Daughters of the Witching Hill

by Mary Sharratt

  Breathless, I raced up, looking for Nancy. Yet I knew even before Mistress Holden clutched me with shaking fingers that my friend had passed in her sleep. Forgetting myself, I wailed as though a hunk of flesh had been hacked from my side. Chattox had robbed me of my father, and now she'd stolen away my dearest friend.

  Jagged and raw, I sobbed till Mam wrapped her arms round me and steered me into the church. Held my hand all through the service, she did, and her strength buoyed me. I knew that she understood my pain when Gran did not, so blinded Gran was by whatever loyalty had once bound her to Chattox. My eyes scoured the congregation for that hag's despicable face, but, like Gran, she'd stayed home, being too old and feeble to flounder those miles through the mud. Only Annie Redfearn and her girl had come, their skirts coated in muck.

  Surely now the Holdens must lay blame upon Chattox. After church would be the perfect time, with all the parishioners to bear witness. Roger Nowell attended church in Whalley, but Constable Henry Hargreaves was right in our midst. One word to him and he'd ride for West Close, arrest her, and haul her in for questioning. Half of Pendle Forest would be willing to speak against her, so I wagered, and my mam would be first amongst them to denounce Anne Whittle as a murdering witch.

  After we'd sung the final hymn and the Curate gave us leave to depart, I turned to Anthony Holden and waited for him to speak out, but he only hastened out of church. I ran after him. Say it. Just open your mouth and have at it. I was bold enough to reach for his hand and stare up, beseeching, at his face. My friend's father looked at me with brimming eyes. The man was fair unable to string two words together in the state he was in.

  Mistress Holden took my arm. "Would you like to come back with us, Alizon, and see her one last time before we lay her in her coffin?"

  My friend rested upon her bed, her hands crossed over her slender breast. Nancy was fresh and lovely as I'd ever seen her. Her mam had bathed and dressed her with such care, I could almost believe she was sleeping and would awaken any minute, smile into my eyes, and laugh at the cruel trick she'd played on us. She was clad in her best gown, trimmed in lace and velvet braid, as though it were her wedding day. A garland of Michaelmas daisies crowned her loosened hair. Stroking her curls, I could not get over how peaceable she looked, happy even, a smile upon her lips. But when I touched her cheek, it was cold as my father's had been the morning I'd rushed to his bedside to find him murdered.

  Helpless and undone, I burst into tears. Mistress Holden hugged me close, and I cleaved to her as I'd once done to Nancy. When we drew apart, Mistress Holden took a folded blanket from the foot of Nancy's bed.

  "This was hers," she said, offering it to me with both her hands. "Take it, love. She'd want you to have it."

  I pressed my face to the wool, so warm and soft, with one of Nancy's long, curling hairs still clinging to the weave.

  On my way home I bore the blanket high upon my shoulders to keep it clear of the mud.

  That night I kept my promise to Nancy. Whilst the rest of my family slept, I prayed for her immortal soul, chanting my Aves till Jennet burrowed deep in the bedclothes to block out my voice. I prayed till my throat ached and my knees turned to wood, prayed that my friend might step through the gates of paradise into that glorious place where Chattox could never trouble her again.

  ***

  The roads had dried out some by the day of Nancy's funeral, making it possible for Gran to make the journey with me guiding her along. When we reached the New Church, we could scarce squeeze our way through the throng gathered from far and wide. Nancy's godmother had travelled from Trawden Forest with her dark-haired nephew who had been Nancy's betrothed. I wondered if he would grieve her a tenth as much as I did.

  Nancy's coffin was strewn with asters, ivy, and late-blooming roses, but when the men lowered it into the earth, dirt soon shrouded the lovely blooms. So it had been with my friend's life, snuffed out far too soon thanks to Chattox.

  Gran craned her neck, her blind eyes raking the crowd. "She's missing. She didn't come."

  "If Chattox isn't here," said Mam, "it's because the Holdens let it be known she wasn't welcome."

  Gran's face twisted to one side as though a ghostly hand had slapped her. Even I had to admit I'd never heard of anybody being banned from a funeral. A serious slight, that was. Folk would murmur about it for weeks. This was the closest thing to an open condemnation that could transpire without Anthony Holden taking himself to Roger Nowell and outright declaring Chattox the agent of his daughter's death.

