The Pendle Curse

by Catherine Cavendish

  Martin laughed. “Yes. I did think that, two years down the road, he might have let bygones be bygones, but evidently Mr. Nowell carries his anger coldly and for a long time.”

  “It must make life a bit difficult in such a small place as this.”

  “Not really. I only went in there because I knew you were there.”

  Again, I felt that shiver in my stomach. “That was nice of you.”

  Martin raised his glass. “You’re a nice lady.”

  I hadn’t expected that. I wasn’t ready for it. Yet part of me thrilled at his attention. I’d wandered onto dangerous ground. I knew it. I was too vulnerable and, I now realized, too lonely, since Rich…Guilt poured in.

  I changed the subject. “May I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  I didn’t get a chance to ask anything, as the door opened, and one part of me breathed a sigh of relief while the other wished Virginia hadn’t picked that moment to arrive.

  She barely acknowledged me. “Martin, you need to come with me. Now.”

  He seemed about to protest but thought better of it. “I’m sorry, Laura, but I have to go. Sleep well. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I couldn’t sleep that night and spent wakeful hours wondering why the hell I’d come on this crazy holiday. I hadn’t made a single note for my supposed book, and far from relaxing me, I felt more wound up than when I’d arrived. My emotions churned away, leaving me unsure of anything and confused about everything. Reality and fantasy seemed to have blurred, and as for my attraction towards Martin… Maybe mere sexual frustration. Hormones replacing rational thought. I couldn’t think of any other explanation.

  “Where are you, Rich?” I said to the walls around me. “Why can’t I hear you in my mind anymore?”

  A door opened and closed, followed by another. In the silence, I heard whispering, but too indistinct to make out the words. Female voices. Two, maybe three of them, right outside. I pushed the duvet aside and got up, but the voices stopped. I put my ear against the door and hardly dared breathe in case someone out there heard me.

  Nothing.

  After a few minutes, I climbed back into bed and lay against the cool pillow. I glanced over at the clock. Three o’clock. Strange. I seemed to wake around then quite often these days. I’d read somewhere that three in the morning was the devil’s hour— the direct opposite of the time when Christ allegedly died on the cross. Superstitious claptrap! The old skeptical me would have dismissed such a thought without question. Now, I thought… Maybe.

  The moon cast shadows through the thin cotton curtains. The temperature had not climbed high enough to leave the window open, but I thought I heard a rustle. A draft maybe? Then again, in old buildings like this, all sorts of odd noises came with the bricks and mortar.

  But now I would have sworn the shadows had changed and I could see the silhouette of a different window. Instead of the large panes of glass, I made out the outlines of small, square, leaded lights. Then my gaze took in the rest of the room. It too seemed to have morphed. Now it appeared shabby, rundown. Not my room at all.

  I switched on the bedside lamp and saw the familiar wardrobe, matching dressing table and chair. When I pulled the curtains back, there were the regular windows.

  I’d done it again. Imagined something that couldn’t possibly be happening. Not only that, I’d woken myself up. I picked up Wicked Enchantments and began to read about Alizon Device and her family until sleep finally took me.

  Next morning, sunlight bathed the field in its warm rays as I stepped through the gate. Even the puddles had caked into cloying mud. I retraced yesterday’s steps, thinking how overactive imaginations can be a very scary thing.

  I could see the farm in the distance and the village below. No buzzing in my head yet. I carried on up the rise for another hundred yards or so and then it started. Just as before. Loud, intense, as if a million bees were on the wing.

  I clapped my hands to my head. Again my eyes closed, even though this time I tried to force them to stay open.

  The buzzing stopped. From close by, children’s laughter rang out. I opened my eyes.

  This time, I stood in the middle of the tiny hamlet—an overwhelming stench of sewage and rotten vegetables made me retch.

  A small, dirty girl played within four feet of me. Even when I put out my hand to her, she didn’t react. But her companion did. The puppy of indeterminate parentage began to yap and bark at me. The little girl said something I couldn’t understand—her Lancashire accent too strong to penetrate—and smacked the puppy’s nose. He gave a slight whimper, cast one last suspicious look at me and then slunk off, his tail between his legs. He followed the child to a ramshackle cottage and glared at me once more before they went inside.

  The door of the odd-shaped house opened. This time an old woman appeared. Bent over, her nose hawklike, she reminded me of a picture I’d seen of Old Mother Shipton—the fifteenth-century Yorkshire witch.

  Something clicked in my brain. Demdike. Elizabeth Sothernes. The witch they never convicted, but who died in Lancaster Prison. Could this be her? I’d read that one of the theories for the origin of the name “Malkin” was that it could have come from “malt kiln”. I stared at the woman and the house. Could it be possible Virginia’s timeslip theory was true? Had I slipped back four hundred years, to Malkin Tower?

  The old woman leaned heavily on a stick as bent and twisted as she was. She peered over at me and beckoned towards me.

  “You can see me?”

  The old woman beckoned again. I stepped forward and hit an invisible wall. The force hit me so hard, I overbalanced. The world seemed to turn upside down until I landed on my back. On soft grass.

