We weren't allowed to speak a word in our own defence, hadn't even been told what the exact charges against us were. We were made to stand there like mutes whilst Roger Nowell, our prosecutor, spoke of our vileness. What a sight he was, calm and poised, the only one in that courtroom who didn't sweat like a boar upon a spit. Before the judge and jury he paced, lithe and supple as a man half his age, and he was clad in spotless linen and silk. Like an angel stepped down from heaven, he appeared, golden rings flashing upon the fingers of the High Sheriff and upholder of the sword of justice.
Except now I'd the power to look right through him, for Gran had revealed his darkest shame. He was our kinsman, blood of our blood. He shared Gran's strong chin, her thick grey hair, her indomitable spirit. If he indeed knew that he was Bess Demdike's own half-brother, it kindled no mercy in his heart but only made him more determined to wipe us out, the hideous growth upon his family tree.
Before that packed courtroom Nowell announced that we witches of Pendle Forest had rejected God and our own baptism to worship Satan as our lord, surrendering ourselves to the Antichrist, body and soul. The Devil's own whores, we suckled demons and so became Satan's instruments, for the Prince of Darkness could only work his depravity through human vessels such as us.
Out into the crowd I gazed, at those countless faces, their mouths hanging open as they beheld the unholy spectacle that was we poor weedy figures gawping back at them. I searched out the throng for anyone who was friend, not foe, anybody at all who wished us well or at least harboured a morsel of sympathy. Perhaps Matthew Holden had come to see how we fared. I saw no trace of him, but my stomach flipped when I glimpsed Uncle Kit. My visions of Elsie's betrayal came back to me, but where did Kit himself, our flesh and blood, stand? Had he simply gone along with Elsie for fear of finding himself chained in the Well Tower along with the rest of his kin? My uncle would not meet my eyes but only stared, looking right queasy, at Jamie, who had fainted in the arms of his guards.
Judge Bromley ordered us to be taken down again. Seemed I had just learned to face the light before they drove us back into the darkness. Our trial would last three days, so Covell had told us.
***
Next morning, Chattox, Mam, and Jamie were called to stand trial. Though it wasn't yet my turn, Nowell had ordered me to the courtroom to watch the proceedings. I'd no inkling what his motives were. Perhaps he thought to humble me by forcing me to observe the fates of the others before the assembly.
First up before Judge Bromley was Chattox. A sorry thing, she appeared, her spine drooping, her eyes watering in the unaccustomed light. Lest the jury be moved to feel pity, Nowell was quick to paint an abominable picture of her.
"You see before you a dangerous witch of very long history. I place her in order next to that wicked firebrand, Old Demdike, because from these two sprung the evil deeds of all the rest, who were the children and friends of these infamous witches."
Nowell read out her charge. "This Anne Whittle, alias Chattox, of the Forest of Pendle, feloniously practised, used, and exercised diverse wicked and devilish arts called witchcrafts, enchantments, charms, and sorceries in and upon one Robert Assheton of Greenhead and, by force of the same witchcraft, killed him."
"How do you plead?" the Judge asked Chattox.
Everybody in that courtroom seemed to hold their breath to hear how she would answer. From the looks on their faces, they appeared to suspect she might cry out to Satan to come rescue her.
"Not guilty." Chattox's tears splashed down to wet her kirtle, black with prison dirt.
Nowell turned toward the court clerk, a skinny Londoner with long, greasy hair. City man like him seemed well nervous to be up in our country. Kept glancing round with huge eyes as though we were wild heathens whose like he'd never seen.
"Thomas Potts," Nowell addressed the clerk, "kindly read out Chattox's voluntary confession of witchcraft recorded on the second of April."
In his high nasal voice, Potts read out Chattox's statement of how she had sought to strike down Robert Assheton on account of his trying to force himself on her daughter and drive her family from their home. Next the Londoner read a statement from Gran herself, saying how she'd witnessed Chattox and Annie Redfearn shaping clay pictures of Robert Assheton and his father. Last, Potts read the testimony of a manservant who had worked for the Asshetons at the time of Robert's death. Young Robert had fallen ill, so the manservant had claimed, complaining that Chattox and her daughter had bewitched him.
