Whilst the guards stood round, frozen as Gran, their torchlight illuminating her, the others stared, full dumbstruck. Annie Redfearn, Mouldheels, Meg Pearson, Alice Gray, and the Bulcocks gazed half in horror, half in awe, whilst Alice Nutter prayed and Mam sobbed and convulsed. Chattox keened over Gran as though they'd been sisters.
Our Jamie was too fevered to take notice of Gran's passing. I laid my hand upon his brow, which burned hot as a brand-iron.
"Bring him a blanket," I told the guards. "Or else you'll soon have another corpse on your hands."
Before they could think of what to say to that, in thundered Covell himself, panting and charging round like a mad dog. Gran, that blind old beldame, had clean escaped him. The most notorious witch of Pendle Forest had up and popped her clogs before he could strong-arm her into another, more damning confession. She'd cheated the hangman. Nowell would be furious to hear that Gran had died under Covell's watch. Her passing might put a damper upon the whole trial.
I ducked my head so Covell wouldn't see me smile at how Gran had bested him, ever the wily cunning woman.
Finally running out of curses, Covell ordered that Jamie be taken away for questioning, never mind that my brother was too weak to stand and had to be carried by two guards.
Chattox's hand found mine. "Let me tell you this before Covell comes for me. Your parents always did think the worst of me, but I swear upon your gran's body that I never cursed your father, Alizon."
Only feet away, Mam muttered in derision, but I knew from the breaking pain in Chattox's voice that she spoke from the heart. I shrank in shame to think how I'd given her the devil at the Holdens' gate, leaving her to limp away hungry and reviled, an old woman with nowt but clay to fill her belly. May God forgive my mean heart.
"The only one I ever wished to harm," she said, "was Robert Assheton and only on account of what he did to my Annie. She was just a girl then, hardly older than yourself."
The rumours I knew—how Chattox and her daughter had cursed their landlord's son after he tried to force himself on Annie. Against my will, I remembered my tussle with Nowell—how he'd shoved me into a corner, his hands voracious as the Devil's. By all accounts, Annie's ordeal had been far worse. How could I fail to understand the hard bargain her mother had struck? Gran would have done no less for me. My grandmother's wisdom and compassion filled me then, like purest well water filling a dry dusty bowl till it overflowed.
"I'm sorry I ever spoke against you," I swore to Chattox. "Can you forgive me?"
"It's gone well beyond that," she said. "We've no time left for grudges or misgivings."
When the guards delivered Jamie back into the dungeon, his jaw bloomed with bruises and his nose was flat and bloodied. As Mam and I bent over him, trying to still his panicked shaking, Covell summoned Chattox to be questioned. My eyes locked with hers before they dragged her off. I offered a silent prayer for her.
Hours later she was returned to us, blue in the lips and sagging so limp it looked as though she might soon go the same way as Gran. So Covell had little choice but to end the interrogations and command his men to bring us decent food, blankets, and fresh straw besides, for he didn't want any more of us escaping justice by dying before the August Assizes.
That very day, after Covell's men had borne away Gran's body, they brought us hot pottage in the place of cold gruel and small beer in place of the unclean water that made our bowels run. They gave us bread, only a day old and still soft to chew. The better rations were Gran's gift to us, and I whispered her name, full reverent, before breaking my piece off the loaf and passing it on as though it were communion bread. Bound together in our circle, we partook of Gran's invisible company. Her spirit quickened inside me, settling into my bones, and I knew that she bided with us, lingering close, ghost and angel, to look after us. When I slept, I fancied that her wraithlike hands stroked my hair and that she whispered in my ear, telling me to hold fast to my courage.
It was courage we needed. Chained to that ring in the floor, we couldn't stand, much less walk. Though we were given better food, paid for, as it turned out, by Alice Nutter, our muscles shrivelled from want of moving. We who lived became ghostly as Gran. Still we struggled along as best we could. Alice Nutter passed her hours in prayer, whilst Mouldheels and Alice Gray sang songs bawdy enough to make the guards blush. Jamie, ailing and weak, clapped his hands over his ears and said that his head would split from the racket. Old Meg Pearson was growing ever madder, raving as Jamie did though she'd no fever.
Chattox could not stop reminiscing about Gran, spinning yarns of the two of them in their younger days. She told me of a private feast she and Gran had once shared at Malkin Tower before I was born. The pair of them had supped upon roasted pheasant and roast beef, the finest cheeses, fresh bread and sweet butter, all washed down with wine and beer. I knew that out of love and yearning she was exaggerating, but I only encouraged her, for her fantastical tale gave me comfort. Her and Gran's familiars had waited upon them like servants, so Chattox said. A great number of dancing imps had lent their magical lights so that Malkin Tower at midnight had been as striking-bright as noontide upon Midsummer's Day, the light far-shining in the darkness.
A
T LONG LAST
came the August Assizes. For the first time in nearly five months, the guards unchained me from that ring on the floor. Up the long-winding stairs they heaved me whilst I hobbled as an old woman would do. Though I was the youngest imprisoned in the Well Tower, those months in shackles had left me almost as feeble as Chattox. Our Jamie was so wasted he could neither speak nor stand. Two strapping guards, it took, to bear my brother along, lugging his limp frame between them.
When they hauled us into the courtroom and lined us up at the bar, the sea of staring faces left me stunned. Our trial was public, open to any soul who could squeeze into that chamber. A fair wonder that those many bodies crushed together still had air to breathe, for the room sweltered in the August heat. Pointed at us and shouted, the onlookers did, as we shrank before them like underground creatures goaded into the daylight. After being manacled down the cold, dank Well Tower for so long, I toppled and swayed, fighting to keep my eyes open and bear the light upon my face.
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."