Daughters of the Witching Hill (36 page)

My mouth went dry to see two other spectres step out from behind her. Annie Redfearn's hollow-cheeked skull floated over a rag-clad skeleton. Then, most painful of all, the vision of Gran hunched in on herself, a stained rag knotted round her head.

Chattox's grip on my shoulder broke the spell. No apparition this, but her flesh and blood looming over my quaking self.

"Is this her then?" she demanded. "The root of our misery."

Before I could speak, Gran fell upon my neck. "Alizon, love, did they hurt you?" Her fingers traced the crisscross of scars on my scalp.

"What hurt will the rest of us suffer before this is done?" Chattox asked. She didn't sound like an addled old woman in the least but like one in full possession of her wits.

Annie Redfearn spoke in a chilled fury that cut even deeper. "I might never see my daughter again, thanks to you. They haven't told me what's to be done with her or who will look after her."

Gran placed herself before me as though to take on the brunt of their wrath.

"Our Alizon made a mistake. But she's suffered as much as any of us."

Cowed though I was, I could not allow my grandmother to fight my battles. So I knelt in the soiled straw before Chattox, the one I'd hated and feared my entire life. My dread of her was nothing compared to my shame.

"I'm sorry," I told her.

If Chattox had done wrong, I'd done worse, sealing my grandmother's doom. Nancy's words came back to me.
When Chattox looked into my heart, she saw me for what I am.
What did Chattox see before her when she looked at my cringing form?

Turned away did Chattox, as did her daughter, who went to help her mother find the least filthy straw on which she could sleep.

"I'm so sorry," I said, reaching for Gran. Sobs racked my body, for I was a useless thing, splintered to pieces. "I broke my promise to you."
Don't go crying witch.

"You're not alone, love." She stroked my head where the hair used to be. "I broke my promise to myself. A slippery one is Roger Nowell. I played right into his hands and Anne Whittle did no better. He hoodwinked the lot of us."

I shook my head, not understanding.

"Anne and I let him trick us into accusing each other." Gran sounded as aching desolate as I felt. "Something I swore I'd never do. But he knew just how to make me dance to his tune. Said if I spoke against her, he'd let you go. The man's a trickster. Wish I could cut my own tongue out, Alizon."

Gran was crying along with me, and I thought what it must have cost her to go back on her own word, all for my sake and all for nothing. From her shadowy corner Chattox muttered something I couldn't make out.

"Only Annie," said Gran, "was strong enough to keep her silence and not condemn anyone else."

"But why?" I asked. "Why should Nowell even bother with the likes of us?"

"He lusts after the powers of his betters, even the King himself." My gran spoke as if she knew Roger Nowell as well as her own kin. "As gentry go, the Nowells are nowt but upstarts. Can't hold a candle to the Shuttleworths and Towneleys. Your lamed pedlar, Alizon—that was his godsend. You're but his stepping stone. Nowell wants to leave his mark."

"You're talking in riddles, Gran."

"The King believes that witches are everywhere," Gran said, and I thought of Nowell paging feverish through the King's book of demonology. "So Nowell will seek them out and arrest them to gain the King's favour. Make his name as a witchfinder."

My head bursting, I clung to Gran. In that moment her warm, living flesh was the only thing that mattered. Then my fingers found the rag tied to her scalp and the crust of dried blood.

"Christ's wounds, what did they do to you?" With shaking hands I peeled the rag away to discover the gash above her ear.

"On the wagon to Read Hall. Pack of brats throwing stones." Gran sounded just like a broken old woman.

Using my sleeve and spittle, I cleaned her wounds as best I could. Was it too late to learn to become a true cunning woman? If only I could draw the pain out of Gran and into myself. Let me give her ease. Our fingers interlaced. She whispered the incantations of blessing and, though I'd been too wretched to say a single prayer, I whispered each word back to her.

I dreamt of Malkin Tower, of my room with the windows full of stars. I dreamt of Gran crowning me in purest white roses.
Time to lead the procession,
she said, and Alice Nutter appeared by my side to press the rosary beads into my palm. Then all was swept aside in a chorus of birdsong.

