V

If you have never been to the Highlands, sir, then you will not know of deer.

There were many in Glencoe. Just as there were men who burnt turf and climbed high, so there were deer. Horse-high and nut-coloured, they trod in a line through marshes so that I might follow their path, and not sink down. They were shapes on peaks, staring. As I slept in my hut, they grazed outside—for I heard the sound of the grass being cropped very neatly, and their droppings pushed up between my toes at dawn.

They were wary, too. They had grown to be—for hadn’t they had a hundred lives of arrows shot into their rumps, or a blade pulled over the throat? They had. So theirs was a wary way of life. I might be humming on the spring-time hills with my skirts tucked up or picking herbs when I’d come across a herd of them on some far-off hill, and they’d have heard and seen me long before I saw them. Necks straight up, ears forward. They could fix you with such a stare! Far harder than any scolding. A deer and I might lock eyes on each other and stare for a long time, both thinking the other might have some trick to them. Deer—I’ll say the hinds, most specially—could stare for so long you thought maybe they were not deer at all, but rocks shaped like them. Then I might lift a foot or tilt my head and they would be gone. Trot-trot with their pale behinds.

The hinds and their calves had a tidy way.

The stags were less neat. Their necks were hedge-thick, and heavy. Sometimes they carried strings of drool, or had moss in the branches like they’d been in a battle or two. They lost their branches, too. In spring, their branches broke off and died, and new ones grew, and they took on the shape the old ones had. I came across a perfect half-branch on Keep-Me-Safe, and I took it back to my hut. At night, it cast a shadow. I hoped the stag who’d shed it would have a long, good life.

Also, they roared. I had heard it, in my early days—I’d thought that single stag had welcomed me. I’d never heard such a sound as that deep, breathy roar. Why? I asked Alasdair, once. And he’d spoken of the stags fighting each other, locking their antlers together like hands.

Fighting?

For hinds. To win them.

Even the deer fight in Glencoe, I said to myself. Rolled my eyes.

So yes—many deer. You will see how many, when you are in Glencoe—or if not, you will see their neat hoof-prints in the bogs, and their dung like currants will press themselves into the arch of your foot. You’ll shake your foot, to be rid of them.

 

MY STAG, I think, saw me. I think he spied me when I first came to the glen—trawling my skirts, with moths in my hair. I think how I made my hut was reflected in his eyes, for he was very watchful. More watchful than the rest.

I searched the tops of hills for him, after that. Scrubbing my pots in the burn, or scrubbing myself very naked in the pools that snowmelt made, I would run my eyes along the peaks—in case. I might see groups of stags, grazing. But he was not with them. I knew this, for I knew his strange, uneven branches. I knew the oily deepness of the fur upon his neck.

Maybe he is gone. Maybe he is dead.

But he came back.

I was drying water-mint in the sun. It grew richly on the sides of Loch Achtriochtan, where the water-bull lived and rose up at full-moons. I saw no water-bull, but as I pulled the herbs up I felt a pair of eyes, and there he was—on the top of Cat Peak, looking down. Under my breath I said hello… And like he heard me, he took himself away.

But back by my hut, with the mint laid out in a row like washing is, he returned. I straightened my back. The sunshine was bright, so I shielded my eyes to see him, and I watched how he trod very carefully down the sides. He came nearer. He flicked his tail twice. The slopes of Cat Peak can be very loose, but he did not slide at all.

I said hello again. He stopped.

He had seven branches on the right side and five on the left—so I knew it was him.

For a good while we looked upon each other. I took in his brittle hooves, his pale mouth, his eyes. I also saw his nostrils open and close, and very slowly he brought his head down, leaned, so that I thought he smells the mint. He smells it…

I crouched, picked some.

Here, I said.

Up went the head. He looked very boldly, as if offended by me. His nose smelt the herb, we stood like this for a long time—me with my arm held out, saying here, and him with his head held high. I hoped he would take it. I felt my body long for him to come closer to me, for him to take the herb from my hand. Just once. Take it… I wanted to feel his warmth on me, for him to leave drool behind. Like the mare did. Like all creatures do.

