The Pendle Curse

by Catherine Cavendish

  “My friends,” he said, “there is much danger in our midst. Draw near that we may strengthen our bonds to fight the enemy.”

  The crowd closed in further around the table as James raised the goblet. He brought it down to his lips, smelling the iron aroma. The sheep on which they had all feasted had been drained of blood, which Elizabeth had collected and mixed with ash, powdered adder skin and the crushed bones of a sacrificed chicken.

  James placed the goblet on the table and lit a candle with a taper from the fire. The crowd stood in silence as he let hot wax drip into the goblet. Behind him, his mother chanted her secret spell, known only to her. James put down the candle and raised the goblet again. “Death to our enemies. Death to Thomas Covell.”

  “Death to our enemies. Death to Thomas Covell.” The assembled echoed and repeated it, like a mantra, over and over.

  In his mind, an image of the accursed jailer formed. He saw Alizon, scared, violated, screaming. In that instant, he smelled burning and knew what had been done to her. His efforts to protect her had come to naught. Two nights now he had dreamed the same dream, and he knew she had sent the vision to him. Thomas Covell had harmed her. Thomas Covell would pay.

  Malkin Tower echoed with the chants of the crowd as they passed the goblet around. Each one took a small sip before handing it to the next. James looked around and then caught a movement out of the corner of his eye.

  Jennet. Her eyes glistened, those eyes that were not like his or Alizon’s, nor even their mother’s. He frowned, certain she had some devious scheme in mind. But what? She should have been banished to the bedrooms like the rest of the children, but she was a little older than them and, as always, had been forgotten.

  His mother distracted him by a light touch on his arm. “Something is wrong. Look at the cauldron.”

  It hung, suspended from a hook above the fire. His mother had added more and more of the precious ingredients, but now all the sizzling and hissing had stopped. The powerful mix of potion and spell should have been flying up the chimney and out to its intended victims. But nothing issued from the pot. No more smoke, no smell.

  “Touch it,” his mother whispered.

  James stared at her. Was she mad? It would be blistering by now.

  She nodded at him, urging him. He brought his right forefinger closer to the metal. So close, he should have felt its heat. The fire sent red and gold flames upward. James touched the cauldron and stared at his mother in disbelief. It could have been twenty feet away from the fire. More, because the cauldron was stone-cold.

  Behind him, the chants died away.

  Alice Nutter spoke. “What is amiss, James? How can you touch the cauldron like that?”

  At her voice, James realized he no longer just touched the pot; he had his right hand flat against it. By rights, his skin should be burning, blistering. But he felt nothing.

  “It’s cold.”

  Shocked gasps and murmurs went up from the crowd gathered around that table. Alice Nutter pushed her way through.

  “This cannot be true. Let me feel it.”

  In a second, she had placed her hand next to James’s. A look of horror spread across her face. “You know what this means?”

  James nodded. “I fear so.” The whole purpose of this Sabbat had been to draw on the powers of all those present to compensate for those of his family, which had been so recently drained. Now even that had failed.

  Alice turned to the questioning faces.

  “My friends. There is a traitor amongst us. One who wishes us harm. A powerful witch who can counter our spells.”

  Everyone muttered and looked around. James studied each face in turn. He counted them all. Twenty-one. All present. None of these people showed guilt, pleasure, triumph. All seemed as shocked as him.

  Elizabeth stood at his shoulder. “I can see no traitor in this room,” she said.

  And then James realized he had missed someone. His eyes scanned the room again. He peered through the throng, into the corners. No sign of her.

  “Jennet’s gone.”

  A few days later, Janet Preston lay in his arms. By her soft sighs, he knew he had pleased her, and she had helped him in ways she could not comprehend.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  He tensed. “Don’t say that. Don’t fall in love with me.”

  She leaned on one elbow, looking down at him. He saw sadness in her blue eyes. “Why? Besides, it’s already too late. I have been in love with you since our first time together.”

  No, she mustn’t. “You’re married. We cannot be together.”

  “I love my husband. I could never leave him. But it is possible to love two men, and I love you.” She kissed his cheek and lay back down again.

  Soon he heard her gentle snores, while he lay awake long into the night.

  James and his mother moved into Malkin Tower. The house had been in the family too long to risk the kind of damage—either deliberate or otherwise—that would result from a prolonged period of emptiness. The small cottage that had been their former home caused less concern. Its poor condition meant it would fall down of its own accord in a few years anyway.

  Elizabeth Device spoke little. She busied herself with cleaning and preparing meals for herself, James and little William, who played innocently in his imaginary world by the hearth.

  His young sister had now been gone for nearly two days and no amount of inquiry around the neighborhood had revealed any knowledge of her whereabouts.

  “You must not worry,” Janet said that night as they lay in bed. She stroked his unruly hair off his face, planting small, feathery kisses on his cheeks and neck. “The girl is very young. She has just run off and will come back as soon as she is hungry.”

