Corrag
Susan Fletcher

FOURTH ESTATE • London

For those who were there

I had an unexpected request the other day; there had been two bad landslides where the bulldozers have been working on the slate banks. Someone…said it was because the workmen had been disturbing the grave of Corrag. Corrag was a famous Glencoe witch…One point of interest about her is that, in spite of reputed badness, she was to have been buried on the Burial Island of Eilean Munda. It was often noticed that however stormy the sea, or wild the weather, it habitually calmed down to allow the boat out for a burial. In the case of Corrag the storm did not cease till finally she was buried beside where the road now runs. By the way, in the Highlands, islands were used for burial very widely. Remember wolves remained here very much later than in the south.

Barbara Fairweather

Clan Donald Magazine No. 8

1979

More things are learnt in the woods than in books. Animals, trees and rocks teach you things not to be heard elsewhere.

St Bernard (1090–1153)

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

Letter

One

I

II

III

Two

I

II

III

IV

Three

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

Four

I

II

Five

Letter

I

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Also by Susan Fletcher

Copyright

About the Publisher

Map

Letter

Edinburgh

18th February 1692

Jane

I can’t think of a winter that has been this cruel, or has asked so much of me. For weeks now, it has been blizzards, and ice. The wind is a hard, northern one – it finds its way inside my room and troubles this candle that I’m writing by. Twice it has gone out. For the candle’s sake I must keep this brief.

I have news as foul as the weather.

Edinburgh shivers, and coughs – but it whispers, too. In its wynds and markets, there are whispers of treachery – of a mauling in the brutish, Highland parts. Deaths are often violent there, but I hear these were despicably done. A clan, they say, has been slaughtered. Their guests rose up against them and killed them in their beds.

On its own, this is abhorrent. But there is more.

Jane – they say it was soldier’s work.

Of all people, you know my mind. You know my heart, and if this is true – if it was soldiers’ hands that did this bloodiness – then surely it was the King who ordered it (or I will say the Orange, pretending one, for he is not my king).

I must leave for this valley. They call it wild and remote, and it’s surely snowbound at this time – but it’s my duty. I must learn what I can and report it, my love, for if William is behind this wickedness it may prove his undoing, and our making. All I wish, as you know, is to restore the true King to his throne.

Pray for my task. Ask the Lord for its safe and proper outcome. Pray for the lives of all our brothers in this cause, for we risk so much in its name. Pray, too, for better weather? This snow gives me a cough.

The candle gutters. I must end this letter, or I shall soon be writing by the fire’s light, which is not enough light for my eyes.

In God’s love, and my own,

Charles

ONE

I

‘The Moon is Lady of this.’

of Privet

Complete Herbal

Culpeper 1653

When they come for me, I will think of the end of the northern ridge, for that’s where I was happiest – with the skies and wind, and the mountains being dark with moss, or dark with the shadow of a cloud moving across them. I will think of how it is when part of a mountain brightens very suddenly, so it is like that rock is chosen by the sun – marked out by sunshine from all the other rocks. It will shine, and then grow dark again. And I’ll stand with my skirts blowing, make my way home. I will have that sunlit rock in me. I will keep it safe.

Or I’ll think of how I ran with the snow coming down. There was no moon, but I saw the morning star, which they say is the devil’s star but it is love’s star, too. It shone, that night – so brightly. And I ran beneath it, thinking let all be well let all be well. Then I saw the land below which was so peaceful, so white and still and sleeping that I thought maybe the star had heard and all was well – no death was coming near. It was a night of beauty, then. For a while, it was the greatest beauty I had ever seen in all my life. My little life.

Or I will think of you.

In my last, quiet moments, I will think of him beside me. How, very softly, he said you…

Some called it a dark place – like there was no goodness to be found inside those hills. But I know there was goodness. I climbed into its snowy heights. I crouched by the loch and drank from it, so my hair was in the water, and I lifted up my head to see the mist come down. On a clear, frosty night, when they said all the wolves were gone, I heard a wolf call from Bidean nam Bian. It was such a long, mournful call that I closed my eyes to hear it. It mourned its own end, I think, or ours – as if it knew. Those nights were like no other nights. The hills were very black, like they were shapes cut out of cloth, and the cloth was dark-blue, starry sky. I knew stars – but not as those stars were.

