Corrag (5 page)

So when Cora slipped through the falling light, with her tangled hair, she heard
halt! Stay there! Show yourself!
She wept. She talked of her own bereaving ten miles away—her lost cows, her dead man.
May I find shelter with you? In the Lord’s name?
Cora could jaw well, and lie better. And the men saw her prettiness, and how long her lashes were—how she looked from behind in those skirts of hers.

So she lived in Thorneyburnbank with its wild, cold wind and singing water.

Our cottage was by a burn. It was a reedy, whispering burn which met the river Allen and later the river Tyne—rivers meet rivers like fingers meet hands. It was so close to the water that its floor was marshy, and its roof was bright with fish that had jumped, stuck. Cora found it half-lost to holly and liked this, for holly is said to hold the lightning back. So she let the holly grow. She swept the floor of fishes’ scales and she went to church—for to not go to church was to shine a light upon her. It was darkness she wanted, and peace.

This is how she was in the beginning. Tidy, and quiet. She made her pennies from reeds and rushes for thatch—for there were many growing by the burn. And there is always a need for rushes in a land where the wind is hard, and so are the men who come raiding.

She sold them in Hexham, and smiled at men. She was as sweet as a pear, or let them think it. Cora wore her cross on its chain, to fool them, and she took Christ’s body into her mouth on Sundays, kept it under her tongue for an hour or two until she could spit it out. What a piece. Who would have known that as she was seated on her pew, with her head bowed, she thought of full moons and thumbs-and-toes tied?

It is a shame Cora did not stay pear-sweet—for she did not.

She was always a night-time lady. The wolf in her howled for night air, and so she took herself away into the unknown parts. If she was seen, she’d say
I am a widow. I grieve out in the darkness…
and this would satisfy them for a while. But it was an odd grieving—lifting her skirts, throwing back her hair.

I won’t talk too much of it. Nor did she—snapping out
hush up! What I do is what
I
do, not you…
before running bright-eyed into the night. All I will say is what harm did she do? What trouble? She had a beauty which lured men to meet her by the Romans’ wall, and they grappled in the gloaming or held each other back. They sought themselves, somehow. And when the sky lightened, she re-tied her bodice, shrugged, and wandered home with the birds singing about her, and her hair undone.

I never knew my father, Mr Leslie.

Nor did Cora. Or not for more than a moment or two.

I know this says
whore
to you.
Slattern. Old jade.
They are names she gave herself sometimes, and laughed, and how she is remembered in Hexham is as a
witch
and a
whore.
They think it’s right that they stretched her neck like they did. But I don’t think these things.

What she did, Mr Leslie, was not bad. More badness was done years before, when she was a little one—in a river, with her mother snared like a bird.

C
ORA
had her feelings on love.

Do not feel it,
she told me. She took my wrist, or my chin in her hands and said
Never feel it. For if you love, then you can be hurt very sorely and be worse than before. So don’t love,
she said.
Do you hear me?
She made me repeat what she said.

That’s a sad story, is it not? It is to my ears—a woman as fair-faced as Cora being afraid of love. So don’t call her a
whore,
thank you. Not my mother. She found her comfort in deep-furred cats, and the moon, and the fireside, but also in kisses from unknown men. Who did this hurt? Nobody.

We all need our comforts. Things which say
hush…
and
there, now.

So her belly swelled. It fattened liked the berries did. But what filled her head? Some fierceness. She took off her cross and stepped out from the cottage of fish and holly as she was—not a widow, but a woman of bad weather. A person who did not like
God
. His word was
justice,
she said, and what a ripe lie that was, with its trapdoors and screws.

Mr Pepper in the church spoke of forgiveness. On the Sabbath he said
we are all from the Lord
—but folk ignore what doesn’t suit them. They hissed,
her? With child? And without a man by her side?
They brought their rushes from someone else after that—a lazy wife who cut them wrong, so they cankered. But this wife prayed and read the Bible, so her bad reeds were better than clean ones from that slattern in the dark-red skirt. It did not matter. Cora had her means. She told future times in Hexham’s wynds and shadows. She gave herbs to the women who needed it—fern, lovage. It’s always the women.

That was a merciless winter. One of frosts and white breath. Old Man Bean left to hunt the pheasants and was not seen again. Cora knew the cold called out to the Mossmen. They came for food and wood to burn, and a Scotchman with a yellow beard stole two cows away, and a dog, and a kiss from the milkmaid. Cora was glad. It was all eyes to the north once more, and none on her belly like a bramble fattening up.

Oh she loved the Mossmen. She tightened her fists with glee at the sound of their hooves on the frost—
da-da, da-da.
She loved their moonless nights, and the smell of their torches flaming as they rode. And on Christmas Eve, as they galloped to Hexham with their backswords held high, my mother took her body out into the yard. She roared with two voices. She steamed in the dark, and I fell onto the ice.

Witch,
she called me, for she knew it would follow me for all my days.

Then, she cradled me, kissed me. Said
but Corrag’s your true name.

T
HAT
was me. My beginning.

I lived on old fish and sour milk, for months. If I cried, she lay me down amongst the reeds and I would sleep—maybe it was wind sounds, or the wet.
Ghost baby
she called me, because of my eyes which are pale and wide. I crawled in the spring-time elm wood. I walked in the next summer, by the cherry tree. Later, still, I’d sit on a fallen log by the church and ride it—my wet, wooden horse. I had ivy for reins, and a saddle of leaves.

Autumn was also good for mushrooms. She showed them to me like she showed me herbs—
this one is for sickness. This brings poisons out
.
And these ones…
she’d say, twirling a stalk before my eyes,
are for supper! Let’s run home and cook them!
And we would run, hair out.

Still. Winters were best.

