As for the woman herself – Jane, I wonder if even your motherly heart and goodness would feel any warmth for the wretch. I thought she was a child, when I entered. She is child-sized. I barely saw her at all, and thought the cell was empty. But then she shifted in her chains and spoke. You might read child-sized and feel tender for her – but Jane, she’s a despicable thing. Her hair is knots and branches. She is half-naked, dressed in thin rags which are crusted with mud and blood and all manner of filth (the smell in her cell is unpleasant). Her feet are bare. Her fingernails are splintered and black, and she gnaws on them sometimes, and I partly wondered if she was human at all. I was minded to turn, and leave. But she said sit. And I felt the Lord beside me, so I did not leave.
I sat – and then, in the gloom I saw her eyes. They were a very pale grey, and gave her a haunted expression, as the dying get. Her stare was brazen. She stared, and said she had expected me – which I doubt. If she knew I’d hoped to visit her, it can only be through prattle – for news is swift, in small towns. Even prisoners have ears.
She herself can prattle. The landlord was right about her tongue, for she talked more than I did. She rocked with her knees to her chest like her mind was half-gone – which it may be. She is a witch, and therefore deserves no sympathy, and I give her none, but I will say she has been poorly treated in her time – there were bruises on her arms, a reddened crust above one eye, and there’s a blood-stain on the side of her. The shackles have also broken her skin. I wonder if these wounds will kill her before the flames do. (I’ll also add this – that she is bruised and cut, and mangled, but I saw no bites on her. So rest yourself, Jane – do not worry yourself on lice.)
She may have been pretty, once. But the Devil takes hold of a face as much as he does the soul, and she is filthy now. Woe is on her features. This also makes her look older than I will say she is. If she is older than our eldest son, Jane, it can only be by months.
So, in short, Inverary tollbooth is a very foul place. Foul, too, is its inmate whose high, girlish voice spoke of kindness and good deeds – but I am not tricked by that. The Devil was speaking. He hides his nature in lies, and when she said I cannot hurt you I heard his voice very clearly. I thought, I will not be fooled by you. I know who you are. He speaks through this half-creature in a feminine way – and it is better for her that she is burnt, and soon. The flames will purge her soul. The fire will clean her of wickedness, and to be purified in death is far better than to live in this manner – unChristian, defiled.
It was good to leave. I stepped into the snow, and filled up my lungs with fresh air. I wondered if I’d ever met such a wretched human, as her – and I was minded to not return. But, Jane, I am intrigued – for she spoke of Dalrymple, the Master of Stair. His is not a name you know. But he is a Lowlander. His hatred of the Highlands is as famous as his love of himself, and fine things – and he is William’s wolf. He prowls Scotland, in the King’s name. In short, if he had a hand in the Glencoe murders, then is that not proof? Of William’s own sin?
For all her unpleasantness, this witch may help our cause.
So I will not be discouraged by her smell, or strangeness. I will endure her, and use her for her knowledge – no more than that. For I believe she may indeed have news that brings James in. I have given her my true name – which I hope I will not regret. But who might she tell? She will die soon.
She has promised to speak of the massacre and what she knows, but only if I listen to the years of her life, beforehand. A tiresome task. Who knows what crimes or barbarity she has seen? But she said no one knows my story. She said William is blood-red, not orange – so I agreed to her request.
A curious arrangement, indeed. It is not one I could have imagined when I wrote to you, in Edinburgh. But God works as He chooses – we have our tests, and He has His revelations.
This is an unearthly winter. I will be glad when spring comes.
My love, with this knowledge, and with there being no hasty thaw of snow, I think I may be in Inverary for longer than I thought. Perhaps two weeks, or more. Therefore, if you find the time to write a small note to me, it will reach me here. It would be a joy to have your words. It is the closest I can be to you – and as always, I wish to be close.
Charles
‘Called also Wind flower, because they say the flowers never open but when the wind blows.’
of Anemone
How would you like my words? I have so many of them. Like a night sky is starry, so my mind is shining with words. I could not sleep, last night, for thinking. I lay on my straw and thought where do I start, with my story? How?
I could speak of the night of the murders itself – how I ran all breathless from Inverlochy with the snow coming down. Or how the loch was dark with ice. Or Alasdair’s kiss – his mouth on my mouth.
Or further back?
To before the glen? To my English life?
I will start there. I’ll start in a town of clover, with my mother’s glossy black hair. For it’s right, I think, that I start with my early days – for how can you tell my tale, if you don’t know me? Who I am? You think I am a stinking, small-sized wretch. No heart in my chest. No skin on my bones.
Yes, I will wait a moment.
A quill, ink, your holy book.
Is it a goose’s feather? Very long and white. I have seen geese flying at twilight, and I have heard them call, and those are good moments. They happened in England, in the autumn days. Where were the geese flying to? I never really knew. But sometimes their feathers would undo themselves, and float down into the cornfields, and Cora and I would find them, take them home. She couldn’t write, but she liked them. So long and white…she’d whisper, fingering it. Like your quill.
And a small table, that unfolds?
You have brought plenty in that leather bag of yours.
There is the saying, sir, that witches are not born at all.
I have heard such lies – that their mothers were cats, or a cow whose milk had soured so she heaved her curdle out in human form. A fishwife once said she hatched out from fish eggs, but she cackled, too – she liked the whisky too much. Then there was Doideag. She swore she grew like a tooth on a rock, on the isle of Mull – and she believed her own story, I think. But I didn’t. That one lusted for henbane, like Gormshuil did. Fiercesome pieces, both. They smiled when they heard of a boat being wrecked – and I asked why? It is awful! A boat is gone, and all those lives…But I reckon they smiled at what they knew, from years before – loss, and sorrow. That’s why.
A tooth? On a rock?
Not me.
I had a mother. A proper human one.
She was like no other human I have ever known. Her eyelashes brushed her cheekbones. Her laugh was many shrieks in a line, like how a bird does when a fox comes by it. She wore a blood-red skirt, which is why she wore it, I think – for when our pig died, his blood didn’t show on it at all. Nor did berry juices, or mud. When she spun on her toes those skirts lifted up, like a wing – as if she might fly far away. Cora lapped up the morning dew, cat-like. She rustled with all the herbs she’d picked, and she told future times, and most of the men looked twice at her as she passed, and smiled. The blacksmith was in love with her. The baker’s boy would follow her, put his feet where