Tears of the Jaguar (26 page)

“Finally, Demdike, Old Chattox, and the Chattox daughter, Anne Redfearn, were arrested and interrogated. Both old women confessed—and in detail—to long histories of witchcraft. Demdike said the devil first came to her in the form of a small boy and she gave him her soul in exchange for the power to kill. She learned how to make ‘pictures in clay’—doll versions of her victims—which she would then torment with pins, or fire, or by slowly crumbling them to dust, creating sickness, pain, and death in the actual person. The devil granted her a familiar who appeared to her as a dog, a cat, or a hare, and which came to her home at Malkin Tower to suck her blood.”

“She lived at Malkin Tower?” said Deborah.

“That’s right,” said Ralph. “The foundations of the cottage where she lived are on the land where you are staying. The present buildings were built from the stone and timber that remained when the tower was demolished.”

Deborah said nothing. The pub had grown oddly silent as everyone listened.

“Chattox also confessed to killing cattle and otherwise using evil spirits to serve her ends. Her daughter Anne Redfearn said nothing, but was implicated by the others, and by Alizon, who had already confessed. The laws against witchcraft were stringent. Two days later, all four women were sent to Lancaster Castle to await trial at the assizes. And the matter triggered the only recorded instance of a witches’ Sabbat in England. It took place in 1612, on Good Friday “

“A Sabbat?”

“A kind of meal and meeting, but also some kind of ritual event like a black mass,” said Ralph. “Simply put, it was a gathering of witches.”

“We can only imagine what that meeting was like. It was probably little more than a hurried gathering of friends and family to discuss what was to be done about the incarceration of the four women, but it drew a lot of people. If we can believe the evidence of those in attendance, they met to give a name to Alizon Device’s familiar spirit in hopes it would release the imprisoned women by using magic to destroy Lancaster Castle and kill the jailor.”

“They thought they could do that?” asked Deborah.

Ralph shrugged and rubbed a broad hand across his sweaty face.

“We’ll never know,” he said. “The testimony against them came largely from Jennet Device—who, as we said, was nine. It’s thought she was manipulated by those in charge. She implicated her mother, Elizabeth Device, plus Demdike’s daughter and a dozen others. Among them were women who had no clear connection to those imprisoned, such as Alice Nutter, who was a woman of land and property at Roughlee, a town nearby. The little girl publicly picked each ‘witch’ out of a lineup, taking each of the supposedly guilty by the hand.”

“She may as well have taken them by the throat,” said the man in glasses with feeling.

“They didn’t convict on the evidence of a child?” said Deborah. Jennet was younger than Adelita.

“They did,” said Ralph. “King James’s new laws gave greater freedom and urgency to those prosecuting witchcraft.”

“Terrorism is the new witchcraft, then,” said Deborah, sitting back.

“And in those days witchcraft was also terrorism,” the barman agreed.

“Guilty until proven innocent,” said Deborah, thinking briefly of Martin Bowerdale languishing in a Mexican prison.

“In effect, yes,” said Ralph.

“So what happened?” said Deborah, not sure she wanted to know.

“Over two days, nineteen suspected witches—mainly women—were tried. The suspects were packed into a dungeon below the well tower in Lancaster Castle, shut up in pitch darkness, a room twenty feet by twelve with a seven-foot ceiling, without ventilation or sanitation. Three months they stayed in there, those who were originally arrested anyway. Not surprisingly, Old Demdike didn’t
survive the imprisonment. Of those that did, ten were found guilty and hanged.”

Deborah stared at him as he began to count them off on his fingers.

“Old Chattox, her daughter Anne Redfearn, Elizabeth Device and her children, Alizon...”

“Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, Jane Bulcock, and her son, John,” put in the man in round glasses.

“And Isobel Roby,” said Ralph. “All hanged less than a mile from Lancaster castle. The only member of her family to survive was the child Jennet, who had been set up on a table so that she could be seen and heard clearly as she denounced those she had grown up with, including her own mother. Hanging was an unpleasant death, a matter of strangulation before the invention of the long drop that broke the neck, but it was at least better than the burning they would have had on the continent.”

“What about the little girl?” said Deborah, thinking of Adelita, whom she had promised to see again. “Jennet?”

“Returned to Pendle Forest and carried the weight of what she had done for the rest of her life,” said Ralph. “Except that there was a nasty twist. Twenty-one years later, she was accused of witchcraft herself and had to go through it all again, this time from the other side of the dock. Revenge, perhaps. People round here have long memories.”

“But she was just a child manipulated by the authorities,” said Deborah.

“Even so.”

“There’s one other thing about the Sabbat I haven’t told you,” said Ralph.

“What about it?” said Deborah.

“It happened at Malkin Tower,” said Ralph. “They found clay images of people and human teeth dug up from graves at Newchurch. About ten yards from where you’ll be sleeping tonight. So. Sweet dreams.”

As Deborah managed a smile and drained her glass, the silent pub exploded with laughter.

Nick Reese left the hotel where he was staying at a brisk walk, moving quickly through the dark and damp flagstone streets of Skipton to where he had parked the beige Toyota Corolla in a half-empty pay lot. He was, as usual, alone.

