by Robert Neill
Chapter 6 THE PURITAN
“God’s Grace to you!”
“And to you, Master Nowell!” His voice was as firm and resonant as Roger’s. “And may it be upon us all, since we all have need of it.”
“Amen to that!” Roger nodded shortly. “What’s to do here?”
The man with the Psalter looked him in the eye.
“It’s a foul tale,” he said, “and best not told in this presence. We’ll be sweeter in the air.”
Roger nodded assent, and then followed silently as Dick Nutter led them through the house and into a formal walled garden behind. He did not stop there, but led them through a gate in the garden wall and so to a sloping pasture beyond. In silence they followed him across its green turf till they came to a grey stone dairy, set where the pasture ended and the ground swept steeply up to a commanding ridge. Here they halted, and the puritan eyed them grimly.
“Here,” he said, “it was. Here it came upon him.”
Roger looked about him attentively, and in so doing he caught Margery’s eye.
“Faith, little cousin! I’d all but forgotten you.” There was a flicker of amusement in his eye as he made his tone formal. “Give me leave to present Master Richard Baldwin. Master Baldwin, my cousin, Mistress Whitaker.”
The man turned to Margery and seemed to become aware of her for the first time. He looked her slowly up and down, noting the gay orange-tawny, the slashed and buttoned doublet, the plumed copintank and the laced gloves. His lips pressed together and his eyes grew hard as pebbles. In silence he made the slightest of bows.
Margery stood stiffly under his scrutiny, tense and alert and with her mind racing. She knew- precisely what Richard Baldwin was thinking. Puritan disapproval was not new to her, and she drew now on her experience of it. This man seemed to count for something here, and to stand well with him might help her to stand well with cousin Roger; and since to do that had become important to her, she was in no mood now to stand on niceties. She must soften this Richard Baldwin, and she was seeking the way of it when he spoke.
“I don’t remember you as a neighbour, mistress. You’ll be from further parts?”
That gave her a chance, and she took it on the wing.
“I was born in Cambridge,” she told him, “where my father professed Divinity. And I was bred in Lambeth, where my brothers were ordained.”
The Psalter moved between his fingers and a shade of doubt came into his eyes. The watchful Margery missed nothing.
“Lambeth?” he said slowly. “I’ve heard of that as a godly place.”
“I’ve known it as that,” came the solemn answer.
‘‘Aye Lambeth,” he repeated. He seemed less sure of himself now. Then you’ll have heard the Archbishop? You’ll have heard him preach?”
That was easy.
“By Dr. Bancroft I was baptized, and later heard many of his sermons.”
“Aye--Bancroft.” The voice was harder again. “But what of His Grace that now is? What of him, mistress?”
She was in no doubt about the meaning of this. Bancroft had been something of a High Churchman and hence suspect among the puritans; but George Abbot, enthroned at Canterbury hardly a year ago, was as stout a puritan as any. Margery smiled gravely.
“I’ve I ye sat beneath Dr. Abbot many times,” she said. She was pleased with that, it had the right puritan tang. “And,” she added hastily I’ve more than once heard him discourse at his own table where we sat at meat.”
This was true. Her father’s name had stood high and his writings against the Jesuit Bellarmino had found favour enough to win for his family some notice from both Archbishops
“At his own table?” Baldwin spoke musingly “That’s a goodly place. And yet....“
He broke off as his eye lit again upon the orange-tawny
Then Roger came to her help.
“Richard! Richard!” he said. “Of your charity, let’s leave Archbishops till we’ve done with Harry Mitton. Get to your tale man, and let’s be done!”
Margery, well satisfied, retired into silence. Her cousin had sounded pleased and Master Baldwin had sounded interested-and that, she thought, was the work half done. It was her turn now to listen.
Richard Baldwin told his tale simply and without artifice He stood in the sunlight, bare-headed and cloakless as he had come and his strong resonant tones came easily above the sighing of the wind and the rustle of the grass.