Looking well pleased with himself, Nowell spoke to the judge and jury. "Since the voluntary confession of the witch herself exceeds all other evidence, I spare to trouble you with the multitude of other examinations and depositions or any other witnesses to come forward and declare her guilt. For I believe no reasonable soul can doubt how dangerous it was for any man to live near such people as Anne Whittle."
A tremor rocked the crowd as though they were unable to shake off the thought of this decrepit old woman toying with clay poppets, torturing her gentleman victim till he dropped dead. Under such fierce attention, Chattox collapsed. Her bones creaked loud enough to be heard over the muttering crowd as she sank to her knees, meeker than I ever knew she could be.
"I'm a wicked creature and pray for God's forgiveness." Beseeching, she gazed toward Judge Bromley and lifted her hands, folded as though in prayer. "My lord, I beg you, be merciful to my daughter, Anne Redfearn. She's innocent. As blameless as I am guilty. The sin was mine, never hers."
In so short a space Chattox's trial was over, though the judge and jury had yet to sentence her. The guards whisked her away, and then it was Mam's turn to take the stand. In a right hurry, Judge Bromley seemed to be. After all, it was steaming hot in that courtroom and he'd a heavy velvet robe to wear and many more cases to hear.
Shoulders drawn back and head held high, Mam took her place at the bar. Resolute, she looked, not giving Nowell the pleasure of seeing her crumble before him as Chattox had done. With my entire will I prayed that she might preserve her dignity. Already the crowd was jeering at her wandering eye as though her deformity proved her guilt.
"O barbarous and inhumane monster," Nowell said to my mother, causing the crowd to rumble even louder, "you are so far from sensible understanding as to bring your own children to the gallows by your wicked example."
How I seethed to hear him speak of the gallows before we'd even been sentenced, as though our trial were a mere spectacle to entertain the slavering throng. I glared at Nowell, who happened to take notice of me, raising his eyebrows and looking at me with a face that so resembled Gran's that my knees knocked.
"This Elizabeth Device," Nowell went on, "was the daughter of Elizabeth Southerns, known as Old Demdike, a malicious and dangerous witch."
Mam lifted her chin even higher, ever proud to hear Gran's name spoken.
"It is very certain that amongst all these witches," said Nowell, "there was none more dangerous and devilish to execute mischief than the woman you see before you, having Old Demdike, her mother, to assist her; and James and Alizon Device, her natural children, provided with spirits and ready to aid her upon any occasion of offence."
Nowell paused then, the way the Curate would, to make sure everybody was paying attention before explaining in detail some choice titbit about hell or fornication or somesuch.
"Such in general was the common opinion in the country where she dwelt, the Forest of Pendle, a place fit for people of such condition, that no man near Elizabeth Device, neither his wife, children, goods, or cattle, should be secure or free from danger."
By and by, Nowell got round to mentioning the actual charges against Mam. He held her to blame for working with Gran and Alice Nutter to bring about the death of Henry Mitton, who'd once refused my gran a penny. Hearing that last bit, I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. What cause did Mistress Alice have to finish off a nobody like that old miser?
Mam never faltered. Before the packed courtroom, her back unbowed, she declared h
erself not guilty.
With grim forbearance Nowell asked Master Potts to read out her statement taken on the twenty-seventh of April, when she'd been arrested after the Good Friday meeting at Malkin Tower. Still my mother refused to relent. Stubborn as anything, she denied her previous confession, which Nowell had twisted from her by guile as he'd done with the rest of us.
Judge Bromley then asked the chief witness against Mam to be brought forward. The sight was enough to make my weak shivery legs give out and send me sprawling to the floor. My own sister appeared at the stand. Quite the little lady she looked, her dull hair curled into ringlets and tied up in a velvet band. She'd a rose-coloured gown that made her face seem less pinched and pale. So tiny was our traitor they had to stand her upon a table so the gentlemen of the court could get a gawp at her.
Mam let out such a roar. She wept and screamed and cursed and pleaded all at once. What cold cruelty could move a nine-year-old girl to condemn her own mother? Did our Jennet even understand how Nowell was using her, or did she think it a mere game to pose in her lovely frock and mouth the words he'd told her to say? I could only guess what Jennet made of us with our bone-pale faces and filthy clothes. Maybe that made it easier for her—she could pretend we were strangers.
