Daughters of the Witching Hill Page 6

  "It was an accident," the girl spoke up. "I never meant to slight her."

  "But slighted she was," said Mistress Whitaker. "I heard her muttering and murmuring under her breath, too low for anybody to make out her words. In God's name, I'll swear it was an incantation."

  My skin prickled. Sometimes, it was true, Anne talked to herself—she seemed to value her own counsel and motherwit above all else—but what harm was in that? How dare this woman slander my friend? I was set to burst out of my hiding place to defend Anne's good name when Tibb's hand on my arm held me back.

  "Wait a spell yet," he whispered. "There is more you'll learn."

  "The Widow Chattox," said Liza, "has no more power to bewitch your daughter than the mice what live in our thatch. But if Mistress Alice has been cursed, I've a charm that will break it, just the same."

  At that, my Liza began to recite word for word the blessing I'd spoken over little Matty Holden at Bull Hole Farm. How had she learned it—by eavesdropping? Wench was too canny for her own good. How clear Liza's voice rang out. Both anger and pride tore at my heart.

  Sleepest thou, wakest thou, Gabriel?

  No, Lord, I am stayed with stick and stake,

  That I can neither sleep nor wake.

  Rise up, Gabriel, and come with me,

  The stick nor the stake have power to keep thee.

  Then, by Our Lady, I caught my breath to see Alice take something from her velvet purse. Garnet beads, shining dark red as droplets of blood, flashed in her white hands. Her fingers began to work them, one by one, whilst her lips intoned the forbidden prayers. I hadn't seen a rosary since the days of Mary Tudor. Even owning one marked a person out as a traitor. If the Church Warden happened by, he might well report her to the Magistrate who would have her whisked off to Lancaster Gaol. Who was this timid girl, bullied by her mother yet so willing to risk everything for her troth to the old religion? After a moment I put two and two together. She could be none other than the young wife of Richard Nutter of Roughlee Hall, the man who sheltered Jesuit missionaries. At least in their piety, the girl and her husband were well-matched.

  When Liza's charm was wound up, young Alice closed her eyes, kissed the beads, and tucked them away, safe and out of sight. The young lady then drew something else from her purse—five shining shillings she pressed into Liza's outstretched palm. More brass than I'd seen in my life. We didn't take money, I wanted to shout. We took capons and eggs and ale and dressed hares, but no coins. Liza had already pocketed them.

  My girl declared that she would go through my store of dried herbs and give young Alice the physick she needed to ward off witchcraft and bless the womb. But Liza didn't know much about the plants beyond the quick and timely use of tansy. For all I knew, she'd give young Alice some wort that would poison her, then we'd both be hanged.

  Without further ado, I leapt out from behind the black-thorn, as though out of thin air, causing everyone to cry out. Liza's mouth opened wide enough for a hen to nest inside. Never crossed her mind that I could eavesdrop as well as she. As the saying goes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

  "Peace," I said, looking our visitors square in the face.

  Before the girl's mother could open her flytrap in protest, I took young Alice's arm and swept her into the firehouse, then bolted the door so we would have our privacy.

  "So your husband's quite a bit older than yourself, our Alice." Couldn't say what it was, but something in the girl moved me to speak to her in a familiar way, as though she were my own kin. I took her soft white hands in my brown callused ones. "It's God's truth that he's the likely cause of your so-called barrenness. Old seed isn't very quick now, is it?"

  Poor thing blushed a deeper red than her garnet rosary beads.

  "It's all right, dear. Not a hopeless cause by any means."

  Brisk and practical, I reached deep into a clay jar and pulled out pearly heads of garlic. "Have your cook put a clove into his food every noon and evening. You'll not like the smell of it on his breath, I'll wager, but it will help him rise to the occasion, as it were."

  She turned her face away from me and seemed so shamed and lost that my heart fair melted away. Not wasting a second, I found some dried woodruff blossom for her, took her cambric handkerchief, filled it with the bloom that smelled sweet and haunting as the first of May, and tied it with a bit of string. Then I closed the girl's hands round that flowery bundle.

  "This is for you, to turn your heart to delight. You'll not conceive a child unless you get some pleasure from the act, and I know it's not easy being married to such an old goat, no matter how much land he has."