“We’d been busy at the mill since first light,” he said “I’d a word to put to Dick here about the grain I’m working for him and the lads being all busied I bade my girl ride over. And here’s her tale Wishing to know Dick’s whereabouts, she came to this place, where Mitton then was. He was here, just where we are now and with him m talk was the Demdike crone.”
“The old one?” This came from Roger, sharply.
“Aye, the old beldame--the grandmother. But a half-score paces back was the young whelp, the granddaughter “
“Alizon?”
“She. My girl hadn’t a doubt that the old crone was begging and Mitton refusing, for as she drew close she heard him bid the woman be off.”
“And then?”
“Aye--then. Mark it well. Demdike drew off, cursing like a soldier’s drab; and twice she stopped to spit. Harry Mitton took a pace or two after her. Whereat the whelp Alizon stoops, picks a fistful of cow-dung, wet and fresh as it lies, and flings it in Mitton’s face. And him turned sixty, mark you--and a churchwarden.”
“I mark.” Roger’s voice was quiet. “And then?”
“She runs up the slope, and Mitton after her--being justly angered.”
Richard Baldwin paused, and his level gaze swept round the circle of his listeners. He seemed to address himself to them all, and his voice came slowly and deliberately.
“Harry Mitton had not run a score of paces up that hill when some power struck him down. He fell on his face, and he lay there, grovelling and twitching--for my lass to look on.”
“And then?” Roger’s voice was without expression.
“Then? Why, Grace screamed at what she saw, and the whelp Alizon ran as though she’d the Devil at her. Then out comes Dick Nutter here--and of what followed he may speak himself.”
“And what says he?”
Dick Nutter fidgeted unhappily as they all turned to him, but he did his best with the tale.
“There’s little more to tell,” he said. “Richard’s lass screamed, and I ran out and saw it--just as Richard’s said. There was Harry on his face and the girl Alizon running like a mad thing.”
“What of the Demdike?”
“I heeded her nothing, nor she me. There was a gardener came out too, and a cowman, and between us we got Harry in--and a rare sweating job we had of it, with his weight and this ground. But we got him in and laid him as you saw.”
“He still living?”
“Aye, and twitching. Then I sent a lad to bid Richard come fetch his daughter, she being in no fit state to go alone.”
“No doubt.” Roger seemed deep in thought. “And then?”
But it was Richard Baldwin who took up the tale again, and there was a tremor in his voice now, as though he were deeply stirred.
“I’d Dick’s message,” he said, “and I guessed poor Harry as good as dead. I bade the lad ride on to summon Wilsey, and I nigh foundered my horse getting down here. I prayed God as I rode that it might please Him to spare Harry Mitton. But it pleased Him not, and before I came the man was gone.”
“Aye, gone he was.” Dick Nutter spoke again. “There was naught we could do. He lay there and snored, jerking and twitching, and his face red as a cornfield poppy. Betimes he tried to speak, or so it seemed, for we never kenned a word. And then, of a sudden, he was dead. And that’s all there’s to it.”
“All?” Richard Baldwin’s voice rose passionately. “All, d’ye say? All?” He turned from Dick Nutter and spoke directly to Roger. “When I’d seen poor Harry dead and quiet, I came out here in great unease of
spirit. And there on this hillside, not twenty roods away, were two damned witches squatting like gorged crows--Demdike and her squinting bastard.”
“Who?” Wilsey spoke for the first time. “Which of them? Alizon? Or Squinting Lizzie?”
“In human pity, tell us a plain tale!” Roger sounded exasperated. “I grow giddy between this brood of women. Whom do you speak of now?”
Baldwin explained carefully, speaking clearly and with a slow patience.
“There are but three to think of,” he said. “There’s Demdike, the old beldame who began the whole damned brood. There’s her daughter whom she names Elizabeth and who takes second name Device from a fool she says married her. And....“
“Is that Squinting Lizzie?”
“So Wilsey says. And surely she’s afflicted of the eyes....
