This note will be briefer than my last to you. It must be—for the clock says it is far later than I would like. The fault is mine, for having left the tollbooth I did not return immediately to my room. I was thoughtful, and I walked, and found myself in the town’s square. It is where they will burn the prisoner, when the thaw begins, and I looked upon the timber that gathers there. They have tried to cover it with cloth, for the snow still falls. There was also a notice nailed to a post which said witch and trial by fire. There is no date—it merely speaks of the first clear day, and less snow.
I have expressed my feelings on ones who are not our faith. But it would be a hardened man—a callous one, I dare say—to see the wood gathered there and not feel a little moved by it.
It is past midnight, and the candle is low. Corrag (I have not thought or called her witch since your letter, my love) spoke of the Highland region this evening, and of the wild moor that lies before Glencoe. I did not write down a word of her story, for I was also lost on it. I did not write because my ears and eyes were on the windy moor, not the paper. She can give such accounts, Jane—she cannot read, nor write herself, and when she counted the days that she spent on that moor she used her fingers and toes. Yet she can talk. She is gifted with words, and I will not call that witchcraft. I will say it is a talent God gave her, when He made her, and before she stepped away from His name.
My landlord, who saw my late return tonight, said has the whore in chains confessed herself? Conjured the devil for you, yet? And he made a sound in his throat—a rasp, like he may retch. I think he hoped for news—for tales, to tell the drinkers. But I was tired, Jane, and I said she has not.
Nor has she. She talked of Rannoch Moor, and her words were fondly done. She spoke of a death, out on its hills—of a horse, which she felt affections for. A beast is a beast, as you know. But I think this horse was the only life which stayed with her for a year or more, which was not taken from her or called her hag, and her eyes were very moist when she spoke of the death. She has had, I’ll agree, a lonesome life.
Jane, she reminds me of you. Not in lonesomeness, of course (for you have never seemed it, nor will our boys allow it) and not in appearance (except for the hair—its thickness, and how it falls). But Corrag delights in the tiny parts of life we mostly do not see, for hurrying—a bee in a bloom, the sound a fish makes with its mouth. And I know, too, that you love such delicate things. You listen to birds singing, and do you remember our excursion to the coast, when our boys were barely born? You brought a sea-stone back with you, and when I asked why you said, I would have missed it—as though my enquiry was strange to you. I thought of this, tonight.
I thought also of my father. I asked myself what he would have done, when offered a three-legged stool in a cell before this girl. Would he have softened, as she says I do? I know the answer, of course. He softened at neither deaths nor births, and he’d never have softened at witch. He’d have hastened her death or done it himself.
My love—I also have been thinking of our loss. I confess that our own quiet death lies in my head and heart, tonight. For a year, nearly, we have not spoken of our daughter dying, and I understand why—what mother would choose to speak of such a loss? But I assure you here, in ink, that I have not forgotten. Do not think I have forgotten.
Forgive me. You suffer enough from my absence, and I do not wish to cause you any more.
I will put some light in this letter.
Corrag’s tale has brought us to Glencoe. I trust that tomorrow I shall hear more of these MacDonalds—and from one who is not as topped up with bias as the Campbells are. Or if I do not hear of them, I am sure I will hear of the glen, and its hills. All I hear from my innkeeper and the rest I speak to is what a dark place. A nest of thieves.
So I hope, that from tomorrow, I will be given such news that I might write a far better letter to London—not asking for funds (or not only) but assuring that this massacre was ordered by our present king, and that I may prove it. I may prove it. The thought lifts me. It lightens this, does it not?
I will write now, as always, of you. Are you well? Do you see my handwriting and feel as I do, on seeing your own? I hope you sleep knowing that I will come back to you. Jane, I shall.
Tomorrow I will write again. I will return to the square, whose snowy pile of barrels and wood will haunt me far less, by daylight. I will feel less sore at seeing them, and know myself again. And I shall take the cob to the blacksmith’s—for even though I have not much to pay him, the horse is in pain and will only grow worse. It will be warm, in the forge, at least.
