Corrag

by Susan Fletcher

  I listened to this. I sat by my fire with the hens, and I watched the light darken, behind his head. I wondered on its colour—this light. Not grey. Not deep-blue.

  I said, you have cut many down?

  Aye. When I’ve had to. When there have been quarrels or insult to the clan. I fought at Killiecrankie and took a few with my dirk on those braes.

  I felt a deep, long sadness. I listened to the valley, at that moment—to the hearth, the sound of him eating. The wind. I thought of how far that wind had come, of the trees it had passed through, the birds it had borne.

  He was looking at me. You say nothing, he said. What is in that mind of yours?

  That you came here for this—to tell me of wars. Of the men you’ve killed. To make me feel I was wrong to have ever come here—to have come north-and-west…

  I came here with venison, he said. To give it to you.

  I nodded, blushed. I know.

  We sat as we were. The fire tended to itself, as a cat does, and we both seemed to watch it—the red, and how the peat glowed.

  He said, your name? It is a strange name.

  It’s from my mother. She was Cora. That was her true name, but she had hag thrown out at her so much that she sometimes thought that was her name, instead. She joined them to make mine—Cora and hag. I saw his face, thinking. She had a strange humour. She laughed when I was born.

  Do you know what it means? In our tongue?

  Corrag?

  Yes. Do you know?

  I looked up from the fire to his face, for I didn’t know. I did not understand him. It has a meaning?

  He raised a finger. In the half-dark, he lifted up his forefinger and slowly pointed at me—at my face, my eyes. It is Gaelic, he said, for this.

  For finger?

  For finger. You have a Gaelic name, Sassenach. So maybe you were right to come this far.

  MR LESLIE, do you remember how I said that moments change lives? Small moments? I think that was one. How Alasdair lifted his finger. How he looked, in the twilight that had moved in, behind him. He was a dark shape, a dark face.

  When he left, I thanked him. For the meat, I said.

  I hope it lasts you. There is plenty.

  Did you save enough? For your wife, and family? I can live on far less than what you’ve given me.

  We have some, Sarah and I.

  I nodded, smiled.

  We did our goodbyes, which were small.

  Look. See? My finger. Not much to see. It is tiny and muddied, and its nail is torn, and it’s some crooked from how I grasped rocks and heather to haul myself up onto tops like how my toes are crooked. The mare bit me once, thinking I was food, and there is a mark upon my finger still from a tooth of hers—there. She never meant it. It bled, but I had knotgrass in Cora’s purse back then.

  Corrag means finger.

  Do you know what they said? The ones in other glens who’d heard of me and my name, but had never met me? They knew of my herbs and ghost-grey eyes, and how I trod the braes in windy weather, and they said Corrag? Ah…Because she curses by pointing. She points at a person and it turns them into stone…

  You’ll hear that. It’s what they will tell you—the Camerons from the north, and maybe a Stewart or two. There’s the man called Breadalbane who said he’d heard my finger had light at its tip, and it hurt folk—like lightning can. But he was half-fool. What will you say back to them?

  Say no. She never pointed—not at people, and she never cursed. For I never have.

  I LOOKED at my finger, after that. I saw its wrinkled parts, its lines, and thought how can that be my name? My proper name?

  I did not like it. Not my name’s meaning, nor my little hands.

  But I like both things, now. I know them, and like them.

  Corrag? Why Corrag?

  Because she was brave. She showed the way.

  I know I must be grateful—and I am.

  But I miss him, Mr Leslie. All my waking hours, I miss him. At night, I dream of him, so that I think I’m by his side, or sitting by that fire as he talks and eats his meat—but then I wake, and miss him. I miss him all the more.

  DO NOT leave me yet? I know it is late. But talk of Ireland, and its skies? Of your sons, and wife?

  Maybe I will dream of them.

  Talk me to sleep.

