The Daylight Gate (16 page)
Authors: Jeanette Winterson
The gallows were well made. The ropes were new. The drop was long. It would be quick. And then the bodies would be burned.
The first five of the women, and James Device, were led forward. Chattox and Elizabeth Device yelled curses at the mob who were pleased to see the show they had come for. James Device looked dazed and disbelieving. He was talking about a farm where he lived and where he was warm and dry and fed and soon to be married.
Alice watched the condemned as they were rough-handled onto the platform. The women struggled. Chattox was old and easy to subdue. Elizabeth Device had to be hit. The guard punched her in the face – blood ran from the cut above her eye. She was half unconscious. She was lucky. They were lined up.
Then it was quick.
Noose. Neck. Drop.
There was a roar from the crowd. James Device, tall and lanky, hadn’t been fully strangled by the drop, A man’s hand reached up from the front of the crowd and pulled Jem’s legs. Alice heard his neck snap.
Now it was her turn. She mounted the scaffold. She did not struggle. She asked that her hands be untied and this was granted.
The hangman was fitting the others one by one and each by each into the nooses. The clergyman was asking them if they repented of the grievous sin of witchcraft.
Alice heard John Dee’s voice in her head. ‘
Choose your death or your death will choose you
.’
It was not too late.
She lifted up her arm. The crowd beneath shouted out in fear. Was the witch cursing them? The men and women directly under the scaffold, jostling for the best view, turned and stumbled over those behind. Now there was a riot below. A man punched his neighbour and ran. A woman was trampled to death on the ground. The man who had pulled James Device by the legs and ended his misery was fighting to climb the scaffold.
Alice held up her arm, and from the sky faint with sun fell the falcon.
The bird dropped through the air, wheeled,
swooped
, landed straight on Alice’s arm. The crowd was screaming. No one dared approach her.
Alice stared into the crowd for a second. Her hair was white. She was much changed. But in the crowd there was a face she recognised who recognised her. She smiled her old smile. She looked young again.
She stretched back her neck, exposing the long line of her throat. The falcon flapped his wings to keep himself steady as he dug his feet into her collarbone to make a perch. His head dived forward in one swift movement. He severed her jugular vein.
In the chaos of what came next, the man jumped onto the scaffold and bent over Alice’s body, pulling away her dress. She was wearing his crucifix. He lifted her head, took it off and swung it at the terrified crowd. ‘Here’s your witch – with a cross around her neck.’
‘Catch him!’ shouted Roger Nowell.
But in a bound Christopher Southworth was gone. In the terror of the crowd he could not be caught. His horse was waiting. He rode in one stretch from Lancaster to Pendle Forest. Then he tied his exhausted horse to eat and drink by the river and he climbed to the flat top of the hill. It was nearly not quite dark: the Daylight Gate.
*
He took the crucifix out of his pocket to hang it round his neck again, and it was then that he noticed the little leather case. He opened it; there was the tiny mirror made of mercury.
It was misty here. Cold now. He shivered. His breath clouded the mirror, then, as if by itself, the surface cleared. ‘Alice?’ he said, half fearful, half hopeful. He saw her face in the mirror.
He turned wildly. There was no one behind him.
The cold was intense, jagged. He felt like he was being cut.
They would come for him today, tomorrow or the next day.
He can hear voices. Men approaching. They are bringing nets and clubs to hunt him down like an animal. He crouches and crawls through the solid low mist where they cannot see him. His dark hair is white and dripping with mist. He is already a ghost.
Already, he knows, they will have burned her body. Already she is gone.
He squats and takes out his knife, folding back his cuffs from his wrists. Red against the white. If there is another life he will find her there.
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446492321
Published by Arrow Books in association with Hammer 2012
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Copyright © Jeanette Winterson, 2012
Jeanette Winterson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Published in Great Britain in 2012 by Arrow Books in association
with Hammer
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ISBN 9780099561859