That’s just my way of thinking. Not many think this way.
IS IT late? Yes.
It’s so dark I barely see you. Just your white wig and your goose-wing quill.
Darling Jane
She talks of gifts—of the world being rich with them, and we must know them when we see them. For her, it was a waterfall and a valley hidden from view. Jane, I feel a gift has come to me. He is the blacksmith, with a beard as thick as the seaweed on this coast, and just as long. He, like all I have met in this town, is genial, and good at his work—but as he stood in his apron with the sparks about him, I thought I had found a man with a little sadness to him. When I mentioned Glencoe and its murders, he shook his head in a melancholy way.
I go too fast.
His forge is a mile or so outside the town—and therefore, in the snow, it was a lengthy walk. (Have I expressed how glad I am, of my coat? I have not had a coat better, and I am glad of the day we saw it, you and I. It keeps my cough from worsening, I’m sure). But the forge stood at the lane’s end, and glowed, and we could hear the metal being worked, and the smell was a sour one of smoke, and iron. It might have daunted a lesser man. Indeed, the cob was wary, with his ears switching back and forth.
Yet there was warmth in the place—in its fire, and the heat of sweaty toil, and beasts, but also in the sincere and honest welcome that I received from the blacksmith himself. Perhaps he is not frequented by many. Perhaps (and this is more likely—for he spoke of a family, and conversed freely with me) there is less work in this weather than he would like. Not many folk are travelling, of course. Less travel must mean less need for a horseshoe, or a fixed gate.
He shook my hand, and patted the cob’s rump as he examined him. He complimented his strength and condition, and I found myself implying that the horse was my own (or rather, the horse of Charles Griffin. How these falsehoods grow, Jane. But all for a cause, and a noble one). It seems that all four shoes are beyond mending, and new ones are required. There also seems to be a swelling of some kind, in a hind hoof. I fear this will be costly—but no talk of fiscal matters tonight.
Like Corrag, the blacksmith is gifted with words. He has the soft Scottish accent of these parts, and I wonder if a lifetime of being near beasts has softened his voice further—his voice had a musical tone. Bent over, with a hoof against his knees, he said I think I know you, sir. Are you not the Irish gentleman who has come to tame the northern clans?
I agreed that I was, and he clucked his tongue. He called it a sorry business—all of it.
I asked him, what was, sir?
Glencoe. He looked up. The dreadful deeds that came to pass in it, not three weeks ago. You have surely heard of the murders?
I said I knew a small part—the men were killed by their guests, as they slept. Soldiers, I think? Perhaps it is all gossip that’s come by me…
He wiped his hands on his apron. Aye. It flies, right enough. But so it should—a sin like that…
A sin? This brought me closer. I stood at the cob’s end, by his tail, so that I might hear the blacksmith better. Sir, I said, I have heard some say that such barbarity was deserved, by these men. I held up my hands, added, I know little of these parts, and have formed no thoughts myself as yet…
They were an unruly sept, I’ll grant that. Thieves. Rebels. But—he winced, tightened his face. The soldiers slaughtered bairns, they did. A boy! A wee boy was run through.
You were there? For he spoke so clearly, so boldly.
I was not. But I shoed the horse of a soldier who’d been there. Last week he came to me. Nice black mare—good blood in her.
A soldier? On his own?
He shook his head. Several of them, but they all stayed out in the lane, and shivered. Only their captain came here. And I will tell you this—they had blood on them, on their breeches and shirts. And musket-shot and peat. And I know about the wee boy being slain from the captain’s own words, sir. He saw it, and was marked by it.
Marked?
The blacksmith tapped the side of this head. In here. He was haunted. Troubled. I reckon they were fearful men.
Fearful?
He rose, straightened his back. I tell you this for you are not a Lowlander. Not a Scot. You’ll be standing amongst us with different, foreign eyes—and I know you hope to spread God’s words up in those wild parts. So hear this, if you will: what barbarity they may have done as a clan did not deserve such killing. And such killing had troubled those soldiers—I swear it. Glencoe hung on them.
