Daughters of the Witching Hill Page 20

  "Gran," I said instead, "I fear Mistress Towneley is in danger. Can you say a blessing for her? I saw Chattox this day." How I trembled at my lie, wondering if Gran would see right through me. "I saw her with a clay figure in her basket, and this time I was bold and wrested it from her. She wished ill on Mistress Towneley for refusing her alms. If I gave you the clay picture, could you undo the harm?"

  I held my breath, waiting, whilst she rubbed the tears from her eyes. If this talk of Chattox distressed her so, how much more despairing would she be if she knew that Jamie was the culprit?

  "I've never known Mistress Towneley to refuse alms," she said at last. "Poor Chattox is off her head." She gripped my arm and heaved herself off the boulder.

  My arm round her middle, I guided her down the track and back home, getting her settled upon her stool before I sprinted out the door to fetch the clay doll. My hand reached into the tree hollow where I'd left it. But it wasn't there. Jamie must have seen me hiding it, for it was well gone.

  Gran murmured her charms and blessing whilst I prayed for Mistress Towneley till my knees ached. As for Jamie, whenever he so much as saw me step toward him, he turned tail and fled. When he had to come in to eat, he closed his ears to me.

  "Mistress Towneley means you no ill," I told him, standing over his pallet whilst he lay there pretending to sleep. "She's troubles enough of her own. Our Jamie, please. What about your immortal soul?"

  "My soul belongs to Jesus Christ," he said, his eyes squeezed shut. "I gave only part of my soul to Dandy."

  "Did Dandy tell you to make that picture?"

  "Folk think they can use me however they like. I'll show them."

  "Jamie!" I dropped to my knees and stroked his hair as though I were his mam, not his younger sister. As though he were a little boy and not a huge strapping man. "Please, Jamie, if you love the rest of us, have a heart. Stop this mischief or you'll be the ruin of us."

  ***

  An ill wind blew, all right. In the August Assizes, Mistress Towneley's brother, Edward Rigby of Parbold, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, his private parts lobbed off whilst he was still alive, his beating heart yanked from his body, so folk said. Less than a fortnight later, Mistress Towneley miscarried. Though Henry Towneley sent for the best physician he could afford, she died three days on, delirious with fever.

  Anne Towneley was buried on a bitter September day with gales blasting down from the moors. When I took my place with the other poor folk come to pay their respects, Jamie jigged up and down to keep warm. A grin spread across his face, as though the sight of Anne Towneley's coffin tickled him. My brother seemed almost smug with what he fancied his clay picture had wrought. His sheer lack of remorse left me so wretched, I hadn't the nerve left to glare at him. Was our Jamie a murderer then? Or had her brother's tragedy broken Mistress Towneley down so that she had miscarried and died of her own despair?

  Blessed ignorant of Jamie's mischief, Mam was of a more practical mind concerning Mistress Towneley's demise.

  "Her husband was a fool, sending for a doctor when it was a midwife she needed. What do men know about miscarrying?"

  Mam made a show of ignoring Chattox, stood only a dozen paces away, but I couldn't keep myself from stealing glances at her. She was even thinner than when I'd seen her at the Holdens' gate. No doubt she'd come for alms, seeing as the Towneleys still followed the old tradition of giving out funeral doles of bread to the poor.

  Gran herself, being of frail health, had stayed home with Jennet to mind her, but her stories came alive in my head. She'd told me that when she was young, the Towneleys of Carr Hall used to put on Yuletide revels with feasting and dancing, the humble joining in with the rich, and the Lord of Misrule kissing the girls and showing his bottom to the highborn men. Not a trace remained of those happy times. Master Towneley had lost both his young wife and the unborn child who was to be their first-born. Now he'd have no one but servants to welcome him when he returned to his hall. Maybe he would marry again, by and by, or maybe he would mourn his dead wife forever and die alone, without an heir, and that would be the end of the line for the Towneleys of Carr Hall. The dead woman's voice rang out in my memory. May God rid us of this cursed King. He won't be satisfied until he's murdered us all!

