скачать книгу бесплатно
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 (#ulink_8f41812a-a80d-5527-bb24-10ad8841bc15)
‘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.