It was odd being up in the north again, close enough to home for it to feel oddly familiar and just as oddly alien. He had lived in London for a decade and traveled around the world. Now, these streets, with their pie shops, curry houses, and chippies, seemed quaint and slightly absurd, like models on a railway layout or reconstructions in a museum.

Scenes from my past
, he thought.

Not that he fit in any better in London.

Out of habit, he looked around him as he walked. The shops were closed, and the pubs would have rung for last call. Somewhere he heard a man singing drunkenly, then a cackle of girlish laughter, but the night was otherwise quiet.

There were only three other vehicles in the lot and only one caught his attention: the gray transit van squeezed in next to his car, so close that getting into the driver’s side was difficult. He slid in between the two vehicles sideways, muttering curses, and in the process put his left hand on the van’s hood. It was warm.

A practically empty lot, but this van had parked in so tight he could barely open his car door.

Which, in turn, meant
...

The rear doors of the van kicked open and two men came out of the back, one white, one black, the latter with what looked like a blanket held tight to his chest. Another man slid out of the passenger’s side and was coming around the front.

For a moment Nick Reese did nothing but scowl, then he reached for the keys in his jacket pocket. In a moment, the first man was on him, pinning his arms to his side and jerking him around so the black guy could throw the blanket over his head.

“What the hell...?” Nick said, sputtering with indignation and fear.

Then, just as the blanket was high enough to block the man’s line of sight, Nick Reese shed the pretense of surprise and panic, and became a different man entirely. He kicked upward hard, connecting with the guy’s groin. In the same instant he reached forward with his left hand then snapped his elbow back high, a sharp staccato gesture that caught the second man on the side of his head. The pressure pinning his arms weakened, and he snatched his hand from his pocket, pulled it back, and thrust hard with the heel of his palm into the face of the winded black man. The man’s head shot back and he crumpled, but the white guy behind him caught him in a headlock and pulled back hard so that Reese’s feet were almost lifted off the ground.

The man was bigger than him, stronger, and smelled of Juicy Fruit gum. Reese tightened his stomach, kicked off with his feet, and flipped backward and over the top, using the other man’s momentum against him. Reese would have landed flat on both feet behind him, but there wasn’t enough room between the car and the van, and he fell awkwardly on the hood of the Corolla. But the action had at least broken the choke hold and given him a clear view of the third man—the driver—advancing from the hood of the car, another big guy, this time in shades and sporting a crew cut. He was reaching into his jacket for a weapon.

Reese turned, grasped the van’s roof rack, and used the grip to stabilize a wild roundhouse kick at the gunman. The height of the van gave him reach the gunman hadn’t anticipated, and the kick caught him neatly under the jaw, just as the black automatic came into view. He dropped, and Reese turned and aimed another kick at Juicy Fruit, who, still dazed from Reese’s flip, turned obligingly into it.

Reese jumped down, seized the gun hand of the driver, and butted him hard in the face like he was heading an in-swinging corner kick. The man crumpled, clutching his face. With a deft twist, Reese relieved him of his weapon, spinning in the same moment to aim it squarely at Juicy Fruit.

Nick Reese, one. Van-driving amateurs, nil.

The man immediately backed off. Reese opened the car door and slid in, switching the gun to his left hand and keeping it trained on the only attacker who was still upright till he had the key in the ignition. As the engine came to life, he put it in reverse with his right hand while his left still aimed the pistol through the open door. Then he took his foot off the brake and rolled the Toyota back, opening the door wide so he had a broader field of
fire. He grabbed the wheel with his right hand, shot the car into a tire-squealing turn, and sent it peeling out of the parking lot, his eyes and weapon locked on the man by the van whose hand was frozen in the air inches from his shoulder holster.

For a second the two men looked at each other, and it was like Death had paused to see what would happen next—then the Toyota was careening out into the streets of Skipton. Reese tossed the gun onto the passenger seat, checked the rearview mirror for signs of the van, then closed the driver’s door and reached for his seatbelt.

Well, that was bracing
, he thought.

He glanced at the automatic on the seat beside him, a Glock 35. They hadn’t been amateurs. They just hadn’t expected him to be quite so professional.

The long northern day was finally over by the time Deborah had begun her walk back to the Malkin Tower Farm. It was funny, she thought, without actually being amusing, how much the name of the place had changed for her in the last couple of hours. Before, it had been quaint and rustic. Now it brooded like the hill that was the heart of the area, a presence marked by the sinister nature of what had once been done there.

There were lights on at the farm cottages, and she experienced an almost unreasonable relief at the sight of the stone building that had once been the piggery. A bottle of spring water had been set at the door with a hand-scribbled note that said simply “Fresh!” taped to the cap. Deborah picked it up, let herself in with her key, and cracked the seal on the bottle.

She kicked off her walking shoes, which had begun to rub just above the heel, and poured herself a cup of the water as she waited for her laptop to awake. The water had a slight aftertaste,
a very slight but not unpleasant bitterness that tasted of the earth. She checked the label: Penine Springs. Local.

She took another mouthful and, ready to do some research, typed, “Gold rod dove” into her search engine. What came up was a mixture—everything from wedding motifs to dictionaries of Biblical imagery—but over half of the list on the first page contained the word “scepter.” She opened three of them and read about European royal regalia that included scepters adorned with doves as symbols of peace or the Holy Ghost.