The fiery room went black. Alice was leaning against the wall. She heard the door of the dungeon being pulled open. The gaoler entered with his flare. His face was terrified. He looked down and kicked the senseless body of Old Demdike with his foot.
There was no Elizabeth Southern. Old Demdike was dead.
Jennet Device
IT HAD GROWN dark in Malkin Tower as she sat on her own, wolfing the chicken and singing a lullaby. The head and the hand were her only company. The head said, ‘Jennet Device! They have all been taken to prison. Do you want them to return?’ Jennet shook her own head. ‘Make sure they do not,’ said the head.
She went and curled up in the clean bed that belonged to Old Demdike. She had never been allowed in here. Not even her mother had been allowed in here. She was safe behind the curtain when she heard Tom Peeper opening the door of the tower, calling for her. She kept quiet. She didn’t want the hard thing tonight. She was sore.
She heard him walking about. Then his footsteps stopped their pacing and he saw the head. She heard him swear. He was unsteady on his feet. He went towards the opening into the cellar. It was dark. He would fall in. She giggled. He stopped pacing. He was listening. ‘Jennet?’
He found her. He pulled back the curtain to her safe place. Picked her up in his damp arms. ‘Daddy fell in the pond but Daddy came back for his little girl. I’ve got a big bag of bread and cheese and apples and tarts from Roger Nowell’s kitchen, and we’ll live here safe and sound, just the two of us, Daddy and his little girl. Here, here.’ He was undoing his breeches. She didn’t want it in her mouth.
She slipped away from him and he came after her. The room was dark. She dodged sideways, and as he lunged to catch her, he fell through the open trapdoor into the cellar. She knew he had hurt himself.
Using all her small strength she pushed away the ladder off its mooring and down into the hole. Then she rolled her whole body under the trapdoor to move it, kneeling up with it, until by her greatest effort it reached the tipping point and banged down with a crash, sealing the cellar. There was a bolt. She shot it across the trapdoor into its keep. Then one leg by one leg she moved the rough heavy table over the trapdoor.
‘Good, Jennet,’ said the head. ‘Now go to sleep.’
Jennet nodded, took the little hand from in front of the head and went back to her bed. All night Tom Peeper shouted, and all the next day, and the days after that, and for quite a long time, she thought, as she ate her way through a week’s supply of food for two.
And then he didn’t shout any more.
August 1612
‘THE COUNTIE OF Lancaster may lawfully be said to abound as much in witches of divers kindes, as Seminaries, Jesuits and Papists.’
Potts was pleased with himself; he was writing a book.
‘Shakespeare,’ he thought as he scribbled away. ‘Foolish fancy. This is life as it is lived.’
‘Do you have to write a book?’ asked Roger Nowell, who was sick of it all.
‘Posterity. Truth. Record. Record. Truth –’
‘Posterity,’ said Roger Nowell.
‘Here is the title page: “The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancashire by Thomas Potts, Lawyer”.’
‘I suppose it will take your mind off the fact that the King’s spies have failed to catch Christopher Southworth – again.’
*
Alice Nutter was in her cell when she heard that Jane Southworth had been acquitted. Her maid had confessed that she had been put up to the accusation by a Catholic priest. As Jane Southworth was the only member of her family who was a Protestant, the accusations against her were deemed to be part of a vile papist plot. The Judge commiserated with her and ordered that she be taken home at once.
‘The vilest witches of the earth are the priests that consecrate crosses and ashes, water and salt, oil and cream, boughs and bones, stocks and stones; that christen bells that hang in the steeple; that conjure worms that creep in the field,’ said the Judge.
Alice waited at her window all day until she saw Jane being led out to her carriage. She could barely walk.
‘Jane!’ shouted Alice through the bars of the window. Jane looked up. She could barely see after five months of darkness, disease and malnutrition.
‘He is safe,’ shouted Alice.
Jane stood for a moment, statue-like and motionless, then very slowly she raised her hand.
That evening Alice Nutter had a visitor: Roger Nowell.
‘You are changed,’ he said.
She had not used the elixir. She had not looked in a mirror. Now she took out the tiny mirror from her pocket and stood in the light.
Was that her? Gaunt. Lined. White hair. She was still beautiful, if there was something transparent about her, as if her skin were made of leaves that had lain in the sun.
She was an old woman.
The Trial
WHEN THE PRISONERS are led into the Lancaster Assizes, Master Potts produces his prize witness: little Jennet Device.
So small and underfed is she that she has to be stood on a table to give her evidence.
One by one as they are brought in, she points them all out, the members of the coven gathered that Good Friday at Malkin Tower.
