Mist Over Pendle (51 page)

“How did Harry Mitton die?” he asked suddenly.

They gaped at him, taken aback by the unexpectedness of it; and then Jemmy went off into his idiot peal.

“She did it,” he crowed. “She did an’ all.”

“Who did?”

“He means his grandmother.” Lizzie had intervened quickly, alert to save herself.

“Demdike was it? And how?” Again Jemmy whooped.

“He denied her a penny. And her spirit sat on him. Sat on him it did. And all for a penny.”

Roger nodded. “And your spirit also?”

He spoke to the woman, and when she shook her head in quick denial he leaned forward across the table to her.

“You’re committed for a confessed murder,” he told her, “and that will do your business sufficiently. One more shall scarcely signify. Your spirit and your mother’s, both of them, sat on Harry Mitton. But there was another woman whose spirit sat also. Who was that?”

She stared blankly at him, and he leaned forward farther.

“Yesterday you were taken at Westby, where you thought yourself secure. Who was it, think you, that knew where you were, and could tell us where to seek you?”

Her lips moved uncertainly, as though she were on the brink of speech, and a sly smile came on Roger.

“Who was it that came to me with word of your consortings on Good Friday?” Roger paused, and then his words fell slowly in the silence. “Who was it that would have you put to silence?”

Her eyes widened; and suddenly she understood.

“The goddam bitch!” she burst out. “The poxy lying trull! She said---”

“Who
said?”

“That goddamned Alice. She said---”

“Whose spirit sat with yours?”

Elizabeth Device stood twitching while her eyes rolled madly. Then she steadied one of them on Roger, and Margery saw the hate that flamed in it.

“Hers!” She seemed to spit the word.

“Whose? Let’s have it plain.”

“Alice Nutter’s.” Malice writhed across her face; and then for once and once only, Squinting Lizzie laughed. “And all for a penny,” she shouted. “All for a penny.”

“A dear penny,” said Roger quietly. “You swear to this?”

“Swear and be damned.”

“Swear and be damned.” Jemmy whooped with glee. “That’s good, it is. Damned good.”

“Do you swear it too?”

“Me? Aye, I do an’ all. Swear and be damned.”

Roger turned to Margery.

“To their depositions, add that.”

“Aye sir.” She dipped her pen and wrote hastily while Nick Banister looked cryptically at Roger. Roger saw it. “Say not that I do ill?”

“I’ll not gainsay you, Roger.” Nick shook his head. “And truly I think you do well. This woman needs a hanging, and there’s no other way. When a woman has both riches and repute---”

“Those don’t protect when it’s witchcraft.”

“For that thank God,” said Richard Baldwin, and Roger nodded his assent.

“Neither does absence at Lathom,” he added. “It’s all one when there’s talk of a spirit sitting.” He looked at Margery and saw that she had finished writing. “Bring the woman in.”

Hargreaves moved quickly to obey, and Richard Baldwin went zealously with him. Margery looked round her, at Roger and Nick Banister impassive at the table; at Jemmy and his mother, watched warily by Wilsey and Tom Peyton; and at Frank, stiff and silent by the wall. For a moment he had the ghost of a smile for her. Then the door opened, and Alice Nutter came in between the two men; and at sight of Roger her face went chalky; a slower wit than hers would have read the menace in his eyes.

“There’s further matter against you,” he said curtly. “Read it to her.”

Margery obeyed stiffly, and she felt her voice shake as she read the formal sentences.

“Good God! What’s here?”

It came savagely, cutting through Margery’s level tones like a scream in the night; and smooth and level came Roger’s answer. “Matter to hang a witch,” he said. “Witch! Are you mad?”

“Ask Sir Edward Bromley. He has a way with witches. Make me the Mittimus.”

“I was not there.” She almost screamed it at him. “When Mitton died I was---”

“Telling tales at Lathom. We’ve cause to know those tales, and you’ll tell no more of them. You’ve tarried overlong in Pendle. Take her out.”

She shrieked as they closed on her, and there was livid murder in her eyes. But the hard-faced puritan had her by the arm as the papist Constable took the other, and between them they spun her round. Frank moved watchfully behind as they tugged her out.

Margery forced her attention to the Mittimus as she wrote it in the ancient form; and before she had ended, the uproar had died and Jemmy and his mother had been taken after Alice Nutter. She finished, and then looked up at the quiet room. Nick Banister was sitting impassively, and Roger was standing by the hearth.

“What’s set against her?”

She sanded the paper and then read it to him slowly:

“. . . she did feloniously practise exercise and use her devilish and wicked arts, called witchcrafts enchantments charms and sorceries, in and upon Henry Mitton; and him the said Henry Mitton by force of the same witchcrafts feloniously did kill and murder, contra formam statutiin huic casu nuper edicti et provisi: et contra pacem Domini Regis, Coronam et Dignitatem suas.”

Margery’s voice died away, and Roger nodded approval.

“It will serve her need,” he said shortly. “Nick, I think we should see them horsed.”

“Aye,” said Nick soberly. He went out with Roger, and Margery was left alone.

She came slowly to her feet and stared unseeing at the open door, her mind on the assizes that would come to Lancaster, and on what must follow on a windy moorland there. She stirred uneasily, knowing that for good or ill it was done, and that it might not have been done if she had not come to Pendle. Then he: eyes came back to the present, and to the goose-quill in her hand She looked and shuddered; almost she could see blood on the thing, and she ran to the hearth and thrust it into the fire that Richard had kindled in his anger; and when it scorched and curled and twisted into sizzling black there were faces in the smoke-- Demdike and Alizon and Alice Nutter.

Margery turned away, shuddering; and Frank, coming in search of her, found her cling to him as never before. Neither of them heard footsteps in the doorway.

“God’s Grace!” said Roger, and stood in staring silence.

His friend’s hand was on his shoulder.

“Surely,” said Nick Banister.

The End