The Daylight Gate (15 page)

Alice had passed further in, to where there were makeshift coverings and shacks. This was a den of lepers and drunkards, pox-ridden hags drinking a filthy mixture of beer and bad water, and raddled
bucks
swilling their wounds with mercury to cure their infections.

Alice found Elizabeth. She tried to give her money. Elizabeth spat at her. Alice had dropped a purse of gold at her feet but as she turned to go Elizabeth had called out, ‘Alice – give me the neckcloth you are wearing.’

Now, here, in the stinking cell, Demdike started to cough and Alice loosed the rags at her neck but Demdike pulled away. ‘I’ll die with that at my throat closer than the noose.’ In the fatty light Alice peered at the unrecognisable cloth. Demdike said, ‘You gave it to me that day.’

Yes. The day in the leper house in Bishopsgate.

She was aware of something at the door.

In the room, making itself out of nothing piece by piece by piece formed a human shape. Feet, groin, chest, neck, head. The figure was dressed in grey. He wore no hat. He was short, handsome, deadly. Alice had seen him before. He gave a short bow. ‘Mistress Nutter.’

Old Demdike had hidden her face. ‘He has come for my Soul.’

The man opened his hand. His palm was covered in dark hair. He was holding a small clear glass bottle of blood. ‘I have here the seal of our contract,’ he said.

Alice tried to think. She was half mad with the torture. Everyone in this cell was wholly mad, driven out of their wits by poverty and cruelty. This was an hallucination.

The man smiled as if he knew what she was thinking. He unstoppered his little bottle and poured the blood over Demdike’s head. A drop fell on Alice’s hand. She felt it burning.

As the blood ran down Demdike’s forehead and cheeks, she began to change. Her hair grew thick and black. Her grimy crusted eyes cleared and opened. Her skin softened and tightened. She stood up. She was Elizabeth Southern. She smiled at Alice and her eyes were green as the emeralds Alice used to wear. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘We can go together. It is not far.’

The dungeon was lit up with a faint green light. The Dark Gentleman made a small bow. ‘Another chance for you, Alice Nutter. Hold out your hand and it is done.’

Hardly knowing what she did, Alice held out her hand to Elizabeth. Elizabeth took it gently, but then her grip tightened like a chain. Her expression was hard and wild. ‘You shall not leave me this time.’

The cell was on fire. Sheets of flame seared the walls. Fire was under her feet. The Dark Gentleman took Elizabeth’s free hand and began to dance. In
burning
flames he and Elizabeth danced, while Alice tried to free herself from the terrible grip. ‘You shall not take her!’ shouted Alice. ‘I am the sacrifice and I am not dead yet.’

Alice freed both her hands and she put them either side of Elizabeth’s face. She said, ‘He shall not have your Soul.’

The dark man sprung at her, growling and snarling. He was like a black fox, his jaws ripping her. He was on her back, sinking his teeth into her neck. Still she held Elizabeth’s face. ‘Her Soul belongs to me,’ she said. ‘I will pay the price.’

The fiery room went black. Alice was leaning against the wall. She heard the door of the dungeon being pulled open. The gaoler entered with his flare. His face was terrified. He looked down and kicked the senseless body of Old Demdike with his foot.

There was no Elizabeth Southern. Old Demdike was dead.

Jennet Device

IT HAD GROWN
dark in Malkin Tower as she sat on her own, wolfing the chicken and singing a lullaby. The head and the hand were her only company. The head said, ‘Jennet Device! They have all been taken to prison. Do you want them to return?’ Jennet shook her own head. ‘Make sure they do not,’ said the head.

She went and curled up in the clean bed that belonged to Old Demdike. She had never been allowed in here. Not even her mother had been allowed in here. She was safe behind the curtain when she heard Tom Peeper opening the door of the tower, calling for her. She kept quiet. She didn’t want the hard thing tonight. She was sore.

She heard him walking about. Then his footsteps stopped their pacing and he saw the head. She heard him swear. He was unsteady on his feet. He went
towards
the opening into the cellar. It was dark. He would fall in. She giggled. He stopped pacing. He was listening. ‘Jennet?’

He found her. He pulled back the curtain to her safe place. Picked her up in his damp arms. ‘Daddy fell in the pond but Daddy came back for his little girl. I’ve got a big bag of bread and cheese and apples and tarts from Roger Nowell’s kitchen, and we’ll live here safe and sound, just the two of us, Daddy and his little girl. Here, here.’ He was undoing his breeches. She didn’t want it in her mouth.

She slipped away from him and he came after her. The room was dark. She dodged sideways, and as he lunged to catch her, he fell through the open trapdoor into the cellar. She knew he had hurt himself.

Using all her small strength she pushed away the ladder off its mooring and down into the hole. Then she rolled her whole body under the trapdoor to move it, kneeling up with it, until by her greatest effort it reached the tipping point and banged down with a crash, sealing the cellar. There was a bolt. She shot it across the trapdoor into its keep. Then one leg by one leg she moved the rough heavy table over the trapdoor.

‘Good, Jennet,’ said the head. ‘Now go to sleep.’

Jennet nodded, took the little hand from in front of the head and went back to her bed. All night Tom
Peeper
shouted, and all the next day, and the days after that, and for quite a long time, she thought, as she ate her way through a week’s supply of food for two.

And then he didn’t shout any more.

August 1612

‘
THE COUNTIE OF
Lancaster may lawfully be said to abound as much in witches of divers kindes, as Seminaries, Jesuits and Papists
.’

Potts was pleased with himself; he was writing a book.

‘Shakespeare,’ he thought as he scribbled away. ‘Foolish fancy. This is life as it is lived.’

‘Do you have to write a book?’ asked Roger Nowell, who was sick of it all.

