The Daylight Gate Read online

  Tom Peeper got up and dragged the maimed boy up with him. He pulled Robert’s hands away from his bloodied mouth. ‘You see this? What woman that is no witch-woman would do this to a man?’

  ‘What man that is a man would do this to a woman?’

  The men did not reply.

  ‘Take the boy to the herbalist in Whalley and set the charge to my account.’

  ‘The herbalist is a witch!’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes and every midwife with her according to the likes of you. Get him away and see to him before he chokes to death on his own blood. Sarah Device – pull up your dress. You will come with me.’ She passed Sarah a cloth from her saddlebag to wipe her mouth. Sarah did not speak. She could not stop shaking.

  ‘Constable Hargreaves! Untie her.’

  Hargreaves cut the cords with a single slash of his knife, not caring that he took the skin off Sarah’s wrist. Then he bent down and picked up the torn-out tongue. ‘Does she want this to take with her to her grand-dam Demdike in Lancaster Castle?’

  Alice Nutter did not flinch. ‘Wrap it and give it to me.’ She stared steadily at Hargreaves until he looked away, took out his handkerchief, wrapped the object and handed it to Alice, who put it in her saddlebag.

  Hargreaves looked as if he might say something but Alice Nutter was not that kind of woman.

  Without glancing at Sarah, who was holding onto her stirrup leather, Alice rode off.

  Hargreaves and Tom Peeper watched her go. Neither spoke until she was out of earshot. Then Hargreaves said, ‘She rides astride like a man, and she rides with the bird even though no woman is a falconer. I tell you I don’t trust her. A woman astride and a falcon following – that’s unnatural.’

  ‘And she took the witch’s part.’

  ‘I tell you they are the same.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be calling Alice Nutter a witch, would you, Harry?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call her nowt, Tom, leastways not in public, but there’s many in private have things to say about her wealth and her power, and who she favours and who she don’t – and why. Why does she let the Demdike live in Malkin Tower on her land?’

  ‘You can’t take her on.’

  ‘Not me. There’s one who would do it if he had evidence to do it.’

  Tom Peeper nodded his head. ‘You’d best get up to Read Hall then, Harry, and tell Magistrate Nowell what’s happened.

  Roger Nowell

  ROGER NOWELL WAS a handsome man. He could read as well as he could ride. He liked a play as much as a cockfight. He was the Magistrate of Pendle Forest and the Master of Read Hall – the finest house in Pendle.

  Old Demdike and her granddaughter Alizon had been dragged before him accused of maiming the pedlar John Law by witchcraft. Evidence against them was given by Mother Chattox. She had seen them that day at Boggart’s Hole.

  But Old Demdike was wily, and she had turned and faced her accuser Chattox and accused her in turn of being a witch from the womb. Baptised twice – once for God and once for Satan. She bears the marks.

  Since they were all shouting witchcraft at each other, and since John Law was on his deathbed, Roger Nowell had a choice: pack them off to Lancaster to await trail or hand them over to the mob for a ducking that would certainly have meant a drowning.

  He was hoping to quieten things down by committing them to trial – he disliked the slavering excitement of the mob. But the sensational news of this nest of witches spread long past Lancashire and soon reached London. Roger Nowell was obliged to receive an unwelcome visitor at Read Hall: Thomas Potts of Chancery Lane – Recording Clerk for the Prosecution and the Crown.

  ‘What more do you want?’ asked Roger Nowell. ‘The Demdike and Chattox will be tried at the August Assizes. There is nothing more to say or to do and I would prefer to return to my regular duties when Easter is past.’

  Potts fluffed himself up inside his ruff. He was a proud little cockerel of a man; all feathers and no fight. ‘King James is an authority on witchcraft. What other monarch has written his own book on the subject?’

  ‘Your point?’ said Roger Nowell.

  ‘My point, sir, is that if you had taken the trouble to read Daemonology you would understand what the King in his wisdom understands; that where there is one witch there are many. Here we have four witches –’

  ‘All in prison.’

  ‘The Demdike has family. Mother Chattox has family. Serpents, sir. I say it again – serpents.’

  Potts preferred to say things again. And again and again. Roger Nowell controlled himself.

