Jennet Device

It had grown dark in Malkin Tower as she sat on her own, wolfing the chicken and singing a lullaby. The head and the hand were her only company. The head said, ‘Jennet Device! They have all been taken to prison. Do you want them to return?’ Jennet shook her own head. ‘Make sure they do not,’ said the head.

She went and curled up in the clean bed that belonged to Old Demdike. She had never been allowed in here. Not even her mother had been allowed in here. She was safe behind the curtain when she heard Tom Peeper opening the door of the tower, calling for her. She kept quiet. She didn’t want the hard thing tonight. She was sore.

She heard him walking about. Then his footsteps stopped their pacing and he saw the head. She heard him swear. He was unsteady on his feet. He went towards the opening into the cellar. It was dark. He would fall in. She giggled. He stopped pacing. He was listening. ‘Jennet?’

He found her. He pulled back the curtain to her safe place. Picked her up in his damp arms. ‘Daddy fell in the pond but Daddy came back for his little girl. I’ve got a big bag of bread and cheese and apples and tarts from Roger Nowell’s kitchen, and we’ll live here safe and sound, just the two of us, Daddy and his little girl. Here, here.’ He was undoing his breeches. She didn’t want it in her mouth.

She slipped away from him and he came after her. The room was dark. She dodged sideways, and as he lunged to catch her, he fell through the open trap door into the cellar. She knew he had hurt himself.

Using all her small strength she pushed away the ladder off its mooring and down into the hole. Then she rolled her whole body under the trapdoor to move it, kneeling up with it, until by her greatest effort it reached the tipping point and banged down with a crash, sealing the cellar. There was a bolt. She shot it across the trapdoor into its keep. Then one leg by one leg she moved the rough heavy table over the trapdoor.

‘Good, Jennet,’ said the head. ‘Now go to sleep.’

Jennet nodded, took the little hand from in front of the head and went back to her bed. All night Tom Peeper shouted, and all the next day, and the days after that, and for quite a long time, she thought, as she ate her way through a week’s supply of food for two.

And then he didn’t shout any more.