Daughters of the Witching Hill (31 page)

"Good day to you, sir. Would you open your pack for me? I'd like to buy some pins."

Though I'd used my best manners, the pedlar seemed fair displeased that I was stood between him and his next mug of ale.

"I'm not giving the likes of you any pins." Soon as he opened his mouth, I knew him to be a Yorkshireman and a gruff old gob at that. "I'm a chapman, not a charity."

My eyes smarted at the way he'd taken me to be the lowest sort of person, unworthy of his time. Though I might look to be penniless, I had, in fact, a few silver pennies in my pouch, thanks to our good Alice Nutter. To prove this, I whipped out my coins and passed them beneath his nose.

"I'm not begging. I can pay for your pins all right."

"Wasn't born yesterday," he said, trying to step past me. "I've seen that trick before. Show me some brass and soon as I open my pack, you'll be off with half my gear."

"Now you call me a thief?" I shook, I was so angry. "And me, an honest girl wanting some pins."

"Some honest girl. How did you get them pennies, lass? Did you steal them or did you earn them on your back?"

For a moment I could not speak. Dumbstruck, I was, by the red mist floating in the air between his face and mine. I'd been called witch and beggar, and many other bad names besides, but this was the first time anyone had dared call me a whore to my face. And I'd never so much as kissed a man.

"You'll come to rue your words, you pot-bellied bastard!"

He froze up then, that grown man, the whites of his eyes stark gleaming, and still I could not rein in my fury.

"The Devil take you for your mean heart."

I could scarce recall what other awful words ripped their way out of my throat, but I'd enough of being the butt of everyone's scorn. As my rage wrapped me in its fist, I understood the surge of wrath flying out of Mam when she'd cursed out Baldwin. I understood the throb of anger that had driven our Jamie to avenge himself against those who'd treated him like a witless dunce, as if he'd no feelings at all.

An unearthly humming filled my head, the power thrumming through my veins. Begging for mercy, the pedlar raised his hands as though he feared I'd strike him dead. Staring into his shrinking pupils, I saw the same raw fear I'd witnessed in Nancy the day Chattox had given her the devil.

From behind a hedge the black bitch hurtled toward me, summoned by my wicked ire. The creature danced round the man, snapping and snarling, so that he panicked all the more. Off he bolted toward the safety of Colne, fast as his stubby legs could take him, but his heavy pack dragged him down. The sky seemed to reel in a slow circle, the very birds silenced by the awfulness unfolding.

The fat chapman had run barely two hundred yards when he collapsed. The weight of his pack sent him sprawling, as though God himself had struck him down. Or the Devil.
The Devil take you for your mean heart.
My curse had come true before my eyes. Such a horror gripped me I could no longer feel my own heartbeat.

The black bitch pressed close, nuzzling and whimpering, as if to offer comfort. The powers had been with me all along. Hadn't I both cursed and then helped cure Issy Bulcock? Gran and even Jamie had tried to tell me, only I'd refused to see the truth. Blinder than my grandmother, I'd been. And now it was too late.

This was no blessed event such as when Gran first came into her powers to charm Anthony Holden's sour ale and heal his son. Instead I'd cursed out a stranger, then watched him go down.
No, no, no.
My brother's plaintive claim came back to me:
My soul belongs to Jesus Christ.

With the black bitch at my heels, I bolted to where the Yorkshireman lay. One side of his face flinched at the sight of me whilst the other side was frozen up as if he'd seen every demon of hell. When I took his hand, he flailed, but one half of his body was so rigid, he couldn't so much as wiggle a finger. Poor man couldn't even speak. If I had allowed her, Gran would have trained me to be a blesser, working for good. But I'd spurned her every attempt, and so I'd become a witch worse than Chattox herself. I'd lamed a man, struck him mute, left him paralyzed in half his body.

"Undo it," I pleaded to the panting black creature who regarded me with fathomless eyes. "I'm sorry," I told the man, my tears falling upon his face, drawn white in shock.

Loud and fervent, I prayed for him till I saw three men passing through the field.

