Mist Over Pendle

by Robert Neill

  Under the horses’ feet a hare sprang from nowhere and went bounding and leaping over the tufted grass. Roger turned in his saddle.

  “You saw it?” he called.

  “The hare?”

  “What our country folk would call a malkin.- And here we are! The Malkin Tower!”

  Chapter 7: THE DEMDIKE BROOD

  They hitched their horses to what was left of the fence and Jim Wilsey led them to the door. This was his privilege as Constable, and Roger followed behind him. Margery, in the rear, had time to note the pitiful ruin of the place, the split and battered door, the broken windows, the litter of filth on the ground about.

  Whatever these Demdikes might be, the Malkin Tower was testimony to their poverty and squalor.

  Wilsey kicked sharply on the door and set the crazy thing shivering. He waited, kicked again, and looked inquiringly at Roger. Margery guessed why. Wilsey, as Constable, was an officer elected of the parish; but the King’s peace lay on the crazy door, and only the King’s Justice might give leave to force it. But so much was not needed. A bolt screeched, and the door swung slowly open to disclose a man--or the semblance of one.

  Margery looked in surprise. She had expected a woman, and even if she had expected a man she would hardly have expected such a man as this. He was a tall thin fellow, in shirt and tattered breeches, and with sacking tied about his shirt in the place of a jerkin; and shirt, sacking and breeches alike were slimy with dirt. His head rolled above a long thin neck, and his eyes rolled in his head till they showed their whites. His dirt, his fantastic dress, and his idiot looks made it hard to fix his age, though he was obviously young. Margery guessed that he might be about twenty. And no sooner had he opened the door than he loosed a great whooping laugh; then his mouth dropped open, and he stood gaping.

  Wilsey wanted no more invitation. He marched in, Roger after him, and shouldered the fellow aside. One by one the others followed, and all the men stayed covered.

  The dark low room was as foul and ruinous as the rest of the place. A heavy rough-hewn table filled most of the mud floor. To the left of it, set against the wall, was a long wooden chest. Beyond, on the back wall, a low bench covered with rags and straw looked as if it served someone as a bed. To the right of the table a peat fire smoked on a cracked stone hearth. By this hearth, sunk in the shadows, sat three women.

  Margery had heard endless talk of witches. She had read of them in books and in many a lurid broadsheet. Once she had been in the crowd to see one hanged. But she had never seen a living witch at close quarters, and she stared now with undisguised interest at these three women. Unquestionably they were the three generations Baldwin had spoken of. One was pitiful in extreme old age; one was in vigorous middle life; and the third was a young girl whose age might have matched Margery’s. This, no doubt, was the ‘whelp’ of Baldwin’s tale.

  A crackling word from Wilsey brought all three women to their feet, while the fellow who had let them in moved to the window. Tom Peyton hooked one of the stools from the hearth and set it at the table’s end for Roger, who moved slowly to it. Wilsey, as Constable, stood to his right, Tom Peyton to his left. Baldwin and Nutter hovered behind him. Margery moved to the chest by the wall, thinking it would serve her as a seat; but before she reached it there was an interruption.

  Roger, in settling himself, pushed his long legs under the table. At once there came a quick squeal and a rustling in the straw. Then, from the other end of the table, a child shot out, rushed wildly at the door, and ran head down into Margery.

  Margery grunted, and held on to the frightened child. Roger jumped to his feet, and the gaping fellow by the window loosed his idiot laugh again. For a moment there was confusion. Then Roger seated himself again. Tom Peyton silenced the laughter with a vicious jab in the stomach, and in another moment Margery was sufficiently recovered to look curiously at her capture.

  The child was very young, a girl who could have been no more than eight, and something in her won Margery’s sympathy at once. It was not only her pitiful state of fright, not only her unkempt neglect, not only the coarse rough smock that clothed her; beyond all these, this child was attractive. She had a strong cleanly-cut little face, clear grey eyes, and hair that might have been golden without its dirt; and though she looked pinched and underfed, she was nevertheless well limbed and of good proportions. She pulled and struggled for a moment. Then she gave it up and buried herself in Margery’s cloak. Margery pulled her out of it and tilted the little face towards her own.