  My love

  I cannot thank you enough for your letter. Just to see your handwriting again soothes me, and when I read it I feel as if you are here in Inverary, with me. I wish you were, as you know. When I read my Bible in the evenings, by the fire, I look at the second chair in this room which I have never sat upon, and imagine how you would be if you were sitting in it. Embroidering, perhaps. Or with a small novel on your lap. I have seen many sights, Jane. As a bishop, as an exile—but I have seen the greatest of them as a husband.

  I told her so.

  Tonight, she grew fretful and I think she cried, in the dark. It was not her death that troubled her so much (she can grow very anxious on that, of course)—rather, it was her life, I think. Mostly, she sees the good in the world, the light where there is dark—for who else can have a soldier try to defile her (you will understand my meaning—the worst way a man can defile a woman) and afterwards talk of a slowly-setting sun? She sees beauty where we mostly pass it by. But tonight, she was heavy-hearted. I think sometimes she unfolds all her losses and stares at them, in the dark.

  She said talk to me of Ireland, as I packed my quill away.

  So I stayed a while. She was the listener and I spoke to her. I told her of how our boys grow, daily, into strong and educated men, and how your singing voice is the sweetest sound I know. I gave her Glaslough, with its ivy and gardens, and I told her how the lanes are very full with flowers in the spring, so she said which flowers?—but when have I ever known which flowers they are? I said my wife knows them. And to this she smiled a little, said women do. Yes.

  She asked me of you, Jane. I did not describe you to her too greatly—for perhaps it would be like telling a little flower on a rock what qualities a rose has. It would not seem fair. But she asked me such questions as what makes you love her? And how could I answer? I have no starting place.

  I write this, and I hear a drip. It is outside, and comes from the roof down onto the other roof beneath me—the kitchen’s roof, I believe. It is, I think, the slow start of spring, and I know this means that her death grows near. They are hauling the wood and ropes to the square, and my landlord assures me that that wicked Devil-child (his words, not my own) does not have long, now. A week, he says, at best—(they prefer weekends, for burning. It brings, I think, more people out).

  I also asked him who the sheriff of this town is. Who, I asked him, might take an oath for the King?

  The name he gave was Ardkinglas.

  So I will find this man and speak to him. He must have been one of the last men to have seen the MacIain before his slaughter, and it will interest me to hear his account of him.

  I will retire with your letter. There is a patter of rain against the window—rain, not snow. So yes, surely I will be riding north, within the week.

  C.

  V

  “The flowers are white and very small; later come the little cases which hold the seed, which are flat, almost in the form of a heart.”

  of Shepherd’s Purse

  If you have never been to the Highlands, sir, then you will not know of deer.

  There were many in Glencoe. Just as there were men who burnt turf and climbed high, so there were deer. Horse-high and nut-coloured, they trod in a line through marshes so that I might follow their path, and not sink down. They were shapes on peaks, staring. As I slept in my hut, they grazed outside—for I heard the sound of the grass being cropped very neatly, and their droppings pushed up between my toes at dawn.

  They were wary, too. They had grown to be—for hadn’t they had a hundred lives of arrows shot into their rumps, or a blade pulled over the throat? They had. So theirs was a wary way of life. I m
ight be humming on the spring-time hills with my skirts tucked up or picking herbs when I’d come across a herd of them on some far-off hill, and they’d have heard and seen me long before I saw them. Necks straight up, ears forward. They could fix you with such a stare! Far harder than any scolding. A deer and I might lock eyes on each other and stare for a long time, both thinking the other might have some trick to them. Deer—I’ll say the hinds, most specially—could stare for so long you thought maybe they were not deer at all, but rocks shaped like them. Then I might lift a foot or tilt my head and they would be gone. Trot-trot with their pale behinds.

  The hinds and their calves had a tidy way.

  The stags were less neat. Their necks were hedge-thick, and heavy. Sometimes they carried strings of drool, or had moss in the branches like they’d been in a battle or two. They lost their branches, too. In spring, their branches broke off and died, and new ones grew, and they took on the shape the old ones had. I came across a perfect half-branch on Keep-Me-Safe, and I took it back to my hut. At night, it cast a shadow. I hoped the stag who’d shed it would have a long, good life.