When I awakened in the faint trickle of light, the birds still sang. A fine spring morning this must be, though its beauty couldn't reach us down here. Curled beside me, Gran still slept. Annie Redfearn slumbered beside her mam, who snored like my father used to. Was Chattox truly his murderer then, or had I been wrong about her from the beginning? If she was innocent of killing Father, did that make me innocent of laming the pedlar? My heart began to beat wild as Nancy's had when I pressed my ear to her breast.

The crunch of footsteps upon gravel broke through the birdsong, and then I heard the bolt drawn back. Shaking Gran awake, I helped her to her feet as Baldwin and Hargreaves stumbled down the steps, hesitant and uncertain, as though they didn't know whether to flail before us witches or whether to gloat at how they'd humbled us.

Struggling up from the straw, Chattox wheezed and coughed till I thought the men must show her some pity, but they only gave us water and old bread before binding our hands behind our backs. Wasting not a minute, they herded us out of the cellar and into that glorious morning. Whilst I stared entranced at the red disk of sun breaking through the mist, Hargreaves ordered us into the wagon.

"Where are you taking us?" My voice sounded strange, as if it didn't belong to me anymore.

"Lancaster Gaol," said Hargreaves. "Where else? Did you think Nowell would suffer you on his land another day?"

Bound for Lancaster! Never had I ventured so far from home. The journey of a lifetime, this was, and one that could end with each of us dead. Even if they decided not to hang us, we might die in prison as Chattox's daughter Betty had done.

When the wagon set off, my eyes locked with Gran's clouded ones. Humming under her breath, she was, too low for Hargreaves and Baldwin to hear. The horses made sluggish progress down the muddy road. Again and again, the men had to unload us and heave the wheels free from the mire. A secret smile lit upon Gran's face. It was as though the land itself were rising up against Nowell and his henchmen so that we might stay in Pendle Forest where we belonged.

Chattox's anger hung in the air like an invisible curtain, making me afraid to so much as glance her way, though she was sat, tied and bound, only inches away in the rattling wagon. Sometimes I caught Gran turning to the sound of Chattox's voice as she spoke to Annie.

My grandmother grit her teeth in pain as the wagon jolted along. Needless to say, no one had thought to waste any straw to cushion the splintery boards. Wriggling up beside her, I tried to pillow her body.

"Come, lean your head against my shoulder," I told her. "Rest a spell."

But Gran seemed too troubled to lose herself in the sweet oblivion of sleep.

"What will happen to the rest of them?" she murmured.

I thought of Mam, Jamie, and Jennet, how their lives must go on without us. God willing, Alice Nutter would look after them.

By daylight gate we reached Clitheroe. The weary horses dragged us up steep streets where folk pointed and stared. We passed through the market place with its pillory and then up to the grey castle. Before the castle gates closed upon us, I cast my eyes round at the hills and fells rising in every direction, green slopes dotted with sheep. Above it all, Pendle Hill brooded, bathed golden in the evening light.

Baldwin and Hargreaves took their leave, only too glad to be shot of us. Without a backward glance, they abandoned us to our fate. They'd fare home like brave and conquering heroes—the godly men who had rid Pendle Forest of its witches.

Dour-faced guards whose names we didn't know wrested us down to the dungeon deep beneath the castle. In that cell stinking of shit and vomit, we were locked in for the night. The four of us were given a single bowl of gruel and a bucket of brackish water. High on the wall, a rush light lit up the gloom. Annie Redfearn let out a cry when she spied the first rat, and we'd only the emptied gruel bowl to use as a weapon to beat it off.

"At this rate," said Chattox, "we'll be dead before we reach Lancaster."

She said this with her back to Gran and me, still giving us the cold shoulder. I looked to Gran who touched my face.

"Pray," she begged me.

Though I felt too polluted to mouth the holy words, I sank to my knees in the filth and murmured my Aves. Only then did Chattox deign to look at me.

