Читать книгу Corrag - Susan Fletcher - Страница 13

‘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