Daughters of the Witching Hill

by Mary Sharratt

  "Let him rest, the poor lad." Mam caressed his hair that had grown back crooked and uneven, sticking out every which way. "Listen to me, love." She reached for my hand. "I don't think they'll charge you with murder. That pedlar of yours is only lame. God willing, they might let you go free."

  I shook my head, not wanting to be ensnared by some fragile hope that would only be smashed to pieces before my eyes. Even if Mam was right and they released me, how could I return to Pendle Forest and live out the rest of my life if my loved ones had been hanged, thanks to Jennet's lies? I hated to think what I'd do if I ever encountered my sister again.

  "Pray," Mam urged me. "Like you used to, love. Pray that you at least will be spared."

  Four, five months ago I would have prayed till my knees turned to pins and needles. But I scarce knew how to pray anymore. Five months of darkness and degradation had shaken up everything I thought I knew or believed in. Both the old religion and the new seemed a mockery. I asked myself, as Nancy had done before me, if heaven even existed. What was left to believe in, what anchor for my soul? Only my recollections of Gran gave me succour: her strength and that bliss on her face when she departed this life.

  Of the eleven of us, only Alice Nutter's faith endured. When Covell called her Satan's whore, she stared straight into his eyes and shook her head. Bound for the saints and angels, she was. Feet away from us, she prayed even now, the murmur of her words rising and falling with her ragged breath till, of a sudden, Covell and the guards burst in.

  "Alice Gray!" shouted our gaoler, shining his torch in the old woman's face. "You are summoned to court."

  Alice Gray clamped her lips together as if to keep herself from moaning in fear whilst the guards unlocked her shackles and yanked her to her feet.

  "Good luck," Mouldheels called out to her friend. Behind Covell's back, she mouthed the words you'll need it.

  The afternoon dragged by. Seemed a curious thing that Alice Gray's trial should last so long when Mam, Jamie, and Chattox had been tried and sentenced within the space of an hour and a half.

  When the guards finally brought back Alice Gray, we could see straight off that she'd endured a great shock. Her eyes were round as coins, as though she'd beheld a procession of dancing spectres.

  Meanwhile, though it was already late, the guards informed Annie Redfearn that it was her turn to stand trial. Chattox's daughter, who had never spoken a word to condemn herself or betray any of us, glanced to her mother before the guards marched her off.

  Chattox reached for Alice Nutter's hand. "Pray for Annie, I beg you." Chattox, that old sceptic who'd mocked Mistress Alice's piety as so much nonsense, bowed right down. "May the judge have mercy and let her go home to her daughter."

  Before Alice Nutter could reply, Alice Gray let out such a whoop as to snap my spine. That cry of hers was the first joyful noise I'd heard in an age.

  "What is it?" Mouldheels asked her friend.

  "Judge says I'm not guilty." Alice Gray was well giddy. "Says there's not enough evidence against me."

  We were struck speechless in our amazement.

  "I went on trial same time as them from Samlesbury in the next cell over," Alice Gray said. "They're to be freed, too, soon as the Assizes are over. That child Grace Sowerbutts was called up as a witness. Well, the Judge decided she was nowt but a little liar. She'd been misled by a popish priest, so he said."

  "So one child's lies count as evidence," said John Bulcock, as bitter as Alice Gray was gleeful. "But not another's?"

  Shocked us, John Bulcock did, for we hadn't heard a peep from him in so long. These months in darkness had left him and his mother in deepest melancholy. Yet now that the Assizes were upon us, young John had come back to life with a vengeance as though beside himself with inescapable panic at what was to come.

  "If you walk free," he said to Alice Gray, "then so should we all—save for the Chattoxes and the Devices. Hang the real witches and let the rest of us go. We're only here on account of Liza's lying bastard and her idiot son."

  His voice lashed through the murk as though he were about to rip out my mother's throat. I gripped Mam's hand, prepared to throw myself between her and young Bulcock if need be. Any other time Mam would have leapt out of herself in fury to hear someone speak ill of her children, but now she only wept in resignation, knowing that John spoke the truth. Jennet and Jamie had destroyed the lives of our friends and neighbours whose only crime had been to visit Malkin Tower of a Good Friday because they were so worried to hear of Gran's arrest.

