Free Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill Page A

You doubt all things.” Baldwin was flaming in accusation. “You doubt that this killed Mitton. You doubt all power of witches. You set aside the Holy Writ. You set aside what the King has writ. And you doubt! I tell you, whoever doubts the Devil’s power will doubt God’s power before he’s done. I have said to you before....“
    “And you’d best not say it again.”
    Margery jerked to attention. There had been a note in Roger’s voice which she had never heard in any voice before. It cut Baldwin short in the height of his fury, and he stopped, his hard breathing noisy in the silence.
    For a moment there was open hostility. But both men kept their tempers, and Roger broke the tension with a sudden smile.
    “We’d best not quarrel, Richard,” he said. “That’s how the Devil wins.”
    But Richard Baldwin was harder to appease. He turned aside and spoke bitterly.
    “Thou makest us to be rebuked of our neighbours,” he recited. “To be laughed to scorn and had in derision of them that are round about us.”
    Margery picked up her scattered thoughts. She had sat in churches and at family prayers too often to miss the quotation, and suddenly she dared an intervention.
    “The forty-fourth Psalm, is it not?” she said. “But Master Baldwin, is there not also a word in the eighty-ninth?”
    She knew how to talk to puritans. He whipped round as though he had been stung, and she saw him groping for it. Then, before he had found it, she gave it him.
    “What man is he that liveth and shall not see death?” She looked him straight in the eye. “I take that to mean, sir, that death is natural to men.”
    A faint nod from Roger showed his approval. Baldwin turned from Margery to Roger. Then, still in silence, he turned back to Margery, and once again there was doubt in his eyes. The others stood in watchful silence.
    “You’ve been well schooled, mistress,” he said slowly.
    Then Roger spoke crisply.
    “It’s matter of my duty as a Justice, Richard. Granting that a witch has power and may strike a man, I nevertheless can’t commit till I’ve determined that she’s in fact done so. Wherefore my duty here is plain. I must see these women. Where shall they be sought?’’
    Richard Baldwin had recovered his poise. He looked Roger very straight in the eye.
    “If I’ve misjudged this, I’ll be sorry for that,” he said simply.
    “Thanks for that, Richard. Since we’re of a mind on it, we may seek the Demdike brood.”
    Then Jim Wilsey cut in with a cheerful heartiness that helped to ease the tension.
    “That’s good,” he said. “Then we’d best get us to the Malkin Tower. It’s home to them all, and they’ll be back there by now.”
    “Like enough!” said Dick Nutter, and led them back through the garden to the house.
    They mounted, all six of them, and took to the road again, riding now beyond the Rough Lee and with the Pendle Water still splashing beside them. Wilsey was riding with Roger, and seeing them deep in talk, Margery fell back. To her surprise, Richard Baldwin came alongside her. As usual, he spoke his mind without prelude.
    “You’ll know more of Holy Writ than the Psalms, mistress?”
    “I trust so, indeed.” She was watchful, and wondering what was coming.
    “Tell me, then, what’s commanded for a witch in the Book of the Exodus?”
    Margery felt more at ease. She knew this with certainty. Every puritan used this text, and she answered easily.
    “In the twenty-second chapter? Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live?”
    He nodded approvingly.
    “Just so. And is not that enough?”
    Margery sought evasions, that she might neither contradict this man nor range herself with him against Roger. And while she hesitated he pressed her again.
    “And of this woman and her daughter and her daughter’s daughter, the three of them damned alike--what’s declared of such as they?”
    Margery thought quickly and as quickly found the answer, thankful that these puritans all leaned on the