  When the burial had ended, Mistress Holden was stood at the lych-gate handing out funeral doles to the poor. She gave us more bread than we could carry. But Chattox and her daughter would go without.

  Winter took its toll. That miser Henry Mitton died, and the chill crippled my gran, freezing up her joints. She could no longer mount the tower stairs without one of us guiding her. During those months of cold and darkness, she dwindled and grew ever frailer. Only time she stopped shivering was when she was sat before the fire, though the smoke made her eyes stream. Yet her wits remained sharp as the wind trumpeting down the chimney.

  One afternoon when the others were out, I stayed home to look after her, fixing an herbal potion to ease her cough. The herbs were so bitter I worried she'd have a hard time getting the stuff down.

  "Next time I go to market, I'll bring you back some honey," I promised.

  Gran just screwed up her face and knocked back the physick as though she'd far more important matters on her mind.

  "Go up the tower, love, and fetch my pallet. I'll sleep down here from now on."

  For all her pride, she'd finally broken down and admitted that the stairs had become too much for her. As long as I could remember, she'd slept in her room at the top of the tower—I couldn't picture that chamber without her inside it.

  "I'll bring down your pallet. But come spring, you'll feel more limber. Then you might want to return to your room."

  With my whole heart I longed to make time run backward so that she could be her old self—the gran I'd known in earliest childhood, that vigorous charmer who could still see and walk on her own, back in the days before Chattox had laid her curse upon us. In truth, I'd begun to suspect that Chattox's malevolence had cast this dark enchantment on Gran, which made her suffer and pine even as Chattox hungered now that she was cast out by decent folk.

  "Bless you, Alizon," said Gran. "But my days of sleeping up the tower are gone for good." She grinned, some of her old spirit shining through. "But you, love, are a hardy young soul. Your blood's still warm enough to withstand the draughts. That room is yours. If you want it."

  I turned away, for I knew she was offering me much more than a room. Though Gran had kept her word to Mam not to badger me about familiar spirits, she was now inviting me to take her place at the top of the tower, the place where a cunning woman would sleep.

  A hollow buzz filled my head as I stripped her pallet and carried down the bedclothes and the bolster stuffed with straw and mugwort, the herb that gave Gran her visions. On the second trip I heaved the pallet itself up off the creaking oak boards and hefted it down the stairs to the hearthside. Quiet and brisk, I made up the pallet, placing it just so, with its head-end against the chimney breast so that Gran could sit up in bed with the bolster to cushion her back against the warm stone.

  "There you are, Gran." I did my best to pretend I wasn't rattled by this.

  "Now you'll want to make a pallet of your own since you won't be sleeping with Jennet anymore." Gran's lips curved in a smile. "When I was younger and still had my eyesight, nowt made me happier than lying a-bed and gazing out at the stars."

  Lost in thought, she seemed, as though mulling over everything that she had lost to old age. But when I chafed her chilly hands in mine, the caul covering her eyes melted away. A much younger woman I saw, her face bathed in starlight. I blinked and saw the dusky firmament awash with pinpricks of light, the Milky Way sweeping across the heavens. The stars swirled in a dia
dem, a perfect wheel, spinning round and round Malkin Tower. Then the vision faded. and my heart banged loud enough to deafen me. Gran touched my face as if to draw me back to earth.

  Mam helped me stitch the new pallet and bolster, then stuff them with straw, rosemary, catmint, and lovage. Not only did the herbs smell nice, but they also kept the fleas at bay.

  My first night in the tower, I thought I'd die of frostbite as the draught whistled through the window slits. Even so, I was well overjoyed to be shot of sharing a pallet with Jennet. Nestled in Nancy's blanket, I lay in blessed contentment with no sister to shove and kick me.

  The dark of the moon, it was. In every window the stars blazed pure white fire. As a blast of wind stirred my hair, I imagined I was soaring through the heavens to join Nancy, who took my hand, bearing me aloft, higher and higher till Malkin Tower and then Pendle Hill were lost in the swimming darkness below. Fair thrilled me, that did. Off in the night a hound wailed, rending the stillness. But I shut my ears to the thing and called out to Nancy, letting her draw me above it all.