Here…

But stags are wild things. He was wilder than most—on his own, and with branches like that. I knew he wanted the mint, but I knew that the ground between us was huge to him, and airy, and I was too human, so he turned on his back legs again.

He went up and over, out of sight. I looked down at the little green leaves in my hand and felt sad, briefly. But I also knew he would come back—for I saw in his eyes what he wanted. I knew the look.

 

Spring was good, Mr Leslie. It is good for all souls, and for herbs, and all plants which had been sleeping over winter. I ducked out of my hut, breathed, and raced up onto the peaks which snow had kept from me. I lifted rocks. I found betony and yarrow, and beetles, and in the woods by Inverrigan I found tansy which I had not seen since Thorneyburnbank. I crouched down by it, felt its leaves. I made me think of Cora. I remembered being a child, and with her. She always said that tansy-leaves were as soft as rabbit fur—and this said it was a kind plant. It was best for sun-burnings and joint-aches. It made me sad, for I missed her. But also, there she was—in a scent, in herbs. She was real again, and with me. I found her in many places, in such weather.

I found other people, too—people whose faces I began to know.

The children from Achnacon with their freckled skin hung upside down in an alder tree, as I passed it. They hollered to me. They swung their arms, and I said are you bats? In that tree? They spoke no English, and giggled. Their hair brushed my own as I walked underneath. And as I lifted water from a bend in the Coe, I spied the old man from Inverrigan fishing with his boys—very still, like wading birds. And by the Ridge Like a Church, I saw Sarah. She caught my wrist, said how are you? Asking it like she meant it, like she wanted to know. I sat with her for a time. She stroked her belly, and closed her eyes when the sun came out from clouds, and smiled. Sunshine, she breathed, at last. And so we basked a while, her and I.

I told her, I am well. Very well. Fine.

All folk seemed well, in those weeks.

On a day of green buds and bright water, more cows came. I was beating my deerskin with a stick, to rid it of winter’s dust, and heard hooves on rocks. I turned. In they came—a dozen black cows, drooling grass. MacDonald men came, too. They were muddied, and red-cheeked, and blowing hard, and smacked the cows on with their hands, and I thought whose cows…? For they were stolen cows. Being kept in a secret valley, so they could be found and taken back. I knew their ways, by now.

I watched them. No Alasdair. Just the Gaelic-speaking men, the ones like bears. They did not look at me. They passed so near to me that I felt their draught, smelt their sweat—but they did not speak a word, and I felt heavy-hearted, at this. Why won’t they smile? Greet me? I stood with my hands by my side.

But as they were leaving, the one with the scar which ran down his chin, clefting it, turned as he walked, so that he walked backwards for a time. And as he walked backwards, he raised his hand. He raised it to me. I raised mine.

It is the small moments, sir, which change a world.

 

I was barely left alone, in those months. I barely saw a day without a person in it, which I sometimes liked but also, sometimes, I wanted peace and hush. I could not step out of my clothes to wash myself, for fear of eyes. I had not much to hide—bones and whiteness, mostly—but it still isn’t right to be looked upon like that. It is a private time.

A man with a splinter came to me, held up this thumb, and I healed him.

Bran found me, panted, lifted his leg on the hazel tree. But he was gone again, soon after—and no person was with him. Or if a person was, they never came down to my hut. I looked up at the braes, but all there seemed to be on them was rocks and tufty grass.

I liked it—to see lives. To have lives come to me. But I told my reflection in a peaty pool you are for places, Corrag. Do not love. Do not look for him, in shadows. Do not whisper his name.

So I also took myself away. I chose a breezy day to walk towards the moor. Rannoch Moor—on which my mare had died, and where I’d seen her ghost walk out. Where I’d wandered like a bride of rags and grief and tiredness, and I’d never seen Glencoe before. Where I’d had a different life.

