Susan Fletcher - Corrag

Edinburgh 18
February 1692

Jane

I cant think of a winter that has been this cruel, or has asked so much of me. For weeks now, it has been blizzards, and ice. The wind is a hard, northern oneit finds its way inside my room and troubles this candle that Im writing by. Twice it has gone out. For the candles sake I must keep this brief.

I have news as foul as the weather.

Edinburgh shivers, and coughsbut it whispers, too. In its wynds and markets, there are whispers of treacheryof a mauling in the brutish, Highland parts. Deaths are often violent there, but I hear these were despicably done. A clan, they say, has been slaughtered. Their guests rose up against them and killed them in their beds.

On its own, this is abhorrent. But there is more.

Janethey say it was soldiers work.

Of all people, you know my mind. You know my heart, and if this is trueif it was soldiers hands that did this bloodinessthen surely it was the King who ordered it (or I will say the Orange, pretending one, for he is not my king).

I must leave for this valley. They call it wild and remote, and its surely snowbound at this timebut its my duty. I must learn what I can and report it, my love, for if William is behind this wickedness it may prove his undoing, and our making. All I wish, as you know, is to restore the true King to his throne.

Pray for my task. Ask the Lord for its safe and proper outcome. Pray for the lives of all our brothers in this cause, for we risk so much in its name. Pray, too, for better weather? This snow gives me a cough.

The candle gutters. I must end this letter, or I shall soon be writing by the fires light which is not enough light for my eyes.

In Gods love, and my own,

Charles

The Moon is Lady of this.

of Privet

Complete Herbal
Culpeper
1653

W hen they come for me, I will think of the end of the northern ridge, for thats where I was happiestwith the skies and wind, and the mountains being dark with moss, or dark with the shadow of a cloud moving across them. I will think of how it is when part of a mountain brightens very suddenly, so it is like that rock is chosen by the sunmarked out by sunshine from all the other rocks. It will shine, and then grow dark again. And Ill stand with my skirts blowing, make my way home. I will have that sunlit rock in me. I will keep it safe.

Or Ill think of how I ran with the snow coming down. There was no moon, but I saw the morning star, which they say is the Devils star but it is loves star, too. It shone, that nightso brightly. And I ran beneath it thinking let all be well let all be well. Then I saw the land below which was so peaceful, so white and still and sleeping that I thought maybe the star had heard and all was wellno death was coming near. It was a night of beauty, then. For a while, it was the greatest beauty I had ever seen in all my life. My little life.

Or I will think of you .

In my last, quiet moments, I will think of him beside me. How, very softly, he said you

S OME called it a dark place like there was no goodness to be found inside those hills. But I know there was goodness. I climbed into its snowy heights. I crouched by the loch and drank from it, so my hair was in the water, and I lifted up my head to see the mist come down. On a clear, frosty night, when they said all the wolves were gone, I heard a wolf call from Bidean nam Bian. It was such a long, mournful call that I closed my eyes to hear it. It mourned its own end, I think, or oursas if it knew. Those nights were like no other nights. The hills were very black, like they were shapes cut out of cloth, and the cloth was dark-blue, starry sky. I knew starsbut not as those stars were.

Those were its nights. And its days were clouds and rocks. Its days were paths in grass, and pulling herbs from soggy places that stained my hands and left their peaty smell on me. I was damp, peat-smelling. Deer trod their ways. I also trod them, or nestled in their hollows and felt their old deer-warmth. I saw what their black deer-eyes had seen, before my own. Those were its dayssmall things. Like how a river parts around a rock and joins again.

It was not dark . No.

I had to find itdarkness. I had to push rocks from their resting place, or look for it in caves. The summer nights could be so light, so full of light that I curled up like a mouse, hid my eyes beneath my hand so I might find a little dark to sleep inside. It is how I sleep, even nowtucked up.

I will think this way. When my life is ending. I will not think of musket shots or how it smelt by Achnacon. Not of bloodied things.

I will think of the end of the northern ridge. How my hair blew all about me. How I saw the glen go light and dark with clouds, or how he said youve changed me, as he stood by my side. I thought this is the place, as I stood there. I thought this is my place mine, where I was meant for.

It was waiting for me, and I found it, in the end.

No rivers for me, now. No bogs.

Now I am in chains. Im in a half-dark cell with shackles on my wrists, and wet straw to lie upon. A cracked bucket. Bars.

And it snows. From the little window, I can see it snows. Its been months, I think, of snowingof bluish ice, and cold. Months of clouded breath. I blow, and see my breath roll out and I think look. That is my life. I am still living.

I like itsnow. I always did. I was born in a sharp, hard-earth December, as the church folk sang about three wise men and a star through their chattering teeth. Cora said that the weather you are born in is yours, all your lifeyour own weather. You will shine brightest in snowstorms she told me. Oh yes I believed herfor she was born in thunder, and was always stormy-eyed.

So snow and ice is mine. And I have known some winters. Ive heard fish knock beneath their ice. Ive seen a trapdoor freeze so it could not go bang, though they still took the mans life away, in the end. Me? Im a hardy thing. People die from the cold, but I havent. Ive not had blue skin, not oncea man said it was the evil fire in me that kept me warm, and bind that harlot up . But it was no evil fire. I was just born in snowy weather and had to be hardy, to stay living. I wanted to live, in this life. So I grew strong, and did.