Those were its nights. And its days were clouds and rocks. Its days were paths in grass, and pulling herbs from soggy places that stained my hands and left their peaty smell on me. I was damp, peat-smelling. Deer trod their ways. I also trod them, or nestled in their hollows and felt their old deer-warmth. I saw what their black deer-eyes had seen, before my own. Those were its days – small things. Like how a river parts around a rock and joins again.

It was not dark. No.

I had to find it – darkness. I had to push rocks from their resting place, or look for it in caves. The summer nights could be so light, so full of light that I curled up like a mouse, hid my eyes beneath my hand so I might find a little dark to sleep inside. It is how I sleep, even now – tucked up.

I will think this way. When my life is ending. I will not think of musket shots or how it smelt by Achnacon. Not of bloodied things.

I will think of the end of the northern ridge. How my hair blew all about me. How I saw the glen go light and dark with clouds, or how he said you’ve changed me, as he stood by my side. I thought this is the place, as I stood there. I thought this is my place – mine, where I was meant for.

It was waiting for me, and I found it, in the end.

I was always for places. I was made for the places where people did not go – like forests, or the soft marshy ground where feet sank down and to walk there made a suck suck sound. Me as a child was often in bogs. I watched frogs, or listened to how rushes were in breezes and I liked that – how they sounded. Which is how I knew what I was.

See? Cora said, smiling.

She was for places too. She trawled her skirts over mud, and wet sand. She was brambled, and fruit-stained, and once she lived in an old waterwheel, upon its soft, green wood. She said she was lonesome there – but what choice did I have? Tell me? Not much. Some people cannot have a peopled life. We try for it. We go to markets, and say hello. We help to bring the hay in, and pick the cider apples from their bee-noisy trees, but it takes very little – a hare, or a strange moon – for hag to come. Whore. They raise an eyebrow, then. They call for ropes to bind us, so that we grow so sad and afraid for our small lives that we turn to empty places – and that makes them say hag even more. She lives on her own. Walks in shadows, I hear…But where else is safe? No towns are. All that was left for Cora was high-up parts, or sunken ones. Places of such wind that trees were bent over, and had no leaves. Normal folk did not go there, so we did – her, and I.

I’ve lived in caves, and woods. My feet have been torn up on thorns. When I crept into towns for eggs or milk they crossed themselves, spat. I know spitting. I know its sound, too, like retching, like a cat pulling up the bones of a bird it ate up whole, all sharp parts in with feathers. They hissed, we know what you are…And did they? They thought they did. In my English life, they took old truths – my snowy birth, how I liked marshy places – and pressed them into proper lies, like how they saw me lift a shoulder up and turn into a crow. I never did that.

I have lived on open land. On moors, in windy weather.

I’ve lived in a hut I made myself, with my own hands – of moss, and branches, and stone. The mountains looked down on me, as I curled up at night.

And now? Now I live here.

In a cell, with chains.

It snows. From the little window, I can see it snows. It’s been months, I think, of snowing – of bluish ice, and cold. Months of clouded breath. I blow, and see my breath roll out and I think

look. That is my life. I am still living.

I like it – snow. I always did. I was born in a sharp, hard-earth December, as the church folk sang about three wise men and a star through their chattering teeth. Cora said that the weather you are born in is yours, all your life – your own weather. You will shine brightest in snowstorms she told me. Oh yes…I believed her – for she was born in thunder, and was always stormy-eyed.

So snow and cold is mine. And I have known some winters. I’ve heard fish knock beneath their ice. I’ve seen a trapdoor freeze so it could not go bang, though they still took the man’s life away, in the end. Once, in these high Scottish passes, I made a hole in the drifts with my own hands, and crept inside, so soldiers ran past not knowing I crouched in it. This saved my life, I think. I’m a hardy thing. People die from the cold, but I haven’t. I’ve not had blue skin, not once – a man said it was the evil fire in me that kept me warm, and bind that harlot up. But it was no evil fire. I was just born in snowy weather and had to be hardy to stay living. I wanted to live, in this life. So I grew strong, and did.