Nowell could not have contrived a more grievous torture for my mother. The cat-o'-nine-tails would have been kinder. Yet looking at Judge Bromley, the jury, and the onlookers crowding close to stare, I knew they didn't see a woman devastated by her own child's treachery. What they saw was an odious witch and a freak besides, her cock-eye near bursting out of its socket as she railed and sobbed.
Mam's clenched fists were the fists of a weakling with bracelets of oozing sores round her wrists after being chained for months in that dungeon. To see our mother so unravelled, Jennet caved in upon herself and began to cry in shame and confusion, telling the judge she couldn't go on. I wagered that Nowell hadn't warned her it would be quite this harrowing.
Yet instead of removing Jennet from the scene, the guards wrested away my shrieking mother. Soon as she was gone, my sister was made to recite in her thin, shaky voice what Nowell had instructed her to say against Mam. Jennet, our pert little wench—Nowell had made her his creature through and through. His perfect tool. Now I understood why he had called me to court. He wanted me to see how eager my sister was to destroy us. We'd no hope left.
"My mother is a witch," said our Jennet. "This I know to be true. Sundry times"—no doubt, she'd learned that word from Nowell—"I saw her spirit come to Malkin Tower in the shape of a brown dog, which my mother called Ball. He'd ask her what she would have him do." My sister gulped for breath, her sweaty hands clutching at her fine skirt and causing it to wrinkle.
"And what did your mother bid Ball, her familiar, to do?" Nowell prompted.
"She said she would have him kill Master Mitton," Jennet said, not daring to look in my direction as she spun her lies. "Gran and Alice Nutter wished him dead. Ball said he'd do it and he vanished away. Three weeks later, Master Mitton died."
"Is that all?" Nowell asked my sister. "Do you wish to say anything more?"
Aware that everyone in that room was hanging upon her words, Jennet flushed and simpered as though she'd been crowned the Queen of May.
"My mother taught me two prayers," she said, falling silent as the crowd buzzed in consternation, no doubt assuming that these were no godly devotions but popish prayers that doubled as magic charms. "One to cure the bewitched and one to get drink."
As if that were not enough, Potts then read Jamie's statement of April twenty-seventh so that Mam might be condemned by her son as well as her youngest daughter. Our mother had made a clay picture of Henry Mitton, so Jamie had said, and she had planned the Good Friday gathering at Malkin Tower. His eyes huge, Potts was about to read further when Nowell cut him off as though he wanted to save the juiciest bit for later.
At that, the guards led Mam back to the bar where she was made to listen to how Jennet and Jamie had declared her guilty of murder by witchcraft. Still she denied everything, but that made no difference to Nowell, who then asked Potts to read the most damning part of Jamie's statement.
Potts's hands shook as he held the parchment aloft and read in a half-strangled voice till Nowell silenced him and summed up my brother's confession in the most chilling words.
"Elizabeth Device was the principal agent behind the solemn meeting at Malkin Tower, that great assembly of witches, where they connived a plan to blast asunder this very castle with gunpowder and also to murder Master Thomas Covell, the King's appointed gaoler, who little suspected or deserved any such villainy against him."
Even I forgot to breathe, for this was the most audacious claim yet—far more disturbing than even the clay pictures. Only seven years ago, Guy Fawkes and his band of papist rebels had plotted to blow up Parliament. Now Nowell was accusing us poor simple folk of the same kind of conspiracy—highest treason. Oh, my brother and his foolish talk.
Nowell paused before delivering his final blow. "I shall remind my Lord Judge and the gentlemen of the jury that the evidence against this woman was delivered by her own children."
Riven by those words and by Jennet's hot little face turned away from her, Mam's knees buckled. Finished off, she was, like a horse flogged till it collapsed and lost all will to rise again.
After the guards banished Mam down the Well Tower, Nowell summoned my brother to the bar. Jamie's eyes rolled up with only the whites showing as he slumped in the arms of the two men straining to hold him upright.
