The Highland Witch, page 31
What words will I use, in our garden? When I speak of that moment? I don’t know. I don’t have the ways to speak of it, yet. We looked upon each other. Her hair was wet against her face. She took my hands, then. She held them, and did not say a single word to me—but what a look was on her. It was grace, and wisdom. She pressed my hands, let go of them, and that was her thanks.
She ran. My last sight of her was her ragged skirts, and hair. I stood by the trees. I stood for a long time, until my horse shook its mane, and all her tiny footprints had been filled washed away by the rain.
I will leave, now. It is nearly dawn, and when the sky is lighter I will remount, and go. Appin is not far, and I will be welcome there. I will whisper Jacobite. Perhaps I’ll say her name.
What follows, I cannot say. A half-drunk gaoler may stagger in the streets and say she is gone! Flew away! Perhaps they will find another soul to burn for some other deed, or burn it anyway. If they try to chase the Irishman who went to her, each day, they will chase a ghost—for Charles Griffin has fled. Like a dream, or like magick, he has slipped away.
Jane. My love. I hope you read this letter, fold it, and place it on your lap with a small, true smile. I hope you are proud of this man—who thought to serve God, but who knows, now, that the best way to serve Him is to serve all others well.
Daily, I have missed you. But you are in all beauty, which keeps you near me.
I am coming to you. Imagine me, walking up the path to our door. Look out of the window every day, and picture it—me, with my spectacles and calf-leather bag, the pink roses by the window in full bloom—and one day, one day, the picture will be true.
On to Appin, and to serving the world. And on, on, on with loving you.
Charles
I
“…let no man despise it because it is plain and easy—the ways of God are all such.”
of Cinquefoil, or Five-leafed grass
I ran. I moved my legs, and they carried me. I ran across wet earth, and old snow, and I made for a line of trees. When I reached them, I turned. You were still standing there. The rain had darkened you—your wig, your waistcoat—and I thought remember his face, remember it for always. Remember him who saved you. You saved a thousand things.
We did not wave, did we? No.
And no words—for what words were there, that could say it all? I had clung to you. I had pressed myself against you, closed my eyes, breathed your warm, human smell, and when you wrapped your arms about yourself, they were also about me. Who had ever held me? Pressed me in, like that? No father ever had. Only Alasdair—sixteen nights ago.
I smelt the sea, as you ran with me. I felt your bones, and clutched at your clothes.
Thank you, I said, as you mounted the horse. And later, by the line of trees, you smiled at me. You smiled, looked up at the rain, and held out your hand to feel it. Remember him, standing there.
Mr Leslie. Who serves God, and lost a daughter, and is the kindest of all men I’ve ever met—all men. Who loves his wife. Who misses home.
Remember him, Corrag.
Then you turned, and left.
WHEN I came to a pool I knelt in its mud, and drank, and drank. I washed beneath my arms. I cupped the water in my hands, lowered my face to it, and I took the blood and dirt away. Ash was in my hair. My hands had lines, and bruises, but I thought they will live. They will survive, and not be burnt—not now.
By the pool, I cried.
Not for long, and quietly. But I cried—for I was living. I was in a wild place, where I was meant to be. I cried for my iron wrists. For the death I nearly had, but did not. I cried for those who were yet to die that way.
For the MacDonalds who were gone now. For all the magick, tiny moments which pass by and die, unseen. For my mare. For Alasdair.
For not seeing you again.
Who we were is not who we are, these days. What was a lie, is no longer full of lies. We changed. Blood and love changed us. And words did—north-and-west and make for Appin changed my life, and other lives. So did witch, and Sassenach. So did little thing…
And you? When you first sat before me, with your goose-wing quill, you loathed what you saw. You saw witch, and would not move the stool to me. I think you feared for lice. You thought my burning would brighten the sky. But then you heard my story, and you took a blacksmith’s file from your pocket, passed it through the bars. You said hurry. You also filed my chains, on and on, till they broke. You said hold on to me, and you carried me into the rain.
My story, which I thought would die with me. For who would tell it? Who knew what I had seen? What I had felt? And done? But both of us are unshackled now. Both my story and me can wander, and be lifted up with the wind.
WHAT was dark will always be dark, I know that. Death is still death. Hatred will never be far, in this life.
But also, there is light. It is everywhere. It floods this world—the world brims with it. Once, I sat by the Coe and watched a shaft of light come down through the trees, through leaves, and I wondered if there was a greater beauty, or a simpler one. There are many great beauties. But all of them—from the snow, to his fern-red hair, to my mare’s eye reflecting the sky as she smelt the air of Rannoch Moor—have light in them, and are worth it. They are worth the darker parts.
