The Daylight Gate (13 page)

At Read Hall Roger Nowell had blazed up the fire. The room was warm and bright. He bowed. She curtsied. He asked her to sit down. Potts came in, his eyes like spears. He asked her if she had read the King’s book
Daemonology
.

Alice replied that she had. She added that she
had
no great opinion of it.

‘Then I will ask you to pay attention as follows,’ said Potts, reading from his own copy.

‘
The two degrees of persons which chiefly practise Witch-craft are such: as are in great miserie or poverty, for such the Devil allures to follow him, by promising great riches, and worldly commoditie: Others, though riche, yet burne in a desperate desire of Power or Revenge. But to attempt a woman in this sort, the Devil had small means … How she was drawn to fall to this wicked course, I know not, but she is now come to receive her trial for her vile and damnable practices
.’

‘There is no evidence against me,’ said Alice.

Roger Nowell lifted his hand and Constable Hargreaves brought in James and Elizabeth Device. Neither had slept.

They were asked to identify Alice as coming to Malkin Tower on Good Friday. They were asked to say her business there, and Elizabeth agreed that Alice Nutter had always been a friend to her mother, Old Demdike.

‘She is more powerful even than her!’ shouted Jem.

‘I am not a witch,’ said Alice. ‘I have nothing else to say.’

‘What do you say to this?’ said Roger Nowell.

Constable Hargreaves brought in the poppet. Elizabeth Device looked pale. ‘I didn’t make no poppet,’ she shouted.

‘It is a crude likeness to myself,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘And yesterday I was struck with disease and agony.’

‘Bring in the herbalist from Whalley,’ said Potts.

Alice’s friend came into the hall. Roger Nowell had her stand before him. ‘Did you not say yesterday that my ague was no ordinary illness but witchcraft?’

The herbalist nodded. She did not look at Alice.

‘Then what do you say of this doll found at Mistress Nutter’s house? Her servant brought it here.’

Potts took the doll and examined it. ‘This is witchcraft. Alice Nutter, did you fashion this doll?’

‘I did not.’

‘Then how is it that it came to be in the study of your house?’

Alice could not answer; she could not incriminate her friend the herbalist.

‘The doll has a scalp of human hair. I do not know how you robbed the graves,’ said Potts.

James Device shouted out: ‘I robbed them! She bewitched me to the form of a hare and I escaped Malkin Tower, and robbed the graves at Newchurch in Pendle and brought her teeth and the rest. She bewitched me. Let me go free like the spider said.’

‘The spider?’ asked Potts. ‘Is that your Familiar?’

‘You all said if I testified against Alice Nutter I should go free.’

‘So that is it,’ said Alice. ‘Bribery and intimidation – but all legal because the Law is doing it.’

Potts stood up. ‘Alice Nutter. You are accused of witchcraft. You will stand trial at the Lancaster Assizes.’

Roger Nowell stood up. ‘Clear the room.’

Alice Nutter sat still. They left one by one, and Potts too, until only Alice and Roger Nowell remained. It was not yet five o’clock in the morning.

‘So you have me,’ said Alice. ‘I do not know why.’

Roger Nowell smiled. ‘I have you, but I could let you go.’

‘What is the price of my freedom?’

‘Christopher Southworth.’

‘He is not at my house. You searched it.’

‘But you know where he is, don’t you?’

‘I do not know where he is.’

‘Your groom tells me you lent him a horse yesterday.’

‘Jem Device says I turned him into a hare. Do you believe that too?’

Roger Nowell was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Sir John Southworth is my friend. I take no pleasure in this. My own situation is threatened. Do you not see that? Christopher Southworth came to Lancashire and he came to you. You imagine I do not have my spies? You hid him six years ago when he fled
London
after the Plot – yes, I know you did so, and it is true I turned a blind eye. They caught him when he left you for the coast of Wales. He would not confess who it was who had hidden him. He did not give your name.’

Alice felt the tears in her eyes as she thought of his tortured body. Roger Nowell noticed them and he came towards her.

‘It does not surprise me that he loves you.’ He put his arms out to her. She neither yielded nor resisted. He said softly, ‘You think your servants cannot be bought like every other servant?’

Alice looked at him. ‘Did you have Jane Southworth arrested?’

Roger Nowell shook his head. ‘Potts.’ There was a pause. ‘I had reason to believe that Christopher Southworth was returning to Lancashire. I did not know why. Frankly, I thought he had gone mad. Then Potts came with his witchery popery popery witchey. I am caught in this trap every bit as much as you are. There has to be a sacrifice – don’t you understand that?’

And in her mind she was in the house at Vauxhall and Elizabeth was saying, ‘She is the One.’

Still Alice did not speak. Roger Nowell stood back, took a bag from his pocket, and drew out the heavy silver crucifix. He swung it from side to side
like
a pendulum; like an omen of time. ‘This was found in your bed.’

‘A witch with a crucifix. Am I accused of the Black Mass or the High Mass?’

Roger Nowell kissed her forehead. He felt her body resist him. ‘Potts makes no distinction and neither does our Scottish King. Whatever you are, you are facing death.’

‘I am not afraid.’

Roger Nowell drew back from her. ‘I am going to give you a chance. Go home. Think carefully. Run away and I will hunt you down. Return at dusk and tell me where to look for Christopher Southworth – that is all – and you will be in your own bed tonight. Refuse, and I will send you to Lancaster Castle.’

Bankside

CHRISTOPHER SOUTHWORTH HAD
arrived in London. He came through the turnpike at Highgate, sold his horse and walked down into the city.

