The Daylight Gate (5 page)

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.’

‘And what of the men who buy? Tom Peeper rapes nine-year-old Jennet Device on a Saturday night and stands in church on Sunday morning.’

‘You rarely stand in church yourself,’ said Roger Nowell.

‘If you cannot try me as a witch perhaps you will charge me as a papist. Is that it?’

‘Your family is Catholic,’ said Roger Nowell,

‘And every family in England till King Henry left the Church of Rome. The Church of England is not yet a hundred years old and you wonder that many still follow the old religion?’

‘I do not wonder about that,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘But I wonder about you.’

They were both silent for a time.

‘You are stubborn,’ said Roger Nowell.

‘I am not tame,’ said Alice Nutter.

He stood up and came over to her chair. She could smell him; male, tobacco, pine. He was so close she could see the grey beginning in his beard. He took her hand. He held it up to the light, looking at it as
he
spoke softly. ‘You mistake me if you imagine I believe in no dark power. I believe in God and therefore I believe in the Devil.’

‘Who surely has better things to do than help the Demdike dry up cattle, steal sheep and bewitch pedlars?’

‘Indeed. At the Berwick witch trials many of the women were poor and ignorant, deluded by a pretence of power. Yet their leader was a man who would risk anything to kill a king. Suppose our Lancashire witches have found such a leader? Someone whose knowledge of the magick arts is directly from the Devil himself? Faust was a man who made such a pact. But a woman? Where beauty met with wealth and power. What might she not accomplish?’

‘I have no special power.’

‘Like Faust you have strange youthfulness. Many wonder at you, undiminished by time.’

‘I am skilled in herbs and ointments.’

Roger Nowell nodded. ‘Will you give evidence against the Demdike?’

‘I have no evidence to give.’

He stood up, stretching. He smiled. ‘Then, perhaps you will attend the trial yourself in a different capacity. That is not my wish, though it may become my duty. But for now, I should like to invite you to a play.’

Alice was utterly bewildered.

‘We ride at dawn to Hoghton Tower. There is a new play to be put on, written by William Shakespeare who has had great success in London. He was a tutor for a time at Hoghton Tower and, by gracious request, his play is to be performed there.’

‘I have seen some of his plays in London,’ said Alice. ‘What play is this?’

‘
The Tempest
. I am told it is a play about magick.

Before Alice could answer a servant ran into the room. Roger Nowell followed him at once into the square hall. The front door was open. There were dogs barking outside.

Alice went forward. In the hall were two men she had never seen before. They were dirt-spattered and sweat-stained. One was wiping his face with a wet cloth.

‘Where did you lose him?’ said Roger Nowell. ‘Salmsbury Hall?’

One of the men looked back towards Alice. Roger Nowell turned, gesturing with his hand as though all this were nothing of any importance. ‘A fugitive. Unexpected. One of my men will ride with you to the Rough Lee as you have brought no servant.’

Alice was escorted to her horse. In the courtyard were half a dozen men carrying wild and burning flares. Stag-hounds ran about, some with their noses
to
the ground, others sniffing the air as though they were hunting ghosts.

As she rode the short distance to the Rough Lee she watched the flares dipping and darting between the trees as the men ran following the dogs. The dark forest looked on fire. The trees were lit up like funeral pyres. She thought she saw bodies strapped to the trees, burning, burning, burning.

She spurred her horse.

The men were moving away from the direction of her house, towards the river. The moon came up, shining down. Her horse shied. On the path directly in front of the horse’s hooves stood a huge hare, all eyes, ears and startle.

The hare had a look she knew. But that was foolish. It was a hare.

She rode on, and dismissed Roger Nowell’s servant at her gate.

She was already unbuttoning her riding habit as she climbed the staircase to bed. She was in her shift when she opened the door from her dressing room into her bedroom.

Ghristopher Southworth was lying on her bed.

Christopher Southworth

HIS EYES WERE
blue like forming crystals. There was a scar across his face from his left eyebrow to his right lip.

Alice had not seen him for six years. She had never expected to see him again. There was a knock at the bedroom door. Alice threw a cover over Christopher and opened the door to take in the chicken pie and wine she had asked for. She locked the door and pulled the heavy curtains across the window.

‘Is it you they are hunting, Kit?’

‘Give me food first.’

They were like children; eating quickly, laughing, her heart beating too fast, his face smiling all the time as he ate. He had got into the house after dark and taken the little staircase to her study, and crept through the secret corridor that joined her bedroom.
Alice
ran her hand over the ridge of scars under his eyes and kissed his eyelids where the skin was thick like leather.

When he had been captured after the Gunpowder Plot his torturers had cut his face with a hot iron. They had blinded him by dripping wax into his pinned-back eyeballs. The curious blue of his eyes was due to the elixir that had saved his sight. But nothing could hide the scars.

‘You should not have come back to England, Kit. They will hang you this time.’

Christopher Southworth nodded and drank more wine. ‘I had to come. Jane has been arrested on charges of witchcraft.’

‘Jane? Jane is a Protestant! The only member of your family to receive the Anglican Communion.’

‘It is a trap, I know.’

‘Do they want your head so badly?’

‘They will not stop till all of the Gunpowder Plotters are dead.’

‘King James has set his sights on Lancashire, Alice. He believes that this is the county of England where he has the most to fear – from Catholic traitors or from witching hags.’

‘Demdike and Chattox have been taken for trial at Lancaster Castle.’

‘I know. Jane is in there with them. They are in the
Well
Dungeon until the August Assizes. She will not survive that ordeal – instant death would be more merciful.’

‘I have just come from Roger Nowell. He said nothing to me of this.’

Alice told Christopher about the matter at the Malkin Tower. He was listening carefully, restless, tapping his fingers on the bedpost.

‘None of this is coincidence or chance. There is danger here. Alice. Listen to me. Withdraw. Apologise. Equivocate. Do not risk yourself for that broken family of vagrants and thieves they call the Demdike.’

Alice drew away from him. ‘Are you like all other men after all? The poor should have no justice, just as they have no food, no decent shelter, no regular livelihood? Is that how your saviour Jesus treated the poor?’