Winter is an empty season, too. Safer. For who wanders out on frosty nights, or drifty white mornings? Not many, and none by choice. In my travelling days, with my grey mare and north-and-west in my head, I might see no one for days. Just us, galloping. Me and the mare, with snowflakes in our manes. And when we did see people, it was mostly desperate ones – gypsies, clawing for nuts, or broken men. Drunks. A thief or two. And foxes, running from the hunter’s gun with that look in their eyes – that wild, dread look, which I know. Once I found some people kneeling in a gloomy Scottish wood – they took Christ’s body into their mouths, and a priest was there, saying church things. I watched, and thought, why here? And at night? I did not understand. I have never understood much on God, or politics. But I know these kneeling folk were Covenanters, which is a gunpowder word. They could be killed, for praying – which is why they did it in woods, at night.

And I passed a lone girl, once. She was my age, or less. We met in some Lowland trees, in the early hours, and we slowed, brushed hands. We looked on each other for a moment or two, with be careful in our eyes – be safe, and wise. For who else is as hated as we are? Who is more lonesome, than ones called witch? Briefly, we both had a friend. But we were hunted creatures – her, the fox and I. So I took the path she had come by, and she took my old path.

Witch. Like a shadow, it is never far.

There are other names, too – hag, and whore. Wicked piece. Harlot is common, also, and such names are too cruel to tie upon a dog – but they’ve been tied, easily, on me. I drag them. Vile matter once, like I was a fluid hawked up in the street – like I was not even human. I cried after that. In the market, once, Cora was Devil’s hole.

But witch…

The oldest name. The worst. I know its thick, mud-weight. I know the mouth’s shape when it says it. I reckon it’s the most hated word of all – more hated than Highland, or Papist is. Some won’t say William like it’s poison – I know many people don’t want him to be King. But he is King, for now. And I was always witch.

That December birth of mine was a troubled one. My mother bled too much, and cursed, and she roared so long that her throat split in two, like it can in painful times. Her roar had two voices – one hers, and one the Devil’s, or so said the folk who heard it from the church. I fell out to this sound. I slipped out upon the glinting, blue-eyed earth, beneath a starry sky, and she laughed. She wept, and laughed at me. Said my life would be like this – cold, hard, outdoors.

Witch she said, weeping.

She was the first to say it.

Later, at daybreak, she gave me my proper name.

I say it – look. Witch…And my breath clouds so the word is white, rolls out.

I have tried to not mind it. I’ve tried so hard.

I have tried to say it does not hurt, and smile. And I can reason that witch has been a gift, in its way – for look at my life…Look at the beauty that witch has brought me to. Such pink-sky dawns, and waterfalls, and long, grey beaches with a thundering sea, and look what people I met – what people! I’ve met some sovereign lives. I’ve met wise, giving, spirited lives which I would not have done, without witch. What love it showed me, too. No witch, and I would not have met the man who made me think him, him, him – all the time. Him, who tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. Him who said you…

Alasdair.

Witch did that. So maybe it’s been worth it all, in the end.

I wait for my death. I think him, and wonder how many days I have left to think it in. I turn my hands over, and stare. I feel my bones under my skin – my shins, my little hips – and wonder what will happen to them when I’m gone.

I wonder plenty.

Like who will remember me? Who knows my true name – my full one? For witch is what they will shout, as I’m dying. Witch as the dark sky is filled with fiery light.

It is like I have lived many lives. This is what I tell myself – many lives. Four of them. Some folk have one life and know no other, which is fine, and maybe it’s the best way of it – but it’s not what I was meant for. I was a leaf blown all over.

Four lives, like there are seasons.

Which was the best of them? I would live them all again, for all had their goodnesses. I would like to be back in the cottage by the burn, with cats asleep in the eaves. Or to walk in the thick elm wood – which was dappled, full of grubs. Cora called it a healer’s friend, for she found most of her cures in there. It was where I undid my shoulder for the first time, and where the best pheasants were for catching and eating, which sometimes we did.

Or I would like to be back in my second life. My second life was like flying. It was empty lands, and wind, and mud on my face from her hooves. I loved that grey mare. My fingers were knotted into her mane as she galloped over miles and miles, snorting and throwing up earth. I held on, thinking go! Go!