  ‘I have read King James’s Daemonology and much else besides on the subject of sorcery. My mother’s family was once afflicted by Demon Possession.’

  ‘So I had heard,’ said Potts.

  ‘So I say to you as Magistrate of the District of Pendle that four witches will stand trial. None else is accused.’

  Potts stalked about the room. ‘Accused, no. At their filthy labours? Indeed! In all England no county is as known for its witches as Lancashire. The abbey at Whalley, before it was destroyed by King Henry the Eighth in his just and wise Reformation, had been the sacrilegious altar of the anchorite Isolde de Heton. Anchorite become sorceress.’

  ‘You have been studying our local history in your free time,’ said Roger Nowell.

  Potts had no sense of irony. ‘And that lady Isolde – better call her a cat or a beldame than a lady – when she was discovered, she fled the abbey and made her fortress at Malkin Tower – now home to the witch Demdike.’

  ‘It has been a home to sheep and pigs in the years in between. The Demdike are remote from the villages out there and make less mischief than elsewhere. The land is owned by Alice Nutter. She is a widow. She may do as she pleases with her property.’

  Potts regarded him with fury. He liked to be taken seriously. ‘It has been noted, sir, and by the highest in the realm, how slack you are in Lancashire to seek out and stamp out evil. Tomorrow is Good Friday. I am expecting a Sabbat on Pendle Hill.’

  ‘Are you?’ said Roger Nowell. ‘I shall be in church. At Whalley.’

  He was pleased to see his visitor turn purple with indignation, but Potts was not giving up.

  ‘Since you take the evil of witchcraft so lightly, what have you to say on the other matter?’

  Roger Nowell knew what was coming next.

  Potts fluffed himself up again. ‘Have you forgotten that only six years ago, after the Gunpowder Plot that was set to claim the life of the lawful and crowned and God-anointed King, every conspirator to a man fled to Lancashire?’

  Roger Nowell had not forgotten.

  ‘What is worse, sir? A High Mass or a Black Mass? To practise witchcraft or to practise the old religion? Both are high treason against the Crown. Witchery popery popery witchery. What is the difference?’

  ‘Are you saying that a Mass celebrated in the name of God is a profanity? Equal to the Black Mass of the Prince of Darkness?’

  ‘They are both diabolical,’ said Potts. ‘Treasonable and diabolical. Diabolical and –’

  ‘Treasonable,’ said Roger Nowell.

  ‘I am glad we are agreed on that at least,’ said Potts. ‘For while so little has been done to wipe the stain of witchcraft from these lands, less has been done to prosecute those who are loyal to the King in name only and yet follow the old religion.’

  ‘If you mean Sir John Southworth …’

  ‘I do,’ said Potts.

  ‘He pays his fines as a Catholic recusant for not attending Anglican Communion and he does no harm. He is not a Jesuit. He is an old man who follows his conscience quietly. He celebrates no Mass and he hides no priests. Besides, he is my friend.’

  Potts looked up at his host beadily. ‘You do not choose your friends with care, sir.’

  ‘I have known him all my life,’ said Roger Nowell.

  ‘And his son, Christopher Southworth? The Jesuit?’

  Roger Nowell was uncomfortable. This was difficult.

  ‘Chri
stopher Southworth is a traitor – granted. If he were here I would arrest him – friendship with his father notwithstanding. But he escaped from prison after his part in the Gunpowder Plot. He is in France. You know that.’

  ‘I know he is training priests under Father Gerard at Douai and sending them in secret to England. The English Mission is paid for and protected by the Pope himself.’

  ‘I had heard as much. Then catch him in France.’

  ‘We have tried. In a Catholic country we are hardly likely to succeed.’

  ‘Then give up,’ said Roger Nowell.

  Potts’s small eyes widened. ‘Give up? The reward is vast. And think of the glory. The advancement. If I were instrumental in the capture of Christopher Southworth, King James would raise me up.’

  Roger Nowell would gladly have raised Potts up and thrown him on the fire. Instead he forced himself to speak reasonably.

  ‘Christopher Southworth is a traitor but not a fool. If he set foot in Lancashire I would know it within a day. He will never return here.’