  "Peace, our John." Alice Nutter spoke to him with the gentle authority I imagined she'd once used with Miles. "Such bile will get you nowhere. We must all of us stay calm."

  "Calm?" the young man sputtered. "Like yourself, you mean? How can you just kneel there and pray every godforsaken minute? You're damned as the rest of us. If that son of yours cared for you, he'd have found a way to get you out of this hole."

  It was impossible to see Mistress Alice's face in the dark, but she went dead quiet as though John Bulcock's words had stabbed her like a dagger in the heart.

  The awful silence stretched on till Annie Redfearn returned, trembling so hard that the guards had a fair struggle clapping the irons back on her.

  "Well?" her mother asked soon as the men had gone and taken their light with them. The chains clanked and tugged upon us all as Chattox reached out to embrace her daughter.

  Annie Redfearn spoke in a voice so hushed and faint as to make each of us hold our breath. "Judge said I'm not guilty of murdering Robert Assheton."

  Whilst Chattox cried out in gratitude, Mam's lips found my ear. "You might go free as well," she whispered, my mother who had lost everything, whose one remaining hope was that I might live on and carry the candle of remembrance for her and the others.

  22

  THE NEXT MORNING Annie Redfearn was called up to trial once more, along with Alice Nutter and Mouldheels. Trying to put aside my lack of faith, I prayed for them till my tongue went dry as a board.

  I might have spared myself the effort, for soon enough the three of them were back in the Well Tower, all three sentenced to hang. Though Annie Redfearn had been declared not guilty of killing Robert Assheton, the Judge decided she was to blame for the demise of Christopher Assheton, his father. Mouldheels and Alice Nutter had pleaded not guilty to the charges against them, but my sister stated under oath that Mouldheels had bewitched some woman in Colne and that Alice Nutter had worked with Gran and Mam to bring about the death of old Henry Mitton.

  Chattox's grief for her daughter fair deafened us, and the guards told her to shut it. Then they bore me away, together with Meg Pearson, Jane Bulcock, and John, who bellowed out his innocence with every step up those sharp-twisting stairs.

  When mad old Meg Pearson limped to the bar, Magistrate Nicholas Bannister, Nowell's friend, charged her with bewitching to death a mare in Padiham. Those months in the Well Tower had indeed robbed our Meg of her wits, for she confessed, blithe as anything, that she and her spirit had climbed into the stable through a loophole and straddled that poor nag till it collapsed. Nowt but a walking skeleton was our Meg, a long string of drool dribbling from her mouth. Perhaps it was all the same to her whether she lived or died.

  Next, Jane and John Bulcock took the stand. This time Nowell appeared, assured as ever, and accused them both of using their witchcraft to drive one Jennet Deane of Newfield Edge in Yorkshire insane. As evidence of this, Nowell had the clerk read a garbled statement of Jamie's. The Judge called out my sister, who pointed to John Bulcock and said that during the Good Friday meeting at Malkin Tower, young John had turned the spit to roast Jamie's stolen sheep. Jane and John pleaded not guilty. In the crowd, Henry Bulcock looked on, his face clenched, no doubt praying that the Judge would see reason and let his wife and son go free.

  Rushing right along, the jury reached their verdict. As Judge Bromley announced that Jane and John Bulcock would hang, Henry Bulcock blasted out in blistering fury.

&n
bsp; "This is no justice!" he yelled. "This is infamy! Infamy!"

  Fat good that did. Bromley wasted no time in having the man thrown out of court.

  Next, the Judge determined Meg Pearson's fate. Since she had only killed a horse and no human, she was not sentenced to hang, but to stand at the pillory in open market at Lancaster, Clitheroe, Padiham, and Whalley, with a paper tied to her head stating her crime in huge letters. For six hours at each marketplace she would be stood there, her head and hands locked in the stocks, and made to confess her crime whilst every passing drunkard and bully spat and lobbed stones at her. I imagined senile old Meg mumbling our stories in each of the four market towns—with her wandering mind she'd make a job of it, tell tales outlandish enough to outshine Jamie's. Well famous we witches of Pendle Forest would be then. Folk would talk of nowt else.

