Daughters of the Witching Hill (18 page)

Her mother, Betty, and I rushed out the door, leaving Annie to bolt it behind us.

Astride a fat grey gelding, young Robert was sat, dressed in a cloak of new wool with gold and silver braid. His sword hung from his belt and he'd a tall plumed hat. Not the bedraggled boy I remembered. A sparse beard grew at his chin and his eyes glinted with lunacy. Gaunt, he looked, and haunted, too, as though he'd known no sleep or rest since I'd seen him last. Couldn't sit still in his saddle but rocked back and forth like Jamie at his worst. Even his placid gelding danced sideways, full skittish. I could imagine Annie with the clay doll in her hands. Her hidden away in the cottage this very moment and crumbling away at the head.

"Bring out Annie Redfearn," he commanded as bold as though he were the Chief Justice himself. "I must speak to her at once."

"If you have anything to say, you'll be talking to me, Master Robert," Tom Redfearn said.

Tom stood nearly six feet tall. In spite of the cold, he'd rolled up his sleeves so that the young master could see his muscles flexing as he wielded the shovel. The boy trembled in his rage at being told off by a poor tenant. Yet lowborn as Tom might be, armed with only a shovel instead of a sword, he was twice the man in size and strength. If Tom chose, he could fell Robert with one blow.

Thrashing in the saddle, the boy jerked at the reins, forcing the gelding to pace a tight circle. He pointed his riding crop at Tom. "I'll have my father put you out of this house."

"And if he doesn't?" Well angry, Tom was, his every muscle tensed. Reminded me of a bull set to charge.

"Then I'll pull the cottage down myself."

Tom's reply came stern and strong. "When you come back again, you'll be in a better mind."

Young Robert brandished the whip at Tom, intent on striking his face, when a sooty crow swooping overhead sent the horse spinning, then the beast shied at the whip. Without another word, the landlord's son dug in his spurs, sending the old gelding into a swift, jerky trot.

"One day I swear I'll murder that milksop," said Tom.

"Peace," Anne said in a voice that made every part of me shrink. "You won't have to."

Her eyes hardened as they followed the crow winging away in the direction Robert had fled. The bird could only be Fancy, I thought: Anne's familiar rushing off to do her grisly bidding. A storm was rising inside my friend, the power, raw and new, potent enough to knock me sideways. Anne was so much more than my apprentice. She had it in her to outshine me, to charge ahead where I would never dare go. Like a knife in the gut came the unwelcome knowing that I was afraid of her, afraid of my oldest friend. It was not enough for her to protect her daughter from young Assheton, I realised. She wanted to be even with him. Wanted to destroy him. My own Anne Whittle, who had nothing left to lose.

"Have a care, our Anne," I begged her before I left. "Go too far and you'll get us hanged."

We'd best keep our heads down, I warned her. Make like the meekest souls in Pendle Forest. Pray that Robert would leave for Chester soon and not show his face again for a good long while.

Anne shook her head at me, her patience worn thin. Assheton was the menace looming over her every waking hour. It was her daughter and her home under threat, not mine. She didn't have the luxury of walking away from this.

"We've the powers," she said. "Why should we not use them? We're damned if we don't."

An awful pall clung to me when I walked home that foggy evening. Anne had been chosen by her spirit, that was true, her desperation drawing a familiar altogether different from Tibb. If Tibb was a creature of earth, sun, and starry skies, Anne's Fancy seemed a son of coldest Saturn, of shadowy places and slithery creatures who hid down dank holes. His was the might concealed in the tiny purple flowers of nightshade. Under Fancy's thrall, my Anne was becoming another woman, one I didn't know if I could trust.

She was her own mistress. She alone chose the path she walked, and there was no pulling her back, for her actions were borne of dire need.

Right late, it was, by the time I reached Malkin Tower. A rush light still burned behind the window. Stepping in the door, I girded myself, thinking that Liza and John would welter me with questions concerning Anne and her deeds. What would I tell them now when they spoke of the rumours of vile witchcraft?