"Help him!" I cried, leaping to my feet and waving with both arms.

I knew these men by sight if not by name: the blacksmith, his son, and another man. With barbed eyes they looked from me to the stricken man and back again.

"Alizon Device, what happened to him?" the blacksmith asked. So he knew my name, though I didn't know his. "Was that dog of yours worrying him?"

"He fell over, didn't he? His pack was too heavy." On my knees upon the cold March earth, I rocked myself back and forth. "Help him, please. We can't leave him here."

So we unstrapped the pack from his shoulders, and the blacksmith and his son bore the pedlar away to the Greyhound Inn whilst the third man carried the pack. Following in their wake, I asked myself what I would tell Gran now that I'd crippled a man and there were three witnesses to my deed. Though I longed to run away into the far hills and never show my face in Pendle Forest again, I was bound to walk to that inn, one foot in front of the other, and stick my head in the door. I was bound to face my deed.

They laid the chapman upon a long wooden settle and spread a blanket over him. The tavern keeper was asking if anyone knew the man's name or his hometown, so that he might send word to his family. One of the men who'd seen him of a market day in Marsden said that the pedlar was John Law of Halifax.

Whilst I shivered in the doorway, the pedlar gazed up at me with his one eye that could still move in its socket.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," I told him.

Then I fled, my feet flying, the cold wind stinging my face.

Part of me wanted to take Nancy's blanket, my only possession of worth, and be off, going to a place where no one knew my disgrace. But where? If I headed off to Yorkshire, I might meet the friends and kin of that pedlar I'd lamed. If I headed west, I'd still be in Lancaster County, still under the reach and power of Roger Nowell, High Sheriff. If I went south, I'd pass through Cheshire where Robert Assheton lay buried, cast down by Chattox herself. And if I travelled north, over the borders, I would find myself in Scotland, that lawless place where folk still raided for cattle and sheep, or so I'd been told. Maybe one as lost as me could find refuge in such a wild and forlorn land.

I wondered if anybody would try to pursue me and how far I could expect to wander, a girl on my own with nowt but a blanket, a threadbare kirtle, and a few pennies. Should I instead run to the nearest fell and leap to my death to spare my family my shame? Flinging myself off the top of Pendle Hill would be a sight easier than telling Gran what I'd done. Maybe it would be better and braver to turn myself in to the Magistrate and confess my crime, in the hope that the rest of my family would be spared. But Gran had made me swear never to go near him.

As my thoughts whirled round, I was frozen as that chapman. Turned to stone, so I was, like an evil witch in an old tale. But at last I crept home, quiet as I could. At this hour of afternoon, only Gran would be in, dozing by the fire. With some luck, I could steal past her and up the stairs, grab my blanket, and be gone, either to try my luck elsewhere or hasten my journey to hell. I still hadn't decided.

When I took my first step over the threshold, Gran's blind eyes caught me. Again I turned to stone.

"Our Alizon."

Her gaze told me that she knew of my misadventure, whether by the far sight or by Tibb whispering in her ear. Tears moved down her face, and she trembled as though Death himself lurked in that room, sickle in hand, preparing to cut us both down. But it was her tenderness that unravelled me and made me hide my face in her lap whilst she stroked my hair. I'd done my worst and she still loved me. I confessed everything, offering up my sin to her as to one of the priests of the old religion.

She wanted to know more of the black dog. "Did she speak to you, love? Did she tell you her name?"

"No! Never. I swear, she only ever took the form of a dog. Afterward I asked her to undo it, but nothing happened. Can
you
undo it, Gran?" My eyes locked with her sightless ones, and for a second I was giddy with the possibility that this burden could be lifted.

Gran seemed to look inside herself, searching for an answer. "This pedlar of yours is a stranger to us, love, from far beyond the bounds of Pendle Forest. I can't go to him unless he sends for me. The innkeeper might bar the door to us. It's down to you, our Alizon. You must pray for him. Pray as you've never done before."

