The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online Page A

where he thought he might hide, and I am patron in charity to the Demdike. That is all. Now leave.’
    ‘He came to you …’ repeated Hargreaves. ‘He might have gone anywhere to hide, but he came to you.’ He punched Jem again.
    Jem turned to Alice, hunted as the hare he dreamed himself to be. ‘Help me,’ he said.
    ‘I cannot help you, Jem,’ said Alice.
    ‘Take him away,’ said Constable Hargreaves. ‘Lock his legs this time.’
    Gradually the noises of the men were silenced into the dark and the last of the flares disappeared into the hill. Alice went back inside and sent the servants to bed. Then she went to her study and brought out Christopher Southworth. He had heard it all. He took Alice by her shoulders.
    ‘Alice – they were hunting me and found him. I like none of this. The net is tightening and you do not feel it. Jem Device or some other of his demented kin will accuse you of witchcraft when they discover that you will not help them. You want to protect the Demdike but they will not protect you.’
    ‘I have not told you the rest of my story.’

The Dark Gentleman
     
    THAT NIGHT I wrote a letter to Elizabeth begging her to see me
…
    The following day a servant came to me and asked if I would wait upon his mistress that night at her house in Vauxhall. It was Maytime, Beltane, and the full moon.
    At sunset, as I had been instructed, I went to her house and dismissed my servant.
    I could hear a great noise coming from the hall that was placed in the centre of the house. I entered and saw a large company of men and women unknown to me. All wore masks across the eyes. Some wore animal tails. I was not announced, nor was I given a mask. I walked freely around the room, looking for Elizabeth. There was a table piled with food and drink. Two fiddlers played.
    A man in a mask kissed me. I pushed him away. He said, ‘We are free spirits here.’
    Suddenly Elizabeth came towards me. ‘Alice! Tonight is our great ceremony of Beltane and I would that you were one of our company. You are rich but you could be richer yet. Your beauty will remain. Your power will increase. The Dark Gentleman has asked for you himself.’
    I felt a chill on me like the beginning of winter. I looked across the room and there was a small handsome man staring at me with deep black eyes. He bowed briefly as I looked at him.
    Elizabeth laughed. ‘Here is no simple charm. Here is everlasting power.’
    She kissed me fully. She drew me aside to a small room off the hall. We had undressed in moments and made love like wolves.
    But while she was touching me I felt something strange about her left hand. I pulled it up from my body. The third finger of her left hand was missing.
    ‘I married the Dark Gentleman,’ she said. ‘The Christians give a ring. The Dark Lord takes a finger.’
    I folded her fingers. Kissed them. ‘You belong to me,’ I said. She shook her head. ‘I did once upon a time, but you never belonged to me, did you, Alice? You gave me your body but you never gave me your Soul.’
    I touched her face. Her green eyes were full of tears. And yet she was different, changed. She was as beautiful as ever but her softness was gone. She was bright like something from the sea, like treasure that the sea has covered in coral.
    She wore a simple gold ring on her little finger. She took it off, put it on the third finger of my left hand. My hands are smaller than hers. ‘Remember me,’ she said.
    I looked at her. She was my memory. There was no one else to remember.
    ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you will be one of us. Come.’
    She threw me a silk petticoat and took my hand. We went back into the hall.
    There had been a change. A table covered with a red cloth stood on a dais. On the table were four black candles, lit, giving off a foul stink. ‘Sulphur and pitch,’ whispered Elizabeth. ‘Come forward.’
    I went forward, realising that while I was wearing only a shift, the others in their masks were fully clothed. My heart