Corrag: A Novel Read online

  SO YES, I know she is dead. I know the river claimed her cottage in the months that followed, that all traces of her life are gone—except for me.

  I was with them for three months—for three moon-turns. Three times, I saw it grow from a thin, pale crescent through the trees above my bed to a heavy fruit-like moon, which I might pluck, and hold. I mended those eyes in September; it was frosty by the time I left, with my belly full of meat and their songs in my head. For they sang old thieving songs by that fire—of love, and lost love.

  He taught me many things. Scotland was two countries—two faiths, two tongues. How to skin a rabbit with one pull. He gave me a dirk, for keeping. He gave me the MacDonalds are a savage sept, to also tuck away.

  But maybe the best thing I learnt was this: that we cannot know a person’s soul and nature until we’ve sat beside them, and talked. For Mossman once meant trouble. Now, it means sadness, and goats.

  What if I had not met them? We can always ask those things. If they had not seen me and my purse, what now? I might have been bolder in Lowland parts, and found my death that way. I might have not found the Highlands—not ever. Not found him, or Glencoe.

  Alasdair. There he is, now. In my head.

  Did I know he was waiting? Did my heart feel him, even then? That is fanciful talking, I know. But as soon as the plum-faced Mossman said Highland to me, I thought there…There! That is the place! Where the people are wild, and the trees are wind-buckled, and there are lochs which mirror the sky. Where men live crouching down, waiting. Where I might live as I am.

  Go there. Move on.

  AND I did. In the end, I slipped away.

  A quiet night-time wind moved the trees, and made me think north-and-west. Of my mother’s eyes.

  I knew I had to go. So as the first frost settled, I rose up. I pulled my cloak about me, beckoned to my mare. I looked at the four men sleeping on the ground. They were under their cloaks, breathing—and I listened to their breath for a time. I said thank you. I put thank you in the air, and hoped it would hang there, so they might hear it when they woke to find me gone.

  I laid heartsease by him with the plum-coloured face—for it is rightly named, and strengthens the heart, and comforts it. He was the best to me.

  And we galloped.

  I had no reins for her, so I clutched her mane, said go! Out of the forest, over white-crusted fields, and under a sky of so many stars that I smiled a little, as I held tight. I felt her warmth, heard her snorting as we went, and I knew that this was a true witch’s leaving—by night, and secretly.

  Sometimes we have so much to say, we cannot say it. Sometimes it is best we do not say goodbyes.

  Jane

  I grow more familiar with this town. Every morning, after my breakfast of smoked fish, I take a walk about it with my coat buttoned up, and my muffler on. I am careful, of course—for there are sideways winds on this coast, and they are strong enough to unsteady a man. I am careful too of the snow. It gathers in corners, and on roofs. I keep away from porches in case a gust of wind drops a weight of snow on me—which would assist neither my cough nor my humour.

  Despite the weather, it is a handsome place. My walk takes me past a castle and a fine church, and the market place is of such a size that all of the townsfolk might be there, and still move freely. (In its centre, there is a barrel or two, and wood. This will be the prisoner’s burning place, in time—although who knows when it might thaw? I wonder if it ever will.) I will also add that there are also some elegant homes in fine positions on the loch’s edge. There must be money in Inverary—or in being a Campbell, at least.

  On this morning’s walk, which took me by the castle, I thought about the name. Campbell. What do we know of clans, you and I? Not much—and not enough. What I know of this country is newly-learnt, and tender. It was the Edinburgh gentleman who first warned me of the Highland parts—of how its tribes fight amongst themselves, hold tight to their grievances and reap their revenges many years on. He talked of the Campbells. He called them two-sided, I remember that—like coins, they have two faces. Charles, he said, that evening, you must know this: that the Campbells are seen as either shrewd and self-serving, or they are seen as wise on the matter of betterment, and how to extend what they own. You will hear both views, on your journey. He assured me that they own much of the western parts, and—he pointed his finger to the ceiling, as he said this, to ensure I marked him—they are never on the losing side…

  So one either loathes a Campbell, or admires them. They are either friend or foe.

