Daughters of the Witching Hill

by Mary Sharratt

  "The blessed child," said John.

  "Let's call her Alizon." Liza smiled to him. "Can't think of a prettier name."

  Even Jamie went soft when he first laid eyes on his little sister. Gentler than I'd ever seen him be, he reached out a timid finger to stroke her tiny hand.

  Having come so close to touching death, Liza took weeks to heal. I insisted that she rest in bed with no work but to nurse and cuddle her baby whilst I did the rest. I even used the excuse of tending Liza to stay home from church for an entire month, sending John and Jamie on without me. Wasn't it midwinter, after all, when a newborn was most vulnerable? Liza and Alizon needed all the care I could give them.

  Kept snug at home, the baby grew plump and rosy. She was quick to prove her cleverness, so eager to latch on to her mother's breast. Afterward the little one raised her huge blue eyes, still unfocused, to the sound of her mam's cooing and she soon learned to smile.

  I was so in love with her, so caught up in our circle of happiness, my bliss was near perfect—unless my thoughts strayed to Anne, whom I'd not seen since St. Stephen's Day. I prayed for her and her girls, yet at the same time I longed to shield my own family from the web of dark magic Anne was caught up in. Was I a fickle friend? Would Anne think that I'd abandoned her when she needed me most?

  Round about the old feast of Candlemas, the weather turned mild, the roads dried out, and Liza was on her feet again. It was high time we finally had our little Alizon christened, so off to church we went. My thoughts were on Anne. I fair wondered if I could look her in the eye without my face igniting in shame. At least I could take comfort in the fact that young Assheton had left for Chester. Anne and I would have nothing to fear till he returned.

  The instant my family set foot in the churchyard, who waved to us but Anne. For the first time in her sixty-four years she'd come early to church, for she'd heard my little granddaughter was to be christened that day. She'd been missing me, so she had. My heart flooded with memories of everything we'd shared, sticking together in good times and bad. How I yearned to go off somewhere private with her and pour out everything I'd been through since we'd parted on St. Stephen's Day. But before I could get out a word, her eyes rested upon the baby in Liza's arms. My Anne bustled over, no doubt intent on fussing over the pretty little thing.

  Liza looked to me in alarm whilst John threw himself in Anne's path. He'd a face like thunder.

  "You," he said to my dearest friend, speaking loud to be heard by all the gawping folk in the churchyard. "Stay away from my family."

  At the sound of his raised voice, the baby began to cry. Liza turned her back on Anne and hurried into church, leaving Jamie to stumble along after her. John took up the rear, glaring at Anne to keep her distance. The others standing round crowded into church as well, as though they'd no desire to be caught out with the old woman my son-in-law held in such revulsion. In a matter of heartbeats, my friend and I were the only two left amidst the gravestones and glowering yews.

  The look on Anne's face said more than any of my fumbling apologies could have done. Nobody's fool was my Anne. She knew that things between us could never be the same again.

  "Bess," she said. "Your John Device never cared for me, that much I knew, and your Liza's heart hardened against me ages ago. But never did I dream that you would prove such a turncoat."

  My eyes filled with tears as I uttered the words it half-killed me to say: that I'd seen a change in her that left me stark terrified.

  "It was two clay pictures I saw you and Annie make," I whispered so that none could overhear. "Why two, our Anne? I taught you the craft so that you could protect yourselves, but it's gone beyond that—it's gone well beyond my understanding."

  Even as I spoke, I saw Fancy's bruising might clinging to her like a dusky cloud. Mute and trembling, the pair of us were stood there till finally Anne broke the deadlock.

  "Think you're too good for me now, our Bess? Think I might taint you? By God, I was there the day they near stoned you for adultery."

  Holding her thin frame tall and proud, she swung round and strode into church. That day I was the last one in the door. Bowed and defeated, I joined my family. Empty, I felt, and hollow, as though my heart had fallen out of my ribcage.

  After my granddaughter's christening, Anne, who was no longer my Anne, hurried on her way without another word or glance in my direction.

