Spook's Stories: Witches, The Page 3

  This time the village women resorted to violence. Over a dozen of them seized her in the market square. Bill Battersby told me later that she'd fought with fists like a man, but also scratched like a cat, almost blinding the ringleader of the women. Finally they struck her down from behind with a cobblestone and, once felled, she was bound tightly with ropes.

  Only a silver chain can hold a witch for long, but they rushed her down to the pond and, after breaking the ice with stones, threw her into the deep cold water. If she drowned, they would accept that she was innocent of witchcraft; if she floated they'd have the satisfaction of burning her.

  Meg did float, but face down, and after five minutes or so became very still in the water. The women were satisfied that she had drowned and didn't really have the stomach for burning her anyway. So they left her where she was.

  It was Battersby who pulled her out of the pond. By rights she should have been dead, but Meg was incredibly tough. To his amazement, she soon began to twitch and splutter, coughing up water onto the muddy bank. He brought her back to my house across the back of his pony. She looked a sorry sight, but in hours she was fully recovered and soon started to plot her revenge.

  I'd already thought long and hard about what needed to be done. I could cast her out; let her take her own chances in the world. But that would have broken my heart, because I still loved her. And I had to make allowances because it wasn't all Meg's fault. You see, she was an exceptionally pretty woman and it was natural that men should be attracted to her. The temptations for her were consequently greater than for most women, I told myself.

  My knowledge of a special herb tea seemed to be the answer. It is possible to administer this to keep a witch in a deep sleep for many months. If the dose is reduced, she can even walk and talk - though it impairs the memory, making the witch forget her knowledge of the dark arts. So this was the method I decided to use.

  It was very difficult to get the dosage right, and painful to see Meg so docile and mild, her fiery spirit (something that had attracted me to her in the first place) now subdued. So much so that, at times, she seemed a stranger to me. The worst time of all was when I decided to leave her alone in my Anglezarke house and returned to Chipenden for the summer. It had to be done lest the law catch up with her. There was still a danger that she might be hanged at Caster. So I locked her in a dark room off the cellar steps in so deep a trance that she was hardly breathing.

  'Farewell, Meg,' I whispered into her ear. 'Dream of the garden at Chipenden where we were so happy. I'll see you in the autumn.'

  As for her sister, Marcia, despite my former promise to Meg, I hired a mason and smith and had her bound in a pit in the cellar. I had no choice. I could not take the risk that she might eventually break through the iron gate. Without human companionship or contact with a domestic lamia, she would slowly shift her shape until she became feral again. And she wouldn't starve. She would never run out of rats - they could always be relied on.

  I left for Chipenden with a heavy heart. Although I'd experimented through the winter, I still worried whether or not I'd got Meg's dose of herb tea right. Too much and she might stop breathing; too little and she could wake up alone in that dark cell with many long weeks to wait until my return. So I spent our enforced separation riddled with sorrow and anxiety.

  Fortunately I had calculated the dosage correctly and returned late the following autumn just as Meg was beginning to stir. It was hard for her, but at least she didn't hang, and the County was spared the harm she could have inflicted.

  But a lesson must be learned from this, one that my apprentices should note carefully. A spook should never become romantically involved with a witch; it compromises his position and draws him dangerously close to the dark. I have fallen short in my duty to the County more than once, but my relationship with Meg Skelton was my greatest failing of all. This is a tale that had to be told and I'm glad the telling is over.

  Always beware a woman who wears pointy shoes!

  DIRTY

  DORA

  MY NAME IS Dirty Dora Deane and I'm a dead witch.

  Some call me Dirty because I spit thick slimy gobs of spittle to mark my territory. But I'm bad, not mad; have a reason for all I do. When I sniff that spit, I know I'm home and safe in the dell. Sniff it in the dark, I can, when I'm crawling back on my hands and knees.

