The Daylight Gate Read online

  ‘Take him away,’ said Constable Hargreaves. ‘Lock his legs this time.’

  Gradually the noises of the men were silenced into the dark and the last of the flares disappeared into the hill. Alice went back inside and sent the servants to bed. Then she went to her study and brought out Christopher Southworth. He had heard it all. He took Alice by her shoulders.

  ‘Alice – they were hunting me and found him. I like none of this. The net is tightening and you do not feel it. Jem Device or some other of his demented kin will accuse you of witchcraft when they discover that you will not help them. You want to protect the Demdike but they will not protect you.’

  ‘I have not told you the rest of my story.’

  The Dark Gentleman

  THAT NIGHT I wrote a letter to Elizabeth begging her to see me …

  The following day a servant came to me and asked if I would wait upon his mistress that night at her house in Vauxhall. It was Maytime, Beltane, and the full moon.

  At sunset, as I had been instructed, I went to her house and dismissed my servant.

  I could hear a great noise coming from the hall that was placed in the centre of the house. I entered and saw a large company of men and women unknown to me. All wore masks across the eyes. Some wore animal tails. I was not announced, nor was I given a mask. I walked freely around the room, looking for Elizabeth. There was a table piled with food and drink. Two fiddlers played.

  A man in a mask kissed me. I pushed him away. He said, ‘We are free spirits here.’

  Suddenly Elizabeth came towards me. ‘Alice! Tonight is our great ceremony of Beltane and I would that you were one of our company. You are rich but you could be richer yet. Your beauty will remain. Your power will increase. The Dark Gentleman has asked for you himself.’

  I felt a chill on me like the beginning of winter. I looked across the room and there was a small handsome man staring at me with deep black eyes. He bowed briefly as I looked at him.

  Elizabeth laughed. ‘Here is no simple charm. Here is everlasting power.’

  She kissed me fully. She drew me aside to a small room off the hall. We had undressed in moments and made love like wolves.

  But while she was touching me I felt something strange about her left hand. I pulled it up from my body. The third finger of her left hand was missing.

  ‘I married the Dark Gentleman,’ she said. ‘The Christians give a ring. The Dark Lord takes a finger.’

  I folded her fingers. Kissed them. ‘You belong to me,’ I said. She shook her head. ‘I did once upon a time, but you never belonged to me, did you, Alice? You gave me your body but you never gave me your Soul.’

  I touched her face. Her green eyes were full of tears. And yet she was different, changed. She was as beautiful as ever but her softness was gone. She was bright like something from the sea, like treasure that the sea has covered in coral.

  She wore a simple gold ring on her little finger. She took it off, put it on the third finger of my left hand. My hands are smaller than hers. ‘Remember me,’ she said.

  I looked at her. She was my memory. There was no one else to remember.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you will be one of us. Come.’

  She threw me a silk petticoat and took my hand. We went back into the hall.

  There had been a change. A table covered with a red cloth stood on a dais. On the table were four black candles, lit, giving off a foul stink. ‘Sulphur and pitch,’ whispered Elizabeth. ‘Come forward.’

  I went forward, realising that while I was wearing only a shift, the others in their masks were fully clothed. My heart was beating too fast.

  A figure came towards me offering a drink in a silver cup. I took it and drained it off. Everyone in the room was clapping. They stamped their feet as the fiddle music got wilder and discordant. Elizabeth was holding my hand. ‘The Dark Gentleman will make you his own.’

  Without understanding what I did I took off my shift. I was naked now. The Dark Gentleman walked forward, picked me up with surprising strength so that my legs were wrapped round his waist while he had intercourse with me. I was heady with the drink and with my pleasure with Elizabeth and I enjoyed him.

  I saw that others in the room were now at the same business, half naked and hungry for each other. All the time the music played.

  While I was still at my pleasure, I saw Elizabeth put on a fur cloak and make her way to the door to the street. Why was she leaving without me?

  The crowd parted. A shape – I cannot call it a figure – moved – I cannot call it walked – through the bodies. The shape carried a sword. The shape was draped and hooded.