I stood at the glen’s western end, and looked out at it. I saw its bees rising, and its blowing sky. And I took myself onto the mountain which stood by my side, looking out—the Dark Mount, maybe, or the Arrowhead, for I still had a mark on my heel from the wound. But I thought climb up! Think of the view… It was hard climbing. I scrabbled, and used my fingers. In places, I saw the heather far beneath me, between my feet, and it made me say keep going! Go up! And I imagined the joy from the peak, when I made it—the air and sore limbs, and the view, the view!

But I did not feel joy, at the top. Instead, I smelt a smell.

I slowed. There, on the top of this black, jagged mount, was Gormshuil.

I gasped. I put my hands upon my hips and said you? Here? For what a climb it had been! I’d clung, and jumped, and swung my way up. And she was three times my height and four times my age, and ate nothing that I could see, and yet here she stood with her lacewing’s skin and her threadbare cloak catching the wind. She said nothing. She only stepped aside. And behind her I saw a shelter of stones, and a low hearth, and bones, and old cloth. And two other women, sitting there.

I stayed for manners’ sake. I crouched upon a stone, and smiled at the new faces. They were as thin and pale as Gormshuil—but both younger, I reckoned. One had a very damaged face—its bones had been broken in past times, for her nose was flattened and her jaw was not straight. Her lower teeth protruded, and so she slurred as she spoke. Doideag, she hissed. From Mull. An island—south… And she pointed. The second girl did not speak. She looked at her toes, with her chin on her knees. She had more sadness upon her than I had ever seen, maybe, and Gormshuil hissed that one has no tongue.

No tongue?

She has a tongue but does-nee use it. Can-nee. Shock took words from her.

Shock?

A boat went down. Laorag. From Tiree. And all the ones drowned about her, and clawed at her hair, and she swam with dead men’s hands on her skirts…All sank down but her.

It was no good thing, to sit upon Dark Mount with these women of such strangeness—of such wild living that even Cora would not have cared for it. Amongst their hearth were gnawed bones, and feathers, and their privy was upwind so its over-ripe smell came down to me. There was no proper sleeping place—only rocks, and a bundle of muddied cloth. No green, save for my henbane. I saw it, sitting on a stone.

Gormshuil eyed me. It was like she did not know me—like maybe she knew me, but maybe she did not. You have a different look she said, as if it displeased her.

I frowned. No. I looked the same.

She did not. She looked worse, I reckoned. She had sores by her mouth. At the corners of her lips there were red crusts which flaked when she spoke—and this was the winter’s doing. I thought how comfrey would help her.

You are different, she said. Seeds are being sown all over, and up they come through the earth…

Strange talk. I shook my head at it. Doideag’s mouth made a sound like Bran’s did, when he licked himself—she ate something, in her hand. Her jaw was very twisted, and her cheeks were sharp from broken bones.

I said, this is fine weather. I’ve seen more folk in the past two weeks than in my whole life, I think. Fishing in the Coe. Weaving. I’ve seen the boys practice their swordplay, and—

Gormshuil said foraying.

Foraying?

Aye. Stealing. Being reckless in the south. ’Tis what they do…

She knew these things. She pushed her tongue into the gaps where her teeth had been, as if she was thinking hard—and maybe she was. But hers was a grizzled brain. It was clouded with henbane, and age—I was certain of this. They’ll take and take. They’ll bring more cattle here. Turf. Horses…It will do for them, in the end she told me—this theft. She raised an eyebrow and tightened her hand about the herbs. The youngest is a thiever. Yours.

Mine?

Yours. His seed grows, and his thieving does. Glen Lyon cows, these ones. Found in the river, drinking, and he took them—at dusk. Oh there had been trouble with him. Wild hearts. All flaming like his hair is, and he was shackled up in Inverlochy for his ways, last summer—and it took the Queen to free him. The proper queen! She won’t last long. She’s stronger than her husband but a plague will carry her…

Gormshuil, I said, what are you speaking of?