  Although I'm cold and dead now, and live under the rotting leaves in Witch Dell, I'm still strong enough to leave it and I want to tell my tales while I still can. Most nights I hunt for blood, but once or twice a week I go back to our cosy cottage, where my sister, Aggy, still lives. We chat together about the old times while my damp clothes steam in front of the fire; then, after Aggy has combed the beetles out of my hair, I spend a bit of time jotting down my memories. It's not easy because I find it difficult to remember what happened and I want to get it all down before it's all gone out of my mind - or I can't write no more. Don't know which will happen first. Never can tell with us dead witches. Sometimes the mind goes completely. Then again, it could be my hands that drop off so that I can't hold a pen. More than one dead witch crawls round the dell with pieces of her body missing. One ain't even got a head!

  Now I only remember three things properly. Three chunks - that's all. The rest has gone.

  I'll start by telling you about my sabbaths. The ones I enjoyed as a girl and a young woman.

  The four main ones are Candlemas, Walpurgis, Lammas and Halloween. They're the nights when the Pendle witches meet. Not together, mind. The different clans don't see eye to eye; they gather in different places. We Deanes usually meet on the outskirts of our village and build a big fire. The thirteen members of the coven form a circle around it, warming their hands. Other witches from the clan stand further back, according to their age and power.

  We kill a lamb first, slitting its throat and covering our hands and faces with its warm blood. Once its carcass has been thrown into the fire, we start with curses, shrieking them up into the sky to fly out towards our enemies or make their bodies wither and rot. Exciting, it is. Loved that more than anything when I was young.

  But Halloween was always my favourite sabbath because that was when the Fiend sometimes paid a visit. Got lots of names, he has. Some call him Old Nick, but people who ain't witches usually call him the Devil.

  Didn't stay long, but it was good just to get a glimpse of him. Most witches want to see the Fiend at least once in their lives. Big, he was. Very big, with a tail, hooves and lovely glossy black hair all over his body. And what a lovely stink he gave out - ranker than a tom-cat. He'd appear right in the middle of the flames, and the coven members would reach out their hands to touch and stroke him, not caring about burning their arms.

  I remember the night it all went wrong though. The night when an enemy stole into our gathering. Nobody saw it coming. Nobody sniffed it out. The Fiend had just appeared in the flames and all our eyes were on him, not on what was dashing out of the darkness straight towards the fire.

  It was a wild woman, her hair flying behind her as she ran. She carried three blades - one in each hand, the third gripped between her teeth. She burst right through to the edge of the flames before anyone could stop her, and threw a blade straight at the Fiend. I heard him scream; a shriek that split the sky above with forked lightning and made the stones groan beneath our feet.

  But she wasn't satisfied with that. Twice more she threw her blades. I wasn't close enough to see, but they told me later that all three reached their target: the first one stuck in his chest, the second in his throat, and the third went up to the hilt in the left cheek of his hairy arse. The latter would have been the worst for sure, but he turned away at the last moment.

  Why he didn't kill her on the spot nobody knows -certainly not we Deanes. The Fiend simply vanished, and the fire died down and went out in an instant, plunging us all into darkness. That was how the mad knifewoman made her escape.

  We raked three blades out of the embers of the fire. E
ach one was tipped with silver. We used our best scryers, but we couldn't find out who the madwoman was or where she'd gone. She'd cloaked herself in powerful magic.

  Later we sent assassins after her, three in all, over the space of a few days. Not one of them came back, and then the trail went cold and even the best trackers couldn't find her. The Fiend didn't appear to us for five years after that. It was a bad time. Really bad. Our magic was weak or didn't work at all, and some of our coven died of wasting diseases. They say it was the Fiend taking his revenge on us because we hadn't taken enough precautions against an intruder; we hadn't kept him safe.

  Why she did it nobody knows - at least, perhaps some do but, if so, they ain't saying. Got a glimpse of her face as she passed me sprinting towards the fire.

