We came to the edge of a square pit with thirteen bars across the top. Lizzie held out the candle to illuminate it. The pit was filled with water, but there was a shelf of mud on one side and the captured water witch was lying there on her back, looking up at us, her eyes gleaming in the candlelight.
I’d thought that some of the Pendle witches were ugly, but this water witch was truly grotesque, with her big scary fangs. Would we be safe if Lizzie freed her from the pit? I wondered.
‘Listen, sister,’ Lizzie called down to her. ‘Come to get you free, we have. In return I’ve a proposal for you, and another eleven of your kind. Will you take us to your keeper so we can talk terms?’
I wondered what Lizzie meant by ‘your keeper’, but as usual she didn’t bother to explain what was going on.
The witch got to her knees and looked directly at Lizzie. Then I saw her nod.
‘Right’ – Lizzie smirked at me – ‘we have a deal, girl. I’ll soon get her out of here. No time for rats and flies magic, so it’s lucky we aren’t in Chipenden facing one of John Gregory’s witch pits. There the bars are securely fixed in place, and without magic we’d need the help of a blacksmith to pull ’em free. Here it’s just a hinged lid with two locks. Do you know why Arkwright makes it so easy to get in and out of this pit?’
I shrugged. I hadn’t got a clue.
‘When John Gregory puts a witch in a pit, he means her to stay there until the end of her days, so the bars are permanent. That ain’t the case with Arkwright. If a witch kills an adult, it’s one year in the pit; two if it’s a child. He’s like a judge passing sentence, and at the end of their time he pulls ’em out and kills ’em. To make sure they ain’t coming back from the dead, he cuts out the heart, slices it in half and feeds it to his dogs.’
Bill Arkwright was a really scary spook. Lizzie’s tale made me nervous. What if he tired of the chase and came back? I didn’t fancy being shut in one of his slimy pits!
Lizzie spat into each lock, and within moments both had clicked open. The lid was free, but there was no way that she was going to touch it.
‘Made of iron, those bars are. You’ll have to lift the lid, girl. You ain’t a witch yet, so you shouldn’t feel much. Get on with it!’
Lizzie might be training me as a witch, but I still had a long way to go yet. So she was right: touching those iron bars didn’t hurt at all. The problem was the weight. I struggled for some time before I managed to raise them high enough for Lizzie to kneel at the pit’s edge and lean down to offer the water witch her hands.
My whole body was shaking with the effort, but I managed to hold it up long enough for the water witch to be dragged to safety. No sooner was she on the mud floor beside the pit than I let the lid fall back into place with a clang.
Then I stepped back two paces very rapidly. The water witch was crouching, face distorted into a bestial snarl, as if ready to spring at us. She looked hungry for blood rather than grateful for being rescued.
‘Right,’ said Lizzie, who didn’t seem in the least perturbed by the witch’s attitude. ‘Let’s get clear of here before Arkwright returns with those bog dogs of his. Lead on, sister,’ she said. ‘Guide us to somewhere safe.’
In reply the water witch merely gave a sort of grimace; it twisted her face so that her mouth opened, revealing more of her sharp yellow teeth. She was covered in slime and dripping with water. She smelled bad too – the stench of mud, rot and stagnant ponds. As she walked ahead of us, she waddled slightly. If I hadn’t been so nervous, I would have laughed. Water witches weren’t suited to land.
We left the mill, and to my surprise, the water witch led us eastwards, away from the marsh. We crossed the canal by the nearest bridge and then kept to the hedgerows.
Where could we be going? And how could we ever be safe? Once those wolfhounds got our scent, they’d track us down for sure. Hadn’t Lizzie said that Arkwright was relentless and never gave up?
At last, after nearly two hours of scrambling through muddy countryside, the witch pointed across a big field. There was nothing ahead but another distant hedgerow. However, I could sense something; something unseen.
But then the witch uttered some disgusting guttural noises and waved her arm about, making signs in the air.
The air shimmered, and suddenly the outline of a building came into view. It had been hidden by magic – some sort of powerful cloaking spell I’d never seen before. As we approached, I saw that it had once been a farmhouse but now seemed deserted. There were no animals in the fields; no dog set to guard the house. It was in pitch blackness.
Then, by the light of the moon, I saw that there was a large pond beside the house. Most ponds, like middens, were kept some distance away to avoid leakage into the house’s cellar. This one had been extended – and in a most unusual way. The water was deep and came right up to the walls of the house, lapping against the brickwork. There was something else strange too. In what should have been the farmyard sat a huge mound of soil almost as big as the house. It was covered with grass and nettles but didn’t look natural. Who had put it there? What was its purpose, and where had the soil come from?
Without looking back at us, the witch slipped into the dark water and disappeared from sight. She was gone a long time and I wondered if she were gathering some of her sisters to drag us down after her. But then there was a flicker of light from an upstairs window.
‘There’ll be an entrance under the water,’ Lizzie said. ‘No doubt the cellar has been flooded deliberately. But we ain’t going in that way. Let’s go back to the front door.’
Leading the way past the pond, she headed round the side of the house. The glass had gone from the windows, but they had been fixed with board so that you couldn’t see inside. The front door looked rotten but was closed. I felt that a good kick with a pointy shoe would shatter it into soggy pieces.
However, we didn’t need to do that. I heard the sounds of chains being released and bolts being drawn back, and then the door slowly opened, creaking on its hinges.
A stout, round-faced woman with piggy eyes was standing in the doorway holding up a candle, the better to examine our faces. Her hair was a tangle of grey and her eyebrows were unkempt: hairs stuck out like a cat’s whiskers. She looked anything but friendly.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded abruptly.