Corrag (34 page)

He said,
do you know when I first saw you?

I said nothing. I wished he would be quiet, for he needed all his strength, but I did not say this. I sat and sewed.

It was early evening. You had moths in your hair…

I breathed.
You saw me?

You stood in the waterfall. Laid the moths onto a tree, by me.
His mouth made a sound.

You saw me? That day?

I did.

Outside it snowed. Inside the fire lit the walls of my hut and his face which looked on me as I worked. I thought of how he had carried two hens through darkness, and how I’d later touch those hens thinking
he’s touched them. Held their legs
. I walked where he had walked. Said words he had spoken, as if they had a taste.

I looked up at him.
Why did you not flee to Appin? Like I said?

He smiled.
You know why.

I don’t,
I said.
I don’t! I thought you were safe! All the while, I thought you had fled. And look at you now—how wounded you are!

Hush,
he whispered.
Hush yourself. How could I have gone there without you?

I wanted to cry. I blinked, and pressed my lips against themselves, and I thought how curious our lives are—how sad, and strange. How—of all sunsets and tiny beetles, making their way on a leaf, and of all the blown grass—this was the greatest beauty. Now. This love of mine, for him.

Corrag,
he breathed,
I’m dying.

You are not
.

Very gently, like he was speaking to a child who did not want the truth to be as the truth was, and thought she could alter it, he said
I am.

You’re not!

You can’t change how the world is.

I can stop your bleeding and sew. Feed you. Warm you till you’re mended up.

Look at me
he said.

I did not. I had to sew. I blinked hard, cleaned the old blood from him so his skin was white again, and I sewed the broken part of him.

Look,
he said,
at me.

I slowed. I sniffed. I put my needle down, and straightened myself. I did not look at his eyes, but he took my hand and shook it very lightly, as if to say
look at me
again. So I did. My eyes met his eyes.

Sassenach…
he smiled.
The oath? Which we made? It was not for kings…It was never for kings. It was to keep our loved ones safe. That’s why we made it.

I looked at him.

I wanted you to be safe. You…

We looked on each other then as if there was so much inside us that no other soul had ever seen but we could see it, we could see it very clearly. I thought of all the years gone by. I thought of how much loss there had been—so much loss, and sorrow. I had walked amongst death all my life, and felt it, and I had seen more in the glen this night than I had ever seen before—and such painful deaths. Such lies. Every death in this glen, I thought, was a lie—just as politics was, and money, and laws.

What matters has never been money, or laws. It is people.

Come closer,
he said.

He put his hand against my cheek, felt it. I made a small sound, a child’s sound.

Ssh
he whispered.
Little thing…

I cried. I felt his hand upon me, and I looked at his face. It was such a face. It was his, his face, and I cried to see it so close to me—so close our breath was on each other’s face. I saw how blue his eyes were, each hair in his beard, and I saw the creases by his eyes from all his days of laughing or from squinting through the rain. I saw the lines in his lips, from talking. I saw his straight nose, the soft pads of his ears.

It is people that matter—them, and their hearts. And I leant very slowly. I leant like the stag had done for my hand—gently, and in silence, and with shining eyes, for it is so hard, so very hard, to give all your trust away to another life, to put your nature down and be fragile for a while. I was partly scared. All my life, I had been partly scared. But I was tired, now. I was so hugely tired—in my body, and mind. I thought of the stag’s thick fur. I thought of his life of sideways rain, and rock, and how he’d turned upon his hooves, and run. He had also grown tired. I’d seen it—how he’d trodden closer, and closer. I’d seen the half-close of his eyes, as he came towards my hand. His mouth had opened slowly. His breath had been so warm, and like the stag’s breath was warm, mine was warm. My breath was on Alasdair’s face, and I held my mouth above his mouth, breathing his breath in. We were frail, then. We hovered, sharing breath. We were eyes, and breath, and fear, and need, and that was the moment—the small, bare moment—where it was too late to turn, to pull away.

I was done with fighting.

I was done with
witch
. Done with being hardy.

He was half-lit and half in shadow. The fire hushed beside us, and outside there was snow, and he was what I loved more than all the mountains and all the skies, all the windy places. When my nose touched his nose, he smiled at it. When we kissed, it felt known—like this kiss of ours had been waiting, all along.

I watched the doorway lighten. I lay with my cheek upon his collarbone. I heard his heart beating, and I thought of the red winter sunrise over Rannoch years ago, and wished he’d also seen it.

I’d dragged
witch
all my life. I’d cried from it, and felt alone. I’d been bruised and chased because of it, and spat upon, and my mother had been murdered, and her mother had been. But it had brought me here, to this moment—to being with him.

We spoke no more of love. We had no need. We’d known what it was, when we came upon it. I’d known it, when he said to me
it’s raining
. He’d known it, when he’d crouched by a waterfall one night, and seen a tiny woman, standing very naked, with moths and cobwebs in her hair.

Love is what saved him, in the end.

Some might say it’s what saves all of us, but I know none of that. I only know of him. I only know that my mother’s loving heart said
north-and-west
to me, and my own loving heart said
Glencoe, Glencoe
—and look what I found there. This. Him.

So love saved Alasdair, and others of his clan. And he would love his wife, and son. He would live his life with them, tell them tales, bring in peat for their fire and make more children by that fire’s light, and how could I mind that? I could not mind it. He was living. And I had loved him all my life.

