mare. I put a kiss on my hand, pressed my hand to her neck. Not Mr Fothers’ any more, but mine. We went deeper in. What else might we do? Don’t come back said Cora, and north-and-west. So we went deeper in. It rained. It was drip drip drip from the branches, and suck suck from her hooves in the mud. We sheltered by upturned trees, or in a ruined cottage which was only mossy stones. And for eating we ate what we found – fir cones, and tree-roots. Berries. I took ants from tree-barks with my thumb, whispered sorry to them, ate them up. One day I fell upon some mushrooms which swelled like froth from the cleft of a log and I picked them, roasted them in garlick leaves and it was a meal of sorts. It tasted like Hexham – a man had sold them there and we’d bought a penny’s worth, Cora and me, and gobbled them. So I thought of her as I ate them. The mare ate dead-nettle and moss. They were dark and wet days. When I think on them I think sad, and dark, and wet. I did light fires, sometimes. It was hard, in all that dampness, to light one that didn’t hiss or smoke blackly – but I did it once or twice. Once, we found a clearing that had a stream in it, and moss of such bright greenness that it glowed. There, by my fire, I unfolded Cora’s purse. I laid them out, on rocks. There were hundreds of them – all tied with string, all with different natures and smells and properties. Some were fresh, and still soft. Others seemed so old that they powdered to my touch, and I wondered if she’d found them when she was much younger – in her own wandering times. I thought some herbs might be older than me. Mallow, chervil, golden rod. Campion and eyebright – which is rare, but worth looking for. It brightens eyes exceedingly. I gathered them up, one by one. I folded them into my mother’s cloth purse, and fastened it, and I said these are her whole life’s gatherings to the mare, who listened carefully. So did the trees, and the gold-green moss. I put the purse under my cloak, to keep it safe. Then the mare reared. She whinnied. Then I heard a bird go flap flap flap so I turned my head, thinking what is…? And I was grabbed. I was grabbed very roughly, with an arm on my throat so I could not breathe – I could not breathe for the arm was so strong and I kicked, and grappled with it. The horse snorted. That bird went flap. I could not breathe at all. My eyes sprang tears, and the arm lifted me clean up so my feet were off the ground and I had a small, cold moment where I thought I will die here – but then I thought no I will not. I was cross. I tried to scratch the arm but my fingernails were bitten so I reached behind to feel for this man’s face or ears or hair. I found his hair. I pulled it very hard, which did nothing, so I fumbled with his face and found his eyes. I pushed my thumbs right in. Eyes are soft. It felt like they burst under my thumbs and there was a yell, a holler, and he dropped me. I scrabbled away and heaved in air. He wailed my eyes my eyes! The mare squealed, and I coughed thickly. The man moaned my eyes are bleeding, she’s blinded me – and so I knew he was not alone. I turned. Three of them. Three more men came out of the darkness like thoughts, but I knew they were real – they were muddied and strong-smelling, and in jerkins of such thin leather and so laden up with rusted blades and ropes that I thought I know your kind…I remembered. I saw a frosty morning. I saw five ropes swinging. I stared at them. I looked at each face as I crept back towards the mare – one had a plum-coloured face like he was half-burnt, and he beckoned to me. Give us your purse and we’ll not harm you. I shook my head. I was keeping Cora’s herbs for always – for all my life. We saw it. Give us your money. I said I have no money. He spat into a nettle bush. He stepped towards me more. No one travels with no money. Then he took a dirk out and growled again your purse. I heard his tongue’s accent which was Scotch – I knew it well enough from pedlars on the roads who’d beckoned me. I’d bought a silver mirror from a Scotchman once because it was so pretty and Mother Pindle saw me do so. She’d spat out the word Scotchman like it was whore or plague. I have no money! He smiled quickly, like I was a joke to him. Then he came at me, lifted me right up and pushed me back against a tree. He struggled with me, seeking my purse so harshly that my teeth rattled, and I roared at him, and smacked his head. Ha he said, finding it. Cora’s purse. He tugged it free and opened it, and out they went – radish, dock, lovage, fennel, comfrey, elderflower, sage. All over the forest floor. I cried out. I dropped to my knees to gather them. It was like my mother was sprawled on the floor too, and for a while there was silence – just me saying no no no… Take her horse, then. I screamed. I ran to the mare who was head-up and walking backwards, not liking this at all. I grabbed her mane but some Mossman had my leg so I could not mount her and the mare tried to carry me off, good girl. But the man had my boot, so I was stretched like on a rack and the ground was lying under me, and I knew I could not hold the mare much longer. I also knew that if I let go they would take her so I screamed I’ll curse you all! I will summon the Devil and he’ll not like this at all! Well that was a fine trick. They let me go like I was on fire. I hit the ground, scrambled to my feet and turned with my back to the mare and my arms stretched out like I was hiding her from them, keeping her safe. These four