  James sighed. “The girl is unnatural She doesn’t eat. She doesn’t do anything a normal child does. She is a changeling, and I fear that soon we will see how powerful she really is. Grandmother never believed she had the power, but now I think she may be stronger than any of us were, even before our spirits were taken from us. I’ve seen a vision, and I know for certain that she is hell-bent on destroying us. She’s the devil’s child. It will take many lifetimes to avenge what she will do, and we are rendered powerless to do anything to prevent what she has begun here. But I swear to you, Janet, my spirit will hunt her down through the ages until I find her. Whoever she may have become. Wherever she manifests herself.”

  Hours later, he drifted off into a fitful sleep, and when he awoke, darkness had descended and Janet had gone. Back to her husband. Out of his life. For now.

  The banging on the door of Malkin Tower dragged James out of a deep, troubled sleep. He heard his mother open up, furious voices, and then the door of his bedroom burst open. Two guards stood framed in the doorway. He grabbed the blanket to cover his nakedness.

  “James Device, you are arrested on charges of witchcraft. You will come with us now to Read Hall.”

  They let him dress and then dragged him out into the warm sunshine. Jeering neighbors awaited them. He cared not. Let them take him to Lancaster. At least he would be with Alizon.

  James felt the ropes bite into his wrists as the guards tied him firmly to the chair. In front of him, the smiling face of Roger Nowell. As before, James would have given much to be able to wipe that smirk off his self-satisfied face.

  Their job done, the guards moved away and Master Nowell pushed back his chair, its feet scraping the wood floor. In James’s nostrils, the smell of beeswax penetrated over the sour aroma of his own body sweat. He could control his facial expressions not to give away fear, but he could not prevent his pores from opening and coating his body in a thin layer of moisture.

  “Now, James. I always believed we would meet again, and this day has come.”

  “What do you want of me?”

  “A confession. Nothing more. Nothing less. You
r sister has been most cooperative. Master Covell at Lancaster is pleased with her. If you do your part, I may save you the inconvenience and—shall we say—discomfort of having to join her.”

  At the mention of Alizon, James’s anger drowned his fear. He tugged at the bonds, but that only served to drive the harsh ropes further into his skin.

  “What has that bastard done to her?”

  Master Nowell gave an almost imperceptible flinch. The smile left his face, only to be reinstated a second later.

  “I understand she is in good health and caring for her grandmother.”

  “In that cesspit of a well?”

  “I believe she and her grandmother may have been moved by now. After all, it would not be fitting to jail the accusers with the accused.”

  James stopped straining at his bonds. What did he mean, “jail the accusers with the accused”?

  “Oh yes, Master Device. Your sister has told us of the evil witch Chattox and her murderous activities against your father, Mistress Anne Nutter and the child Hugh Moore. She has told us how this witch curdled milk, turned skimmed milk into butter and bewitched a neighbor’s cow. Indeed, with a little encouragement, she became most forthcoming. As I am sure you will be.”

  Encouragement? All the anger flooded back in a tidal wave of fury. This time, James freed one of his wrists, and Roger Nowell jumped back and gestured to the guards.

  “Take him away and make him more cooperative.”

  Two more guards appeared. Still James struggled against them. What had they done to Alizon?

  He took no account of where they led him. The guard opened the door of a small room, cold and empty save for a high-backed chair into which they now threw him, binding his hands and feet even tighter than before.

  Two guards held him, while a third stood by the door and the fourth guard wrapped chains around his gloved hand. Drawing back his fist, he struck a blow to James’s face. The chains tore into his skin. The pain seared through his head. He tasted blood before another blow hit him, then another. Then blackness.

  Sun struck a narrow sliver of light through the small window as James tried to open eyes swollen shut. His face thundered with pain and his head throbbed with the power of a thousand hammers. He tried to shift, but every slight movement caused another jag of agony to soar to new heights.

  He was still alone, bound hand and foot to the chair; only that glimmer of sunlight seeping under his tortured eyelids to tell him night had not yet fallen. He slipped into blissful unconsciousness again, and this time when he awoke, the pain had lost a little of its sickening edge. He gave up the effort of trying to open his eyes. Then a door opened and footsteps approached. Someone loosened his bonds.

  One of the guards spoke. “Master Nowell wishes to see you. You had best behave this time or much worse is in store for you. He has a mind to turn you into a gelding.”

  They dragged James to his feet and he fell against them, his balance destroyed by the vicious beating to his head. They manhandled him up stairs and along corridors before they pushed him down into a chair and he heard a familiar voice. Roger Nowell.

  “What a pretty pass you have come to, Master Device. I hear you were a favorite among the young women hereabouts, but if they could see you now, I fear they would not recognize the handsome face of the man they had so recently bedded. Why, your own mother might not recognize you.”

  James tried to speak but no words would come out. His tongue felt thick in his mouth and his lips would not work.

  “I see my guards have taught you cooperation at last. No more the arrogant knave.” He laughed.

  James barely registered the man’s words through the dense fog of pain. Nowell read some sort of statement before asking him if he would attest to it, but James didn’t even know what the magistrate had said. He had drifted away from this world. Behind the closed eyelids swirled purple fog. Alizon’s face appeared. She smiled at him and held out her hands. She beckoned to him and he tried to form her name.

  “You are trying to say something, I see. But what can it be? Can it be that you will attest to what is in this document I hold?”