‘Posterity. Truth. Record. Record. Truth –’

‘Posterity,’ said Roger Nowell.

‘Here is the title page: “
The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancashire
by Thomas Potts, Lawyer”.’

‘I suppose it will take your mind off the fact that the King’s spies have failed to catch Christopher Southworth – again.’

*

Alice Nutter was in her cell when she heard that Jane Southworth had been acquitted. Her maid had confessed that she had been put up to the accusation by a Catholic priest. As Jane Southworth was the only member of her family who was a Protestant, the accusations against her were deemed to be part of a vile papist plot. The Judge commiserated with her and ordered that she be taken home at once.

‘
The vilest witches of the earth are the priests that consecrate crosses and ashes, water and salt, oil and cream, boughs and bones, stocks and stones; that christen bells that hang in the steeple; that conjure worms that creep in the field,’ said the Judge
.

Alice waited at her window all day until she saw Jane being led out to her carriage. She could barely walk.

‘Jane!’ shouted Alice through the bars of the window. Jane looked up. She could barely see after five months of darkness, disease and malnutrition.

‘He is safe,’ shouted Alice.

Jane stood for a moment, statue-like and motionless, then very slowly she raised her hand.

That evening Alice Nutter had a visitor: Roger Nowell.

‘You are changed,’ he said.

She had not used the elixir. She had not looked in
a
mirror. Now she took out the tiny mirror from her pocket and stood in the light.

Was that her? Gaunt. Lined. White hair. She was still beautiful, if there was something transparent about her, as if her skin were made of leaves that had lain in the sun.

She was an old woman.

The Trial

WHEN THE PRISONERS
are led into the Lancaster Assizes, Master Potts produces his prize witness: little Jennet Device.

So small and underfed is she that she has to be stood on a table to give her evidence.

One by one as they are brought in, she points them all out, the members of the coven gathered that Good Friday at Malkin Tower.

Jem Device can’t walk. He hasn’t walked more than twelve paces each way for four months. He has lost what fat he had. His eyes shine like fireflies in the waste ground of his body.

Chattox is demented. She spits and raves. She curses. She wants to be what they say she is; a witch. What else is left for her to be?

Elizabeth Device believes that Satan has taken her
mother
. She sits in the courtroom with her hands tied, livid and vile. She still has the energy to shout obscenities.

Nance Redfern and Alizon Device lie down. They can no longer stand. Both have been infected with syphilis by the gaoler.

Mouldheels sits on the floor and pulls blisters from her pus-soaked feet. She can feel her way through to the bone.

The Bulcocks never knew if they were brother and sister or man and wife. No one told them you couldn’t be both. He has his arm round her. She pulls her few strands of matted hair and hides her head. He shields what is left of her mind against what is left of his body.

Jennet Device tells the court all about their Familiars, Fancy and Dandy and Ball. She says she has flown on a broomstick and seen the Dark Gentleman with her grand-dam, Old Demdike. Jennet pays special attention to her mother. She tells the court all about the poppet and the head.

Her mother is so overcome with rage that she has to be led out of the courtroom and drenched with water. Jennet Device shows no emotion; she has no emotion to show.

Jennet looks at them. Her brother who sold her. Her mother who neglected her. Her sisters who
ignored
her. Chattox who frightened her. Mouldheels who stank.

She names them one by one and condemns them one by one.

Then they lead in Alice Nutter.

‘Do you recognise this woman?’ asks Justice Bromley. Jennet smiles and goes and takes Alice’s hand. ‘She has a falcon who is a spirit. She has a pony who can jump over the moon. She has food and drink and money and jewels. She is the most powerful of them all.’

Justice Bromley asks Alice Nutter how she pleads. Alice answers, ‘Not guilty.’ After that she remains silent.

They were all convicted. Potts wrote it down. Convicted of ‘
practices, meetings, consultations, murthers, Charmes and villanies
’.

The End

THAT MORNING ALICE
Nutter was up before dawn. She had slept for an hour or so because she wanted to remember what it is like to fall asleep. What it is like to wake up.

She wanted to remember the stretch of her body. The feeling of hunger. How it felt to breathe. She was leaving home. Her body was home. She wanted to say goodbye before they evicted her.

Roger Nowell came to her cell. He said, ‘Even now, if you would help us catch Christopher Southworth, I could –’

‘I could not,’ said Alice.

Roger Nowell looked at the floor. ‘Would you like to take Communion before you are executed?’

‘It is unnecessary.’

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘I should like my magenta dress.’

The dress was brought. She wiped her face and hair with the last drops of the elixir and smashed the bottle. She dressed. She took the tiny mirror she had made out of mercury and fastened it to Christopher Southworth’s crucifix. She hung the crucifix around her neck and under her dress.

She was ready.

The journey from Lancaster Gaol to the gallows east of the city was crowded. The mob were pelting and jeering, leering, mocking, and afraid too. Children were held high on their fathers’ shoulders. Old women in white, to show their virtue, sat at the front of the pulsing hordes, holding up lavender and hyssop.

There were boys with buckets of cat parts; paws, tails, ears, heads, entrails. The boys went up and down the lines letting people dip in and lift out some bloody and stinking offering to hurl at the cart.

Cow dung and blood, urine, vomit and human faeces were thrown from the upper windows of those buildings that lined the route.

And all the time people were clapping and singing. This was pleasure. This was a holiday.

At the Golden Lion there were jugs of beer. The
Demdike
had no relatives or friends to buy for them, because everyone they knew was being executed with them, except for Jennet Device. Someone had paid for their drink though, and Alice’s too. Wiping some of the filth away from their hands and faces, they drank.

Alice did not drink. She was looking out of the window. She could see a bird high in the cold morning. A steady circle of wings. It was her falcon.