But it’s my third life I would like again, most of all. My glen one. I lived it too briefly – it was too short a life. Yet it’s the best I’ve known – for where else did I see my reflection and think you are where you should be – at last. And where else were there people who did not mind me, and let me be? They pressed a cup into my hand, said drink. They left hens by my hut, as thank you, and raised a hand in greeting, and I had craved that all my lonesome life. All I’d deeply wanted was love, and human friends. To stand in a crowd and think these are my kind. My people. That was my third life.

And my fourth one is this one – in here.

Yes I’m for places, mostly. But it is because they made me so – the ones who eyed me, and did not trust herbs or a grey-eyed girl. They made me for places, by hissing witch. They sent me up, up, into the airy parts.

But the truth is that I wish I could have been with people more – with those Highlanders who never minded filthy hands, or tangles, or my English voice, and who slowed to look at geese flying south, like I did.

So I am for places – wind, and trees.

But I am for good, kind people most of all.

Like Alasdair. Cora. The Chief of that clan, who is dead now.

I think, too, of Gormshuil. I think of how she was, the night before the murders – how she put her hand near my cheek, but not on it, as if she was afraid of touching me. She said there is blood coming – but she said more than that. A man will find you. A man will come to you, and see your iron wrists, your small feet. He will write of things – such things…

What were those words? I brushed them away. I thought it was henbane talking, or some half-had dream. I saw Gormshuil in the falling snow, and shook my head. No…My wrists? I looked down upon them and thought they are pink, and flesh. They are fine. It was the herb – surely. Her teeth were green with it.

But blood was spilled, in Glencoe, like she said. Blood did come.

A man will find you.

I hear these words, now.

Who says them? I say them. I say Gormshuil’s words, and I remember how she looked at me. I see the deep lines on her face which loss had made, and the scalp beneath her snow-wet hair. I wonder if she is also dead. Perhaps she is. But I think she still lives on that blustery peak.

A man will find you. Iron wrists.

Some things we know. We hear them, and think I know – like we’ve always had the knowledge waiting in ourselves. And I know. She was right. There was a light in her when she said iron wrists – a wide, astonished light, as if she’d never been so sure. Like how a deer is, when it lifts its head and sees you, and is scared – for it knows you are real, and breathing, and that you’ve crouched there all this while.

So I wait. With my shackles, and dirt.

I wait, and he comes. A man I’ve never met is riding to my cell.

When I tuck up in the straw, I stare into the dark and see my other lives. I see the bogs, the glen. But I also see his face.

His spectacles.

His neat, buckled shoes, and leather case.

The Eagle Inn

Stirling

Jane

I write this letter from Stirling. It is poor ink so forgive the poorer hand. Forgive, too, my bad humour. My supper was barely a crumb and my bed is damp from the cold, or the previous sleeper. What’s more, I was hoping to be further north by now, but the weather remains unkind. We’ve kept to the lower roads. We lost a horse two days ago, which has stolen hours, or days, from us. It’s a wildly unsatisfactory business.

Let me go back a while – you shall know each part, as a wife should.

I left Edinburgh on Friday, which seems many months gone. I am indebted to a gentleman who lent me a sturdy cob and some funds – though I cannot give his name. I hate to withhold truths from you, but it may endanger him to write much more; I will simply say he is powerful, respected and sympathetic to our cause. Indeed, I glimpsed an embroidered white rose on his coat, which we all know says Jacobite. We drank to King James’ health and his speedy return – for he will return. We are few in number, Jane, but we are strong.

My thoughts were to make for a place named Inverlochy, on the Scottish north-west coast. It has a fort, and a settlement. Also it is a mere day’s journey from this ruined Glen of Coe. The gentleman assured me that its governor, a Colonel Hill, is kindly, and wise, and I might find lodgings with him – but I fear the snow prevents this. I travel with two servants who speak of thick blizzards on the moor that lies between the fort and here. They’re surly men, and locals. As I write they are in the town’s dens, drinking. I don’t trust them. I’m minded to insist we take this snowy route, no matter – for we have ridden this far through such weather. But I cannot risk another horse. Nor can I serve God if I perish on Rannoch Moor.