  She was young, hardly more than a girl… somehow, I felt I knew her. Seen her somewhere before. Almost had her name. Almost. It was on the tip of my tongue…

  They were good times until then. I miss being part of that big happy group. Most of all I miss the cursing and seeing the Fiend. Who knows, if I'd lived long enough, I might have become one of the coven and got to stroke the Fiend myself. But that wasn't to be. The mad girl spoiled all that.

  And there was something else. Didn't see it coming, but my life was almost over.

  We are all fated. All doomed. What is written will be. We witches can sniff out the future, see dangers approaching. But few of us see our own doom coming. I certainly didn't…

  Over seventy years ago, even before my mother was born, a quisitor called Wilkinson arrived in Pendle. Wanted to deal with the clans once and for all, so he brought priests, wardens and thirty special constables. And they were all armed to the teeth and keen to kill witches.

  Made his base in Downham, he did, and started to arrest suspected witches from all three clan villages -Goldshaw Booth, Roughlee and Bareleigh. Not all clan members are witches though, and he tried to sort them out using different tests. He swam a dozen of them. Three drowned and another died of fever afterwards. Another three sank but were dragged out barely alive. The five who floated were tried, found guilty and hanged at Caster Castle. But swimming never works, and only one of them was really a witch. Not that it bothered Wilkinson much anyway. He was a nasty, greedy man. He seized their houses and possessions, sold them and kept the money.

  After that he arrested lots more - mainly Malkins. Tested them with a bodkin this time; jabbed its sharp blade into their flesh until he found what he called 'the Devil's Mark', a place where he said they couldn't feel any pain. All nonsense of course, but they say that he enjoyed his work.

  However, the clans weren't going to stand for that. Not them. So they banded together in a temporary truce and collected their dead. Buried them under the loam in Witch Dell with the others. Somehow Wilkinson and his men were tricked into passing through the dell. Don't know how they did it. Nobody seems to remember that.

  It happened after dark, as they were travelling back to Downham. The dead witches were lying in wait, desperate for blood.

  Wilkinson survived, but over half his party were slaughtered. Their bodies were recovered later - but in broad daylight, of course, with the bright sun over head. All the dead had been drained of blood and their thumb-bones were missing.

  The quisitor was in fear for his own life, so he made a hasty retreat from the district. But they weren't finished with him yet, were they. The Malkin clan used a powerful curse, and within thirteen months every last one of Wilkinson's men was dead, including him. Some died in accidents; others just vanished from the face of the earth - probably victims of witch assassins. Wilkinson's own death was particularly horrible. His nose and fingers fell off and his ears turned black and withered away. Scared of dying but scared of living, he was too. So he tried to hang himself but failed when the rope gave way. Driven mad with pain, he drowned himself in a local pond. So the clans' revenge was complete. Didn't think anyone would ever try it again.

  Became too sure of ourselves, we did. All of us - me included. Well, I paid the price for that and no mistake. Didn't see my own doom coming, did I?

  One morning I was begging at a farm gate on the outskirts of Downham. This was the third time I'd been back in less than a week and I'd scared that old farmer good and proper - threatened to make his crops fail and his livestock be struck down with foot and mouth. The first time I'd just asked for eggs; the second, a leg of lamb; but this time I'd come for his hoard of coins.

  Farmers are always moaning and crying poverty, but most of them have got something squirreled away. I want money this time,' I told him. 'Nothing less will do…'

  I have no money he protested. I can scarcely make ends meet. You've already taken the food out of my children's mouths…'

  'Ah, you have children,' I said, giving him a wicked grin. 'I do hope they thrive! How many have you?'

  At that his hands began to shake and his bottom lip to tremble like a withered leaf in an autumn gale. I could tell that he really loved those children of his.

  'Two girls,' he said, 'and another child on the way'

  'You're a bit old to be a father. Got a young wife, have you?'

  There was a movement in the doorway and a woman came out into the late evening light and started to peg out her washing. She was less than half his age but a bit of a dumpling and not at all pretty.

  'Give me your money or it'll be the worse for you,' I threatened.