  Also, they roared. I had heard it, in my early days—I’d thought that single stag had welcomed me. I’d never heard such a sound as that deep, breathy roar. Why? I asked Alasdair, once. And he’d spoken of the stags fighting each other, locking their antlers together like hands.

  Fighting?

  For hinds. To win them.

  Even the deer fight in Glencoe, I said to myself. Rolled my eyes.

  So yes—many deer. You will see how many, when you are in Glencoe—or if not, you will see their neat hoof-prints in the bogs, and their dung like currants will press themselves into the arch of your foot. You’ll shake your foot, to be rid of them.

  MY STAG, I think, saw me. I think he spied me when I first came to the glen—trawling my skirts, with moths in my hair. I think how I made my hut was reflected in his eyes, for he was very watchful. More watchful than the rest.

  I searched the tops of hills for him, after that. Scrubbing my pots in the burn, or scrubbing myself very naked in the pools that snowmelt made, I would run my eyes along the peaks—in case. I might see groups of stags, grazing. But he was not with them. I knew this, for I knew his strange, uneven branches. I knew the oily deepness of the fur upon his neck.

  Maybe he is gone. Maybe he is dead.

  But he came back.

  I was drying water-mint in the sun. It grew richly on the sides of Loch Achtriochtan, where the water-bull lived and rose up at full-moons. I saw no water-bull, but as I pulled the herbs up I felt a pair of eyes, and there he was—on the top of Cat Peak, looking down. Under my breath I said hello… And like he heard me, he took himself away.

  But back by my hut, with the mint laid out in a row like washing is, he returned. I straightened my back. The sunshine was bright, so I shielded my eyes to see him, and I watched how he trod very carefully down the sides. He came nearer. He flicked his tail twice. The slopes of Cat Peak can be very loose, but he did not slide at all.

  I said hello again. He stopped.

  He had seven branches on the right side and five on the left—so I knew it was him.

  For a good while we looked upon each other. I took in his brittle hooves, his pale mouth, his eyes. I also saw his nostrils open and close, and very slowly he brought his head down, leaned, so that I thought he smells the mint. He smells it…

  I crouched, picked some.

  Here, I said.

  Up went the head. He looked very boldly, as if offended by me. His nose smelt the herb, we stood like this for a long time—me with my arm held out, saying here, and him with his head held high. I hoped he would take it. I felt my body long for him to come closer to me, for him to take the herb from my hand. Just once. Take it… I wanted to feel his warmth on me, for him to leave drool behind. Like the mare did. Like all creatures do.

  Here…

  But stags are wild things. He was wilder than most—on his own, and with branches like that. I knew he wanted the mint, but I knew that the ground between us was huge to him, and airy, and I was too human, so he turned on his back legs again.

  He went up and over, out of sight. I looked down at the little green leaves in my hand and felt sad, briefly. But I also knew he would come back—for I saw in his eyes what he wanted. I knew the look.

  Spring was good, Mr Leslie. It is good for all souls, and for herbs, and all plants which had been sleeping over winter. I ducked out of my hut, breathed, and raced up onto the peaks which snow had kept from me. I lifted rocks. I found betony and yarrow, and beetles, and in the woods by Inverrigan I found tansy which I had not seen since Thorneyburnbank. I crouched down by it, felt its leaves. I made me think of Cora. I remembered being a child, and with her. She always said that tansy-leaves were as soft as rabbit fur—and this said it was a kind plant. It was best for sun-burnings and joint-aches. It made me sad, for I missed her. But also, there she was—in a scent, in herbs. She was real again, and with me. I found her in many places, in such weather.

  I found other people, too—people whose faces I began to know.

  The children from Achnacon with their freckled skin hung upside down in an alder tree, as I passed it. They hollered to me. They swung their arms, and I said are you bats? In that tree? They spoke no English, and giggled. Their hair brushed my own as I walked underneath. And as I lifted water from a bend in the Coe, I spied the old man from Inverrigan fishing with his boys—very still, like wading birds. And by the Ridge Like a Church, I saw Sarah. She caught my wrist, said how are you? Asking it like she meant it, like she wanted to know. I sat with her for a time. She stroked her belly, and closed her eyes when the sun came out from clouds, and smiled. Sunshine, she breathed, at last. And so we basked a while, her and I.

