Corrag (15 page)

I stared. Blinked.

We all looked upon each other. They spoke between themselves.

He turned to me again and said
who are you? Where are you from?

You speak English?
I had the thought that none did, in these parts.

He tilted his head at my voice, like how birds listen for worms.
From the Lowlands?

No. Thorneyburnbank. Near Hexham.

England?

Yes.

He turned, spoke in Gaelic again. The other two men were much older than him—grizzled, broad men, like when wood is left out in the seasons. They had that weathered look. Years of squinting in sun, and snow, and rain. I have never seen bears, but I have seen them in my head. These men were like bears, I reckoned. Hands like paws.

My heart was beating fast and very hard.

There’s been talk of you,
he said.

Of me?

Of a black-haired faery stealing pots and eggs from our tacksmen. Of some half-woman, half-child skinning a hind freshly killed by my cousin—he needed that hide, and would have set upon you if he’d known you were human. Our cows have less milk, since you chose to milk them. You’ve built this
—he kicked the wall of my house—
on our land, in a place no-one knows of but us, and now we find you’re English.

A bear said
Sassenach…

I saw myself, then. I saw myself as they saw me—a tiny, snag-haired thieving thing, with a hovel made of cow-dung and fish drying in its eaves. I saw my dirty hands. I thought
what to say
—but what could I say? I knew they thought
witch.
I knew that I could lie, but lies unpick themselves and that’s some cleaning up. There have been too many lies.

I have come north to be safer,
I said.
To have a quiet life. To make a home here.
I tried a half-smile.
I mean no harm.

They watched me. They muttered Gaelic amongst themselves, and I waited. Speaking with the cows had been a simpler thing.

A safer life? Here?

I’ve seen trouble before. I’ve had a life of trouble in the south, with
witch
being said and stones thrown at me.
I shrugged.
I was told north-and-west, so I came here…

The tallest and greyest bear snapped out Gaelic words. These older ones spoke no English, I reckoned—only the red-haired one did. He spoke over his shoulder to them, with his eyes on me.

Witch? We have enough of them.

Like the cattle, we shifted on our feet.

You have plants in there. In your house.

Yes.

Herbs?

I nodded.

He thought on this, for a while. He looked up at the clouds. He talked in that watery language to his friends, who said it back. And then, in a voice which sounded like he had had enough of me, and better ones to speak to, he said
take less milk—there’s one of you and far more than one of us. And herbs to eggs is no fair trading—not from a man whose hens are old, and lay less and less each week.
He thumbed my roof like it was poorly made, or very well-made—I was not sure which.
Give us no bother and we’ll give none back.

I agreed. I said I’d drink less milk—I had just been very hungry, but not now.

They turned to go. But the red-headed man said
your name?

Corrag.

What?

Corrag.

Your full name?

It is just Corrag. I have no other name, for I never had a father.

He considered this.
I’m Iain MacDonald—and I do have a father, and he’s the chief of our clan. This is our tacksman of Achtriochtan whose eggs you’ve garnered, and this is Old Man Inverrigan—it’s his wife’s pot I see sitting on your fire. No more thieving, Sassenach. If it’s the quiet life you truly want, we’ll not meet again.

And they walked away from me.

I thought
MacDonald?
I felt my belly tighten. I think my eyes widened like how water does when a stone’s thrown in, and I pushed myself onto my toes and called after them
where is here? Its name?

As they were about to drop away from view, Iain MacDonald with his beard like a fox-brush and his shrewd eyes called back,
Glen of Coe. And your roof won’t last the winter.

Then they were gone. All that was left was their footprints, and their smell which was how most of them smelt, for what else was there? To smell of? Wet wool, and cows, and peat-smoke, and sweat.

The owl called its name, after this. The stream which came down the mountainside by my hut said
Coe…
all the time. The wind in the trees and the rough, sudden flap of a hare’s hind leg on its ear, scratching it, which I heard one dusk by the birch trees said
Glen of Coe Glen of Coe.
I heard it in the stag, when he roared from his rock above my hut—
Coe,
he said. His breath steamed, as he roared.

