The Witchfinder's Sister

by Beth Underdown

  So, after our scene on the steps, I thought it best to make a show of obedience, and so I made sure to stop Matthew as he came out of the parlour that morning, and tell him where I was going. He nodded. He did not move away, but his face made me think he would speak.

  ‘Forgive me for saying what I did,’ he said, at last. ‘My temper is not what it ought to be – I have been much engaged. I beg you, sister. Consider it unsaid.’

  I said, ‘Of course,’ watching his eyes for any insincerity. I could see none there, but as I waited for Grace to be ready to go, it struck me that, although he had asked for forgiveness, for me to consider it all unsaid, he had not told me he had not meant them, the words he had spoken. About the freedom Father had given me, and what it had turned me into.

  Mary Phillips had asked Grace to bring some few things back to the Thorn, so we stopped first at the victualler’s, and the butcher’s, who had once again put out his sign, and was selling good spring lamb, Lent being done with. Watching Grace pay, counting out the coins from the leather purse Mary Phillips had handed her, I was suddenly aware that I had no money of my own.

  When the tailor’s shop door closed behind us, Rivet’s wife put down a piece of close-work, rose and shouted up the stairs. I smiled at her, for I remembered her as a gentle, harried person, the opposite of her husband. Before I could ask whether she was yet well recovered from her illness, she had taken up her work again, and Rivet came in, occupying at once all the space between floor and ceiling. He was not only a tall man but fleshy also, and he always made you want to take a step back, that you might not have to see too close the nut-brown teeth he showed each time he smiled.

  ‘Is that Matthew Hopkins’s sister? I am at your service, mistress,’ he said. Clasping his hands, he asked after my brother’s health.

  ‘I need two mourning gowns,’ I told him. ‘And gloves, two pairs.’

  Rivet smiled, and his wife again put down her sewing and stepped towards me with a length of measuring cord. I bundled my cloak to Grace.

  ‘We heard your brother’s seeing about these witches,’ Rivet said, after a minute. He said ‘witches’ not fearfully, but like you might say ‘rats’ or ‘beetles’.

  I glanced at Grace. ‘My brother has many kinds of business,’ I replied. ‘I can scarce keep up with it all.’

  Rivet leaned on the counter. ‘Never mind Bess Clarke. Rebecca West, it’s her that frightens me,’ he said. ‘That one’s no better than she should be. They do say that Thomas Hart was bringing her a half-dozen eggs a week for her services.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Folk say it’s never the ones you’d think – but in my experience, it’s always the ones you would think.’

  As Rivet continued in this vein, I spoke quietly to his wife, asking her to put a bit of room in when she made up the gowns. Her eyes shot to my face, as she caught my meaning; fortunately, Grace did not see.

  ‘I heard he has a warrant, your brother, for all of Essex,’ Rivet was saying. ‘That’ll make him a nice sum.’

  ‘I have heard nothing about it,’ I said. I ought to have known Rivet would be peddling inflated rumours, for what could Matthew want with a warrant? Though he was scribing for Grimston, he was not high-placed enough to be considered to serve as constable.

  Rivet’s wife crouched to open a drawer, making more noise than she might have done, and began to bring out pairs of gloves, black ones and grey. Then she stood, dusting her hands, and I was saved from replying to her husband by the need to make my choice. Looking at the gloves I pointed to, Rivet excused himself and went into the back to find his credit book.

  †

  After the tailor’s, Grace and I went on to Mother’s house: we had agreed not to spend long, but only to finish packing up the kitchen items, the flour and preserves we had judged should come back to the Thorn, and arrange for a boy from the Bell to bring them.

  There was a moment of awkwardness as I let Grace into the passage ahead of me and, through the open parlour door, we were met with the two chairs, still drawn up in the pose in which Matthew and I had left them. But then I went ahead of Grace to the kitchen: I did not intend to waste this time alone with her. I had been thinking of the accusations Matthew had levelled against Bridget, one being that Mother had changed her will under Bridget’s influence. And it had struck me that, as to what had or had not happened the day before Mother’s death, Grace might be the one to know.