My son-in-law only cried out in his relief that I had returned. He pointed to the pile of fresh straw where Liza huddled, clad in her shift with a blanket wrapped round her. Her time had come, at least a fortnight earlier than I'd reckoned.

"She's been having the pains for hours already," John said before leaving me to my business.

"I thought you'd never come," Liza panted. "You were with
her.
She kept you out so late on purpose."

My daughter's white lips clamped in dread. It appeared that her old fears of bearing another afflicted child had arisen, along with her memories of Jamie's brutal, tearing birth, and the talk of black magic had done her no good at all. Trying to put her mind at ease, I brewed her motherwort and raspberry leaf. I prayed aloud to St. Margaret and St. Anne, but my daughter flinched even to hear that name.

"What if she's cursed me again?" Liza asked as I mopped the cold sweat from her face.

"Anne Whittle never cursed you, love." Once I would have said that she was blameless and had never cursed anybody, but thanks to my own meddling, that was no longer true. "She never wished the least ill on you. Now take a deep breath and stop clenching up."

Her pains were coming fast. If she could bring herself to breathe in time with them, she would spare herself some agony.

"She kissed John at our wedding and things were never right after that. She cursed Jamie in the womb and he was born an idiot."

Raving, my girl was. Women swept away in the dolour of childbirth would yell out the most outrageous things. Some of it was purest nonsense, and some of it was the hostility and regrets they'd bottled up inside and never given voice to before the pain wrenched it out of them. The midwife who helped me when I birthed Liza told me how I'd cursed the whole night through, wishing every possible calamity to befall my husband. The next morning I hadn't been able to remember a word of it. God willing, it would be just the same for my daughter. Between her pangs, I sang bawdy songs to make her laugh, but she would not allow herself to be comforted.

"Only thing stronger than witchcraft is cunning craft. Keep my baby safe from her. Promise me you won't let that woman near us again."

"Hush, love. You're doing the baby no good, carrying on like that."

But she clung to me and pleaded, gripping my hand hard enough to crack the bones. Her eyes gleamed with real horror. Her legs knifed, her whole frame cramping up. As the pain wracked her, she began to sob. To think I had promised her an easy birth. John's worst imaginings had infected her, and now these travails had pushed her to the brink of hysteria. She was convinced that Anne meant to damage her child. Worse still, her dread awakened my own. What I had witnessed that very day in Anne Whittle's face left me floored—the raging powers inside her rising like floodwater. She was in over her head and there was nowt I could do about it.

"She's not your friend, Mam, she can't be. She's using you. Promise me you'll not keep her company."

If Liza kept on flailing, neither she nor the baby would survive. And if I did nothing to ease her panic, I'd lose them both.

Tibb had admonished me to be careful which road I walked, but in truth no road was simple, straightforward, or, indeed, what it appeared to be at first glimpse. Every path was tricksy, full of turns and twists and blind corners with God-only-knew-what dangers lurking round the bend. If Anne had made herself into the witch that folk had long feared her to be, she'd done it to defend Annie. To save my own daughter, I had to make this vow.

"I promise you, love. Now push when I tell you."

Murmuring too low for Liza to hear, I called out to Tibb to preserve my daughter. A rare light began to flicker and pulse in our dim chamber. Though it seemed that only my eyes saw the glow, it touched us both and in that moment the terror drained from Liza's face. Gasping, she bore down.

At daybreak, when the first rays of sun pierced the mist, the baby came, whole and hale, slipping out easy for me to catch.

"Just look at her," I said to Liza, holding up her daughter before I'd even cut the cord. "Look at your girlchild. She's perfect."

Liza cradled and kissed her, her face lit up in wonder.

After I'd washed my granddaughter and wrapped her in swaddling, I sat a spell with Liza, my arms round her, drinking in her joy.

"In God's name, she's a beauty," my daughter said, stroking the chestnut curls already sprouting from the infant's head. Our child of promise.

