Читать книгу Corrag - Susan Fletcher - Страница 14

‘It is commonly found under hedges, and on the sides of ditches under houses, or in shadowed lanes and other waste grounds, in almost every part of this land.’

of Ground Ivy

Last night, she was with me. When you had gone, she sat on the stool and looked at me with her shiny bird-eyes. I said to her I spoke of you to a man today and I reckon she knew. I thought of all the things which belong to her, which make me think of her when I see them, or hear them – thunder, rope.

Every herb I ever used, Mr Leslie, has had my mother in it. She taught them to me. In the elm wood she plucked them, rubbed their leaves. She boiled their roots, pressed their stems, and she said do not think that the small leaves are not useful. Sometimes they are the most useful leaves of all…I know what I know about leafy plants because she knew them, and passed them on.

So when I saved lives, Cora saved them.

When I cured an ache, or sealed up a wound, Cora also sealed it.

Never love is what she told me. Sometimes I thought then she surely does not love me? If she says ‘do not love’? I know she could be black-tempered. I know that mostly she was daydreaming, and had a half-smile to give – but sometimes a cloud came down upon her. It made her hiss in the cottage. She would run out into the rain to curse, and roar. She hated the word justice, and churches, and tore at her nails, and she smacked me, too, sometimes. When I said a bad word against her she put a teasel in my mouth and said chew, so that I’d learn the soreness of such words – and I’d think, chewing teasels, this isn’t kind. I also thought this isn’t her…Not the proper Cora.

Do not love…But I think she did love me. I think so. For she combed my hair at night, and when my shoulder popped itself she’d kissed it, said poor old bones…And one winter in Hexham we caught snowflakes and ate them, left our shapes in the deeper drifts. We sang old and naughty witch songs on our way home, and that was good. There was love in that.

But there was no other love – not for people, sir. She loved no man. Instead, she packed her heart away and let them take her like bulls take their cows – sighing on to the back of her neck. She never met the same bull twice. Nor did she ever meet them by day, in case they were handsome, and what if her heart broke out, and was free? I blame the ducking stool for that.

Ride north-and-west. Don’t come back.

They may not sound much, to your ear – those words. But she did not have to say them. She could have let me sleep, on that night of dog-barking. Or she could have mounted the grey mare with me, and we could have fled together into Scotland, and forests, with our hair flying out.

But she said ride north-and-west – because she knew she would die.

She knew they would follow her – hunt her till they found her, and on finding her, hang her, and whoever she was with.

Be good to every living thing she said.

She died alone. Which was better in her eyes than dying with her daughter by her side.

Miss her? Sometimes. Like how I miss the soft, dreamless child’s sleep that I once knew but don’t, now. And I wish her death had not been murder, and I wished for a time that we’d had a better, true goodbye. But she is in the realm, now. It is a good place to be.

She said her own goodbye, much later.

It was dusk, in a pine forest. I looked up to see her ghost passing by. I knew she was a ghost, for ghosts are pale and very quiet, which she never was in life. She trod between the trees and glanced across at me. She looked so beautiful, and thankful, and this was her goodbye.

I thought of her at the Romans’ wall. With the stars and silence. With the mare working quietly on the pear.

I thought of her too in the forest. There were small sounds like the wind high up, or a pine cone dropping down – and I thought maybe these sounds were Cora, like she was speaking to me. I listened for a while, thinking is it you? Are you there? And the wind shushed the trees, which was like I am here. Yes.

I thought of how she’d crouched in wynds, selling herbs and secrets.

How she loved blackcurrants.

But what good are backward glances? They do not help. They cannot be helped, or do any proper helping. I had her with me. I will never be far away from you.

So I said on with it – I had to. I knew a life awaited me.

Mr Leslie. I am glad to see you.

I thought perhaps you’d not return today. For I know how my talking can be. I was always one for going on and on – for saying so much a person’s eyes grow fish-like, and dead. Maybe it’s the lonesome life I’ve had. I’ve been mostly out of doors, on my own, with no soul but my own to talk to – so when I have a person with me I talk and talk and talk.

Was I that bad? Were you tired last night?

I am glad that you are here again. With your folding table and your goose quill.

I know you do not care for what I tell you very much. What does a James-loving man want Hexham for, or grey mares, or Mossmen? He doesn’t want them, I know. But I will give you what you need, in time.

The forest, then. The mare.