men could only stare at me – or rather three did, for the fourth was still crouching and saying my eyes. I slowed my breath, stared back. It was like all the forest had heard me, all the birds and insects, and I thought then, too late, that maybe saying witch-like things was foolish. I was running from witch-haters, and there were no doubt plenty more in this country. Rats can cross walls, after all. But it was said now. It was done. Witch? They looked at each other. They looked down at the herbs, understanding them now. There was a small hush, so I heard all our breathing and the rain going drip. Then they muttered in their own Scotch words. They looked on me for such a long time I felt hot, awkward. I didn’t say yes I am – for I’ve never called my own self witch. I held my tongue and scratched the mare’s neck how she likes, to calm her. How old are you? I pouted. I was cross because they’d troubled her and because they’d made Cora’s herbs fall out of her purse, and now they were treading on them, which was a proper waste and sadness. This winter will be my sixteenth I said. What’s your business? What’s yours? Saucy of me. I can be, and that’s Cora. The plum-faced one considered me. An English girl? In a woman’s cloak? On a stolen horse? Maybe it was the softness which had come into his voice. Or the half-light. Or maybe it was my lonesomeness that made me talk to him – I don’t know. But I said my mother sent me away. They call her a witch, and hate her, and she will die soon, so she told me to flee north-and-west away from Thorneyburnbank so that they might not kill me, too. I looked at the ground. These were her herbs. They are mine, now – to sell, I think, and to keep me safe. They are all I have in the world – except for my wits, and my mare. This all came out in a rush. It was like my words were water and out they came, and now what? We all stood amongst my words like leggy birds in a stream. I was breathless, and a small part of me felt like being teary-eyed because I thought of Cora dying, but I wouldn’t let them see it. I thought fool to myself. No one likes a chatterer. It’s best to keep your mouth tied up, but I never did it. It was even stranger, what was next. They did not come to me. They did not grab my purse or my mare. It was like they were creatures who put their claws away because I had shown my proper face – like how the air is always better when the storm’s come in and gone. We all looked upon ourselves, brushed our clothes of rain. I straightened out my skirts and tried to make my hair less of thatchy. The plum-faced one said hanging is a greater sin than most folk are hung for. As if he was trying to comfort me. I sniffed. I said yes. He looked at me. I know Thorneyburnbank he said. Near Hexham? Does it have a cherry tree? And then he looked so sad, so empty and sad that I felt sorry for him, and had no fear at all. He looked about the ground at my herbs, and he said what can you do? Can you mend? Some things. Can you mend his eyes? For the poor one on the ground was still bloodied. I said I reckon so. How about sewing? Cooking? These were not my best things but I could do them. I said yes. He nodded. Mend his eyes, he said. Mend my cough and that one’s foot and sew a jerkin or two, and we’ll give you some meat. And you can rest a while. He helped me to gather Cora’s herbs, and put them in my purse. I followed them through the trees. I walked with the drip drip and my mare blowing her nose, and I whispered to myself, to her, to what it is that sees us and hears us – God, or spirits, or the hidden self, or all these things – this, now, is my second life. It began as Cora’s ended. My second, galloping life. They were ghosts, Mr Leslie. Not spectres made of mist, and air – not lost souls. Just ghostly men. The last of their kind, for reiving days were gone. I’d thought all the Mossmen had been hung, or sent away. But here they were. With their sweat and goatskin boots. They took me to a clearing of moss, and damp. A goat’s leg boiled in a pot. A lone hobbler dozed beneath a tree, and three hens pecked in the dirt. The evening light was dusty, like it is in barns, and when I looked up I saw the evening star, shining through the trees. Here. Some of the cooking water was given to me, in a cup. I thought of how I used to be – of what I’d believed in, a few hours before, which had not been these things. I mended his eyes that night. I was glad of the eyebright, and pressed it on with flaxweed, and said hush, now, and laid them on his lids. Then I also took a splinter out from a heel. For the cough, which rattled like pins in a pail, I took coltsfoot and warmed it up in milk. I said sip this tonight, and your cough will go directly. There is no herb better for the chest. I ate a little goat’s meat, which was good. The fire crackled. My mare dozed with the hobbler, side by side. We’ve met ones like you said the plum-faced one. Like me? I looked up. Runners. Hiders. These woods are full of folk who are hunted for things – small and big things. He put goat in his mouth, and chewed. For a stillborn child. A wild heart. Faith. I nodded. My mother’s heart is wild. He looked up. But she doesn’t run with you? No. Because they would follow her. They would follow her, and find her, and find me too. It made my eyes fill up with tears, which I think he saw. We are the same – you and us. You might think we are not, but we are. Our ancestors are mostly dead by the hangman’s doing. We also live by nature’s laws – which