Corrag (8 page)

I wailed. I dropped to my knees to gather them. It was like my mother was sprawled on the floor too, and for a while there was silence—just me saying
no no no…

Take her horse, then.

I screamed. I ran to the mare who was head-up and walking backwards, not liking this at all. I grabbed her mane but some Mossman had my leg so I could not mount her and the mare tried to carry me off, good girl. But the man had my boot, so I was stretched like on a rack and the ground was lying under me, and I knew I could not hold the mare much longer. I also knew that if I let go they would take her so I screamed
I’ll curse you all! I will summon the Devil and he’ll not like this at all!

Well that was a fine trick.

They let me go like I was on fire. I hit the ground, scrambled to my feet and turned with my back to the mare and my arms stretched out like I was hiding her from them, keeping her safe. These four men could only stare at me—or rather three did, for the fourth was still crouching and saying
my eyes
. I slowed my breath, stared back. It was like all the forest had heard me, all the birds and insects, and I thought then, too late, that maybe saying witch-like things was foolish. I was running from witch-haters, and there were no doubt plenty more in this country. Rats can cross walls, after all. But it was said now. It was done.

Witch?

They looked at each other.

They looked down at the herbs, understanding them now.

There was a small hush, so I heard all our breathing and the rain going
drip
. Then they muttered in their own Scotch words. They looked on me for such a long time I felt hot, awkward.

I didn’t say
yes I am
—for I’ve never called my own self
witch.
I held my tongue and scratched the mare’s neck how she likes, to calm her.

How old are you?

I pouted. I was cross because they’d troubled her and because they’d made Cora’s herbs fall out of her purse, and now they were treading on them, which was a proper waste and sadness.

This winter will be my sixteenth
I said.

What’s your business?

What’s yours?
Saucy of me. I can be, and that’s Cora.

The plum-faced one considered me.
An English girl? In a woman’s cloak? On a stolen horse?

Maybe it was the softness which had come into his voice. Or the half-light. Or maybe it was my lonesomeness that made me talk to him—I don’t know. But I said
my mother sent me away. They call her a witch, and hate her, and she will die soon, so she told me to flee north-and-west away from Thorneyburnbank so that they might not kill me, too.
I looked at the ground.
These were her herbs. They are mine, now—to sell, I think, and to keep me safe. They are all I have in the world—except for my wits, and my mare.

This all came out in a rush. It was like my words were water and out they came, and now what? We all stood amongst my words like leggy birds in a stream. I was breathless, and a small part of me felt like being teary-eyed because I thought of Cora dying, but I wouldn’t let them see it.

I thought
fool
to myself. No-one likes a chatterer. It’s best to keep your mouth tied up, but I never did it.

It was even stranger, what was next.

They did not come to me. They did not grab my purse or my mare. It was like they were creatures who put their claws away because I had shown my proper face—like how the air is always better when the storm’s come in and gone. We all looked upon ourselves, brushed our clothes of rain. I straightened out my skirts and tried to make my hair less of a thatch.

The plum-faced one said
hanging is a greater sin than most folk are hung for.
Like he was trying to comfort me.

I sniffed. I said
yes.

He looked at me.
I know Thorneyburnbank
he said.
Near Hexham? Does it have a cherry tree?
And then he looked so sad, so empty and sad that I felt sorry for him, and had no fear at all. He looked about the ground at my herbs, and he said
what can you do? Can you mend?

Some things.

Can you mend his eyes?
For the poor one on the ground was still bloodied.

I said
I reckon so.

How about sewing? Cooking?

These were not my best things but I could do them. I said
yes.

He nodded.
Mend his eyes,
he said.
Mend my cough and that one’s foot and sew a jerkin or two, and we’ll give you some meat. And you can rest a while.

He helped me to gather Cora’s herbs, and put them in my purse.

I
FOLLOWED
them through the trees. I walked with the
drip drip
and my mare blowing her nose, and I whispered to myself, to her, to what it is that sees us and hears us—God, or spirits, or the hidden self, or all these things—
this, now, is my second life.

It began as Cora’s ended.

My second, galloping life.

They were ghosts, Mr Leslie.

Not spectres made of mist, and air—not lost souls. Just ghostly men. The last of their kind, for reiving days were gone. I’d thought all the Mossmen had been hung, or sent away. But here they were. With their sweat and goatskin boots.

They took me to a clearing of moss, and damp. A goat’s leg boiled in a pot. A lone hobbler dozed beneath a tree, and three hens pecked in the dirt. The evening light was dusty, like it is in barns, and when I looked up I saw the evening star, shining through the trees.

Here.
Some of the cooking water was given to me, in a cup.

I thought of how I used to be—of what I’d believed in, a few hours before, which had not been these things.

I
MENDED
his eyes that night. I was glad of the eyebright, and pressed it on with flaxweed, and said
hush, now,
and laid them on his lids. Then I also took a splinter out from a heel. For the cough, which rattled like pins in a pail, I took coltsfoot and warmed it up in milk. I said
sip this tonight, and your cough will go directly.
There is no herb better for the chest.

I ate a little goat’s meat, which was good. The fire crackled. My mare dozed with the hobbler, side by side.

We’ve met ones like you,
said the plum-faced one.

Like me?
I looked up.

Runners. Hiders. These woods are full of folk who are hunted for things—small and big things.
He put goat in his mouth, and chewed.
For a stillborn child. A wild heart. Faith.