  Then came my turn.

  I, Alizon Device, first to be arrested by Roger Nowell on charges of witchcraft, was last to be tried at the Lancaster Assizes. As to what my chances were, I was right flummoxed. None of the jury's decisions made the least sense to me. Alice Gray, who had been charged with the same offences as our Mouldheels—attending the assembly at Malkin Tower on Good Friday and bewitching some woman in Colne—would go free whilst Mouldheels was doomed to die. Alice Nutter, a gentlewoman who had devoted her life to charity and kindness, would hang alongside Chattox.

  Knowing that these might be my last living hours, I looked round with unshuttered eyes, braving the sunlight pouring through the windows. After searching the crowd for Matthew Holden and finding him nowhere, I imagined Nancy watching me from the other side, her face full of sadness. Alizon. My friend laid her head upon my breast and listened to my sick-thudding heart. The force of my fear left me faint and yet I remained standing, because I was Old Demdike's granddaughter. Gran would expect me to show some backbone. She would want me to pay attention to every single thing I saw whilst I still had life in me.

  Up I gazed toward the huge windows. A few panes had been opened to let air into this scorching room, and upon a high sill perched a magpie. The bird gazed back at me with gleaming-curious eyes. One for sorrow. In spite of myself and the bad luck a single magpie promised, I smiled to think that some of God's creatures possessed wings to fly away from their misery.

  "On the eighteenth of March," Roger Nowell drawled in his rich man's voice, "the accused, Alizon Device, did bewitch and lame the pedlar John Law of Halifax."

  Nowell loomed menacing close, but I'd no awe left for him. He was just a man, after all, only he'd wealth and better clothes than I did. But I girded myself, knowing he would do his worst. No doubt he would call upon our Jennet and encourage her to slander me to my face as she'd done to our mother. As it turned out, Nowell had something even more wrenching in store.

  A yelp ripped out of me as a man upon a litter was carried into court and, once again, I found myself staring into the eyes of the Yorkshire chapman. He'd not improved one bit since I'd seen him last. The crowd pointed and shouted, their stares slashing me, for they could see that my victim's head was drawn awry, half his face was deformed, and the entire left side of his body was stark lame. What could this be but the handiwork of a witch?

  My doubts and guilt arose anew like hot water threatening to boil over the sides of a pot. Did I do it, or was it an accident as Alice Nutter had suggested? How could such a thing be an accident? It was as though I'd drawn a line down the middle of this man with a magic wand and blasted his left side whilst allowing his right side to remain hale.

  "Behold this lamentable spectacle," Nowell said, sweeping his hand toward the pedlar. "What torments this innocent man has suffered at the hands of this damnable witch, Alizon Device, first instructed by Old Demdike, her grandmother, and brought up by her mother, Elizabeth Device, in this detestable course of life."

  Mam had begged me to keep my head, admit nothing, and deny my previous statements, as she had tried to do till Nowell broke her by bringing out Jennet. But when I looked into John Law's eyes, I could only sink to my knees and cry.

  "Pray, let the court hear me," I said. "Master Law, I beg your forgiveness for your suffering."

  "How do you plead?" Judge Bromley asked, showing no pity for my tears. "I bid you to make an open declaration of your offence."

  The Judge's words whirled round my head like flies.

  "Up on your feet," Nowell commanded. "Tell us. How did you lame this man?"

  In those next moments I was at the still centre of a storm—the most important person in the courtroom. All eyes were on me as I stammered out my tale—how angry I'd been at the pedlar, how I'd shouted, how he'd fallen, the black dog leaping out of nowhere. But I'd never meant any of it, never meant to harm the man, much less lame half his body. Yet by telling my story, I convicted myself.

  His eyes never leaving mine, my pedlar then told his story under oath. I sensed that he was as sorry for me as I was for him. He alone of those present gazed at me without hate, only yearning.

  "So you lamed me, lass," my Yorkshire chapman said. "Can you mend me? Half my body is right. Can you cure the other half?"