She eyed me. You know… Then, a small candle is brightest in a place with no candles… And she looked away from me, out across Rannoch Moor where the shadows of clouds raced over its rocks, and she watched this. You will come to me, she said, when there is a wolf.

I shook my head. A wolf? This was proper nonsense, now.

When it calls. You’ll come back…

A wolf? A thought took me, then. You have the second sight?

Wolves won’t last. No, no…

I shifted. Do you have it? The sight? Gormshuil?

She was lost to me, after this. She stood, and wandered over the stones and dirt, picking at a dead bird and whispering under her breath. I watched her do this. And I sensed a power to her, then. Perhaps it was the henbane, addling her brain and filling it with dreams. Or perhaps it was her height and old bones which made her seem oddly wise.

 

I DIDN’T know. I couldn’t tell. But as I dropped down from stone to stone, and made my way home, I came across the man of Achtriochtan, digging peat in the glen. I crept up to him. Very quietly, I said to him, the cows? In the hidden valley? Where were they stolen from?

He understood enough. Glen Lyon. South-east.

And how could she have known that? With her broken, half-drugged life?

I tucked myself up very tightly by the fire, that night.

 

Second sight. Even you, sir, have heard of it—how a person can know of future times—can see them, and be certain. Cora had fits, on the floor. She’d arch her back, and when it had passed she’d clutch her head, say I think I have a gallows neck, or be wary of marked calves… She saw north-and-west this way, I think. Saw her rope, and go!

Sometimes Cora had sold them—her seeings, her second sight. She’d come back from Hexham with a fistful of pennies she’d spend on food, or a ribbon for her hair. But not Gormshuil. She sold nothing. She kept from the houses and hid in the heights, and the MacDonalds had their stories of her—of a glaistrig, who wailed on full-moon nights. The leaver of faery-shot, in the grass. Lady Glencoe spoke of the bean nighe—a woman of mist, who’d wash her clothes in the Coe on dark nights, and her name meant that death was nearby. I heard this, and knew it was Gormshuil they spoke of. I said she is real, not mist-made. I’ve met her, and she has a sour smell. But beliefs can be stronger than facts, sometimes. Stay away from her, Sassenach, said Lady Glencoe. Death’s in that one.

A witch. A seer. Crone.

But Gormshuil was a human. They all were—they were people of bones and blood, with a heart hidden inside. Doideag scratched, and sneezed. Laorag of Tiree had her monthly courses, for I saw them on her skirts as she drifted by in her upright way. And once I found Gormshuil spying on a Cameron man from a distant glen—he came to Glencoe, sang as he went, and she followed him for a time. Why? I’ll guess. I reckon she wanted a hot, private act with him—but never asked, or tried.

I talk too much on this.

What I say is this. That despite the second sight, and the reeking, and the wild life, they were still human things. They had still been daughters and sisters, and wives, and so I’d watch them with their henbane eyes and think what happened? What hardship came by? For no-one lives such a life by choice. No one lives on a mountain unless there has been some kind of sadness—a hurt, or a loss, or fear upon fear.

Doideag was mangled by fists, I thought. A man, or men, had brawled with her and left her for dead—for I saw the shape her bones had, and I heard how she clicked when she walked. The girl from Tiree was so heart-sore and lonesome that it took out her tongue, and she suffered such dreams that I thought I heard her calling out, one night—in pain. Dreams of lost boats.

And Gormshuil? I’ll never know. But she took henbane to deaden all echoes of it.

Once, I heard her say love… That was all. She said no more. But how she said it—slowly, with a lazy blink of her red-rimmed eyes—made it sound like she wished it had not found her, and passed her by.

 

Look what it did to them. Look what people did.

But what good are words? I counted the days where I did not see Alasdair.

I looked for him on the peaks. I wandered through the woods, and when a bird flapped up from the bushes I thought him? But it was not him.

Still. He came, in the end. He came down from the slopes of Cat Peak, bringing down pebbles which I heard first. They were like rain. They pattered, and as I turned I saw the pebbles bouncing against rocks, and knocking into the cows, so that I thought what is…? And when I looked up, there he was.