  She lowered her eyes, but I kept on speaking in a low, confiding voice.

  "When he comes to you at night, close your eyes and think of the handsomest, most strapping young lad you can imagine. It will work wonders, I promise."

  She stared at me, speechless, then her face split into a grin. Her lips parted and she laughed. A shy laugh. I encouraged her, laughing along, till she was roaring, tears in her eyes. How long had it been, I fair wondered, since she'd allowed herself a good long laugh?

  "Another thing," I said, wiping tears from my eyes. "You're going to have to learn to show some backbone and talk back to that mother of yours before she eats you alive." I took her kitten-soft hands in mine. "Honest, lass, there's nowt wrong with you. Within the year you'll bear a healthy son." Whilst I spoke, I saw it before me, her loving face bent over the baby who would give her more joy than her elderly husband ever could. "You'll have five children in all. So much for being barren, my girl. One day you'll not be able to remember what it was to be such a slender young thing without any little ones tugging at your skirts."

  Young Alice beamed at me with such gratitude, the way I knew she never smiled at her own mother. Then, bless her soul, she kissed my cheek.

  In the fullness of time, my predictions came true. Our Alice Nutter of Roughlee Hall had four sons and one daughter. The girl she named Elizabeth, after me.

  ***

  After Alice and her mother went on their way, I took Liza aside and forbade her to so much as touch my herbs till she had learned their names and uses. Gave her a right scolding, I did. Told her she could recite my charms till she was blue in the face but without the aid of a familiar spirit, the spells were just words and nothing more.

  "A familiar?" Her wandering eyes tried to fix on me. "You mean the Devil?"

  We were sat in my tower room, the door below bolted lest some neighbour come spying. I watched her back away from me. Her dread filled the air like some awful stink.

  "No, Liza. Not the Devil," I said. "I don't have dealings in any such business as that. Familiar's more like an angel."

  Then I broke off because that wasn't quite true either. Angels lived in heaven. My Tibb was a creature of earth, of the hollow hills. My poor head throbbed at the confusion of trying to explain this to Liza when I'd scarce grasped what had happened to me.

  "An angel?" Liza stepped toward me, her fear turning to hunger.

  She saw the power in me, Tibb's power shining inside me like light within a lantern, and she yearned for power of her own. Could any soul blame her? How she longed to be something more than a cock-eyed spinster and the butt of everyone's ridicule. If she was a blesser, folk would think twice before crossing her.

  "So how do I come by a familiar then?"

  I sighed. "The spirit comes to you, love. You don't go chasing after it."

  "Well, how did yours come to you?"

  "He just appeared to me one day. I can't explain it."

  "He?" All at once her eyes straightened.

  I held my breath, wondering if our strange conversation had filled her with such an almighty awe as to cure her squint.

  "Tibb," I said. My cheeks went hot as I breathed his name.

  Liza sat back on her heels, her eyes never leaving my face. "I'd heard you calling out to Tibb whilst you were poorly after charming Matty Holden. Thought he was some fellow you'd been
meeting in private like."

  I laughed till I was sore. "Bless you, my girl. Those days are over for me."

  But, in a way, my Liza was right. My meetings with Tibb were not unlike lovers' trysts. The rush of joy and fear, the shame and thrill of our forbidden bond, the secret that twined us together.

  "He's the power behind my every charm," I told her. "Sometimes he appears to me in the form of a young lad. Sometimes as a brown dog." A shiver gripped my spine. "And just today as a hare."

  Liza was speechless, probably wondering if I'd gone mad. Having second thoughts about wanting powers of her own, or so I hoped. Her eyes went on their crooked way again.

  "Till you have a familiar, you'll not be able to work a single charm, my girl. I'll teach you of the herbs, but it's best for you to leave the rest of it alone. You don't want to be mixed up in this business." I grasped her hand tight enough to make her look up at me. "You're my only daughter. Wanted to shield you from this, love. Should the tide ever turn and the Magistrate haul me away, I want him leaving you alone."

  "Mam, it's no use." Liza spoke up quiet and earnest. "Folk think it runs in our family, that we've the witchblood."