Glencoe hung on them! It is a worthy expression, is it not? I wanted to ask more, but as I tried to he said, this beast is worse than I thought. See here? This blister? And we spoke about the horse, and the weather. A blizzard picked up for my walk back to the inn. If such weather chills me in a town—with venison, a reading chair and a fire to comfort me—how might it chill me in a desolate glen? In Glencoe?
A dark place, he’d called it, patting the horse.
But Corrag does not call it such. She assures me it shone with light.
So to bed, my wife. I retire. What should I think of these murders? I hear so much. Good men killed, as the prisoner would say? Or did good men do the killing, and rid the world of sin? It is hard to know, truly. What I feel confident of, Jane, is William’s part—for it was certainly his soldiers in that glen. And who orders the King’s soldiers, but the King?
As I blow out the candle and tuck the blankets about me, I think of the creature sitting in her cell, in her chains. How can she not feel such cold? She tells me she does not. She says we all have a weather that we are our brightest in, and winter is hers.
I wonder on our weather, then—yours and mine. For ours is the same, I think. I think we are summer creatures, when the path through the woods is sunlit, and scented, and the boys are playing about us. I think those are the times of greatest joy, in my life.
I miss you, and ask for your forgiveness—for I know that you will fold this letter up, and move through the house on your own. I will return, soon.
Charles
II
“…also, if you tie a bull, be he ever so mad, to a Fig Tree, he will quickly become tame and gentle.”
of Fig
Well. Did Iain MacDonald walk back to your lodgings with you? In your head? Him, with his hair so red that he had the fox’s look—orange, more than red. In sunlight it was on fire with its brightness. He had the same orange marks on his hands, and across his nose—and I knew of herbs which, my mother had told me, would take these marks away. I did not think them unsightly, though. I see freckles like the sun that fell on them. Dappled light.
They say that he has his father’s colours in him. Before he took to being white as snow on his head, the chief of the Glencoe men—the MacIain, is what they called him—was also fox-orange, on fire. I thought, too, they have the same nose. I also reckoned they had the same speaking manner, which was blunt but not unkindly-said. They did not say witch, but they said I must not trouble them. We have trouble enough the Chief said.
But the MacIain’s second son was not like them. Not in looks. They said he took more of his mother in appearance—the blue eyes, and not as tall as Iain but broader, and stronger, and bolder in the way he moved so that he seemed taller, to me. His hair was red, but not his brother’s orange-red. It was darker. Like hillside, is what I thought. Like the wet, autumn hillside—old ferns, damp heather. I thought of his hair when I grasped branches or tufts as I ran. I said Alasdair when I was high-up and looked down upon all that dark-red, and deep-brown.
Your shoes are wet.
Just on the toe.
Is it thawing? A little? Just a small part. I thought it might be, for as I thought of them all last night, as I thought of their plaids and wet-wool smell, I heard a drip…Drip…
I must talk, then.
Of the MacDonalds who lived there. Of the glen, and the feet that walked upon it. Many of those feet are gone now, dead—so I must talk of them. It makes them not dead, or less so.
It was Iain who said to me no man born outside the glen can truly know it. I saw him on the braes, not long after the autumn came in and the leaves were falling down. He was squinting when he said it, for the sun was low. I saw the lines on his face, the old scars. Not even you.
But I did. I did know it. In time, I came to know how every mountain looked against the sky, and what their colours were. I climbed them with my skirts tied up. Where there were deer-paths, I took them, and where there were deer-hollows I lay myself down. I learnt their wind sounds. Their herbs.
I think I know it, I said to him. Sassy.
He shook his head, turned. Be careful. I won’t say it twice, to you.
Careful—which all women are, by nature, who are not quite like the rest.