Mr Fothers’ mare, the grey one who he’d called bewitched, his grizzled old nag. He had locked her up with every full moon and given her no water to drink, for Mr Fothers thought water called the devil in. So she’d licked the walls, whinnied for rain. We took a pail to her, Cora and I. One night we held it to the mare and she sucked and sucked the water up. She blew hard through her nostrils, scratched her rump on the doorpost and Cora said she’s too fine a horse for him. Which was true.

Now I rode her.

I was on her back. Me.

I looked down. I had not fully looked on her before. I had patted her nose at the Romans’ wall, and I’d pressed my cheek to her neck and clutched at her mane as she’d galloped. But we were not galloping now. We were treading through a forest, and I saw that she was a pretty horse – white-coloured on top, but with brown flecks on her hind parts and belly, like she’d trodden on soft apples and they’d burst, speckled her. I felt how she swayed. She was wide like barrels, so my legs stuck out.

And she was tall. Maybe not to most people, but I am tiny-sized – so she was big as a house to me. The ground seemed far, far down. I learnt, in time, how mounting her it was best to run a little, grab her mane and heave. If she minded this she never said so. She might even hold her foreleg up for me to step on, which could be useful in hurried times when folk were shouting witch – and later I’d find hay or fistfuls of mint and offer them to her, kind thing. I think my clambering up was far better than a fat man on her back with whips and spurs. I’d once seen him jab her in the mouth so much with a horrid metal bridle that her mouth frothed pink and her eyes rolled wild. Wicked man. All I did to her mouth was fill it up with pears.

Nor was she quiet. I learnt this in those trees. She whickered at things that pleased her and at things that did not. She blew through her nose when I patted her, and sometimes she snored in her deep, horse-sleep. And most of her life she was eating – brambles, nettles, dock – so most of her life her belly grumbled at itself with all that food inside it. Food makes air, as we know. She could be very noisy when that air found freedom. It’s not decent to speak of this, but she could toot.

Yes, I talk fondly. So would you.

Creatures do not care for hag or witch. It is what makes them so wise and worthy – how they only mind if they are treated well or not. That is how we should all live. The mare shook off witch like it was a fly or a leaf that fell on her. She kicked the ones who tried to hurt me, and she had a way of rubbing her head on my shoulders when I felt lonesome. This made her nice to be with.

I was glad of her. I rode her through the forest and told her so.

I called her my mare. I put a kiss on my hand, pressed my hand to her neck.

Not Mr Fothers’ any more, but mine.

We went deeper in. What else might we do? Don’t come back said Cora, and north-and-west. So we went deeper in.

It rained. It was drip drip drip from the branches, and suck suck from her hooves in the mud. We sheltered by upturned trees, or in a ruined cottage which was only mossy stones. And for eating we ate what we found – fir cones, and tree-roots. Berries. I took ants from tree-barks with my thumb, whispered sorry to them, ate them up. One day I fell upon some mushrooms which swelled like froth from the cleft of a log and I picked them, roasted them in garlick leaves and it was a meal of sorts. It tasted like Hexham – a man had sold them there and we’d bought a penny’s worth, Cora and me, and gobbled them. So I thought of her as I ate them. The mare ate dead-nettle and moss.

They were dark and wet days. When I think on them I think sad, and dark, and wet.

I did light fires, sometimes. It was hard, in all that dampness, to light one that didn’t hiss or smoke blackly – but I did it once or twice. Once, we found a clearing that had a stream in it, and moss of such bright greenness that it glowed. There, by my fire, I unfolded Cora’s purse. I laid them out, on rocks. There were hundreds of them – all tied with string, all with different natures and smells and properties. Some were fresh, and still soft. Others seemed so old that they powdered to my touch, and I wondered if she’d found them when she was much younger – in her own wandering times.

I thought some herbs might be older than me.

Mallow, chervil, golden rod.

Campion and eyebright – which is rare, but worth looking for. It brightens eyes exceedingly.

I gathered them up, one by one. I folded them into my mother’s cloth purse, and fastened it, and I said these are her whole life’s gatherings to the mare, who listened carefully. So did the trees, and the gold-green moss.

I put the purse under my cloak, to keep it safe.

Then the mare reared. She whinnied.

Then I heard a bird go flap flap flap so I turned my head, thinking what is…?

And I was grabbed.

