Mundy who was a long time boxed under the earth. He’d stepped on a nail, or so I heard. It turned his blood bad, and that took him.
I don’t know why she told me of the reiver. I only half-caught her meaning, but did not forget.
Most were gone by my birth. They did their crimes before this Dutch Orange king, or the witch-hating one. The red-haired queen was on the English throne when they fought with most splendour or the least shame – whichever you’d have it. Before the war people called civil, when no war is such. They were caught and banished, or strung up like rats, so that these northern parts could sleep well on autumn nights.
The second Charles king talked of border peace then. But he was wrong, as kings can be. There was no proper border peace. The sons of reivers and their sons were still alive. They were fewer, but vengeful. And when my mother first came to Thorneyburnbank she knew the last reivers still rode out at night, and lurked in blind turnings, for the witch in her could smell their blades and fires, and sheep fat. She could hear their hobblers’ teeth upon their bridles in the dark.
Wise Cora.
She was. For she reasoned that if a village had one eye on the Scotch raiders, they would not say witch so much. Folk need a foe, she told me, and they have their foe already. See? I saw. Some people fight Campbells, or Papists, or the English, or women who live on their own. But Thorneyburnbank? They fought these night-time marauders, these varlots. These Mossmen.
A week before an unknown lady with a blood-red skirt came into the village, a farmstead was reived. A dozen geese were thrown in a sack, and stolen. Local men rode after the sound of a dozen white geese in foul tempers, but the Mossmen knew the windings, the places no one knew. The geese were gone, plucked, roasted before the men had saddled up, most likely. And the farmer had no beasts now, except for an old bull.
So when Cora slipped through the falling light, with her tangled hair, she heard halt! Stay there! Show yourself! She wept. She talked of her own bereaving ten miles away – her lost cows, her dead man. May I find shelter with you? In the Lord’s name? Cora could jaw well, and lie better. And the men saw her prettiness, and how long her lashes were – how she looked from behind in those skirts of hers.
So she lived in Thorneyburnbank with its wild, cold wind and singing water.
Our cottage was by a burn. It was a reedy, whispering burn which met the River Allen and later the River Tyne – rivers meet rivers like fingers meet hands. It was so close to the water that its floor was marshy, and its roof was bright with fish that had jumped, stuck. Cora found it half-lost to holly and liked this, for holly is said to hold the lightning back. So she let the holly grow. She swept the floor of fishes’ scales and she went to church – for to not go to church was to shine a light upon her. It was darkness she wanted, and peace.
This is how she was in the beginning. Tidy, and quiet. She made her pennies from reeds and rushes for thatch – for there were many growing by the burn. And there is always a need for rushes in a land where the wind is hard, and so are the men who come raiding.
She sold them in Hexham, and smiled at men. She was as sweet as a pear, or let them think it. Cora wore her cross on its chain, to fool them, and she took Christ’s body into her mouth on Sundays, kept it under her tongue for an hour or two until she could spit it out. What a piece. Who would have known that as she was seated on her pew, with her head bowed, she thought of full moons and thumbs-and-toes tied?
It is a shame Cora did not stay pear-sweet – for she did not.
She was always a night-time lady. The wolf in her howled for night air, and so she took herself away into the unknown parts. If she was seen, she’d say I am a widow. I grieve out in the darkness…and this would satisfy them for a while. But it was an odd grieving – lifting her skirts, throwing back her hair.
I won’t talk too much of it. Nor did she – snapping out hush up! What I do is what I do, not you…before running bright-eyed into the night. All I will say is what harm did she do? What trouble? She had a beauty which lured men to meet her by the Romans’ wall, and they grappled in the gloaming or held each other back. They sought themselves, somehow. And when the sky lightened, she re-tied her bodice, shrugged, and wandered home with the birds singing about her, and her hair undone.
I never knew my father, Mr Leslie.
Nor did Cora. Or not for more than a moment or two.
I know this says whore to you. Slattern. Old jade. They are names she gave herself sometimes, and laughed, and how she is remembered in Hexham is as a witch and a whore. They think it’s right that they stretched her neck like they did. But I don’t think these things.
What she did, Mr Leslie, was not bad. More badness was done years before, when she was a little one – in a river, with her mother snared like a bird.
Cora had her feelings on love.
Do not feel it, she told me. She took my wrist, or my chin in her hands and said never feel it. For if you love, then you can be hurt very sorely and be worse than before. So don’t love, she said. Do you hear me? She made me repeat what she said.
That’s a sad story, is it not? It is to my ears – a woman as fair-faced as Cora being afraid of love. So don’t call her a whore, thank you. Not my mother. She found her comfort in deep-furred cats, and the moon, and the fireside, but also in kisses from unknown men. Who did this hurt? Nobody.
We all need our comforts. Things which say hush…and there, now.
So her belly swelled. It fattened like the berries did. But what filled her head? Some fierceness. She took off her cross and stepped out from the cottage of fish and holly as she was – not a widow, but a woman of bad weather. A person who did not like God. His word was justice, she said, and what a ripe lie that was, with its trapdoors and screws.
Mr Pepper in the church spoke of forgiveness. On the Sabbath he said we are all from the Lord – but folk ignore what doesn’t suit them. They hissed, her? With child? And without a man by her side? They bought their rushes from someone else after that – a lazy wife who cut them wrong, so they cankered. But this wife prayed and read the Bible, so her bad reeds were better than clean ones from that slattern in the dark-red skirt. It did not matter. Cora had her means. She told future times in Hexham’s wynds and shadows. She gave herbs to the women who needed them – fern, lovage. It’s always the women.
That was a merciless winter. One of frosts and white breath. Old Man Bean left to hunt the pheasants and was not seen again. Cora knew the cold called out to the Mossmen. They came for food and wood to burn, and a Scotchman with a yellow beard stole two cows away, and a dog, and a kiss from the milkmaid. Cora was glad. It was all eyes to the north once more, and none on her belly like a bramble fattening up.
Oh, she loved the Mossmen. She tightened her fists with glee at the sound of their hooves on the frost – da-da, da-da. She loved their moonless nights, and the smell of their torches flaming as they rode. And on Christmas Eve, as they galloped to Hexham with their backswords held high, my mother took her body out into the yard. She roared with two voices. She steamed in the dark, and I fell on to the ice.
Witch, she called me, for she knew it would follow me for all my days.
Then, she cradled me, kissed me. Said but Corrag’s your true name.
That was me. My beginning.
I lived on old fish and sour milk, for months. If I cried, she lay me down amongst the reeds and I would sleep – maybe it was wind sounds, or the wet. Ghost baby she called me, because of my eyes, which are pale and wide. I crawled in the spring-time elm wood. I walked in the next summer, by the cherry tree. Later, still, I’d sit on a fallen log by the church and ride it – my wet, wooden horse. I had ivy for reins, and a saddle of leaves.
Autumn was also good for mushrooms. She showed them to me like she showed me herbs – this one is for sickness. This brings poisons out. And these ones…she’d