I was careful. I knew I must be, for wild places are not kind to things which think them easy. In Thorneyburnbank, Old Man Bean had been lost to a biting winter wind, or a fox or two, for he’d sauntered out too casually. In the Highlands, it was the rocks which awaited. Many gullies could be false. They could beckon and have the look of a path to other valleys by way of streams, or birch, so that men may wander up them—but these were foolish men. So many gullies led only to rock. Or, worse, they led to no rock at all—only drops of air, and mist. I nearly went this way. I was scrambling above my hut, singing under my breath, and fell, and it was a birch tree that saved me. Pebbles fell down and down, and I clung to the branch, and I saw my thatch of moss and stones far, far beneath me, between my ankles which dangled like fruit. I was glad of that birch tree. I hugged its bark, smelt it. I’d remember it, on passing. Birch of the Saved Life.
I’d hear stories. Not all folk had birch trees by them, when they slipped, and fell. Iain said bodies of their enemies might be washed downstream, in snowmelt—a Campbell, or a Stewart of Appin when the Stewarts were their foes. We’d have heard none of him since last winter—and there was the rotting reason why. They took a dead Breadalbane man, strapped him to a cow that had been taken from him, and they led the cow back to its old grazing place. I hated that. Poor herder, to look up and see his kin rotting on a cow’s back. But who was I to speak? To call this cruel? I was English, and alone. I was living on their land—and I had seen cruelty, and known of crueller things.
You can’t know it. Don’t try to, if you like your life such as it is.
Oh, Iain could be quick with me. He could use the same voice with me as he did his dogs, or the cattle, and he looked at the sky when he spoke like the skies mattered far more to him. He thought I was untrustworthy. I think he heard my English voice and hated it, at first—for it meant Protestant, and William, and many English things. Battles fought, and yet to come. Lives gone.
England?
Yes. And I’d seen his face when I’d said that.
BUT I did know the glen. I did. Show me their shapes and I’ll tell you their names. I gave my own names to the mountains, before I knew their Gaelic ones. In those early days, I began to venture out—climbing and crawling on autumn braes, and I named them from what I saw on them, or from them. Deer, or ragwort. A wildcat, which hissed. Aonach Dubh is its proper name but it was always Cat Peak to me.
This was how it was. It’s how it still is—my childish names against their Gaelic ones. At the glen’s eastern end, by Rannoch Moor, there was a mountain which was darker than the rest, in colour—black in storms, and shiny—so it was Dark Mount, sometimes. Then, when I trod upon an arrowhead, lying in its peat, it nicked my heel and bled me, so I called it the Arrowhead after this, for a time. Later, I knew the ones who lived on it. I knew their dirt and sadness. I knew how the wind caught the soul up there, and shook it, so it was Gormshuil’s Mountain, also. I called it all these things.
What? Alasdair said, when I told him. Dark Mount? He half-smiled, half-frowned. It’s Buachaille Etive Mor, to us…
Maybe. But I liked my names better.
And further in, as the glen’s sides grew higher and higher, there was Thistle Top, for it had rustled with them as I’d sat on its peak, and the pass beneath it which led into more hills was Pass of the Hinds, for I saw so many treading through its peat, their ears back, their eyes half-closed against the wind. In the winter, a bird flew up from the heights at the western end—a white, stocky bird. I never saw it twice, but that made it White Bird Peak.
The Pap, too—for that hill was woman-shaped.
A waterfall became Grey Mare’s Tail, as it was just like hers had been.
And the ridge. If Glencoe is ever known for its mountains alone, I reckon it’s the ridge that most will know. What a ridge. Huge, and dark, and notched like teeth. It ran the length of the glen’s northern side—and it was Northern Ridge, for a while. In my head, I thought I will walk upon the Northern Ridge, or the Northern Ridge is frost-topped today. But this changed. This changed as I ran beneath it one early evening, and looked up. There, at that moment, I gasped. I stumbled. It became Ridge Like a Church. That was its name. To me, it was that. For how like a church it was! Not in its colour (for it was brown, mostly, not the grey of church stones) and not for its shape, as it did not have a tower to it. I called it this for its grandeur. It was so grand…It had the grandeur which can stop a person walking, which can stop their tongue and make them feel both drawn to it, and scared. I was in awe, I think. That evening, I felt tearful at its height, and age. I looked up, and nearly trembled. And I’d dip by it like I dipped by all churches—thinking it is not meant for me, and not wanting to know it better, but still feeling its long, cool shadow on me, as I went. I could see very clearly why others might be bound with love for it. Why they might never take their eyes from it, and serve it all their lives.