I was grabbed very roughly, with an arm on my throat so I could not breathe – I could not breathe for the arm was so strong and I kicked, and grappled with it. The horse snorted. That bird went flap.

I could not breathe at all. My eyes sprang tears, and the arm lifted me clean up so my feet were off the ground and I had a small, cold moment where I thought I will die here – but then I thought no I will not. I was cross. I tried to scratch the arm but my fingernails were bitten so I reached behind to feel for this man’s face or ears or hair. I found his hair. I pulled it very hard, which did nothing, so I fumbled with his face and found his eyes. I pushed my thumbs right in. Eyes are soft. It felt like they burst under my thumbs and there was a yell, a holler, and he dropped me. I scrabbled away and heaved in air.

He wailed my eyes my eyes!

The mare squealed, and I coughed thickly. The man moaned my eyes are bleeding, she’s blinded me – and so I knew he was not alone. I turned. Three of them. Three more men came out of the darkness like thoughts, but I knew they were real – they were muddied and strong-smelling, and in jerkins of such thin leather and so laden up with rusted blades and ropes that I thought I know your kind…I remembered. I saw a frosty morning. I saw five ropes swinging.

I stared at them. I looked at each face as I crept back towards the mare – one had a plum-coloured face like he was half-burnt, and he beckoned to me.

Give us your purse and we’ll not harm you.

I shook my head. I was keeping Cora’s herbs for always – for all my life.

We saw it. Give us your money.

I said I have no money.

He spat into a nettle bush. He stepped towards me more. No one travels with no money. Then he took a dirk out and growled again your purse. I heard his tongue’s accent which was Scotch – I knew it well enough from pedlars on the roads who’d beckoned me. I’d bought a silver mirror from a Scotchman once because it was so pretty and Mother Pindle saw me do so. She’d spat out the word Scotchman like it was whore or plague.

I have no money!

He smiled quickly, like I was a joke to him. Then he came at me, lifted me right up and pushed me back against a tree. He struggled with me, seeking my purse so harshly that my teeth rattled, and I roared at him, and smacked his head.

Ha he said, finding it. Cora’s purse.

He tugged it free and opened it, and out they went – radish, dock, lovage, fennel, comfrey, elderflower, sage. All over the forest floor.

I cried out. I dropped to my knees to gather them. It was like my mother was sprawled on the floor too, and for a while there was silence – just me saying no no no…

Take her horse, then.

I screamed. I ran to the mare who was head-up and walking backwards, not liking this at all. I grabbed her mane but some Mossman had my leg so I could not mount her and the mare tried to carry me off, good girl. But the man had my boot, so I was stretched like on a rack and the ground was lying under me, and I knew I could not hold the mare much longer. I also knew that if I let go they would take her so I screamed I’ll curse you all! I will summon the Devil and he’ll not like this at all!

Well that was a fine trick.

They let me go like I was on fire. I hit the ground, scrambled to my feet and turned with my back to the mare and my arms stretched out like I was hiding her from them, keeping her safe. These four men could only stare at me – or rather three did, for the fourth was still crouching and saying my eyes. I slowed my breath, stared back. It was like all the forest had heard me, all the birds and insects, and I thought then, too late, that maybe saying witch-like things was foolish. I was running from witch-haters, and there were no doubt plenty more in this country. Rats can cross walls, after all. But it was said now. It was done.

Witch?

They looked at each other.

They looked down at the herbs, understanding them now.

There was a small hush, so I heard all our breathing and the rain going drip. Then they muttered in their own Scotch words. They looked on me for such a long time I felt hot, awkward.

I didn’t say yes I am – for I’ve never called my own self witch. I held my tongue and scratched the mare’s neck how she likes, to calm her.

How old are you?

I pouted. I was cross because they’d troubled her and because they’d made Cora’s herbs fall out of her purse, and now they were treading on them, which was a proper waste and sadness.

This winter will be my sixteenth I said.

What’s your business?

What’s yours? Saucy of me. I can be, and that’s Cora.

The plum-faced one considered me. An English girl? In a woman’s cloak? On a stolen horse?

Maybe it was the softness which had come into his voice. Or the half-light. Or maybe it was my lonesomeness that made me talk to him – I don’t know. But I said my mother sent me away. They call her a witch, and hate her, and she will die soon, so she told me to flee north-and-west away from Thorneyburnbank so that they might not kill me, too. I looked at the ground. These were her herbs. They are mine, now – to sell, I think, and to keep me safe. They are all I have in the world – except for my wits, and my mare.