  With every drop of blood in my body, I longed to do just that. Rise up before all and show them the measure of what a cunning woman could do; what, by rights, Demdike's granddaughter should have been able to do: chant the charms and lift his lameness.

  Tears moving down my face, I told him no. "I can't. I'm sorry."

  I was no wisewoman. Even if I chanted every blessing Gran had ever taught me, I was nothing like her. She'd shown me the path of power and I'd refused it, run fast as I could in the other direction, the long, bitter road that had led me to this chamber where I cowered, a weak girl covered in prison dirt, so useless that she burst into tears at the sight of a magpie.

  Nowell made a great show of calling the other accused witches up from the Well Tower till the eleven of us were stood before the lamed chapman. The sight of Master Law's malady stunned each one of them. Even John Bulcock's mouth hung slack.

  "Can any of you lift the bewitchment off this man?" Nowell demanded.

  One by one, my fellow prisoners shook their heads. Chattox herself muttered that it was fair hopeless and that she'd never seen anybody as ill-done-to as John Law.

  Not waiting for Nowell's leave, I drew myself up to the bar and spoke as loud as I could, to be heard by every last soul in that courtroom. "The only one with the powers to cure him is my grandmother, but now she's dead."

  On the high windowsill the magpie fluttered its wings as though it would swoop down and carry me far from this place.

  Before Nowell or the Judge could cut me off, I gripped the bar and carried on. "If Gran had lived, she could and would have mended John Law."

  23

  IN THE OLD RELIGION, this would have been round about the time of the Feast of the Assumption. That morning I awakened from a dream of Gran fitting a wreath of roses round my head. Time for the procession. You'll lead them all on Assumption Day.

  She'd told me how the young girls had gone out to gather wildflowers and herbs, how they crowned each other in garlands and paraded into church, each of them bearing blossoms and fresh-cut greenery to set upon the altar of the Virgin.

  Instead of garlands, we'd iron rings round our necks and shackles round our wrists, but our ankles were free as we struggled up the steep cobbled streets. This was the first time we'd been allowed to set foot outside the castle or breathe fresh air or walk beneath the blue sky. The breeze touched my fresh-washed hair, for Alice Nutter had bribed the guards to bring us water and soap. Round my clean body hung a fine kirtle of blue-green wool, for Mistress Alice had procured garments for us at the last moment so that we would not have to march to the gallows in our lousy soiled rags.

  The guards had Alice Nutter and me marching side by side at the head of our sorry train with the seven others following behind. Beneath her breath, Mistress Alice murmured of a woman clothed in the sun, crowned in a diadem of stars, who crushed a serpent beneath her hee
l. How I wished I'd her firm faith, ever unshakeable. But if I lacked Alice Nutter's conviction, at least I could try to bear myself with dignity and grace as she did. Even though the glaring August sun hurt my eyes, I kept them open. This was my last chance to try to make sense of what had happened to us.

  Halfway up the hill, our guards took us into the Red Lion Tavern so that we might have one last mug of ale before meeting the hangman. The ceiling was low enough to make the guards stoop, and the rushes on the floor were none too clean. Though it was a sight better than the dungeon, it oppressed me to know that this dingy room was the last I'd ever see. The ale the tavern keeper pulled from the barrel looked like weak and sour stuff. But Alice Nutter took command, a lady once again, for her son had brought her best gown to wear on this, her last living day. Heavenly blue brocade, it was, stitched with silver threads. She told the tavern keeper to put away his ale and bring out his best French claret.

  So the tavern keeper poured us each a goblet brimming with blood-dark wine. Sipping the heady stuff, I remembered Chattox's tale of how Gran and her spirits had conjured wine out of nowhere. I pictured Gran and Chattox sat up in Malkin Tower, feasting away in secret, those two most infamous witches of Pendle Forest drinking from the same cup whilst their imps lit up the place like a thousand candles. What a sight that would have been.

  Here in the tavern, Chattox gulped down her wine as though it were bitter medicine whilst Annie Redfearn hovered beside her, not touching her own cup, no doubt pining for her Marie, lost to her forever. Mam was giving Jamie her full care, for he was in a bad way, so weak that she had to tip the wine into his mouth for him. What a wretched ending for the lot of us.