  Our Jamie laughed aloud, which made everyone in that churchyard stare at us. I ducked my chin right down. Would folk suspect my brother of witchcraft, just to see him with that stupid glee plastered on his face, or would they shrug their shoulders at Idiot Jamie who knew no better than to guffaw at a gentlewoman's funeral? Mam, not one to suffer his nonsense, dragged him off so he could cause us no further embarrassment.

  My tears scalded me. Could I have saved Mistress Towneley if I'd told Gran the truth about Jamie's malice instead of lying and laying the blame upon Chattox? Perhaps then Gran's counter-spells might have worked.

  After the burial rites, after even Master Towneley had withdrawn, Alice Nutter lingered by her friend's grave. The secrets she was keeping must have weighed heavy, as did my own, though mine were well different from hers. Least she didn't have a brother who tried to murder folk by witchcraft.

  Shy as the five-year-old child who had once stepped into her hidden sanctuary, I approached her.

  "Mistress Alice, I'm dreadful sorry. Terrible, what happened."

  The lady's grey eyes held mine as she pressed her bloodless lips together. She looked at me as though she'd powers of her own that made it plain to her I wasn't just saying I was sad that she'd lost her friend. Mistress Alice could tell that I knew things I'd no business knowing.

  "You eavesdropped that day, didn't you?" she asked me in a voice quiet as gravedust settling.

  For all the high regard she held for my grandmother and the generosity she'd shown to my family over the years, these were trying times, when neighbour turned against neighbour and servant against master. Someone, after all, had betrayed Edward of Parbold, and someone might do the same to Alice Nutter. Had she come to regret the revelations she had entrusted to me when I was a child, my eyes turned in wonder to her statue of Our Lady? Now that I was grown, I could be a danger to her if my tongue was loose, if I proved disloyal. She seemed convinced that her fate rested in my hands.

  I stared at the hem of her black gown, smudged by clay unearthed by the gravediggers. What would Mistress Alice think if she knew what lie hidden inside Jamie and me?

  "I'm so sorry," I told her again, stammering as though I were no older than Jennet.

  My brother had committed the unforgivable and I'd not been able to stop him. Perhaps he and I were both beyond redemption. Still I owed it to Mistress Alice to offer what solace I could, to find the words to tell her that I would never betray her but keep her secrets buried deep as my own. I remembered the words of comfort she had whispered in my ear the day of my father's funeral, nine years ago.

  "By Our Lady," I said, gathering my courage to look Alice Nutter in the eye. "I'll pray for her. I'll pray for Mistress Towneley."

  Colour flooded her face and she took my hands, for with those few words I'd allied myself with the old religion, as though I'd cast my lot in with hers.

  14

  SOMETIMES FORTUNE GRANTS small favours. To my unending gratitude, Nancy's parents decided not to pack her off to Trawden Forest straightaway, least not before Christmas, and that gave us some time together before she was wrenched from my sight. I visited her every chance I could, doing whatever work her mam gave me and not minding how hard or dull it was if it allowed me to sit a spell with my friend.

  One rainy afternoon whilst her mam was off visiting a neighbour, the two of us were sat spinning when Nancy arose from her stool and crooked her finger, beckoning me near. She pressed my ear to her thin chest.

  "Listen," she said. "What do you hear?"

  "Your heartbeat, of course. What else would I be hearing? A herd of mooing cattle?"

  "It's no joke, our Alizon."

  She sounded so fretful that I could only humour her. Closing my eyes
, I listened with as much care as I'd mustered that day in Carr Hall, stood in the fireplace and listening to Mistress Towneley's distraught words to Alice Nutter.

  Most folk have a heartbeat as steady and even as a patient-plodding horse, but Nancy's was that of a fresh yearling unsure of where it wanted to go. It galloped here and there, stopping in between. I lifted my head and gazed into her eyes, wide and gleaming. She breathed quick, her kirtle rising and falling.

  "Well?" she asked.

  "Your heart beats just a little faster than mine."

  "You mean to be kind," she said, "but you know there's more to it than that."

  "There must be some physick," I said, my mind racing. "I'll ask my gran. All them herbs of hers. She must have some cure."

  "It's nowt that even your gran can cure, our Alizon. When Chattox looked at me over the gate that day, she looked into my heart. I haven't been the same since."