  “What is it, child?” she asked. “You needn’t fear. There’s none here will do you any hurt.”

  The child clung to Margery with both her grubby hands and looked about her nervously. Then she looked up again and seemed to take courage. Margery patted her shoulder.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Now come and sit with me.”

  She led to the chest by the wall, and seated herself; and after a little hesitation the child sat beside her and nestled against her. Margery pulled the fold of her cloak round the thin body and patted the child reassuringly.

  “Which being ordered,” said Roger, “we’ll proceed.”

  He gave a slight nod of approval to Margery and cast a steady glance at the child; and suddenly, as his eyes held hers, the crinkly smile lit his face, and Margery felt the child gasp with pleasure.

  “You’re well seated, little maid,” said Roger. And then his face turned grave and he gave attention to the three women by the hearth.

  “Which first, sir?” asked Wilsey. “Demdike, is it?”

  Roger nodded.

  “If that’s her true name. I’ve heard it’s not.

  “Stand out, old one!” said Wilsey sharply. “You other two can stand back. Now, tell Master Nowell how you’re named.”

  The old woman by the hearth moved slowly forward, leaning on a stick that tapped as she came. She was old far beyond what was common. Margery, scanning her keenly as she came from the shadows thought she be far beyond the threescore years and ten. She was as bedraggled as the rest, and had a ragged kirtle from which age and filth had removed the last trace of colour. She moved unsteadily, and groped with her stick as if her sight were all but gone. Yet she was not wholly blind, and the little deep-set eyes shone brightly in the seamed brown face.

  “You’re asked how you’re named,” said Wilsey again.

  In a flat toneless voice she gave her name as Elizabeth Sowtherns.

  “Sowtherns? Or Demdike? Which?” asked Wilsey sharply.

  “Which you please,” came the venomous answer.

  There was a stir by the hearth, and the middle-aged woman suddenly spat, as though to show approval of this. Tom Peyton sprang forward indignantly, and then stopped abruptly as Roger’s hand slapped the table imperiously. Margery, glancing sideways, saw Roger with his head thrown back, his nostrils dilated and his eyebrows drawn down. He looked steadily at the offender. Then he spoke in a voice that gave Margery little shivers.

  “You’re to learn your manners,” he said. “If you give me cause again, you’ll go outside and have the lesson applied to your back.”

  The silence of a frozen night fell on the room. The woman turned white and kept silence. Margery held her breath. Then Richard Baldwin’s whip broke the silence, slapping gently against his boot, and Margery saw that his face matched Roger’s. This she noted without surprise: she knew something of puritan hardness.

  Then the tension relaxed. Roger nodded as though satisfied. He turned again to the old woman.

  “I’ve known you as Demdike,” he said, “and Demdike you’ll remain. You’ll need to tell me now what passed between you and Harry Mitton when the sun was new this day. Now loosen your tongue.”

  Demdike looked round her nervously, from the one side to the other, and drew no comfort from it. She spoke in her toneless quavering voice and kept her eyes down, on the floor, on the table, on the hearth--anywhere but on Roger’s face.

  “Nowt passed of any weight,” she said. “I
’m old and poor, and none to find for me, and there’s been no bite in the house since yestere’en, and the cold’s colder when your belly clings. And this day, being blind when it’s bright, I had my gran’daughter, ugly lump that she is, lead me down to the Rough Lee, where I’d thought to have blue milk if nowt better. And seeing Harry Mitton there, it came to me to ask of him a penny for the buying of meat.”

  She paused and stood silent, looking down at her twisting hands.

  “And then?” asked Roger steadily. “What did Mitton say?”

  “Called me a ditch drab and bade me be off.”

  “I’ll not ask what you called him. But what followed?”

  Demdike looked about her again, hesitant and uneasy.

  “I trudged up the hill,” came the answer at last.

  “And Mitton?” Roger’s voice was ominously quiet.

  There was another pause. Behind Roger’s back, Richard Baldwin stirred impatiently.

  “I saw nowt,” she answered sullenly, “so I can tell nowt.”

  Roger slapped the table again, and the woman stepped back hurriedly.

