Corrag (18 page)

This bony creature with her privy smell walked towards me, then. She passed me, bent down and crept into my hut.

I squawked. I followed her, saying
this is my home! You cannot walk into my home like it’s your home!

She could not straighten herself inside it, she was so tall. But she tried. She lifted herself until her hair with its leaves brushed the roof. The fish I was drying shed a few scales.

Ah
…she said.
Herbs.

Like Iain had said. Like the only thing that mattered to any person in this glen was herbs.
Yes.
I said it sharply.

Which?

Which?

Herbs,
she said.
Which herbs?
I heard her voice properly then. It was a soft Scottish voice, and she spoke like the MacDonalds did—like English was not the tongue she was born with. Like she had learnt these English words.

Where are you from?
I asked.

Do you have henbane?

Where,
I said,
are you from? Tell me. Where are you from, and where are you now living?

She eyed me. Maybe it was the firelight on her, or how she stooped as an old woman would, but she looked less fearful then. More human. I saw a sadness in her, briefly. Like a bird’s shadow it flitted over her, and was gone.

Moy. ’Tis not near here.

I nodded.
And now?

On what they call the buachaille. The pointed rock at the east.

I knew it. It was the black, pointed mountain at the east of the glen. It was where I had trodden on an arrowhead, and where I’d seen an eagle preen its feathers on an alder branch.

I did not ask why she was in the glen. Not why she wasn’t in this place called
Moy,
these days. I thought
she is hiding
. For most folk I’ve met in my life that live alone are hiding, from other people.

Do you have henbane?

I said
ha.
Folk only want henbane because of what it does—which is that it stupefies their heads, and makes them dream whilst they’re awake, and I’ve never wanted that. Cora told me. She said it owns you, once you try it—that you seek it again and again.

Despite her puckered mouth, and her stink, I felt for her, then. I thought
poor her. Being as she is.
Plucking her shawl and looking for that herb.

I have henbane.

And her eyes grew wide, and a peg-toothed smile came.

So, Mr Leslie, in my hut, on a winter day, I gave a woman called Gormshuil a fistful of henbane so that she shook as she took it, and whispered to it as if it could hear.
Yes…
But I did not give it freely—no, sir. I gave her a price for the herb. I asked for some grain to feed my hens upon, and which I might make a broth from.

She flinched.
Grain?

It is a fair bargain,
I said.
Henbane is harder to find than grain, I can promise you.

I watched her go. She made no sound, and the mist soon took her and she was gone. I thought
I will get no grain for this
—for what was trustworthy, in her? I doubted that she ate. I doubted that she found much joy in the world, or beauty, or that she treated people well. I half-doubted she had ever been there, in the mist—for she had been so ghost-like. But her smell lingered.

I did get grain.

Two days later, she came to me with a sack and her fish-eyes. Grain was in it. I peered in, smiled, and when I looked back to thank her she was gone, and a crow was in her place. Some folk say witches shift their shapes into new creatures, when it suits them, and I know this is a lie. I know it can’t be done. It is only when bones misbehave themselves, or when the falling sickness comes and women twitch. But the crow had a look to it. It tilted its head, cawed at me twice, and I fancied it was
thank you,
or
see? Grain for you.

It flew. I watched it fly. And when I looked down at her footprints in the snow, I wished they were not her footprints. I wished they were someone else’s.

Say what you will. Say
old hag.
She looked it, and smelt like one. She was an old half-human creature who suited the winter weather—not in the way I suited it, for Gormshuil was not winter-born and saw no beauty in a naked tree. No. She suited winter for she had no green shoots in her—no hope, no love, no dreams. She was as thin as sleet can be. As sly.

I told myself, sometimes, that she had been a child once. A daughter, and a wife.

Once,
I told my hens,
she was happy—once. I must remember that.
But like it is hard to see a winter field and remember it in flower-time, so it was with Gormshuil.

W
HY
do I speak of her? Because she lived. Because by living, she altered the world as we all do, and who is there to speak of her? So I speak of her. And in time, perhaps you will—for she played her part in the murders, sir. Her name is worth writing down.

We all have our stories, and we speak of them, and weave them into other people’s stories—that’s how it goes, does it not? But she did not speak of hers. She was reeky and lonesome, and when I think of her I see henbane in her teeth. She lived on a pointed mountain. She crouched by a fire with two other women whose minds were half-gone, and whose hearts were sealed up. And what life is that? A sadder one than mine was. Far more so. Full of winter nights.

Gormshuil of Moy. You will hear many things said of her, and all bad. But not many people, sir, are all bad.

Those winter nights. I’d look out at the huge sides of snowy rocks which grew about me, and I’d see their eerie colours—grey, black, blue. Then I would go inside, where my fire spoke to itself. But still, I felt them. In my hut, I was still aware of the mountains looking down on me. I could feel their height, and darkness. I thought of their age, of what they had seen, and as I tucked up by my fire I thought
they glow
…Like living things. Their frost glinted on me, and their breath was icy-cold.

Some people hate such thoughts. They stay away from mountains like mountains mean them harm. But what I say to myself when I see a mountain or a starry sky, or any natural thing which feels too much to bear, is
what made this, made me, too. I am as special. We are made by the same thing…
Call it
God,
if you wish. Call it
chance,
or
nature
—it does not matter. Both the mountains of Glencoe and me are real, and here. Both the moon which is full tonight and you, Mr Leslie, are here, and shining.

I
N THE
days that followed Gormshuil, and her sack of grain, I saw Alasdair again. I was high up, looking down. He was by my hut, and then he circled it as if I might be hiding there. For a while he was still, thinking. He had no blades with him, and no hens. Just him—with his plaid, his dark-red hair.

From my hiding place, I watched him go. He trod down through the gully and back into Glencoe, and I could see his marks left in the snow.

I went down.

I touched the rock I’d seen him touch. I heard the sounds he’d heard—the stream, my hens—and I thought,
come back to me.