The Daylight Gate (10 page)

Mouldheels came forward and taking the doll she had made, she pierced it through with a sharp stick
and
baptised it in the cauldron:
In his likeness it is moulded, he shall die
.’ And she plunged the doll under the scummy water. It shrieked.

Elizabeth pushed Mouldheels aside, and with a pair of heavy tongs she fished in the boiling brew for the head, lifted it out and set it to drain. Much of what had remained of the decomposing flesh had been scalded off into the pot. The head retained a few strands of hair and its new tongue. It sat on the altar, steaming as the water fell from it.

The stench in the cellar was so bad that the company assembled above began to complain. Elizabeth got on the wormy ladder and poked her head into the room. ‘When you are free and Roger Nowell is dead you will not complain. And when we are free we shall fly to Lancaster Castle where the Dark Gentleman will reward us for our pains.’

‘We cannot do it without Old Demdike or without Mistress Nutter,’ said one.

But Elizabeth was blazing now. ‘I have claimed the power. I shall lead you. My proof will be the proof of my Spell.’ She went back down into her lair. ‘Mouldheels, bring up the head.’

Mouldheels took a cloth and wrapped the damp head in it. Elizabeth climbed the ladder into the round room of Malkin Tower and reached down for the head. As it was produced, the company gasped.

‘Yea,’ said Elizabeth, ‘now you see me. I have made the head that not even Demdike could make. The head will speak to you, confirm my power, and guide us from this place.’

She placed the head on the plank-board table.

‘At sunset it will speak. In Demdike’s name it will speak.’

In the cellar Jennet Device was poking in the cauldron for the remains of her bottled baby. She found a tiny hand and put it carefully in her dress pocket.

The Fog

ALICE NUTTER HAD
ridden home to the Rough Lee to discover that Roger Nowell had ordered her house to be searched. She was sitting in her study with Christopher Southworth. He kept fingering his neck. She made a joke about the noose. He shook his head. ‘I have lost my crucifix. I took it off in your bed. Now I cannot find it. I took it off to make love to you.’

She kissed him as they sat either side of the fire. She had made up her mind. ‘I will leave for France with you, Kit.’

He looked at her in disbelief. She stood up. ‘I dreamed of Elizabeth Southern last night, if it was a dream – a nightmare. For the first time in a long time I feel afraid. It is as if she is coming for me.’

‘Coming for you? From beyond the grave?’

‘Or near to it.’ Alice was crying. Christopher tried to comfort her but she pulled away.

‘That night I told you about, at Elizabeth Southern’s house in Vauxhall, when I heard her voice say “She is the One”. I had no doubt that I was to be a sacrifice, though I did not know what kind of sacrifice.

A hooded figure advanced towards me. I picked up the two candles made of sulphur and pitch. I hurled them into the dreadful shape. The robes of the creature caught fire. Those in the room shrank back. This gave me courage. I ran sideways towards the door. I reached the door; it was locked and barred. The crowd was on me and the fearful figure burning towards me.

I stripped off my shift and set it alight from a wall-torch. Now there were two of us burning. I swung my burning shift in front of me, making a fiery barrier between myself and the crowd. One grabbed it and burned his hand. Another tried to slip behind me but I hit him in the face with the flaming garment.

There was a window behind me leading directly onto the street. I backed up to it, turned, and jumped straight out. My skin was scorched. My hair was on fire. I ran down to the Thames and threw myself in.
I
swam upstream like a burning mermaid until I was at Bankside. I scrambled out on a low pier and fell half drowned into my house.

John Dee was waiting for me.

He tended my burns with salve. He put me to bed. He looked at me gravely. ‘Born in Fire. Warmed by Fire. By Fire to depart.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Your nativity. You were born under the sign of Sagittarius. You are born in fire. That is the first part of the prophecy. You have studied the alchemical arts and so you have been warmed by fire. That is the second part of the prophecy. The third part of the prophecy is how you will die. Choose your own death or fire will choose you.’

‘I do not understand what you say.’

‘Elizabeth has betrayed you. She sold her Soul to enjoy her wealth and power for a fixed time. Now, unless there is a substitute for her Soul, she will lose everything. You are the substitute.’

‘I do not believe in those things.’

‘It does not matter what you believe. Believe what is.’

John Dee stood up and brought over a mirror. It was a mirror I had made using mercury. It offered a surface reflection, like all mirrors, but behind the reflection was a deep view, like a magenta pool.

‘Why do you think you look so youthful, Alice? You are almost forty years old.’

‘It is true that I seem to have become younger since I met you.’

John Dee nodded. ‘Mercurius is a youthful spirit. In the alchemical work he is the renewing force.’

‘Then is it the mercury I have been using?’

John Dee shook his head. ‘Only in part. I have experimented with an elixir. It is the elixir that I have instructed you to wipe over your entire body once a month at the new moon.’

‘And Elizabeth too. Is that the secret of her beauty?’

‘Elizabeth’s beauty is dropping from her body like a ragged coat. She has failed to make you the sacrifice in her place. Look in the mirror – already she is ageing and withering.’

I looked in the mirror – her skin like parchment stretched over her face. Written on the body was disease, disfigurement, death.

Christopher Southworth sat up. ‘Alice, who is Elizabeth Southern?’

‘Southern was her own name. She married a man named Device. Elizabeth Southern is Old Demdike.’

Damn You

ROGER NOWELL WAS
in pain. It began about noon as he finished his dinner and got up from the table. His legs buckled under him. He felt a sharp pain like a knife in his groin. He had to grab the edge of the oak table to stop himself falling. He called a servant who helped him up the stairs to bed. The doctor could not attend at once, and so the herbalist from Whalley was summoned. By the time she arrived Roger Nowell was in a bloodshot fever.