Stables, kennels, breweries, carpenters’ shops, pudding dens, low-roofed sheds where they sewed jerkins or rolled candles. Inns, taverns, bakers, cook shops, men and women smoking clay pipes carrying fish baskets on their heads. Dogs running in and out of the cartwheels, a parrot on a perch, a woman selling bolts of cloth from a cart. A tinker with pots and pans hung round his thin body. A fiddler playing a melody. A sheep on a rope, the smell of mutton flesh cooking, the smell of iron being heated till it glowed. A little boy with bare feet, a girl carrying a baby, two soldiers, ragged and thin.

Soon he reached the River Thames, wide like a
dream
, jammed with boat-craft and bodies, like a nightmare.

There was a boatyard at Bankside. Boats upended, sanded, oiled, the smell of pitch heating in a vast pot. At the boatyard two men in dresses were joking with a charcoal burner who wanted to go and see a play.

Christopher Southworth went up to them and asked where was the House at the Sign. ‘What’s it to you?’ said one, and he gave them a penny, and they pointed to a stumpy pier where a cowhand was branding his cow in a hiss of steam.

The house was timber. Pitch-painted frame, in-filled with plaster, with handsome glass and lead windows. A woman was leaving the house. He introduced himself, showed her Alice’s seal and letter and key, and although she seemed surprised, she let him in. He told her his name was Peter Northless.

‘If it is True North you are looking for, you have come to the right place,’ she said, reaching down and feeling for his balls. His hand stopped her. She laughed. ‘We shall not disturb you unless you wish to be disturbed.’

He went in. He understood. This was a brothel.

And a handsome brothel. Well appointed. There was a staircase up to a gallery with neat doors leading off it. So this was how Alice kept up her income. She said she got a good rent for the place.

He went up to the gallery. This was not the floor she had described. A room at the top, Alice had said.

He came to a little swing door. He pushed through it and found a flight of stairs, narrow and unused, if dust was a guide. His footsteps left prints on the treads.

He went up, and up, impossibly up, it seemed, and at the top of the stairs he was faced with a big sturdy square door entirely painted with a face. The keyhole was in the right eye of the face. He looked at the face. The face looked at him.

Christopher went in.

There was a high bed against a square-panelled wall. A table by the window set for two people but thick with dust. A portrait of a beautiful woman with green eyes. ‘Elizabeth Southern,’ he said, amazed that this was the hag he had pushed away in Lancaster Gaol.

He felt he was intruding on another life. A secret life.

There was a calfskin book on the table. He opened it. It was Alice’s handwriting.

John Dee has returned to Poland to rejoin Edward Kelley. There is no news of Elizabeth. I have succeeded in making the mirror
.

The mirror?

He looked around. There was a mirror on the wall,
but
nothing unusual about it. There were no cupboards in this room. No drawers in the table. Perhaps she had taken the mirror with her. Perhaps it had been stolen or lost.

Well, she would be here tomorrow or the next day, and on the day after, they would ride to Dover and sail to Calais.

The room had long windows to the side that opened onto a rough square balcony. He freed them from years of neglect and went outside. He could see the river winding through the city, and all the teeming life of London rolled out like a carpet. He felt peaceful and suddenly very tired. He had ridden hard, changing horses, hardly sleeping. Now he could sleep. After all, it was Alice’s bed.

The Daylight Gate

Stand on the flat top of Pendle Hill and you can see everything of the county of Lancashire. Some say you can see other things too. This is a haunted place. The living and the dead come together on the hill
.

ALICE KNEW SHE
was being followed. Let them follow her. They would not come too near.

She heard wings. She held out her arm. It was her bird. He scarred her arm where she had no glove but she did not care because she loved him and she knew that love leaves a wound that leaves a scar.

She had the letter from Edward Kelley.
Yet meet him where he may be met – at the Daylight Gate
.

‘I have come,’ she said.

For a while nothing happened. The mist that wraps the hill close like a cloak was up to the belly of her pony. She dismounted and stood holding the reins. There was no sound. It was as if the hill was listening.

Then she saw a shape coming towards her. Hooded. Swift. Her heart was beating hard. The falcon flew up into a blasted tree.

The figure stopped a few feet away from Alice and threw back its hood. It was John Dee.

‘I did not expect to see you,’ said Alice.

‘Who were you expecting?’

‘I have a letter … from Edward …’

‘One of his summoning spirits, I expect,’ said John Dee. ‘None such can help you now.’

‘Are you alive?’ said Alice.

John Dee shook his head. ‘Not as you are. We are standing on a strip of time, what the Catholics call Limbo – in between the worlds of the living and the dead.’

‘Am I dead then?’ said Alice.

‘I am here to set you free. Your body is a shell. Leave it behind. Give me your hand. Let them find your shell abandoned on the ground. They can do nothing to your body once you have deprived them of your Soul.’

‘I never believed in the Soul,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Still stubborn,’ said John Dee.

‘Where is Christopher? Is he safe?’

‘He is in your house at Bankside.’

Alice Nutter smiled. Then he was safe. He would set sail. ‘And Elizabeth?’

‘It is too late for Elizabeth. It was too late long ago.’

‘Release her from that rotting place.’

‘I cannot. Nor can you. There is nothing you can do now, Alice. It is time to go.’

John Dee held out his hand.

She stood in the mist and the failing light. There were only two people she cared about. Christopher was safe. She would never see him again, she knew. Elizabeth was left behind.

She whistled. Her falcon came reluctantly and landed with her on that thin strip of time. She took the gold ring from her finger and fastened it to the bird’s foot. ‘Find him,’ she said. ‘Tell him I cannot come.’

Out of the mist she could hear voices. They were near. John Dee held out his hand like a fiery branch. All she had to do was touch the fire and the prophecy would be ended. She would not burn at the stake. She would be free.

She shook her head. She put her foot into the
stirrup
and swung up onto her pony. She would not let Elizabeth go.