This all came out in a rush. It was like my words were water and out they came, and now what? We all stood amongst my words like leggy birds in a stream. I was breathless, and a small part of me felt like being teary-eyed because I thought of Cora dying, but I wouldn’t let them see it.

I thought fool to myself. No one likes a chatterer. It’s best to keep your mouth tied up, but I never did it.

It was even stranger, what was next.

They did not come to me. They did not grab my purse or my mare. It was like they were creatures who put their claws away because I had shown my proper face – like how the air is always better when the storm’s come in and gone. We all looked upon ourselves, brushed our clothes of rain. I straightened out my skirts and tried to make my hair less of thatchy.

The plum-faced one said hanging is a greater sin than most folk are hung for. As if he was trying to comfort me.

I sniffed. I said yes.

He looked at me. I know Thorneyburnbank he said. Near Hexham? Does it have a cherry tree? And then he looked so sad, so empty and sad that I felt sorry for him, and had no fear at all. He looked about the ground at my herbs, and he said what can you do? Can you mend?

Some things.

Can you mend his eyes? For the poor one on the ground was still bloodied.

I said I reckon so.

How about sewing? Cooking?

These were not my best things but I could do them. I said yes.

He nodded. Mend his eyes, he said. Mend my cough and that one’s foot and sew a jerkin or two, and we’ll give you some meat. And you can rest a while.

He helped me to gather Cora’s herbs, and put them in my purse.

I followed them through the trees. I walked with the drip drip and my mare blowing her nose, and I whispered to myself, to her, to what it is that sees us and hears us – God, or spirits, or the hidden self, or all these things – this, now, is my second life.

It began as Cora’s ended.

My second, galloping life.

They were ghosts, Mr Leslie.

Not spectres made of mist, and air – not lost souls. Just ghostly men. The last of their kind, for reiving days were gone. I’d thought all the Mossmen had been hung, or sent away. But here they were. With their sweat and goatskin boots.

They took me to a clearing of moss, and damp. A goat’s leg boiled in a pot. A lone hobbler dozed beneath a tree, and three hens pecked in the dirt. The evening light was dusty, like it is in barns, and when I looked up I saw the evening star, shining through the trees.

Here. Some of the cooking water was given to me, in a cup.

I thought of how I used to be – of what I’d believed in, a few hours before, which had not been these things.

I mended his eyes that night. I was glad of the eyebright, and pressed it on with flaxweed, and said hush, now, and laid them on his lids. Then I also took a splinter out from a heel. For the cough, which rattled like pins in a pail, I took coltsfoot and warmed it up in milk. I said sip this tonight, and your cough will go directly. There is no herb better for the chest.

I ate a little goat’s meat, which was good. The fire crackled. My mare dozed with the hobbler, side by side.

We’ve met ones like you said the plum-faced one.

Like me? I looked up.

Runners. Hiders. These woods are full of folk who are hunted for things – small and big things. He put goat in his mouth, and chewed. For a stillborn child. A wild heart. Faith.

I nodded. My mother’s heart is wild.

He looked up. But she doesn’t run with you?

No. Because they would follow her. They would follow her, and find her, and find me too. It made my eyes fill up with tears, which I think he saw.

We are the same – you and us. You might think we are not, but we are. Our ancestors are mostly dead by the hangman’s doing. We also live by nature’s laws – which are the true laws. He shook his head. Man’s laws are not as they should be.

I agreed to this. I ate.

We’re Mossmen, he said. My father’s father was a reiver, and my father was – and I am the last of them. But where they raped and burnt – and I know they did, God forgive them – I’ve only ever taken what I needed to, and no more. An egg. Perhaps a lamb. And only from the rich. He eyed me, as if he wanted me to nod at this. Then, to himself, he said they call us murderers but I’ve not killed a soul. Not even hurt one.

Like Cora, I said. They blamed her for a baby that came out blue.

Not her fault?

No.

The fire lapped on itself. I heard the mare’s belly rumble, which was the hay in her.

Thorneyburnbank…he said. Yes, I know it. Clover. It had the sweetest cattle when I was a boy. A half-moon bridge. That cherry tree…

They were good cherries.

He nodded. They were. My brother liked them. He liked all of it.