are the true laws. He shook his head. Man’s laws are not as they should be. I agreed to this. I ate. We’re Mossmen, he said. My father’s father was a reiver, and my father was – and I am the last of them. But where they raped and burnt – and I know they did, God forgive them – I’ve only ever taken what I needed to, and no more. An egg. Perhaps a lamb. And only from the rich. He eyed me, as if he wanted me to nod at this. Then, to himself, he said they call us murderers but I’ve not killed a soul. Not even hurt one. Like Cora, I said. They blamed her for a baby that came out blue. Not her fault? No. The fire lapped on itself. I heard the mare’s belly rumble, which was the hay in her. Thorneyburnbank…he said. Yes, I know it. Clover. It had the sweetest cattle when I was a boy. A half-moon bridge. That cherry tree… They were good cherries. He nodded. They were. My brother liked them. He liked all of it. The whole tree? The whole village. With its fat cows. Its stream full of fish. The folk too…He threw a piece of grass into the fire. My brother said they were sour. That they were sour to each other, and that thieving from sour people was less sinful than thieving from the good. Some were kind I said, sharply. I thought of Mrs Fothers with her hand-shaped bruise. Mr Pepper who had never minded Cora’s ways, or mine. He wiped his chin with his forearm. Some. There’s always a star or two, on dark nights, I’ll say that. But…He looked into the fire then. He looked so hugely, deeply sad that I wanted to ask him of it – but I did not need to ask. He said we took from there. When I was younger, we took some geese from there. Then my brother wanted more, so he rode back for two plump cows. He took them from a farmer who beat his herd with sticks until they bled, which wasn’t good. I was there. I helped him. He held up his fingers. Two cows. We never took more than we needed, and never left a person with nothing at all. What then? I asked this. But I think I knew. They rode out a third time. He shook his head. He was quiet for a long time, so that I heard the wind move high above us. I smelt the pines, and the smoke. Hung by the neck in Hexham. Four years ago, this winter. I saw it. I was there again, and saw it – the crow waiting, and the crowd’s cheer as the doors went bang. Was his beard yellow? He glanced over. Yes. You saw? I did not tell him I often saw it, in my head – the one, small bounce when the rope reached its end. They were all your men? My brother, an uncle, three friends. He said no more on this. He said no more at all that night – only you can sleep soundly here, which I believed. And I did sleep soundly – beneath my mother’s cloak, breathing night-time air. But no, there was no more, on those deaths. I know some people think that to talk of others dying is not right – that it makes them die a second time. Maybe he thought his brother died a new death that night, by the fire, with goat’s meat in our mouths. He had looked so woeful. He’d rubbed at his eyes. And thieving is wrong – even a hen, or a turnip or two – but not much deserves the scaffold, and these men never did. I’m sorry I said. He nodded. We took two cows and they took five lives. I don’t think to talk of how people died makes them die twice-over, though. I think it keeps them living. But we all think different things. He was the one I knew. Him with the reddish bloom on his face which I reckoned came with his birth – and which no herbs could fade. It ran from his brow, over one eye. It was plum-coloured, and shiny, and Cora would have liked it. She liked differences. She said true beauty lay in them. The other Mossmen kept in shadows, or slept, but the plum-faced one stayed near me – as if he wanted to. Maybe he did. Maybe he felt closer to his brother by being with a girl who’d seen his bad death. I don’t know. Are you coming? he’d ask. Where to? Into the forest, always. He trod old paths. He led me to streams which silvered with fish, and we gathered berries there, and firewood. This, he said, is how to catch the fish – and it was slowness that did it. He moved his hand so slowly that the fish thought it was weed until it scooped it up, into the air, with there! See? He showed me how to smoke it, and lift it from its bones. I whispered thank you to the fish as I ate it – and the Mossman smiled a little, said Corrag – it cannot hear you now. By the fire he showed me how to skin a rabbit, how to use its fur. We mended the small roof which we all huddled under, in hard rain – with moss, and thick branches. He showed me how. And one day I said do you know about mushrooms at all? Which he did not. So I took him out to the dankest parts and gave him their names, showed him their pale, velvet underskirts – and I was glad of this, for I felt I’d been taking more than giving, and I like giving more. And he was the best for stories. He had many – so many. Maybe he knew that I loved strange and wild tellings, for when we picked thistles out of manes together, or shook trees to bring the grubs down, or sat by the fire with broth, he’d speak of them. I’d say tell me of…And some tales were of such wonder that I could not breathe with them. Unearthly, whispering tales – of red-coloured moons, or a boy who spoke more wisdom than any grown man could, or of a green, northern light in the sky. Of an eggshell with three eggs inside it. He spoke of how he fell, once, with a wound and woke to find a rough tongue licking his blood away – a fox’s tongue. A fox? I said. But he