Corrag (33 page)

I knelt down to him. I kissed him on his brow, where I had stitched him once.

Outside, tearful, I trod upon a thing.

I looked down.

It mewled, like a cat.

It was Lady Glencoe. She was lying in the snow, half-bare. They had stripped her of her top clothes, and she was shivering, still living, but with gruesome wounds done by a blade all upon her. Her fingers were bloodied, with teeth-marks on them. I gasped. I dropped down. I said her name over and over, and stroked her, and I took off my cloak and laid it upon her for warmth and a dignity which her husband did not have. I said her name again, said
can you hear me?

Very faintly, she said,
Corrag?

Yes, I’m here. Why are you here? Why did you not run to Appin? Didn’t Alasdair warn you?

He did…Too late. They shot my husband…
And she closed her eyes, opened up her mouth in a long, silent howl.

I said
ssh
to her, and smoothed her hair. I said,
I will take you from here, and mend you. I will find herbs that
—

No…
she breathed.
No herbs will do. I’m dying. I am dead, Corrag. He is dead, and I am stabbed…

I can lift you, and
—

Let me be,
she murmured.
Mend other ones. My boys.

I laid my face beside her face, so that I could see her eyes. I said
Lady Glencoe, I have seen Iain. He is well. He is making for safety, and will survive. But where is Alasdair? I must find him.

She shifted, and made the small sound of a surprised creature. She said
he did not find you?

Find me?

He went to look for you. At your hut. Corrag
—and she sighed, she breathed out a long, tired breath and spoke, as she sighed.

And then her eyes clouded, and her jaw lowered itself, and she was dead in the snow like her husband was dead in his chamber. I brought her eyelids down. She was all good and had never done badness that deserved such a death as she had.

I
DID
not care for the soldiers who were still stalking the glen, who had their muskets and swords and were looking for more Glencoe men to cut down, or root out. I did not care that they saw me and grappled for guns, or snatched at my hair. I did not care for them at all, or what they might do for me, for I had him in my head—him with his hair, him with his hands.
Him! Him!

And when we run very frightened it is a fast running and a numb one for the head can only think of why you run, and where you are running, and not of wounds and pain upon yourself. I felt no coldness. I felt no hurt where I was bleeding—I only ran along the edge of Loch Achtriochtan which was black with ice in it, through its marshes, and I ran past the fiery house of Achtriochtan where the men still lay outside on the snow, with a coat of snow upon them, and his wife’s red apron was glowing through the dark.

To my valley. To my hut. To home—and as I crossed the Coe I remembered how Alasdair had kissed his Sarah’s head as she was sleeping, with their newborn son upon her breast, and how it had felt, to see it. How I had cried, quietly, that night.

That, I thought, was my time.
That was my time
—like how Cora’s time had been on a half-moon bridge as she watched her mother bobbing in her ghost-white shift, and drowning, for that time changed her life for always. It altered all her life. Like Mother Mundy’s time had been as she was taken by a reiver on a night not far from this night, with fire and so much crying, and had she looked at the sky that was coming through the burning roof and known she was always different now? That she was changed, and none might ever know it but her, for all her life? The plum-faced man’s life had changed in Hexham, that winter—with his brother’s neck being stretched.

We all have our moments that change us. But some change our lives, also—the life we are yet to live. And mine had been as Alasdair had kissed her hair, like all the world was there for him, in that bed asleep—for I’d wished to be her. I’d wished that. To be a mother and wife—his wife. Just that.

Still. Our hearts stay our hearts. They are as they’ve always been.

I thought these things, as I ran through the snow.

I
N THE
gully that led to my hut the muskets sounded far away, and the snow was not as deep for the trees by the burn were wearing it, in their branches. I moved quickly. I prayed
let him be well,
and it was as I hurried on the path with the valley nearing me that I saw it—a sight I knew, which was dark stains on snow like ink on parchment can be, or like stars, darker at their middle and paler at their sides.

I wailed. It was an owl-cry, the hare’s cry when the owl finds it.

It was Alasdair’s blood—I was certain. I knew. And I ran on to find only more of it, more on the path like a giant man had thrown the blood out from a pot and here was where most of it had fallen—a smattering of it, not just the snow but the rocks also. I put my hand on a rock and lifted my hand back to find it red, and wet. I wiped it on my skirt. There was too much blood here for one man to have lost. There was so much.

He was lying on the path ahead, under a birch tree.

He was not on his face but on his side, with one arm out above his head and the other resting down across his chest. I thought
he sleeps like this
—though I didn’t know, I had never seen it. But maybe he was sleeping now, like people do after walking far and after fighting. He said he slept for many weeks after Dundee died, at Killiecrankie, and so here he was—sleeping with the snow drifting down. I made my way to him carefully, like I thought my feet might wake him and I did not want that—he must sleep. His bed was snow and blood. I knelt down. I said his name. I said
Alasdair
and he was so cold to touch and so pale that his hair like ferns looked black against his face and I said
Alasdair
again very sharply.

He did not say
Corrag
or open his eyes.

He stayed as he was with his arm on his chest and I made a cry, a shriek. I pressed my thumb against his neck to feel for the heart that should beat there. It took my eyes closed tight to feel it. I felt it. One beat. Two. He was not dead, but there was blood on my skirt from my kneeling by him and we could not stay in the snow like this. My hut was not far. My herbs were not far.

