Daughters of the Witching Hill (35 page)

"Go on, Alizon," he said, lifting his quill. "Have you anything else to say regarding Chattox?"

My speech emboldened by the wine, I told him how Betty Whittle had once begged a dish of milk off the Holdens at Bull Hole Farm only to have Chattox pour it into a can, cross two sticks over it, and begin an incantation till Matthew Holden came charging out and kicked the milk over to break the spell. But the next morning one of his father's cows fell sick, lay for four days, and then died.

Nowell scribbled away with such excitement I thought his inkpot would run dry. After a spell he'd no choice but to rest his hand. He arose then and leafed through the book written by the King.

"Let me read a passage for you."

This seemed a wondrous thing as I'd never heard anybody read from a book just for me.

"'When witches are apprehended and detained by the lawful magistrates,'" he quoted, his finger moving across the page, "'their power is then no greater than before that ever they meddled with these matters.'"

Nowell closed the book.

"Don't you see, Alizon? Your people should have reported this business with Chattox when it first happened. It would have been too late to save your father, but it might have saved your friend Nancy Holden."

Bowing to his reason, I was sat there in silence. He'd given me much to ponder.

"Your own grandmother is even more renowned than Chattox. Some would call her a blesser."

"Oh, yes, sir! A blesser she is, indeed." As the wine went to my head, I bragged quite bold about Gran's many powers. How she mended sick children and cattle, how once I'd left a piggin of blue milk just inside the door of Malkin Tower whilst Gran lay upon her pallet and how I came back a short while later to find a quarter-pound of butter in its place, and Gran had never stirred from her bed! That was stretching the truth, of course, but it was a story I was fond of telling, and everybody knew that Gran was a great cunning woman.

"I'd heard that Anthony Holden of Bull Hole Farm called upon your grandmother to mend one of his cows some months ago," said Nowell.

"Yes, sir, he did. Except it was a heifer."

"The animal died afterward, I take it."

"That was a spot of bad luck, sir. But Gran's a blesser. She's cured many cattle in her day."

"She's blind, is she not? How does she get around, then, to do her blessings?"

"Why, my sister and I lead her about. Sometimes Jennet leads her out and then, after a spell, I lead her back, and sometimes we do it the other way round. Our gran's getting on in her years, bless her, so she never goes very far from Malkin Tower these days."

"But only two years ago," said Nowell, "I understand that she was capable of covering a fair distance. Master Baldwin complained that your grandmother had come to his mill at Wheathead, accompanied by you and your mother, and that she gave him some grief. Soon after his daughter fell ill, languished a year, and died."

"Gran never harmed a soul! She only went to ask Baldwin to pay my mam for the carding she'd done." I trod careful when speaking of Baldwin since he might have been listening on the other side of the door.

"It seems plain that your grandmother has no liking for the man," Nowell insisted. "Was she not angry with him that day?"

"Aye, sir, as most would be if he'd come rushing at them, waving that whip of his, and screeching,
Whores and witches. Get off my ground. I will burn the one of you and hang the other.
" The wine was making me speak freer than I should. I set the goblet down and chewed on my bottom lip.

Nowell's eyes seemed to leap out of his face. "Master Baldwin called your grandmother a witch? How did she respond?"

"The way any decent person would, sir. She offered to pray for him."

Least I managed to keep mum about Baldwin being Jennet's father. Didn't want to push my luck and have Baldwin after me for slander—that stick-legged, arse-faced hypocrite.

I braced myself lest Nowell ask me more of what had passed between Gran, Mam, and Baldwin, but he put the subject to rest.

"Now about the pedlar. I know this is irksome for you, my dear, but as Magistrate it is my duty to address it. Can you tell me, just between us, what truly happened that day?"

I told how I wanted to buy the pins, not beg them off the chapman as he'd claimed.

"Pins," said Nowell. "What need had you of pins?"

"To keep my clothes together, sir," I said, blushing and looking down at my feet, tied up in old rags.

"Understandable," he said. "What happened next?"