Beyond that, there’s the third generation, this whelp Alizon, who’s daughter to this Elizabeth Device and hence granddaughter to the Demdike.”
“Yet first you said....“
“I said that first there were Demdike and the whelp Alizon. And so there were. But the whelp ran off, and her mother must have took her place, for it was her I saw.”
“The grandmother remaining? I see.” Roger’s face had the faintest of smiles. “Then the matter, as you see it, stands how?”
“Is there need to say how?” Baldwin sounded impatient. “They’re known reputed witches, all of them. The whelp flings dung. Mitton makes at her, and the old one strikes him down. Then, her own power not sufficing, she calls Device, her daughter, to help make an end of him. Is it not enough?”
Roger looked slowly round the circle from one to another, as though searching out their thoughts.
“It would be enough,” he said quietly, “if I were sure that any power had struck him.”
“If you were sure?” Richard Baldwin’s stern voice shook with fury. “What meaning has sure if this be not it?”
Roger chose to answer him indirectly.
“This Mitton,” he said, “to be more just than courteous, might be called stout of girth. And none so young. It’s ill work for such a one to run up hills in the sun.”
“You doubt. You doubt all things.” Baldwin was flaming in accusation. “You doubt that this killed Mitton. You doubt all power of witches. You set aside the Holy Writ. You set aside what the King has writ. And you doubt! I tell you, whoever doubts the Devil’s power will doubt God’s power before he’s done. I have said to you before....“
“And you’d best not say it again.”
Margery jerked to attention. There had been a note in Roger’s voice which she had never heard in any voice before. It cut Baldwin short in the height of his fury, and he stopped, his hard breathing noisy in the silence.
For a moment there was open hostility. But both men kept their tempers, and Roger broke the tension with a sudden smile.
“We’d best not quarrel, Richard,” he said. “That’s how the Devil wins.”
But Richard Baldwin was harder to appease. He turned aside and spoke bitterly.
“Thou makest us to be rebuked of our neighbours,” he recited. “To be laughed to scorn and had in derision of them that are round about us.”
Margery picked up her scattered thoughts. She had sat in churches and at family prayers too often to miss the quotation, and suddenly she dared an intervention.
“The forty-fourth Psalm, is it not?” she said. “But Master Baldwin, is there not also a word in the eighty-ninth?”
She knew how to talk to puritans. He whipped round as though he had been stung, and she saw him groping for it. Then, before he had found it, she gave it him.
“What man is he that liveth and shall not see death?” She looked him straight in the eye. “I take that to mean, sir, that death is natural to men.”
A faint nod from Roger showed his approval. Baldwin turned from Margery to Roger. Then, still in silence, he turned back to Margery, and once again there was doubt in his eyes. The others stood in watchful silence.
“You’ve been well schooled, mistress,” he said slowly.
Then Roger spoke crisply.
“It’s matter of my duty as a Justice, Richard. Granting that a witch has power and may strike a man, I nevertheless can’t commit till I’ve determined that she’s in fact done so. Wherefore my duty here is plain. I must see these women. Where shall they be sought?’’
Richard Baldwin had recovered his poise. He looked Roger very straight in the eye.
“If I’ve misjudged this, I’ll be sorry for that,” he said simply.
“Thanks for that, Richard. Since we’re of a mind on it, we may seek the Demdike brood.”
Then Jim Wilsey cut in with a cheerful heartiness that helped to ease the tension.
“That’s good,” he said. “Then we’d best get us to the Malkin Tower. It’s home to them all, and they’ll be back there by now.”
“Like enough!” said Dick Nutter, and led them back through the garden to the house.
They mounted, all six of them, and took to the road again, riding now beyond the Rough Lee and with the Pendle Water still splashing beside them. Wilsey was riding with Roger, and seeing them deep in talk, Margery fell back. To her surprise, Richard Baldwin came alongside her. As usual, he spoke his mind without prelude.