  They are both to me, at this time. Perhaps that sounds strange—but isn’t it so? They are genial hosts, and I was greeted on this morning’s walk (as Reverend Griffin, of course) which is always heartening. Manners, I think, are proof of a civilised man. But they are foe in that they are William’s men, and see no crime in a Dutchman taking a foreign throne. Nor is there any denying their sharpness in the dealings—they pry, and I feel every penny I give and word I say is remembered. I would not choose to fight a Campbell, Jane, in arms or mind.

  Friend and foe, then—both.

  My landlord speaks highly of the Campbell clan. He calls his people honest, and Godly—a light in the Highland darkness he said. The northern ones are barbarous, heathen. I pity you, he added, and your task. I doubt you will make them decent with words. Or by other means! He polished a glass, shook his head.

  I asked my landlord of the Glencoe men again, and he laughed through one side of his crooked mouth. He said if we are the light, then those MacDonalds are mostly the dark! Their chief? As tall as two men, with a bull-hide coat and a cup he kept for drinking blood. The Glencoe MacDonalds were the worst of all of them. He spat. You will not find many grieving for that den of thieves.

  Jane, I will add that not all are dead. I came upon mutterings in the inn which said that some MacDonalds survived that murderous night—many did. Indeed, my landlord assures me (with narrowed eyes) that plenty scuttled up into the hills. How they survived, I cannot say. It is a wonder they did, by all tellings—for the weather was as merciless as the murderers, it seems.

  Still. Some found safety. A fisherwoman picking over the shore this morning hissed some got to Appin, sir, which is a coastal town to the north. It is Stewart ground (more clans!)—for these Stewarts, I hear, are also Jacobites and are sheltering their brothers at this time. Perhaps I make for Appin, when the snow lifts up.

  I passed this on to Corrag. I spoke of Appin, of survivors being there—and she gripped the bars and shook her chains, and said who? Which ones? What are their names? She looked feverish, and her eyes flashed. She gasped, too, when I said I have no names. It was the Devil, I think, that made her cheeks flush as they did.

  Find their names, she told me. Do the sons live? Their wives?

  I have barely written of her, in this letter.

  She remains as she was—still talking, still small. Still a prisoner, and rightly so—for she has told me of thieves, and broken men. She spoke of raiders that live in the borders’ woods who she rested with a while—learning tricks from them. She says coltsfoot will help a cough, as mine is, but what trickery is that? The Devil speaks such things. My thoughts on her have darkened. I must not be swayed by how she seems kind—for surely, she lies.

  Still—I will admit again that she has a manner of speaking which could charm a lesser man—a less wary man. Perhaps it is her girlish voice, or her words (I don’t know which—both?) But she spoke of her life in those border trees and when I walked back from the tollbooth, through the snow, I believed that I smelt moss, and damp earth. I thought I trod on pine cones.

  Witchcraft, this. I will not be fooled.

  I will add that I worry for the horse. The chestnut cob that the gentleman in Edinburgh was good enough to lend me is not in full health, which is a true concern. I went to the stables, and he carried a hind hoof, in the air. I do not know why, as yet. But I will find a blacksmith. A costly business, I fear—but I will be requiring a horse whe
n the weather clears, for it is a mountainous and inhospitable journey north, to Glencoe.

  A letter, my love? I long to hear your voice, which I know I cannot do. But to read your words would be the same. I can imagine your writing—its slant, its long stems—but would ask that you send me some of it. Indulge me? I am missing my wife.

  C.

  III

  “The leaves put under the bare feet galled by travelling, are a great refreshing to them.”

  of Great Alder

  You are back. You are—and do you know any more of Appin? Of who is there? You mentioned it so casually as you left, last night, so that all I thought of in the dark was who is in Appin? Who made it there? Who is safe? I have barely slept. I have had a thousand imaginings of what may have happened, since that bloody night and now. I know that the blizzards and mountain routes will have unpicked them. Killed more than the muskets did.

