Corrag. Susan Fletcher

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