  I told her, I am well. Very well. Fine.

  All folk seemed well, in those weeks.

  On a day of green buds and bright water, more cows came. I was beating my deerskin with a stick, to rid it of winter’s dust, and heard hooves on rocks. I turned. In they came—a dozen black cows, drooling grass. MacDonald men came, too. They were muddied, and red-cheeked, and blowing hard, and smacked the cows on with their hands, and I thought whose cows…? For they were stolen cows. Being kept in a secret valley, so they could be found and taken back. I knew their ways, by now.

  I watched them. No Alasdair. Just the Gaelic-speaking men, the ones like bears. They did not look at me. They passed so near to me that I felt their draught, smelt their sweat—but they did not speak a word, and I felt heavy-hearted, at this. Why won’t they smile? Greet me? I stood with my hands by my side.

  But as they were leaving, the one with the scar which ran down his chin, clefting it, turned as he walked, so that he walked backwards for a time. And as he walked backwards, he raised his hand. He raised it to me. I raised mine.

  It is the small moments, sir, which change a world.

  I was barely left alone, in those months. I barely saw a day without a person in it, which I sometimes liked but also, sometimes, I wanted peace and hush. I could not step out of my clothes to wash myself, for fear of eyes. I had not much to hide—bones and whiteness, mostly—but it still isn’t right to be looked upon like that. It is a private time.

  A man with a splinter came to me, held up this thumb, and I healed him.

  Bran found me, panted, lifted his leg on the hazel tree. But he was gone again, soon after—and no person was with him. Or if a person was, they never came down to my hut. I looked up at the braes, but all there seemed to be on them was rocks and tufty grass.

  I liked it—to see lives. To have lives come to me. But I told my reflection in a peaty pool you are for places, Corrag. Do not love. Do not look for him, in shadows. Do not whisper his name.

  So I also took myself away. I chose a breezy day to walk towards the moor. Rannoch Moor—on which my mare had died, and where I’d seen her ghost walk out. Where I’d wandered like a bride of rags and grief and tiredness, and I’d never s
een Glencoe before. Where I’d had a different life.

  I stood at the glen’s western end, and looked out at it. I saw its bees rising, and its blowing sky. And I took myself onto the mountain which stood by my side, looking out—the Dark Mount, maybe, or the Arrowhead, for I still had a mark on my heel from the wound. But I thought climb up! Think of the view… It was hard climbing. I scrabbled, and used my fingers. In places, I saw the heather far beneath me, between my feet, and it made me say keep going! Go up! And I imagined the joy from the peak, when I made it—the air and sore limbs, and the view, the view!

  But I did not feel joy, at the top. Instead, I smelt a smell.

  I slowed. There, on the top of this black, jagged mount, was Gormshuil.

  I gasped. I put my hands upon my hips and said you? Here? For what a climb it had been! I’d clung, and jumped, and swung my way up. And she was three times my height and four times my age, and ate nothing that I could see, and yet here she stood with her lacewing’s skin and her threadbare cloak catching the wind. She said nothing. She only stepped aside. And behind her I saw a shelter of stones, and a low hearth, and bones, and old cloth. And two other women, sitting there.

  I stayed for manners’ sake. I crouched upon a stone, and smiled at the new faces. They were as thin and pale as Gormshuil—but both younger, I reckoned. One had a very damaged face—its bones had been broken in past times, for her nose was flattened and her jaw was not straight. Her lower teeth protruded, and so she slurred as she spoke. Doideag, she hissed. From Mull. An island—south… And she pointed. The second girl did not speak. She looked at her toes, with her chin on her knees. She had more sadness upon her than I had ever seen, maybe, and Gormshuil hissed that one has no tongue.