Corrag (10 page)

Y
ou are back. You are—and do you know any more of Appin? Of who is there? You mentioned it so casually as you left, last night, so that all I thought of in the dark was
who is in Appin? Who made it there? Who is safe?
I have barely slept. I have had a thousand imaginings of what may have happened, since that bloody night and now. I know that the blizzards and mountain routes will have unpicked them. Killed more than the muskets did.

Do you have names?

Please listen for them. Ask? And if you hear names of people still living then pass them to me? Every night and each morning I think,
let him be safe. Let him be mending.
The others, too—
let them all be safe.
But I think of Alasdair most of all.

I
SEE
it still snows. Is it heavier?

Maybe it will never stop. Maybe it will snow on and on until we cannot move for it, and we freeze, and that is that. Only the people like me will survive—the ones who like coldness, or do not feel it at least. We shall live in snow caves and be blue-skinned, and black-eyed. Maybe.

But that’s a strange dream I have. It won’t be like that.
Spring always comes
is what Cora said, nodding—for she never liked snow. She liked the warm weather much better. The green shoots.

Spring always comes. Yes.

But I reckon I won’t see it. I hear them drag the wood for me, even through the snow. They wait for a thaw, I think. When it thaws, they will come for me, and burn me on that wood—for snowy weather’s on my side. My weather. It will be when the birds sing again, and the buds show themselves, that I will be gone.

Just ashes. A blackened skull.

M
AUDLIN
talk. But I am allowed a little of it, I think. To be burnt…I have never burnt a single living thing, and never would—no matter of its nature or what it had done. Never.

How can lives burn lives? What part of them has no feeling, that they can say
burn her,
and then turn on their heel, leave before the burning smell weaves into their wigs? I never understood it.

But I am not like most people.

That winter. That long, blue-lit winter that we moved through, her and I. She broke ice with her hooves. She crunched out over frosty fields and kicked the snow up, and was very startled when a bough dropped its load on her back. She whinnied, charged away. I fell from her, into a drift, but the mare came back and sniffed about for me. I think she was sorry, for her ears were forwards. She always put her ears forwards when she was glad to see a thing.

I sucked icicles. I saw some eerie, moonlit nights. Sometimes the sky was so clear that I put my cloak across her back, as she slept—for she felt the cold more than I. She was foaled in the summer, long ago.

We rode through old reiver valleys.

Drank from moats of castles.

And we moved mostly at night, for these are the emptier times. I said
north-and-west,
in her ears, and we set out under the stars. We trod carefully in dank places. We held our breath in them—or what else lurks in such dankness?
Not much that’s good,
I thought. But we galloped, too—out over the open, snow-covered wastes, and the drifty valleys, and under bare trees. She liked it. When had she ever galloped before? Being locked up, and thrashed? She put her ears back when she galloped. I felt her strain beneath me, heard her breath, so that whenever we slowed back down to a walk she had mucus in her nostrils from all her galloping. She snorted through them. She blew her nostrils clean, and scratched her face on her leg, and I said
well done
and
good girl.

I nearly lost her this way.

Not from the mucus, but the galloping.

Near the Hermitage castle, where dead Queen Mary had untied her skirts for this Bothwell man, the mare sank in a bog. All bogs were hard with frost, or had been. We had gone over them with our manes flying out—but this bog was not frozen. We plunged right in. I slipped off her and climbed onto some rocks, but she, being a heavy horse, was stuck. I wailed. Her legs and lower body was lost in the mud. I took her mane, and pulled.

Please don’t die here
I told her.

She whinnied.

Climb out! Heave!

She rolled her brown eyes and her nostrils went in and out, in and out. She sank deeper down.

Please don’t…

But she didn’t die. I went to her. I murmured gentle things to her until she was calm. And when she was calm I put a little mint on the rock in front of her, which she smelt, and tried to reach with her lips. Then I went behind her with thistles in my hand, and a roar in my mouth, and I smacked the mare so hard that my hand tingled, my throat broke in two, and she was so shocked at the smack and the sound that she hauled herself up, and was free.

She found the mint and munched on it. Shook her mane.

I was fierce with her, for a moment.

Then I wasn’t fierce at all. I hugged her boggy neck. I thought
do not love her,
for I had promised it—but I liked how she searched my hair with her lips, and left drool in it, and I was glad she had not died, in that bog. I wondered if the heart could be ordered, in such a way.

She was grey on top, and mud-black below. When I looked back at her, it was as if she was floating—a half-horse creature, sailing through the dark.

We moved through the gloaming most of all—the times that are neither day nor night. Cora called them the
betwixt-and-between times,
when the world is stirring or it is setting down. When the light is strange, and your eye can think
what is that? Moving?
But nothing moves out there. Dawn and dusk are always softly lit. Their shadows are thin, and to ride through these shadows on my mare felt like breaking them—but they sealed themselves again, in our wake.

Cora also said
the veil is thinnest, at this time
—that the wall between this world and the other, magick world was weakest. She breathed,
you can reach, and touch it…
I never felt that, when I was small. But out on the mare, I felt it. Treading through mud, with deepening skies, and birds coming in to roost, I felt it in my body
I am not alone. I am seen,
I thought, with the sunrise.

You look at me as if I’m senseless. Like I’ve blasphemed.

I only meant to say that those are my favourite times.

And what ones I saw. What dusks and dawns. We saw them from strange places, for we slept in some uncommon beds, her and I. Rocks, barns and islands. An empty badger’s sett which made me musky for days. Once, I slept in a tree, and I felt Cora was with me that night.

Are you there? Are you with me tonight?

I am with you every night.
Or so I dreamt she said.