  It was Eastertide before I learned that Robert Assheton was dead. He'd fallen ill in Chester, his body wasting, his mind ravaged. As he languished far from home, the lad declared a hundred times over that Annie Redfearn had cursed him. His cousin, the Dean of Chester, buried him in that city, some said to keep Annie from dancing upon his grave or digging up his bones to use in her unspeakable magics. Though he perished round about Candlemas, the news took months to reach me because folk only dared whisper about it. With the young man dead, it was proof that witches lived amongst us. Our John could not even bring himself to look at Annie when she was stood in church with her hands folded in prayer. So awful was the fear that few had the stomach to speak of it, much less make public accusations. Everybody knew that crying witch could backfire. The Magistrate might come to look upon the accuser with suspicion, or the accused witch herself might be declared innocent and live to hurl even more misery upon any who presumed to denounce her.

  Yet even this dread might have eased with time had not Christopher Assheton, the dead lad's father, begun to ail at Maudlintide, just before the beginning of the wheat harvest. He didn't point the finger at Anne or her family—he didn't dare. He suffered and he pined, confiding to his daughter Margaret that he, too, had been bewitched, only he didn't have the nerve to name the ones he suspected. By Michaelmas he was dead. All I could think of was the second clay picture I'd seen Annie shaping that last December, how she'd passed it across the beck for her mother to finish. For the life of me, I couldn't begrudge them for what they'd done to Robert, but why his father? Then I asked myself if Christopher Assheton had died of witchcraft or of grieving his son who had died so young and so disturbed. A parent's love is a powerful thing, and at the root of Anne's terrible magic was a mother's fierce devotion to her daughter.

  I kept my own part in this business silent. If I'd been bold enough to ask Anne's opinion, no doubt she'd have told me I was a bald-faced hypocrite who did my all to preserve my own reputation as a cunning woman for the sake of my family and our livelihood whilst allowing her and Annie to carry the full weight of blame as the rumours descended. After Robert and Christopher Assheton's deaths, the gulf between Anne and I only widened with more pain, more hurt, till a hell-deep abyss plunged between us. A wrenching thing, it was, when my dearest friend became my rival and foe. Anne had loved me, perhaps more than any other living soul ever had. As my cuckolded husband would have told me, the quickest thing to turn to hate is love betrayed.

  Anne's powers rose like a column of smoke in a clear summer sky whilst mine began to ebb. I still chanted my blessings and walked my rounds with my pouch of herbs, but my days as sole cunning woman of Pendle Forest were over. Now we'd Anne to reckon with, Anne who had grown fair unstoppable.

  II. THE BLACK DOG

  Alizon Device

  9

  FROM EARLIEST CHILDHOOD, I learned to safe-keep secrets in the chamber of my heart. I knew how to keep silence. Life or death could hang in the balance.

  My earliest memory was walking hand in hand with my gran into a manse with arched windows and ivied walls. Five years old, I was, my bare feet padding upon rushes scented with lavender and rosemary, my eyes huge to take in the silver candlesticks, the tables and chairs of massive carved oak, dark with age. A lady came to greet us, her face lighting up at the sight of Gran. Her hair was half black, half silver, reminding me of a magpie's wing.

  After whispered words with Gran, Alice Nutter, mistress of Roughlee Hall, led us into a chamber where the shutters and thick draperies were drawn against the July sun. Upon a massive four-poster lay the oldest man I'd
ever seen, the lady's husband. So shrivelled and shrunken in on himself, he was, it seemed a marvel that he still breathed. His parchment skin was stretched taut in pain.

  "My children are away with kin," I heard Mistress Alice tell Gran. "I've called them home, but I don't know whether they can return in time."

  Whilst I stood by, eyeing her every move, Gran set to work with her herbs, brewing them over a fire that blazed in that very room though it was high summer. Poppy seed, said Gran, would ease his suffering. After she tipped the draught into his mouth, Old Master Nutter smiled, the tightness in his face unfurling some. Gran and Mistress Alice prayed over him with strange words that I knew from their sound and music, for I'd heard Gran chant them many a time, though I did not yet understand their meaning. But I lisped along all the same as I watched Mistress Alice threading dark red beads through her fingers.