  Do you have names?

  Please listen for them. Ask? And if you hear names of people still living then pass them to me? Every night and each morning I think, let him be safe. Let him be mending. The others, too—let them all be safe. But I think of Alasdair most of all.

  I SEE it still snows. Is it heavier?

  Maybe it will never stop. Maybe it will snow on and on until we cannot move for it, and we freeze, and that is that. Only the people like me will survive—the ones who like coldness, or do not feel it at least. We shall live in snow caves and be blue-skinned, and black-eyed. Maybe.

  But that’s a strange dream I have. It won’t be like that. Spring always comes is what Cora said, nodding—for she never liked snow. She liked the warm weather much better. The green shoots.

  Spring always comes. Yes.

  But I reckon I won’t see it. I hear them drag the wood for me, even through the snow. They wait for a thaw, I think. When it thaws, they will come for me, and burn me on that wood—for snowy weather’s on my side. My weather. It will be when the birds sing again, and the buds show themselves, that I will be gone.

  Just ashes. A blackened skull.

  MAUDLIN talk. But I am allowed a little of it, I think. To be burnt…I have never burnt a single living thing, and never would—no matter of its nature or what it had done. Never.

  How can lives burn lives? What part of them has no feeling, that they can say burn her, and then turn on their heel, leave before the burning smell weaves into their wigs? I never understood it.

  But I am not like most people.

  That winter. That long, blue-lit winter that we moved through, her and I. She broke ice with her hooves. She crunched out over frosty fields and kicked the snow up, and was very startled when a bough dropped its load on her back. She whinnied, charged away. I fell from her, into a drift, but the mare came back and sniffed about for me. I think she was sorry, for her ears were forwards. She always put her ears forwards when she was glad to see a thing.

  I sucked icicles. I saw some eerie, moonlit nights. Sometimes the sky was so clear that I put my cloak across her back, as she slept—for she felt the cold more than I. She was foaled in the summer, long ago.

  We rode through old reiver valleys.

  Drank from moats of castles.

  And we moved mostly at night, for these are the emptier times. I said north-and-west, in her ears, and we set out under the stars. We trod carefully in dank places. We held our breath in them—or what else lurks in such dankness? Not much that’s good, I thought. But we galloped, too—out over the open, snow-covered wastes, and the drifty valleys, and under bare trees. She liked it. When had she ever galloped before? Being locked up, and thrashed? She put her ears back when she galloped. I felt her strain beneath me, heard her breath, so that whenever we slowed back down to a walk she had mucus in her nostrils from all her galloping. She snorted through them. She blew her nostrils clean, and scratched her face on her leg, and I said well done and good girl.

  I nearly lost her this way.

  Not from the mucus, but the galloping.

  Near the Hermitage castle, where dead Queen Mary had untied her skirts for this Bothwell man, the mare sank in a bog. All bogs were hard with frost, or had been. We had gone over them with our manes flying out—but this bog was not frozen. We plunged right in. I slipped off her and climbed onto some rocks, but she, being a heavy horse, was stuck. I wailed. Her legs and lower body was lost in the mud. I took her mane, and pulled.

  Please don’t die here I told her.

  She whinnied.

  Climb out! Heave!

  She rolled her brown eyes and her nostrils went in and out, in and out. She sank deeper down.

  Please don’t…

  But she didn’t die. I went to her. I murmured gentle things to her until she was calm. And when she was calm I put a little mint on the rock in front of her, which she smelt, and tried to reach with her lips. Then I went behind her with thistles in my hand, and a roar in my mouth, and I smacked the mare so hard that my hand tingled, my throat broke in two, and she was so shocked at the smack and the sound that she hauled herself up, and was free.

  She found the mint and munched on it. Shook her mane.

  I was fierce with her, for a moment.

  Then I wasn’t fierce at all. I hugged her boggy neck. I thought do not love her, for I had promised it—but I liked how she searched my hair with her lips, and left drool in it, and I was glad she had not died, in that bog. I wondered if the heart could be ordered, in such a way.

