Manningtree, Essex, England.
Widow Potts was the first to see it, sneaking along the floor, having skittered out from beside the chimney. It looked to all intents and purposes like a like an ordinary rat seeking out stray crumbs, nose twitching and head darting. Yet the long shadow it cast along the floor and up the wall was clearly not of its own making. Instead it seemed to be that of a cat, black from shadow and clearly angered, its back arched tight and high. The wood on the fire suddenly crackled and hissed, no doubt to mask the sound of the cat itself hissing as it readied itself to pounce upon them and claw its way into their hearts...
It was somewhere approaching five minutes to six in the evening and the world outside was cold and blustery. February was always the month in which the most vicious winds began to blow fast along the Stour from the Channel, hardening the ground to stone as they passed. It was a dire time for all, one in which the planting of anything became an impossibility, save for the hopes of a long and fruitful summer.
Ordinarily, none within Widow Hart’s meagre residence would have known the hour, not without venturing outside and looking skyward to the moon, then venturing further to take a guess. As it happened, however, Porter had loaned them the use of a ‘clock watch’, something that not one in the village had ever laid eyes upon before. It was, according to Porter himself, a ‘pomander watch’ which he informed the beguiled Goodwives was a name taken from the French ‘pomme d’ambre’, meaning ‘amber apple’. It was a design used for the perfume bottles of nobility throughout Europe, and one which a German fellow by the name of Peter Henlein had used to insert his first portable mechanism whilst exiled in a Franciscan monastery as far back as 1505. This particular pomander, Porter further informed them, had been crafted at Henlein’s own hands over a century past and was very valuable indeed. So they were told quite firmly that they were each to ‘looke with theyre eyes, and not with theyre fingers.’
It had the appearance of a small world globe, coppery in colour and with an equatorial ridge forming the break between the lower workings and the upper lid. The thin-plate upper section had a repeating series of teardrop holes cut right through, whilst the lower section was solid but engraved with a number of rough illustrations. One crudely represented the face of a man, clearly a nobleman, whilst another showed a tower on what was presumably his home, his standard flying proud above. Each of these illustrations was surrounded by a similarly crude representation of the outer section of the face itself; a series of lines and dots. On the actual face each of the twelve lines, Porter explained, was a representation of an hour of the day, with small rivet-like hemispheres having been placed between for decorative purposes. Whilst the face was also amber in colour and shining, the one hand the watch possessed - a thick and solid hour hand - was cast from the dullest of black iron. In the centre of the face a twelve-fingered star reached out its arms and pointed to each of the hour markings in turn.
Hopkins, meanwhile, had been less than enamoured with the addition of any timepiece to the proceedings at all, as he worried that Porter was either trying to catch him out in his methods or, more likely, detailing every event with just a little too much accuracy to use against him at a much later date. In the end, however, he had been unable to find an argument sealed tight enough to carry water and had no option but to let it pass.
Porter, for his part, felt that he was fast losing control of the entire situation and the inclusion of the watch was just one way in which he was trying to regain just a little. In addition to not liking Prudence’s inclusion in the proceedings at all, he had further not liked the fact that the location for the pricking had been changed from St. Mary’s to Prudence’s own home, Hopkins suggesting that the dark spirits Rachael would call upon may be afeared to enter the hallowed halls of a church. He had also not liked the fact that, according to that very same pomander, Hopkins had spent over one full hour completely alone with Prudence - ‘detailing to her what she might need eyes for’. Last, but by no means least, he had really not liked the fact that, for some lengthy period of time before the pricking commenced, Hopkins’ boy had been nowhere to be seen.
But the watch went with them and for now it sat wide open in the corner of a dark room which bristled with fear and expectation. The amber was flickering to the light of the low fire as the watch emitted a deep and heavy ‘click-clock’ that added a dark beat to silence which had steadily fallen. With the pricking commencing at around 11.00pm on the Wednesday night, it had kept its beat steady and firm for almost four full turns - forty-two hours or so for those among who might be able to count that far.
