‘Take her blood – make her swear.’
Elizabeth was white. ‘I cannot take her, Jem. She is too powerful.’
‘She is not too powerful to bleed,’ shouted Jem. He came up fast on Alice with his little knife and slashed her arm. She bled.
The blood seeped through her sleeve and began to drip onto the floor. The assembled company scrambled towards it, wiping it with their hands, licking their fingers. Alice felt like she was being attacked by rats, and the more she pushed the more they crowded.
Alice was in danger and she knew she had only one chance. She took it. She shouted, ‘Get on your knees!’
The company fell back, afraid. Alice repeated her command and, taking the knife from James Device, still standing, she told him to kneel before her. He did so.
Alice Nutter did not hesitate. She pulled open his shirt and scored a triangle in blood opening it out to make a shallow bleeding pentagram on his bare chest. He was trembling with terror.
‘James Device, you will answer to me, your mistress, in all that you do, and if you do not, Satan will take your soul. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes, Mistress.’
‘Feed on him.’
She stood back as the company fell on James as they had on her. He was covered in them, like leeches, like bats. Only Elizabeth and Sarah did not do it.
‘You will lead us then?’ said Elizabeth.
Before Alice could answer there was a fierce banging at the door. The creatures feeding on James Device stopped their foul meal and pulled themselves up. The banging came again.
‘Open this tower in the name of the Magistrate.’
Alice made a gesture with her hand for everyone to resume their places. James tied his shirt at the neck. Alice stood back. Elizabeth opened the door.
Outside stood Roger Nowell, Constable Hargreaves and Tom Peeper.
Confrontation
‘YOUR RIDING COAT is torn,’ Roger Nowell said as he stood before Alice Nutter.’
‘My pony bolted,’ Alice replied, meeting his gaze.
‘A feast, I see,’ said Roger Nowell, ‘and meat too, on Good Friday, when it is the rule that fish should be eaten.’
‘The poor have their own rules,’ said Alice. ‘The poor must eat what they can when they can. There were no alms from the church or from yourself, or from any other person, given to the Demdike this Easter. I came with provisions of my own. That is the purpose of my visit.’
‘Did you bring that sheep?’ asked Roger Nowell.
‘James Device – I am arresting you for the theft of a sheep,’ said Constable Hargreaves.
‘Prove it!’ shouted Elizabeth. ‘The Demdike have known suffering enough from you.’ She turned to Roger Nowell. ‘And from you, good Magistrate of the Law. I’d like to see the pair of you in the stocks in the quick and handy way you fasten up my kind. I’d like to see you being pelted with rubbish and soaked in day-old piss.’
Hargreaves hit her across the face. She spat at him.
Roger Nowell looked at her with disgust. Elizabeth Device was dirty and ugly. The strangeness of her eye deformity made people fear her. One eye looked up and the other looked down, and both eyes were set crooked in her face. Her hair was already white, although she was not yet forty, and her skin had shrunk tight and sallow over her bones. She had been married once, but she and her children had come back to Malkin Tower to live with Old Demdike. Sometime, perhaps nine years ago, she had been raped. The ragged child Jennet Device was the result of the rape.
Elizabeth was fierce. Begging had never helped her. If she could not gain sympathy, she could provoke fear and dislike.
Roger Nowell looked around at the company – threadbare and drunk, stinking and defiant. He said, ‘We have intelligence that a Sabbat is planned on Pendle Hill. You are thirteen in number. Thirteen is a witch number and the number of a coven to defy the twelve and one that was Christ and his Disciples. You profane the day by eating meat. Your kin has confessed to witchcraft. You will remain under guard at Malkin Tower for questioning and for proving – by whatever means we see fit.’
Alice Nutter stepped forward. ‘And if Sarah Device was dead in the river this morning, would you charge Tom Peeper and Constable Hargreaves with murder?’
‘Putting to death a witch is not murder. It is the law of the Scripture,’ said Constable Hargreaves. ‘“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Exodus Chapter 20 Verse 16.’