  She was grey on top, and mud-black below. When I looked back at her, it was as if she was floating—a half-horse creature, sailing through the dark.

  We moved through the gloaming most of all—the times that are neither day nor night. Cora called them the betwixt-and-between times, when the world is stirring or it is setting down. When the light is strange, and your eye can think what is that? Moving? But nothing moves out there. Dawn and dusk are always softly lit. Their shadows are thin, and to ride through these shadows on my mare felt like breaking them—but they sealed themselves again, in our wake.

  Cora also said the veil is thinnest, at this time—that the wall between this world and the other, magick world was weakest. She breathed, you can reach, and touch it… I never felt that, when I was small. But out on the mare, I felt it. Treading through mud, with deepening skies, and birds coming in to roost, I felt it in my body I am not alone. I am seen, I thought, with the sunrise.

  You look at me as if I’m senseless. Like I’ve blasphemed.

  I only meant to say that those are my favourite times.

  And what ones I saw. What dusks and dawns. We saw them from strange places, for we slept in some uncommon beds, her and I. Rocks, barns and islands. An empty badger’s sett which made me musky for days. Once, I slept in a tree, and I felt Cora was with me that night.

  Are you there? Are you with me tonight?

  I am with you every night. Or so I dreamt she said.

  And we slept, too, in a church. It was empty, and ruined. There was ivy where the roof should be, and a pigeon in the font. Our forelocks were stuck down after three nights of rain, and so when we found the empty church we both said yes. Here. I laid down on a pew, and rested. I fingered the old singing books, and looked at the calm, wooden face of Jesus on His cross—and I thought what a gentle face He had. Gentle—when so many ungentle things had been done in His name.

  It was a peaceful place, and dry. The mare let out a little wind by the altar, followed by what made it, but these are natural things, and I don’t think the church minded. It was giving shelter. Shelter and love is what faith is—or so Mr Pepper said.

  Which church? Which town?

  I don’t know. There are so many different churches. I know this King William is of one faith and hates the other, and James is of the other and hates what he is not, and so aren’t they both the same? In this hating?

  It was nature’s church. That’s what I call it. Mother Nature’s church, for her brambles wrapped round the pulpit, and her sermon was soft pigeon calls. Her hymns were
beetles clicking over wood.

  More churches should be like that church, maybe.

  WE kept from towns. You ask for their names like I rode through them, or stayed a while. But I did my best to keep away from where people were, and witch.

  When I met people it was mostly by chance. It was by coming to a place where two paths met and on the other path would be someone. We’d slow, eye each other. But most night-time travellers do not want to be seen, and so are happy to pretend to have seen nothing, as well. I met a man and his wife, running. I did not ask why, but her belly was round—perhaps she was not his wife. I blinked kindly at them, gave a small smile. They did the same. We did small exchanges, too—herbs for an egg, or a crust of bread. And we said no words, but on the edge of a wood, where its trees met a field which was grey with moonlight, we wished each other well, with our eyes. Hide well. Be safe.

  I also saw a man on a rock, one daybreak. He was sitting with his legs tucked up, and looking east. I sat myself beside him for a while. I felt his sorrow, and when he spoke he said they say my mind is gone in his Scottish voice. He did not look at me. His eyes were on the sun coming up, which told me his mind was not gone at all, that he was like me—sometimes so amazed by a sight that all he could do was stare. So we watched the sun come up together, and heard the distant bells ring in Christmas Day, and we shared the stale bread I’d found in the church, and some wine.

  And Covenanters? Did I tell you of them? I saw them, in a wood. Don’t ask me what they were, for I don’t rightly know. But I reckon they were one faith being hunted by the other. I reckon they were people who were frightened for their lives because of who their God was, so they did their praying to Him very secretly—in trees, and at night. Not much could find them that way. Only owls, and a fox or two. And me, of course—an English thing with a half-sad face who saw beauty in a leafless tree. Who had no-one to tell of these people in woods, so their secret was safe, with me.