Malkin Tower: Good Friday 1612

It was a strange, wild, ragged group of men and women beginning to arrive at Malkin Tower.

Mouldheels had walked from Colne, begging, cursing and spitting all the way, trailing her familiar stink behind her, and bringing no broomstick with her, only a cat as clean as his mistress was rotten. Mouldheels had flesh that fell off her as though it were cooked. And her feet stank of dead meat. Today they were wrapped in rags already beginning to ooze.

There was pretty Margaret Pearson from Padiham, getting food from her favours given to farmhands. The Puritan who owned the mill called her a ditch-trollop and beat her if she came round looking for barley. But his son never turned her away. Fornication was a sin but not with a witch who had put a spell on you.

John and Jane Bulcock were there; some said they were husband and wife, others said brother and sister though they slept in the same bed.

Old Demdike’s disfigured daughter Elizabeth had called the meeting. Her son James, ‘Jem’ Device, had stolen a sheep to roast for the feast.

And there was the little girl Jennet Device, vicious, miserable, underfed and abused. Her brother took her with him to the Dog to pay for his drink. Tom Peeper liked his sexual conquests to be too young to fall pregnant.

The tower had not been so busy for a long time. The table was roughed out of a few planks set on trestles and there were no plates. The mutton spitting above the smoking fire was torn off the carcass and served straight onto the table. Each person had brought a cup to be filled with ale.

Malkin Tower was a squat stone round of a building, soundly constructed and strangely placed, alone and remote, with no purpose anyone could remember, and no inhabitants anyone ever knew but for the family they called the Demdike.

The tower might have been a prison – it stood like one, grim and windowless, except for slits that looked east and west, north and south, like narrow suspicious eyes. There was a stagnant moat around the tower, filled with thick green algae. The sun did not shine here.

It was nearly noon, and there were eleven of them present when Alice Nutter rode up with Sarah Device walking beside her. Squint-eyed Elizabeth came out to meet them. She bowed briefly. ‘Mistress Nutter!’

Alice acknowledged her but without warmth. ‘Sarah was on her way to me yesterday, bringing a message from you, she says, when she fell foul of Tom Peeper and Constable Hargreaves. My advice to you and your family is to stay away from either man.’

The child Jennet came out of the tower. Bare feet. Ragged dress. Pinched and starved, she gnawed jealously on a piece of fatty mutton, like a wilder thing than a child.

Alice Nutter dismounted her pony and took loaves, butter, apples and a large cheese from her saddlebag. She gave them to Elizabeth. ‘When did that child last eat?’

‘Three days ago, like the rest of us. The parson calls Lent a fast, for it suits the church to starve the poor. I begged from the church and the parson said that a fast did a woman good. I answered that I must be the goodliest woman in Pendle.’

Alice tossed Jennet her own bread and cheese. The child made off with them into the bushes.

‘What is it you want from me?’ asked Alice.

‘Please to come inside, Mistress.’

It was a strange sight. It was a strange company.

The dinner guests were smeared in grease and fat. The rough plank table now had the remains of the sheep carcass in the centre, a hacking knife stuck into its middle. Most of the sheep had been eaten. There was a jug of ale on the floor and a pot of turnips steeping over the fire.

As Alice entered, the company stood up and bowed to her.

Elizabeth Device was behind her, with Sarah Device. ‘Now we are gathered thirteen,’ she said.

Alice Nutter began to realise what this was about. ‘I am not one of your thirteen,’ she said.

She turned to leave. Jem Device was behind her at the door. He was leaning on it, a rough axe in his hand. Alice looked around. The tower had no other door and no other means of escape. She was aware of a powerful smell of rot.

‘I called this meeting,’ said Elizabeth Device, ‘that all of us here might free my mother Demdike and my daughter Alizon from Lancaster Castle. I will even free the Chattox if they will help us.’

Agnes Chattox nodded her head.