The candle is gone. I will end this, and undress in the firelight.
I am far away, but with you.
Charles
Three
I
“Esteem it as a jewel.”
of Black Elder
I love that I was there. I love that I saw it before the trouble came—that I trod in the glen, and washed myself in its burns. I love that I closed my teeth down upon its berries when it was only den of thieves—no worse than that. Most folk will never see it. Most the world will never even know its name, or write it—or if they do they will speak of its badness, of its hurts, of its deaths and betrayal. They will say Glencoe? There were murders there…and say nothing more, for what will they know? Not how, on summer days, the clouds moved their shadows along the valley floor, over the cows and the heather, over the lochs, and me.
Before it was bloodied, or snow-thick, Glencoe was lit by moon. It was a quiet, night-time valley which I crept into, with mud and moths in my hair. It was height—such height that to see it I tilted my head so much that my mouth opened a little, and I held my arms out so I might not fall. I looked up, up. Up.
It was cool air, with the sea’s breath. It had the thick, earthy smell of plants at night, and water, and water sounds, and as I stood there, breathing it, I knew in my whole being that this was the place my mother meant when she stood by her cottage, still living, red-skirted, and said north-and-west, now! North-and-west! I knew it was the place that my mare had seen, beneath her white lashes, and galloped for. I’d had no reins on her, so how could I guide her? Steer her? She took me where she chose to, and she had chosen this place.
When the plum-faced man or any soul had said Highland I’d thought, yes. Like a deep, female part of me knew more than the rest. How can I explain it? I shall leave it unexplained. All I know is that when they said it is a wild place or they have savage ways, I thought there. That is where I must be. Go there.
Can you see it? In your mind’s eye, which is our sharpest eye? A valley of such narrowness, and with such steep sides that it is like walking into a hand, half-closed. Some would say this frightened them—that it was a fist of rocks. Some said the mountains were so high they might fall down, and crush a man. But I never felt that. I felt Glencoe was kind. It was an open hand that I could lie inside, and it would keep me safe.
It wants me here is what I told myself. For did it not call?
I brushed through the grasses, and drank from a pool.
Then I lay down amongst the rocks, brought my mother’s cloak about me, and closed my eyes, and slept.
I slept all day. I slept, and it was not daylight that woke me. It was a cow’s breath. She sniffed wetly, and beyond her shaggy head was rocks and evening sky.
Rocks and sky. They are small words. To say it was rocks and sky sounds like it wasn’t much. But it was. Rocks can have a thousand colours in them—grey, brown, purple-grey, dark-blue. They can have moss and lichen on their sides, and heather, and birch trees, and waterfalls, and marks where waterfalls have been. There can be caves and loose rocks which tumble, and deer treading neatly, and a perched bird. I saw these things, as I sat there. I saw the different colours, and shapes against the sky. When I stood, and moved down through the cattle, I put my hands upon a stone beneath the northern ridge, and felt it. It had an old warmth, and a wisdom. It was rough, like a tongue. And like all the skies I saw there, it was a
blowing sky.
I WALKED. I made my way further down into the dark, evening glen. My skirts dragged their branches, which dragged their own branches now. It was a noisy load to pull which grew louder with each step as it gathered more leaves, more peat and stones. I looked back on my trail. It was tatters and cow muck, and I turned to rid myself of it but by turning so my skirts did—I turned like a dog who seeks its own tail. I could not reach the branches. I stretched, but they moved away as I stretched. For a moment or two I turned, and turned.
I stopped, considered this.
A spider hung down from my hair on its thread.
Above me, a pale evening mist came down very slowly, rolled into the glen. And as I looked at it, I heard a sound. It was a sound I knew, a sound all wild places have, if you listen long enough—a river’s sound, as it drops from a height. I went on, and the sound grew louder, the heather dropped away, and I came to bright, falling water.
Like glass, I thought. How it flashed, and smashed onto rocks. How clean it looked. How it broke.