Fear?

No. I have felt it. I’ve known fear very well—like when the drunken man grappled me, or when I knew my mother’s feet were treading the air, turning, and then growing still. But I was not afraid of
Glencoe.

I spoke of it to my hearth. I whispered it—
Glen of Coe.

I’ve heard
fate
talked of. It’s not a word I use. I think we make our own choices. I think how we live our lives is our own doing, and we cannot fully hope on dreams and stars. But dreams and stars can guide us, perhaps. And the heart’s voice is a strong one. Always is.

Listen to it, is my advice. If I give no more of it, take this as all I have to say on life, and how to live it (for is my life not nearly done?). Your heart’s voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we’d rather it did not—and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don’t live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you.

That’s just my way of thinking. Not many think this way.

I
S IT
late? Yes.

It’s so dark I barely see you. Just your white wig and your goose-wing quill.

W
ell. Did Iain MacDonald walk back to your lodgings with you? In your head? Him, with his hair so red that he had the fox’s look—orange, more than red. In sunlight it was on fire with its brightness. He had the same orange marks on his hands, and across his nose—and I knew of herbs which, my mother had told me, would take these marks away. I did not think them unsightly, though. I see freckles like the sun that fell on them. Dappled light.

They say that he has his father’s colours in him. Before he took to being white as snow on his head, the chief of the Glencoe men—
the MacIain,
is what they called him—was also fox-orange, on fire. I thought, too,
they have the same nose
. I also reckoned they had the same speaking manner, which was blunt but not unkindly-said. They did not say
witch,
but they said I must not trouble them.
We have trouble enough
the Chief said.

But the MacIain’s second son was not like them. Not in looks. They said he took more of his mother in appearance—the blue eyes, and not as tall as Iain but broader, and stronger, and bolder in the way he moved so that he seemed taller, to me. His hair was red, but not his brother’s orange-red. It was darker.
Like hillside,
is what I thought. Like the wet, autumn hillside—old ferns, damp heather. I thought of his hair when I grasped branches or tufts as I ran. I said
Alasdair
when I was high-up and looked down upon all that dark-red, and deep-brown.

Your shoes are wet.

Just on the toe.

Is it thawing? A little? Just a small part. I thought it might be, for as I thought of them all last night, as I thought of their plaids and wet-wool smell, I heard a
drip…Drip…

I must talk, then.

Of the MacDonalds who lived there. Of the glen, and the feet that walked upon it. Many of those feet are gone now, dead—so I must talk of them. It makes them not dead, or less so.

It was Iain who said to me
no man born outside the glen can truly know it.
I saw him on the braes, not long after the autumn came in and the leaves were falling down. He was squinting when he said it, for the sun was low. I saw the lines on his face, the old scars.
Not even you.

But I did. I did know it. In time, I came to know how every mountain looked against the sky, and what their colours were. I climbed them with my skirts tied up. Where there were deer-paths, I took them, and where there were deer-hollows I lay myself down. I learnt their wind sounds. Their herbs.

I think I know it,
I said to him. Sassy.

He shook his head, turned.
Be careful. I won’t say it twice, to you.

Careful
—which all women are, by nature, who are not quite like the rest.

I was careful. I knew I must be, for wild places are not kind to things which think them easy. In Thorneyburnbank, Old Man Bean had been lost to a biting winter wind, or a fox or two, for he’d sauntered out too casually. In the Highlands, it was the rocks which awaited. Many gullies could be false. They could beckon and have the look of a path to other valleys by way of streams, or birch, so that men may wander up them—but these were foolish men. So many gullies led only to rock. Or, worse, they led to no rock at all—only drops of air, and mist. I nearly went this way. I was scrambling above my hut, singing under my breath, and fell, and it was a birch tree that saved me. Pebbles fell down and down, and I clung to the branch, and I saw my thatch of moss and stones far, far beneath me, between my ankles which dangled like fruit. I was glad of that birch tree. I hugged its bark, smelt it. I’d remember it, on passing.
Birch of the Saved Life.

