Corrag

by Susan Fletcher

  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 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 prope
r 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 onto 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 may 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 liked the berries did. But what filled her head? Some fierceness. She took off her cross and stepped out from the cottage of fish and ho
lly 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 brought 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 it—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 onto 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.