The Daylight Gate Read Online Free PDF Page B

come from?’
    Alice rounded on him now. She was angry. ‘My fortune comes from my industry. I had a royal warrant from the Queen.’
    ‘And instruction from the magician John Dee,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘I know more of your past than you imagine. My mother’s family, the Starkies, were possessed by demons for a time, and had to consult John Dee when he was living in Manchester.’
    ‘I know of that,’ replied Alice, ‘and that John Dee succeeded where Puritan preachers failed.’
    ‘That is exactly my point,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘By what means he succeeded we cannot know, but like can talk with like.’
    ‘John Dee is dead and cannot answer your charges. Let him rest in peace.’
    ‘If he does rest … He died in 1608, but some say they have seen him in Pendle – visiting you.’
    The room was heavy like a great iron weight was slowly dropping from the ceiling.
    ‘Let me read to you,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘It is a night for reading.’
    He went to his desk and came and stood opposite her with a leather-bound book. ‘This volume is titled
Discourse of the Damned Art of Witches
, and is written by a man well known to me – a Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Please, sit down. Listen to what he has to say.
    ‘
The ground of all witchcraft is a league or covenant made between the witch and the Devil, wherein they do mutually bind themselves the one to the other
…
the Devil
…
for his part promises to be ready to his vassal’s command, to appear at any time in the likeness of any creature, to consult with him, to aid and help him
.’
    Roger Nowell closed the book and looked directly at Alice. ‘You have a falcon. Is that your Familiar?’
    ‘What is it that you want from me? The land in dispute?’
    Roger Nowell shook his head. ‘I do not like to lose but I do not like to dwell on my losses either. That matter is done.’
    ‘Then what is this about?’
    ‘Explain the matter at Malkin Tower.’
    ‘I went there at the request of Elizabeth Device. I took nourishment with me. I agreed with Elizabeth Device that I would intercede with you on behalf of her family.’
    ‘On behalf of self-confessed witches?’
    ‘Such women are poor. They are ignorant. They have no power in your world, so they must get what power they can in theirs. I have sympathy for them.’
    ‘Sympathy? Elizabeth Device prostitutes her own children.’
    ‘And what of the men who buy? Tom Peeper rapes nine-year-old Jennet Device on a Saturday night and stands in church on Sunday morning.’
    ‘You rarely stand in church yourself,’ said Roger Nowell.
    ‘If you cannot try me as a witch perhaps you will charge me as a papist. Is that it?’
    ‘Your family is Catholic,’ said Roger Nowell,
    ‘And every family in England till King Henry left the Church of Rome. The Church of England is not yet a hundred years old and you wonder that many still follow the old religion?’
    ‘I do not wonder about that,’ said Roger Nowell. ‘But I wonder about you.’
    They were both silent for a time.
    ‘You are stubborn,’ said Roger Nowell.
    ‘I am not tame,’ said Alice Nutter.
    He stood up and came over to her chair. She could smell him; male, tobacco, pine. He was so close she could see the grey beginning in his beard. He took her hand. He held it up to the light, looking at it as he spoke softly. ‘You mistake me if you imagine I believe in no dark power. I believe in God and therefore I believe in the Devil.’
    ‘Who surely has better things to do than help the Demdike dry up cattle, steal sheep and bewitch pedlars?’
    ‘Indeed. At the Berwick witch trials many of the women were poor and ignorant, deluded by a pretence of power. Yet their leader was a man who would risk anything to kill a king. Suppose our Lancashire witches have found such a leader? Someone whose knowledge of the magick arts is directly from the Devil himself? Faust was a man who made such a pact. But a woman? Where beauty met with wealth and power. What might