But why these ways? Why with such pain in them? I wish we could all find a high-up place with clouds and air, and close our eyes, and find a heavy sleep – and that would be our deaths. No ropes or pins. No crowds, or spit. Just the wind, and a knowing that the ones you love are safe, that you’ll be remembered fondly, and all’s as it should be.
That’s the death I’d choose.
But I cannot choose. It is chosen for me. It has been picked, like fruit.
Why fire?
I asked the gaoler this. I asked the man who came to see my wounds, and staunch them up. I asked the one called Stair who has always hated witch. I said why fire? Why? Please not by fire…And Stair watched me for a while, through the bars. I pleaded with him. I rambled, begged. But he picked at his teeth, turned slowly on his heel and left this room saying, I think fire is best. Such cold weather…It would warm the town up – don’t you think?
I shook the bars. I banged my iron wrists on the bars, and kicked at my pail. I screamed not by fire! Not that way! And come back! Come back! Come back! Come back!
I shook, and shook.
I heard my words echo and his footsteps die away.
So it will be by fire. Outside, they gather wood. I hear them drag it through the snow, and the nails going in. Inside, I look at my skin. I see its scars and freckles. I feel my bones, and I roll the skin upon my knees so that the bones beneath them clunk – back and fro. I follow where my veins run along my arm and hands. I touch the tender places – inside my legs, my belly. The pink, wrinkled skin between my toes.
The realm. Where they are waiting.
I love them – Cora, the plum-faced one.
But I do not want to join them. Not yet, and not this way.
I am fretful, tonight. Afraid.
Tonight, I breathe too quickly. I walk up and down, up and down. I run my fist along the bars so that my knuckles hurt, and bleed – but the hurt says I am living, that my body still has blood in it and works like it should do. I talk to myself so my breath comes out – white, white – and when I sit, tucked up, I hold my feet very tightly and I rock myself like children do when they have plenty on their minds. I try to say hush now to me, to calm me, but it doesn’t work. I press my eyes into my knees, and tell myself that my mother is waiting for me, and my mare, the Highland men, and won’t it be nice to see her again? So hush now, I say, stroking myself.
I have been so afraid that I have retched on me. It made me cry. In my hair, and on my skirts, and I looked upon my hands, and when the gaoler saw it he spat, said ah the devil’s in you, right enough. Foul wretch…like he was all manners himself, all clean – and he’s never been clean. I tried to tidy myself. I tried to quieten down – but I was so afraid, that night. I cried, and hugged myself, and vomited again.
Above all, I’m afraid of the pain. For surely it hurts? Surely it is a pain beyond all knowing, and a slow death, too? And such a lonesome one. Fire…And when I think it, it makes me wrap my arms about me, and I wail. My wail has an echo. I hear the echo, and think poor, poor creature, to make such a sound – for it is a desperate, dying sound. It is the wail of such a mauled and mangled thing, with no hope left, no light. No friend.
I pull at my chains. Don’t let me die.
Don’t let it be by burning.
I rock back and forth like this.
Still. I have a comfort. It is small, but I have it – I whisper it into cupped hands.
People live because of me.
They do. They live because I saved them – because I listened to my soul’s voice, to the song of my bones, the words of the world. I listened to my womb, my belly, my breasts. My instinct. The howling wolf in me. And I told them make for Appin! And go! Go! And they went. I watched them running in the snow, with their skirts hitched up, and their children strapped on tightly, and I thought yes – be safe. Live long lives.
There. It comforts me. It takes the fear away, and makes my breath slow down. When they tie me to the wood, I will say I have saved lives, and it will be a comfort and I will not mind the flames. For what if that’s the cost? My life for their lives? What if the world asks for that – for my small life, with its lonely hours, in return for the lives of three hundred, or more? I will pay it. If it means they are living, and if it means the stag still treads the slopes, and the herrings still flash themselves in the loch in summer, and if it means the people still play their pipes and still tell their stories of Fionn and his dogs, and the Lord of the Isles, and if the heather still shakes in the wind, and if it means that he – him, him, with hair like how wet hillside is – is still living, and mending, then I will pay it. I will.
Does he live? I think he does. In my darkest hours I worry he is dead – but I think he lives. I see him by the sea. On his side, he has the poultice of horsetail and comfrey, and he unpeels it. He sees he is healing, smiles, thinks Corrag…He presses the poultice back on.
See? I am calm now. I can see his dark-red hair.
I must sleep. It partly seems a waste of final hours, of breath. But even as I think of life, and love, and the stag with his fine branches, I have Gormshuil in my head – how she said a man will come.
I think he comes tomorrow. My days grow less and less.
Let him come. Let him do his purpose, even if it hurts. Even if it’s pins, or his turn to say whore, or hag. For I am still living. Ones I love are still living, and so what pain can come to me? What is there to fear?
Lives mean far more than deaths ever do. It is what we remember – the life. Not how they died, but how warm and bright-eyed they were, and how they lived their lives.
The Argyll Inn
Inverary
26th February
Darling Jane
You will be glad, I think, to see where I write this from. I have made it safely to the town of Inverary – though there were times in our journey when I doubted that we would. It was arduous, my love. It was wild with blizzards. We passed such dark, desolate water, and the wind howled like a demon at night. I thought of the stitched kneeler my mother made – remember? It says ‘So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”’ (Hebrews 13.6) – and it is His doing alone, His loving care, which brought us to Inverary, in the end.
It is an attractive town, despite the weather. Placed on the edge of Loch Fyne, it has an air of money and civility which is welcome at this time. My lodgings here are warm, and dry. They are by the water, in a coaching inn which seems lively by day and more so at night. My rooms have a fire, and a window which looks out across the loch and its clinking ice (I take a rather childish pleasure in seeing such coldness, whilst I am warm. I write this, and see the blueness) and I wonder at the hardiness of these people, who live amongst such mountains and wind. The Campbells are also generous men. Their allegiance may not be my own, but I have eaten well in this inn, and our two remaining horses which have served us so well seem as happy as I am for the food and rest. I confess to being better in my spirits than I was. I have even eaten venison, Jane. I am still picking my teeth from it, but it is a good, restorative meat.
On to my purpose.
I have heard plenty of Glencoe. In the corners of the inn, it is all they speak about. I dined, and overheard such things that chilled me – the Chief, they say, was shot as he rose from his bed. His lady wife was injured in such a manner that she died, naked, out in the snow. Her rings, I hear, were bitten from her hands, so that her hands were mauled most savagely. Dreadful, despicable deeds.
I