“You’ll know more of Holy Writ than the Psalms, mistress?”
“I trust so, indeed.” She was watchful, and wondering what was coming.
“Tell me, then, what’s commanded for a witch in the Book of the Exodus?”
Margery felt more at ease. She knew this with certainty. Every puritan used this text, and she answered easily.
“In the twenty-second chapter? Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live?”
He nodded approvingly.
“Just so. And is not that enough?”
Margery sought evasions, that she might neither contradict this man nor range herself with him against Roger. And while she hesitated he pressed her again.
“And of this woman and her daughter and her daughter’s daughter, the three of them damned alike--what’s declared of such as they?”
Margery thought quickly and as quickly found the answer, thankful that these puritans all leaned on the same texts; and again she quoted it easily.
“The twentieth chapter? ‘I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.’ Is that it, Master Baldwin?”
It was, and Master Baldwin plainly wanted to discuss it further, but Margery would have none of it. She knew that look in a puritan’s eye, and she knew the sort of talk it presaged, and at this moment she felt that she could not bear with it. Her mind was on present matters, and she wanted to know where they were, where and what this Malkin Tower might be, and some more about this woman called Demdike. She was curious, too, about this man, and about the Grace he had called his daughter. So she asked him quickly where they were.
If he was disappointed, he hid it well. There was, as she was coming to perceive, a natural courtesy in Richard Baldwin, and it was not always over-ridden by his puritan bluntness. He looked about him shrewdly. They had come a couple of miles from the Rough Lee, and the Pendle Water had swept to the right and was now far from the road; he pointed to the curve of it.
“You see,” he said. “The Water’s gone from the road. It turns back on itself and goes to join the Calder. But see you now.”
They had topped a short steep slope, and before them the prospect had changed abruptly. In front of them was a long and grassy valley, rising and curving into the far distance; and here their road swung to the right, and then seemed to swing left again behind a grassy hill, as though it followed the shoulder of this valley. To their left a stony track led down to the bottom of the valley, and Margery could see its white streak as it wound up the slope beyond.
“That’s for Wheathead,” he told her. “It would bring you to the mill where I have my home and work. And one day,
mistress, if you’ll take that ride, I’ll be glad indeed to greet you there.”
He looked across at her with a touch of shyness that sat oddly on him. Margery was in haste to answer.
“That, sir, I’ll surely do, and soon. My thanks for those words.”
She was both pleased and nattered. Clearly she was on the way to having his liking. Besides, she was as curious as ever, and she wanted to see his home and daughter. She would certainly visit this mill at Wheathead--but not, she thought, in orange-tawny and a plumed copintank.
A moment’s halt was enough for Roger, and then he led them off the road, so that they were riding on the bare grass and climbing obliquely out of the valley. Again it was Richard Baldwin who explained.
“You saw the road go round the hill? We may join it again this way. We do but shorten corners. It’s the Gisburn road and it runs along the crest of the valley.”
His meaning was plain when they had topped the crest. Here was a windy moorland with the thin road crossing it, straight and stark.
“And what more do you see?”
Richard Baldwin spoke quietly, and Margery had no doubt of his meaning. Set by the road, lonely and desolate, was another of the grey stone houses, but this time a mere cottage. It stood alone, far from the life of the Forest. No outbuildings ringed it. No animals, not a cow, nor a sheep, not even a chicken, seemed to belong to it. Its only sign of life was a wisp of smoke flattening into the wind from its single chimney. It stood alone and desolate, an outcast from the dwellings of men.
“So!” Richard Baldwin spoke with menace in his voice. “The Malkin Tower.”
They were riding swiftly now, down the bare slope of the grass. The awful cottage drew nearer, and Margery could soon see that its desolation was not of position only. It was decayed, ramshackle, desperate. There were holes in the thatch and cracks in the walls; the bounding fence was torn into crazy gaps. But for the smoke, she would have supposed the place derelict and abandoned these twenty years. If this was a human habitation, it surely ought not to be.