"I was angry, sir, that he accused me first of being a beggar and then of being a thief. Said he was afraid that if he opened his pack for me, I'd be gone with half his goods. I've never stolen from anybody in my life, sir! Next he called me something even worse that I'll not repeat, and I fair lost my temper. Then that dog came running out."

Here I stumbled.
Lie,
Mam's voice inside me urged. As much as I trusted Nowell, it would do no good to any of us if I confessed outright that the creature was my familiar.

"It was only a stray, sir, no dog of mine," I said, breaking into a sweat. "The pedlar seemed frightened of it. He ran off, then collapsed and fell lame, and it was a most terrible thing to see. Wouldn't wish it on anyone."

"John Law and his son are convinced that you bewitched him, Alizon, with the help of that dog. Master Law fell lame after you cursed him out."

"I should have never spoken to him in anger like that, sir. I sore regret it. You can believe I'll never do such a thing ever again."

"So it was your anger that lamed the pedlar?" Nowell's voice brimmed with amazement.

"Some might say so, sir. But I never meant to hurt the man."

"What about the dog? Did the animal speak to you as I speak to you now? Did the black beast offer to help you be even of him and lame him for you?"

Such talk set me twisting in the fine chair. If a word of it was true, it made me as damned as Chattox. My stomach seized up. How I longed to be far away from here, out on some windswept moor where I'd never lay eyes on another human being.

"Alizon," he said in the kindest voice. "Pray, turn and face me. Your grandmother is an esteemed cunning woman. Many have turned to her for healing."

Tears in my eyes, I nodded to him.

"You alone of her grandchildren show promise to carry on the family trade. Did she bring you up to be a blesser like herself?"

"Aye, sir, she tried. But I'm nothing like her. I'll never be her match." Least now I took comfort that my every word was the truth.

"Some would beg to differ," said Nowell, "after what passed between you and John Law. Did your grandmother encourage you to befriend this black dog or any other such creature?"

"That was only a stray, sir, what comes and goes." Mam's will seemed to shape my speech. "I've no idea where it came from, sir, but there are plenty of strays running round."

"Have you ever kept an animal as a pet?"

"No, sir," I said, breathing easy again now that we'd left off talking about the dog. "We're only poor folk. We've hens for laying and when they stop laying, we eat them."

He set down his quill. "Well, let's say you had a pet, such as a dove or a squirrel as some gentlewomen have been known to keep. Where would you hold it against you, if you were to show it affection?"

In spite of myself, I laughed. "What would I want with a squirrel, sir?"

Nowell remained grave. "Alizon, stand up, if you please."

My head began to churn from the wine and his many questions, but I did as I was told. Then he stepped close to me, too close, which didn't seem right. Laughing and uncertain, I backed away. Surely he didn't intend to do this, a man such as him. The mirror on the far wall caught my reflection as I tried to smile to show him that I knew he didn't mean it, but the smile died upon my lips and the taste of his claret went bitter in my throat. Backed me into a corner had Nowell, and I hadn't taken him for that sort of man, not in the least. The look he was giving me made me swallow a scream. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his lips parted and wet.

The mirror revealed his back arching over me, my tear-stained face over his shoulder as I struggled to fight him off, only his good wine left me too clumsy and weak. First he brushed off my coif and took my hair in his fists, as if taking pleasure in its softness, but then he yanked it as if its fiery colour proved my guilt. His fingers that had never known a day's hard labour found the lacings of my kirtle. If I cried out, who would come? Baldwin? Hargreaves? What a laugh. Wasn't Nowell the law itself: Magistrate, Justice of the Peace, and High Sheriff? To think that for his sake I'd broken my promise to Gran. Calling upon the Holy Mother, I made one last move to free myself. Only then did he give over, as if banishing sore temptation, and merely pointed to a spot upon my kirtle as though he had discovered a stain.

"There," he said, full triumphant and swaggering as Satan himself. His eyes gleamed wide as though he were about to force a kiss upon my mouth. "Just below your paps, Alizon Device." His thumb kneaded the threadbare wool of my kirtle. "This is where a witch such as you would suckle her imp. Her black dog."