So tomorrow, our journey takes us west. Inverlochy must wait.

We are headed, now, for the town of Inverary – a small, Campbell town on the shores of Loch Fyne. The coast has a milder climate, I hear. I also hear the Campbells are a strong and wealthy people – I hope for a warmer bed than this one that Stirling provides. There, we might fatten our horses and ourselves, and rest, and wait for the thaw. It sounds a decent resting place. But I must be wary, Jane – these Campbells are William’s men. They are loyal to him, and support him – they would not take kindly to my cause. They’d call it treachery, or worse. So I must hide my heart, and hold my tongue.

Wretched weather. My cough is thicker and I worry my chilblains might come back. Do you remember how I suffered from them in our first married winter? I would not wish for them again.

I feel far from you. I feel far from Ireland. Also, from like-minded men – I write to them in London, asking for their help, in words or in funds to assist me, but I hear nothing from them. Perhaps this weather slows those letters. Perhaps it slows these letters to you.

Forgive me. I am maudlin tonight. It is hunger that troubles me – for food, for warmth, for a little hope in these hopeless times. For you, too, my love. I think of you reading this by the fire, in Glaslough, and I wish I could be with you. But I must serve God.

Dear Jane. Keep warm and dry.

I will endeavour to do the same, and shall write to you from Inverary. It may be an arduous journey, so do not expect a letter in haste. But have patience, as you have other virtues – for a letter will come.

In God’s love, as always,

Charles

II

‘The black seed also [helps] such as in their sleep are troubled with the disease called Ephilates or Incubus, but we do commonly call it the Night-mare.’

of Peony

There are ones who wait for me. I know this. I know, too, who they are. They are the ones whose hearts were like my own – wild, unfettered hearts. Cora’s heart was wildest – rushing like clouds can do – and she waits. So does her mother, who I never met, but I know she is tiny and has pondweed in her hair. Mrs Fothers, too – for I once saw her looking at the evening star, and she wept at it, and I thought her heart is like my heart. So I reckon she is waiting.

There is the plum-faced man. It was his heart which killed him in the end, I think, for it was a tired heart when I knew him – and that was years ago. Also, the boy I found crouching, who feared the baying dogs, waits patiently for me. So does our pig. I wish I’d never killed him, with his velvety snout, but I did, and now he waits for me as if he never minded dying. He waits, flaps his ears.

And my mare. My speckled, big-rumped mare who I loved, and loved, and loved. I see her looking at me and I think I love my speckled mare.

And them – of course. The MacDonalds of Glencoe – or the ones I could not save. The newly dead Scots men who wait in a line with their fresh musket wounds sealed up, and their skin uncut, and they will say my name as I cross to them – not witch, not Sassenach.

These are the lives I’ve loved, who are dead now. Their bodies are worms – but their souls are free, and in the other, airy world. The realm, Cora called it – where we all go, one day. Our death is a door we must pass through, and it seemed a good thing by how she spoke of it. Calm, and good. Part of life – which it is.

But I was wrong to think it was calm. Or I was wrong to think it always happened that way. I was a child, with a child’s mind, and I thought all deaths were by lying down, closing our eyes, and a sigh. I thought that sigh would be lifted by the wind, and carried. But no. Only when I killed the pig and it squealed did I think it can hurt. Be bloody, and sad. That was an awful lesson I learnt. After it, I was wiser. Cora said my eyes turned a darker shade of grey.

It can hurt. Yes.

And I have seen more hurtful deaths than I’ve seen gentle ones. There was the nest which fell, and all those little feathered lives were licked up by the cats. In Hexham, a man was put in stocks and had stones thrown at him until he was dead – and for what? Not much, most likely. Also, there was Widow Finton, and I don’t know how she died, but it took a week to know that she was gone – they smelt the smell, and found her. A door we must pass through? I believe that part. I believe it, for I have seen souls lift up and move away. But not all deaths are peaceful. They are lucky, who get those.

We do not get them. Peaceful deaths.

Not us who have hag as a name.

