Mist Over Pendle
Page 41
“Neither does absence at Lathom,” he added. “It’s all one when there’s talk of a spirit sitting.” He looked at Margery and saw that she had finished writing. “Bring the woman in.”
Hargreaves moved quickly to obey, and Richard Baldwin went zealously with him. Margery looked round her, at Roger and Nick Banister impassive at the table; at Jemmy and his mother, watched warily by Wilsey and Tom Peyton; and at Frank, stiff and silent by the wall. For a moment he had the ghost of a smile for her. Then the door opened, and Alice Nutter came in between the two men; and at sight of Roger her face went chalky; a slower wit than hers would have read the menace in his eyes.
“There’s further matter against you,” he said curtly. “Read it to her.”
Margery obeyed stiffly, and she felt her voice shake as she read the formal sentences.
“Good God! What’s here?”
It came savagely, cutting through Margery’s level tones like a scream in the night; and smooth and level came Roger’s answer. “Matter to hang a witch,” he said. “Witch! Are you mad?”
“Ask Sir Edward Bromley. He has a way with witches. Make me the Mittimus.”
“I was not there.” She almost screamed it at him. “When Mitton died I was---”
“Telling tales at Lathom. We’ve cause to know those tales, and you’ll tell no more of them. You’ve tarried overlong in Pendle. Take her out.”
She shrieked as they closed on her, and there was livid murder in her eyes. But the hard-faced puritan had her by the arm as the papist Constable took the other, and between them they spun her round. Frank moved watchfully behind as they tugged her out.
Margery forced her attention to the Mittimus as she wrote it in the ancient form; and before she had ended, the uproar had died and Jemmy and his mother had been taken after Alice Nutter. She finished, and then looked up at the quiet room. Nick Banister was sitting impassively, and Roger was standing by the hearth.
“What’s set against her?”
She sanded the paper and then read it to him slowly:
“. . . she did feloniously practise exercise and use her devilish and wicked arts, called witchcrafts enchantments charms and sorceries, in and upon Henry Mitton; and him the said Henry Mitton by force of the same witchcrafts feloniously did kill and murder, contra formam statutiin huic casu nuper edicti et provisi: et contra pacem Domini Regis, Coronam et Dignitatem suas.”
Margery’s voice died away, and Roger nodded approval.
“It will serve her need,” he said shortly. “Nick, I think we should see them horsed.”
“Aye,” said Nick soberly. He went out with Roger, and Margery was left alone.
She came slowly to her feet and stared unseeing at the open door, her mind on the assizes that would come to Lancaster, and on what must follow on a windy moorland there. She stirred uneasily, knowing that for good or ill it was done, and that it might not have been done if she had not come to Pendle. Then he: eyes came back to the present, and to the goose-quill in her hand She looked and shuddered; almost she could see blood on the thing, and she ran to the hearth and thrust it into the fire that Richard had kindled in his anger; and when it scorched and curled and twisted into sizzling black there were faces in the smoke-- Demdike and Alizon and Alice Nutter.
Margery turned away, shuddering; and Frank, coming in search of her, found her cling to him as never before. Neither of them heard footsteps in the doorway.
“God’s Grace!” said Roger, and stood in staring silence.
His friend’s hand was on his shoulder.
“Surely,” said Nick Banister.
The End
Table of Contents
MIST OVER PENDLE
Chapter 1: THE CUCKOO CHILD
Chapter 2: THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN
Chapter 3: THE BROODING HILL
Chapter 4: CANDLE LIGHT
Chapter 5: THE ROUGH LEE
Chapter 6 THE PURITAN
Chapter 7: THE DEMDIKE BROOD
Chapter 8: DARK ELEGANCE
Chapter 9: THE KING’S JUSTICE
Chapter 10: UNDERCURRENTS
Chapter 11: THE CHAPEL-OF-EASE
Chapter 12: THE MILL AT WHEATHEAD
Chapter 13: THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER
Chapter 14: THE FATES ARE THREE
Chapter 15: THE EVE OF ALL HALLOWS
Chapter 16: THE ENGLISH MISSION
Chapter 17: THE LADY BOUNTIFUL
Chapter 18: AMBITION’S TRACK
Chapter 19: MARTINMAS
Chapter 20: THE GENTLEMAN FROM LATHOM
Chapter 21: THE SCENT OF EVIL
Chapter 22: THE DARK HOUSE OF NUTTER
Chapter 23: CLOUDS OVER WHEATHEAD
Chapter 24: THE BREAKING STORM
Chapter 25: AFTERMATH
Chapter 26: TAFFETA AND VELVET
Chapter 27: THE TRAVELLER BY NIGHT
Chapter 28: “TO DRIVE AWAY SORROW”
Chapter 29: THE SECRET COLD
Chapter 30: EAST WIND IN PENDLE
Chapter 31: CANDLEMAS
Chapter 32: COLD COMFORTS
Chapter 33: THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH
Chapter 34: THE STRICKEN PEDLAR
Chapter 35: EASTER DUTIES
Chapter 36: CHARITY AND SILENCE
Chapter 37: MOON-KISSED
Chapter 38: THE STEWARD’S ROOM