  The Dark Gentleman had finished with me. I leaned back against the altar. From far away I heard Elizabeth’s voice. ‘She is the One.’

  The Wound

  CHRISTOPHER SOUTHWORTH WAS silent. He took Alice’s hands and kissed them. ‘I met you at Salmsbury Hall when I was a boy. What was I? Eighteen? I fell in love with you. I became a priest. I remained in love with you. Whatever you are, I will always love you.’

  Alice touched his chest. He pulled his shirt over his head. His chest was stamped with scars from the branding iron and the red-hot wires. She stroked his scars. She did not flinch.

  He kissed her forehead. ‘I will always love you but I can’t be your lover.’

  ‘God will forgive you.’

  ‘I have nothing for Him to forgive.’

  He unbuttoned his breeches and taking Alice’s hand laid it against his groin.

  *

  They had taken the Jesuit Christopher Southworth to a cell without windows. In the cell was a rack, a winch, a furnace, a set of branding irons, a pot for melting wax, nails of different lengths. A thumbscrew, a pair of flesh-tongs, heavy tweezers, a set of surgical instruments, a series of small metal trays, ropes, wire, preparations of quicklime, a hood and a blindfold.

  They did not rack him but they used the rack as a bench. They tied his arms above his head, legs apart. They made a small neat cut in his side and drained a quart of blood to weaken him. Then they forced him to drink a pint of salt water.

  They did not break his fingers joint by joint or pull out his teeth one by one. They were relaxed. They drew pictures on his chest with their delicate knives, carefully cleaning the blood away. They pinned back his eyelids with metal clips and dripped hot wax into his eyeballs. When he screamed they debated whether or not to take out his tongue. But they wanted his tongue for his confession.

  He did not confess. He gave them no names. The only name they heard was Jesus.

  He was naked. They stroked his penis and his balls. To his shame his penis hardened. He felt nothing but he hardened. The men were excited by him. They turned him over and buggered him. They turned him back and prepared a small fire in a tin. Then while one of the men held his penis the other cut it off. Then they cut off his balls. He had fainted but they threw water over him and roused him. They burned his testicles in the small tin. He couldn’t see anything but he could smell himself. The stench of himself. Burning alive. Then they left him alone.

  He said, ‘There is a ship that sails from Dover in fifteen days. Be on it. Be on it with me.’

  ‘What about my house? My land?’

  ‘What about your life?’

  ‘My life is not in danger. Yours is.’

  ‘I no longer care about my life. I died when they tortured me – or so it feels.’

  She undressed him. She kissed him. Gently he divided her legs with his hands and moved down the bed so that his tongue could reach her.

  They both fell asleep.

  A Life for a Life

  CONSTABLE HARGREAVES UNLOCKED the leg irons and took James Device round the corner to the Dog.

  Tom Peeper was there in the dark low-fired room. A naked half-asleep child sat on his knee. She pulled her dress on over her head and ran off without speaking to her brother. Tom Peeper stood up and fastened his breeches.

  ‘How did she get out of the Tower?’ said Hargreave
s.

  ‘I locked ’em in. I let ’em out,’ said Peeper. ‘Not that sly toad I didn’t though.’ He gave Jem a kick. ‘Devil must have let you out.’

  Jem looked like an animal at the food and drink. He stretched out his hand. ‘You’ve had my sister. Give me beer and bread.’

  He tried to snatch the crust but Tom Peeper slapped him aside.

  ‘She’s not yours to trade, Jem, not now, property of the Law. That right, Harry?’

  Harry Hargreaves said nothing. He had no appetite for the children Tom used but he wouldn’t stop him using them. Tom Peeper was useful. He was a spy and a sadist. That made Hargreaves’s job easier.

  ‘We’ll give you food, Jem,’ said Hargreaves. ‘Eat up.’

  Jem hesitated, but only for a second. He sat on the bench, both elbows on the table and shoved food into his mouth with both hands. He drank with his mouth full, slopping and choking, scooping up the slushy mess that fell out of his mouth. He ate unconcerned for anything, except his food, as a man who is often starving eats. Peeper glanced over at Hargreaves. They had worked together for a long time. They had an understanding.

