Free Corrag by Susan Fletcher Page B

them. I said yes.
    He nodded. Mend his eyes, he said. Mend my cough and that one’s foot and sew a jerkin or two, and we’ll give you some meat. And you can rest a while.
    He helped me to gather Cora’s herbs, and put them in my purse.
     
     
    I FOLLOWED them through the trees. I walked with the drip drip and my mare blowing her nose, and I whispered to myself, to her, to what it is that sees us and hears us—God, or spirits, or the hidden self, or all these things— this, now, is my second life.
    It began as Cora’s ended.
    My second, galloping life.
     
     
    They were ghosts, Mr Leslie.
    Not spectres made of mist, and air—not lost souls. Just ghostly men. The last of their kind, for reiving days were gone. I’d thought all the Mossmen had been hung, or sent away. But here they were. With their sweat and goatskin boots.
    They took me to a clearing of moss, and damp. A goat’s leg boiled in a pot. A lone hobbler dozed beneath a tree, and three hens pecked in the dirt. The evening light was dusty, like it is in barns, and when I looked up I saw the evening star, shining through the trees.
    Here. Some of the cooking water was given to me, in a cup.
    I thought of how I used to be—of what I’d believed in, a few hours before, which had not been these things.
     
     
    I MENDED his eyes that night. I was glad of the eyebright, and pressed it on with flaxweed, and said hush, now, and laid them on his lids. Then I also took a splinter out from a heel. For the cough, which rattled like pins in a pail, I took coltsfoot and warmed it up in milk. I said sip this tonight, and your cough will go directly. There is no herb better for the chest.
    I ate a little goat’s meat, which was good. The fire crackled. My mare dozed with the hobbler, side by side.
    We’ve met ones like you, said the plum-faced one.
    Like me? I looked up.
    Runners. Hiders. These woods are full of folk who are hunted for things—small and big things. He put goat in his mouth, and chewed. For a stillborn child. A wild heart. Faith.
    I nodded. My mother’s heart is wild.
    He looked up. But she doesn’t run with you?
    No. Because they would follow her. They would follow her, and find her, and find me too. It made my eyes fill up with tears which I think he saw.
    We are the same—you and us. You might think we are not, but we are. Our ancestors are mostly dead by the hangman’s doing. We also live by nature’s laws—which are the true laws. He shook his head. Man’s laws are not as they should be.
    I agreed to this. I ate.
    We’re Mossmen, he said. My father’s father was a reiver, and my father was—and I am the last of them. But where they raped and burnt—and I know they did, God forgive them—I’ve only ever taken what I needed to, and no more. An egg. Perhaps a lamb. And only from the rich. He eyed me, as if he wanted me to nod at this. Then, to himself, he said they call us murderers but I’ve not killed a soul. Not even hurt one.
    Like Cora, I said. They blamed her for a baby that came out blue.
    Not her fault?
    No.
    The fire lapped on itself. I heard the mare’s belly rumble, which was the hay in her.
    Thorneyburnbank… he said. Yes, I know it. Clover. It had the sweetest cattle when I was a boy. A half-moon bridge. That cherry tree…
    They were good cherries.
    He nodded. They were. My brother liked them. He liked all of it.
    The whole tree?
    The whole village. With its fat cows. Its stream full of fish. The folk too… He threw a piece of grass into the fire. My brother said they were sour. That they were sour to each other, and that thieving from sour people was less sinful than thieving from the good.
    Some were kind I said, sharply. I thought of Mrs Fothers with her hand-shaped bruise. Mr Pepper who had never minded Cora’s ways, or mine.
    He wiped his chin with his forearm. Some. There’s always a star or two, on dark nights, I’ll say that. But… He looked into the fire, then. He looked so hugely, deeply sad that I wanted