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.
IN 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.
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.
Corrag: A Novel Page 29