This is why I called it Ridge Like a Church. It made me feel tiny. And it made the glen a sanctuary, of sorts, which also fits its name—no soul could ever climb it. It was too high, too steep.
Aonach Eagach is its Gaelic name. I know that, now. Alasdair taught me their names, and when he spoke them to me, he used his hands—as if feeling each word as it came out. We were by my fire. His hair was dark-gold, in its light, and he said Beinn Fhada, Bidean nam Bian, Aonach Dubh…—pinching the words, with his thumb and fore finger. Your turn. And I tried them, in my own mouth. His words in my mouth.
But I taught him my names, too.
The three, rolling hills on the southern side, which looked very squarely at the Ridge Like a Church, were my favourite hills. I lived amongst them. My own hidden valley was tucked behind them, and so I often found myself climbing up, up, on these three peaks. I came to truly know them. I lay in their hollows, and licked their waterfalls. I spoke my secrets to their winds, which carried them—so they knew me, too.
The Three Sisters, I told him, shyly.
They have their own names. I told you…
I know. But I call them this.
Months later—months, Mr Leslie—I heard the MacIain tell of a fine white hind he had shot, as a boy, in the windy heights of Beinn Fhada, and whose skin he still wore, even now. I said Beinn Fhada? For a white hind has magick in its heart—or more than most. And he’d drained his cup, waved his hand like my words were flies which troubled him, said the eastern sister. Of the three.
I smiled at that, thinking that they might not be too trusting of my Englishness, but look—they liked my English names.
So Iain had found me. Him, and those two bears. They had sniffed, growled, tied Sassenach on. They’d spied my herbs, and left.
People change a place. A place’s air is different when three men have passed through it. Their footprints stayed by my hut for weeks, and their wet-wool smell lingered, and so did their words—your roof won’t last. That troubled me. I circled my hut that evening, testing it, peering in. I’d done my best, and it had served me well—for the turf and branches and dung had kept me dry enough. The thin part of the roof had let my smoke drift out. I had been happy. Warm.
But within days, a frost came in. I woke in the night—not from coldness, for I do not mind the cold. Bu
t from a strange light inside my hut, which was bluish, and unknown. I crawled on my belly to my door of hanging turf, lifted it. And there it was—my first Highland frost. Ghost-blue, and still.
It was beautiful, to my eyes. The mountains looked down on me, and glinted. But it also made me think that he was right—my roof would not do. It was too thin. Rain would come—driving, sideways rain which is the common Scottish kind, and a steady rain, too. And snow. I feared lying under my hind’s skin with dreams in my head only to have the roof fall in on me, with an arm’s depth of snow. I may not mind the cold, but I mind being woken rudely. We all need our sleep.
So on a frosty October morning I went down, into the glen. I crept into the woods, by the river Coe, and gathered more branches. I bundled them up, hauled them back. And this was hard doing, so I paused to rest a while. As I rested, I looked up. And on the slopes above my gully, there he was—the stag. His branches. He was eyeing me from a different hill and he had a single hoof held above the snow, as if he’d been walking when he spied me, and stopped. There we were, watching.
I counted his points. Five on the left side and four on the right.
He flicked his tail, trotted away.
I dreamt of his crown, that night. Under my new, thicker roof, I dreamt of his branches, his shining eye. And it was a deep dream, I think—for when I woke in the morning, I found more footprints in the frost outside my hut. I crouched, and looked at them. Human footprints. My hand was small against them, and I could smell wet wool.
It made me glad of my new roof, and my thickened walls.
There was also a hill called Keep-Me-Safe.
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