  “You’ll be wise,” he told her, “not to suppose I’m to be treated as a fool. What happened to Mitton?”

  There was an edge in his voice now, and Demdike had evidently heard it.

  “He ran at my gran’daughter,” she said slowly, “and something felled him.”

  “Something? What was it? You?”

  That came sharply enough, but Demdike’s answer came as sharply.

  “I know nowt of it. I saw him on his belly, and that’s all.”

  “All, was it? How came he to run at your granddaughter?”

  “Don’t know. She’d best tell of that.”

  “She shall. Meantime, stand back. I’ll want you again.” He turned sharply to the middle-aged woman. “Now you,” he said, “come out here, and have a thought to your manners.”

  She slouched forward sullenly. It was the first time she had been out of the shadows, and Margery drew breath sharply at sight of her. She was a woman of perhaps forty, big-boned, angular and of powerful build. She had lank black hair and uneven teeth that were almost as black; and between hair and teeth were two dark rolling eyes which showed the most preposterous squint Margery had ever seen. The left eye looked down, the right eye up, so that however she stood she could show the pupil of no more than one; of the other, only the rolling white could be seen.

  Margery saw and shuddered. It was not only the hideous squint The lines of this woman’s face, the set of her chin and the drooping twist of her mouth, all joined in a picture of malice and savage temper. The girl who clung to Margery suddenly buried her head in testimony to her fear of the woman who stood slouching there, quelled by a threat and silent only from fear.

  “Name?” asked Wilsey sharply.

  “Elizabeth Device.” There was a rumble of anger in the deep voice.

  “Condition?”

  “Widow.”

  “Whose?”

  “John Device.”

  Roger’s foot tapped the floor, and Wilsey abandoned his formal questions abruptly. Roger leaned forward.

  “How came you to join your mother behind the Rough Lee this morning?”

  “Walked.”

  Roger’s eyebrows puckered ominously. “You’d best not be pert. Who called you there? “None.”

  “Then why did you go?”

  “The old ‘un hadn’t come back.”

  “So you went to fetch her? Then why did you not fetch her?

  “I did.”

  “You did not. You sat on the hill with her. Doing what?

  “Doing newt. Just sitting.”

  Roger sat back and viewed her steadily. His foot tapped the floor again.

  “Stand back and wait. You, also, will be wanted again. Now, the youngest.”

  Elizabeth Device returned his stare venomously, but she did as she was ordered and stepped back in silence. In the same silence the girl by the hearth stepped forward to the table.

  Again Margery peered keenly, and her first impression was confirmed. This girl must have been of her own age, or at most not a year older. There the resemblance ended. This girl followed her mother; neither her youth nor the absence of the squint could conceal the likeness. She was slimmer and smaller, though time might alter that; but she had the black hair and the dark eyes, the droop at the corners of the mouth, and the same mute suggestion of malice and evil temper. If she differed from her mother it was in lacking her mother’s fierce courage, though the sly darting of her eyes hinted at a cunning that might serve her instead.

  She came forward nervously, plainly frightened and ill at ease. Roger spoke at once, not waiting for Wilsey this time.

  “Your name?”

  “Alizon Device, sir.”

  “Her daughter?” Roger jerked his head towards the sullen Elizabeth.

  “If it please you, sir.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “No sir.”

  She suddenly clasped her hands behind her back and stood waiting in silence. Margery watched with complete understanding. The girl had offended, and knew it; and now she hoped to soften judgment by showing the best manners she had. Margery had done exactly that too often not to recognize it. But sympathy did not go with recognition; she had already decided that she had no liking for Alizon Device.

  “What passed between you and Harry Mitton?”

  Roger’s question came sharply, and the girl moved uneasily, her mouth twitching.

  “Nothing, sir,” she said at last. “Not a word at all.”

  “That’s possibly true--as to the word. But what else?”

  “Nothing else, sir. Nothing at all.”

  “What fool do you take me for?” The edge was back in Roger’s voice. “What did you do?”

  The girl looked sullen, her shifty eyes everywhere but on her questioner.

  “I’m told you flung a fistful of dung at Harry Mitton. Did you so?”

  There was silence again--a silence sharply shattered by the idiot laugh from the window.

