The Manningtree Witches

by A. K. Blakemore

  24

  Lonely Men

  THE PORT OF HARWICH IS WHERE ENGLAND bares her rump to the continent. The ships come in from the curling spit of land called the Hoek van Holland, ships laden with fine linens and Flanders lace and, anecdotally, Papists. It is early evening when Hopkins arrives and stables his horse at the inn, where he feels fortunate to go unrecognised. He cleans himself up, takes a glass of good port, and walks over towards the foreshore in the fading light of day.

  Little sloops and caravels dip in the docks, their sails furled. A few seamen linger about the harbour, smoking and playing cards. Dutch, for the most part. They pay little mind to the Witchfinder, this dark stranger who falls to his knees at the jetty to pray. They have fought their own lowland wars over God, and they know how peculiar it can make men, to see the High Father coming staggering home, his white beard speckled with blood or shorn by dogma. A few look on Hopkins sympathetically as they unload the last of their cargo, as an individual clearly fraught by spiritual crisis. Sailors are sensitive people. They know such men are best left alone.

  Hopkins looks out over the placid grey sea, hears it suck against the planks beneath his bent knees. The rain, the endless rain. There is something about rain over the sea, something stately in its utter drab superfluousness. It makes the world seem a mausoleum. The Witchfinder’s prayer goes something like this: God, Father, guide me now, for I have erred. I look around and all I see is chaos—and for a moment, I allowed myself to be swallowed, lost to confusion and sin. I am thy instrument. Guide me to thy will, use me to fulfil it, then strike me down, if you must. Only let me serve you, before you give me over to the Devil entire. He opens his eyes to look out over the ceremental horizon and feels out his body from the inside, rarefied and refined by hunger and insomnolence. This is the way he likes himself, keen as a whetted blade, secretly suffering. How could it be anything but providential, that in that very moment he hears the tender resonance of church bells a short way off, calling the faithful to evening prayer? And how could he do anything but answer that mellow summons?

  He finds himself in a small church—little more than a seaman’s chapel. A single high window of clear glass over the altar aluminises the dusty chamber, unadorned but for a faded mural on the far wall depicting the Genesis, and the Fall: fawns and lions cavort ill-proportioned through pockmarked Edenic splendour, and a fat serpent coils himself about the waist of a pale, pink-nippled Eve. There she stands, poised blithe forever at the moment of lapse, beneath a smiling sun of many rays. Hopkins positions himself by a pillar close to the door, and removes his hat. The pews are empty but for a few old dockhands with sunburned necks who smoke continually, even as the careworn minister ascends to the pulpit and begins his preaching (an insipid remonstrance against the episcopacy that Hopkins recognises as plagiarised, for the most part, from the writings of John Bastwick). The door opens and closes behind him, and a latecomer hustles into the back pew. Hopkins knows with inexplicable certitude that this latecomer is Master John Edes, so much so that he waits until the preacher bids them lower their heads in silent prayer to peer over his shoulder and check. His patience is rewarded. There, indeed, pressing his hat to his chest, stands John Edes. Hopkins is afforded the opportunity to study him at length. He appears a different man to the one Hopkins sent from the Thorn that chill March evening to fetch the pricker-women: his shoulders are narrow and hunched, his hair now cropped close in the Roundhead style. Hopkins notices that his reddish beard is flecked with grey. Nevertheless, John Edes: the last piece, the keystone.

  The sun has set by the time the sermon ends, and the rain clouds, half-disgorged, have turned a roiling plum. Hopkins follows Edes down the narrow streets of Harwich, until, passing under the flaking sign of an alehouse, he sees his chance, and, stepping forward, he grasps for the arm of his former associate. Edes wheels on the spot, and stares, surprised, into Hopkins’ smiling face.

  “Sirrah!” Hopkins exclaims, with a false and somewhat threatening good cheer. “Master John Edes. I had not thought to see you here.”

  “Hopkins,” Edes replies, on the edge of an inhalation. His eyes skid up and down the narrow street.

  Hopkins tightens his grip on Edes’ arm. “It has been too long. How do you fare, my good man?”

  “Did the magistrates summon you here? I heard nothing of . . .” Edes trails off.

  “Nay, nay,” Hopkins replies. “An . . . unexpected digression.”