  Old Master Nutter reached for his wife's hand. "Bring her to me one last time before I go."

  I'd no clue what he was on about, but Mistress Alice understood straightaway. She and Gran traded a look, then Gran took my hand as if to lead me from the room.

  "You can stay," Mistress Alice told her.

  "The child, too?" Gran asked.

  "Why should she not see it at least once in her life?" Mistress Alice smiled in sadness. "She might not have another chance."

  By now I was well curious, gawping with huge eyes as Mistress Alice went to tap upon a panel of plain wood behind the chimney breast. The answering knock that came from within made me jump. Did goblins and boggarts live inside her walls? Gran put her hands over my eyes, but I peeked between her fingers to see the panel open like a door. Then Mistress Alice invited us both to pass with her into that secret place.

  A narrow stair led upward to a hidden chamber beneath the eaves, a place of windowless darkness lit only by pricks of candle flame. A sweet fragrance I couldn't name tinged the stale air. When my eyes grew accustomed to the murk, I gave a cry to see a ghost-white young man staring at us. But Mistress Alice curtseyed and spoke to him, proving that he was a creature of flesh and blood.

  Only then did I dare look round the chamber to see the wonders hidden there. A candle in a lamp of red glass hung from the shadowy beams. There was a great table covered in embroidered cloth and above it a cross with a man's tortured body nailed to it. The sight made me twist my head in fear. Then Gran turned me round to face the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen: a statue of a lady with flowing hair and tender eyes, her arms outstretched as if to embrace me.

  "That's Our Lady," Gran whispered. "The Queen of Heaven."

  Stood upon a crescent moon, the lady was, her lovely head crowned in a circle of stars. Rays of sun adorned her blue-painted gown.

  "Once she'd her own altar in the New Church," Gran told me. "Then Master Nutter had to hide her to keep her safe."

  I fair wondered what was harder to believe: that this lady's statue had once dwelt within our stark whitewashed church or that the old, old man in the room below had ever been strong enough to rescue anything.

  The young man had donned a robe and placed a stole round his neck. Full reverent, he lifted the lady from her niche and bore her down the narrow stairs and into Master Nutter's chamber whilst the rest of us followed behind as if in procession. When the young man set her upon the bedside table, the old man's eyes softened. He'd a look of purest bliss and comfort.

  Mistress Alice checked the bolts on the doors and shutters. Meanwhile, the young man fetched all manner of things from his hiding place and arranged them upon a table in the room. A silver chalice and plate, they were, and a silver box, the sight of which made Gran cross herself. In a voice rich as his face was wan, the young man sang the secret words, all the more powerful because I didn't understand them. Gran knelt, tears streaming down her face, and I trembled at the mystery of it, gazing at the star-crowned lady who shimmered in the candle glow. Then the young man raised up a round white wafer, and though I was only five, I knew I beheld something holy and rare.

  The young man gave the wafer to Old Master Nutter and anointed him with oils, chanting over him just like Gran would do when she was blessing someone, and I asked myself if he, too, was one of the cunning folk. Before I could catch another glimpse, Gran drew me to the other end of the chamber to give the two men their privacy as murmured words passed between them.

  "He's preparing Master Nutter's soul for the next world," Gran told me.

  Closing my eyes, I tried to picture the world beyond this one and what it might look like. I'd always thought of heaven as a place made of clouds, but when I tried to conjure up paradise, I saw a deep green wood, thick and lush, with bluebells growing everywhere.

  When it was all done and Master Nutter was dozing peaceful with his wife holding his hand, the young man gathered his things to return them to their hiding place. Gran and I needed to wait till the room was clear before we could unbolt the chamber door and go on our way.

  Just when I thought the young man would vanish inside the walls like a phantom, he approached Gran, his face full sombre, and asked if she'd anything to confess. Though he was but a scrawny thing, it was a long look he was giving her and one that I knew well even at that age—the look that folk gave Gran when they didn't quite approve of her reputation.

