Therefore come in from the door. I cannot hurt you.
There is a stool, by that wall.
I knew a woman who dreamt of you. She was half-mad, and as tall as a man can be. In a light, soft snow when the snow did not fall, but lingered in the air, she spoke of you to me. A man she said. After the bloodshed, he will come to you. She talked of my iron wrists, and called you neatly done. She did not talk of spectacles but I imagined them, and I am also right about your shiny buckled shoes. About your wig’s tight curls.
What a look you give. The look I know.
It says damned slattern. Keep away from me.
So I knew you would come. Gormshuil was her name. She had the second sight, though I did not always believe what she said, for she loved her henbane too much to trust her words. Once, she put her finger to my chest and said a wife! As if she saw one in me – that I might become a wife. I told her no…I shook my head, stepped back, but she sang the word as she drifted away – wife! wife! through the glen.
That’s the henbane for you – as strong a herb as I know. Too much can kill you, and speedily too. But I believed her when she told me, sir, of you.
It’s your purpose for coming that I don’t know.
Others have come. You are not the first, sir, to sit on that stool, or frown at the walls. Several have come. And their reasons have been so plentiful, and strange, that it is like plucking herbs – none are the same. To save my soul from Hell’s unending fires, is one. I think my soul is fine, but many try it – to make me speak of God and repent my wicked ways. There were belches from the priest who came to me, like croakings from a toad. He talked to me like all churchmen do, which is like I’m not human, or at best a simple one. Are you a churchman? I see the cross about your neck, and your dislike of me has a high, Godly air. I reckon a thousand Bible words live in your head, and are spoken very solemnly. But save my soul? Maybe not. You don’t sit like the others did. You don’t stare as hard. The priest belched, and stared so intently that I stared back and he hated that – a staring witch-called piece, he said. And he hated my talking. I know I can talk. But I don’t see many people so I talk plenty when I do.
He called me harlot, and quarrelsome, too. Said my chatter disrespected him, and that the day I was burnt like a hog on a spit would be a good day.
So I get them – churchy ones. Who think that by cursing me they are better men.
And lawmen. They have come. But what law is that? I’ve seen no trial, sir. I’ve seen no proper fairness – for when did fairness say its name in law? None of our women ever heard it. If a bird squawks as much as once then cook the bird, or drown it, or maybe string it up and kick away the stool, so it may not squawk again – that is the law. Law, I think, is like hag – it is said so much we are blind to it. Its heart, which is the truest part, is lost, and a wicked lie sits in its heart-shaped place. I’m not the squawking kind, and never was. But that’s no matter. Here I am – chained up.
And doctors. There has been a doctor. Just one – a man with his own lice who looked at the wound where the musket caught me. He said it was healing so fast it was the Horned One’s work – which it wasn’t, of course. It was horsetail with some comfrey boiled up and pressed on. He might do well from comfrey himself, for he had very rank sores from his lice. One was all pus and will only grow worse. He was no true doctor.
And then there were the rest. The townsfolk from Inverary who just wanted to see – to see and smell a witch, a Devil’s whore. They threw stones through the bars at me. They pressed pennies into the gaoler’s hands as they left, and handkerchiefs to their noses, and I reckon I’ve fed him well. He must have bought many bottles with what he’s made from that witch who was in that damned glen.
She was there? In Glencoe?
Aye. Saw it all, they say. They say she knelt and did her spells there.
Called in the Devil?
Oh aye. All that blood and murder…The Devil was there, right enough.
A man called Stair, as well. He has come. He has sat where you are sitting now. He looked upon me as a wolf looks on a thing it has stalked too long, but has now.
That is all I have to say on him.
Reverend Charles Leslie. I feel I know your name.
Leslie – like the wind in the trees, or the sea coming in…
I saw you flinch at witch.
Oh it’s a dark word, for certain. It has caused its damage across the months and years. Many good people have been undone by it – married and unmarried, beautiful, and strange. Women. Men.
What did you have, in your head? With witch?
I know that all people have a certain creature in their head, when they hear it – a woman, mostly. Pitch-dark and cruel, crooked with age. Did you think she will be mad, this witch? I might be. It’s been said. I prattle, I play with my hands and bring them up to my face when I speak like this, as a mouse may with its paws as it eats or cleans itself. My voice is shrill and girlish – this has been called proof, for they say the devil took my lower voice away and ate it up to make his own voice deeper. Which is a lie, of course. I am small, so my voice is small, too – that’s all.
And spells? Oh they’ve tried to pin a thousand things on me – a splinter in a finger, or an owl swooping in. They pinned even more on my mother, but she was a wilder one than me, and beautiful, and brave. A calf with a star on its forehead was her doing, and so were the twins which were as alike as shoes. Cora said, once, that a black cock crowed by a church door so they took it and buried it – the cock, not the door. Buried it alive, too, so that she heard its scrabbles as they held it down. The Devil sent it to us, they hissed. And later that night, Cora unburied the cock with frantic hands, but it was too late – it was earthy, and dead. She buried it again but gently, and in a better, secret place.
I hated that story. That poor cock which did no harm – it was just black, and passing by. But Cora said all people bury what it is they fear – so it cannot hurt them. So it is kept from them, locked up in the earth or in the sea.
Does it work? I asked her. Burying a feared thing?
She pursed her lips. Maybe. If it is done justly, and with an honest, hopeful heart – which it wasn’t with that rooster, I can promise you that. She shook her head, sighed. That was a waste of a fine, cockerel life…
So what townsfolk say we do and what we truly do are very different things. I have cast no spells. I’ve never plucked out gizzards or howled at moons. I’ve never turned into a bird, skimmed a night-time loch, or settled on ships to make them drown. I’ve not kissed obscenely or eaten dead babes, and I don’t have a third teat, and nor do I laugh like broth when it’s left to boil over and ruin the fire, and ruin itself for the broth tastes bitter, then. I’ve never seen the future in a rotten egg. I never laughed at murders, or called murders in.
I’ve not summoned anything. I’ve only asked – prayed.
Pray. Yes. I use that word, too. I pray – not in church and with no Bible, but otherwise I reckon it’s probably like how you pray, which is with the heart’s voice talking, not the mouth’s.
Devil child, they’ve called me. Evil piece.
But Mr Leslie, I will tell you this. When witch was first thrown at me, as I passed through a market, Cora led me by the hand to an alleyway and sat me down, and wiped my wet eyes, and said listen to me. The only evil in the world is the one that lies in people – in their pride, and greed, and duty. Remember that.
And from what I have seen of this world,