  “I see.”

  Hopkins flourishes a hand in the direction of the squalid alehouse called the Stingray, and insists they enter to raise a glass to Cromwell, for old times’ sake. Master Edes at first protests, but Hopkins is insistent, and the reluctant Edes soon finds himself impelled towards the narrow door.

  A single poky room with a sawdust floor. The alehouse is deserted except for two hooded men at the bar conversing intently in French, and the innkeeper, a shifty-eyed little fellow with tufts of white hair at his nostrils. Hopkins presses Edes towards a sticky corner table, out of sight of the door. Edes still seems dazed by his associate’s sudden reappearance. He moves slowly, carefully, like a man navigating the deck of a listing ship, his world suddenly aslant. They take their seats. The innkeeper comes, wholly unbidden, and scrubs a wet rag around the table between them. He steals covert glances at Hopkins, whom he recognises by reputation. His interest is irritating. “Bring beer,” Hopkins orders. “Then leave us.”

  Two mugs of ale are set down between them. Edes drinks. He wipes his moustache on the back of his hand, a nerve jumping in his jaw. Hopkins knows John Edes will be an easy mark, as all agreeable people are. The man cannot bear silence. Even now, confronted with a void, he rushes to fill it. “You have made the London news-sheets,” he says, finally. “You and Stearne. You are fortunate men indeed, to be so called upon by God. ‘Witchfinder General’ . . .” He lets out a nervous chuckle.

  Hopkins smiles. “A more . . . ostentatious sobriquet than I would like—but if I might better serve God, being so called . . .”

  “Such purpose,” Edes mumbles, inwardly, stroking his thumb against the side of his tankard. “A lucky planet, you must have been born under.” He is warming up already, Hopkins observes. Falling into his ease. He has had only a few gulps of beer, so it cannot be that. Perhaps he has been lonely, sequestered away by the sea. Edes peers up into Hopkins’ face at last, his blue eyes tired and dim. “It seemed a bad business to me, back in Manningtree, Matthew. The devilry, choking”—he massages a hand over his throat—“like smoke from wet kindling. I was . . .”

  “You were frightened,” Hopkins suggests.

  “Frightened. Yes. But . . .”

  Hopkins watches John Edes search for words. John Edes—this big, winsome man-thing he must baby to the correct conclusions, to the proper names for his mistakes.

  “The Manningtree women,” Edes says, carefully, “are bound over for trial?”

  Hopkins nods. He explains that Anne West and Elizabeth Clarke have confessed to the most horrible villainies, and are unrepentant. That the widows Leech and Moone were consorting with all manner of infernal spirits, making images stuck with dressmaker’s pins. He watches Edes carefully as he speaks, notices the incremental tightening of the fingers around his beer mug. “We may never have the full measure of the mischief they wrought at the Devil’s behest,” Hopkins sighs.

  “And what—what of Rebecca?” Edes asks, as Hopkins knew he would.

  “She denies every particular.”

  Edes exhales and nods his head, relieved. Hopkins allows him this moment of reprieve to take a deep gulp of beer, before he produces, from inside his cloak, a hat. John Edes’ hat, with the square brass buckle. This he places wordlessly on the table between them, and Edes stiffens in his seat. “I—” he sputters, uselessly, and, “That—”

  “Do not perjure yourself by false explanation.” Hopkins smiles. “Your own sin concerns me not. Rebecca West’s, however . . .” He turns his hands palm-upward on the table, as if to
show Edes the girl’s soul dancing on his dark glove. “God has bid me extirpate the scourge of sorcery . . . and return to him the lost. Rebecca West must confess. Only by confession can she be redeemed. You know this.”

  “What must I do?” asks Edes, his lips trembling.

  Hopkins tells him he must testify at the summer assizes. Edes’ eyes dart feverishly around the dingy room, like those of a cornered animal. Testify to what? he asks, mind bent on the preservation of his own reputation above all else. “I taught her letters—her catechism—we never—witchcraft, nor the Devil, never . . .” He labours to straighten his face, to click the mismatched halves of it, the frantic brow and the stolid mouth, into place beside each other.