Why should we? When they say we worship the devil and eat dead babes? When we steal milk by wishing it? We have no easy ends. For my mother’s mother, they used the ducking stool. All the town was watching as she bobbed like a holey boat, and then sank under. I imagined it, in my infant days – out in the marshes with the frogs and swaying reeds. I crouched until my nose was in the water and I could not breathe, and I thought she died this way, and would it have been a simple death? A painless one? I doubted it. I coughed reeds up. Cora grabbed me, cursed me and plucked frogspawn from my hair.

Then there are the twirling deaths. Like the ones the Mossmen had. I saw these ones – how they put the rope on you like a crown that is too big, and your hands are double-tied. Like you are King, the crowds hiss or cheer. And then there is the bang, and maybe some go quickly but I’ve seen the heels drumming, and I’ve thought what sadness. What huge sadness there is, in the world.

And pricking. A dreadful word.

That is a fate they save only for us – for witch and whore. I’ve been afraid of the pricking men for all my life, for Cora was. She shook when she spoke of them. She made herself small, and hid. Part of a witch does not bleed, she whispered – or so the church says. So men prod our women with metal pins, seeking it…I asked her how big? Are the pins? And she held out her hands, like this – like how fishermen do, when telling their tales.

A door, Cora said, that we must pass through.

Yes.

But why these ways? Why with such pain in them? I wish we could all find a high-up place with clouds and air, and close our eyes, and find a heavy sleep – and that would be our deaths. No ropes or pins. No crowds, or spit. Just the wind, and a knowing that the ones you love are safe, that you’ll be remembered fondly, and all’s as it should be.

That’s the death I’d choose.

But I cannot choose. It is chosen for me. It has been picked, like fruit.

Why fire?

I asked the gaoler this. I asked the man who came to see my wounds, and staunch them up. I asked the one called Stair who has always hated witch. I said why fire? Why? Please not by fire…And Stair watched me for a while, through the bars. I pleaded with him. I rambled, begged. But he picked at his teeth, turned slowly on his heel and left this room saying, I think fire is best. Such cold weather…It would warm the town up – don’t you think?

I shook the bars. I banged my iron wrists on the bars, and kicked at my pail. I screamed not by fire! Not that way! And come back! Come back! Come back! Come back!

I shook, and shook.

I heard my words echo and his footsteps die away.

So it will be by fire. Outside, they gather wood. I hear them drag it through the snow, and the nails going in. Inside, I look at my skin. I see its scars and freckles. I feel my bones, and I roll the skin upon my knees so that the bones beneath them clunk – back and fro. I follow where my veins run along my arm and hands. I touch the tender places – inside my legs, my belly. The pink, wrinkled skin between my toes.

The realm. Where they are waiting.

I love them – Cora, the plum-faced one.

But I do not want to join them. Not yet, and not this way.

I am fretful, tonight. Afraid.

Tonight, I breathe too quickly. I walk up and down, up and down. I run my fist along the bars so that my knuckles hurt, and bleed – but the hurt says I am living, that my body still has blood in it and works like it should do. I talk to myself so my breath comes out – white, white – and when I sit, tucked up, I hold my feet very tightly and I rock myself like children do when they have plenty on their minds. I try to say hush now to me, to calm me, but it doesn’t work. I press my eyes into my knees, and tell myself that my mother is waiting for me, and my mare, the Highland men, and won’t it be nice to see her again? So hush now, I say, stroking myself.

I have been so afraid that I have retched on me. It made me cry. In my hair, and on my skirts, and I looked upon my hands, and when the gaoler saw it he spat, said ah the devil’s in you, right enough. Foul wretch…like he was all manners himself, all clean – and he’s never been clean. I tried to tidy myself. I tried to quieten down – but I was so afraid, that night. I cried, and hugged myself, and vomited again.

Above all, I’m afraid of the pain. For surely it hurts? Surely it is a pain beyond all knowing, and a slow death, too? And such a lonesome one. Fire…And when I think it, it makes me wrap my arms about me, and I wail. My wail has an echo. I hear the echo, and think poor, poor creature, to make such a sound – for it is a desperate, dying sound. It is the wail of such a mauled and mangled thing, with no hope left, no light. No friend.

I pull at my chains. Don’t let me die.

Don’t let it be by burning.

I rock back and forth like this.

Still. I have a comfort. It is small, but I have it – I whisper it into cupped hands.

People live because of me.