  But what did it contain? He hadn’t heard. Now the face dimmed, swallowed up by the all-enveloping fog. Roger Nowell’s words floated into his brain from far away.

  “…and that, furthermore, one Henry Bullock did come to Elizabeth Sothernes’s house and said that her granddaughter had bewitched a child of his. This granddaughter, Alizon Device, did go with him to his house and fell down, confessing her guilt and begging forgiveness.”

  He tried to form the word no.

  “What is that, Master Device? You say this is not so? And do you also deny that a year ago, you heard your mother, Elizabeth Device, and your grandmother say that they had killed one Henry Mitton, of Roughlee, by witchcraft?”

  Again, the words floated to him. Again he struggled to deny them, but no sound would come out, only the barest of whispers.

  “Come now, Master Device. Do you not realize we have more than enough evidence to convict all your sorry family of crimes of witchcraft? Crimes against people and animals. You yourself stand accused of the murders of Mistress Anne Towneley of Carre Hall, of John and Blaize Hargreaves and of John Duckworth. All by witchcraft. Will you deny these crimes also?”

  The fog began to lift. The names of the victims echoed in his mind. John Duckworth? Who knew about the argument he’d had with the man? Dandie had cowled the memories of those in the alehouse that night. As for John and Blaize Hargreaves, they shouldn’t have called Alizon a whore. Justice had been served.

  He felt breath on his cheek and smelled clean linen. Master Nowell leaned over him. “Master Device, we know of the witches’ meal at Malkin Tower on Good Friday last. For that alone you could be hanged. You and your mother. We have the names of most who supped there, and we know of the awful and wicked thing you tried to do. We know about the spell you cast on Master Covell, for all that it failed and you cannot be tried for it. There is enough to make you swing. And you will swing, Master Device, make no mistake. If you do not cooperate with me, you, your mother, your grandmother and that pretty sister of yours will go to the gallows, accused, tried and convicted of witchcraft.”

  If only he could demand to know who had accused them all. Who had attended the Sabbat who would have hated them all enough to put their lives in jeopardy? Surely anyone who admitted to being there would be found as guilty as they?

  Then a vision flashed into his mind. Only one person detested them all enough to see them hang. One person who had waited all her life to get her revenge on a family who hated her. She had planned this, and barred them from their familiars.

  Jennet. His sister. May the devil take her soul and let it rot in hell.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Shame your friend had to hurry back like that,” Martin said as he set a mug of coffee down in front of me at Barrowbrooke Farm. “I know you were looking forward to spending the weekend together.”

  “Yes.” I stared at the tiny coffee bubbles as they swirled and dissolved in the mug. My thoughts were jumbled, but above all else, I felt so sorry Dawn and I had parted like that. In all the years I’d known her, we’d never once had a row. The odd disagreement, yes. But nothing remotely like this.

  I took a sip and the coffee soothed me. “Dawn said some strange things last night, back at the guesthouse.”

  “Oh? What sort of things?”

  “She said there were witches. All around me.”

  “She’s right.”

  “What?”

  “There are witches in this house. Always have been. Virginia’s one. It’s all the rage these days.”

  “Oh, I see what you mean. So no black magic or anything?”

  Martin smiled and shook his head. “Modern witchcraft—Wicca—isn’t like that.”

  “White magic?”

&n
bsp; “Yes, if you like.”

  “And are you a witch?” Why had I asked that?

  He seemed taken aback for a moment. He took my hand and kissed it. “Listen, I have to go out for a few minutes. Something I promised to do for Virginia and it went right out of my head. Stay here and finish your coffee and I’ll be back before you miss me.”

  He left before I could say anything. I wandered over to the window and looked out over the garden.

  The brightly colored flowers shone in the brilliant sunshine. I had an urge to go outside. Not that I would go anywhere near that damned hut.

  I heard footsteps behind me and turned. Lillian and Ella. Still here. They were more like permanent fixtures than guests.

  “Good morning,” I said, forcing a smile onto my face.

  “Good morning, dear,” they said, in unison.

  “Lovely day.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  Had they always done that? Said the same thing at the same time? I couldn’t remember.

  Then it didn’t matter anymore. The dizziness started, same as before, but it shouldn’t have been happening here. My eyes shut and I bent double, my hands over my ears. The women started chanting, their words indistinct. Someone tugged at me. I tried to force my eyes open but couldn’t. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Hands reached around me, hoisted me up and carried me.

  I smelled rotten vegetation. Oh God. The hut. A voice in my head screamed, No!

  “Hello, Laura.”

  My eyes opened. I was in that infernal hut. Jerry Majewski stood in front of me—a smile on his face.

  The two women stood in the shadows, either side of the door. It opened.

  Virginia—a smile on her face and a black velvet robe in her hand.

  I found my voice again. “What’s going on? What happened? I was in the kitchen…”

  “I know,” Virginia said. “You have so many questions. They’ll be answered now. You’ll see. Today you will become one of us. You may not believe this, but we are here to save you.”

  Surely this couldn’t be a dream? Hallucination maybe, or… I had to make a run for it. I leaped forward but the two women barred the door.