"Who do you think is going to answer your prayers now?" she asked.

I just prayed on—what else could I do? As the words wrapped themselves round me, the light of mercy welled up from within. The vision came to me of the statue of Our Lady hidden inside Alice Nutter's secret chapel, the Virgin's tender face and outstretched arms. A woman clothed in the sun. How her blinding beauty blazed within my heart as I chanted the prayer charm Gran had taught me as a child.

Open, heaven's gate, and stick shut, hell's gate.
Let every christened child creep to its Mother mild.

Opening my eyes, I started to see Annie Redfearn's face before mine. She raised her thin hand with its nails bitten down to the quick. Wrenched from the solace of my devotions, I flinched, thinking Annie would slap me for presuming to pray after landing the four of us in this pit of despair. Annie leaned so close, I could see myself reflected in eyes green as her mother's.

"Can you pray for my daughter? My Marie?"

I bowed to Annie Redfearn, the only one of us who had acted in true honour.

"Course I can," I said, cracking apart to hear how she wept for the girl she'd not see again.

Early the next morning the guards prepared to fetter us for the onward journey. Thinking they would bind our hands with rope as Baldwin and Hargreaves had done, I was stood there with my hands behind my back. But it was cold iron these men laid on us. Manacles were fastened round our wrists and rings round our necks, and to mortify us further, we were chained together like a string of pack horses: me in front, followed by Gran, Annie, and Chattox at the rear.

"Now move your lazy arses," the lead guard told us. "It's onward to Lancaster."

We climbed out of the dungeon and into the forecourt where Baldwin and Hargreaves had handed us over the night before.

"Where's the wagon?" I asked, looking round and not seeing one.

"You'll be walking," the lead guard told us.

"All the way to Lancaster?" I couldn't contain myself. "Sir, my gran's eighty years old. Chattox, too. Sure you can't make them walk so far."

The guards had a good laugh.

"If you witches can fly," said the young guard stood close to me, "then you can walk right enough."

He couldn't have been much older than I was, that lad. Even though I was ugly as could be with my hair shaved off and my kirtle stained with prison dirt, I could sense the lust coming off him. I burned to feel his eyes moving up and down my body just as Nowell's had when he forced me into the corner. Still chuckling to himself, the young guard pinched my cheek. If it weren't for the manacles binding my wrists, I would have belted him. Shackled though I was, I was fair tempted to curse him till his ears bled. Instead I swallowed my anger, for if I lost my temper, I could get the lot of us into more trouble. The lead guard looked like a severe one, just itching for an excuse to wield that club he carried.

Least the chains that bound us were loose enough so that I could take Gran's arm and guide her along, the way I'd always done. If it wasn't for the cold iron biting into my skin, I could almost pretend I'd travelled back in time and was leading her out to bless one of the Holdens' calves.

***

First our journey was downhill. We descended the snaking road leading from the castle and out of Clitheroe, then headed alongside pastures full of new lambs, just like the meadows of home. The birds trilled sweet as any I'd ever heard. Wild primrose and dogtooth violets bloomed on the beckside, and every tree was crowned in buds set to burst into new leaves. A lovely and tender time of year, this was, to be marching toward our ruin. Another two Sundays and it would be Easter.

My heart jolted to spy a hare bounding by, seeming to linger near Gran's shadow till it leapt through the hedge, free and away. Gran's face went rapt as though Tibb had appeared to offer her comfort. So sweet her reveries must have been she no longer seemed to hear the clanking iron or cursing guards. Miles away, Gran was, with only my arm on hers to bind her to this earth.

The enchantment faded when we reached Waddington, the next village on our way, where a gaggle of children stormed out, chanting
witch.
Only a matter of time before they started throwing missiles at us, and it looked as if the lead guard had no mind to stop them if they did. Gran's hand in mine went cold and slick, and I saw how the gash on her scalp still wept with pus. Before any of those imps had the chance to hurt her, I drew myself up and yelled for all I was worth.