Hargreaves refilled the tankards. ‘And what of Mistress Nutter?’
Jem took his beer and drained it off. ‘I will say to Magistrate Nowell that she promised to lead us and to blow up the gaol at Lancaster and free Old Demdike.’
He started to laugh – high, hysterical. They were laughing with him. He wasn’t alone and outside any more. Not cold or hungry or afraid. He would be safe now.
The Hell Hole
THE WELL DUNGEON at Lancaster Castle measures twenty feet by twelve feet. It is sunk thirty feet below ground. It has no window and no natural light, save for a grille, slotted into the floor at ground level, but ground level is thirty feet above. Might as well be the moon away. And the moon looks in at night, high and pale, a cold light, but on full moon a light at least.
And better than the fat-drenched flare that drips its pig grease onto the filthy straw and lights up … what does it light up? Misery, emaciation, rot, suffering, rats.
The prisoners are not chained. They roam around their stall. Chattox paces like a show cat, back and forth, forth and back, muttering nobody knows what. Her daughter, pretty Nance Redfern, sits in the corner hating Alizon Device, her rival for food and a few brief hours out of this hell. The gaoler takes one or the other for sex most days. He washes them too, or at least the part that interests him. Therefore the two young women have fewer sores than the rest.
The place stinks. Drainage is a channel cut into the earth under the straw. Their urine flows away, their faeces piles into a corner. Old Demdike squats over the mounting pile and generally loses her footing and slips into it. Her dress is smeared in excrement. She has weeping sores between her legs. When the gaoler comes for one of the women, Demdike lifts her dress and leers at him, offering him her sores. He hits her. She has lost two teeth this way.
They are fed stale bread and brackish water twice a day. When the bread is thrown through the door, the rats squeal at it and have to be kicked away. There are four or five rats. There were more. The rest have been eaten.
Cold. The dungeon is cold and the women have only a couple of horse blankets to share between them. When it rains, the rain falls through the grating and soaks the straw underneath. Jane Southworth stands under the rain chute and tries to wash her face and hands, tries to wash between her legs, and the others laugh at her, but the rain is liquid sanity to her. It comes from outside and she tries to imagine that some of the outside enters this hellish inside and makes it bearable.
The wet straw adds to the smell of rot.
The walls have moss on them and strange dark fungus. Demdike knows her toadstools and scrapes what she can from the walls. The heavy iron manacles hung round the walls are rusted. When she has the fit on her, Demdike shakes the manacles with all her strength calling for her Familiar to come and save her. Greymalkin never comes, nor the small gentleman dressed in black that she used to know, nor the brown imp that lived in a bottle, nor the bird that told her where the grain was kept. Nothing human or not human enters this place. The gaoler never comes in and when the women are questioned they are called to come out by name. Every kind of disease is in these walls.
It is April. The women will be here until the August Assizes.
Chattox and Demdike hate each other. Their daughters Nance and Alizon hate each other. No alliances have been made. No sympathy each to each. Jane Southworth keeps herself apart. She recites the Bible and that enrages the others.
He will come, says Old Demdike, one night, on a moon-trail, he will come and I’ll be rid of the lot of you
.
At first the rival families made spells and invocations . At first fire and blood were used to lure the Dark Gentleman. Now there are curses but no hope. Misery but no invention. Alizon wonders about Old Demdike’s power. Demdike swears he will come but she no longer believes
Jem took his beer and drained it off. ‘I will say to Magistrate Nowell that she promised to lead us and to blow up the gaol at Lancaster and free Old Demdike.’
He started to laugh – high, hysterical. They were laughing with him. He wasn’t alone and outside any more. Not cold or hungry or afraid. He would be safe now.
The Hell Hole
THE WELL DUNGEON at Lancaster Castle measures twenty feet by twelve feet. It is sunk thirty feet below ground. It has no window and no natural light, save for a grille, slotted into the floor at ground level, but ground level is thirty feet above. Might as well be the moon away. And the moon looks in at night, high and pale, a cold light, but on full moon a light at least.
And better than the fat-drenched flare that drips its pig grease onto the filthy straw and lights up … what does it light up? Misery, emaciation, rot, suffering, rats.
The prisoners are not chained. They roam around their stall. Chattox paces like a show cat, back and forth, forth and back, muttering nobody knows what. Her daughter, pretty Nance Redfern, sits in the corner hating Alizon Device, her rival for food and a few brief hours out of this hell. The gaoler takes one or the other for sex most days. He washes them too, or at least the part that interests him. Therefore the two young women have fewer sores than the rest.
The place stinks. Drainage is a channel cut into the earth under the straw. Their urine flows away, their faeces piles into a corner. Old Demdike squats over the mounting pile and generally loses her footing and slips into it. Her dress is smeared in excrement. She has weeping sores between her legs. When the gaoler comes for one of the women, Demdike lifts her dress and leers at him, offering him her sores. He hits her. She has lost two teeth this way.
They are fed stale bread and brackish water twice a day. When the bread is thrown through the door, the rats squeal at it and have to be kicked away. There are four or five rats. There were more. The rest have been eaten.
Cold. The dungeon is cold and the women have only a couple of horse blankets to share between them. When it rains, the rain falls through the grating and soaks the straw underneath. Jane Southworth stands under the rain chute and tries to wash her face and hands, tries to wash between her legs, and the others laugh at her, but the rain is liquid sanity to her. It comes from outside and she tries to imagine that some of the outside enters this hellish inside and makes it bearable.
The wet straw adds to the smell of rot.
The walls have moss on them and strange dark fungus. Demdike knows her toadstools and scrapes what she can from the walls. The heavy iron manacles hung round the walls are rusted. When she has the fit on her, Demdike shakes the manacles with all her strength calling for her Familiar to come and save her. Greymalkin never comes, nor the small gentleman dressed in black that she used to know, nor the brown imp that lived in a bottle, nor the bird that told her where the grain was kept. Nothing human or not human enters this place. The gaoler never comes in and when the women are questioned they are called to come out by name. Every kind of disease is in these walls.
It is April. The women will be here until the August Assizes.
Chattox and Demdike hate each other. Their daughters Nance and Alizon hate each other. No alliances have been made. No sympathy each to each. Jane Southworth keeps herself apart. She recites the Bible and that enrages the others.
He will come, says Old Demdike, one night, on a moon-trail, he will come and I’ll be rid of the lot of you
.
At first the rival families made spells and invocations . At first fire and blood were used to lure the Dark Gentleman. Now there are curses but no hope. Misery but no invention. Alizon wonders about Old Demdike’s power. Demdike swears he will come but she no longer believes
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