And they were hard ones in Thorneyburnbank. A duck froze on the burn—it squawked until a fox came, and left its webbed feet in the ice. There were icicles we sucked, Cora and I. The millpond could be walked on, and once, a tree broke from all its snow and buried a cow—they had to dig for it with spades and hands. All night they dug, and the cow lowed so crossly that they did not hear the Mossmen taking horses from the forge. Also, one winter, there was a wooden box—put beneath the yew tree, and not buried, for the ground was too dark, iron-hard. The box was broken by dogs and crows who knew meat when they neared it. Poor Widow Finton. But she was dead and never felt it. All things must eat.

I saw the crows again in Hexham square.

That was the day they hung the Mossmen by the neck.

Five of them. I was maybe twelve years old when Cora came to me, her eyes on fire, and said
this is bad, very bad…
She meant for us—but not so bad that we stayed away from it. She knotted my cloak, and we trod through the snow to the town. And the sound! There were more folk in the square than when the judge came, or when the Christmas market did. All jeering and jabbering. I climbed on a barrel to see what they saw, which was the word
scaffold
. Five ropes in neat circles. It chilled me in a way no snow had done. And the crowd laughed at the men who stood by their ropes with their hands trussed up behind.
These
I thought
are Mossmen
. Just men with scars, and sad eyes. The yellow-bearded one was there. He saw the crows, like I did—perched on the scaffold, cleaning their wings. I felt so sorry for him. I thought I could hear his thumping heart, his quick breath, and the crowd cheered when the ropes were put over the Mossmen’s heads.
Bang
went the door, and
bang
went the next, and
bang
and
bang
and the last man was crying for mercy.
Sorry for my sins,
he pleaded, and shook. And maybe the door was bolted still or the cold had frozen it, I don’t know, but it didn’t open—so they took him to a rope that had a Mossman hanging from it, and they cut the dead man down and strung the live one up and used that rope again.

Folk need a foe.

Cora muttered this. She also said,
I should have known…For did you see the bats? Did you, Corrag? All gone…
They’d flown away the day before. They’d streamed out from beneath the bridge with their leathered wings, and not come back—and Cora said that creatures do this, before a death. Like weather, they feel it coming. They sense trouble in their wings, their paws, their hooves—and flee.

Foe…
she said. She scattered bones by the hearth that evening, tore herbs so our cottage smelt green. I knew what troubled her. All my life, she had sung
let them raid!
But they did not raid as they hung with the frost on them, and crows pecking by.

L
ATER
, Cora fell on the floor and arched her back up. She had the second sight this way—the sight I didn’t have. I knew to stay by her, and stroked her hair until it passed.

When she sat up, she whispered,
do I have a gallows neck?

It was late. I was sleep-heavy, and she looked strange to me—fear, I think it was. She held up her thick, black hair, said
do I? Say the truth.

I always did. So with the hearth being the only sound, for the burn was frozen and the owl was silent that night, I said the truth to her. She knew it, too.

A pretty neck, but yes—it was gallows-made.

Spring came in. Water sounds all over—the burn roared with snowmelt. Up came the clover in the marshy parts which made sweet milk, and cattle fat. This is when I took the knife to the pig and killed it—a terrible thing. I think I was taken with some spring madness, or it was the Mossmen’s deaths in me. I don’t know. But Cora was cross. She said why kill it in spring when we had made it through the winter, and was I a simpleton? The meat did not sit well in my mouth, or my stomach. Poor pig.

Full of shame, I ran away. I hid in the elm wood all day, crouching by a log, and when I rose up in the dusky half-light I did not see the log, and fell.
Pop!
A neat sound by my shoulder. Then, a pain—a huge, hot pain, so that I stumbled back to Cora with my right arm very mangled, and my shoulder pushed high up. I wailed, as I ran.
The pig’s revenge
said Cora dryly, and she pressed my bone back in its proper place.
Pop
again. And marjoram was laid upon it, which can help.

And things grew. The crops grew well, that year. That made Cora’s purse clink, for women were making babies with all that corn in them. Mostly it was feverfew, for the easy birth. Comfrey dried up old milk. She sent me out for fern, also, and told me how to cut it—with a single slice, and thinking kind thoughts. Fern has its dark powers—for the secret cleansing of a woman, shall we say.

And creatures made babies too—calves, and chicks that went
peep
. There was a striped cat too whose teats were like thumbs, who purred when I stroked her. She was good. But one day, with dandelions blowing, I saw her lying on the ground. There was a bucket by her, and Mr Fothers in his hat. He was staring at the bucket, and then he marched away—and I thought
why is the striped cat so still? The lovely striped cat?
I straightened my back.
So very still…
And then I thought
run!
I had such a fear in me that I threw my dandelion away and ran, and in the bucket I found water, and five dark newborn kittens mewling for their lives. Their paws scraped the metal. Their eyes were closed, so I pushed the bucket over, said
wake up! Don’t die!
They rolled into their mother, who was dead and not purring now.

Cora, when I carried them home, said,
what happened to them? So tiny…
And in a lower voice she hissed
who did this?
For she had a proper hatred of people drowning things.

We fed them. We laid them by the fire and dropped cow’s milk on their tongues. I sang ancient songs to them like they were my own, and Cora said
how dare that man? How dare he? A life is a life—each life…
She narrowed her eyes at his name. She kicked the kettle and it bounced outside. But she softened when she stroked the kittens, and felt their grainy tongues against her hand. Mr Fothers hated creatures but we never did.

They lived—all five. They were meant to drown on a dandelion day but they did not. Instead, they grew into quick, ash-coloured cats with eyes as green as mint is, and they rubbed against our shins, tails up. I liked how their gentle heads would butt against my own. In time, they sniffed out the fish in the thatch. I remember them that way—high up in the rafters, crunching the bones of the stranded fish, their noses silvery with scales.