I’d hear stories. Not all folk had birch trees by them, when they slipped, and fell. Iain said bodies of their enemies might be washed downstream, in snowmelt—a Campbell, or a Stewart of Appin when the Stewarts were their foes.
We’d have heard none of him since last winter
—and there was the rotting reason why. They took a dead Breadalbane man, strapped him to a cow that had been taken from him, and they led the cow back to its old grazing place. I hated that. Poor herder, to look up and see his kin rotting on a cow’s back. But who was I to speak? To call this cruel? I was English, and alone. I was living on their land—and I had seen cruelty, and known of crueller things.

You can’t know it. Don’t try to, if you like your life such as it is.

Oh, Iain could be quick with me. He could use the same voice with me as he did his dogs, or the cattle, and he looked at the sky when he spoke like the skies mattered far more to him. He thought I was untrustworthy. I think he heard my English voice and hated it, at first—for it meant
Protestant,
and
William,
and many English things. Battles fought, and yet to come. Lives gone.

England?

Yes.
And I’d seen his face when I’d said that.

B
UT
I did know the glen. I did. Show me their shapes and I’ll tell you their names. I gave my own names to the mountains, before I knew their Gaelic ones. In those early days, I began to venture out—climbing and crawling on autumn braes, and I named them from what I saw on them, or from them. Deer, or ragwort. A wildcat, which hissed.
Aonach Dubh
is its proper name but it was always
Cat Peak
to me.

This was how it was. It’s how it still is—my childish names against their Gaelic ones. At the glen’s eastern end, by Rannoch Moor, there was a mountain which was darker than the rest, in colour—black in storms, and shiny—so it was
Dark Mount,
sometimes. Then, when I trod upon an arrowhead, lying in its peat, it nicked my heel and bled me, so I called it
the Arrowhead
after this, for a time. Later, I knew the ones who lived on it. I knew their dirt and sadness. I knew how the wind caught the soul up there, and shook it, so it was
Gormshuil’s Mountain,
also. I called it all these things.

What?
Alasdair said, when I told him.
Dark Mount?
He half-smiled, half-frowned.
It’s Buachaille Etive Mor, to us…

Maybe. But I liked my names better.

And further in, as the glen’s sides grew higher and higher, there was
Thistle Top,
for it had rustled with them as I’d sat on its peak, and the pass beneath it which led into more hills was
Pass of the Hinds,
for I saw so many treading through its peat, their ears back, their eyes half-closed against the wind. In the winter, a bird flew up from the heights at the western end—a white, stocky bird. I never saw it twice, but that made it
White Bird Peak.

The Pap,
too—for that hill was woman-shaped.

A waterfall became
Grey Mare’s Tail,
as it was just like hers had been.

And the ridge. If Glencoe is ever known for its mountains alone, I reckon it’s the ridge that most will know. What a ridge. Huge, and dark, and notched like teeth. It ran the length of the glen’s northern side—and it was
Northern Ridge,
for a while. In my head, I thought
I will walk upon the Northern Ridge
, or
the Northern Ridge is frost-topped today.
But this changed. This changed as I ran beneath it one early evening, and looked up. There, at that moment, I gasped. I stumbled. It became
Ridge Like a Church
. That was its name. To me, it was that. For how like a church it was! Not in its colour (for it was brown, mostly, not the grey of church stones) and not for its shape, as it did not have a tower to it. I called it this for its grandeur. It was so grand…It had the grandeur which can stop a person walking, which can stop their tongue and make them feel both drawn to it, and scared. I was in awe, I think. That evening, I felt tearful at its height, and age. I looked up, and nearly trembled. And I’d dip by it like I dipped by all churches—thinking
it is not meant for me,
and not wanting to know it better, but still feeling its long, cool shadow on me, as I went. I could see very clearly why others might be bound with love for it. Why they might never take their eyes from it, and serve it all their lives.

This is why I called it
Ridge Like a Church
. It made me feel tiny. And it made the glen a sanctuary, of sorts, which also fits its name—no soul could ever climb it. It was too high, too steep.