  When we had the kitchen crate half packed, I said, ‘It must have been hard, with my mother as she was. When you first came into our service.’

  She leaned back on her hands. ‘I liked the mistress,’ she replied. ‘She was kind to me. There are worse houses.’ She saw I was listening. ‘I have heard of houses where maids are pinched or starved for nothing. Where the master …’ She met my eyes, to check I knew what she meant.

  I nodded. ‘But I have been thinking – you know my mother did amend her will, the day she died?’

  ‘I remember it.’

  ‘Was she – lucid, when she did it? For I know she had good days and bad.’

  ‘The master must have judged her to be.’ She dusted her hands, and stood up, and we took the chairs at the kitchen table. ‘Her health was breaking, poor lady,’ Grace said. ‘She had pains in her womb. She would fret herself over little things. But if you want my opinion, the day she died, she was in her wits.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I would have said she was more restless the night before, after your mother-in-law came to see her.’ She avoided my eyes.

  ‘What do you mean? She was distressed?’

  ‘No, it was more – she seemed excited. She would not settle. She sat up late doing needlework, nothing fancy either, but mending one of her gowns, though she was that ill, and not like to be out of bed to wear it again.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. Though it did not seem so out of the ordinary: Mother had always taken up her sewing when she wanted soothing. Her clothes were always stuck full of pins, where she would insert them, then forget them.

  Slowly, Grace said, ‘The master was angry with me, for letting your mother-in-law in. He did not like it, but he forgave me my mistake.’ She looked at me with meaning. I saw she was speaking of Matthew, how he had admonished me in the yard. She was trying to comfort me.

  ‘He had told you not to admit Bridget, then?’

  ‘Not as such.’ She was frowning to remember. ‘He said nothing about her in particular, mistress – but he had told me not to let anyone in. We had sent the nurse away, for she was no good. I was trying to clean the mistress’s sores, but they were worse than I had realized, and she wouldn’t keep still, and then I heard the knocking below.’

  ‘And you showed Bridget up?’

  Grace nodded. ‘She helped me change her bedlinen, and stayed a while after. I went up after half an hour, and heard them parting.’

  ‘And my mother was excited?’

  ‘I heard your mother-in-law saying, “I don’t want it.” And the mistress saying, “You must, you must.” I heard her saying, “I can’t keep it where I am going.” ’

  ‘And you think they were speaking of the will? Of my mother’s ring, perhaps?’

  ‘I thought so. But then your mother was so restless, and – I only remembered it, after. After she had died. I tried to speak to you of it the other day, mistress – for I told the master of it, and I think now I should not have done.’

  ‘Told him of what?’

  ‘What brought it back to me was, the master asked me, after she had died, whether I had heard or seen anything unusual in the mistress before her death.’ She looked at me. ‘And I did. I did see something. It was not – I do not know that it had anything to do with your mother-in-law. It was earlier on that day, the day before your mother died. It was in the morning.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I went to wake her, and I saw something in the bed.’

  ‘What do you mean? Saw what?’ I thought of the accusations that had been troubling the town. ‘A creature?’ I said.

&nb
sp; ‘No, not a creature.’ She looked strangely at me. ‘I don’t know what it was. It was this big.’ She showed me the size, with finger and thumb against her flattened hand. ‘I had not seen it before. I think perhaps she had been holding it while she slept. It was made of – if I did not know better, I would have said it was made of hair, coarse dark hair woven into a shape like a child’s shape, crude. But not like a little girl’s doll. It didn’t look – it didn’t look nice. It didn’t look good.’ She paused. ‘I searched for it – the item – after the mistress died. Once I remembered it, I searched for it everywhere. So as to dispose of it.’ She met my eyes. ‘So that the master would not find it, and be puzzled or otherwise distressed. But I could not find it. I scoured her chamber, and I could not find it. So it gives me to think, whether your mother-in-law took it away.’

  I swallowed. ‘And you told my brother this.’