"Girl's not like her brother," I told her. "You can see that straight off."

Liza nodded. "A canny one, she'll be. You called on Tibb last night, didn't you?" My daughter took my hand. "Your magic's much stronger than hers."

So she'd not forgotten her ranting about Anne or the promise she had begged me to make. Now she'd hold me to that vow. She would expect me to see Anne as our enemy. Could I really go through with such an awful bargain?

"Let me fetch John," I said, turning away so she wouldn't see my sadness.

But when I saw how our John, full tender, wept over his daughter, just as his wife did, my dark thoughts faded. A voice inside me that was mine, not Tibb's, said
family first.
What was stronger than blood?

"The blessed child," said John.

"Let's call her Alizon." Liza smiled to him. "Can't think of a prettier name."

Even Jamie went soft when he first laid eyes on his little sister. Gentler than I'd ever seen him be, he reached out a timid finger to stroke her tiny hand.

Having come so close to touching death, Liza took weeks to heal. I insisted that she rest in bed with no work but to nurse and cuddle her baby whilst I did the rest. I even used the excuse of tending Liza to stay home from church for an entire month, sending John and Jamie on without me. Wasn't it midwinter, after all, when a newborn was most vulnerable? Liza and Alizon needed all the care I could give them.

Kept snug at home, the baby grew plump and rosy. She was quick to prove her cleverness, so eager to latch on to her mother's breast. Afterward the little one raised her huge blue eyes, still unfocused, to the sound of her mam's cooing and she soon learned to smile.

I was so in love with her, so caught up in our circle of happiness, my bliss was near perfect—unless my thoughts strayed to Anne, whom I'd not seen since St. Stephen's Day. I prayed for her and her girls, yet at the same time I longed to shield my own family from the web of dark magic Anne was caught up in. Was I a fickle friend? Would Anne think that I'd abandoned her when she needed me most?

Round about the old feast of Candlemas, the weather turned mild, the roads dried out, and Liza was on her feet again. It was high time we finally had our little Alizon christened, so off to church we went. My thoughts were on Anne. I fair wondered if I could look her in the eye without my face igniting in shame. At least I could take comfort in the fact that young Assheton had left for Chester. Anne and I would have nothing to fear till he returned.

The instant my family set foot in the churchyard, who waved to us but Anne. For the first time in her sixty-four years she'd come early to church, for she'd heard my little granddaughter was to be christened that day. She'd been missing me, so she had. My heart flooded with memories of everything we'd shared, sticking together in good times and bad. How I yearned to go off somewhere private with her and pour out everything I'd been through since we'd parted on St. Stephen's Day. But before I could get out a word, her eyes rested upon the baby in Liza's arms. My Anne bustled over, no doubt intent on fussing over the pretty little thing.

Liza looked to me in alarm whilst John threw himself in Anne's path. He'd a face like thunder.

"You," he said to my dearest friend, speaking loud to be heard by all the gawping folk in the churchyard. "Stay away from my family."

At the sound of his raised voice, the baby began to cry. Liza turned her back on Anne and hurried into church, leaving Jamie to stumble along after her. John took up the rear, glaring at Anne to keep her distance. The others standing round crowded into church as well, as though they'd no desire to be caught out with the old woman my son-in-law held in such revulsion. In a matter of heartbeats, my friend and I were the only two left amidst the gravestones and glowering yews.

The look on Anne's face said more than any of my fumbling apologies could have done. Nobody's fool was my Anne. She knew that things between us could never be the same again.

"Bess," she said. "Your John Device never cared for me, that much I knew, and your Liza's heart hardened against me ages ago. But never did I dream that you would prove such a turncoat."

My eyes filled with tears as I uttered the words it half-killed me to say: that I'd seen a change in her that left me stark terrified.

"It was
two
clay pictures I saw you and Annie make," I whispered so that none could overhear. "Why two, our Anne? I taught you the craft so that you could protect yourselves, but it's gone beyond that—it's gone well beyond my understanding."