B
ALDWIN SHOVED ME
into a low-ceilinged storage chamber where a lantern-jawed midwife and two other matrons awaited. I'd never seen them before, and yet they seemed to know of me and my family's reputation. Later I learned the midwife was a cousin of Baldwin's and believed, as he did, that my gran had bewitched and murdered his only lawful child. In her mind, she'd every reason to treat me with contempt.

The midwife rolled up her sleeves, as did the two others who jumped to the orders she barked, and then the three of them descended upon me. In a flurry they tore off my kirtle, smock, even the rags tied round my feet. The midwife grinned to snatch Nancy's ribbon from my hair and stuff it down the front of her bodice. Before their eyes I was stood there mother-naked. Rough and cold were their hands, prodding and pinching, as they scoured my flesh in search of the witch's teat Nowell had told them to find. A razor in her big red fist, the midwife sheared every last hair off my scalp, humming whilst she worked, as though her grim task delighted her.

To make my debasement complete, the midwife bade her two helpers to hold me down with my legs splayed whilst she shaved every last hair off my private parts, for Nowell had told her that removing a witch's body hair would force her to confess. I pictured him peeping through the keyhole to take his cruel pleasure in this spectacle.

***

Afterward they slapped the clothes back on my body and delivered me to Baldwin. His breath blew hot as hell flames upon my shorn and bleeding scalp as he bound my wrists behind my back.

"Nowell told me that we've no choice but to examine your grandmother next," he said, turning me so I could see the elation on his face. "Now that you've denounced her as a bloodthirsty witch."

My tears flew as I shook my head. "I never said such a thing."

I thought of how I'd trusted Nowell, how I'd smiled at him as though he were my father come back from the dead. Lulled by his fine speech and his wine, I'd bragged to him about Gran's powers as a healer whilst he'd scribbled it down.

"What a righteous day it will be," said Baldwin, "when we hang Old Demdike."

My legs turned to putty. Came crashing to the floor, I did. When Baldwin hauled me up, my guts heaved and I spewed Nowell's blood red claret on Baldwin's boots.

"You filthy sow," he railed.

He dragged me out of the house, across a cobbled yard, and down a muddy path. Daylight gate was falling, the cold March air tangy with woodsmoke. The smell of horses filled my nose: their warm flesh and the hay they chewed. A white-faced mare nickered and how I longed to hide my sick-stained face in her mane.

Round the back of the stables, a cellar door was propped open. Baldwin wrested me down a flight of stone stairs, untied my hands, then pushed me so that I toppled into the sour straw. I couldn't bring myself to lift my head off the floor even after I listened to him hurry up the stairs, slam the door, and bolt it behind him. When at last I opened my eyes, I thought I'd gone blind as Gran because that cellar was so dark. Baldwin had abandoned me here without a blanket or rush light. The smell of damp hit me, then the stink of the others who had been kept here before me. The very stones reeked of despair.

My heart would not quieten but kept on banging and banging like a caged thing. I was the most abominable creature on this earth, for I had allowed Roger Nowell to beguile me into condemning my own grandmother.

I could not say how much time had passed in that gloom where fleas sucked at my flesh as though they were a host of demons feeding off the witch that I was.

From fitful sleep I awakened to a thud, to some creature breathing ragged and fast. As I juddered and shook, the dim light trickling from the high, barred window revealed the most awful vision summoned by Satan himself to punish me. It was as if I were gazing into the mirror in Nowell's beautiful room and saw my own reflection warp to reveal how damned I was on the inside. Those empty eyes staring from bruised sockets, that bald and bloodied scalp, that face with its wrinkled flesh hanging loose—the very mask of an aged witch. Chattox peered at me, her mouth curling in scorn, yet I thought that if I tried to touch her, she would vanish, for it was my own forsaken soul I beheld: I, Alizon Device, who had crippled a man in Colne Field.