  “Hey! Hey! Hey!” came a shrill high voice. “Dung for the old--ugh!”

  Tom Peyton’s fist had dug into the fellow’s stomach, and he went sprawling on his back, whooping like a croup-stricken child.

  “Who the Devil’s that?” asked Roger curtly. “And what ails the fellow?”

  Wilsey answered him.

  “It’s young Jemmy, sir--another of ‘em.”

  “Jemmy? Meaning James?”

  “Yessir., James Device. He’s another of hers.” Wilsey signed at the squinting Elizabeth.

  “Oh? Your brother, is it?” This to Alizon.

  “Yes sir, if it please you.”

  “Again it does not. What ails him?” Once more Wilsey gave the answer.

  “He’s moon-kissed, sir. Wanting. Always has been. He’s well known for it.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Roger watched not unsympathetically as Tom Peyton hauled the lad to his feet. Then he turned briskly to Alizon Device again.

  “Now, of this dung you’re said to have thrown at Mitton. What’s your tale?”

  “I didn’t sir. Never at all sir. Not a thing like that, sir. No sir.”

  Roger stared at her.

  “Never?” he asked coldly.

  “Never, sir. I’ll swear by . . . by---“

  “Spare your perjuries. You were seen to throw dung at Harry Mitton, and seen by one whose word is beyond doubting.”

  “No sir.”

  “You’re still denying it?”

  “Yes sir. And if there’s only one against me---“

  She broke off and stood silent, her mouth twisting in a sly smile.

  Roger turned slowly to the men behind him. “You see her meaning, Richard?”

  “I see she’s an impudent liar, and much that’s worse besides.” There was anger in Baldwin’s voice.

  “I nothing doubt it. But you see her meaning? She’s made it very clear. With only one witness I m
ay neither commit to Sessions nor deal summarily. It’s to be deplored, but you see it?”

  Roger’s voice was airy. The girl’s shifty smile grew broader while Baldwin stood speechless in his anger.

  “Ye-es.” Roger was positively drawling, and Margery watched carefully. It had occurred to her that if she were in Alizon’s place she would not trust this blandness.

  “I think, Richard, that this flinging of dung is not a matter for the law. Could it be matter for the Church?”

  “The Church?”

  Baldwin sounded puzzled and suspicious, and Margery thought he suspected blasphemy. Puritans often did, she had noticed. But Roger stayed placid.

  “Aye, the Church. Or if not the Church, at least the churchwarden. Which is to say, it’s left to you. I’m told you’ve some force in your arm.”

  Baldwin understood. So did Alizon. There was no smile left on her twitching pallid face as Richard Baldwin slipped round beside the table.

  “I want the grandmother again.” Roger’s voice came curtly. “Demdike--where is she?”

  Tom Peyton pushed her forward, and then flung the door open as Baldwin gripped Alizon by the neck and hustled her out Margery heard his whip crack before the door was shut, and the girl’s shrill screaming came steadily as Roger probed again into old Demdike’s tale. Margery hardly listened. She was considering this Alizon, and what a fool the girl must be to have supposed she could match her slyness against Roger. Margery nodded her approval. Alizon was certainly being dealt with roundly and Margery thought that proper. One could not have a world in which girls were free to fling dung at churchwardens.

  The door creaked open, and a sobbing whimpering girl was thrust in and left to sprawl painfully on the mud floor. Richard Baldwin followed, and Margery scanned his hard face shrewdly It was as she had expected. She had seen that pitiless chill in puritans before.

  Roger’s quiet questioning went on. Alizon faded into near silence, and Margery began to lose interest. Then suddenly her attention moved to the child at her side. She had seemed to be asleep and had certainly taken no interest in what had gone on; but now she was sitting up, neither sleepy nor nervous. From the straw that littered the room, she had picked a stalk of barley that seemed to have an ear or two of grain left in it; and she was now busily engaged in rubbing out these ears and eating them, raw and filthy as they were. Margery looked, and was a little shocked. But then she remembered what Demdike had said of a house without food since yesterday. If that were so, the child must be ravenous, and as Margery thought of that she remembered the bread and cheese that Tom Peyton had given her for her saddlebags.