Goodwife Morley was away to offer updates and retrieve more vittels and Widow Potts was catching up on much-needed slumber. Widow Lawton had checked the face of the watch only a few minutes ago and had surmised to Prudence that it might be around ‘ten-minutes-two’. With only an hour hand to go on, combined with a low degree of education on the part of the aged widow, it was seriously anyone’s guess at this stage just how accurate that reading might be. Prudence, seated in a chair around eight feet from Rachael and staring directly at her, nodded without ever diverting her gaze. Rachael’s head hung low and fluttered gently on occasion, but it was difficult to ascertain if she was asleep or not.
Having spent the first three hours of the pricking stripping the young girl naked and examining her body in disgustingly minute detail - prodding her inside and out in as vile and inconsiderate a manner as possible - only to find nothing of note beyond the inverted crucifix of which they were all already aware, the women had then seated her on a crude wooden chair, her body sagging as though her bones had been stolen. She was allowed to put her own clothes back on first, of course, but had been so tired and battered from the intrusive scouring of her flesh that she now looked as though she had dressed herself blindfold. Her hands had been tied roughly to the cross beam which ran behind her back, her ankles receiving similar treatment on each of the wooden legs. Blood from the internal search still trickled and glistened down her legs.
She had been placed too close to the fire, and had wanted to tell them so, but feared the words that might leave her mouth if she actually tried to speak. She had been sweating hard on and off for almost two full days now, her brow matted with streaks of red hair which, in the similarly orange light of an evening fire, took on the appearance of yet more streams of blood running down her skull.
It was only a few moments after the checking of the watch that Widow Potts screamed and jumped up, tipping her chair noisily to the floor. Even Rachael’s weary head raised at the sound.
“I see it, I see it,” the old woman said. She did not shout, however. She whispered. It was as though she feared putting anything into voice at all.
Widow Lawton followed Potts’ line of sight and saw the rat, sitting on its hind legs in the middle of the floor and looking up and around the room as though wondering if it had remembered to hang its washing to dry. She sighed. “’Tis but a rat, Molly. You have downed too much mead is all and you see things not there. Go back to sleep.”
Another thing which Porter had not liked; the mead. He cared little for Prudence’s state of mind throughout the pricking, as her recollection of what might transpire was always going to be twisted, but he had wanted Goodwife Morley and Widows Lawton and Potts to be ‘completely compus’. Which, apparently, meant ‘of reasoned mind’. Or, the way he saw it, of the mind the women normally had which, even he had to admit, often veered well away from the path of reason. Hopkins had insisted that mead should be allowed over just water as it ‘opened one’s eyes to all around by clearing the mind of all other worries’. It was an essential ingredient to all prickings, he said, and he had swift despatched his Boy to bring some from the Ale House. Over the two day period, not one of the ladies had become drunk upon it, but all had sipped regularly, save for Prudence who had no wish to ‘clear her mind’. Even Rachael had been offered a few sips at regular intervals, and had taken them to just fight the heat. It was offered to
her at Prudence’s instruction, but only so that it might ‘moisten and loosen her tongue’.
So far, it simply hadn’t worked.
Widow Potts was unconvinced that what she saw right before her eyes was all to be blamed on the mead and so she closed them just for a few moments, reciting a lengthy prayer to herself. When she opened them again the rat was gone, but it had not seen fit to carry any of her fears away with it.
The rat’s first appearance, however, was only the start...
By seven o’clock, or thereabouts, things were really looking to kick off...