  "My gran broke the spell!" I cried, stung, for Gran had near killed herself mending Nancy, and yet Nancy still thought she was cursed.

  "Do you believe in heaven?" my friend asked me.

  "Course I do! You think I'm some heathen?" Then I flushed at the thought of Jamie and his clay picture; of Gran and her Tibb who was no angel; of the black dog that had clung to my side when I'd upbraided Chattox, how the beast had howled and snapped as if to do my bidding.

  "I'm not so sure about it myself." She smiled, all crooked. "I don't know for certain I'm part of the Elect. Maybe I'm not bound for heaven."

  "Now you're talking rubbish. Stop being such a wet thing. Sure you've more backbone than that."

  But Nancy would not be swayed. "When Chattox looked into my heart, she saw me for what I am." An eerie calm took hold of my friend. "Our Alizon, I must be wicked. I don't want to marry this young man they've chosen for me, even though there's nowt wrong with him. He's not even ugly. But I would rather stay ill than be his wife."

  "Tell that to your mam," I begged her. "Maybe she'll call it off."

  "Alizon, if I live, I'm bound to marry one day. If not that young man, then some old widower. But I fancy I won't live to see the day. I was never that strong or well, even before Chattox overlooked me, and I know my life-thread is short. I've left off fighting it. Don't look at me so, Alizon," she said, brushing away my tears. "I'm not asking you to pity me. For all my sinful thoughts and disobedience, I know I'm not bound for heaven, yet I hope I'll escape hell. Is there another place I might go?" She gripped my shoulders. "Don't you Papists believe in purgatory? Alizon, if I go there, you'll pray for me, won't you? Then one day I might reach heaven."

  I could only shake my head at her. "Our Nancy, you don't know what you're saying."

  But she insisted. "Will you pray for me, Alizon?"

  "Course I will." I held her so that her heart beat against mine.

  Stumbling home in the rain, I saw only grey. Clouds pressed low and dour, shrouding Pendle Hill. Nancy's talk of heaven and hell nettled me, for it made me ask myself where I was bound. Did I truly believe I would ever reach heaven, and what of Jamie now that he'd worked evil against Mistress Towneley? What of Gran herself, led and beguiled by Tibb? Were we even godly folk, my family at Malkin Tower? In our hearts, we refused to embrace the new church, and yet we weren't proper Catholics like Alice Nutter. I'd never received any of the sacraments of the old faith and had only once clapped eyes on a living, breathing priest, who made quick to show us he'd no high opinion of Gran. Much as I adored Our Lady and took comfort in the forbidden prayers, I couldn't say I fancied laying down my life as a martyr as Mistress Towneley's brother had done, or as Alice Nutter and her son might well do if their luck turned bad. What was I then?

  For just a moment I pictured myself a charmer as mighty as Gran. If my soul was damned anyway, why should I not use the cunning craft to unbend what was twisted? What a boon it would be to banish the darkness that hounded Nancy, to bind Jamie to the path of goodness, and to take it on myself without ever burdening Gran—this was too much for her at her age. By rights she should bide her remaining years in peace. One day, far sooner than I wished, she would pass on and then it would be down to me to provide for Mam and my sister, and do my best to keep Jamie out of trouble.

  Jennet's voice seemed to call out of the fog. When Gran dies, you'll be the witch!

  My sight blurred and I slipped in the mud. When I hauled myself up, a dark shape filled my vision, as if in answer to my inmost prayer. The black dog pressed its wet, quivering body against mine.

  Too frightened to cry out, I took off running so fast and hard that a stitch sliced my side. But there was no escaping this thing. The creature charged after me, yapping and yowling, following me home to Malkin Tower.

  Reaching our gate, I leapt over, praying to leave that thing behind. But the beast found a way to scramble over the drystone wall. I dove for the door, opening it only wide enough to squeeze myself through, then bolted it.

  Before I could even wring the rain out of my skirts, Gran limped toward me. Beaming, she was, as though I'd come home covered in gold.

  "Our Alizon, did that dog follow you home?"

  Outside, the creature scratched upon the door and whimpered, full plaintive. Then what did our Jamie do but unlatch the door and let the thing in. It made straight for me, prancing round me in a circle. Mam let out a fearful moan. For the first time in years I saw her cross herself.