He said I’ve been away. Too long, I think.

His hair was brighter from sunshine, and he seemed broader to me. And in his pocket he brought out the thin, blue-dappled shell of an egg. Half of it. It still had the whitish film inside it, and a small streak of blood, and I knew a bird had flown from this. It had broken from it, flown away. He put it into my hand.

 

WE WALKED. We did not stay by my hut, for the afternoon was warm and slow. Insects hung in handfuls, and the cows swung their tails as they grazed.

We’ll be moving them soon, he said. We’ll move them onto Rannoch Moor for the grazing. Your valley is too small for so many.

My valley?

Aye. Yours.

We took ourselves to the Meeting of the Waters. Once, a thousand years ago, I’d washed my cloak here and hung cobwebs on trees. Now, the waterfall did not thunder or mist as it had done, for the snow had melted and there’d been no rain.

He said, how have you been?

Very well. Busy. Spring means herbs, so I have been gathering.

He nodded, but I wondered if he’d heard me. His eyes seemed far away.

My mother taught them to me. She had wandered all over, and picked herbs that she passed…

He said, I was wrong to speak as I did, last time. I spoke too strongly. It’s my way, and I must mind it. Women don’t care for war stories…

Not this woman. I gave a small smile to him. I’m for healing sores, not making them.

He nodded. I will remember that. Perhaps you run, and I fight.

Perhaps you should fight less. There is plenty of it, and it helps no-one’s cause—not that I can see.

He smiled, looked away. Your nature is not like mine. It is not like anyone’s here. I saw that, as you stitched our father. You’re more for cowslips than claymores, I think, he said. Teasing me.

More for eggshells.

Aye. I saw it and thought of you.

I smiled. I watched his hand on the grasses, and wondered why my nature was always my own—why I was always alone in it. Cora had been like me, had she not? But none here, and none for a long time. Your brother dislikes my nature, I said.

Iain? It’s not dislike. It’s distrust.

Distrust? But I mended your father.

You did. I know that. Our father knows that. The clan, he said, knows that. But look at you. Listen to you! There was talk for a time of you being a spy, Sassenach.

For whom?

This Dutch king. The Campbells. Sent in with those eyes of yours and your girlish voice to tame us, or to hear what we may be plotting. To send back news on this Jacobite clan…You spoke of having no god, and no king—

I’m not a spy.

I know, he said. I know. But I’ve never heard a person speak that way. Our whole clan fights and lives to bring King James back to the throne. We are all for kings, and you… He gave a long, heavy sigh. Understand my brother’s ways. He will be chief of this clan, one day, and there is so much we risk in these times. So many shadows…

We listened to the waterfall. We listened to the silence that comes when two people want to speak, but neither does. There was such light on the water, such brightness, that it was hard to think of shadows, or of enemies, or war. It was hard to believe in my old lives, with the ash-coloured cats, or the red winter sunrises that took my breath away. They seemed so long ago, to me.

Sarah is with child, he said. She wondered it a little after Hogmanay but she is certain now. It grows quickly. She’s—he held out his hand, showing her belly.

I smiled. I know.

You do?

I shrugged, pointed at my eyes. I have these.

You do.

We nodded at each other. And in silence, we walked back to my hut through the birdsong, and flies. I searched through my herbs for motherwort, which is a true female herb. It mends sickness and worry, and is kind to all parts, and I gave it to Alasdair. I said she may boil the leaves, and sip it. Or burn a little in the fire and its smoke with settle her. It’s from the Ridge Like a Church. There is a rock which it grows about.

He smiled, bemused. From where?

I told him, then. I blushed, and told him my names for the hills which I walked on, and loved, and knew the shapes of. I listed all of them, and he listened, smiled. It made him stay a little longer—for he settled by my fire, and taught me their proper names. Rather than leave, with the motherwort, he stayed and whispered Gearr Aonach to me. Aonach Dubh. Sgorr na Ciche. He said their names very slowly. He used his hands, as if pinching the words as he said them.