  ‘There’s a dungeon for you, Jem, in Lancaster. Makes the Malkin Tower look like a royal palace. Your grand-dam hasn’t escaped and neither will you, not as a hare, not as a bird, and not with a league of Dark Gentlemen to escort you. You will leave on a cart and you will be burned at the stake.’

  Jem ate steadily, without looking up, but he was listening.

  ‘You could save yourself. Testify against your kin and they will burn and you will be free. We’ll send you away quietly. Roger Nowell will get you a billet in Yorkshire. You’ll have food to eat, clothes to wear, a barn to sleep in, a fire in winter. You can get married. How about that, Jem? A wife to keep you warm. Something better than your squinty mother or a greasy sheep to quieten your cock. All you have to do is to confess to Roger Nowell that the meeting at Malkin Tower was a band of witches. A blasphemous Good Friday plot. We will not remember the stolen sheep or any other thing against you.’

  Jem was eating and thinking. Eating was easy. Thinking was hard. They were only asking him to tell the truth. He saw a picture in his head of the straw bed in the barn and the chicken in the pot and his sweetheart working in the fields, and her coming home in the evening and them being together, away from all this forever.

  ‘And you would testify against Alice Nutter.’

  Jem stopped eating and dreaming. His face was full of fear. He shook his head. ‘I may not speak against her.’

  Tom Peeper put his nose in very close. ‘Why may you not speak against her? What power has she over you?’

  Jem shook his head again. ‘I will be torn in quarters by demons.’

  Tom Peeper took up the smoky dripping candle and held back Jem’s head. ‘I can quarter you faster today than any devil tomorrow. And where I am too soft and silly, the torturer at Lancaster will make up for my slackness.’ He dashed the hot wax into Jem’s face.

  Jem jumped away and went whimpering into the corner of the room. There was a big spider on the floor. The spider said, ‘James Device, I will protect you. Do what they ask and I will make you greater than she.’

  ‘Are you a fiend?’ said Jem.

  ‘I am your friend, James Device. Put me in your pocket and listen to me carefully.’

  ‘Get up off the floor, you length of rotten rope!’ shouted Peeper.

  Jem pocketed the spider and stood up. ‘I will testify against them all.’

  Constable Hargreaves refilled the tankards. ‘And what of Mistress Nutter?’

  Jem took his beer and drained it off. ‘I will say to Magistrate Nowell that she promised to lead us and to blow up the gaol at Lancaster and free Old Demdike.’

  He started to laugh – high, hysterical. They were laughing with him. He wasn’t alone and outside any more. Not cold or hungry or afraid. He would be safe now.

  The Hell Hole

  THE WELL DUNGEON at Lancaster Castle measures twenty feet by twelve feet. It is sunk thirty feet below ground. It has no window and no natural light, save for a grille, slotted into the floor at ground level, but ground level is thirty feet above. Might as well be the moon away. And the moon looks in at night, high and pale, a cold light, but on full moon a light at least.

  And better than the fat-drenched flare that drips its pig grease onto the filthy straw and lights up … what does it light up? Misery, emaciation, rot, suffering, rats.

  The prisoners are not chained. They roam around their stall. Chattox paces like a show cat, back and forth, forth and back, muttering nobody knows what. Her daughter, pretty Nance Redfern, sits in the corner hating Alizon Device, her rival for food and a few brief hours out of this hell. The gaoler takes one or the other for sex most days. He washes them too, or at least the part that interests him. Therefore the two young women have fewer sores than the rest.

  The place stinks. Drainage is a channel cut into the earth under the straw. Their urine flows away, their faeces piles into a corner. Old Demdike squats over the mounting pile and generally loses her footing and slips into it. Her dress is smeared in excrement. She has weeping sores between her legs. When the gaoler comes for one of the women, Demdike lifts her dress and leers at him, offering him her sores. He hits her. She has lost two teeth this way.