Alasdair sighed. I felt his chest rise up, and down.

He put his mouth against my head, and kissed it.

I smiled. His fingers held my fingers, and it looked like a single hand.

We are the magick—we are. The truest magick in this world is in us, Mr Leslie. It is in our movements and in what we say and feel. I learnt this from the second son of the twelfth chief on the snowy night their people were slain so cruelly in their glen. His father had died, and his mother, and the Highlands were dying also in their way, and yet still he came to find me. He held my hand, and when we kissed, he made a sound like he could rest, now—like he had imagined that kiss a thousand times.

In time, I heard a horse outside, and I knew whose horse it was, and I knew whose feet they were that came across the snow.

Iain looked tired. He saw his brother, knelt.

He is sleeping,
I said.
He is very wounded in his leg.

He felt his brother’s face, said
we must go. Alasdair? There are soldiers in the glen who are looking for us. You and me. We have to leave here now.

So they left. They left me. Iain carried Alasdair out into the daylight which was very white, very clean, and he hauled his brother up onto the horse. They sat astride it, both of them—a brother with dried ferns for hair, and one with wet ferns, wet hillside, and wrapped in my old deerskin. Iain sat behind with the reins in one hand. The other hand held Alasdair against him, pressed him in.

I saw his face. His blue eyes.

Iain said,
Thank you
.

I nodded. I pressed all my herbs into his pockets, filled his purse with them.
Boil them and press them on his wounds.

Aye.
He gave a ghost-smile, a sad one. Then turned his horse and kicked her on.

A
ND SO
they were gone. I watched them pass up the steep sides of my valley, onto the back of the Three Sisters and over the ridge, out of view. I stood by my hut for a while after, and looked at how the morning was—the sky, the hazel tree, the snow.

After this, I took myself back into the glen. I moved through the blackened grass, the empty byres. I held the hand of every frozen soul, and prayed for them, mourned them. The light was pink, and gentle. I sat by each one, for a while.

Where Carnoch smouldered quietly, I found Lady Glencoe. She was cold and dead beneath my cloak, with all her jewellery gone. I stroked her hair, and told her that her boys were safe—both her boys.

The ruined house was smoke, and ashes. I blackened myself on its timber, and burnt my hands on its walls. Under stones, I found the old chief’s sword. I dragged it out. I hauled it outside, and it ploughed a black line into the earth. On the shores of Loch Leven, I made a wish. I wished, with all my soul and heart, that such nights were over—that no such lies or treachery or blood would come again. That the men and women and children of Glencoe would not die like that again—not ever. I wished. I prayed.

I threw the sword into the loch.

We bury what we hate to keep it from us,
Cora said.
We burn it, or drown it.
And I watched how the water settled back down, sealed itself back over the sword.

So it was.

So it was meant to be, all of it. I had done my best, for always, and a single snowflake drifted down. Then two flakes. Three.

T
HE
soldiers came. By the water’s edge, they circled me.
That’s the one. She warned them—she did.

This tiny thing?

It was her. Bind her up.

How did they know? From the dead, I think. I think the dead told them, before they died. I think that as a blade was held above their chests they were asked
who told you? Who warned you of this?
For most of the clan were gone, and safe. Most of the beds were empty, for their sleepers had risen up and were in the hills already, with their hoods up and their children’s hands clutched in their hands, saying
run, now. Don’t look back.

Who told you? Who?

The Sassenach did…

So they knew. A calm-eyed soldier found me, with blood on his neat hair. He wiped his face, eyed me, said
so this is the English witch?
They shackled me. They put chains on my wrists, and they struck me. They kicked me, hissed out
hag
and
meddling piece,
and the calm-looking one took off his glove, looked at his hand, and then threw his fist at me which cut my eye, and made me drop down. I bled from it. When I looked at him, he was red.

I did not weep.

Instead, as they led me away, I turned. I turned back towards Glencoe, which was burnt, and very still, and high above its trees I saw the Pap. I saw its snowy heights—I said
goodbye
to it.

I was dragged for many nights. I slept in my chains on rocks, or wet sand. They talked of the murders, and who they killed. Of who did the killing. I heard names.

The sons?

I mauled one of them. Put a blade in him—and deeply. But I reckon they both made it.

Stair won’t like that.

And I smiled when I heard this—I smiled behind my hair, or into my knees, for what else mattered? Not my musket’s wound. Not the bloodied eye. Not where they were taking me, or why.

L
ATER,
on a snowy night, near the castle of Barcaldine and a stirring sea, I heard
what’s her name?
They had lit a fire. They were warming themselves, drinking a bottle they’d taken from the ashes of Glencoe, and I lay in the shadows.
That one?
They meant me. They trod near me, and a redcoat woke me from my lost half-dream, pressed his heel on my waist where the musket had hit me, and he rocked me back and fro.

He bent down. In my ear, he spat,
what’s your name?

Witch. That’ll do for her.

Devil’s whore! Ha…

But no. It was never that. My proper name was never
witch,
never, and nor has it ever been
hag
or
wicked piece
or
Devil’s wife
or
whore.
When have I ever been whorish, or cruel? When? And yet all my life I had had that—false names, lies, curses thrown out, and I’d had no family name which made them say
whore
even more, and
the Devil’s her father as well as her lover, most likely
—and what was that? Lies! Sadness, and lies. But
not now,
I thought. By their small fire I thought,
no more
…
That is not me. That’s not my name.