  Only a short while ago, Gran had gone down on her knees and wept to hear him sing. But now she stood her ground, stolid as a badger. This man might have hidden power and authority, but so did my gran, and he knew it.

  "Peace, Father," she said, and I thought it was well odd she should call him that since she was old enough to be his gran. "My sins are between me and God."

  "You must not breathe a word to anyone about what you saw today," Gran told me on the walk home. "He has to hide or else he'll be chopped to pieces. Butchered like a pig."

  "That's why he never smiled," I said, thinking of how the young man lived in the dark, the sunlight never touching his face.

  "Bless him, but he was dour as any Puritan." Gran's eyes were miles away. "Didn't used to be like that, love. Even your mam's too young to remember, but back in my day there was more to religion than all this hush and doom."

  As we walked along Pendle Water, hand in hand amongst the birch trees, she told me how she once led the procession on the Feast of the Assumption, a crown of roses upon her hair, how they used to dance within the very nave of the church. Gran was so wise because she remembered the lost things that other people had never known, even that pale young priest.

  I knew two things for certain. Most important was that Gran was the most powerful cunning woman in Pendle. When all else failed, she'd the gift to mend what was broken. Mistress Alice's priest had reason to both fear and respect her, and I wondered if the Magistrate himself ever reaped such awe—when had he ever healed a person? In truth, Gran was mightier than any soul I'd ever met. My mother's anger and my father's fears crumbled before her. Before I came into this world, Mam was a charmer, too, yet never anything like Gran, whose match was nowhere to be found. Second thing I knew, sure as my own brother's face, was that Anne Chattox's curse hung over my family in defiance of Gran's powers.

  The first sign was delivered not a fortnight after I'd seen the forbidden priest and the statue of Our Lady. On a sunlit afternoon I was helping Gran weed her herb garden. She gave me a catmint leaf to taste but told me to stay well away from the monkshood, for it was potent poison even though its blue flowers were dazzling as the Virgin's mantle.

  Gone to Colne Market, my parents were, and my brother was mucking out the byre. So it was just the two of us in Gran's garden, her telling me stories of the Queen of Elfhame riding through the greenwood upon her white mare, when we both looked up to see a woman stood at the garden gate. Leaving me in the mint patch, Gran went out to speak to her. First I thought nothing of it, for folk were always calling on my gran, asking her for a blessing or potion.

  But the woman started railing at Gran. "You think you can just wash your hands of us? You made my mam what she is.
"

  Whilst our visitor carried on like a drunken fishwife, her mouth twisted ugly-wide, Gran was stood quiet, saying, "Peace, Betty, peace."

  My own parents had told me that Betty Whittle was a fiendish one. So off I bolted to fetch Jamie. Though unkind folk claimed there were sheep with sharper wits than my brother, our Jamie was fearsome-protective of Gran and me. Brandishing the manure fork, he came charging as if fixing to stab Betty through the heart with those dung-caked prongs. Seeing what she was up against, Betty shut her wicked gob and scarpered. Jamie made to chase her, but Gran laid a hand on his arm.

  "Let her be, love."

  "I'm fair clemmed," our Jamie replied. He always said he was clemmed. I never saw a body eat so much as my brother.

  So Gran promised us bread, butter, and soft new cheese from the dairy. Skipping with each step, I led the way to the house but froze at the sight of our open door swinging in the breeze. So that slattern had barged her way into Malkin Tower. There, before our hearth, she'd dumped a filthy old sack.

  "Alizon, no!" Gran cried out, but I was a wilful thing, too quick for her to stop.

  Pouncing on the sack, I opened it and what tumbled out but a human skull. Empty eyeholes stared back at me, mocking me as I shrieked. Four teeth still stuck to the jaw, fixed in a ghastly grimace. Scarier than the skull itself was the look on Gran's face as she crumpled to the floor. The way she cupped her hand to her mouth, I thought she was going to be sick.

  Anxious to give comfort, I patted her arm. "Don't be sad. We can hide it."

  "Aye," she said, wiping away tears. "We'd better do just that before your parents come home. Not a word to your father, you two. Thing like this could frighten the life out of the man."