Roger Nowell looked at Alice Nutter. He was puzzled. ‘I am surprised to find you here, Mistress.’
‘Your number of thirteen includes myself. Am I a witch? It includes that ragged child – is she a witch?’ Jennet Device was darting round the door.
Alice picked up her gloves and walked down the steps from the tower.
‘You letting her go?’ said Tom Peeper.
Tom Peeper and Roger Nowell followed Alice out to where she was untying her pony.
‘Mistress Nutter, I am the Magistrate of the District of Pendle,’ said Roger Nowell, ‘I must take these matters seriously. John Law is on his deathbed. Demdike and Chattox are self-accused.’
‘She takes the witches’ part,’ said Tom Peeper. Without warning, he lunged forward and grabbed Alice’s pony. Alice dashed him across the shoulders with her riding crop but his darting twisted face was triumphant. ‘Search her saddlebag, go on, she knows what she’s got in there, and so do I!’
Alice stepped back. Roger Nowell put his hand in one of the leather bags and came out with a handful of cobnuts. He threw them to the ground, keeping his eyes on Alice as he searched and dipped into the second bag. He drew out the handkerchief, soaked in blood.
‘What in God’s name is this?’
‘It is Robert Preston’s tongue,’ said Alice Nutter.
‘She took it to make a Devil’s poppet!’ shouted Tom Peeper.
‘I took it as evidence,’ said Alice. ‘You threatened Sarah Device with ducking and you raped her.’
‘So she says,’ said Tom Peeper. ‘The young lad was kissing her in sport. It was sport, Master Nowell.’
Roger Nowell held the black and swollen tongue away from him. Then he threw that body part into the bushes. He said: ‘Mistress Nutter, I will ask you to attend me at Read Hall at six o’clock this evening.’
Alice nodded her head, mounted her pony, and turned to go. Then she reined in for a moment and said to Roger Nowell, ‘I provided the sheep.’
Hidden in the bushes, the child Jennet Device had seen everything. As soon as the men were gone, she darted out and snatched the cobnuts and went to look for what else had been thrown nearby.
It Begins
ALICE NUTTER WAS in her study when she had the distinct feeling that she was being watched.
Her study was panelled in oak, with a large oak table under the window and two silver candlesticks on that table.
She was sitting reading a letter sent to her many years ago by her lover Edward Kelley. He had sent it soon after she and he and John Dee had been in Amsterdam together undertaking certain alchemical experiments. Edward Kelley had raised a spirit, a Familiar he called Trumps, and in his letter he promised Alice that should she ever be in difficulty, she could call on Trumps. The method of doing so was in the letter, along with a faded lock of Edward Kelley’s hair.
Alice laid down the letter. She was troubled by the happenings of the day, and troubled by something that she did not yet understand. She stood up and went to the window. The air outside was mild but her study had become cold and strangely dark. She closed the window, took the tinderbox and lit her candles, watching the flames leap and burn. The room felt better now, but she was still cold, and so she bent to make a fire out of stacked applewood in the big open hearth. A servant could have done it for her, but Alice had always enjoyed lighting her own fire. The wood caught and crackled.
Soon she would have to ride over to Read Hall for her appointment with Roger Nowell.
She turned back to Edward Kelley’s letter. She read aloud: ‘And if thou callest him, like
unto an angel of the north wearing a dark costume, he will hear thee and come to thee. Yet meet him where he may be met – at the Daylight Gate.’
There was a rush of air through the room. The new fire flared high and the flames pushed forward from the hearth, catching the little fire screen and igniting it.
Alice jumped up towards the burning screen, and as she did so she heard a man say her name. ‘Alice Nutter …’
She smothered the fire screen with her bare hands, left it smouldering, and went to the study door. She opened it onto the long, dark corridor that led to her bedroom. She looked this way and that; there was no one in the corridor.
She went back inside and closed the door. She had a feeling of foreboding. Her study felt occupied – that was the word that jumped into her mind. Occupied … and not by a person, but by a presence.