  15

  IN THE MORNING I set out for Colne Market with my basket of fresh eggs to sell.

  Threading my way through the stalls, I pricked my ears to the gossip, fair curious to know if folk would speak ill of Chattox after she'd been shunned from Nancy's funeral, but I heard nowt to do with her. Out of sight, out of mind, she was. Old and infirm, she wasn't likely to show her head outside her door in such weather. Air was so cold it turned my breath to mist.

  In hope of soaking up some warmth, I wound my way through the horse market, passing close by those shaggy creatures with their steaming coats. Young lads galloped them over the green to show off their paces whilst the sellers were stood beside their nags, eager to open the animal's mouth to prove how young it was. Our Jamie, who should have been looking for a day's wages, sidled up to a bay mare. The pretty pony, hobbled to keep her from straying, rubbed her head against his chest. Using Jamie as a scratching post, so she was, and fair tolerating his clumsy stroking. Such a look of loneliness burned upon my brother's face as his fingers tangled themselves in her mane.

  "Our Jamie!" I called out, sweet and gentle as I could. "Come along with me and watch me bargain!"

  My words slid past him. Jerking away from me, he melted away amongst the horses, hucksters, and hawkers, whilst I threw icy stares at the men who muttered unkind things about him. Poor Jamie. When we were still children, I'd at least been able to protect him some, but now he was a man and had strayed beyond my ken.

  Heavy-hearted, I shuffled through the warren of stalls in search of honey for Gran's raw throat. After scouring the marketplace, I discovered that the only one with honey to sell was Richard Baldwin.

  Right torn, I was. On the one hand, honey was honey, no matter how loathsome the vendor, and it would do Gran much good. But did I truly wish to have dealings with this thin-lipped hypocrite who had driven Gran, Mam, and me off his land, calling us whores and witches?

  "And what did you come to the market to sell, Alizon Device?" he asked me with a cold gleam in his eye.

  For one wicked moment I fancied that I possessed the powers to bowl him over and leave him gasping and full humiliated. Then, shrugging, I made up my mind to turn tail. Before I could walk away, Baldwin did his worst.

  "They say your brother's an idiot," he said, making my hands prickle with the urge to slap him. "But that's not the whole story, Alizon, is it now?"

  He used his loftiest manner, as if to remind me that he was the Church Warden, a man to be reckoned with. But I saw him for what he was: the fornicator who'd left my mother with his bastard.

  "My brother," I said, "is a better man than you'll ever be."

  Baldwin's face darkened. "Your brother's an idiot who knows how to curse people."

  My boiling rage turned to ice-cold dread. "You're an idiot yourself to believe such twaddle." But the tremor in my voice gave away my fear.

  Baldwin smiled, mirthless and cruel. "Plenty of talk going round about you lot at Malkin Tower. Henry Mitton refused your grandmother a penny and now he's dead. Then John Duckworth died after refusing your brother a shirt he'd coveted."

  Jamie's clay picture flashed in my mind. Had he fashioned ones for Mitton and Duckworth? That forlorn look in his eyes when I'd watched him stroking the mare proved that my brother was a lost soul. Seemed he didn't know right from wrong. If this went on, folk would call him an evil wizard and run to the Magistrate with their accusations. Unlike Chattox, Jamie wasn't old or weak or housebound but wandered wherever his wilful fancies took him.

  "May God punish you for your slander," I told Baldwin.

  Then, to my shame, I broke down into tears. Off strode Baldwin, leaving me to weep and hug my basket of eggs in the middle of Colne Market, and that was how Matthew Holden found me.

  "Our Alizon, what happened?"

  He looked at me with such concern, but I couldn't bring myself to tell him, not there in the throng with everyone eyeing us. Snow flakes fluttered down and the wind was enough to suck the warmth from a body, so Matthew gave me his arm and I clung to him as though he were my own brother, strong and canny enough to avenge me and Jamie. The good man took me to the Greyhound Inn, sat me upon a settle in the corner nearest the fire, and asked the tavern wife to bring me a mug of mulled ale and a trencher of hot mutton stew.

