Corrag (20 page)

No.
He smiled.
Not here. What brought you to the glen?

I also smiled, at that. I nearly laughed. I looked away and shook my head, for it seemed like an old story, now, and a strange one—too strange to speak of. Not to him, with his hair like that.

A long tale? Too long?

Yes.

He nodded.

We shifted for a while. Alasdair looked up to the eaves, smoothed his hand across them. Then he brought that hand down. He leant against the doorframe, and I wondered if I should turn, and go, for there was a long silence between us. Behind him, they were dancing again.

Did you eat enough?
he asked.
There is plenty…

Yes.

More silence. He breathed in.
So where did you spend your last Hogmanay? Not in a Highland glen, I reckon—not with that voice.

I straightened. I looked sternly at him. Was he teasing me? Did he know the true answer, and was mocking me? His brother could mock, I was sure of that. His father, too. I eyed him, and searched for a wry smile or a raised eyebrow—but found none. He was looking at me like he truly wanted to know.

So I said,
I was on my grey horse in the Lowlands. We passed an inn at midnight, and heard them cheer. It was a full moon, and we galloped out across a low-tide beach that night, and did not stop till sunrise, and that’s what I did.
I shrugged.
We galloped. Under more stars than I’d ever seen.

He was very still. All the noise and dancing was behind him, and he was still. Just looking. He had the bright eyes which made me think that he could see it, in his mind—that beach. Its mirrored sand.

He opened his mouth to speak—but as he did this, an arm came about his waist so that he turned his head, and the fair-haired girl with the singing voice came to his side. She was taller than me, and more shapely. She had the shape a woman’s meant to, and she pushed herself against Alasdair, said
you
—prodding his chest with her forefinger, and smiling—
are letting the cold air in…

Then she turned to me. She beamed. She did not frown at my knotted hair or my ragged skirts. She said
I am Sarah. And I am glad of any new woman in this place—too many men! All these men…
Such a smile. Bright, and clear.

We all smiled. We smiled away, wished each other a fine, healthy year, and I tightened my cloak and turned, slipped away into the dark.

In the gully of birch trees I paused, briefly. I felt the night air. I breathed it.

I slept with a hen on either side of me.

This was winter, then—my season. My weather. And what a wild, Highland winter that one was. Ice creaked, and the flakes of proper snow did not fall, at first—they hung, mid-air. They drifted about my head as I walked back from the glen, with peat in my arms. When I saw myself in darkened pools I saw my snowy hair.

Seeing it, I thought
this is the start
.

It was. These thin flurries did not last. Five days after Hogmanay, a wind blew in. It threw snow against the northern ridge, and howled up into my valley so that my roof shook. Skies swelled and raced, like sea-skies do. And I wandered—for wasn’t winter always too magick to go unseen? I had never feared it. So I wandered where I knew there would be beauty—to half-frozen water, or to the heights where deer were. They sat against rocks, blinked in the wind. I saw a white hare running—so fast and snow-coloured it was like wind, or a flurry of flakes, and only its black eye and the pads of its feet showed it was not these things.
A snow-hare…
I had never seen one. I looked at its tracks when it was gone. I was spun in the wind when I crested peaks, and when I lay down I caught flakes on my tongue. These things. Small, and safe things.

But day by day, there was less snow. Slowly, there became more water noises, and the falling burn in my valley grew loud, and strong. I drank from it—not on my knees, or with cupped hands, but by clutching a rock, leaning in and opening my mouth. I smiled as I drank. I tasted old winter. I drank new spring.

Day by day, green shoots showed themselves. The snow grew dimpled and up they came—comfrey, and motherwort. To see them was like seeing friends again. I crouched to them, thought
who needs people? People aren’t always like this
—by which I meant meek, and kind, and soft to touch. I gathered them, dried them. Or I powdered them up, or put them in salt. Or I let them grown on, in the earth.

It was in these watery days that Gormshuil came back to me. She appeared like a tree on the top of a peak—very thin and straight. I watched her come down, and as she drifted nearer I saw her thinness, the deep-blue veins beneath her skin. Despite her smell, I worried. She was dead-looking, so that I said
will you stay? Have an egg or two?
It’s right to offer kindness to a soul less well than us. But she did not want eggs, or warmth, or a friend. In a frail, girlish voice she said
henbane…
And I freely gave it. I asked nothing, in return.

Gormshuil,
I said,
if you ever need food…

But she shook her head. She smiled, for the henbane was in her hand now, and her skin was as thin as a moth’s wing, and she said
you are like a wife
to me—
a wife! A wife!
And she whispered to herself as she walked over the rocks, as if her mind was gone.
I am no wife.

It was not just her that came.

The birds sang and sang. They perched on the hazel tree and sang, or they washed themselves in the snowmelt, and as I was washing my cloak in the burn one afternoon I realised that I’d missed such music. In the snowy depths, I’d only heard an owl. But spring was near, and here the birds were. I sang along with them. I scrubbed my cloak, and hummed.

And as I wringed my cloak of water, I noticed the birds had stopped. No singing.

I thought
Gormshuil is back
. But no.

On the north slopes, where the snow still was, I saw the stag. He was very still, and looked like a rock. But his branches were very broad, and pale, and I could see his tracks which came down from the tops. He stood, watching. I also stood and watched.

Are there no others with you?
I asked.