My deed towered over me like some great mountain and I was lost within its shadow. "If you'd seen him, Gran! Lying there as though he were dead on one side of his body. I fear my prayers won't be enough."

Gran lifted my face to hers. "Today you know the true force of your powers. Go back out, our Alizon, and find that dog and pray that the chapman might still be mended."

Up and down the tracks of Pendle Forest I scrambled in search of the black bitch. When I spotted a dark shape dashing up a hill not far from Thorneyholme, I called out till I was hoarse, but it seemed useless enough since I'd never learned her name.

As I was stood there, clutching myself, I heard approaching hoofbeats. It took my last courage to stand my ground instead of scarpering. I would have to live with this now, no matter what, for that was what my loved ones had always done. My Mam hadn't shrivelled up and died after Baldwin ill-treated her and took to calling her a whore. Through it all, she'd held up her head and looked her name-callers in the eye. So I remained on the track and felt again the faint thrumming in my veins, the powers I didn't understand, and wondered if the singing-ringing in my head would be enough to call back that dog.

I braced myself to face that rider, be it friend or foe, even if it was Roger Nowell himself. At that thought, my fortitude deserted me and I was a heap of quivering bones when round the bend our Alice Nutter came trotting upon her chestnut roan mare, the horse's flaxen mane fluttering like a silken banner over its glossy neck.

"Alizon," she said, reining to a halt.

Straightaway I saw in her face that she'd heard the tale of what I'd done to the pedlar in Colne Field. Would she spurn me as the Holdens had done? Yet because I trusted her, I asked her, in a voice half-strangled, if she'd seen hide or hair of a stray black bitch.

The lady's eyebrows lifted all the way to the brim of her tall-crowned hat. But she didn't recoil from me.

"No, Alizon. In truth, I have not."

I dropped in a curtsey. "Thank you all the same, Mistress Nutter."

Instead of riding off then, the way some folk would have done, spattering mud over my kirtle, she reached into her deep saddlebag and pulled out a globe about the size of an apple and the colour of the sun at daylight gate.

"Here, Alizon," she said, stretching out her gloved hand so that I might take the golden-red ball from her hand.

I gazed up at her, full amazed, thinking she must be some conjurer, for I'd never seen anything like this before. Its cool surface was like soft leather, but bright and polished-looking, and when I raised it to my nose, it had the most heavenly smell.

"Take it home and share it with your grandmother. That's an orange. My relations in the south sent us up a box. It's a fruit than can only grow in glass houses in this country, but they grow in abundance in warmer climes. I've been told that the streets of Rome are lined with orange trees."

The picture her words painted made me think of the Garden of Eden. What a marvel to see trees heavy with these fruits.

"You peel off the skin with your fingers," she told me. "Then tear it into segments and eat it. I do hope your grandmother will like it."

As Alice Nutter said her farewell and trotted off gentle and easy, not splashing me once, I clung to her orange as though it were the talisman that could deliver me. So I wasn't despised by everybody in Pendle Forest. Even now there were those who stood by me and mine.

When I reached home that evening, I peeled the scented skin off Alice Nutter's orange and fed half of it to Gran, dividing the other half between Mam, Jamie, Jennet, and me, and I'd never tasted anything more delectable. The taste clung to my tongue for the rest of the evening.

I carried on searching for that dog, scouring every pasture and hillside from Colne Field to Stang Top Moor only to be left with the sinking feeling that I'd never see that black bitch again. The notion lodged itself in our Jamie's head that if we invented some fool ceremony to name my familiar spirit, it would show itself and then I could bid it to lift the curse off the chapman and we'd be out of danger. But Gran said the most we could do was pray—for the pedlar and for ourselves.

Come Sunday I'd no choice but to show myself in the New Church where I burned in my abasement. The Curate glowered at me whilst the Holdens seemed afraid to even look my way. My uncle Kit was stood there like a hag-ridden thing with shadowed, red-rimmed eyes, for I'd brought infamy not just upon myself but all my kin. Even gaunt-faced Annie Redfearn could not keep her eyes off me.