Aonach Eagach
is its Gaelic name. I know that, now. Alasdair taught me their names, and when he spoke them to me, he used his hands—as if feeling each word as it came out. We were by my fire. His hair was dark-gold, in its light, and he said
Beinn Fhada, Bidean nam Bian, Aonach Dubh…
—pinching the words, with his thumb and fore finger.
Your turn
. And I tried them, in my own mouth. His words in my mouth.

But I taught him my names, too.

The three, rolling hills on the southern side, which looked very squarely at the Ridge Like a Church, were my favourite hills. I lived amongst them. My own hidden valley was tucked behind them, and so I often found myself climbing up, up, on these three peaks. I came to truly know them. I lay in their hollows, and licked their waterfalls. I spoke my secrets to their winds, which carried them—so they knew me, too.

The Three Sisters,
I told him, shyly.

They have their own names. I told you…

I know. But I call them this.

Months later—months, Mr Leslie—I heard the MacIain tell of a fine white hind he had shot, as a boy, in the windy heights of Beinn Fhada, and whose skin he still wore, even now. I said
Beinn Fhada?
For a white hind has magick in its heart—or more than most. And he’d drained his cup, waved his hand like my words were flies which troubled him, said
the eastern sister. Of the three.

I smiled at that, thinking that they might not be too trusting of my Englishness, but look—they liked my English names.

So Iain had found me. Him, and those two bears. They had sniffed, growled, tied
Sassenach
on. They’d spied my herbs, and left.

People change a place. A place’s air is different when three men have passed through it. Their footprints stayed by my hut for weeks, and their wet-wool smell lingered, and so did their words—
your roof won’t last
. That troubled me. I circled my hut that evening, testing it, peering in. I’d done my best, and it had served me well—for the turf and branches and dung had kept me dry enough. The thin part of the roof had let my smoke drift out. I had been happy. Warm.

But within days, a frost came in. I woke in the night—not from coldness, for I do not mind the cold. But from a strange light inside my hut, which was bluish, and unknown. I crawled on my belly to my door of hanging turf, lifted it. And there it was—my first Highland frost. Ghost-blue, and still.

It was beautiful, to my eyes. The mountains looked down on me, and glinted. But it also made me think that he was right—my roof would not do. It was too thin. Rain would come—driving, sideways rain which is the common Scottish kind, and a steady rain, too. And snow. I feared lying under my hind’s skin with dreams in my head only to have the roof fall in on me, with an arm’s depth of snow. I may not mind the cold, but I mind being woken rudely. We all need our sleep.

So on a frosty October morning I went down, into the glen. I crept into the woods, by the river Coe, and gathered more branches. I bundled them up, hauled them back. And this was hard doing, so I paused to rest a while. As I rested, I looked up. And on the slopes above my gully, there he was—the stag. His branches. He was eyeing me from a different hill and he had a single hoof held above the snow, as if he’d been walking when he spied me, and stopped. There we were, watching.

I counted his points. Five on the left side and four on the right.

He flicked his tail, trotted away.

I dreamt of his crown, that night. Under my new, thicker roof, I dreamt of his branches, his shining eye. And it was a deep dream, I think—for when I woke in the morning, I found more footprints in the frost outside my hut. I crouched, and looked at them. Human footprints. My hand was small against them, and I could smell wet wool.

It made me glad of my new roof, and my thickened walls.

There was also a hill called
Keep-Me-Safe.

My name for it—of course. Named on a starry-sky night, for as I passed beneath it I looked up and asked
keep me safe? I am afraid.

It did, too.

I was half-asleep. I was listening to the fire lick itself, and I lay on my side, tucked up. Outside, an owl called, and I shifted. The owl sounded far away, like wakeful things do when you are sliding into sleep.

Sassenach!

There was a bang on my turf door which made the hut shake.

I yelped. I had been soft and warm. I’d been dreaming, and now I was scrambling to my feet with my hair snagging on the thatch, and I heard a horse snort outside.
Sassenach!

No good news comes in the night-time with a bang on the door, and a sweating horse—and I fell outside to find Iain MacDonald on my threshold again with his hands on his hips from his hard ride.
Your plants,
he said.