It is in us, too. Cora said so. She spoke of inner light, and I believe in that. It is the soul, perhaps, or just our thoughts, our heart and lungs and liver keeping us alive. The flush of life. Magick. Our pulse, our loves, our hopes and dreams. When I kissed Alasdair, we passed our brightness on—his into my mouth, and mine into his. So I carry his light in me, now, and he has my small light.
Cora. She died—but I have every tale of hers in me, every laugh. How she loved blackcurrants. How she cried to see a rainbow, for it seemed so lovely to her—too lovely, as if she had no right to see it being hag, and tangle-haired. But she had every right. The rainbow was no lovelier than she, my mother, had been.
So I say this. Speak of them. Speak of those that died. Speak of all those who ever died—in all the world’s history, in its wars, and long-lost days. Speak of those who met their deaths in Glencoe, in snow—not of their deaths, but of their lives before them. Not of how they died, but of how they bent to pat a dog’s head, or what ballads they could sing, or what their skin was like by their eyes when they smiled, or which weather was their weather—for it keeps them living. It stops them being dead.
To do this—to speak or write of them—puts breath back in their mouths. It lifts them up from their earthy beds. It shakes off their worms and brings them forth, and they stand by the side of the one who speaks of them; they walk out of the pages of those who write them down. From the realm, they smile upon us. All the dead people—only, they are not dead.
THEY will always call me witch. That will stay with me. I doubt the tale of me will always be truthfully told—for it will be told in time by men I’ve never met, who have only heard rumours of me. They will say evil. They will say that the Devil came for me, in my cell. Changed me into a beetle, or an owl, or a cat, and I flitted away with him.
But Charles Leslie of Glaslough knows the truth. He knows it, with his Bible on his lap. A blue-eyed MacDonald, the old chief’s second son, knows the truth as he rocks his son to sleep by a hearth, singing an old Highland song. Every bird that skims my hair now, for the rest of my life, will feel the truth rise up from me and call it out—Corrag! Corrag! And this is enough. I am alone, now—like I always was. But I have been a mother, a lover, and a wife. I’ve been kind, or always tried to be. And these things are enough.
This is my fifth life. I wake when the sun does, and I watch it change the sky. I watch it, and feel grateful. I feel my arms, my bones.
These days are hushed, and long. Like the days I once knew, they are simple. I sleep in warm hollows. I sink my heels into bogs, and watch the tiny droplets on the tips of bright-green moss. I crouch down by lochs which are so still that they have their own mountains, their own moving sky. Deer tread in a line, and I follow them. I came upon a hind giving birth, two days ago, and watched her—the bluish bag, the silence, and how her nostrils went in and out. She knew her child when it came, and it knew her, and as I watched it try its legs I thought how well the world was. How well.
The evenings are slow-coming. Sometimes I sit upon a rock all day, and watch the sky—how its light moves from east to west—and those are well-spent days. No day is like the day before, on Rannoch Moor.
WITH all these things, sir, I think of you. Of your face, and spectacles. Your voice.
I hope you are well, Mr Leslie.
I hope you are happy, wherever you are. I hope that, when a breeze moves the trees you walk beneath, you close your eyes to hear them. That you think, they move for me. In my honour. For they do—for a good man like you.
In my cell, I thought that I would meet my death saying I love one man. I love Alasdair—and I do. I always shall. Daily, I think of how my hand looked in his hand, or how he moved my hair on a red-coloured day—and I miss him. I say his name, to hear it. I feel the parts of me that he has felt.
But he lives, like I live.
And I love more than just one man, these days. I reckon I love two.
I THINK this, and look up.
It is evening. The moon is small, and new. There are stars, and a stream’s sound, and I can hear the wings of insects, in the dark. I think what gifts we are given. Such gifts—every day.
I wrap your coat about me, breathe. Smile.
I WALK out beneath the sky, across the moor.
Afterword
In May 1692, three months after the massacre, a pamphlet entitled A Letter from a Gentleman in Scotland appeared in Edinburgh. It gave an intimate account of the deaths in Glencoe, from soldiers and survivors alike. Whilst the pamphlet is seen as Jacobite propaganda, it remains the most substantial source of information on the Massacre of Glencoe. Published anonymously, its author was almost certainly Charles Leslie.
Leslie himself went on to write numerous religious pamphlets, and continued to fight for the Stuart cause. In 1715, he joined the court of the exiled James VII/II in Italy, where he remained for six years. In 1721, at the age of seventy-one, he was finally allowed to return to his native Ireland, where he died. He is buried in Glaslough, near his family home.