  The hamlet had disappeared. The stench of human waste had been replaced by the sweet, sappy smell of the grass and the sound of birds flying overhead.

  Chapter Twelve

  March 1612

  “Away again all last night. Whoring, were you?” Alizon’s lovely mouth twisted into an ugly scowl.

  James shut the door behind him, the noise of the icy blast reduced to an eerie howl. “It is my business. Not yours.”

  “No, never my business. Not anymore. Not for nearly a year since. Who was it this time? That Preston girl? Or the miller’s daughter perhaps? Or the milkmaid? There are so many, I cannot keep account of them.”

  James threw his coat over a chair and his dark eyes flashed in anger. “Take care, woman. You go too far.”

  “Woman? It’s woman now, is it?”

  “I speak the truth. You are a woman.”

  Alizon advanced towards him, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Woman I may be, but take care before you assume I am weak. My spirit is strong and I have great powers at my command. All the greater now.”

  He knew what she meant. Since she had birthed a demon, something had changed within her. She had grown darker, more dangerous and powerful. For sure, her familiar hadn’t deserted her. But despite Dandie’s warning, neither his nor any of the others’ had left either. As time went by, James became more convinced that he had misunderstood his familiar. Or maybe the devil infant had implanted a false vision in his head.

  But never again had she come to him as his Alizon. His beloved. The sadness gnawed at him. His feeling of loss so strong that he almost wished her dead, so that he would not have to look at her. Then he would not need to go in search of women to take his mind off her. But however hard he searched, he could find no one to match her. No one whose face would take the place of the image he held of her in his arms, wrapped in his embrace. And she knew it. Knew all of it. That’s why she mocked and taunted him, while she flaunted that beautiful body in front of him.

  A sudden wave of loss hit him and he reached for her. “Alizon.”

  She backed away. “No, James. You betrayed me.”

  “We could do nothing else.
That…thing…inside you could hear and understand everything we said in your presence. We had to get rid of it and we couldn’t tell you.”

  “It was not yours to take.”

  How could she say that? She ranted like a child whose favorite toy had been taken away from her.

  “It was evil, Alizon.”

  She rounded on him. “And do we not summon the spirits every day of our lives? Do we not command demons to do our bidding?”

  “Not like that. Not like the demon that grew inside you. That was not a spirit to do our bidding. It would have controlled us. That was Beelzebub himself.”

  “Pah!” Alizon turned on her heel and went back to the fire, where she stirred something in a pot—no doubt a delicious stew for her grandmother and herself now that she lived with her at Malkin Tower.

  James watched her for a minute. He wanted so much to make things right with her, but she would not understand. Maybe if Grandmother hadn’t drugged her and she had been awake through the dreadful, unnatural birth. Perhaps then she would see things more clearly. But even then there were no certainties.

  Grandmother too had said that Alizon had changed. “It left something behind. Maybe in the cord. Some bad blood traveled back into the mother.”

  Grandmother had examined the afterbirth, spreading it out on the table after Elizabeth had taken Alizon to rest in bed.

  James had seen the gory mess. Black blood. And, for one awful second, he thought he saw it move of its own accord. Then his grandmother had snapped out an order. “This too must go. Burn it.”

  Elizabeth had protested. “But I thought we would bury it.”

  Grandmother had refused with a vigorous shake of her head. “Boy, get over here and burn it.”

  James had raced to do her bidding. Something in her voice…

  He had lifted the bloody and revolting mass and thrown it into the flames before he had chance to fully understand what he was holding.

  It had sizzled, sending waves of acrid smoke billowing into the room. All three of the assembled coughed and sputtered for ten minutes or more, while their eyes streamed.

  His grandmother had gasped between chokes. “My…mirror. Get it for me.”

  James, his hand over his nose and mouth, had handed it to her. He knew why she wanted her scrying mirror. Something had gone wrong. There shouldn’t have been so much smoke.

  She hobbled off to her room, still coughing, holding the mirror. They hadn’t seen her until the next day, and she never spoke about what she had visioned. But James knew. Hell had rejected the placenta. The demon might have been vanquished, but something of its spirit remained. And it would haunt them all until it had its revenge.

  His mother bustled into the room, dragging James out of his dark thoughts. She carried a skirt with a torn hem.

  “I saw Old Chattox today. She’s not long for this world and good riddance.” She spat on the floor.

  James picked up a cleaning rag and polished his good boots, ready for his assignation with Janet Preston. “I thought the old witch was dead already.” A wave of hatred flowed through him. Murdering bitch! Their father would be alive today if she hadn’t bewitched him.

  In the corner of the room, he caught a movement. His sister Jennet. By’r Lady, that girl haunted the place like a wraith.

  His mother bit off a thread, the hem mended. “She had that daughter of hers with her. Anne Redferne. I saw the old woman’s lips moving. Chattering they were. No, cursing me more like.”

  James nodded. “Time we finished those two.”

  “Your grandmother is of a like mind. She and Alizon are working on some powerful magic.”

  James’s eyes shot open. “They must take care. Master Nowell’s men watch our every move.”