‘What has this to do with me?’ said Alice. ‘If you wish me to speak with Roger Nowell on your behalf I will do so. Not because you are witches, but because you are not. Witchcraft is superstition.’

There was a murmur round the table. Elizabeth spoke again.

‘Alice Nutter. My mother, Old Demdike, knew you well, do you deny it?’ Alice did not reply. Elizabeth continued. ‘You were her friend once, in better times, in times forgotten. You have the gift of magick and you learned it from the Queen’s own magician, John Dee.’

‘John Dee is dead,’ said Alice. ‘He was not a magician, he was a mathematician.’

‘And Edward Kelley? Was he a mathematician too?’

Alice was surprised. Edward Kelley was the most famous of the mediums and spirit-raisers. He had been an intimate of John Dee in Manchester and at Mortlake. He had been Alice Nutter’s lover too. Many years ago. He was long dead.

‘What do you want from me?’ said Alice again.

‘Blow up the gaol at Lancaster and free Old Demdike and Alizon and the Chattox and her daughter Nance Redfern. Spirit them away. It is not too much for a woman of your magick and we here will serve you as we served Old Demdike.’

‘I never served Old Demdike,’ shouted Agnes Chattox.

‘The general point is good,’ said Elizabeth. ‘And as for you, Agnes Chattox, will you or won’t you serve Mistress Nutter?’

‘I will if she can make a spell.’

‘I cannot make a spell,’ said Alice. ‘I have no magick.’

‘Then how did you come by your money? Then how did you come by your youth? Look at you, unlined and strong, and yet you are not so much younger than Old Demdike and she is eighty.’

The company was astonished. Alice was uneasy yet she kept calm. ‘I am not the age you reckon. I knew your mother when I was young and she had her own ways of seeming youthful. It was that Demdike had youth when others had age, not that I had age and now I have youth.’

This answer was sufficiently confusing, and the company were all convinced of the powers of Old Demdike. Then Jem Device began kicking the door with his heel. ‘Make her do it, make her swear!’

The rest at the table began banging the table in rhythm with Jem’s kicking. ‘Make her do it, make her swear, make her do it, make her swear!’ The pounding and the chanting got louder and wilder. They were drunk already and now they were intoxicating themselves with the thought of power.

Jem Device came round to the table and threw down his axe. He took out a knife and held it out to his mother.

‘Take her blood – make her swear.’

Elizabeth was white. ‘I cannot take her, Jem. She is too powerful.’

‘She is not too powerful to bleed,’ shouted Jem. He came up fast on Alice with his little knife and slashed her arm. She bled.

The blood seeped through her sleeve and began to drip onto the floor. The assembled company scrambled towards it, wiping it with their hands, licking their fingers. Alice felt like she was being attacked by rats, and the more she pushed the more they crowded.

Alice was in danger and she knew she had only one chance. She took it. She shouted, ‘Get on your knees!’

The company fell back, afraid. Alice repeated her command and, taking the knife from James Device, still standing, she told him to kneel before her. He did so.

Alice Nutter did not hesitate. She pulled open his shirt and scored a triangle in blood opening it out to make a shallow bleeding pentagram on his bare chest. He was trembling with terror.

‘James Device, you will answer to me, your mistress, in all that you do, and if you do not, Satan will take your soul. Do you hear me?’

‘Yes, Mistress.’

‘Feed on him.’

She stood back as the company fell on James as they had on her. He was covered in them, like leeches, like bats. Only Elizabeth and Sarah did not do it.

‘You will lead us then?’ said Elizabeth.

Before Alice could answer there was a fierce banging at the door. The creatures feeding on James Device stopped their foul meal and pulled themselves up. The banging came again.

‘Open this tower in the name of the Magistrate.’

Alice made a gesture with her hand for everyone to resume their places. James tied his shirt at the neck. Alice stood back. Elizabeth opened the door.

Outside stood Roger Nowell, Constable Hargreaves and Tom Peeper.