They do. They live because I saved them – because I listened to my soul’s voice, to the song of my bones, the words of the world. I listened to my womb, my belly, my breasts. My instinct. The howling wolf in me. And I told them make for Appin! And go! Go! And they went. I watched them running in the snow, with their skirts hitched up, and their children strapped on tightly, and I thought yes – be safe. Live long lives.

There. It comforts me. It takes the fear away, and makes my breath slow down. When they tie me to the wood, I will say I have saved lives, and it will be a comfort and I will not mind the flames. For what if that’s the cost? My life for their lives? What if the world asks for that – for my small life, with its lonely hours, in return for the lives of three hundred, or more? I will pay it. If it means they are living, and if it means the stag still treads the slopes, and the herrings still flash themselves in the loch in summer, and if it means the people still play their pipes and still tell their stories of Fionn and his dogs, and the Lord of the Isles, and if the heather still shakes in the wind, and if it means that he – him, him, with hair like how wet hillside is – is still living, and mending, then I will pay it. I will.

Does he live? I think he does. In my darkest hours I worry he is dead – but I think he lives. I see him by the sea. On his side, he has the poultice of horsetail and comfrey, and he unpeels it. He sees he is healing, smiles, thinks Corrag…He presses the poultice back on.

See? I am calm now. I can see his dark-red hair.

I must sleep. It partly seems a waste of final hours, of breath. But even as I think of life, and love, and the stag with his fine branches, I have Gormshuil in my head – how she said a man will come.

I think he comes tomorrow. My days grow less and less.

Let him come. Let him do his purpose, even if it hurts. Even if it’s pins, or his turn to say whore, or hag. For I am still living. Ones I love are still living, and so what pain can come to me? What is there to fear?

Lives mean far more than deaths ever do. It is what we remember – the life. Not how they died, but how warm and bright-eyed they were, and how they lived their lives.

The Argyll Inn

Inverary

26th February

Darling Jane

You will be glad, I think, to see where I write this from. I have made it safely to the town of Inverary – though there were times in our journey when I doubted that we would. It was arduous, my love. It was wild with blizzards. We passed such dark, desolate water, and the wind howled like a demon at night. I thought of the stitched kneeler my mother made – remember? It says ‘So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”’ (Hebrews 13.6) – and it is His doing alone, His loving care, which brought us to Inverary, in the end.

It is an attractive town, despite the weather. Placed on the edge of Loch Fyne, it has an air of money and civility which is welcome at this time. My lodgings here are warm, and dry. They are by the water, in a coaching inn which seems lively by day and more so at night. My rooms have a fire, and a window which looks out across the loch and its clinking ice (I take a rather childish pleasure in seeing such coldness, whilst I am warm. I write this, and see the blueness) and I wonder at the hardiness of these people, who live amongst such mountains and wind. The Campbells are also generous men. Their allegiance may not be my own, but I have eaten well in this inn, and our two remaining horses which have served us so well seem as happy as I am for the food and rest. I confess to being better in my spirits than I was. I have even eaten venison, Jane. I am still picking my teeth from it, but it is a good, restorative meat.

On to my purpose.

I have heard plenty of Glencoe. In the corners of the inn, it is all they speak about. I dined, and overheard such things that chilled me – the Chief, they say, was shot as he rose from his bed. His lady wife was injured in such a manner that she died, naked, out in the snow. Her rings, I hear, were bitten from her hands, so that her hands were mauled most savagely. Dreadful, despicable deeds.

I know this from my landlord. You’d smile, I think, at him – he has the reddest hair I’ve ever known, and red cheeks. He brims with words, and I have been in Inverary for a mere afternoon – four hours, at most! – yet he has already accosted me more than once. Even as I arrived I felt his stealth. He said, staying long? I replied that I, like all travellers, am at the Lord’s mercy, and that He and the weather will decide on my length of stay. I think he will pry, Jane. But this may prove of use, in its way. For if he pries with me, does he not pry with others? He may know plenty, in time.

Thinking this, I asked very casually, is that infamous glen in these parts?

How he liked that! He came near, said aye, what remains of it. Burnt and butchered, it was. His eyes blackened, and he leant closer in. Mark me, he said – it is no loss. Those that were cut down in that glen will not be missed…He caught himself then – for I am a stranger to him, so he said what is your name, sir? You have not given it.