  Hopkins was never allowed to hunt—his mother forbade him to ride out to the woods with his elder brothers on account of his weak constitution. But now he feels a little of what they must have felt—the stippled red pelt, the racket of hounds, the scent of blood. “The Devil’s servants disguise their malevolence well,” mutters Hopkins, leaning forward. “If you cast your mind back to the hours you spent with Miss West, I am certain you will recall instances when her true nature—subtle, devious—was made apparent to you. Laid bare,” he adds. “So to speak.”

  Edes’ eyes narrow as he listens to Hopkins. He snorts mirthlessly and draws himself back up to his full height. “You,” he says, shaking his head. “The Witchfinder General. You say you hate the Devil but I think you are very like him. Coming by night in your tall black hat, with your insinuations. All these souls under your power . . . you make of them your play-things.”

  Hopkins’ lips twitch. He went too far too quickly, questioning the man’s honour. He must give him some slack before he reels him in again. “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth,” he says, taking a sip of beer.

  Edes laughs at that. “You seem a very happy man indeed.”

  “Rebecca West is the Devil’s handmaiden,” Hopkins continues, coolly. “A cunning wanton. Like to Salome, shaped by her master to draw men into sin. I know it well, John, for she has practised her charms against me, too, come cooing and lecherous even as I pleaded with her to forsake the Old Deluder and find her salvation in God.”

  “Stop,” says Edes, cheeks reddening. “You slander her—”

  “I do not.” Hopkins’ hand stiffens at the edge of the tabletop. “The Devil hath inflamed her mind and had use of her body. You know it. You know her to be a terrible fornicatress. Swear to it, and ease your soul.”

  Edes’ defiance wavers. He tugs at his hair. There is some fright in his look, the big white teeth half-bared. Of the fornication, at least, Hopkins is not wrong. Edes feels himself to be no longer special. His sin—and the passion that precipitated it—was not unique, exceptional and therefore forgivable, but sin, true and cheap as bad mutton. Slattern. Wanton. Whore. There must be some way to purge it. Some way to wipe himself clean. Ease your soul.

  “All this,” sighs Hopkins, reaching out to grasp Edes’ wrist, “all your suffering will be ended. Help me. Help me, John, to cut away their rot. Then all will be peace. Do you see? It must begin with us. It must begin with men. We were set above them to guide—to nourish. And to punish.”

  He does see. Shame itself a kind of bewitchment. Edes’ mind is ruction and tumult beneath his furrowed, reddening brow. Peace. Peace is all he wants now—to slough off his guilt and slither away to be left alone in silence. Perhaps saying will lead to believing, he thinks. It wasn’t him, it was her, all her, cooing and lecherous even as he pleaded— just as Hopkins says—flesh bedizened with sin and raindrops, eyes and skin—some exquisite spell like soft black candy on her tongue—

  “For she sitteth at the door of her house,” Hopkins says, quietly, his head bent low over his mug, “and as for him that wanted understanding, she saith to him that stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests feast in the depths of Hell.”

  Edes balls his hands into fists and presses them hard against the table, his knuckles livid. “I will do it,” he says, hoarse and hasty. “I will testify.”

  That easy. Hopkins draws back and takes a long, hard look at the broken man sitting across the table, pretending not to be a broken man as best he might. Edes looks as though he is trying not to weep. There it is again, that seething black powerful feeling. Only this time, it is good. Potent yet conformable, like hard, shining glass over his insides. Here I sit, he thinks, the son of a minister from Wenham, Suffolk—and yet God-like. He recognises this thought as his first gleeful blasphemy.

  Edes’ shoulders quiver as he takes a long, resonant sniff, and begins to slowly rise from his seat. The two men look one another in the face. “Deuteronomy sets the price of lying with a virgin maid at fifty silver coins,” says Edes, with a bleak, ironical smile. He lifts the hat from the table, and turns it in his hands. “It seems I will pay a higher one.”

  “I do not ask you to impute any dishonour to yourself.”

  “Nay,” Edes replies, sucking the inside of his cheek. “You do not. A mercy indeed.”

  “I entreat you to remember, sir,” Hopkins murmurs, surprised—perhaps a touch unnerved—by Edes’ sudden sanguinity, “her soul is at stake.”

  “I do not think it is her soul that so preoccupies you, Matthew.” Edes drains his beer mug.