The whole tree?

The whole village. With its fat cows. Its stream full of fish. The folk too…He threw a piece of grass into the fire. My brother said they were sour. That they were sour to each other, and that thieving from sour people was less sinful than thieving from the good.

Some were kind I said, sharply. I thought of Mrs Fothers with her hand-shaped bruise. Mr Pepper who had never minded Cora’s ways, or mine.

He wiped his chin with his forearm. Some. There’s always a star or two, on dark nights, I’ll say that. But…He looked into the fire then. He looked so hugely, deeply sad that I wanted to ask him of it – but I did not need to ask. He said we took from there. When I was younger, we took some geese from there. Then my brother wanted more, so he rode back for two plump cows. He took them from a farmer who beat his herd with sticks until they bled, which wasn’t good. I was there. I helped him. He held up his fingers. Two cows. We never took more than we needed, and never left a person with nothing at all.

What then? I asked this. But I think I knew.

They rode out a third time. He shook his head. He was quiet for a long time, so that I heard the wind move high above us. I smelt the pines, and the smoke. Hung by the neck in Hexham. Four years ago, this winter.

I saw it. I was there again, and saw it – the crow waiting, and the crowd’s cheer as the doors went bang.

Was his beard yellow?

He glanced over. Yes. You saw?

I did not tell him I often saw it, in my head – the one, small bounce when the rope reached its end. They were all your men?

My brother, an uncle, three friends.

He said no more on this. He said no more at all that night – only you can sleep soundly here, which I believed. And I did sleep soundly – beneath my mother’s cloak, breathing night-time air.

But no, there was no more, on those deaths. I know some people think that to talk of others dying is not right – that it makes them die a second time. Maybe he thought his brother died a new death that night, by the fire, with goat’s meat in our mouths. He had looked so woeful. He’d rubbed at his eyes. And thieving is wrong – even a hen, or a turnip or two – but not much deserves the scaffold, and these men never did.

I’m sorry I said.

He nodded. We took two cows and they took five lives.

I don’t think to talk of how people died makes them die twice-over, though. I think it keeps them living. But we all think different things.

He was the one I knew. Him with the reddish bloom on his face which I reckoned came with his birth – and which no herbs could fade. It ran from his brow, over one eye. It was plum-coloured, and shiny, and Cora would have liked it. She liked differences. She said true beauty lay in them.

The other Mossmen kept in shadows, or slept, but the plum-faced one stayed near me – as if he wanted to. Maybe he did. Maybe he felt closer to his brother by being with a girl who’d seen his bad death. I don’t know.

Are you coming? he’d ask.

Where to?

Into the forest, always. He trod old paths. He led me to streams which silvered with fish, and we gathered berries there, and firewood. This, he said, is how to catch the fish – and it was slowness that did it. He moved his hand so slowly that the fish thought it was weed until it scooped it up, into the air, with there! See? He showed me how to smoke it, and lift it from its bones. I whispered thank you to the fish as I ate it – and the Mossman smiled a little, said Corrag – it cannot hear you now. By the fire he showed me how to skin a rabbit, how to use its fur. We mended the small roof which we all huddled under, in hard rain – with moss, and thick branches. He showed me how. And one day I said do you know about mushrooms at all? Which he did not. So I took him out to the dankest parts and gave him their names, showed him their pale, velvet underskirts – and I was glad of this, for I felt I’d been taking more than giving, and I like giving more.

And he was the best for stories. He had many – so many. Maybe he knew that I loved strange and wild tellings, for when we picked thistles out of manes together, or shook trees to bring the grubs down, or sat by the fire with broth, he’d speak of them. I’d say tell me of…And some tales were of such wonder that I could not breathe with them. Unearthly, whispering tales – of red-coloured moons, or a boy who spoke more wisdom than any grown man could, or of a green, northern light in the sky. Of an eggshell with three eggs inside it. He spoke of how he fell, once, with a wound and woke to find a rough tongue licking his blood away – a fox’s tongue. A fox? I said. But he was sure of it.

He had reiving tales in him, too. Not his own – for he said he had never reived in the true sense of it. But the ones who came before me…Their times were brutal times – hiding, raiding, creeping in the dusk, fighting with March-wardens, breaking free from cells…They burnt all the farmsteads they reived from so the night sky was orange. Filled with sparks.

