The End

That morning Alice Nutter was up before dawn. She had slept for an hour or so because she wanted to remember what it is like to fall asleep. What it is like to wake up.

She wanted to remember the stretch of her body. The feeling of hunger. How it felt to breathe. She was leaving home. Her body was home. She wanted to say goodbye before they evicted her.

Roger Nowell came to her cell. He said, ‘Even now, if you would help us catch Christopher Southworth, I could –’

‘I could not,’ said Alice.

Roger Nowell looked at the floor. ‘Would you like to take Communion before you are executed?’

‘It is unnecessary.’

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘I should like my magenta dress.’

The dress was brought. She wiped her face and hair with the last drops of the elixir and smashed the bottle. She dressed. She took the tiny mirror she had made out of mercury and fastened it to Christopher Southworth’s crucifix. She hung the crucifix around her neck and under her dress.

She was ready.

The journey from Lancaster Gaol to the gallows east of the city was crowded. The mob were pelting and jeering, leering, mocking, and afraid too. Children were held high on their fathers’ shoulders. Old women in white, to show their virtue, sat at the front of the pulsing hordes, holding up lavender and hyssop.

There were boys with buckets of cat parts; paws, tails, ears, heads, entrails. The boys went up and down the lines letting people dip in and lift out some bloody and stinking offering to hurl at the cart.

Cow dung and blood, urine, vomit and human faeces were thrown from the upper windows of those buildings that lined the route.

And all the time people were clapping and singing. This was pleasure. This was a holiday.

At the Golden Lion there were jugs of beer. The Demdike had no relatives or friends to buy for them, because everyone they knew was being executed with them, except for Jennet Device. Someone had paid for their drink though, and Alice’s too. Wiping some of the filth away from their hands and faces, they drank.

Alice did not drink. She was looking out of the window. She could see a bird high in the cold morning. A steady circle of wings. It was her falcon.

The gallows were well made. The ropes were new. The drop was long. It would be quick. And then the bodies would be burned.

The first five of the women, and James Device, were led forward. Chattox and Elizabeth Device yelled curses at the mob who were pleased to see the show they had come for. James Device looked dazed and disbelieving. He was talking about a farm where he lived and where he was warm and dry and fed and soon to be married.

Alice watched the condemned as they were rough-handled onto the platform. The women struggled. Chattox was old and easy to subdue. Elizabeth Device had to be hit. The guard punched her in the face – blood ran from the cut above her eye. She was half unconscious. She was lucky. They were lined up.

Then it was quick.

Noose. Neck. Drop.

There was a roar from the crowd. James Device, tall and lanky, hadn’t been fully strangled by the drop. A man’s hand reached up from the front of the crowd and pulled Jem’s legs. Alice heard his neck snap.

Now it was her turn. She mounted the scaffold. She did not struggle. She asked that her hands be untied and this was granted.

The hangman was fitting the others one by one and each by each into the nooses. The clergyman was asking them if they repented of the grievous sin of witchcraft.

Alice heard John Dee’s voice in her head. ‘Choose your death or your death will choose you.’

It was not too late.

She lifted up her arm. The crowd beneath shouted out in fear. Was the witch cursing them? The men and women directly under the scaffold, jostling for the best view, turned and stumbled over those behind. Now there was a riot below. A man punched his neighbour and ran. A woman was trampled to death on the ground. The man who had pulled James Device by the legs and ended his misery was fighting to climb the scaffold.

Alice held up her arm, and from the sky faint with sun fell the falcon.

The bird dropped through the air, wheeled, swooped, landed straight on Alice’s arm. The crowd was screaming. No one dared approach her.

Alice stared into the crowd for a second. Her hair was white. She was much changed. But in the crowd there was a face she recognised who recognised her. She smiled her old smile. She looked young again.

She stretched back her neck, exposing the long line of her throat. The falcon flapped his wings to keep himself steady as he dug his feet into her collarbone to make a perch. His head dived forward in one swift movement. He severed her jugular vein.

In the chaos of what came next, the man jumped onto the scaffold and bent over Alice’s body, pulling away her dress. He lifted her head. She was wearing his crucifix. He took it off and swung it at the terrified crowd. ‘Here’s your witch – with a cross around her neck.’

‘Catch him!’ shouted Roger Nowell.

But in a bound Christopher Southworth was gone. In the terror of the crowd he could not be caught. His horse was waiting. He rode in one stretch from Lancaster to Pendle Forest. Then he tied his exhausted horse to eat and drink by the river and he climbed to the flat top of the hill. It was nearly not quite dark: the Daylight Gate.

*

He took the crucifix out of his pocket to hang it round his neck again, and it was then that he noticed the little leather case. He opened it; there was the tiny mirror made of mercury.

It was misty here. Cold now. He shivered. His breath clouded the mirror, then, as if by itself, the surface cleared. ‘Alice?’ he said, half fearful, half hopeful. He saw her face in the mirror.

He turned wildly. There was no one behind him.

The cold was intense, jagged. He felt like he was being cut.

They would come for him today, tomorrow or the next day.

He can hear voices. Men approaching. They are bringing nets and clubs to hunt him down like an animal. He crouches and crawls through the solid low mist where they cannot see him. His dark hair is white and dripping with mist. He is already a ghost.

Already, he knows, they will have burned her body. Already she is gone.

He squats and takes out his knife, folding back his cuffs from his wrists. Red against the white. If there is another life he will find her there.