I nodded.
My mother’s heart is wild.

He looked up.
But she doesn’t run with you?

No. Because they would follow her. They would follow her, and find her, and find me too.
It made my eyes fill up with tears which I think he saw.

We are the same—you and us. You might think we are not, but we are. Our ancestors are mostly dead by the hangman’s doing. We also live by nature’s laws—which are the true laws.
He shook his head.
Man’s laws are not as they should be.

I agreed to this. I ate.

We’re Mossmen,
he said.
My father’s father was a reiver, and my father was—and I am the last of them. But where they raped and burnt—and I know they did, God forgive them—I’ve only ever taken what I needed to, and no more. An egg. Perhaps a lamb. And only from the rich.
He eyed me, as if he wanted me to nod at this. Then, to himself, he said
they call us murderers but I’ve not killed a soul. Not even hurt one.

Like Cora,
I said.
They blamed her for a baby that came out blue.

Not her fault?

No.

The fire lapped on itself. I heard the mare’s belly rumble, which was the hay in her.

Thorneyburnbank…
he said.
Yes, I know it. Clover. It had the sweetest cattle when I was a boy. A half-moon bridge. That cherry tree…

They were good cherries.

He nodded.
They were. My brother liked them. He liked all of it.

The whole tree?

The whole village. With its fat cows. Its stream full of fish. The folk too…
He threw a piece of grass into the fire.
My brother said they were sour. That they were sour to each other, and that thieving from sour people was less sinful than thieving from the good.

Some were kind
I said, sharply. I thought of Mrs Fothers with her hand-shaped bruise. Mr Pepper who had never minded Cora’s ways, or mine.

He wiped his chin with his forearm.
Some. There’s always a star or two, on dark nights, I’ll say that. But…
He looked into the fire, then. He looked so hugely, deeply sad that I wanted to ask him of it—but I did not need to ask. He said,
we took from there. When I was younger, we took some geese from there. Then my brother wanted more, so he rode back for two plump cows. He took them from a farmer who beat his herd with sticks until they bled, which wasn’t good. I was there. I helped him.
He held up his fingers.
Two cows. We never took more than we needed, and never left a person with nothing at all.

What then?
I asked this. But I think I knew.

They rode out a third time
. He shook his head. He was quiet for a long time, so that I heard the wind move high above us. I smelt the pines, and the smoke.
Hung by the neck in Hexham. Three years ago, this winter.

I saw it. I was there again, and saw it—the crow waiting, and the crowd’s cheer as the doors went
bang.

Was his beard yellow?

He glanced over.
Yes. You saw?

I did not tell him I often saw it, in my head—the one, small bounce when the rope reached its end.
They were all your men?

My brother, an uncle, three friends.

H
E
said no more on this. He said no more at all that night—only
you can sleep soundly here,
which I believed. And I did sleep soundly—beneath my mother’s cloak, breathing night-time air.

But no, there was no more, on those deaths. I know some people think that to talk of others dying is not right—that it makes them die a second time. Maybe he thought his brother died a new death that night, by the fire, with goat’s meat in our mouths. He had looked so woeful. He’d rubbed at his eyes. And thieving is wrong—even a hen, or turnip or two—but not much deserves the scaffold, and these men never did.

I’m sorry
I said.

He nodded.
We took two cows and they took five lives.

I don’t think to talk of how people died makes them die twice-over, though. I think it keeps them living. But we all think different things.

He was the one I knew. Him with the reddish bloom on his face which I reckoned came with his birth—and which no herbs could fade. It ran from his brow, over one eye. It was plum-coloured, and shiny, and Cora would have liked it. She liked differences. She said true beauty lay in them.

The other Mossmen kept in shadows, or slept, but the plum-faced one stayed near me—as if he wanted to. Maybe he did. Maybe he felt closer to his brother by being with a girl who’d seen his bad death. I don’t know.

Are you coming?
he’d ask.

Where to?

Into the forest, always. He trod old paths. He led me to streams which silvered with fish, and we gathered berries there, and fire-wood.
This,
he said,
is how to catch the fish
—and it was slowness that did it. He moved his hand so slowly that the fish thought it was weed until it scooped it up, into the air, with
there! See?
He showed me how to smoke it, and lift it from its bones. I whispered
thank you
to the fish, as I ate it—and the Mossman smiled a little, said
Corrag—it cannot hear you now.
By the fire he showed me how to skin a rabbit, how to use its fur. We mended the small roof which we all huddled under, in hard rain—with moss, and thick branches. He showed me how. And one day I said
do you know about mushrooms at all?
Which he did not. So I took him out to the dankest parts and gave him their names, showed him their pale, velvet underskirts—and I was glad of this, for I felt I’d been taking more than giving, and I like giving more.

And he was the best for stories. He had many—so many. Maybe he knew that I loved strange and wild tellings, for when we picked thistles out of manes together, or shook trees to bring the grubs down, or sat by the fire with broth, he’d speak of them. I’d say
tell me of…
And some tales were of such wonder that I could not breathe, with them. Unearthly, whispering tales—of red-coloured moons, or a boy who spoke more wisdom than any grown man could, or of a green, northern light in the sky. Of an eggshell with three eggs inside it. He spoke of how he fell, once, with a wound and woke to find a rough tongue licking his blood away—a fox’s tongue.
A fox?
I said. But he was sure of it.