‘I am being stabbed,’ he said, ‘run through with sharp irons.’ He screamed and grabbed his chest as another searing pain tore through him.

The herbalist undid his shirt. She rolled back the blankets to look at his legs. His body looked as if it had been stabbed and stabbed. There were red marks all over him. The marks bled.

‘This is not a natural ague,’ said the herbalist. ‘It is witchcraft.’

‘Demdike,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘Damn her to Hell.’

Potts burst into the room looking triumphant. ‘I have sensational news! Christopher Southworth is in Lancashire. Christopher Southworth is at the Rough Lee.’

‘I know,’ said Roger Nowell.

‘You know? And you do nothing?’

‘There is nothing to be done. I have had the house searched from top to bottom. No sign of the man.’

‘Arrest Mistress Nutter.’

‘I cannot arrest a woman for harbouring a man who is not there.’

‘He is there!’ shouted Potts, stamping his foot.

‘I am ill,’ said Roger Nowell.

Potts came over to the bed. He could see that Roger Nowell was indeed ill. ‘This is sorcery!’ said Potts.

‘Demdike,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘I have ordered the crew from Malkin brought here this evening. If I am still alive I shall take witness statements.’

‘I shall do all of that,’ cried Potts, sensing his hour of glory approaching. ‘And although you are struck down by witchcraft, why do you call on the Demdike for the offence? I will wager this is the work of Alice Nutter.’

The herbalist was offended. ‘Mistress Nutter is skilled in the alchemical arts and knows her plants and powders but she is no witch and I will swear to it.’

‘You will swear to nothing unless you want to join her at the stake,’ said Potts.

The herbalist did not reply. She mixed up a potion and ordered Roger Nowell to drink it down. He did so and fell straight asleep.

The herbalist warned his manservant that he must not be disturbed until he woke naturally. Then she took her donkey and rode to the Rough Lee.

The Net Tightens

THE FOG WAS
white at the window.

‘Make your escape,’ Alice said to Christopher Southworth. ‘I have a hundred pounds here. Take it. I shall bring more in jewels. I shall send a chest to a trustworthy friend in London. We shall have linens and silver.’

She got up and went to her corner cupboard. ‘This is the key to my house on Bankside. It is tenanted but I keep a room there that no one may enter. Give them this signet ring and show them this key.’

She gave him the things. ‘When will you come?’ he said.

‘I will follow you tomorrow.’

He kissed her. He took her face in his hands. ‘I love you.’

Alice looked out. The house and estate were as
silent
and empty as the fog. ‘I shall bring you a horse. When you hear me at the window, jump down.’

Alice went out to the stables. The grooms were in the kitchen at this hour, eating, keeping warm. They had no instructions and the horses had been attended to. Alice saddled up a bay hunter. Bending down and lifting his hooves she fitted little cloth bags, one on each hoof, and led him softly and unheard to the side of the house.

Christopher was leaning out of the window, but the fog was so thick that he did not see her until she was directly underneath. He slung his bottles of water and wine across his body, checked his dagger, fastened his cloak. His hand went to his neck. Where was his crucifix?

But there was no time. He swung through the stone mullion window and dropped easily to the ground. Alice held the horse while he mounted. ‘Do not be delayed,’ he said. ‘I am afraid.’

She did not answer. She leaned forward and kissed his hand. He rode the hunter slowly and silently through the gates. When he was clear, he took off the hoof-pads and set off at a trot. The fog was his friend. He knew the way.

Alice did not go back indoors. She walked round the side of the house to a bare seat under a still-bare
apple
tree, its branches hesitating into leaf. She sat down and put her head in her hands, glad of the heavy quiet of the fog.

She knew she had to gather her documents of leasehold and freehold. She had a cache of silver. It would take her a week to get to the outskirts of London. She would ride to Preston, sell her horse and take the coach to Manchester. In Manchester she would become someone else, and as someone else, she would make her way to London.

She was thinking all this when her falcon flew like a ghostly spirit into the apple tree. As she sat, she became aware of something falling into her lap, and then another something, and another something. Something like pebbles.

She picked up one of the droppings. It was not a pebble; it was a human tooth.

On With It

AT MALKIN TOWER
Elizabeth Device and Old Mouldheels had strung up the poppet of Roger Nowell. His legs were full of pins.

The band were growing restless. They had sat in a circle in front of the suppurating head waiting for it to speak. It had not spoken.

From the slits in the walls of the tower they could see the guards. The light was fading. The Daylight Gate.

‘I say we break out of here, attack the guards,’ said Agnes Chattox. ‘We have a meathook and a pitchfork.’

‘I tell you Roger Nowell is cast into his bed and will not rise.’

‘If he rises before the moon none of us shall see the sun again.’

‘I tell you he will be dead by nightfall. I tell you the head will speak.’

‘If the head does not speak before Master Nowell, none here shall speak again.’

More

‘THESE TEETH,’ SAID
the herbalist, ‘are from the fresh-robbed graves at Newchurch in Pendle. You have not heard?’

‘I was at Hoghton.’

‘A lurid venture. Head, bones, teeth, scraped out of a grave like worms from a barrel.’

‘The Demdike are locked up.’

‘If they are at Malkin, they are not locked up. There is a way out.’

‘It is on my land. There is no way out of that tower.’

‘No way out but through,’ said the herbalist. ‘I tell you Jennet Device was in the Dog last night with Tom Peeper, and James Device is more cunning than you think him.’

‘Even if Jennet and Jem robbed the graves, they
could
not deliver their bag of rot to Malkin.’

‘Certainly they could. I’ll warrant it was Jennet took the brimming head, severed and wormy, and rolled it like a pig’s bladder through the hole.’