He seemed alone. He seemed thin too, from the winter. His fur had the mottled look that comes with age, or thinness. He heard my voice, and one ear went back. I thought
he is beautiful,
for I had not seen a living deer so close, and here he was—thick-coated, and his mouth steamed with heat, and grass. There were a hundred colours in his fur, and his stare was hard, and his crown was held high. For a while there was nothing but him and me, and the burn.

Then both ears went back. His chest and forelegs moved themselves, and he turned neatly in the snow. He surged up, away from me and back to the safe, high parts, and I said
where are you going? Why?
For I had not moved, or spoken.

He saw me, I think.

I stumbled. I had not heard a person coming across the grass. All that water noise, and the swaying trees, and my own talking to the deer had meant I had not heard his feet, or his plaid against his legs. I steadied myself, put my hand on a rock.

Sorry,
he said, one hand held up.
I disturbed you?

I shook my head.

He waited. He waited until I had smoothed my skirts, and caught my breath.

Here,
he said. He held a basket out. A cloth was upon it, and when I peeked beneath it I saw meat—dark, and salted.

Venison. We had more than enough left from Hogmanay
. He smiled at how I must have looked—there was so much of it.
But maybe don’t show your friend.

I frowned.
Friend?

Him.
He smiled, nodded at the stag who was a shape against the sky, still watching us, one ear forwards and one back.

Alasdair Og MacDonald. That was his whole name.

But I have others,
he said.
Red—for the hair, but also in battle, for I’ve been bloodied by the ones I’ve killed. I can fight well. I reckon it’s what I’m best at, in most ways. Down in Argyll they call me a scrapper, for a brawl I had with some Campbell men when I was a boy. I broke my bones, but I broke theirs too. Scrapper…I’ve heard that enough. Pup. Spare.

I tended the fire as he spoke. It was mid-afternoon, with the January light growing old outside. He sat by the doorway to my hut—half-in, half-not. The hens pecked near him.

Pup?

My mother says I answered less to a name than a whistle, as a boy. Said the dog knew Gaelic better.

I liked that.

We have many names, as a clan. The MacIains, or the Glencoe men, mostly—but if you ask a Lowlander…
He grimaced.
Then there are names which have hatred in them. A papist tribe. That gallows herd…
He rubbed the heel of his cuaran into the ground.

I said,
I know.

Our names?

How names can be. I have plenty. I am Corrag, firstly. But I’ve been called other things more often than I’ve been called that. Hag. Witch. Devil’s piece.

Sassenach.

I eyed him.
I don’t know what that means.

English,
he said, smiling. He looked up from his cuaran, met my look.
It means English. Which aren’t you?

Yes,
I said.
I’m from Thorneyburnbank. It’s a village with a half-moon bridge and a cherry tree. There was the Romans’ wall near it, and such wind…I was born there. I was born on a very frosty night.
I saw that frost, and other frosts.

But you are here now,
he said.

I
WARMED
some meat in the pot, and put herbs in. I had a little stale bannock, and added this, and I had no way of serving it but to pick from the pot with our hands. Why might I have dishes? It was only ever me.

I said
I have no dishes
. But he did not frown, or mind.

How is your father?

Alasdair ate. He ate like men do—quickly, and without looking up, and using the bannock to dig into the meat. I watched his hands, as he did this.
He is well. He is sore-headed, I think—but more from Hogmanay than the wound. Still his fiercesome self.

I looked at the fire. Gently, I said
I heard stories.

Of him? Oh aye. There are plenty of them. He’s the best-known Highlander since Bonnie Dundee, most likely. ’Tis his height and how he looks, firstly. Then there is his fighting. You’ve seen an old man in a chair with a dog by his feet, but the MacIain has scalped a dozen men in one fight, on his own—it’s true. He raided Glenlyon so quickly they all escaped barefoot, if they escaped at all. Some burnt in their homes.
Alasdair eyed me.
He fought some English, too.

English? Because they were English?

Because they moved with the Campbells, down in the south. We’ve always been hated by that clan, and seen as foe. Seen as trouble
.

As thieves?

They’ll say that. But all clans steal, see? Even Campbells do. No
—he chewed—
it runs deeper than that. It runs into God, and politics. Into how we see Scotland, and what we hope for it. Feuds,
he said,
don’t die quickly in these parts.

I was quiet. I thought a while, then said quickly, beneath my breath,
so much hatred here.

He glanced up.
No more hatred here than elsewhere. You know this. You’ve been running from it, have you not? Feared for your life?

This was true.
But I’ve never hurt a person. I’ve never fought.

Never fought? At all?

I shrugged.
Not with my hands. Not with blades.

He blew out his cheeks at this, sighed.
That’s fair. They are little hands, and would not do well at fighting.

Not like his. I looked across at them. I knew his right hand—its half-moon scars, its marks. I saw how it tore the bannock, and remembered how I had spread its fingers out upon the poultice and said
press. Like that.
It felt a long time ago.

Maybe,
I said,
there will be no hatred, one day. No dark. No fighting.

You believe that?
He shook his head.
For as long as there is envy, or greed, there’ll be hatred. For as long as William sits on the throne.

William? You hate him?

He hates us just as much! For we won’t call him king. We won’t bow to him, or be ruled by him, and he knows it.

Because of faith?

Aye because of faith. Because he’s not of ours, nor of our nation. He is ashamed of the Highlanders and calls us trouble, and barbarous, and a yoke on his throne, but has he ever met us? Come to our glen, or any glen? He has not.
He narrowed his eyes.
I speak to you in English. Do you know why?