  They are fed stale bread and brackish water twice a day. When the bread is thrown through the door, the rats squeal at it and have to be kicked away. There are four or five rats. There were more. The rest have been eaten.

  Cold. The dungeon is cold and the women have only a couple of horse blankets to share between them. When it rains, the rain falls through the grating and soaks the straw underneath. Jane Southworth stands under the rain chute and tries to wash her face and hands, tries to wash between her legs, and the others laugh at her, but the rain is liquid sanity to her. It comes from outside and she tries to imagine that some of the outside enters this hellish inside and makes it bearable.

  The wet straw adds to the smell of rot.

  The walls have moss on them and strange dark fungus. Demdike knows her toadstools and scrapes what she can from the walls. The heavy iron manacles hung round the walls are rusted. When she has the fit on her, Demdike shakes the manacles with all her strength calling for her Familiar to come and save her. Greymalkin never comes, nor the small gentleman dressed in black that she used to know, nor the brown imp that lived in a bottle, nor the bird that told her where the grain was kept. Nothing human or not human enters this place. The gaoler never comes in and when the women are questioned they are called to come out by name. Every kind of disease is in these walls.

  It is April. The women will be here until the August Assizes.

  Chattox and Demdike hate each other. Their daughters Nance and Alizon hate each other. No alliances have been made. No sympathy each to each. Jane Southworth keeps herself apart. She recites the Bible and that enrages the others.

  He will come, says Old Demdike, one night, on a moon-trail, he will come and I’ll be rid of the lot of you.

  At first the rival families made spells and invocations. At first fire and blood were used to lure the Dark Gentleman. Now there are curses but no hope. Misery but no invention. Alizon wonders about Old Demdike’s power. Demdike swears he will come but she no longer believes it.

  Day and night are the same. Fitful cold aching sleep, pain, thirst, tiredness even when asleep.

  The straw moves underfoot with lice.

  The air is stagnant. Breathing is hard because the air is so thick. Too much carbon dioxide. Not enough oxygen. Every breath keeps them alive and kills them off some more. One of the women has a fever.

  The door opens. The gaoler is there with a dripping flare.

  ‘Nance!’ he shouts, and shoves the flare in the socket. He leaves them light while he takes the woman; it is his way of signalling something … what?

  The flare throws grotesque shadows on the black stone walls of the cell. No, it is not the shadows that are g
rotesque; the women are grotesque. Shrunken, stooped, huddled, crippled, hollow-faced, racked and rattling.

  Alizon uses her hands to make a play-theatre. Here is a rabbit. Here is a bird. Old Demdike sways back and forth in her soiled dress.

  It is raining a little, and Jane Southworth goes to her station under the grille, opening her mouth to the rain. She lets the rain on her face be her tears. None of the women cry any more.

  She thinks about Hell, and is it like this? She thinks that the punishments of the Fiend are made out of human imaginings. Only humans can know what it means to strip a human being of being human. She thinks the Fiend has a kind of purity that humans never have. She thinks that godliness is ridiculous because it exists to hide this; this stinking airless doomed cell. Life is a stinking airless doomed cell. Why do we pretend? She can smell strawberries. She knows she is going mad. Let the rain come.

  A rat runs over her foot and drinks from the indent of her shoe.

  Hoghton Tower

  ALICE NUTTER AND Roger Nowell were riding ahead of their group. Alice said nothing about Constable Hargreaves or Jem Device or the events of the previous night. When Roger Nowell enquired after his fashion if she had slept well, she said she had. She hoped he had found his fugitive. He had not.

  Potts was travelling with them. He was a poor rider and preferred a carriage, but roads in Lancashire were not so necessary as they were in London, and so Potts had to be content with bouncing along the ruts and bridleways in an open cart drawn by a farmer’s nag. He was bad-tempered enough from a night without sleep and not a single broomstick to be seen on Pendle Hill. He had been curious to meet Alice Nutter but she made him nervous. Something about the way she looked at him made him feel less important than he knew himself to be.

  He was glad to be travelling behind the mounted party.

  Roger Nowell was glad of it too. He and Alice were both distracted by their own thoughts and said little to one another.