Corrag. Susan Fletcher

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       III

       ‘This is a common but very neglected plant. It contains very great virtues.’

      of Comfrey

      The gaoler knows me now.

      He knows how I talk in the dark. How small I can be when I curl myself up – so small that he thinks I’ve done magick, and gone. Filthy witch he says, when he finds me. I hope they do you slowly…I’ll be there to warm myself.

      But I also know him. I know his sideways eye, and that chickweed would help the leaf-dry skin on his hands that flakes when he moves. Those hands get worse in this weather. I know he drinks – for his breath is all whisky and old meat, and I’ve heard him snoring when there is daylight outside, or at least a paler sky than night. I think whisky is his best thing of all. I know his footsteps, too. I know he has a limp, so he drags his left leg. No one else walks like that – like the sea coming in. Also, his keys jangle. It is the only music I hear in this tollbooth – no birdsong, no pipes. Just his keys, and his heavy left leg.

      I know the sound of him, walking.

      This isn’t him walking.

      These are the footsteps of a man who is not him.

      Come in. Sit down?

      I see that look that you give.

      They all give me that look, as soon as they see me for the first time. It’s my size, I think – how small I am? I know I am tiny. I’ve been called mouse and little bird, and bairn, though I’m none of these things. The doctor came in and could not see me in the gloom. He was cross, shouted there is no prisoner in here! And then I shifted my chains so that they clinked, and I whispered to him oh there is…

      Come in from the door. See how locked up I am? Most of the thieves they put here do not wear chains like I do. They are put behind bars, and that’s all. But I have chains because of witch – they think I might turn into a wind, and blow myself away. Or make myself a frog, and hop out through the door. But also, I am chained because of my smallness – my arms like twigs, and my thin body. Stair said I might slip through the bars, so chain her. Shackle her up, and tightly! This one mustn’t go.

      Therefore come in from the door. I cannot hurt you.

      There is a stool, by that wall.

      I knew a woman who dreamt of you. She was half-mad, and as tall as a man can be. In a light, soft snow when the snow did not fall, but lingered in the air, she spoke of you to me. A man she said. After the bloodshed, he will come to you. She talked of my iron wrists, and called you neatly done. She did not talk of spectacles but I imagined them, and I am also right about your shiny buckled shoes. About your wig’s tight curls.

      What a look you give. The look I know.

      It says damned slattern. Keep away from me.

      So I knew you would come. Gormshuil was her name. She had the second sight, though I did not always believe what she said, for she loved her henbane too much to trust her words. Once, she put her finger to my chest and said a wife! As if she saw one in me – that I might become a wife. I told her no…I shook my head, stepped back, but she sang the word as she drifted away – wife! wife! through the glen.

      That’s the henbane for you – as strong a herb as I know. Too much can kill you, and speedily too. But I believed her when she told me, sir, of you.

      It’s your purpose for coming that I don’t know.

      Others have come. You are not the first, sir, to sit on that stool, or frown at the walls. Several have come. And their reasons have been so plentiful, and strange, that it is like plucking herbs – none are the same. To save my soul from Hell’s unending fires, is one. I think my soul is fine, but many try it – to make me speak of God and repent my wicked ways. There were belches from the priest who came to me, like croakings from a toad. He talked to me like all churchmen do, which is like I’m not human, or at best a simple one. Are you a churchman? I see the cross about your neck, and your dislike of me has a high, Godly air. I reckon a thousand Bible words live in your head, and are spoken very solemnly. But save my soul? Maybe not. You don’t sit like the others did. You don’t stare as hard. The priest belched, and stared so intently that I stared back and he hated that – a staring witch-called piece, he said. And he hated my talking. I know I can talk. But I don’t see many people so I talk plenty when I do.

      He called me harlot, and quarrelsome, too. Said my chatter disrespected him, and that the day I was burnt like a hog on a spit would be a good day.

      So I get them – churchy ones. Who think that by cursing me they are better men.

      And lawmen. They have come. But what law is that? I’ve seen no trial, sir. I’ve seen no proper fairness – for when did fairness say its name in law? None of our women ever heard it. If a bird squawks as much as once then cook the bird, or drown it, or maybe string it up and kick away the stool, so it may not squawk again – that is the law. Law, I think, is like hag – it is said so much we are blind to it. Its heart, which is the truest part, is lost, and a wicked lie sits in its heart-shaped place. I’m not the squawking kind, and never was. But that’s no matter. Here I am – chained СКАЧАТЬ