  Hearing that word from her lips set me quaking.

  "Everywhere I go," she said, "they ask me for blessings and charms. What am I to do?"

  I willed myself to be as firm and unmoving as the cold boards beneath my feet. "You're to tell them the truth: You've no powers. If they still want their charms, send them to me. Keep your own name clean."

  Late that year, just past Martinmas, I came home from a day's wandering to a dark and empty house. Hearth fire had gone out. Even the ashes were cold. The worst fears chased through my head as I was knelt there, working by moonlight, right frantic, rubbing flint against kindling. Seemed to take an age to spark flame. By the time the peat had caught, my eyes were burning, my hands raw.

  Where was Liza, out so late? Had she twisted her foot and fallen into a ditch? Had a mad dog crossed her path, or a pack of lads up to mischief? I prayed to the Mother of God and called out to Tibb to keep her safe.

  When the moon had climbed so high as to shine down the smoky chimney, the door opened, its hinges squeaking loud enough to set me gasping. In stepped a wild creature, her skirt smeared with clay and black earth. Her loose, flying hair was full of twigs, dead leaves, and spidersilk. Full a-tremble, my daughter was, stood before the fire, her eyes wandering like mad. When I touched her, she twitched and swayed. Something I'd not seen before shone in her eyes. My girl looked moonstruck, planet-struck, boggart-ridden. Looked like she'd been caught up in a fairy ring and made to dance till she was spent. Her face blazed with wonder, brimmed with shock and bliss.

  "This night I've met him, Mam." Her words tumbled out in a hoarse croak. "Met him in the moonlight up Stang Top Moor." She fell against me, clutching me for comfort. "His name is Ball."

  My girl didn't need to say another word. I'd no choice now but to train her proper. Teach her everything Tibb had taught me.

  So there we were, two women living in a tower, without father, husband, brother, or son to rein us in. Daughters of the witching hill, we turned to magic. Consorted with imps and spirits. We came into our powers, and they grew and grew till folk could not ignore the glimmer in Liza's wayward eyes, the fire that burned inside us both. The magic that ran in our blood.

  4

  SOMETIMES FOLK MADE MUCH of Liza and me for our charms and our blessings. Other times they shunned or even feared us. But most of all, they had need of us.

  The corn crop failed in 1587. That winter one in twenty of us in Pendle Forest died of the hunger and clemming, and if it wasn't for the work we did, Liza and I would have likely perished, too. My Liza and I hauled our bone-thin selves from cottage to farm where we did our best to mend ailing cattle and children, and all that labour in exchange for a bit of oatcake or blue milk, maybe an egg or two. Few could afford to pay more.

  Sometimes I think the only thing that sustained us were the gifts left in secret outside our door. Mutton pie, barley cake, cellar apples, curds and whey. Liza believed such bounty was the gift of Tibb and Ball, but I suspected Alice Nutter as our saviour. Thanks to my herbs, she was the mother of two healthy sons and, bless her, she'd not forgotten her debt to me.

  Ever since Mistress Alice first became pregnant, she and her husband had taken to going to our New Church in Goldshaw, a much shorter ride for her than the grander church in Whalley where Roger Nowell went. Though Richard and Alice Nutter were landed gentry who kept the old faith, they were as bound as I was to show their faces in church of a Sunday and at least pretend to accept the new religion.

  When Mistress Alice and I saw each other on the Sabbath, we'd trade our secret smiles, even in that famine year, and she'd invite me to come ruffle the hair of her little boys, pretty as girls in their gowns, for they were too young to be breeched. Her husband looked on, as though puzzled that his young wife should be drawn to someone lowly as myself, but he seemed well proud of her benevolence toward the poor.

  Of a Sunday I was always on the look-out for Anne, to see how she fared. Thin as the rest of us, my friend was. Though she greeted me hearty as ever before, I could tell something more than plain hunger troubled her. When I cornered her for a private natter, she told me she was worried about Betty, her eldest daughter.

  "She can't find steady work." Anne ducked her head out of the stinging wind as we huddled in the churchyard. "She's a strapping girl of twenty-five and she has no prospects."