Your turn, Sassenach.

Aonach Dubh.

I tried. I shaped my mouth as he shaped his. By the fire, we said the same words.

 

HE STOOD, as it grew dark. He took the herb, and turned slowly in the doorway. He said, is there no man you’ve left behind? No husband?

No.

He shifted, looked down at the herb. And have you been safe?

I did not know his meaning. I blinked. When is a person truly safe?

As you travelled, he said. You’re small, and on your own, and you don’t believe in fighting… He moved his jaw. He had words he did not want to say.

I understood him, then. I knew what he was asking. The sun was very low, and we were both looking very keenly at the motherwort, and the tiny hairs on the tips of its leaves, and I remembered the soldier saying hush, now…You be good for me.

I said, not always.

Where? Were you least safe?

I sniffed. The day before I came to the Highlands I was hurt.

How hurt?

Not badly. Not as much as he’d tried for.

He tensed. I saw his shoulders tighten, and he blew out a sharp breath. He said, you’ll be safe here. You will. I promise it.

We were never good at farewells, him and I. They were always the same—standing, moving stones with our feet, before he turned very quickly and went.

 

I WONDERED why he asked me. I picked at my nails, and twisted my hair. I lay in the dark with my plump old hens and thought why did he ask me? And she is with child.

My nature’s like no-one else’s, he’d said. But I’m still a human, and I feel human things. I knew what beauty was, in a person. I had seen it, in the way a woman fastened her hair under her cap, tucked the fair curls in—and I was dark-haired and had no cap. The day before, I had lowered my head to drink from the loch and risen with weed and water-snail on me. All day I hadn’t known it. The snail had swung in my hair, like fruit. It put a silvery wetness on me, and I’d carried it over the Three Sisters so that it saw things no other snail would see.

I turned onto my side, tucked up my knees.

My heart said him, him… But my head told it to stop prattling, for what was the point? Go to sleep, Corrag. Stop feeling what you feel.

 

Those wide eyes of yours. Looking through your spectacles, as if I was the whore that they all said I was—for whore hurries after witch. What a dread word. What a wire, to bind a girl up with—for once it’s been held against you, it leaves its mark. I have it marked upon me. I still feel its cut.

Whore. How much it makes me think of my English days, where our grey cats stretched themselves, and my mother returned at dawn, half-dressed and flushed. Whore was a stone thrown at her. Whore was murmured as she walked with me, hand-in-hand, through the streets, and whore was what she said once, to herself—she whispered it, looking at her face in a looking-glass. She was so sad-looking, then. She touched the skin by her eyes—like this.

It is a word said in fear—always. For only the strong-willed, wise-hearted women defy such laws, I reckon. And all the folk of Thorneyburnbank feared Cora—for they knew that she knew herself, and was living a life they did not dare, and maybe the others wondered, deep down, what a moonlit night on the moor was like, with the wolf in them calling out, for their own wolf was caged by themselves, and half-dead. Cora, then, was whore. They knew what lifting up those dark-red skirts could do.

 

BUT I am me, am I not? My mother’s child, yes—but also me. And you have sat with me enough times to know that I let my wolf run free in other ways. By sitting cross-legged on a night-time mountain, and waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, until up comes the sun, and day.

You know that I’m for places. But I’m for people most of all.

I wanted love, Mr Leslie. Do not love, but I wanted to—I wanted to find it, and the right kind of it. I’d say to myself I am not lonely—and mostly I wasn’t, for there is such a solace in how trees move, and rain, and my mare and hens have been good friends. But I would feel the space beside me, from time to time. I’d be lying in the heather, turn my head and consider the heather next to me—its colour, how scented it was—and wish there was a person lying on it, looking at the clouds with me.

Haven’t I always tried to be good? To all living things?

Gormshuil called him yours… But he was not mine.

I will say this. That if whore is fire, then I am ice. If whore is like midnight with no stars or moons, no comets trailing their ghost-light, then I am bright. I am milk-white.