  ‘He might,’ said Potts. ‘I have had his sister arrested.’

  Roger Nowell was taken aback. ‘Jane? She is Protestant! She is the one Southworth who has renounced the old religion – Sir John won’t speak to her – you can hardly arrest her for –’

  ‘For witchcraft,’ said Potts.

  ‘But that is foolery!’

  ‘You take it all too lightly it seems to me. She has been accused of causing mortal sickness by sticking pins into a poppet. Her maid fell ill like to die. The maid’s mother found the poppet pinned and bristling like a hedgehog. Jane Southworth has been arrested.’

  ‘House arrest?’

  ‘She is in Lancaster Castle.’

  ‘With the Demdike and Chattox?’

  Before Roger Nowell could press Potts more on this, Harry Hargreaves was shown in.

  Constable Hargreaves began to explain in his slow lumbering way about Sarah Device and Alice Nutter. Roger Nowell could barely contain his irritation. He wasn’t listening. He didn’t like Alice Nutter but he was hardly going to accuse her of witchcraft. He was far more concerned about Potts and the Southworths.

  Potts was delighted by Hargreaves’s news. He was all for them riding out to Malkin Tower right away, but Hargreaves had some further interest to add.

  ‘My spies have reported a band of persons travelling through the forest – unknowns – vagrants they could be, yes, begging for alms at Easter – or they could be to do with the Good Friday Black Mass that we have suspicions of tomorrow, on Pendle Hill.’

  Potts rejoiced at this possibility and ordered Hargreaves to get him some men. They would go to the top of Pendle Hill and lie in wait.

  Roger Nowell was relieved to see them leave together. Potts couldn’t have arrived in Lancashire at a more inconvenient time. Witchcraft did not interest Roger Nowell; superstition and malice, he thought. He had spies of his own at work and he was waiting for other news.

  Is that him? The Jesuit?

  Yes.

  Shall we take him?

  Follow him.

  Where will he go?

  To Lancashire, where his home is. To Pendle Forest, where his heart is.

  Malkin Tower: Good Friday 1612

  IT WAS A strange, wild, ragged group of men and women beginning to arrive at Malkin Tower.

  Mouldheels had walked from Colne, begging, cursing and spitting all the way, trailing her familiar stink behind her, and bringing no broomstick with her, only a cat as clean as his mistress was rotten. Mouldheels had flesh that fell off her as though it were cooked. And her feet stank of dead meat. Today they were wrapped in rags already beginning to ooze.

  There was pretty Margaret Pearson from Padiham, getting food from her favours given to farmhands. The Puritan who owned the mill called her a ditch-trollop and beat her if she came round looking for barley. But his son never turned her away. Fornication was a sin but not with a witch who had put a spell on you.

  John and Jane Bulcock were there; some said they were husband and wife, others said brother and sister though they slept in the same bed.

  Old Demdike’s disfigured daughter Elizabeth had called the meeting. Her son James, ‘Jem’ Device, had stolen a sheep to roast for the feast.

  And there was the little girl Jennet Device, vicious, miserable, underfed and abused. Her brother took her with him to the Dog to pay for his drink. Tom Peeper liked his sexual conquests to be too young to fall pregnant.

  The tower had not been so busy for a long time. The table was roughed out of a few planks set on trestles and there were no plates. The mutton spitting above the smoking fire was torn off the carcass and served straight onto the table. Each person had brought a cup to be filled with ale.

  Malkin Tower was a squat stone round of a building, soundly constructed and strangely placed, alone and remote, with no purpose anyone could remember, and no inhabitants anyone ever knew but for the family they called the Demdike.

  The tower might have been a prison – it stood like one, grim and windowless, except for slits that looked east and west, north and south, like narrow suspicious eyes. There was a stagnant moat around the tower, filled with thick green algae. The sun did not shine here.

  It was nearly noon, and there were eleven of them present when Alice Nutter rode up with Sarah Device walking beside her. Squint-eyed Elizabeth came out to meet them. She bowed briefly. ‘Mistress Nutter!’

