Mist Over Pendle (7 page)

Pie put his horse to a cautious walk down the hill to the crossroads. The others followed.

“I’m told,” he went on, “that we shall not see Alice this day. She’s away at Lathom, she and her precious son.”

“Lathom sir?”

“Aye, Lathom House--by Ormskirk, to the west beyond Preston. Where lives the Earl of Derby, the Lieutenant of this County. Alice has a kinsman who’s some secretary or clerk in milord’s Household, and it’s this fellow she visits--she and Miles.”

“Miles?”

“That’s her son--a slender reed of some twenty summers. The fellow at Lathom’s not much more than that. What’s his plaguey name? I can never hold it. How’s he named, Tom?”

“Potter sir. Matthew Potter.”

“Aye, Potter it is. And what’s the kinship? Is he cousin to Alice, or what is he?”

“Depends where you ask it sir.” Tom Peyton had a broad grin.

“How?”

“At the Rough Lee they says nephew. At the alehouse they says bastard. You take your choice.”

“Thanks. I’ve made mine and I’ll not ask yours.”

They were down the steep slope at last, and there, by the side of the clear and bubbling stream, a horseman waited. Roger waved an arm in greeting, and the man returned it with a cheerful flourish of his hat. Margery scanned him with interest as they came to the water and let the horses pick their careful way across. She saw a tall ungainly fellow, with big hands and feet and unruly hair; his cheerful grin and happy untidiness gave him a friendly look as he pulled his hat at Roger.

“Glad to see you Jim.” Roger sounded as though he liked the man.

“Thank you sir.” Wilsey’s voice was as cheerful as the rest of him. “Sorry there’s this trouble, but I thought I’d best call you.”

“It’s no fault of yours. But what
is
the trouble?”

“It’s Baldwin sir.”

“Baldwin?” Roger did not sound pleased. “I thought it was Mitton.”

“Oh aye sir. It’s Mitton that’s dead, but it’s Baldwin that’s the trouble, if you take me.”

“Baldwin usually
is
the trouble I’ve noticed. What is it this time?”

“What you might guess, sir. Thinks the Devil’s had Harry.” Roger’s eyebrows lifted sardonically.

“The Devil, is it? That’s what Baldwin would think. And who’s His Hellship’s agent this time?” Wilsey had a grin that split his face. “The Demdike sir.”

“Again what I might guess. If we’re to believe Baldwin, that woman’s the Devil’s agent-general for these parts.”

The sunlight came dappling through the trees as they rode down the wooded banks of the stream. Roger had lapsed into a thoughtful silence, and Margery had a chance to consider what she had heard. Its general meaning was plain enough. Somebody called Baldwin thought that somebody called Demdike had bewitched this Mitton, and Margery found no cause for surprise in that. She had heard talk enough at home about witchcraft, about the tales that ran, and the books and pamphlets that tumbled from the presses. Roger too, she noted, had shown no surprise; and with that there came to her a sudden memory of her brother Richard asking why a country gentleman should wish to buy the King’s great book about the witches. Then, while she asked herself what this portended, Roger’s voice disturbed her thoughts.

“Here’s the Rough Lee,” he said suddenly.

They had come to a substantial stone house, large and well proportioned, and set back from the road in a proper dignity. As they dismounted, a slight and sandy-haired man with a shuffling walk and an unhappy look came to greet them; in a yeoman’s jerkin he might have looked at ease, but he had a laced- doublet of green which somehow gave him the air of a lackey flaunting it in his master’s second-best. Roger, however, greeted him heartily.

“Good day to you Dick!” he called, and Margery guessed that this must be the Dick Nutter he had spoken of.

“Good day to you Master Nowell!” It sounded like a forced imitation of Roger’s heartiness. “Though it’s no very good day for us here.”

“So I’m told. What’s this of Harry Mitton?”

“He’s dead this morning.” The man shuffled awkwardly. “And the Demdike woman’s been here, and her infernal granddaughter with her. But Baldwin can tell you more of that.”

“Baldwin? Is he here now?”

“Aye--and waiting for you.”

“The Devil he is!” Roger handed his horse to a fellow who had come out for it. “Then we’ll go in. But I’m forgetting--here’s Mistress Whitaker, who’s my cousin and guest. Cousin this is Master Richard Nutter--though he’s Dick to all Pendle.”

