Corrag (3 page)

T
he gaoler knows me now.

He knows how I talk in the dark. How small I can be when I curl myself up—so small that he thinks I’ve done magick, and gone.
Filthy witch
he says, when he finds me.
I hope they do you slowly…I’ll be there to warm myself.

But I also know him. I know his sideways eye, and that chickweed would help the leaf-dry skin on his hands that flakes, when he moves. Those hands get worse in this weather. I know he drinks—for his breath is all whisky and old meat, and I’ve heard him snoring when there is daylight outside, or at least a paler sky than night. I think whisky is his best thing of all. I know his footsteps, too. I know he has a limp, so he drags his left leg. No one else walks like that—like the sea coming in. Also, his keys jangle. It is the only music I hear in this tollbooth—no birdsong, no pipes. Just his keys, and his heavy left leg.

I know the sound of him, walking.

This isn’t him walking.

These are the footsteps of a man who is not him.

Come in. Sit down?

I see that look that you give.

They all give me that look, as soon as they see me for the first time. It’s my size, I think—how small I am? I know I am tiny. I’ve been called
mouse
and
little bird,
and
bairn,
though I’m none of these things. The doctor came in and could not see me in the gloom. He was cross, shouted
there is no prisoner in here!
And then I shifted my chains so that they clinked, and I whispered to him
oh there is…

Come in from the door. See how locked up I am? Most of the thieves they put here do not wear chains like I do. They are put behind bars, and that’s all. But I have chains because of
witch
—they think I might turn into a wind, and blow myself away. Or make myself a frog, and hop out through the door. But also, I am chained because of my smallness—my arms like twigs, and my thin body. Stair said I might slip through the bars,
so chain her. Shackle her up, and tightly! This one mustn’t go.

Therefore come in from the door. I cannot hurt you.

There is a stool, by that wall.

I
KNEW
a woman who dreamt of you. She was half-mad, and as tall as a man can be. In a light, soft snow when the snow did not fall, but lingered in the air, she spoke of you to me.
A man
she said.
After the bloodshed, he will come to you.
She talked of my iron wrists, and called you
neatly done
. She did not talk of spectacles but I imagined them, and I am also right about your shiny buckled shoes. About your wig’s tight curls.

What a look you give. The look I know.

It says
damned slattern. Keep away from me.

So I knew you would come. Gormshuil was her name. She had the second sight, though I did not always believe what she said, for she loved her henbane too much to trust her words. Once, she put her finger to my chest and said,
a wife!
As if she saw one in me—that I might become a wife. I told her
no…
I shook my head, stepped back, but she sang the word as she drifted away—
wife! wife!
through the glen.

That’s the henbane for you—as strong a herb as I know. Too much can kill you, and speedily too. But I believed her when she told me, sir, of you.

It’s your purpose for coming that I don’t know.

Others have come. You are not the first, sir, to sit on that stool, or frown at the walls. Several have come. And their reasons have been so plentiful, and strange, that it is like plucking herbs—none are the same. To save my soul from Hell’s unending fires, is one. I think my soul is fine, but many try it—to make me speak of God and repent my wicked ways. There were belches from the priest who came to me, like croakings from a toad. He talked to me like all churchmen do, which is like I’m not human, or at best a simple one. Are you a churchman? I see the cross about your neck, and your dislike of me has a high, Godly air. I reckon a thousand Bible words live in your head, and are spoken very solemnly. But save my soul? Maybe not. You don’t sit like the others did. You don’t stare as hard. The priest belched, and stared so intently that I stared back and he hated that—
a staring witch-called piece,
he said. And he hated my talking. I know I can talk. But I don’t see many people so I talk plenty when I do.

He called me
harlot,
and
quarrelsome,
too. Said my chatter disrespected him, and that the day I was burnt like a hog on a spit would be a good day.

So I get them—churchy ones. Who think that by cursing me they are better men.

And lawmen. They have come. But what law is that? I’ve seen no trial, sir. I’ve seen no proper fairness—for when did fairness say its name in law? None of our women ever heard it. If a bird squawks as much as once, then cook the bird, or drown it, or maybe string it up and kick away the stool, so it may not squawk again—that is the law.
Law,
I think, is like
hag
—it is said so much we are blind to it. Its heart, which is the truest part, is lost, and a wicked lie sits in its heart-shaped place. I’m not the squawking kind, and never was. But that’s no matter. Here I am—chained up.

And doctors. There has been a doctor. Just one—a man with his own lice who looked at the wound where the musket caught me. He said it was healing so fast it was the Horned One’s work—which it wasn’t, of course. It was horsetail with some comfrey boiled up and pressed on. He might do well from comfrey himself for he had very rank sores from his lice. One was all pus and will only grow worse. He was no true doctor.

And then there were the rest. The townsfolk from Inverary who just wanted to see—to see and smell a witch, a
Devil’s whore
. They threw stones through the bars at me. They pressed pennies into the gaoler’s hands, as they left, and handkerchiefs to their noses, and I reckon I’ve fed him well. He must have bought many bottles with what he’s made from
that witch who was in that damned glen.

She was there? In Glencoe?

Aye. Saw it all, they say. They say she knelt and did her spells there.

Called in the Devil?

Oh aye. All that blood and murder…The Devil was there, right enough.

A man called Stair, as well. He has come. He has sat where you are sitting now. He looked upon me as a wolf looks on a thing it has stalked too long, but has now.

That is all I have to say on him.

Reverend Charles Leslie. I feel I know your name.