It started again when the now returned Goodwife Morley was cutting apples and dipping their faces in honey so that she and Widow Lawton might have the energy to stay alert until daybreak. As she cut, the world suddenly went a little darker around her and she felt a chill. Distracted slightly, she slipped with the knife and cut a little way into her finger. It was not by much, and was a common occurrence even without the introduction of mead into her system. Indeed, over half the deep creases on Goodwife Morley’s aged fingers had come from a clumsy blade. What was different, however, was that the rat she had been hearing tales about did return, peeking a twitching pink nose from the side of the stove before scurrying swiftly along the workbench. As had been described to her, its shadow was indeed that of a black cat and, whilst the rat scurried in short, sharp bursts, its shadow merely crept; as though it were stalking. Paralysed by fear, Goodwife Morley had been unable to move or scream. Eventually the rat had scuttled right up her very finger and begun to suckle on the blood which trickled from her cut, as an imp might suckle its witch. Shaking head to toe but still frozen with fear, she had somehow found the strength to raise her other arm and make ready to sweep it away. As she did, however, the black cat in the shadow reared up and hissed at her. She could see its shadowed hackles rising. The rat itself, meanwhile, kept on feasting.
All the while the world outside, just visible through the rough and dirty glass of the most basic windows, seemed just that little bit more ominous than before. With the ambient light stolen, it made the shadows from the fire all the more blackened and sinister as they danced like maniacs around the confines of the room. But then, not one among those gathered knew (as Hopkins did) that just after 7.00pm on Friday 10th February 1645 was the date and hour at which the next partial lunar eclipse had been predicted. And, as eclipses often do (if predicted correctly), it had arrived right on time, temporarily cloaking the earth in an orange gloom and accentuating the inherent fears of its overtly superstitious inhabitants.
Eventually, Morley could stand the suckling no more and she screamed and started hacking at the work surface with the knife, her hand flailing wildly as she sought to slice the rat like she might a pig.
By this time Widow Potts was quite noisily asleep once more, huffing like a shire horse, but she woke swift enough at the commotion. Like Prudence’s chair, hers also faced that of the young Rachael directly and the first thing she saw on opening her tired eyes this time around was a violent fire burning deep within those of the young girl. It opened her own wide in an instant. Flames rose up behind Rachael’s dark, thick-spread pupils as she slowly raised her head and stared back at her elderly nemesis with dark venom. She looked straight at Widow Potts and then, through the fiery gloom - she looked straight into her - casting a gaze that the old lady felt burned right at her very soul.
Then Potts heard Rachael speak, though she did so without ever moving her lips. A dark voice, more male than female, told her that she must join the coven and then she might be spared the wrath of God. If she did not, then she would surely burn in the agonising fires of hell for she had wished ill on Robert, late husband of Goodwife Morley. This had been some thirty years back... and Robert Morley had died. She had once kissed him, the voice said. Then more. Much more. Indeed, Widow Potts’ son Henry might even have belonged to Robert. But Robert had told her that it must come to an end; that they must not meet again. She had screamed at him and cursed both his name and his cold, cold heart. A week later that very same heart had turned to stone in an instant and the man had died clutching it in the cold winter fields.
But, save for his death, no-one knew any of that. No-one but Widow Potts herself.
It was a dark, dark secret.
But... the girl. The witch. Somehow she knew it.
The words ‘burn in hell’, ‘join us’ and ‘son of a cold heart’ were echoing around Potts’ mind now. First in that single male voice, but soon in more. Many, many more. Some of the voices she recognised from the village, including that of Goodwife Morley herself, to whom she looked in fear for a moment realising that her secret was freed, but others she did not. Soon it became a full chorus of disapproval, filling her head; a cacophony of disdain violently rattling the chains of a long-imprisoned conscience.
And all the while Rachael just stared at her. Smiling that dark, ominous, knowing smile.
As Potts screamed hard, slicing away at her verminous apparition and Morley was pinned fast in her chair, caught in the glare of the young Medusa herself, Widow Lawton was... dancing. Gently. Gracefully. Risen from her chair and sweeping around the room as though she was a young maiden once more, a broad smile carved across her face and carrying not single a worry upon her extremely hefty shoulders.