"This miserable wretch," said Nowell, "would have us believe that he is too ill to speak or hear or stand. Whether he brought this condition upon himself by his wish for an untimely death to avoid his trial and the just judgement of the law; or whether by his shame to be openly charged with so many devilish practises; or whether his condition was brought on by reason of his long imprisonment, which was done with more favour, commiseration, and relief than he deserved, I cannot say. I can only speak of the charges against him."
Nowell charged Jamie not only for the murders of Anne Towneley of Carr Hall and John Duckworth of the Laund, as I'd expected, but also for the deaths of John and Blaze Hargreaves, kin of our Constable Hargreaves. I couldn't recall that my brother had ever had much to do with those characters. Little difference that made. Seeing that my brother was too senseless to plead either guilty or not guilty, Nowell asked Potts to read out Jamie's previous statements. So the Londoner read out how my brother had wanted to be even with Mistress Towneley who had struck him between the shoulders and accused him of stealing peat, or so he said; and with John Duckworth who had promised him an old shirt and had never given it to him.
When Nowell asked Jamie if these statements of his were true, my brother lolled his head, which Nowell took to be a nod of agreement.
Next Jennet appeared as a witness to Jamie's crimes. Growing used to the attention, she spoke with more mettle than before, smiling to the judge and jury. "My brother fashioned a clay picture of Mistress Towneley to bring about her death. Then my brother called upon Dandy, his spirit, who appeared to him in the shape of a black dog."
I bristled to hear this, thinking she had mistaken the black dog that had followed me home with Jamie's familiar, which he had always spoken of as a foal that flew through the air.
"Within my hearing, Dandy asked what my brother would have him do," Jennet continued. "My brother answered he would have him kill John Hargreaves of Goldshaw and Blaze Hargreaves of Higham. Dandy answered that he would have his best help and so vanished away."
"Do you swear this upon oath, Jennet Device?" Nowell asked her.
"I do, sir," she said, near doubling over in her sweeping curtsey.
In the ground near Malkin Tower, Jennet went on to say, Jamie had buried three human scalps that Chattox had once given Gran. With a lurch I remembered the skull Betty Whittle had left at Malkin Tower, how Jamie had buried it behind the manure pile those many years ago. Loved to tell tall ta
les, did our Jamie. My brother was a whimsical soul. In his memory, the skulls must have trebled. Now he would hang for his fault of confusing the truth with his unruly imagination.
Before Nowell could usher my sister out of the court, my eyes hooked into hers fearsome as Gran's would have done to burn forever in her memory that I had stood witness to her betrayal. Haunt her all her days, this would. Her deed was worse by far than anything she claimed the rest of us had committed. She, and only she, was the true murderer. After sending us to our deaths, she would never again know a family's love or a moment's peace.
Jennet's sallow face flushed red. Her singed curls flying, she spun away from Jamie and me, her siblings whom she had doomed.
Didn't take long for the jury to reach their verdict. Chattox, Mam, and Jamie were found guilty on all charges.
After the guards delivered us back into the reeking gloom of the Well Tower and chained us once again to the ring in the floor, Mam wept in her thwarted love for Jennet. Pulling against my manacles, I tried to hold her as she used to hold me when I was a little lass crying out for my dead father.
"She's too young to know what she's doing," Mam said, as if scrambling to find any excuse to pardon my sister.
Deep down she must have known, as I did, that Jennet was old enough to know right from wrong. Old enough to know what it meant to hang a person. Our Jennet must have passed by the gibbet same as we had when Nowell brought her down to the castle. Silent, I embraced my mother whilst trying to rid my memory of those bodies rocking at the end of the ropes, left to dangle like hogs on slaughter day.
"My little girl ... she wants us dead," Mam said, finally admitting it to herself. "Jamie spoke against me, too, but he's only simple. He never meant it to end like this."
My brother shivered on the damp stone. I stroked his face and called his name, but it was like speaking to a straw doll, leaving me to wonder if he would even come back to himself when the hangman fit the noose round his neck. Perhaps he wouldn't survive the journey to the gallows. So far away my brother seemed, as though halfway to purgatory or some other place that he kept secret from us.
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