  The farmer shook his head, his expression a mixture of despair and defiance. He was on the fence now and didn't know which way to jump, so I made up his mind for him.

  'Wouldn't want anything to happen to that little defenceless unborn your wife's carrying in her belly, would you? And what about her? Is she strong? What if she were to die in childbirth? How would you manage this farm alone as well as raising young children?'

  'Be off with you!' he cried, raising his stick.

  'Give you a chance, I will. Be back tomorrow at the same time. Don't want all your money - I'm not greedy. Half will do. Have it ready or suffer the consequences!'

  Should have sniffed out what was coming. A stinky wind blows from the future, but I didn't even get a whiff.

  Next evening the old farmer was waiting for me at the gate but his hands were empty. Where was my bag of coins? I wondered angrily.

  'Made a big mistake, you have!' I warned him, curling my lip. 'Got a nasty curse ready for you, old man. I'll make the flesh drop off your young wife's bones…'

  He didn't reply. Not only that, he didn't even look scared. Well, maybe just a bit nervous, but not what I'd expected. I opened my mouth to begin the curse, but suddenly heard footsteps behind, running towards me. I turned and saw half a dozen big men with clubs approaching, spread out in a big arc and cutting off any hope of escape.

  Right! I'd show him. I leaped the gate and ran past the farmer towards the house. His wife was inside -and, even better, his children. I'd take them hostage; use them to make my escape. I slipped my sharp knife - the blade I used to take thumb-bones - down my sleeve into my left hand to be ready. Let 'em know I meant business. I'd almost reached the back door when I was brought to a sudden halt.

  A man was standing just inside; behind him lurked another one holding a large stick. Swaggering confidently, they both came out into the yard in front of me. By then other men were climbing over the gate behind me, and within moments they'd surrounded me. I tried to fight, I really did. I spun and slashed at them with my knife, but there were too many of them and the blows they dealt were savage. One of the first knocked the knife from my hand; then they rained down on my back and shoulders. I crouched low, trying to cover my head, but they found it eventually. There was a flash of light and then darkness.

  I was the first they captured that day. In the end five of us were tested down at the pond. By chance I'd chosen to beg from that farm on the very day that a witchfinder had called at Downham; the first such visit to Pendle by a quisitor since the days of Wilkinson. The farmer had gone to warn him and then the
y'd set their trap and awaited my return.

  How come I chose that day and that place? It was my doom. It had been fated to happen.

  Swimming is terrifying. We witches can't cross running water but lakes and ponds are usually no problem. I'd even been known to kneel at the water's edge and wash myself once in a while. Not in winter though - far too cold then. Dirt keeps out the winter chills.

  But it's very different when your hands are tied to your feet. I was the third they swam that cold January afternoon. The first woman floated. She was just a clan member and lacked the craft, but that didn't bother them: dragged her out of the pond, they did, and threw her up into the back of a wagon.

  The second one sank like a stone - and she was a real witch; one of the Malkins. The Fiend didn't bother to save her, did he? Told you swimming don't work. They took their time getting her out of the water. By the time they did she'd stopped breathing, so they chucked her body back into the pond, where it sank for a second time.

  Then it was my turn. Two of them swung me back and forth before letting go. I hit the water hard. Was going to try and hold my breath, but that cold water was too much of a shock. I gasped and opened my mouth. The dirty water rushed in. I seemed to sink, but must have been floating face down. I could see the dead witch below me through the murk, hair drifting over her open mouth and bony nose, dead eyes staring up at me. I choked for a while but then it didn't hurt any more. Gave up, I did. I was going into the dark. Well, why not? I'm a witch. That's where I belong.

  Next thing I knew, I was lying in the mud, pond water gushing out of my mouth. Then I was sick as a dog over one of the men's boots. Gave me a good kicking for that, he did, before bundling me into the back of the wagon.

  They called three of us witches and rushed off towards Caster. Weren't going to risk the wrath of the clans this time, were they? Wanted to get us away from Pendle and into the safety of Caster Castle.