‘Who is here?’ she said. There was no reply, only the intensity of the feeling. She said it again. ‘Who is here?’ This time there was a movement by her desk under the window. The window was fastened, so it could not be a draught.
The letter from Edward Kelley lay on the desk. As she watched, the letter was picked up – that was the only way to describe it – picked up as if someone were reading it. The letter hovered in the air, held by what? An invisible hand? An unearthly wind? The letter was too near the candle flame and whatever was holding it began to move it nearer. Alice watched as if she were hypnotised. The thick paper began to scorch. Alice roused herself, jumped forward and grabbed the letter – as she took it she knew that something was holding it there. She summoned her courage.
‘I will act when I am ready,’ she said. ‘Now get gone.’
The window opened wide. A rush of air blew across the study. The fire had died down. The candles were steady.
Alice closed the window and took care to latch it. She folded the letter. As she did so, she saw that where the scorch mark had extended the ink the letters seemed raised up. ‘The Daylight Gate.’ That was what the presence wanted her to read.
She opened a small cupboard filled with phials and powders and put the letter between the bottles. She locked the cupboard. Then, as a precaution, she took a piece of chalk and drew a symbol on the back of her study door. She had never done this before but she had seen John Dee do it many times.
Was it protection? Was it warning? Was it recognition?
Already she was beginning the route she had never wanted to begin. The Left-Hand Path they called it.
She did not believe in witchcraft, but she had experience of her own that there was such a thing as magick. Magick is a method, John Dee had said, no more, no less than a means of bringing supernatural forces under human control.
She felt she was in danger. She would have to use what methods she could to save herself. It would not be the first time.
Outside her window she heard her servant trotting out her copper mare. She went to change into her magenta riding habit. It was time to keep her appointment with Roger Nowell.
Read Hall
READ HALL WAS a confident, handsome building, old and large, riddled with medieval rooms and extended with later additions. The Nowell family had lived there since the 1400s. Roger Nowell was proud of his house and proud of his line.
The moon lit up the courtyard well enough but Roger Nowell’s serving man was waiting with a flare. As Alice Nutter rode up, a second man ran out to take her horse. She slipped easily out of the side-saddle. Her body was lithe and strong.
Roger Nowell was a widower. Alice Nutter was a widow. They were both rich. They could have been a match. Alice’s land abutted Read Hall. But they had not courted; they had gone to law. Roger Nowell claimed a parcel of land as his. Alice Nutter claimed it as hers. She had won the lawsuit. Roger Nowell had never lost anything before – except his wife.
The servant showed her into the study where the fire was piled high. A bottle and two goblets waited on a small table. It was a masculine room that smelled of tobacco, but not unpleasantly. He had books, writing paper. She liked it.
The firelight and the candlelight lit up her magenta riding habit so that it had the curious effect of seeming as though it were made of water that was on fire. The luminescence of the dye was the secret of Alice’s fortune.
Roger Nowell entered and she turned to him smiling. He was taken aback for a moment; what a beautiful and proud woman she was. He smiled too.
He did not ask if she wanted wine but poured it for her into one of the silver goblets. ‘Hospice de Beaune,’ he said. ‘A Jesuit brought it back from Burgundy.’
He drank and refilled his own goblet. ‘Damn pity about the papists. They have better wine than the Protestants.’
‘And even the Protestants have better wine than the Puritans.’
Roger Nowell laughed. ‘Mistress Nutter … do not mistake me. I do not much care what form of worship a man chooses, or whether his conscience is guided by a priest or his own prayers. I do not much care if a stupid old woman thinks Satan can feed her when others won’t. But I am a practical man and I have to do my duty.’
‘What is your duty tonight?’
‘To question you about the Demdike.’
‘Lancashire is brim-full of witches, it seems,’ said Alice Nutter.
‘So our visitor Master Potts believes. He is shivering on the top of Pendle Hill watching the sky for broomsticks.’
