Corrag. Susan Fletcher

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СКАЧАТЬ one – a man with his own lice who looked at the wound where the musket caught me. He said it was healing so fast it was the Horned One’s work – which it wasn’t, of course. It was horsetail with some comfrey boiled up and pressed on. He might do well from comfrey himself, for he had very rank sores from his lice. One was all pus and will only grow worse. He was no true doctor.

      And then there were the rest. The townsfolk from Inverary who just wanted to see – to see and smell a witch, a Devil’s whore. They threw stones through the bars at me. They pressed pennies into the gaoler’s hands as they left, and handkerchiefs to their noses, and I reckon I’ve fed him well. He must have bought many bottles with what he’s made from that witch who was in that damned glen.

       She was there? In Glencoe?

       Aye. Saw it all, they say. They say she knelt and did her spells there.

       Called in the Devil?

       Oh aye. All that blood and murder…The Devil was there, right enough.

      A man called Stair, as well. He has come. He has sat where you are sitting now. He looked upon me as a wolf looks on a thing it has stalked too long, but has now.

      That is all I have to say on him.

      Reverend Charles Leslie. I feel I know your name.

      Leslie – like the wind in the trees, or the sea coming in…

      I saw you flinch at witch.

      Oh it’s a dark word, for certain. It has caused its damage across the months and years. Many good people have been undone by it – married and unmarried, beautiful, and strange. Women. Men.

      What did you have, in your head? With witch?

      I know that all people have a certain creature in their head, when they hear it – a woman, mostly. Pitch-dark and cruel, crooked with age. Did you think she will be mad, this witch? I might be. It’s been said. I prattle, I play with my hands and bring them up to my face when I speak like this, as a mouse may with its paws as it eats or cleans itself. My voice is shrill and girlish – this has been called proof, for they say the devil took my lower voice away and ate it up to make his own voice deeper. Which is a lie, of course. I am small, so my voice is small, too – that’s all.

      And spells? Oh they’ve tried to pin a thousand things on me – a splinter in a finger, or an owl swooping in. They pinned even more on my mother, but she was a wilder one than me, and beautiful, and brave. A calf with a star on its forehead was her doing, and so were the twins which were as alike as shoes. Cora said, once, that a black cock crowed by a church door so they took it and buried it – the cock, not the door. Buried it alive, too, so that she heard its scrabbles as they held it down. The Devil sent it to us, they hissed. And later that night, Cora unburied the cock with frantic hands, but it was too late – it was earthy, and dead. She buried it again but gently, and in a better, secret place.

      I hated that story. That poor cock which did no harm – it was just black, and passing by. But Cora said all people bury what it is they fear – so it cannot hurt them. So it is kept from them, locked up in the earth or in the sea.

      Does it work? I asked her. Burying a feared thing?

      She pursed her lips. Maybe. If it is done justly, and with an honest, hopeful heart – which it wasn’t with that rooster, I can promise you that. She shook her head, sighed. That was a waste of a fine, cockerel life…

      So what townsfolk say we do and what we truly do are very different things. I have cast no spells. I’ve never plucked out gizzards or howled at moons. I’ve never turned into a bird, skimmed a night-time loch, or settled on ships to make them drown. I’ve not kissed obscenely or eaten dead babes, and I don’t have a third teat, and nor do I laugh like broth when it’s left to boil over and ruin the fire, and ruin itself for the broth tastes bitter, then. I’ve never seen the future in a rotten egg. I never laughed at murders, or called murders in.

      I’ve not summoned anything. I’ve only asked – prayed.

      Pray. Yes. I use that word, too. I pray – not in church and with no Bible, but otherwise I reckon it’s probably like how you pray, which is with the heart’s voice talking, not the mouth’s.

      Devil child, they’ve called me. Evil piece.

      But Mr Leslie, I will tell you this. When witch was first thrown at me, as I passed through a market, Cora led me by the hand to an alleyway and sat me down, and wiped my wet eyes, and said listen to me. The only evil in the world is the one that lies in people – in their pride, and greed, and duty. Remember that.

      And from what I have seen of this world, this life, I think she was right.

      My telling? Of Glencoe?

      Mine?

      Why mine? There are others who, I’m sure, could tell you more. If you are after the truth of that night, of the snowy glen murders, then go to them that survived it. Go to them who live to bury those that do not, and ask for their stories. They know more than me, on many things – like who killed The MacIain, and who ran his wife through. Whose voice said find his damned cubs!

      Why mine? And here, too, is a question, Mr Leslie – why do you want to know at all? No one else has asked. No others care that so many people died in the glen. They were MacDonalds. Why grieve for MacDonalds? is what they say – for they stole cattle. Burnt homes. Ate their foe.

       Barbarous clan.

       The gallows herd.

       Glencoe? A dark place…

      I think most are glad that those people were stabbed, and robbed. Like they deserved what happened to them – for their outdoors life, and their language, and their dress were all a blight on the nation, a canker in the rose. So Lowlanders say. So Stair says, and the Campbells. So does this Orange Dutchman who seems to be king.

      King…That brightens you.

      I reckon it’s a word to hang with hag and law – a fiery word which can kill a man, if whispered wrongly, or in the wrong ear. But most folk like it. Most folk have a man they call king, and fight for – and such fighting…Two men, with two different faiths, and look what that does! It splits up the world. It makes nations narrow their eyes at themselves, and seethe.

      Always eyes and ears, in the dark.

      James is your fellow, I think.

      Jacobite? I know the word. The MacDonald men were those – that Jacobite clan. Those wretched papists in Glencoe. They wanted what you want, sir – to have James sail back from France and take his throne again, and for all to be as God meant it to be. They fought for that. They went to Killiecrankie and flew his flag, and killed William’s men, and rallied, and sang, and plotted against the Dutchman in their wild, blustery glen, and I was asked by them who is your king, English thing? Whose flag do you stand under? That was in the Chief’s house. There were beeswax candles, and a dog with its head on its paws. And I said I didn’t have a flag – that nobody ruled me. I said I don’t have a king.

      That brought a silence СКАЧАТЬ