Hardy Corrag always, and he was three or four times my size, and I could not drag him—but I would not let him die. I would not let his heart stop beating in his neck under a birch tree like this.
Wake up
I shouted and I took his arm, laid it around my neck like it was meat to carry. I roared, and I pulled him up—up across me, so my shoulder fell from its bone again, it dropped out of its socket with its old, proper hotness and its
pop,
and his chest lay down across my back, and his head was by my head so that his hair was by my face. I wailed at the pain. I hauled him up the gully towards the guarding stones.
Wake up
I screamed, and we trailed blood behind us like I once trailed branches before I ever knew him.

He coughed thickly in my ear.

Some fluid came from him down onto my arm and I shouted
wake up
again and I loved his thick cough. I did not care for my shoulder or my soreness, only for his cough which I wanted again and I shouted
wake up
and
wake up
but he gave no second cough.

We made it to my hut, my hut of mud and stone and heather. It was snow-hid and very silent, so still after the glen. My fire was still lit. My goats were still sleeping, by it, and my hens clucked gently. I took Alasdair in, laid him down upon my bed of deerskin, and moss. He groaned, like the mare did when she lay down years before. I turned from him, briefly. I bit my bottom lip, arched my back and pulled upon my shoulder until
pop
—and it was righted.

Alasdair?
I knelt by him, and tapped his face. His eyelids parted, so I could see some blue. I put straw behind him for his head to rest upon, and looked at him. He was so pale. He was deathly-pale.

I said
you are safe. You’re with me, and shortly you will be well again
.

I cut his jerkin away. It was bloodied, and his shirt under it was also very wet with blood—I cut this from him also. He winced. The shirt had stuck itself tightly to the wound and I pulled it too roughly, pulled at his skin. I thought then to find poppy for deadening his pain and set to finding it. There was not time enough to make a tincture of it, so I put a seed or two into his mouth and said
chew on them. They will help.

His chest was hurt from a small blade. It had sliced him, and the blood was very red. But when I tore my skirts to make a cloth, and wiped the blood away, I saw the wound was very shallow—it was not enough to kill a man. I packed comfrey straight on it, which helped. But I knew that there was a greater hurt upon him, somewhere—one that had bled out onto snow, like stars.

I whispered
there must be more
.

He shifted.

I looked down. His plaid was wrapped upon his leg like it was part of him. It was sodden. It was so wet with blood that when I touched it, blood rose up out of the wool—like the wool was full with it. His blood was on my hand. My hand was glossy, by firelight. He must have seen my face for he breathed,
how bad?

I have to look.

He nodded. I crouched lower. I took his plaid, and rolled it very gently. I rolled it like I might roll turf—slowly, neatly. It showed his pale skin, his reddish hair. It revealed his knees to me, and the old scars on them, and as I rolled the plaid above his knees I saw the blood. On his left leg, his skin was not pale anymore. It shone with wetness. It was red, and dark, and there were clotted parts of blood. And I rolled the wool up a little more until there it was, there was the wound.

It was terrible. It was not wide, but it was deep—like a blade had been thrust very harshly, and turned whilst in the skin. It was a hole, in which I could see his inner flesh, his muscle which was cut right through, and the very tender parts of the body we are never meant to see.

He said again,
how bad?

He knew enough. I said
it is not good
.

I found my herbs. I set about him like he was not Alasdair Og MacDonald who I loved but a man I did not know at all, not even his name. I used whisky to clean it. I lit my single sheep-fat candle and brought it close to his leg so I might see the wound clearly, and tore more of my skirt. I pressed a poultice of horsetail and betony and rupture-wort directly on it and held it there. His eyes were shut as I did so. It was like he was sleeping again—still, pale.

Wake up
I said.

He parted his eyes a little and looked down on me. I kept pressing the poultice onto his thigh so it might both deliver its herbs into the wound and also stopper up his blood by not letting it leave his veins anymore, pushing it in, and he said
Corrag.

Yes.

You’re bleeding.

I said it was his blood on me and for his tongue to stop wagging for he needed strength elsewhere.

It’s yours
. And he winced as I pressed harder and he said more than this but very quietly so I did not hear.

I looked down. He was right—there was my own blood coming through my bodice. It was mine, I knew that—for as I eyed it, it grew. Also, on seeing it, I felt a sharp ache, and I remembered the musket’s
clap
at Achnacon—the rush of air, the bite.

It bloomed like a rose, this blood of mine.

We cannot help others if we need help ourselves, and do not give it. I wished this wasn’t true, but it was true.

Alasdair?
I took his hand, said
press this to yourself. As hard as you can.
His hand was stiff with cold and I pushed it down upon the poultice, and I remembered its freckles, its marks and scars. I remembered holding his hand all those months ago, before I truly knew him. How strangely, I thought, the world can echo.
Keep it there
.

Then I set upon myself by cutting through my bodice strings to rid myself of it, for it was too knotted to be untied in the normal way. I threw it away. I crouched down. On my waist my shift was ragged. The skin was chewed and black-dappled, and red.

I made my own poultice from my torn skirt. It was wet enough to seal itself onto my body with no hand needed to hold it there.

You had moths…
he said.

This was the poppy talking like poppy can. It was the broken talk of shock, and loss, and a man whose blood was more out on the snow than inside him. I took my needle from my broth pot and threaded it by the candle, held the needle in the flame to cleanse it with the heat. I said
moths?
Then
don’t talk.

And I lifted his hand from the poultice, and when I took the poultice from his thigh I saw how worthy of its name rupture-wort was, how red and tender and huge the wound was but it was bleeding less, there was no dirt inside it. I dabbed it. I pressed the wound with a herb or two more, and then pinched the sides together. I took my needle. I pushed it through his skin which I felt him tighten at but he did not wince and I pulled the needle through. Slowly, like this, I began to sew.