  The Witchfinder’s nasty smile inspissates on his mouth. “You know, a curious thing about the Manningtree case,” he remarks, his tone stringently casual, “is that seven women—by all accounts simple illiterate folk possessed, at best, of a low animal cunning—were able to achieve by confederacy all that they did. Often, in similar cases, there is a supervisory masculine presence at hand, an attendant conjuror or wizard who serves to mediate between Sathan and his servants, much as a Minister does for good Christian folk.” He watches Edes, poised and pointed. He doesn’t need to say it, but he wants to. Edes may be an impulsive wretch, a people-pleaser, but he is no fool. Hopkins wants Edes to see how powerful he is. He wants to show someone who might fully comprehend what he can do.

  Master Edes claps his hat back on his head with a little laugh. “You, Matthew Hopkins,” he says, smiling, top lip despair and bottom spite, “are the most twisted villain and rogue in all of England. I look forward to reading of your death in the London news-sheets, and knowing at that very moment the Devil is dragging you down to Hell. I do not think it will be like the Hell of your imagining. I think it will be far worse.” He turns on his heel and strides away.

  “I will send to you when the time comes, John,” Hopkins calls after him. Edes waves a dismissive hand over his head to show that he has heard, before slamming the door closed at his back. Hopkins drains the dregs of his beer and sits alone, seething. The two Frenchmen by the bar peer silently over their shoulders at him. The only sound is the sputter of the rain against the windows, the plangent squeak of the innkeeper’s rag in a dirty tankard.

  “Il a l’air solitaire,” one Frenchman remarks, prompting a throaty chuckle from his associate.

  He looks lonely.

  1645

  Observe these generation of Witches, if they be at any time abused by being called Whore, Theefe, &c, by any where they live, they are the readiest to cry and wring their hands, and shed tears in abundance & run with full and right sorrowful acclamations to some Justice of the Peace, and with many teares make their complaints: but now behold their stupidity; nature or the elements reflection from them, when they are accused for this horrible and damnable sin of Witchcraft, they never alter or change their countenance nor let one Teare fall.

  MATTHEW HOPKINS

  The Discovery of Witches, 1647

  IT IS FEBRUARY WHEN HE NEXT SEES HER. TRUE winter refuses to leave, tantrums, threatens to scatter abjection all over the country again. Dark clouds flex and leer above the cursed cities and empty fields with a renewed sense of commitment to pathetic fallacy. Riding high. The world seems his; he thought
it would feel better than it does.

  She is wearing a threadbare prisoner’s habit now—a straight tunic of grey stuff. Her feet are bare, her hair disordered and filthy, her face like a tissue stretched over the bone. Hopkins finds her inanition shocking. Then he finds it alluring. There is something cold and pure in the vacancy of her huge eyes. He thinks of a painting he saw in Paris, of the Mother Mary draped in cloth of gold, closing her hand around her own breast, which was pale and perfect as a shell. He thinks of falcons, their qui vive beauty, their tiny crushable pittering frightened hearts.

  25

  Cadaver

  MY MANACLES ARE TAKEN OFF, AND THEN THE gaoler leaves. I look around the chamber. I see nowhere I can be meant to sit, nothing I can be intended to look at or remark upon. A storeroom, it seems to be, the walls lined with crates and sacks spilling grain on the dirty flagstones where the rats have got to them, shapeless bulks draped over with dust sheets. It smells odd, unpleasant. I have a high tolerance, now, for odd smells—but this is a special one, full-bodied, a sourness sinister in its proximity to sweetness. And there is the Witchfinder standing before me in his tall hat and long cloak. Everything beyond the four walls of our cell seems unreal to me—something in the manner of a waking dream, ripe with grotesque potential.

  He asks me how I fare, knitting his hands behind his back. As though he is a country husbandman passing the brewer’s wife on the road to the market. What new game is this? My first thought is that he has brought me to this secluded place to kill me. Or to hurt me, at the very least. I am surprised to find this thought precipitates very little by way of terror. Just a feeling of drear curiosity. He has brought me here to lie with me, is another. But then I remember my matted hair and unwashed body, my lousy scalp and broken nails. Do men not mind that? I cannot rightly say. The gaoler does not seem to, when he takes Helen away. Hopkins clears his throat. “Miss West?”