Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [29]
Ballad
After the battle at Philiphaugh on the thirteenth of September in the year 1645, the Army of the Solemn League and Covenant presses north. On the broken road to St. Andrews, a cavalryman hangs back till he is out of sight of his comrades, till the dragoons and the musketeers and the regiments of foot have all marched past him. Till the flag, with its stained white cross on a blue field, is gone by. Then he turns off over the empty fields towards Perth. He wears a buff coat with a worn blue ribbon; his hands smell of salt-petre and blood. He is owed four months' wages. He feels nothing, nothing at all.
Beady Bell an Mary Gray,
They were twa bonny lasses
Scotland is plague-stricken. Folk wear bruises of mauve and orange and yellow for a few days, and then they die. Sometimes, of course, they drop dead before they've had time to bruise. Edinburgh has emptied out like a puking stomach, the cavalryman hears from a passing messenger; the city fathers' carriages are rattling into the countryside. Some say the pest has come down from the Dutch ports on the backs of sailors; others blame an evil miasma that hangs in the air; others, the war. As he rides along at a leaden trot, the cavalryman thinks of the pest, so he will not have to think of the war. Not the victories; not Marston Moor, last summer, when he was among the Covenanters who helped the Ironsides wrest the whole North from King Charles. Nor the defeats; Kilsyth, a month ago, when the Royalists scattered the Army of the Solemn League and Covenant like chaff on the wind. And in particular he will not think of Philiphaugh, yesterday. There is no end in sight. He will not dwell on it. He will ride on to Perth.
The pest attracts rumours, and the cavalryman hears them all when he stops for water, at various halts on the way. The people say that only men die of it, not women; that it appears as a lump in the armpit, long before the bruises, though others say a lump in the groin; that it is a city sickness, and those who breathe the clean country air are safe; that it is a disease of heat, and if you only last till the weather cools, you'll be healthy all winter. The cavalryman is almost amused to watch how feverishly his countrymen ward off this blight by both science and superstition, washing their doorsteps with lime and wearing their holy bracelets too, nailing up the sick in their cabins for the full of a fortnight so that the taint will not spread. He knows—as every soldier does—that death is whimsical and contrary, and picks whomsoever it chooses, and there is no kind of magic circle a mortal can draw that will keep death out. As he rides along, the cavalryman thinks not of death but of love. Not of one woman but of two.
Bessy Bell an Mary Gray,
They were twa bonny lasses
On the outskirts of Perth stand plague-camps, rough clusters of shanties and tents. In the fields the cavalryman notes the wide square pits, and three shapeless figures with spades, lifting the turf for another burial. He picks up his pace and rides by.
He is stopped at the bridge by a man in an official robe, and asked for a testimonial before he can be let into Perth—a certificate of health, signed by the magistrates of his home town. But the cavalryman leans down off his horse, and says that he has just come from fighting papacy and prelacy and the King's Highlanders, and he wants a bowl of meat and a bed for the night, and he will not be prevented by fiddle-faddlers. And besides, he has no home town but Perth.
At the market there is little left but oats and carrots, but plenty of them, and not rotted. The cavalryman fills his saddlebag. The market woman stands well away from him. She holds out a ladle for his coins, then dips them in a scalding pot of water before letting them into her pocket.
The house on the High Street is locked up. The neighbours say his parents have fled away into the country,