Mist Over Pendle: Robert Neill

Back in the 17th century, anybody who was anybody was worried about witches. (And by "anybody" I generally mean colonial Americans, English, Scots, and a bit in Germany and the Low Countries.) One of the larger historical events of witch trials, that of the Pendle witches, took place in northwest England in 1612 and resulted in the hanging deaths of twelve accused witches. Mist Over Pendle is a fictional account of the lead-up to the trials of the Pendle witches.

From the back cover:

Deep in the Forest of Pendle, people have been dying in mysterious circumstances. The locals whisper of witchcraft, but Squire Roger Nowell, in charge of investigating the deaths, dismisses the claims as ridiculous. Until a series of hideous desecrations forces Roger and his cousin Margery to look further into the rumours. And what they discover brings them face to face with the horrifying possibility that a coven of witches is assembling, preparing to unleash a campaign of evil and destruction...

Mist Over Pendle brings quite a few of the actual historic characters of the Pendle witches to the fictional page, such as Roger Nowell and many of the accused witches like the Demdike, Elizabeth Device, James Device, Alizon Device, the Chattox, Alice Redfern, Jennet Preston and Alice Nutter (who was a historically unusual "witch" as a comparatively wealthy and wholly respectable widow). Roger's cousin Margery, around whom the plot evolves, is likely a fiction but a good place to centre a story.

Margery is the youngest and orphaned daughter of a large family of Puritans, sent by her brothers and sisters from London to live with their respectable distant cousin Roger in Lancashire. Her family's hopes are that she can curry his favour and no longer be dependent on her brothers and sisters for her upkeep. Obviously feeling scorned and unloved, the clever and even cunning Margery is surprised to discover that her cousin and she are cut from the same cloth: Roger is pragmatic, especially for a magistrate in troubled religious times, clever, and wise. As Margery settles into her new home in Pendle, she comes to know the ins and outs of the society but realizes more than anything else that there is much afoot here. Catholics live almost openly, despite laws that should prevent this; Puritans don't hold as much sway even as they hold respectable positions in society - and a strange group of beggars and wastrels seem to somehow be accepted and well-known for all the ill rumours about them and their possible association with the ambitious Alice Nutter.

What comes to pass, though, is that Alice, no matter how respectable and ambitious, is involved in a strange world of poisons and curses, devils and familiars. But how to trap a clever woman in a web that she has woven? And how to do it without bringing harm to Margery and Roger's friends?

The best moment of this story is a simple one. When discussing the cases of the Demdike and Devices, Roger makes a simple statement: he doubted the actuality of witchcraft, but believed the intention was there. This cast an interesting light on those who were accused, that they may well have intended for witchcraft to take place but there was no probability that it had actually happened. It was an interesting moment of consideration, both within the fiction and within history. Within the book, most people believed that those accused were consorting with the devil and casting spells to cause harm and death to come to people. Roger, in stating the above, gave a credible alternative to this and even tacitly raised a good issue of agency. Within history, though, this statement gave me pause. It was a unique moment of the separation of the crime and the intention, and I don't think I've ever seen witchcraft or "witchcraft" addressed this way in fiction. It was also a telltale for the book's initial publication (1950s): post-feminist studies of historical witchcraft accusations tend to find the historical accusations a combination of many factors, such as a way of women to wield power within a system that methodically denied them any, or a vast societal psychological mindset that combined petty grievances with larger societal pressures such as warfare and invasion (Mary Beth Norton's fantastic In the Devil's Snare discusses this with the Salem trials. Even Kathleen Kent's The Heretic's Daughter, which I did not find worth much of my time, gave a good if clearly post-feminist view of the difficulties with the interrelated families in the Salem accusations.)

Where Mist Over Pendle didn't work for me, however, was in the basics. And by basics I'm talking Novel Writing 101 basics, in that there was little rising action, no climax to speak of, and little falling action. I can see where this action might have taken place, but the slightly archaic writing style and relative emotional suppression of Puritans (except when it comes to witches, the suffering not of) rather tamped any climax down. To be honest, the novel doesn't even touch upon the actual trials, just the route by which Roger and his cohorts manage to get the accused brought to trial, focussing on trying to ensnare Alice Nutter in her own web of deceit. It struck me rather like a really long 17th century edition of "Law and Order," except without any grand and climactic courtroom finale. And the "choing choing."

This fault is a rather hefty one, I'm afraid, and it left me impatient with the book, paging ahead impatiently and waiting for some kind of climax that never came. Despite its really interesting premise, historical basis, and frankly fine descriptive writing (want to know anything about women's dress in the time period? look no further), Mist Over Pendle left me wishing for a lot more. The material was there; the execution denied it. However, as I don't know of any other historical fiction about the Pendle witches, I have nothing to offer you as an alternative. And that's unfortunate, since I think that the subject matter could really use a more recent treatment than this.