NEWS of the massacre brought national outrage. In 1693, an inquiry was ordered into the deaths, but this proved ineffective. Two years later, a second inquiry found John Dalrymple, Master of Stair, accountable. He was stripped of his title, but was soon reinstated. In 1701, he was promoted to Earl of Stair.
After sheltering for several months in Appin, and the mountains of Argyll, the MacDonalds of Glencoe returned to their glen. Iain, their new chief, re-signed the Oath of Allegiance in August 1692—ensuring his clan’s safety. No more is known about Alasdair Og.
King William himself reigned for a further ten years, before being succeeded in 1702 by his sister-in-law, Anne. Despite another fifty years of trying, and several bloody rebellions, the Jacobite cause never succeeded and no Stuart ever returned to the throne.
THE LAST execution of a so-called witch in Britain was in 1727. The Witchcraft Act of 1735 put an end to the generations of fear and persecution. Over the previous three hundred years it is estimated that over 100,000 women—mostly knowledgeable, independent, old or outspoken women—stood trial, accused of witchcraft. Torture was widespread, as means for confession. Across Europe, as many as 40,000 were put to death.
AS FOR Corrag, there is still a story to her name. Her wish to protect the people of Glencoe from the sword has passed into folklore. It is rumoured that no local men died by the sword in battle for over two centuries. Only when a sword was found in the Loch Leven, in 1916, and brought ashore, did any local men die at war; the Battle of the Somme was the next day.
There is no account of Corrag’s own death—although legend says that she was an old woman, when she died. It is also claimed that she was buried, with highest honours, by the MacDonald clan. In the 1930s, a tiny skeleton was accidentally unearthed by road-builders on the shores of Loch Leven. Believed to be Corrag’s, it was taken, and re-buried. Although her grave is unmarked, her new resting place is still by the water. It has a good view of the Pap of Glencoe.
THE HIGHLAND WITCH
Susan Fletcher
READING GROUP GUIDE
Discussion Questions
1. Before we are even introduced to Corrag, the voice we hear as readers is that of Charles Leslie. How does it affect the novel’s progression to have Corrag’s perspective alternate with his account of her story?
2. What do you make of Cora’s assertion that “the weather you are born in is yours, all your life—your own weather”? How does such a belief come to Corrag’s aid throughout the novel?
3. Cora named her daughter by combining her own name with “hag,” an epithet frequently directed at her. Later, though, Corrag finds out that this name has a meaning in the MacDonalds’ Gaelic tongue—“finger.” How do these two names describe Corrag? How do the names we give things define our perceptions of them?
4. Throughout the novel, Corrag continually reminds herself, “You are for places, Corrag—not people. Remember that.” How does Corrag’s relationship to nature set her apart from those with whom she interacts, both in Thorneyburnbank and later, during her journey to and residence in the Highlands?
5. Corrag shocks the MacDonalds with her claims that she has no king and no god. Do you think the novel takes a stance on the role of politics and religion in people’s lives?
6. Corrag initially describes Gormshuil as “this bony creature with her privy smell” and “sour piece,” making it clear to us that she is both repelled by and slightly wary of her. Yet soon afterward her opinion starts to change—Corrag knows that she is “a human . . . of bones and blood, with a heart hidden inside.” How did your feelings about Gormshuil’s character change over the course of the novel? Where do you think her interests lay? Did those interests change from her first interaction with Corrag to their last?
7. Corrag insists that “speaking of the dead makes them less so,” and indeed, Cora and her mare seem to be more alive for her than ever in her vivid descriptions of them to Mr. Leslie. Do you believe this principle holds true for us as well? How might the tendency to avoid speaking of the dead be more harmful than helpful, both in the novel and in our own lives?
8. As the novel progresses, it is revealed that Charles Leslie and his wife lost their infant daughter during childbirth. How do you see this event affecting Charles’s relationship with Corrag and, even through their letters, with Jane?
9. The representation of father figures is mixed in this novel: Corrag has never known her father’s identity; Charles realizes his father’s overbearing influence on his decision to become a minister and missionary; and Alasdair is the second son in a clan that defines itself by its patrilineal heritage. In what ways does such heritage affect these characters?
10. What are your thoughts about Corrag’s decision, once Charles frees her from prison, to resume her solitary life? Why do you think she chose not to follow the surviving MacDonalds to Appin?
11. The afterword situates the novel in the context of real historical events and connects its characters to figures who existed during that time. How does this information shape the way you think about the book?
12. How did the story related in The Highland Witch fit into or change your understanding of witch persecution in history? Did the female characters’ reactions to or acceptance of the punishments brought against them surprise you?
Susan Fletcher, The Highland Witch
