An Eye for an Eye

The speediest way to take a man’s life away by witchcraft is to make a Picture of Clay, like unto the shape of a person whom they mean to kill, and dry it thoroughly; and when they would have them to be ill in any one place more than another, then take a thorne or a pinne and prick it in that part of the Picture you would so have to be ill; and when you would have any part of the body to consume away, then take that part of the Picture and burne it. And when they would have the whole body to consume away, then take the remnant of the said Picture and burne it; and thereupon by that means, the Body shall die. The same can be wrought by means of a Doll or Poppet.

Elizabeth Device was in the cellar of Malkin Tower. She was tending a cauldron coming to the boil over a dirty fire. A rough altar, a pair of sulphurous candles and a skeleton still chained to where its owner’s body had left it, completed the furnishings of the cellar.

Mouldheels was nearby, busily sewing the legs onto a headless doll.

There was a shout from outside. Elizabeth Device went across the cellar and dragged away a large stone from a small hole. Fast as a ferret, Jennet Device crawled through, a small cloth bag in her mouth.

Her mother emptied the bag of teeth onto the altar. She gave Jennet a scrap of bread. While her daughter was eating, Elizabeth unwrapped from a cloth the severed head from the graveyard. Then she laid out Robert Preston’s tongue.

‘Mouldheels! Sew the tongue into this head. The teeth are going into the pot. I have used everything. All of Demdike’s stored arts must be used for the spell.’

‘What do you do?’ asked the child.

‘What do I do? I’ll tell you what I do. That poppet Mouldheels is finishing will serve to injure Roger Nowell until he cries for mercy. We have no clay but we have rags enough to make a doll like your grandmother showed you, didn’t she? With the pins and the thorns?’

The child nodded.

‘And we will cause this severed head to speak. A spirit will speak through it and guide us.’

Mouldheels had the grisly half-rotted head on her knee. ‘Jennet! Hold open this mouth while I do my sewing.’

Jennet came and pulled open the slack blue mouth of the corpse-head. ‘There’s a worm in there, Auntie.’

Mouldheels looked. ‘Worms everywhere, poppet, we live as best we may in a world of worms, but wait till this good head speaks.’

Elizabeth was back at her pot. ‘Jem didn’t come back. You seen him, Jennet?’

The child looked away. ‘He was frightened in the churchyard. He left the teeth.’

‘Where did he go, Jennet?’

The child shrugged and concentrated on the damp empty sockets of the head. Mouldheels was sewing the tongue to what was left of the roof of the mouth by making big stitches through what was left of the nose. ‘Not much to anchor my line here,’ she said. ‘Lucky we had a fresh tongue. The tongue rots first. And the eyes o’course.’

‘What is the pot for, Ma?’

‘Nothing to eat if you were thinking it so. When the head is ready we shall boil it in the pot and then we shall boil the doll in the pot so that our spell is good on both.’

‘What did you put in it? Sheep brain?’

‘No, child. I made the sacrifice and used the baby in the bottle.’

The child Jennet let out a great wail, so much so that the trapdoor above was pulled back for a second and someone called to see what was the harm.

‘That was my toy.’

‘It was your toy, I know it well, and I had to smash the bottle to get the baby out, but she will set us all free and give us power and then you will get another toy as much as you like,’

‘I shall have nowt to talk to now the baby is boiled.’

‘You will talk to the Head, my dearie, and the Head will talk to you. The baby couldn’t talk, could she?’

Tears running down her filthy face, Jennet shook her head. She was a sad sight, dirty and torn and bruised, her blonde hair in knots, her skin calloused from crawling and hiding. ‘I gived you the tongue of Robert Preston from under the bush. You said you’d give me something for it.’

‘And I will!’ said her mother. ‘Soon all this will change.’

Mouldheels had finished her gruesome sewing. The swollen black tongue protruded from the mouth cavity of the head.

She plunged the head into the stew. The cauldron boiled over in a sickening froth.

Mouldheels came forward and taking the doll she had made, she pierced it through with a sharp stick and baptised it in the cauldron: ‘In his likeness it is moulded, he shall die.’ And she plunged the doll under the scummy water. It shrieked.

Elizabeth pushed Mouldheels aside, and with a pair of heavy tongs she fished in the boiling brew for the head, lifted it out and set it to drain. Much of what had remained of the decomposing flesh had been scalded off into the pot. The head retained a few strands of hair and its new tongue. It sat on the altar, steaming as the water fell from it.

The stench in the cellar was so bad that the company assembled above began to complain. Elizabeth got on the wormy ladder and poked her head into the room. ‘When you are free and Roger Nowell is dead you will not complain. And when we are free we shall fly to Lancaster Castle where the Dark Gentleman will reward us for our pains.’

‘We cannot do it without Old Demdike or without Mistress Nutter,’ said one.

But Elizabeth was blazing now. ‘I have claimed the power. I shall lead you. My proof will be the proof of my Spell.’ She went back down into her lair. ‘Mouldheels, bring up the head.’

Mouldheels took a cloth and wrapped the damp head in it. Elizabeth climbed the ladder into the round room of Malkin Tower and reached down for the head. As it was produced, the company gasped.

‘Yea,’ said Elizabeth, ‘now you see me. I have made the head that not even Demdike could make. The head will speak to you, confirm my power, and guide us from this place.’

She placed the head on the plank-board table.

‘At sunset it will speak. In Demdike’s name it will speak.’

In the cellar Jennet Device was poking in the cauldron for the remains of her bottled baby. She found a tiny hand and put it carefully in her dress pocket.