I undressed. I lay my purse down and untied my cloak. My bodice was knotted, and stiff with old mud, but my fingers picked at it, and I stepped out of my skirt which I had not stepped out of in months. My boots came off, and my hose did. Then I looked down at my shift. It was grime, and sweat, and blood, and horse’s drool was on it, and this was my old life’s story. These were my old life’s stains.
I pulled my shift off so that I was fully bare.
And I stood, naked. I had not been naked for a full year, or more, and I closed my eyes, felt the mist on me. I was like that, for a time. I was very still, feeling it—air on me, and wetness, and how my skin tightened at the draught that falling water makes. It made me feel some tearful. I did not know why—the water’s breath, maybe? Like I recognised it, or had missed it? Like my body was grateful, and hugely so? Maybe it was Cora. For I knew she would have done this, if she’d been standing there. She’d have torn off her skirts, opened her arms.
I trod to an alder tree. There, I took the spiders from my hair and hung them on its leaves. One by one I did this. I said there you are…And when all the little lives were off me, I held my breath, and I stepped out under the waterfall. It was so cold and strong that I gasped—I cried out. It was the strongest water I had ever known, for it hammered about me, onto me, far harder than any rain had done. It nearly hurt. It nearly bruised, but I let it fall, for it felt like proper washing—like all the old days were being washed away, like all traces of fox dens and bogs and galloping and grief were coming off me, now. I stood in the waterfall. I felt my hair fill up.
When I was done with the thundering, I swam. I jumped from the waterfall into the deep pool. I floated like a star. I pulled my clothes in with me, and I washed them one by one—soaking them, rubbing the stains against rocks and picking mud off with my thumb. I hummed to myself. I cleaned my fingernails with thorns. Birds flitted over, and the sun came through leaves, and it was a fine, private washing place.
The Meeting of the Waters is its proper name. So I was told, later.
When my skirt was a new colour, and my bodice was cleaner, I hung them out on rocks. It was fully dark, now—or nearly so. A thin moon was above me, and trees, and I lay down. I spread my hair about me, tucked up my knees.
I laid myself down, too. Spread my hair out, and put the cloak across me so that I was less bare. I thought, my third life, sniffed, and smiled. I looked up at all the rocks and sky.
THINGS come to us like gifts. They do. Gifts come, and we must take them—for they are the world saying here—this way… The waterfall was a gift. So were the cows, with their warmth and kind eyes. I knelt beneath the mothering ones and put their teats in my mouth, and there is no better taste than fresh, warm milk after months of cold eating. I was a human calf, that way. The cow would look down on me as if thinking who is…?
I have a list of gifts, from that time. The creak of a flower closing up. Finches’ wings.
And crunch…
On my fourth night I heard it. I was resting in a thicket of birch and blackthorn trees and on the shores of sleep when I heard a treading sound. Up I sat. I stared hard into the gloom. What was this sound? My heart beat, and beat. I knew. I thought footsteps! But there were many of them—many feet, working through the bogs. Heavy feet. Slow ones.
It was the cows. But it was not the cows wandering. They were walking very firmly now—in a long, solemn line. Mothers and calves together filed up the side of this mountain very carefully, moving round the rocks and hollows, maybe pulling tussocks up for eating as they passed. Their coats were silver-black in the moonlight, and I thought I saw their eyes flash, and I thought where are you going? For they walked with purpose. They walked like they knew where they must be.
I followed them. I stood up but kept low, and went. The cows trod neatly into a gully between two mountains. There was a stream in the gully, and birch trees. I felt the trunks of these trees, as I passed. We climbed, and the gully grew very thin, and I thought again, where are they going? For there were two huge boulders at the gully’s end. There is nowhere to go!
But there was. The boulders had a narrow path through them.
I was amazed. I was wide-eyed, and the cows passed through the boulder like ghosts, swinging their tails. I followed. And by following, I found my home.
I called it the lost valley, at first. For it was hidden away. It was a small, grassy field tucked up between two mountains, and guarded by rock. Who could have known it was there? How might I have found it, without those cows?