He poured her more wine. He was dressed in black velvet and he walked softly like a panther. She had never found him attractive before. He raised his goblet, smiling. ‘Here’s to Potts, our draughty little lawyer from London.’
They drank. He said, ‘I do not like lawyers and their meddling.’
‘Yet you took me to court over the land.’
It was the wrong thing to say. His mouth closed from a smile to a line. He was no longer genial. ‘You know my position on that land – I still believe it is mine but I am willing to abide by the law.’
‘As am I, sir. But as for the law and witchcraft, the Demdike are to be pitied, not punished.’
‘The meeting at Malkin Tower was for some purpose, Mistress, and I believe you know what that purpose was. Will you tell me?’
‘If they think they are witches does that make them so? They will not be escaping Malkin Tower by broomstick however much Master Potts wants to see them fly over Pendle Hill.’
Roger Nowell nodded his head, silent for a moment. ‘And yet the Demdike live on your land.’
‘That is charity, sir, not a lease from the Dark Gentleman.’
‘You know that gentleman perhaps?’
Alice was perplexed. She had not expected this. She turned away. He stepped round in front of her, handsome, dangerous.
‘I am not accusing you of being a hedge-witch. Demdike and Chattox deal in dolls with pins stuck in them and horseshoes turned upside to drain a man’s luck and maybe his life. Did they maim John Law? I am sure he ran so fast his heart burst.’
‘Then …’ said Alice. ‘I do not see …’
Roger Nowell held up his hand. ‘I have travelled in Germany and the Low Countries. Do you know the story of Faust?’
‘I saw Kit Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus when I lived in London.’
‘Then you know that Faust makes a pact with Satan through his servant Mephistopheles. That pact brings immense wealth and power to those who will sign it in blood. Such men and women are unassailable. They triumph in lawsuits, for example.’
Roger Nowell paused. Alice felt sick. She said nothing.
‘The wealth of such persons is often a mystery. They will buy a fine house, find ample funds, and yet, where does the money come from?’
Alice rounded on him now. She was angry. ‘My fortune comes from my industry. I had a royal warrant from the Queen.’
‘And instruction from the magician John Dee,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘I know more of your past than you imagine. My mother’s family, the Starkies, were possessed by demons for a time, and had to consult John Dee when he was living in Manchester.’
‘I know of that,’ replied Alice, ‘and that John Dee succeeded where Puritan preachers failed.’
‘That is exactly my point,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘By what means he succeeded we cannot know, but like can talk with like.’
‘John Dee is dead and cannot answer your charges. Let him rest in peace.’
‘If he does rest … He died in 1608, but some say they have seen him in Pendle – visiting you.’
The room was heavy like a great iron weight was slowly dropping from the ceiling.
‘Let me read to you,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘It is a night for reading.’
He went to his desk and came and stood opposite her with a leather-bound book. ‘This volume is titled Discourse of the Damned Art of Witches, and is written by a man well known to me – a Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Please, sit down. Listen to what he has to say.
‘The ground of all witchcraft is a league or covenant made between the witch and the Devil, wherein they do mutually bind themselves the one to the other … the Devil … for his part promises to be ready to his vassal’s command, to appear at any time in the likeness of any creature, to consult with him, to aid and help him.’
Roger Nowell closed the book and looked directly at Alice. ‘You have a falcon. Is that your Familiar?’
‘What is it that you want from me? The land in dispute?’
Roger Nowell shook his head. ‘I do not like to lose but I do not like to dwell on my losses either. That matter is done.’
‘Then what is this about?’
‘Explain the matter at Malkin Tower.’
‘I went there at the request of Elizabeth Device. I took nourishment with me. I agreed with Elizabeth Device that I would intercede with you on behalf of her family.’
‘On behalf of self-confessed witches?’
‘Such women are poor. They are ignorant. They have no power in your world, so they must get what power they can in theirs. I have sympathy for them.’
‘Sympathy? Elizabeth Device prostitutes her own children.’