May God forgive me, Jane – for I spoke falsely. With my true purpose in mind, I did not give my own name – rather, I fashioned a name from scraps that we know. I used, my love, your unmarried name. For what if they had heard of me? And my teachings? And my Jacobite ways? I could not risk the townsfolk learning where my sympathies lie.

Charles Griffin, I told him. Reverend.

Reverend? And what is your purpose? You are far from home, friend.

I said I’ve come to spread the Lord’s loving word in the northern, lawless parts. For I hear the Highlands are full of sin.

They are! To the north of here? Catholics and criminals, dishonest men…He polished his glass, shook his head. Brimful with cruelty and barbarous ways. They shame us! And, he said, a finger raised, the north is full of traitors. Ones who plot against the King.

William?

Aye, King William. God protect him. Thank the Lord he came across – a well-named revolution, was it not?

I took a sip of my ale. I would call it far from glorious, but did not say so.

He said do you know of the witch?

I was surprised at this – who would not be? I swallowed, said, no. I know that this country – indeed, our own – has been troubled in the past times with the matter of witches, and other black deeds on which I do not choose to dwell. But this was brazen talk. He said there’s one here in Inverary. She is chained up in the tollbooth for her malicious ways. I hear, he said, she crawls with lice, and her teeth are gone. She faces her death for her evil. Sir, she was in Glencoe…

Jane. My dearest.

We have spoken of this matter in the past, you and I – in the gardens in Glaslough, by the willow tree. Do you remember? You wore the blue shawl that makes your eyes bluer, and I talked of enchantment – so we spoke of witchcraft, by that tree. I know we disagreed. Men of my faith and profession know of it – of the Devil’s work. We know there are folk who serve him – perhaps not by choice, but they do. It is bedevilment, and a threat to a safe and civil nation. Some say no one who meddles in such a way must be allowed to live, and so must be purged by fire or water, for their own sake. Plenty think this. You know that I am with them? That such women cannot be endured? It worries you, I know – my feeling on this. But do we not have enough foes at this time, Jane? Do we not have enough to fight against – other faiths, and false kings, and wars – without being troubled by such Devil-lovers too? Who truly knows their power? If there is a God, there is a Devil – and there are both, as we know. There is enough wickedness, my love, in this world. It favours the pure parts of it to rid ourselves of the black.

I know your heart. I remember. Your blue eyes filled with water. You do not believe in witch, or rather you don’t trust the men who call it out – I know. You think such women are ill, perhaps. That they suffer delusions, or grief, or fear men. You said you felt sorry for such creatures – in your blue shawl, beneath the willow tree.

I love that trusting part of you – that faith in ones you have not met.

But there is evil, Jane, in this world – I promise it. It casts its darkness everywhere. It hopes to choke virtue, and decency, and I will spend my life fighting to prevent this – as my father did. There is a righteous path. My life’s purpose is to return all men to it – for us to walk, once more, in God’s light.

I hope I stay briefly in this town. It is merely a resting place, before I head north to this ravaged glen. This witch was there, my love. She was at the murders, and saw them with her eyes. I am not keen to visit her, or to spend time with such a cankered, godless piece – nor do I wish to get her lice. But I must remember my cause. If she was at these deaths then she must have her uses. She will have seen the red-coats – and any word, even a witch’s, is a better word than none.

It is late. Past midnight – my pocket watch tells me so. I will conclude this letter with assuring you how much I miss you. They are small words. But to look out of my window is to see Loch Fyne, and the sea, and I look west across it, which makes me think of you. I tell myself that Ireland is across that water. You are across it, and our boys, all that I love in the world beside God.

Keep strong. I know my absence asks much of you, and you endure a hardship by being alone. Forgive me. I ask this, but I know that I am forgiven already, for your faith and love of God is as mine is. I have slept in damp beds and I will talk to witches for His glory and for James, but I also think of you as I do it. I hope I make you proud.

It still snows. I might grumble at it, but it looks soft and beautiful with you, my wife, in mind.

My love to you, from across Loch Fyne, and all that is between us.

Charles

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