was sure of it. He had reiving tales in him, too. Not his own – for he said he had never reived in the true sense of it. But the ones who came before me…Their times were brutal times – hiding, raiding, creeping in the dusk, fighting with March-wardens, breaking free from cells…They burnt all the farmsteads they reived from so the night sky was orange. Filled with sparks. Like the sun had come early, I said. But what I also thought was why? Why would a man choose such a life? To butcher and burn? To hurt other souls. It made no sense to my small ears, and had no good in it – I said so. There are other ways to live. He sighed. Aye – perhaps. But it was always the way in these parts. Such hatred in the air…You could smell it in the wood-smoke, and hear it in the wind…Still can. A Scot may cut an Englishman down but he’d give his own life for the Scot by his side, and so it is in England, also. That hasn’t changed in my lifetime. Nor will it. There’s been too much fighting and slyness to ever clean the air of it. He shook his head. Politics… This made me think. In the dusk and in the dripping trees, I said Scotland to myself. If it was not for their accents, this place felt like England to me. Slyness? He turned his eyes to look at me. He narrowed them. You don’t know much of countries, do you? Of thrones? Loyalties? He shook his head a little. If you’re going north-and-west, my wee thing, you should know more than you do. We sat by the fire, that night. I stitched at a jerkin which was half-undone, and as I sewed he told me what he called must-knows, and truths. Scotland is two countries. I pricked my thumb. Two? Scotland? Two? England says one. But England’s wrong about that. Highland and Lowland, he told me. Like two different worlds. He threw on a pine branch, and out came its smell – sweet, and like Christmas. Which one is this? That we’re in? These are the borders, he said. Which is its own country too, in many ways. But they lead into the Lowland parts not far from here – and the Lowlands are green, and lush. More people live in them. They are civil people, too, or so they like to say. They say they’re more learned, more wise of the world than the rest. They speak English as we do. ’Tis the regal part – the Queen Mary who is dead now rode to her Bothwell’s castle, near here, and there is Edinburgh which is reekie and tall, but that’s a true city. He shook his head. I’ll never see it. Carlisle’s as big as I’ll see in my life. That’s big. Cora said so. But not like Edinburgh is. They say its castle is so high that you might see London from it. It’s where they hung a bishop from the palace walls, and every new king or queen rides the Royal Mile so the crowds may cheer and wave at them. I don’t like kings I said. I’m not too fond myself. But most Lowlanders are favouring this new Orange king, and – he pointed – you should remember this. I scowled. It was the Orange king’s wheezes that had helped to put witch on Cora, and I sewed very firmly. I tugged my needle through. But the Highlands… I glanced up. They are another world. I have never seen them either – they are far, far to the north and I’m too old to see them now. But they say it’s a properly wild place to be. Wind and rain, and bogs, and wolves calling. And ’tis a fiercer folk who live in that wild land, for it takes a hardy soul to survive it. Hardy? Aye. Savage. No laws – or not the laws that Lowland folk live by. They have their own language. Their own faith. He sipped from his broth. He found a bone in it, plucked it out, looked at it. Then he put it in the fire, said they are hated. By who? Lowland hates Highland like horses hate flies. You’ll see that, soon enough. Why? He shrugged. For being lawless. For having their Catholic ways. They say the Highland parts weigh this nation down…That the clans are barbarous. They scrap amongst themselves, is what I hear – and there are many known rogues up there. Even I know of them – me! Down here! The MacDonalds, mostly. Who? A clan with as many branches as a tree has. The Glencoe ones are spoken of plenty – their flashing blades…Thieving. I did a stitch. I thought of how little I knew of the world. Of how far away my old life was, with its holly, and frogs in marshes. It seemed a good life, briefly – that Thorneyburnbank one. I had known it, and its people. I’d not met a person who spoke a language of their own. This life, now, seemed harder. More shadows to pass by. I was quiet for a time. Then I whispered what of us? Of people like me? What does witch mean here? They hang them or drown them in pools, where I’m from. Or they try them by a judge, and do not kill them – but they are called witch for forever, then, and have stones thrown at them all their lives. He watched me. How he looked at me made me wonder if he’d ever had a child at all – for it was the kind of gentle look a parent gives. It was partly sad. Maybe he wished I might have more than this – more than witch, and sewing jerkins in a wood. He rubbed his plum-red patch with the heel of his hand. There were fevers in my youth, I’ll say that. Witch-hunting times – as there were in the south. They burnt a woman in Fife and in the market square they trod on a wetness that must have been her. Her body. Maybe he saw my face, for he said very quickly that was east. That was out in fishing villages, where it’s been worst. So don’t go east. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/susan-fletcher/corrag/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.