At first I thought it was some sort of egg; a large egg, bigger than my fist. But then I saw that it was artificial, stitched into an oval from several pieces of stiff black leather.
‘Bring the candle nearer, girl!’ Lizzie commanded, and I did as she asked, stepping forward and holding it close to the leather egg so that she could examine it more closely. I noticed then that it was covered in writing that spiralled round from one end to the other.
‘It’s in a language I never came across before, but it’s signed with a name at the bottom – Nicholas Browne. Wonder who he is? Might be written in a foreign language, but it sounds like a County name,’ Lizzie muttered. ‘Maybe it’s some sort of warning . . .’
She brought the strange object closer to her face and squinted at it, turning it first one way, then another, her mouth twitching. She sniffed it three times.
‘I’m thinking there might be real power here; danger too. That crafty old spook hid this away so that none like us could get their hands on it. We need to know where the fool got it and all that he knows about it. That means we need to keep him alive a little while.’
Lizzie set off down the stairs right away. But she was too late. Just as we reached the door, we heard a terrible scream.
It came from the direction of the garden gate.
By the time we reached it, the two dead witches had already fed.
The old spook had hardly made it through the gate before they’d leaped upon him, dragging him down into the long grass and sinking their teeth into his flesh. Now Jacob Stone was drained and lay on his back, cold and dead, his unseeing eyes staring up at the moon. I felt sorry for him. He was old – far past the age when he should have retired from such a dangerous trade.
There was no sign of Annie and Jessie, but the iron gate was now open – they’d obviously gone off hunting, strengthened by the old spook’s blood. They’d want some more. Some poor local family would be grieving soon.
‘It ain’t the end of the world,’ Lizzie said, kicking the spook’s rowan-wood staff out of his dead hand. ‘If we can’t question the living, then we’ll question the dead!’
With that, she drew a knife with a sharp blade and knelt beside the body. I turned away in disgust, my stomach heaving. I’d never been present when Lizzie had done this before, but I knew that she would be cutting away the old man’s thumb-bones. Using them, she’d be able to summon his soul and get the answers she needed.
WE SET OFF towards Pendle immediately. Lizzie was eager to get back to her cottage and find out what the leather egg was and what it could do.
We arrived after dark, but despite her impatience she couldn’t get started on it right away. First she had to contact the coven in order to report back formally on the success of her expedition to kill the spook. I had a feeling that she wouldn’t be telling them about the mysterious object she’d found hidden under the floorboards. That was something she’d be keeping to herself. And Lizzie was one of the most powerful witches in Pendle, well able to cloak her activities against the most competent of scryers.
So it was not until the following evening, just before twilight, that Lizzie finally set to work. She used the largest of her cauldrons, which was always positioned close to the rear door of her cottage. I was ordered to light a fire beneath it and then fill it three-quarters full of water. That meant half an hour’s hard work winding the bucket up from the well at the bottom of the garden. Once it started to boil, I stepped back and Lizzie began her ritual.
She positioned a wooden stool close to the cauldron and sat gazing into the steam that wafted up from the bubbling surface. Next she threw in Jacob Stone’s thumbs; each made a splash before sinking towards the bottom. As I watched from a distance, she began to mutter under her breath, adding sprinklings of herbs and other plants to the pot.
During a ritual Lizzie would usually explain to me what she was doing and the purpose of each addition to the cauldron, but this was too important; she couldn’t be bothered with teaching me now. As it happened, I already knew the names of most of the plants she used, and what they could do, and I knew that the crisis would occur when the meat softened and boiled off the bones; that was when she would try to seize control of the old spook’s spirit and make him tell her the information she needed.
It was getting dark now, but Lizzie didn’t bother lighting a candle. Soon I knew why. There was a faint glow from the inside of the cauldron; gradually it grew brighter, until I could see the witch’s face clearly. Her mouth was twisted downwards and her eyes were wide open, the pupils rolled right up into her head. Faster and faster she muttered the incantation. The water was boiling furiously now, and suddenly two white things bobbed to the surface, sticking up like twigs with the bark removed. Jacob’s thumb-bones were floating.
Moments later, the bones were lost to sight. It wasn’t because they’d sunk. The great cloud of steam from the cauldron swelled and grew into a huge thunderhead that soared to the height of the cottage. It was glowing too, and I half expected to see forked lightning. Instead, a face began to form within the cloud; one that I’d last seen staring at the moon with dead, sightless eyes.
It was the spirit of Jacob Stone.
The first thing that struck me was that the old man didn’t look in the least afraid. He stared down at Lizzie calmly and patiently without uttering a word.
It was the first time I’d ever seen her summon a dead person like this. When most people die, they have to find their way through Limbo. After that they either go to the dark or the light, depending on what they are and how they’ve lived their lives. Those going to the light find their way across in a few days at the most. That’s why Lizzie had been so impatient to start the ritual. If a witch can summon a spirit, then she can hold him trapped in Limbo indefinitely and cause him enough pain to make him do what she wants.
As a spook, Jacob Stone would know all about what a witch like Lizzie could do to him. He should have been terrified at being held in Limbo at her mercy. But he wasn’t, and that was odd.
‘You’re mine, old man! Mine to do with as I please,’ Lizzie crowed. ‘Just tell me what I need to know and I’ll let you go. It’s as easy as that.’ She got right to the point. ‘What’s the purpose of the leather egg that I found under the floorboards of your house? What is it? What can it do?’
‘I’ll tell you nothing,’ Jacob Stone’s spirit said calmly. ‘All my life I’ve fought the dark and tried to help the good people of the County. Why should it be different when I’m dead? I’ll do nothing to help you and your kind – nothing at all!’