  Took a while before the ale loosened my tongue, but finally I confessed what Baldwin had said about Jamie. Something in Matthew's face changed—I couldn't quite say what. He bided his time till I'd told him everything. Then he leaned close, his elbows on the greasy table, and talked in a low voice so only I would hear.

  "Alizon, I know better than anyone that your grandmother's a blesser, not a witch." His voice shook upon that very word. Witch. "But you need to keep your brother on a tighter tether."

  "What can I do? He's a grown man. Am I to keep him locked up?"

  "There's some folk as would do just that with one such as your brother."

  "Break his spirit, that would. It would be like killing him."

  "You must find a way to rein him in." Never before had I heard Matthew Holden speak like this, grave as any curate. "Before tragedy strikes again."

  "What do you mean?"

  Did he, of all people, suspect that Jamie was responsible for Mistress Towneley's death? Or, worse yet, did he hold us to blame for what had happened to Nancy? I sickened to remember what little Jennet had said the day she'd caught me unearthing Jamie's clay picture. You're a witch. You made Nancy sick. My lost friend's face loomed before me, shivering in terror as she pointed to the black dog wriggling at my feet. Would she still have been my friend had she known it was not Chattox's familiar but mine?

  Tears filled my eyes, blinding me to Matthew's face, and he laid a consoling hand over mine. My skin burned to think of everybody in that inn staring at the pair of us. No doubt the story would soon be warped into some lurid tale.

  "Best keep yourself out of Baldwin's way," he told me.

  "Not so easy avoiding folk of a market day," I said, wiping my eyes. "Everybody's in Colne today. I even saw Roger Nowell—"

  "You'd no need to come to market." He smiled at me the way I thought he would have smiled at Nancy when giving her brotherly advice. "If you'd need for anything, you could have asked my mother."

  Though I glowed under the light of his kindness, I still had my pride. "Matthew Holden, I'll have you know I'm no beggar to be always banging on your door when I lack something. I've eggs to sell." Then I remembered that our very hens were a gift from Matthew's family.

  "So you do. Come, Alizon. Let's get those eggs of yours sold off before market closes. I'll bring some honey round to your gran tomorrow."

  I walked through the market with Matthew now at my side, and none dared to slight me. With him haggling on my behalf, I traded my eggs for some smoked bacon and a great loaf of wheaten bread. Then, after searching for Jamie and not finding him, Matthew drove me home in his wagon. Soon he had me la
ughing, the way his sister used to do. Yet still I worried, for I'd no clue where Jamie had wandered.

  Matthew drew his horses to a halt outside our gate.

  "If you've need of anything, promise me you'll turn to us, Alizon. We mean to help."

  As I gave him my promise, I traced the ghost of Nancy in the curve of his jaw and the depth of his brown eyes.

  "Will you make me another promise?" he asked, looking at me so close that I blushed.

  "Course I will, Matthew."

  "Our Alizon, if you can't put an end to Jamie's mischief, then surely your grandmother can do something. Promise me you'll ask her."

  So I gave him my word, for I could hardly deny it after all he'd done for me and mine. But I was red-faced and miserable as I clambered down from the wagon. Now I was bound to tell Gran the truth of what our Jamie had been playing at.

  Gran dozed beside the dwindling fire in the darkening room. To her blind eyes night and day, murk and brightness, were the same. Yet when I stepped in the door, her eyes opened and a knowing shone upon her face.

  "Our Alizon," she said, her brow creasing. "What's wrong, love? What happened to you?"

  "Oh, Gran."

  Just the two of us at home. Mam and Jennet had not yet returned from working at the Sellars' and Jamie was off with the fairies for all I knew. Setting down my basket with the bread and bacon, I knelt at Gran's feet and repeated every last despicable word of Baldwin's. Breaking down, I spilled how I'd lied about the clay picture: that it was Jamie's, not Chattox's, handiwork. Said how I'd dug it up and tried to hide it, only Jamie had found it again and I'd never seen it since.

  "I don't know how to stop him, Gran." My head rested in her lap. "Do you think he did it? Does he have the powers to kill folk by magic?"

  She crumpled. For a spell we cried together, my arms round her.