  A quick nod. ‘He questioned me deeply about it. He even bade me draw it on paper. I believe he did hunt for it also, for a day or two after.’ I remembered Mother’s gowns, how the pockets had been turned out. She leaned forward. ‘Mistress, I did not speak of it before, for I have heard nothing about it since. I do not know that it was anything to do with Bridget. But I think the master decided it was, as I was speaking the very words. I see how he has taken against her.’ She spread her hands. ‘I don’t know, mistress. I can’t know. But with all the talk in the town now …’

  I tried to calm Grace, and reassure her that she had done only what she thought best. We finished packing, and set off back to the Thorn in silence. Grace’s words spoke themselves over again in my mind: an item, about this big, like a child woven out of coarse black hair. I did not know what good such a thing could signify. Or what Matthew might have made of it. It worried me that he had not spoken of it.

  Grace was silent for most of the walk. But when we were nearly back, she said, ‘Do you think it is true, about the master having a warrant for all of Essex?’

  I wanted to soothe her. ‘John Rivet talks renowned nonsense,’ I said. But it could be true, I thought. Grimston, as a justice of the peace, he could have given Matthew a warrant to act on his behalf in finding out supposed witches. Though even he could not have written one for the whole of Essex. In any case, I could not think why Matthew would be driven to search beyond Manningtree: Bridget was here, already within his reach, and so were the fine new friends he might impress with his diligence.

  Grace must have heard the doubt in my voice. For she said, ‘Sir Harbottle will know. They are coming tomorrow night to dine.’

  †

  If I had thought that talking to Grace would render matters clearer I was wrong, for it had done the reverse. I spent that night in my chamber, thinking about the item she had described, and what it could mean. There would be no virtue in trying to speak to Matthew of it, but now it felt more urgent than ever to know what was in his mind: in his heart. And since talking to my brother had only made him angry, I was forced to turn to other means.

  When we were little, Father had encouraged us to keep daily books, though it had taken us a long time to grasp that they were meant to be private, for our own confessions to God. I was eleven or twelve before we each left off writing messages for the other to find, among the accounts of the wrongs and shortcomings our little lives contained. Even when I was older – fifteen, seventeen – I had often written some difficulty in my daily book as if I were writing it to Matthew, it being easier to say what I meant in that way, than to write as if to no one. I had left off keeping my daily book with my marriage; but my brother, I suspected, would have continued faithfully with his. He had always used to write in it before bed, as regularly as washing his face.

  Recalling this, I saw that my long days of hesitation had not been wasted. The routine of the Thorn had seeped into me in those days I had spent huddled in my chamber, alive to sounds from other parts of the house. I had noticed my own room was dealt with by one or other of the scullery maids, but my brother’s chamber Mary Phillips did herself, going in each afternoon for the chamber pot and the ashes, and to lay that evening’s fire. His room was most often kept locked, but Mary Phillips did not lock the door when she took his chamber pot. I had heard her, each day, knocking the ashes into the pot, then going away downstairs. Soon, she would come back to replace the pot, and only then would she lock up. Most of the time she was quick – a minute, perhaps two. But more than once I had heard one of the girls ask her something as she went out at the yard door or came back in, and in those cases Matthew’s door would stand unlocked for five minutes or six.

  The next day, the day Grimston and the other men were coming to dine, was a Saturday. Grace came in to me in the morning, to bring me my bread and beer, and asked whether I was warm enough. I assured her I was comfortable, and then she said, ‘Mistress, this evening, the master said to let you know, I will bring you a tray in your chamber. There will be no other ladies at the dinner, and so …’

  ‘Thank you, Grace. I shall not mind that – but this afternoon –’ I knew that to ask it of her was to take a chance. But the opportunity would not happen without help, and suddenly, since what she had told me the day before, matters had gained an urgency. ‘When Mary comes down with my brother’s chamber pot,’ I said, ‘perhaps you might choose that moment to ask her for something.’ I kept my voice low. ‘Detain her. Grace, believe me, just as for good reasons you told me yesterday what you did, I wish for only good reasons to have five minutes alone in my brother’s room.’ I sat back, searched her face. ‘I mean only good by this. For his own sake, I need to know what he is planning to do. Do you believe me?’

