They took me to a clearing of moss, and damp. A goat’s leg boiled in a pot. A lone hobbler dozed beneath a tree, and three hens pecked in the dirt. The evening light was dusty, like it is in barns, and when I looked up I saw the evening star, shining through the trees.
Here. Some of the cooking water was given to me, in a cup.
I thought of how I used to be – of what I’d believed in, a few hours before, which had not been these things.
I mended his eyes that night. I was glad of the eyebright, and pressed it on with flaxweed, and said hush, now, and laid them on his lids. Then I also took a splinter out from a heel. For the cough, which rattled like pins in a pail, I took coltsfoot and warmed it up in milk. I said sip this tonight, and your cough will go directly. There is no herb better for the chest.
I ate a little goat’s meat, which was good. The fire crackled. My mare dozed with the hobbler, side by side.
We’ve met ones like you said the plum-faced one.
Like me? I looked up.
Runners. Hiders. These woods are full of folk who are hunted for things – small and big things. He put goat in his mouth, and chewed. For a stillborn child. A wild heart. Faith.
I nodded. My mother’s heart is wild.
He looked up. But she doesn’t run with you?
No. Because they would follow her. They would follow her, and find her, and find me too. It made my eyes fill up with tears, which I think he saw.
We are the same – you and us. You might think we are not, but we are. Our ancestors are mostly dead by the hangman’s doing. We also live by nature’s laws – which are the true laws. He shook his head. Man’s laws are not as they should be.
I agreed to this. I ate.
We’re Mossmen, he said. My father’s father was a reiver, and my father was – and I am the last of them. But where they raped and burnt – and I know they did, God forgive them – I’ve only ever taken what I needed to, and no more. An egg. Perhaps a lamb. And only from the rich. He eyed me, as if he wanted me to nod at this. Then, to himself, he said they call us murderers but I’ve not killed a soul. Not even hurt one.
Like Cora, I said. They blamed her for a baby that came out blue.
Not her fault?
No.
The fire lapped on itself. I heard the mare’s belly rumble, which was the hay in her.
Thorneyburnbank…he said. Yes, I know it. Clover. It had the sweetest cattle when I was a boy. A half-moon bridge. That cherry tree…
They were good cherries.
He nodded. They were. My brother liked them. He liked all of it.
The whole tree?
The whole village. With its fat cows. Its stream full of fish. The folk too…He threw a piece of grass into the fire. My brother said they were sour. That they were sour to each other, and that thieving from sour people was less sinful than thieving from the good.
Some were kind I said, sharply. I thought of Mrs Fothers with her hand-shaped bruise. Mr Pepper who had never minded Cora’s ways, or mine.
He wiped his chin with his forearm. Some. There’s always a star or two, on dark nights, I’ll say that. But…He looked into the fire then. He looked so hugely, deeply sad that I wanted to ask him of it – but I did not need to ask. He said we took from there. When I was younger, we took some geese from there. Then my brother wanted more, so he rode back for two plump cows. He took them from a farmer who beat his herd with sticks until they bled, which wasn’t good. I was there. I helped him. He held up his fingers. Two cows. We never took more than we needed, and never left a person with nothing at all.
What then? I asked this. But I think I knew.
They rode out a third time. He shook his head. He was quiet for a long time, so that I heard the wind move high above us. I smelt the pines, and the smoke. Hung by the neck in Hexham. Four years ago, this winter.
I saw it. I was there again, and saw it – the crow waiting, and the crowd’s cheer as the doors went bang.
Was his beard yellow?
He glanced over. Yes. You saw?
I did not tell him I often saw it, in my head – the one, small bounce when the rope reached its end. They were all your men?
My brother, an uncle, three friends.
He said no more on this. He said no more at all that night – only you can sleep soundly here, which I believed. And I did sleep soundly – beneath my mother’s cloak, breathing night-time air.
But no, there was no more, on those deaths. I know some people think that to talk of others dying is not right – that it makes them die a second time. Maybe he thought his brother died a new death that night, by the fire, with goat’s meat in our mouths. He had looked so woeful. He’d rubbed at his eyes. And thieving is wrong – even a hen, or a turnip or two – but not much deserves the scaffold, and these men never did.
I’m sorry I said.
He nodded. We took two cows and they took five lives.
I don’t think to talk of how people died makes them die twice-over, though. I think it keeps them living. But we all think different things.
He was the one I knew. Him with the reddish bloom on his face which I reckoned came with his birth – and which no herbs could fade. It ran from his brow, over one eye. It was plum-coloured, and shiny, and Cora would have liked it. She liked differences. She said true beauty lay in them.
The other Mossmen kept in shadows, or slept, but the plum-faced one stayed near me – as if he wanted to. Maybe he did. Maybe he felt closer to his brother by being with a girl who’d seen his bad death. I don’t know.
Are you coming? he’d ask.
Where to?
Into the forest, always. He trod old paths. He led me to streams which silvered with fish, and we gathered berries there, and firewood. This, he said, is how to catch the fish – and it was slowness that did it. He moved his hand so slowly that the fish thought it was weed until it scooped it up, into the air, with there! See? He showed me how to smoke it, and lift it from its bones. I whispered thank you to the fish as I ate it – and the Mossman smiled a little, said Corrag – it cannot hear you now. By the fire he showed me how to skin a rabbit, how to use its fur. We mended the small roof which we all huddled under, in hard rain – with moss, and thick branches. He showed me how. And one day I said do you know about mushrooms at all? Which he did not. So I took him out to the dankest parts and gave him their names, showed him their pale, velvet underskirts – and I was glad of this, for I felt I’d been taking more than giving, and I like giving more.
And he was the best for stories. He had many – so many. Maybe he knew that I loved strange and wild tellings, for when we picked thistles out of manes together, or shook trees to bring the grubs down, or sat by the fire with broth, he’d speak of them. I’d say tell me of…And some tales were of such wonder that I could not breathe with them. Unearthly, whispering tales – of red-coloured moons, or a boy who spoke more wisdom than any grown man could, or of a green, northern light in the sky. Of an eggshell with three eggs inside it. He spoke of how he fell, once, with a wound and woke to find a rough tongue licking his blood away – a fox’s tongue. A fox? I said. But he was sure of it.
He had reiving tales in him, too. Not his own – for