Roger Nowell

Roger Nowell was a handsome man. He could read as well as he could ride. He liked a play as much as a cockfight. He was the Magistrate of Pendle Forest and the Master of Read Hall – the finest house in Pendle.

Old Demdike and her granddaughter Alizon had been dragged before him accused of maiming the pedlar John Law by witchcraft. Evidence against them was given by Mother Chattox. She had seen them that day at Boggart’s Hole.

But Old Demdike was wily, and she had turned and faced her accuser Chattox and accused her in turn of being a witch from the womb. Baptised twice – once for God and once for Satan. She bears the marks.

Since they were all shouting witchcraft at each other, and since John Law was on his deathbed, Roger Nowell had a choice: pack them off to Lancaster to await trail or hand them over to the mob for a ducking that would certainly have meant a drowning.

He was hoping to quieten things down by committing them to trial – he disliked the slavering excitement of the mob. But the sensational news of this nest of witches spread long past Lancashire and soon reached London. Roger Nowell was obliged to receive an unwelcome visitor at Read Hall: Thomas Potts of Chancery Lane – Recording Clerk for the Prosecution and the Crown.

‘What more do you want?’ asked Roger Nowell. ‘The Demdike and Chattox will be tried at the August Assizes. There is nothing more to say or to do and I would prefer to return to my regular duties when Easter is past.’

Potts fluffed himself up inside his ruff. He was a proud little cockerel of a man; all feathers and no fight. ‘King James is an authority on witchcraft. What other monarch has written his own book on the subject?’

‘Your point?’ said Roger Nowell.

‘My point, sir, is that if you had taken the trouble to read Daemonology you would understand what the King in his wisdom understands; that where there is one witch there are many. Here we have four witches –’

‘All in prison.’

‘The Demdike has family. Mother Chattox has family. Serpents, sir. I say it again – serpents.’

Potts preferred to say things again. And again and again. Roger Nowell controlled himself.

‘I have read King James’s Daemonology and much else besides on the subject of sorcery. My mother’s family was once afflicted by Demon Possession.’

‘So I had heard,’ said Potts.

‘So I say to you as Magistrate of the District of Pendle that four witches will stand trial. None else is accused.’

Potts stalked about the room. ‘Accused, no. At their filthy labours? Indeed! In all England no county is as known for its witches as Lancashire. The abbey at Whalley, before it was destroyed by King Henry the Eighth in his just and wise Reformation, had been the sacrilegious altar of the anchorite Isolde de Heton. Anchorite become sorceress.’

‘You have been studying our local history in your free time,’ said Roger Nowell.

Potts had no sense of irony. ‘And that lady Isolde – better call her a cat or a beldame than a lady – when she was discovered, she fled the abbey and made her fortress at Malkin Tower – now home to the witch Demdike.’

‘It has been a home to sheep and pigs in the years in between. The Demdike are remote from the villages out there and make less mischief than elsewhere. The land is owned by Alice Nutter. She is a widow. She may do as she pleases with her property.’

Potts regarded him with fury. He liked to be taken seriously. ‘It has been noted, sir, and by the highest in the realm, how slack you are in Lancashire to seek out and stamp out evil. Tomorrow is Good Friday. I am expecting a Sabbat on Pendle Hill.’

‘Are you?’ said Roger Nowell. ‘I shall be in church. At Whalley.’

He was pleased to see his visitor turn purple with indignation, but Potts was not giving up.

‘Since you take the evil of witchcraft so lightly, what have you to say on the other matter?’

Roger Nowell knew what was coming next.

Potts fluffed himself up again. ‘Have you forgotten that only six years ago, after the Gunpowder Plot that was set to claim the life of the lawful and crowned and God-anointed King, every conspirator to a man fled to Lancashire?’

Roger Nowell had not forgotten.

‘What is worse, sir? A High Mass or a Black Mass? To practise witchcraft or to practise the old religion? Both are high treason against the Crown. Witchery popery popery witchery. What is the difference?’

‘Are you saying that a Mass celebrated in the name of God is a profanity? Equal to the Black Mass of the Prince of Darkness?’

‘They are both diabolical,’ said Potts. ‘Treasonable and diabolical. Diabolical and –’

‘Treasonable,’ said Roger Nowell.

‘I am glad we are agreed on that at least,’ said Potts. ‘For while so little has been done to wipe the stain of witchcraft from these lands, less has been done to prosecute those who are loyal to the King in name only and yet follow the old religion.’

‘If you mean Sir John Southworth . . .’

‘I do,’ said Potts.

‘He pays his fines as a Catholic recusant for not attending Anglican Communion and he does no harm. He is not a Jesuit. He is an old man who follows his conscience quietly. He celebrates no Mass and he hides no priests. Besides, he is my friend.’

Potts looked up at his host beadily. ‘You do not choose your friends with care, sir.’

‘I have known him all my life,’ said Roger Nowell.

‘And his son, Christopher Southworth? The Jesuit?’

Roger Nowell was uncomfortable. This was difficult.

‘Christopher Southworth is a traitor – granted. If he were here I would arrest him – friendship with his father notwithstanding. But he escaped from prison after his part in the Gunpowder Plot. He is in France. You know that.’

‘I know he is training priests under Father Gerard at Douai and sending them in secret to England. The English Mission is paid for and protected by the Pope himself.’

‘I had heard as much. Then catch him in France.’

‘We have tried. In a Catholic country we are hardly likely to succeed.’

‘Then give up,’ said Roger Nowell.

Potts’s small eyes widened. ‘Give up? The reward is vast. And think of the glory. The advancement. If I were instrumental in the capture of Christopher Southworth, King James would raise me up.’

Roger Nowell would gladly have raised Potts up and thrown him on the fire. Instead he forced himself to speak reasonably.

‘Christopher Southworth is a traitor but not a fool. If he set foot in Lancashire I would know it within a day. He will never return here.’

‘He might,’ said Potts. ‘I have had his sister arrested.’

Roger Nowell was taken aback. ‘Jane? She is Protestant! She is the one Southworth who has renounced the old religion – Sir John won’t speak to her – you can hardly arrest her for –’

‘For witchcraft,’ said Potts.

‘But that is foolery!’

‘You take it all too lightly it seems to me. She has been accused of causing mortal sickness by sticking pins into a poppet. Her maid fell ill like to die. The maid’s mother found the poppet pinned and bristling like a hedgehog. Jane Southworth has been arrested.’

‘House arrest?’

‘She is in Lancaster Castle.’

‘With the Demdike and Chattox?’

Before Roger Nowell could press Potts more on this, Harry Hargreaves was shown in.

Constable Hargreaves began to explain in his slow lumbering way about Sarah Device and Alice Nutter. Roger Nowell could barely contain his irritation. He wasn’t listening. He didn’t like Alice Nutter but he was hardly going to accuse her of witchcraft. He was far more concerned about Potts and the Southworths.

Potts was delighted by Hargreaves’s news. He was all for them riding out to Malkin Tower right away, but Hargreaves had some further interest to add.

‘My spies have reported a band of persons travelling through the forest – unknowns – vagrants they could be, yes, begging for alms at Easter – or they could be to do with the Good Friday Black Mass that we have suspicions of tomorrow, on Pendle Hill.’

Potts rejoiced at this possibility and ordered Hargreaves to get him some men. They would go to the top of Pendle Hill and lie in wait.

Roger Nowell was relieved to see them leave together. Potts couldn’t have arrived in Lancashire at a more inconvenient time. Witchcraft did not interest Roger Nowell; superstition and malice, he thought. He had spies of his own at work and he was waiting for other news.