Dick Nutter made a leg at her, shyly and awkwardly, and Margery acknowledged it with a friendly smile. She thought there was something to like in Dick Nutter, and perhaps something to pity too. She wondered what his wife was really like, and whether the green doublet had been her choice rather than his.

He took them in and led them to what Margery judged to be the Steward’s room, a simple place which was part parlour and part pantry; and Roger, who had remained covered, swept off his hat to the dead man stretched on the table there.

Margery looked without emotion. Death, after all, was a common sight, and she had seen it many times. Harry Mitton, when all was said, had merely gone the way so many had gone; and it was no great matter.

She looked at him observantly. He had been a big man, and older than most. She thought he might have been something past sixty, so he had had more than his share of life. She could imagine him, portly, pompous, and red of face, working to impress the stranger with his own importance; even in death he looked that kind of man. But if death had not changed him in that, it had changed him in something else. There was an odd look about him as he lay there, still and quiet on the long oak table; and as Margery considered him, asking herself what it was, there came to her the memory of another death like this. There had been an innkeeper at Lambeth, just such a red and portly man, who had worked himself into a heat, moving wine casks under an August sun, until he had collapsed among them with arm and leg drawn tight and his face pulled awry. He had muttered thickly and had died within the hour; and in death he had looked as Harry Mitton now looked.

There was a stir behind the door, and a man who had been sitting there rose quietly to his feet, slipping under his arm the book he had been reading. He was a sturdy and finely made man of some fifty years, wiry and strong, and with a brown and sunburned face which in repose might have been friendly but now looked tense and strained. Margery, curious as ever, looked at the book he had been reading and saw it was a Psalter. She looked from that to his brown leather jerkin and plain falling band, to his close-cropped hair and burning eyes, to the hard lines of his brow and jaw. Then she stiffened warily; she had learned to know a puritan when she saw one.

“God’s Grace to you!”

“And to you, Master Nowell!” His voice was as firm and resonant as Roger’s. “And may it be upon us all, since we all have need of it.”

“Amen to that!” Roger nodded shortly. “What’s to do here?”

The man with the Psalter looked him in the eye.

“It’s a foul tale,” he said, “and best not told in this presence. We’ll be sweeter in the air.”

Roger nodded assent, and then followed silently as Dick Nutter led them through the house and into a formal walled garden behind. He did not stop there, but led them through a gate in the garden wall and so to a sloping pasture beyond. In silence they followed him across its green turf till they came to a grey stone dairy, set where the pasture ended and the ground swept steeply up to a commanding ridge. Here they halted, and the puritan eyed them grimly.

“Here,” he said, “it was. Here it came upon him.”

Roger looked about him attentively, and in so doing he caught Margery’s eye.

“Faith, little cousin! I’d all but forgotten you.” There was a flicker of amusement in his eye as he made his tone formal. “Give me leave to present Master Richard Baldwin. Master Baldwin, my cousin, Mistress Whitaker.”

The man turned to Margery and seemed to become aware of her for the first time. He looked her slowly up and down, noting the gay orange-tawny, the slashed and buttoned doublet, the plumed copintank and the laced gloves. His lips pressed together and his eyes grew hard as pebbles. In silence he made the slightest of bows.

Margery stood stiffly under his scrutiny, tense and alert and with her mind racing. She knew- precisely what Richard Baldwin was thinking. Puritan disapproval was not new to her, and she drew now on her experience of it. This man seemed to count for something here, and to stand well with him might help her to stand well with cousin Roger; and since to do that had become important to her, she was in no mood now to stand on niceties. She must soften this Richard Baldwin, and she was seeking the way of it when he spoke.

“I don’t remember you as a neighbour, mistress. You’ll be from further parts?”

That gave her a chance, and she took it on the wing.

“I was born in Cambridge,” she told him, “where my father professed Divinity. And I was bred in Lambeth, where my brothers were ordained.”

The Psalter moved between his fingers and a shade of doubt came into his eyes. The watchful Margery missed nothing.

“Lambeth?” he said slowly. “I’ve heard of that as a godly place.”

“I’ve known it as that,” came the solemn answer.

‘‘Aye Lambeth,” he repeated. He seemed less sure of himself now. Then you’ll have heard the Archbishop? You’ll have heard him preach?”

That was easy.

“By Dr. Bancroft I was baptized, and later heard many of his sermons.”