  Times were so dire that folk in the forest began to steal from one another—the needy robbing the desperate. Broke my heart, it did, to hear of some widow coming home to find her peck of oats gone, the only food she had. Before long, people were at our door begging Liza and me to cast spells to reveal the names of the thieves.

  I'd known Kate Hewitt since before Liza and Kit were born. She was married to a cloth dealer down in Colne. We called her Mouldheels on account of all the spinning she did—the wooden pattens she wore were black and greasy from working the treadle. One day she and her good man returned home from visiting relations to find they'd been robbed: her spinning wheel, a pile of woven cloth, and their one pewter plate missing. The Hewitts promised me and Liza enough wool for new cloaks if we could uncover the culprit.

  Upon the dark of the moon, Liza and I trundled down to Colne with our wire sieve. Jack Hewitt provided a big pair of wool-cutting shears. Our Kate Mouldheels lit a single tallow candle and bolted the shutters. What Liza and I were about to do was unlawful in the eyes of the Constable, diabolical in the eyes of the Curate—conjuring spirits to learn the name of the thief.

  The rite of the sieve and shears had been one of Grand-Dad's charms, so Tibb had revealed to me, unveiling long-buried memories. Grand-Dad, in turn, had learned it from a very old man who had learned it from his grandmother. Ancient, this spell was, maybe even older than the old religion. Heathen magic it might have been, but how could I let honest folk suffer at the hands of the wicked if I'd the means to set it right?

  Liza and I were stood facing each other, middle fingers of our left hands upon the handles of the shears to press the blades against the rim of the sieve, which hung suspended. Driving rain hissed down the chimney into the hearthfire, filling the cottage with blue smoke. I heard yelping dogs and knew, with a shiver, that they were Tibb and Ball. My eyes closed, I recited the charm, calling on Saint Peter and Saint Paul, on Christ and Mary to free the innocent and reveal the guilty. Then I bade the Hewitts to name, one by one, the people they suspected of robbing them.

  "Alice Gray," Mouldheels offered, but the sieve did not stir. "Jane Bulcock."

  Pained me, it did, to hear her naming her own friends and neighbours like that. Did she trust them so little?

  "They're innocent," I told her.

  "Meg Pearson," she said.

  My lip curled at the thought of Meg, that hussy who had lured my Anne's husband away, sporting with him in the haystack those many years ago. If Meg
were the thief, I wouldn't feel the least bit sorry to bring down justice on her. But the sieve hung steady.

  "Tom Redfearn," Jack Hewitt said.

  The sieve didn't budge, but a sweat spread over my upper lip. Young Tom Redfearn was besotted with Anne's younger daughter, fifteen-year-old Annie. They were not yet betrothed—she was too young and times were too hard—but I'd heard that she'd set her heart on him. Please don't let it be him.

  "Mam," Liza whispered. "Look at the sieve."

  My knees knocked to see it tremble. Full expectant, my daughter stared at me. When I did not speak, she took charge.

  "Not Tom Redfearn," she said, smooth and business-like. "But someone close to him."

  "What about his sweetheart," Jack suggested. "Annie Whittle."

  When the sieve remained still, I offered a silent prayer of thanks.

  "No, she's only young," said Mouldheels. "More like her mother, that Chattox."

  As I struggled not to shudder, the sieve twisted, but did not fall.

  Mouldheels frowned. "No. It's the older daughter. Betty."

  The sieve writhed between the shears' blades before it tumbled down and struck the slate floor with an awful bang, leaving me so weak that I crumpled to my knees. Outside some thing scratched and scraped at the bolted door. Closing my eyes, I saw the brown dog's great paws. I saw the pain on Anne's face as she had confessed to me how worried she was about Betty, her first born whom she'd named after me. Now my spell had revealed her daughter's crime.

  "There you have it," Liza said. "Betty Whittle is your thief."

  "Came calling last week, did Betty Whittle." Mouldheel's voice was grim. "Asked if I'd any spinning for her. Didn't trust her within an inch of my spinning wheel, but of charity I offered her a cup of milk."

  I fought tears. Why had Mouldheels been so stingy? If she'd welcomed Betty with a generous heart, given her a proper meal and some old bread to take home to her family, it might not have come to this.