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Corrag
Susan Fletcher
A novel from Susan Fletcher, author of the bestselling Eve Green and Oystercatchers.The Massacre of Glencoe happened at 5am on 13th February 1692 when thirty-eight members of the Macdonald clan were killed by soldiers who had enjoyed the clan's hospitality for the previous ten days. Many more died from exposure in the mountains.Fifty miles to the south Corrag is condemned for her involvement in the Massacre. She is imprisoned, accused of witchcraft and murder, and awaits her death. The era of witch-hunts is coming to an end - but Charles Leslie, an Irish propagandist and Jacobite, hears of the Massacre and, keen to publicise it, comes to the tollbooth to question her on the events of that night, and the weeks preceding it. Leslie seeks any information that will condemn the Protestant King William, rumoured to be involved in the massacre, and reinstate the Catholic James.Corrag agrees to talk to him so that the truth may be known about her involvement, and so that she may be less alone, in her final days. As she tells her story, Leslie questions his own beliefs and purpose - and a friendship develops between them that alters both their lives.In Corrag, Susan Fletcher tells us the story of an epic historic event, of the difference a single heart can make - and how deep and lasting relationships that can come from the most unlikely places.
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 (#uf1d3e578-127b-571a-8fe7-65288d21bd4a)
Title Page (#u77d101dc-2fdf-545a-931f-fb3ccab80016)
Dedication (#u72b2e7f3-e0b3-582b-bbd7-757552044dd3)
Epigraph (#u8794cfbc-2bc6-5d3d-8b1e-5117eb2bc75f)
Map (#uba00cb6b-1210-507f-8bd3-6f0051ff424a)
Letter (#u97af6b09-9cfb-5746-b573-575f241cb07e)
One (#ue2962b83-b4fa-5740-bcae-3b6d86721032)
I (#ua7f9783a-b80f-5a79-9fb9-06f512ff0c51)
II (#u3697d4ca-7eda-5f2e-aed0-a14f59a078df)
III (#uc263bf66-6d52-535a-ad37-fe3c3aefd7b0)
Two (#u4048e680-d770-5485-b0d1-3780dfe80c23)
I (#u835a4531-7379-5fec-b6f6-09554de793bc)
II (#u4919b045-d2c3-5061-98de-a8b8706f06b3)
III (#u28b25964-62ec-5f77-b509-274bd30443c6)
IV (#u108751ca-f755-5cb8-850d-a26bf3fbdf33)
Three (#u00fa68c7-9984-5ab8-b867-8143c7532832)
I (#u79bc39c6-fd00-526f-b038-4f459ad4fc76)
II (#ub59fe010-0c19-5731-865c-81fd54979116)
III (#u9826e65d-2372-582c-a239-0c73497000e3)
IV (#uca356a70-82c3-52ee-a773-3710f7e6e8ab)
V (#u4572d87f-34cf-53cd-b638-0fe9635054f6)
VI (#u12b869a7-d12b-5859-978b-a9442a92836a)
VII (#uc5145c3a-a7ef-57f8-98df-760768579cee)
VIII (#u7c96775d-706a-5d7a-bf49-9c99f7591f32)
IX (#uc2f144a7-0872-5c53-8881-d70b4506b1b8)
X (#udc7e7b64-099c-5f17-bbee-a7ebef9c5576)
Four (#uab8f22fa-e62c-5605-bebe-c683b25ea012)
I (#u484af76a-350d-58a7-a331-f82e2408ad9c)
II (#ube205148-a1ae-5429-bf85-e99c0add42f7)
Five (#u659a64b5-87b4-567b-94f2-3ceaaa8924a9)
Letter (#uaf8906e0-f798-57d5-b636-457a0750562a)
I (#u15dedc98-6bb3-5a5b-9482-1a0592317d13)
Afterword (#u99502c14-2812-5f0e-9097-996d7e0346d3)
Acknowledgements (#u771b3bcc-227f-5e89-99f5-adff63222e22)
Author’s Note (#u3bdde8fb-a11d-5b7d-9d53-23e3e9427913)
Also by Susan Fletcher (#u33dd7895-ea2f-5e7a-8036-1ee13871d9ce)
Copyright (#ufba48477-8db2-5418-918c-52c80232dd7e)
About the Publisher (#u355cc3c8-0910-50db-ad17-1c77d821035e)
Map (#ulink_2e9092e3-4de9-5828-95fb-19a785988e88)
Letter (#ulink_17609b84-6e70-5063-a520-b89d0a623773)
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 (#ulink_c3a994b8-c6ab-53a6-a614-4feb14930c2b)
I (#ulink_04d15bd1-ae46-5837-8833-377022e752a5)
‘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.