  Alice acknowledged her but without warmth. ‘Sarah was on her way to me yesterday, bringing a message from you, she says, when she fell foul of Tom Peeper and Constable Hargreaves. My advice to you and your family is to stay away from either man.’

  The child Jennet came out of the tower. Bare feet. Ragged dress. Pinched and starved, she gnawed jealously on a piece of fatty mutton, like a wilder thing than a child.

  Alice Nutter dismounted her pony and took loaves, butter, apples and a large cheese from her saddlebag. She gave them to Elizabeth. ‘When did that child last eat?’

  ‘Three days ago, like the rest of us. The parson calls Lent a fast, for it suits the church to starve the poor. I begged from the church and the parson said that a fast did a woman good. I answered that I must be the goodliest woman in Pendle.’

  Alice tossed Jennet her own bread and cheese. The child made off with them into the bushes.

  ‘What is it you want from me?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Please to come inside, Mistress.’

  It was a strange sight. It was a strange company.

  The dinner guests were smeared in grease and fat. The rough plank table now had the remains of the sheep carcass in the centre, a hacking knife stuck into its middle. Most of the sheep had been eaten. There was a jug of ale on the floor and a pot of turnips steeping over the fire.

  As Alice entered, the company stood up and bowed to her.

  Elizabeth Device was behind her, with Sarah Device. ‘Now we are gathered thirteen,’ she said.

  Alice Nutter began to realise what this was about. ‘I am not one of your thirteen,’ she said.

  She turned to leave. Jem Device was behind her at the door. He was leaning on it, a rough axe in his hand. Alice looked around. The tower had no other door and no other means of escape. She was aware of a powerful smell of rot.

  ‘I called this meeting,’ said Elizabeth Device, ‘that all of us here might free my mother Demdike and my daughter Alizon from Lancaster Castle. I will even free the Chattox if they will help us.’

  Agnes Chattox nodded her head.

  ‘What has this to do with me?’ said Alice. ‘If you wish me to speak with Roger Nowell on your behalf I will do so. Not because you are witches, but because you are not. Witchcraft is superstition.’

  There was a murmur round the table. Elizabeth spoke again.

  ‘Alice Nutter. My mother, Old Demdike, knew you well, do you deny it?’ Alice did not reply. Elizabeth continued. ‘You were her friend once, in better times, in times forgotten. You have the gift of magick and you
learned it from the Queen’s own magician, John Dee.’

  ‘John Dee is dead,’ said Alice. ‘He was not a magician, he was a mathematician.’

  ‘And Edward Kelley? Was he a mathematician too?’

  Alice was surprised. Edward Kelley was the most famous of the mediums and spirit-raisers. He had been an intimate of John Dee in Manchester and at Mortlake. He had been Alice Nutter’s lover too. Many years ago. He was long dead.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ said Alice again.

  ‘Blow up the gaol at Lancaster and free Old Demdike and Alizon and the Chattox and her daughter Nance Redfern. Spirit them away. It is not too much for a woman of your magick and we here will serve you as we served Old Demdike.’

  ‘I never served Old Demdike,’ shouted Agnes Chattox.

  ‘The general point is good,’ said Elizabeth. ‘And as for you, Agnes Chattox, will you or won’t you serve Mistress Nutter?’

  ‘I will if she can make a spell.’

  ‘I cannot make a spell,’ said Alice. ‘I have no magick.’

  ‘Then how did you come by your money? Then how did you come by your youth? Look at you, unlined and strong, and yet you are not so much younger than Old Demdike and she is eighty.’

  The company was astonished. Alice was uneasy yet she kept calm. ‘I am not the age you reckon. I knew your mother when I was young and she had her own ways of seeming youthful. It was that Demdike had youth when others had age, not that I had age and now I have youth.’

  This answer was sufficiently confusing, and the company were all convinced of the powers of Old Demdike. Then Jem Device began kicking the door with his heel. ‘Make her do it, make her swear!’

  The rest at the table began banging the table in rhythm with Jem’s kicking. ‘Make her do it, make her swear, make her do it, make her swear!’ The pounding and the chanting got louder and wilder. They were drunk already and now they were intoxicating themselves with the thought of power.

  Jem Device came round to the table and threw down his axe. He took out a knife and held it out to his mother.