Like the sun had come early, I said. But what I also thought was why? Why would a man choose such a life? To butcher and burn? To hurt other souls. It made no sense to my small ears, and had no good in it – I said so. There are other ways to live.

He sighed. Aye – perhaps. But it was always the way in these parts. Such hatred in the air…You could smell it in the wood-smoke, and hear it in the wind…Still can. A Scot may cut an Englishman down but he’d give his own life for the Scot by his side, and so it is in England, also. That hasn’t changed in my lifetime. Nor will it. There’s been too much fighting and slyness to ever clean the air of it. He shook his head. Politics…

This made me think. In the dusk and in the dripping trees, I said Scotland to myself. If it was not for their accents, this place felt like England to me.

Slyness?

He turned his eyes to look at me. He narrowed them. You don’t know much of countries, do you? Of thrones? Loyalties? He shook his head a little. If you’re going north-and-west, my wee thing, you should know more than you do.

We sat by the fire, that night. I stitched at a jerkin which was half-undone, and as I sewed he told me what he called must-knows, and truths.

Scotland is two countries.

I pricked my thumb. Two? Scotland? Two?

England says one. But England’s wrong about that. Highland and Lowland, he told me. Like two different worlds. He threw on a pine branch, and out came its smell – sweet, and like Christmas.

Which one is this? That we’re in?

These are the borders, he said. Which is its own country too, in many ways. But they lead into the Lowland parts not far from here – and the Lowlands are green, and lush. More people live in them. They are civil people, too, or so they like to say. They say they’re more learned, more wise of the world than the rest. They speak English as we do. ’Tis the regal part – the Queen Mary who is dead now rode to her Bothwell’s castle, near here, and there is Edinburgh which is reekie and tall, but that’s a true city. He shook his head. I’ll never see it. Carlisle’s as big as I’ll see in my life.

That’s big. Cora said so.

But not like Edinburgh is. They say its castle is so high that you might see London from it. It’s where they hung a bishop from the palace walls, and every new king or queen rides the Royal Mile so the crowds may cheer and wave at them.

I don’t like kings I said.

I’m not too fond myself. But most Lowlanders are favouring this new Orange king, and – he pointed – you should remember this.

I scowled. It was the Orange king’s wheezes that had helped to put witch on Cora, and I sewed very firmly. I tugged my needle through.

But the Highlands…

I glanced up.

They are another world. I have never seen them either – they are far, far to the north and I’m too old to see them now. But they say it’s a properly wild place to be. Wind and rain, and bogs, and wolves calling. And ’tis a fiercer folk who live in that wild land, for it takes a hardy soul to survive it.

Hardy?

Aye. Savage. No laws – or not the laws that Lowland folk live by. They have their own language. Their own faith. He sipped from his broth. He found a bone in it, plucked it out, looked at it. Then he put it in the fire, said they are hated.

By who?

Lowland hates Highland like horses hate flies. You’ll see that, soon enough.

Why?

He shrugged. For being lawless. For having their Catholic ways. They say the Highland parts weigh this nation down…That the clans are barbarous. They scrap amongst themselves, is what I hear – and there are many known rogues up there. Even I know of them – me! Down here! The MacDonalds, mostly.

Who?

A clan with as many branches as a tree has. The Glencoe ones are spoken of plenty – their flashing blades…Thieving.

I did a stitch. I thought of how little I knew of the world. Of how far away my old life was, with its holly, and frogs in marshes. It seemed a good life, briefly – that Thorneyburnbank one. I had known it, and its people. I’d not met a person who spoke a language of their own. This life, now, seemed harder. More shadows to pass by.

I was quiet for a time. Then I whispered what of us? Of people like me? What does witch mean here? They hang them or drown them in pools, where I’m from. Or they try them by a judge, and do not kill them – but they are called witch for forever, then, and have stones thrown at them all their lives.

He watched me. How he looked at me made me wonder if he’d ever had a child at all – for it was the kind of gentle look a parent gives. It was partly sad. Maybe he wished I might have more than this – more than witch, and sewing jerkins in a wood. He rubbed his plum-red patch with the heel of his hand. There were fevers in my youth, I’ll say that. Witch-hunting times – as there were in the south. They burnt a woman in Fife and in the market square they trod on a wetness that must have been her. Her body. Maybe he saw my face, for he said very quickly that was east. That was out in fishing villages, where it’s been worst. So don’t go east.