Leslie
—like the wind in the trees, or the sea coming in…

I saw you flinch at
witch.

Oh it’s a dark word, for certain. It has caused its damage across the months and years. Many good people have been undone by it—married and unmarried, beautiful, and strange. Women. Men.

What did you have, in your head? With
witch
?

I know that all people have a certain creature in their head, when they hear it—a woman, mostly. Pitch-dark and cruel, crooked with age. Did you think
she will be mad, this witch
? I might be. It’s been said. I prattle, I play with my hands and bring them up to my face when I speak like this, as a mouse may with its paws as it eats or cleans itself. My voice is shrill and girlish—this has been called proof, for they say the Devil took my lower voice away and ate it up to make his own voice deeper. Which is a lie, of course. I am small, so my voice is small, too—that’s all.

And spells? Oh they’ve tried to pin a thousand things on me—a splinter in a finger, or an owl swooping in. They pinned even more on my mother, but she was a wilder one than me, and beautiful, and brave. A calf with a star on its forehead was her doing, and so were the twins which were as alike as shoes. Cora said, once, that a black cock crowed by a church door so they took it and buried it—the cock, not the door. Buried it alive, too, so that she heard its scrabbles as they held it down.
The Devil sent it to us,
they hissed. And Cora unburied the cock with frantic hands that night, but it was too late—it was earthy, and dead. She buried it again but gently, and in a better, secret place.

I hated that story. That poor cock which did no harm—it was just black, and passing by. But Cora said all people bury what it is they fear—
so it cannot hurt them. So it is kept from them, locked up in the earth or in the sea.

Does it work?
I asked her.
Burying a feared thing?

She pursed her lips.
Maybe. If it is done justly, and with an honest, hopeful heart—which it wasn’t with that rooster, I can promise you that
. She shook her head, sighed. It was a waste of a fine, cockerel life.

So what townsfolk say we do and what we truly do are very different things. I have cast no spells. I’ve never plucked out gizzards or howled at moons. I’ve never turned into a bird, skimmed a night-time loch, or settled on ships to make them drown. I’ve not kissed obscenely or eaten dead babes, and I don’t have a third teat, and nor do I laugh like broth when it’s left to boil over and ruin the fire, and ruin itself for the broth tastes bitter, then. I’ve never seen the future in a rotten egg. I never laughed at murders, or called murders in.

I’ve not summoned anything. I’ve only asked—prayed.

Pray.
Yes. I use that word, too. I pray—not in church and with no Bible, but otherwise I reckon it’s probably like how you pray, which is with the heart’s voice talking, not the mouth’s.

D
EVIL-
child,
they’ve called me.
Evil piece.

But Mr Leslie, I will tell you this. When
witch
was first thrown at me, as I passed through a market, Cora led me by the hand to an alleyway and sat me down, and wiped my wet eyes, and said
listen to me. The only evil in the world is the one that lies in people—in their pride, and greed, and duty. Remember that.

And from what I have seen of this world, this life, I think she was right.

My telling? Of Glencoe?

Mine?

Why mine? There are others who, I’m sure, could tell you more. If you are after the truth of that night, of the snowy glen murders, then go to them that survived it. Go to them who live to bury those that do not, and ask for their stories. They know more than me, on many things—like who killed the MacIain, and who ran his wife through. Whose voice said
find his damned cubs!

Why mine? And here, too, is a question, Mr Leslie—why do you want to know at all? No one else has asked. No others care that so many people died in the glen. They were MacDonalds.
Why grieve for MacDonalds?
is what they say—for they stole cattle. Burnt homes. Ate their foe.

Barbarous clan.

The gallows herd.

Glencoe? A dark place…

I think most are glad that those people were stabbed, and robbed. Like they deserved what happened to them—for their outdoors life, and their language, and their dress were all a blight on the nation, a canker in the rose. So Lowlanders say. So Stair says, and the Campbells. So does this Orange Dutchman who seems to be king.

K
ING
…That brightens you.

I reckon it’s a word to hang with
hag
and
law
—a fiery word which can kill a man, if whispered wrongly, or in the wrong ear. But most folk like it. Most folk have a man they call
king,
and fight for—and such fighting…Two men, with two different faiths, and look what that does? It splits up the world. It makes nations narrow their eyes at themselves, and seethe.

Always eyes and ears, in the dark.

James is your fellow, I think.

Jacobite?
I know the word. The MacDonald men were those—
that Jacobite clan. Those wretched papists in Glencoe.
They wanted what you want, sir—to have James sail back from France and take his throne again, and for all to be as God meant it to be. They fought for that. They went to Killiecrankie and flew his flag, and killed William’s men, and rallied, and sang, and plotted against the Dutchman in their wild, blustery glen, and I was asked by them
who is your king, English thing? Whose flag do you stand under?
That was in the Chief’s house. There were beeswax candles, and a dog with its head on its paws. And I said I didn’t have a flag—that nobody ruled me. I said
I don’t have a king.

That brought a silence to the room. I remember that.

But it’s true. I think kings can only cause trouble. Too many men die, in their name. Too many fight, and kill, or are killed—and so I think of loss with that word
king
. With
king,
I think of lost things.

S
O MUCH
is gone. So much. All for kings, or a shiny coin.

And I remember so much…The dog’s name was Bran, and the snow lay itself down on every branch of every tree, that night, and I kissed a man—there was a kiss—and I remember so much! I know plenty. And if I do not speak of what I saw, that will also be gone.