“Aye--Bancroft.” The voice was harder again. “But what of His Grace that now is? What of him, mistress?”

She was in no doubt about the meaning of this. Bancroft had been something of a High Churchman and hence suspect among the puritans; but George Abbot, enthroned at Canterbury hardly a year ago, was as stout a puritan as any. Margery smiled gravely.

“I’ve I ye sat beneath Dr. Abbot many times,” she said. She was pleased with that, it had the right puritan tang. “And,” she added hastily I’ve more than once heard him discourse at his own table where we sat at meat.”

This was true. Her father’s name had stood high and his writings against the Jesuit Bellarmino had found favour enough to win for his family some notice from both Archbishops

“At his own table?” Baldwin spoke musingly “That’s a goodly place. And yet....“

He broke off as his eye lit again upon the orange-tawny

Then Roger came to her help.

“Richard! Richard!” he said. “Of your charity, let’s leave Archbishops till we’ve done with Harry Mitton. Get to your tale man, and let’s be done!”

Margery, well satisfied, retired into silence. Her cousin had sounded pleased and Master Baldwin had sounded interested-and that, she thought, was the work half done. It was her turn now to listen.

Richard Baldwin told his tale simply and without artifice He stood in the sunlight, bare-headed and cloakless as he had come and his strong resonant tones came easily above the sighing of the wind and the rustle of the grass.

“We’d been busy at the mill since first light,” he said “I’d a word to put to Dick here about the grain I’m working for him and the lads being all busied I bade my girl ride over. And here’s her tale Wishing to know Dick’s whereabouts, she came to this place, where Mitton then was. He was here, just where we are now and with him m talk was the Demdike crone.”

“The old one?” This came from Roger, sharply.

“Aye, the old beldame--the grandmother. But a half-score paces back was the young whelp, the granddaughter “

“Alizon?”

“She. My girl hadn’t a doubt that the old crone was begging and Mitton refusing, for as she drew close she heard him bid the woman be off.”

“And then?”

“Aye--then. Mark it well. Demdike drew off, cursing like a soldier’s drab; and twice she stopped to spit. Harry Mitton took a pace or two after her. Whereat the whelp Alizon stoops, picks a fistful of cow-dung, wet and fresh as it lies, and flings it in Mitton’s face. And him turned sixty, mark you--and a churchwarden.”

“I mark.” Roger’s voice was quiet. “And then?”

“She runs up the slope, and Mitton after her--being justly angered.”

Richard Baldwin paused, and his level gaze swept round the circle of his listeners. He seemed to address himself to them all, and his voice came slowly and deliberately.

“Harry Mitton had not run a score of paces up that hill when some power struck him down. He fell on his face, and he lay there, grovelling and twitching--for my lass to look on.”

“And then?” Roger’s voice was without expression.

“Then? Why, Grace screamed at what she saw, and the whelp Alizon ran as though she’d the Devil at her. Then out comes Dick Nutter here--and of what followed he may speak himself.”

“And what says he?”

Dick Nutter fidgeted unhappily as they all turned to him, but he did his best with the tale.

“There’s little more to tell,” he said. “Richard’s lass screamed, and I ran out and saw it--just as Richard’s said. There was Harry on his face and the girl Alizon running like a mad thing.”

“What of the Demdike?”

“I heeded her nothing, nor she me. There was a gardener came out too, and a cowman, and between us we got Harry in--and a rare sweating job we had of it, with his weight and this ground. But we got him in and laid him as you saw.”

“He still living?”

“Aye, and twitching. Then I sent a lad to bid Richard come fetch his daughter, she being in no fit state to go alone.”

“No doubt.” Roger seemed deep in thought. “And then?”

But it was Richard Baldwin who took up the tale again, and there was a tremor in his voice now, as though he were deeply stirred.

“I’d Dick’s message,” he said, “and I guessed poor Harry as good as dead. I bade the lad ride on to summon Wilsey, and I nigh foundered my horse getting down here. I prayed God as I rode that it might please Him to spare Harry Mitton. But it pleased Him not, and before I came the man was gone.”

“Aye, gone he was.” Dick Nutter spoke again. “There was naught we could do. He lay there and snored, jerking and twitching, and his face red as a cornfield poppy. Betimes he tried to speak, or so it seemed, for we never kenned a word. And then, of a sudden, he was dead. And that’s all there’s to it.”