Birch trees, and water, and a starry sky.
Made for a witch-called girl, I thought, who wants to rest, and be safe.
WE ALL need a house. We all need shelter and a hearth, in the end. This is what had made Cora come to Thorneyburnbank and live in a hut with holly in its doorway and fish stuck in its roof, and what made her be church-going for a time. As for her grey-eyed daughter it meant a home all handmade herself from stone and reeds and heather in a lost Highland valley that was guarded by two boulders, and where stolen cows were kept. Where she found a proper peace. Where the wind rocked the birches at night, and that was a good sound.
Coire Gabhail is its proper Gaelic name. Try that. Corry Garl. It’s the strangest name I’ve heard of, but it’s a strange language—or it is to an English tongue. All these throaty words like music. This talk like the river—fast-moving, deep. Sassenach. That’s what they called me, in Glencoe. It is Gaelic for English, or so Alasdair said—for aren’t you? English? I was. They all threw out the word like it was a curse, at first. But then, later, they said it as if it was a precious word. They used softer voices. They would put their heads on one side, say Sassenach…
Coire Gabhail.
The Lost Valley.
But soon, I called it mine. On the eastern side of the valley, I found a half-circle of high stones. Amongst them there was room for me to spin and stand, and lie down fully—so I smiled, and knew. Day by day, I made a shelter there. I used my dirk to cut up turf and heather, and I knew the cow droppings had some strength to them when dried so I hauled their doings up into my skirt which was like a basket and carried them up to my stones. I made a roof like the Mossman had done, a year before. Here were walls. They did not smell—no more than just a soft cow-smell which I never minded. Most places smell of that.
And I crept up onto the slopes about my home and looked down upon it. I saw it from heights, and said home to myself. I found a herb or two, in hollows, and in the glen, I found a peat-patch which was freshly dug. By it, peat was drying. It had been cut, and stacked, and I glanced about myself before taking a piece or two. For I needed fuel, like all people. I needed to cook, and be warm.
That was a fine home. It even had a window of turf that I might roll up and down as I chose to. I had a part of roof that was very thin and almost bare so my smoke might find its way outside and not fill my place with choking—but not so thin the rain might pour in. I made it, and was so proud
.
Look I said to the cows, when it was done. They were not very sure, but I was.
I will be happy here I said as I sat cross-legged on my floor under my thatching with the rain drizzling out on the cattle and rocks. I watched the rain. When it was too dark to see it, I listened to its sound.
ON A day of crisp leaves twirling down from trees, I came upon a hind on the slopes of a southern hill—dead, and freshly so, and warm. I felt sad at seeing her, with the arrow in her flank—but I also saw her uses. Very carefully, I took her hide away. I used my knife, and cut it—and this was messy. It was sad, and bloody—but she was dead already, and her death would be all the sadder if it led to nothing at all. So I hauled the hide back. I dried it for days in the early autumn sun. In time, I lay it on my floor.
I took a little meat from her, too. Just enough. I roasted it, and ate my first meat in weeks and weeks. I followed it with blackcurrants—and these brought Cora to mind.
I thought of Cora plenty in those days. Maybe it was because I wasn’t running, now, or because I had a home which had only me in it, or maybe it was warmth and good food waking the sleeping parts of me up—I’m not sure. But I thought of them both, on the braes. A year after Cora had swung on a rope, and I cried. At last, I mourned her passing. Against a rock with lichen on it, I sank down and cried for her. I cried for her death, and the life that had ended too roughly, too soon. I cried for all the others who had gone, as she had gone.
I cried, too, for the mare. In my hut, I remembered her velvety nostrils, her bristly chin, her eyes. I let my sadness out very noisily, and wiped it on my arm. And afterwards, in the hush that followed it, I smiled—for it was her life I thought of, not her death. It was her whickering life, with its moors and ripe pears, and I was lucky to have seen it, to have shared it with her.
Corrag: A Novel Page 11