  Elizabeth waved her hand. “It is nothing. They cannot spy behind closed doors. I am to go to Malkin Tower later. The three of us will work together. Such powerful magic needs many hands. Will you join us?”

  “Does Alizon want me there?”

  His mother avoided his eyes. “She has not mentioned it.”

  Oh, but she has, Mother, he thought. And she has told you that I am not to be a part of it, I’ll be bound.

  He felt sorry for his mother, caught in the middle like that. But Anne Whittle—Old Chattox—and her daughter were sworn enemies of his family. If any magic was to be done, he must be a part of it. Janet Preston and her charms would have to wait until another day.

  He put away his polishing rag and set the boots down in a corner of the room. His old shoes would do for their work this evening.

  He pointed at Jennet. “What about the girl?”

  “She will stay here and look after William. He is asleep now and should cause her no trouble.”

  James saw Jennet’s mouth, set in a thin line. No one ever really talked to her, only about her.

  “Very well. Let us go.”

  His mother tidied away her mending box and tied her shawl around her shoulders. Even that short walk up the steep hill could prove enough to chill a person to the bone with the fierce, incessant March wind blowing off Pendle Hill.

  Alizon looked up and frowned as she saw James. She turned to her mother. “Why is he here?”

  “It is family business.”

  Alizon spat out her next words. “Not for traitors.”

  Grandmother intervened. “It is right that the boy is here. We shall need all our forces this night. Come. Gather around the table.”

  The usual pot over the fire had been replaced by a small, three-legged cauldron that James hadn’t seen since boyhood. It only ever came out when they planned serious magic.

  Small bunches of plants and herbs lay scattered on the table. Deadly nightshade, hemlock and monkshood, earth he knew to have come from the graveyard, and rue for protection, in case a demon they had not summoned should make an appearance.

  The women had lined up pots containing all manner of things from dried frogs’ legs to rats’ tails, and some gray hairs lay on a piece of black cloth.

  Elizabeth saw his questioning glance and smiled. “Artfully done. Combings from Chattox’s hair.”

  “But how did you obtain them?”

  Elizabeth nodded over at Alizon, but she ignored him as she added blood to the cauldron. She had slit the neck of a chicken earlier, hanging it upside down over the bowl she now emptied, making sure she lost no drop of its precious contents.

  “All is ready,” Grandmother said. “Now we must summon our familiars.”

  James sat on a stool at the table next to Elizabeth. His grandmother sat opposite and Alizon brought the hot cauldron to the table. A pungent smell of licorice root mixed with boiling blood filled the room. Soon worse, more deadly aromas would create a heady mix.

  His grandmother produced two small clay figures from her pocket and placed them side by side on the table. Alizon lit two candles and dropped hot wax onto each of the figures before dripping some into the cauldron.

  His grandmother started chanting, as did his mother. Alizon joined in and James took up the invocation, “I summon thee, spirit of night, to come to me and do my bidding. I summon thee. I summon thee. I summon thee…”

  The room darkened and the cauldron glowed as Alizon added first one plant, then another, then the soil from the graveyard. James closed his eyes. He could feel his spirit familiar drawing near. Soon it would manifest. He heard a shuffling. Then snuffling. The pad of paws on stone, the scrape of claws. Drawing ever closer.

  “Tibb is here.” His grandmother.

  “Ball approaches.” His mother.

  James opened his eyes. Mist shrouded the room. The cauldron pulsed with red light. A cloying smell assailed him. A smell of death and putrefaction.

  He peered through the mist and saw a familiar figure. A large black dog with gleaming red eyes approached and stood before him. Dandie. In his mind
he heard him speak, and he replied.

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Kill the Chattox and her devil daughter.”

  “But her spirit is too powerful even for me.”

  “Then join with the others. They too are here.”

  “I will think on it. I must show you another vision.”

  Misty, unclear as if glimpsed through a murky pool, James could make out the figure of the woman he had now seen twice before. A woman not of his time.

  “A time is coming when you will search in the spirit world. You will seek your kindred soul and find her in the body of another, in a time and place far from here. In that time you will also find the one who betrayed you. Then you shall have your revenge and then you shall have your heart. But beware what is given you, for it can also be taken away…”

  The vision faded. The cauldron stopped glowing and the mist disappeared. Light returned to the room, and in front of him, James saw the clay figures.

  Crumbled to dust.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You say the old woman was bent?” Virginia said. “Crippled perhaps, leaning on a stick. What was she wearing?”

  Into my mind flashed an image of the woman who had beckoned to me. “A white cap, tied under her chin. Like you see in seventeenth-century paintings. She had on a long, gray skirt and a woolen shawl that looked as if it had seen better days. I couldn’t really see much else as she was so bent over.”

  The kitchen clock ticked a steady rhythm as Virginia nursed her mug of tea opposite me. She seemed deep in thought. Then she spoke.

  “And the house was a cottage with a malt kiln attached at one end?”

  I nodded. “It came to me that I might be looking at Malkin Tower. Old Demdike lived there, didn’t she? And they’re not sure where the site of that building is now. Maybe it’s in that field. George Nowell over at the Feathers seems to think it’s possible anyway.”