Free The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson

shipwreck in sympathy with the King’s own shipwreck by supernatural forces on his way back from Denmark to Berwick.’
    ‘Ah, the Berwick witch trials,’ said Potts. ‘There has been nothing as sensational until now. The Lancashire witch trials will be the first trials to be written as record. A great advantage in the pursuit of Diabolism.’
    ‘Are you doing the writing?’ enquired Shakespeare.
    ‘In my legal capacity, yes. I have written plays also, you know.’
    ‘I didn’t know,’ said Shakespeare, ‘neither does anybody else.’
    The table roared with laughter. Potts looked red and angry. Alice was enjoying his discomfort.
    ‘I wonder you dare venture out of doors in Lancashire for fear of meeting a witch or a priest,’ said Alice.
    ‘What do you mean by that?’ said Roger Nowell, looking not at Potts but at Alice.
    ‘Whatever she means,’ said Shakespeare, ‘this man’s a fool.’
    This was sufficient to drive Potts from the supper table. Roger Nowell laughed with the rest, but he was uneasy too. Potts had found no flying witches. He was looking for a hiding priest.
    It was late and Alice was getting ready for bed when she heard a soft tap at the door. She opened it to find Shakespeare standing outside in his gown and slippers. He put his finger to his lips. She let him in.
    ‘A word of advice from a man who has seen much. If you do not want to find yourself in the Well Dungeon at Lancaster Castle, leave England soon. Christopher Southworth must go with you.’
    ‘Why do you speak of him?’
    ‘Take heed what you are told. Take heed what you tell.’
    Shakespeare opened the door. He said, ‘Often-times, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles to betray in deepest consequence.’
    Alice did not sleep well. When she was ready to leave at the agreed hour of 9 a.m., she was told by a servant of the house that the fog was too thick and she and her party must wait until noon. Roger Nowell was nowhere to be found. Potts was dozing in the library.
    She waited, restless, finally calling her maid, and going herself to order their horses. It was eleven o’clock. The groom who saddled her copper mare told her that Roger Nowell had ridden away unaccompanied at 6 a.m.
    She had been tricked.

A Tooth for a Tooth
     
    ROGER NOWELL AND Constable Hargreaves were standing in the thick fog in the graveyard of Newchurch in Pendle. They looked down in silence. The turf had been flung back and the shallow earth disturbed. The body within was partially uncovered; bones showed in the earth and above ground. By the side of the grave was a skull, dry and bleached. The skull had been smashed at the jaw to remove the teeth. Bits of chipped bone were scattered about. The teeth had been carefully collected in a mound.
    At another grave the ground had been re-dug but the body it held had not yet rotted to the bones and the mouldering flesh was exposed, with its busy colony of worms. The corpse had been mutilated. The head was gone, leaving only the black stump of the neck.
    ‘Happened last night,’ said Hargreaves. ‘They made off with the head and left the teeth. Must have been disturbed at their work.’
    ‘Aren’t the Demdike and Chattox locked up?’
    ‘All but James Device who is prepared to give evidence against his kin. He is dead drunk at the Dog.’
    ‘Then we cannot blame him. And much as you would all like to do so, we cannot blame Alice Nutter. She was with me.’
    ‘Her spirit can go abroad. The spirit of a witch can go abroad anywhere,’ said Hargreaves.
    Roger Nowell did not answer that. ‘Did you search the Rough Lee?’
    ‘We did. I have a servant in my pay now. We found no Christopher Southworth nor any sign or sighting of him. But we found this.’
    Hargreaves pulled out a silver crucifix on a neckchain. ‘In the bedchamber … In the bed.’
    Roger Nowell looked at it closely. ‘Does she use it because she is secretly a Catholic or because