  She seemed uncertain, but she agreed to do as I asked. Perhaps she felt bound, having confided so much to me the day before, or perhaps she, too, was beginning to fear how things were turning. Some few hours later, I heard Mary Phillips come up, unlock my brother’s chamber and clatter about for a short while. Then, when I heard her clumping down the stairs, I let myself out of my chamber, and slipped along the passage to my brother’s door.

  The room was laid out as though a mirror had been held to my own, with the swept grate on the right hand, the high bed on the left as I shut the door to an inch open, then stood still and listened. I looked about me, for any familiar possessions, but there was nothing. It was a man’s temporary room, furnished singularly bare. I opened the chest at the foot of the bed: shirts in stacks, white on white. The best quality, you could tell without even feeling them. I shut the chest again. No Bible on the little stand by the bed, but there were a few spills, perhaps used for marking pages. The only cluttered place was the desk.

  I crossed the room and began to search, trying to replace each item as I moved it, looking for his daily book, or any personal scrap of my brother’s. My hands sweated, and I felt sure that I must be leaving prints, so I wiped the cover of each book on my sleeve as I replaced it. Accounts, a book of sermons: I picked that one up by its spine and shook, but nothing fell out. Receipts, lists. I opened the drawers of the desk. A reminder of the last year’s production of the mill at Flatford, and a witnessed statement detailing my brother’s interest in the same. One large sheet that I unfolded proved to be Mother’s will. I could not prevent myself reading it: it was not long. Near the end, I read, To my faithful servant Bridget, my Bible and my gold ring. For my late husband’s daughter Alice, I do most particularly will her all my clothing. I fought down my anger and hurt, folded it and placed it back where I had found it.

  But as I put it back, I saw another sheet underneath: neat, official writing, and a seal. A warrant. So Rivet had been right. The warrant was long and the phrasing tortuous, in what I took to be Grimston’s hand. Though it did not cover all of Essex, it did cover the Tendring Hundred, the part of the county in Grimston’s charge from Colchester to Harwich to Wivenhoe, half a day’s riding from end to end. I glanced down the warrant quickly, then made myself lay it aside. I did not have much longer.

  But in a minute or two more, I had s
earched through every paper on Matthew’s desk, and I still could not find his daily book. I thought of the brown leather case he carried always with him. Perhaps he kept it in there. But what need to be so careful? He never had been before.

  I stood back, and glanced at the bookshelf above the desk. Biblical commentaries, and then a small volume, A Guide to Grand Jury Men, no doubt some dry legal text. Then another whole row, all bound alike in dark brown leather. As I gazed at them I remembered: it had been Matthew’s habit as a child to keep his daily books on the shelf, with his other volumes. The row of books had looked so dull, had been in such plain view that I had not noticed them.

  Then I heard Mary Phillips’s voice in the passage below and, panicked, I grabbed the book at the end of the row, and slipped out onto the landing. I heard her heavy tread start up the stairs as I crept along to my chamber, and closed my door only as she reached the turn: I heard her halt before she carried on up the second flight, though I did not know whether it was from suspicion or only to catch her breath.

  It took me a while to breathe freely myself. I put the book under my pillow, while I waited to hear Mary finish in Matthew’s chamber and go back downstairs. The baby was moving, and I felt alarmed: I had not intended to take anything from the room. Though I could hardly undo it now. I had heard her turn the key again in the lock.

  I took out the book from under my pillow. I felt oddly reluctant to open it, where my brother’s thoughts resided. But I thought of Elizabeth Gooding, and of Bridget, and I steeled myself.

  It took me a moment to see the words, to decipher the handwriting I had not seen for so long, then the date of the entry on the open page. This daily book was not Matthew’s, but Father’s, and the words on the page written soon before his death.

  I could not help but read them. I turned the pages guiltily at first, but soon I grew absorbed. Though it seemed my father’s thoughts were wandering, in those last days, it touched my heart to read his lyrical praise of Cambridge, his memories from his time as a student there. Of the garden kept in readiness for only the dean to walk in, and to be seen by lesser souls at a distance from behind a rope. Of cloisters, books and lamps in the short winter days, of learning for its own sake.