  "Alizon got herself a spirit," Jamie said. "Only she doesn't know his name."

  "Her name," said Gran.

  The animal flung itself at my feet and rolled over, belly up, revealing itself to be a bitch.

  Gran grasped my elbow. "Has she appeared to you before?"

  Too frozen up to say a word, I hid my face in my cupped hands.

  "Alizon's time has come," Jamie crowed.

  "But she hasn't told you her name?" Gran wouldn't let it rest. "Have you asked her?"

  Her eyes big as goose eggs, Jennet gawped at the dog till it jumped up and licked her full in the face. With a scream, my sister pitched herself into Mam's apron, clinging to her.

  "It's the Devil," my sister sobbed. "Alizon brought the Devil into the house."

  "It's no devil," Gran said, her face glowing with expectation about what I was to become.

  Mam gawped at me with frozen, glassy eyes, reminding me of my father in his deathbed, whilst Jennet shook and cried, too petrified to even look my way. I thought I'd gone stark mad. Something inside me snapped, and I hurtled out the door to escape from my family staring at me as though I'd come home a stranger. Weeping like a child who had just lost her father, I staggered up Blacko Hill with the black bitch chasing me. Jamie's voice whispered inside me. She comes. Her path crosses yours. There's no running away from her, Alizon.

  Flinging myself down, I rocked back and forth, back and forth, as Jamie would do, till my hair and clothes were rain-sodden and I cowered in a pool of mud. When at last I dared to look round, it was gloomy-dark. Tree branches writhed in the wind whilst the damp leaves slithered. But the black dog was nowhere.

  When I dragged myself down to Malkin Tower, my brow throbbed in fever. I was chilled through, shivering too hard to speak a word.

  The second I crossed the threshold, Mam folded me in her arms and wept over me as though I'd crawled back from the dead. Turning to Gran and Jamie, she spoke up sharp.

  "You two stop plaguing my girl. I don't want to hear another word about familiars." First time I'd ever seen her standing up to Gran.

  Shooing the others from the room, she stripped off my wet clothes and dried me in front of the fire before helping me into a clean shift. Wrapping a blanket round me, she steered me to her own pallet. Mam, not Gran, brewed feverfew, mint, and valerian. She stayed by my side the whole night through, laying cool cloths upon my forehead till the fever broke.

  We were of the same mind, my mother and I, wanting nothing more than that I should awaken the next morning with my health and peace of mind restored. That I would simply be her daughter again
, plain Alizon Device. No cunning woman and no witch. No terrified thing chased down by spirits.

  Heavy rain had turned the tracks of Pendle Forest into quagmires. Mam wouldn't allow me to walk to Bull Hole Farm, saying I'd catch my death. Instead she brought me and Jennet along to work at Henry Mitton's, his house being only a stone's throw from Malkin Tower. To be dead honest, I'd no liking for the man who had once refused Gran a penny when we were hungry and needy, and his goodwife was just as sour. In their draughty kitchen I was sat spinning with only the poorest of fires and a bowl of watery broth for comfort. But work was work. I spun till my fingers turned to lead whilst Mam carded and Jennet wound the yarn. High time my little sister learned to do something more useful than whine about my devil dog. At least she'd kept her promise not to tell anyone about Jamie's clay picture.

  Jamie himself was working for Master Duckworth, in the hope that the man would give him his old linen shirt as a reward for mucking out the cow byre. Gran was left behind at Malkin Tower. Saddened me, it did, to think of her spending her hours so lonely, but I was well nervous round her these days. Though she'd left off even mentioning the dog, I could tell that underneath it all, she was disappointed in me. I'd let her down, so I had, but it was time for Gran to face the fact that I just wasn't made of the same stuff as she was.

  On Sunday, with the roads awash in mud, Gran again stayed behind as the rest of us made our cumbersome way to the New Church.

  Soon as I stepped through the lych-gate, I sensed something was not right. From the ash tree with its golden autumn leaves, a murder of crows cawed, raucous as a host of demons. The Holdens were gathered on the church porch with a cluster of folk about them. I spotted Nancy's parents, Matthew, and the little children, every one of them downcast.