And we slept, too, in a church. It was empty, and ruined. There was ivy where the roof should be, and a pigeon in the font. Our forelocks were stuck down after three nights of rain, and so when we found the empty church we both said
yes. Here
. I laid down on a pew, and rested. I fingered the old singing books, and looked at the calm, wooden face of Jesus on His cross—and I thought what a gentle face He had. Gentle—when so many ungentle things had been done in His name.

It was a peaceful place, and dry. The mare let out a little wind by the altar, followed by what made it, but these are natural things, and I don’t think the church minded. It was giving shelter. Shelter and love is what faith is—or so Mr Pepper said.

Which church? Which town?

I don’t know. There are so many different churches. I know this King William is of one faith and hates the other, and James is of the other and hates what he is not, and so aren’t they both the same? In this hating?

It was nature’s church. That’s what I call it. Mother Nature’s church, for her brambles wrapped round the pulpit, and her sermon was soft pigeon calls. Her hymns were beetles clicking over wood.

More churches should be like that church, maybe.

W
E
kept from towns. You ask for their names like I rode through them, or stayed a while. But I did my best to keep away from where people were, and
witch.

When I met people it was mostly by chance. It was by coming to a place where two paths met and on the other path would be someone. We’d slow, eye each other. But most night-time travellers do not want to be seen, and so are happy to pretend to have seen nothing, as well. I met a man and his wife, running. I did not ask why, but her belly was round—perhaps she was not his wife. I blinked kindly at them, gave a small smile. They did the same. We did small exchanges, too—herbs for an egg, or a crust of bread. And we said no words, but on the edge of a wood, where its trees met a field which was grey with moonlight, we wished each other well, with our eyes.
Hide well. Be safe.

I also saw a man on a rock, one daybreak. He was sitting with his legs tucked up, and looking east. I sat myself beside him for a while. I felt his sorrow, and when he spoke he said
they say my mind is gone
in his Scottish voice. He did not look at me. His eyes were on the sun coming up, which told me his mind was not gone at all, that he was like me—sometimes so amazed by a sight that all he could do was stare. So we watched the sun come up together, and heard the distant bells ring in Christmas Day, and we shared the stale bread I’d found in the church, and some wine.

And Covenanters? Did I tell you of them? I saw them, in a wood. Don’t ask me what they were, for I don’t rightly know. But I reckon they were one faith being hunted by the other. I reckon they were people who were frightened for their lives because of who their God was, so they did their praying to Him very secretly—in trees, and at night. Not much could find them that way. Only owls, and a fox or two. And me, of course—an English thing with a half-sad face who saw beauty in a leafless tree. Who had no-one to tell of these people in woods, so their secret was safe, with me.

O
N
, and on. We had our brave times. Those were when we’d pass a sign for carrots or fresh milk, and want some. So I’d lick my thumb and clean my face with it. I’d tidy my hair, and knock on a door. I’d smile. I tried a Scottish accent to the carrot-selling man, and he blinked, shook his head, said
pardon?
When I used my proper voice he stepped back. But still, I got some carrots—maybe voices do not matter if there are pennies to be had.

In fog, we came to a farm. I came through the mist in a mist-coloured cloak, on a mist-coloured horse. And I tried to buy some oats, for my mare was looking thin. The farmer’s wife stared beadily, said
what’s in that purse?
I looked down. Some leaves were spilling from it, which she saw. I had no words. I shrugged. She said
if you have cures in there, I need some.

What for?

Nightmares. My boy has so many he fears sleep, and has grown ill.

And I helped her with that. I gave some peony, and spoke of its virtues, and she nodded and gave us some oats. But later, as I groomed the mare with thistles in a wood, I heard
there she is! Witch! She cured my wee boy! Witch! Witch!
How unfair. What a kindness returned. I could not see her, for the fog—but it was surely her. And the mare sighed, lifted her foreleg so I might climb aboard, and I said
go—as best you can in all this fog.
She went. She saw the way. And we did not knock on doors, after that.

We drank bog-water. We slept in old byres.

We passed a ditch, thought of settling down in it, when a twig snapped and the mare reared up. A boy was crouching in there.
Why are you hiding?
I was cross with him. He did not say a word. But in the fields I heard dogs, barking, and he whimpered at the sound, and I knew he was frightened for his life. So I said
climb on. Quick!
The mare waded through a river with us. It was fast-flowing with snowmelt, and loud, and her hooves clattered on the river’s rocks. But the boy was safe from the dogs, after that, and was gone.

On a very wet evening, as we trudged through the mud, we heard a gasping sound which was not rain. I looked about, frowned. And there, in a hedgerow, was a hare—snared in wire. It was bleeding at the neck, and I dropped down from the horse to tend to it. I said
poor you, poor you,
prised the wire away, and it cut into my fingertips so my blood mixed with the hare’s, but at least it scrabbled free. Off it went, long-legged. And I wrapped my hands in dock leaves for a day or so.

I still have scars from that snare. See?

I have more scars than that—for a running life has its wounds. It has its wire and rope. It has the stones thrown out with
witch,
as I ran, and most stones were only fast air by my ear, or a thud on my mare’s behind—so that
witch
stung more. I have scars from a dog that tried for me.

But a running life has its lonely times—such lonely, long ones—so that I think the soul’s wounds are the worst of all. I do. To pass homes, as we did. To hide in the woods as a family passes by on the road, laughing. A family! What one had I known? I’d been happy enough—Cora and me, and the pig before I killed it. Our scrag hens. That had been my family life—no father to speak of, and no family name. Just
Cora
, just
Corrag. That red-skirted woman by the burn, and her child…
And had I minded? I’d never minded. We were as we were, her and I. But I held the mare’s nose as I stood by her, and I watched. This was a true family passing by—parents, and brothers, and children, and wives.