Jem Device can’t walk. He hasn’t walked more than twelve paces each way for four months. He has lost what fat he had. His eyes shine like fireflies in the waste ground of his body.
Chattox is demented. She spits and raves. She curses. She wants to be what they say she is; a witch. What else is left for her to be?
Elizabeth Device believes that Satan has taken her mother. She sits in the courtroom with her hands tied, livid and vile. She still has the energy to shout obscenities.
Nance Redfern and Alizon Device lie down. They can no longer stand. Both have been infected with syphilis by the gaoler.
Mouldheels sits on the floor and pulls blisters from her pus-soaked feet. She can feel her way through to the bone.
The Bulcocks never knew if they were brother and sister or man and wife. No one told them you couldn’t be both. He has his arm round her. She pulls her few strands of matted hair and hides her head. He shields what is left of her mind against what is left of his body.
Jennet Device tells the court all about their Familiars, Fancy and Dandy and Ball. She says she has flown on a broomstick and seen the Dark Gentleman with her grand-dam, Old Demdike. Jennet pays special attention to her mother. She tells the court all about the poppet and the head.
Her mother is so overcome with rage that she has to be led out of the courtroom and drenched with water. Jennet Device shows no emotion; she has no emotion to show.
Jennet looks at them. Her brother who sold her. Her mother who neglected her. Her sisters who ignored her. Chattox who frightened her. Mouldheels who stank.
She names them one by one and condemns them one by one.
Then they lead in Alice Nutter.
‘Do you recognise this woman?’ asks Justice Bromley. Jennet smiles and goes and takes Alice’s hand. ‘She has a falcon who is a spirit. She has a pony who can jump over the moon. She has food and drink and money and jewels. She is the most powerful of them all.’
Justice Bromley asks Alice Nutter how she pleads. Alice answers, ‘Not guilty.’ After that she remains silent.
They were all convicted. Potts wrote it down. Convicted of ‘practices, meetings, consultations, murthers, Charmes and villanies’.
The End
THAT MORNING ALICE Nutter was up before dawn. She had slept for an hour or so because she wanted to remember what it is like to fall asleep. What it is like to wake up.
She wanted to remember the stretch of her body. The feeling of hunger. How it felt to breathe. She was leaving home. Her body was home. She wanted to say goodbye before they evicted her.
Roger Nowell came to her cell. He said, ‘Even now, if you would help us catch Christopher Southworth, I could –’
‘I could not,’ said Alice.
Roger Nowe
ll looked at the floor. ‘Would you like to take Communion before you are executed?’
‘It is unnecessary.’
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘I should like my magenta dress.’
The dress was brought. She wiped her face and hair with the last drops of the elixir and smashed the bottle. She dressed. She took the tiny mirror she had made out of mercury and fastened it to Christopher Southworth’s crucifix. She hung the crucifix around her neck and under her dress.
She was ready.
The journey from Lancaster Gaol to the gallows east of the city was crowded. The mob were pelting and jeering, leering, mocking, and afraid too. Children were held high on their fathers’ shoulders. Old women in white, to show their virtue, sat at the front of the pulsing hordes, holding up lavender and hyssop.
There were boys with buckets of cat parts; paws, tails, ears, heads, entrails. The boys went up and down the lines letting people dip in and lift out some bloody and stinking offering to hurl at the cart.
Cow dung and blood, urine, vomit and human faeces were thrown from the upper windows of those buildings that lined the route.
And all the time people were clapping and singing. This was pleasure. This was a holiday.
At the Golden Lion there were jugs of beer. The Demdike had no relatives or friends to buy for them, because everyone they knew was being executed with them, except for Jennet Device. Someone had paid for their drink though, and Alice’s too. Wiping some of the filth away from their hands and faces, they drank.
Alice did not drink. She was looking out of the window. She could see a bird high in the cold morning. A steady circle of wings. It was her falcon.
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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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
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Table of Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Jeanette Winterson
Title Page
Contents
Dedication
Introduction
Pendle
John Law
Alice Nutter
Sarah Device
Roger Nowell
Malkin Tower: Good Friday 1612
Confrontation
It Begins
Read Hall
Christopher Southworth
Elizabeth Southern
The Net
The Dark Gentleman
The Wound
A Life for a Life
The Hell Hole
Hoghton Tower
A Tooth for a Tooth
An Eye for an Eye
The Fog
Damn You
The Net Tightens
On With It
More
The Spider Speaks
Save Me
The Past
Thomas Potts of Chancery Lane
The Hourglass Running
And Running Out
Dead Time
Bankside
The Daylight Gate
The Knocking at the Gate
And a Bird
Torture Me
Shadows
No More
Jennet Device
August 1612
The Trial
The End
Copyright
The Daylight Gate Page 11