She had always known that her William would come back to her. One day. And, when he did, his presence would put an end to even her loneliest of nights. She had never suspected that he would come back as such a young man, however. Looking as he had when they first met. His hair was still black and cropped short, his skin smooth and unblemished and his body firm and taut. This was the William which had existed almost forty years before the pox had stolen him away an ounce at a time. And now here he was, large as life. He took her by the hand and promised to be her loving husband once more ’til death, and to avenge her of all her enemies. Her heart melting, she in turn promised to be his obedient wife ’til death, and to deny both God and Jesus Christ. For that was what he asked of her. God, he said, had taken him from her. He was a cruel and heartless god, but there was another who would bring her all she desired - in this life and the next. The devil would become his instrument of revenge for her, he said softly. If she would let him.
All she had to do was dance with him.
So she danced.
Crackles of light from the fire still flickering in her eyes, Rachael turned to Prudence and stared hard. The richest smile in the room was no longer that of the now enchanted Mary Lawton, however. No, the richest, widest smile belonged only to Prudence, as indeed Prudence felt it should. She, in turn, looked right back at Rachael, staring hard into those flickering fires and the impossible smile grew even wider.
It was done. It had taken almost two full days, but Rachael Garland would be in the hands of the Magistrates before another day was at an end. And she would not be coming back.
At her feet, in the deep crevices between the stones which made up the floor, there still lurked numerous deep stains of blood both from Rachael and from the night on which Prudence had given birth in this very room. Without warning, the stains started to grow and spread, like creeping branches on a tree. Slowly, they crawled out from the crevices, edged away from Rachael toward Prudence’s bare feet and started to entwine themselves around her slender legs. Blood-red fingers began to curl around her ankles and climb slowly up her body as though readying to smother her, her flesh blackening like coal as the blood soaked in.
Prudence never moved. It was as though she did not even know this was happening.
Rachael could sense something faint. Something brooding deep within her own mind. Something out of place which toyed with her thoughts and sent them dancing like Widow Lawton across the darkest corners of her mind. It felt as though she really ought to be worried, yet she remained completely unfazed. And even that did not seem to bother her. Somehow she had become numb to it all.
As the eclipse outside started to break ranks and a little more of the blueish mo
onlight found its way into the room, everything became clearer. Just a little. Rachael looked to the glow of window for just a moment, and then back to Prudence’s legs. They were clear. Normal.
With Widow Potts held rigid in the chair, her body quivering as she stared wide-eyed at Rachael and repeated the words ‘son of a cold heart’ ad infinitum to herself, and Goodwife Morley exhausted and finally sunk to the floor, silence fell. It was broken now only by Widow Lawton humming a soft tune to herself as she danced the room, her timing kept precise by the steady click-clock of the pomander as it counted down yet another dark hour.
When realisation found a route between her spinning thoughts, Rachael did not even have the desire, or the strength, to be surprised. If anything, it had somehow been expected. She would fire only one sentence out into the air throughout the entire pricking, and it would be now - her slightly slurred arrow of hatred aimed directly at the deeply malevolent core of Prudence Hart:
“You’re one clever little bytch, Prudence. I’ll fucking give you that.”
THIRTY-SIX
Thursday, July 13, 1645.
Manningtree, Essex, England.
In terms of being a centre of world trade, Mistley was no Antwerp. That was Eli’s first thought.
The dock was home today to only two ships, neither very large, and one of those was the one he had just sailed in on. Despite the Dutch vessel looking way past its prime, the journey had actually been almost pleasurable. After much haggling on the dockside, having paid a number of gold sovereigns direct to the captain for his passage, he had not been required to work so much as a moment of shift on the decks. So he had been able to take time to himself, sitting at the bow, looking forward toward England and musing about the things which had happened and, more importantly, the things which now had to happen. He had heard talk that the English Channel could be the source of some of the roughest seas handed down by the seasons but, probably given that it was now a full-on summer, both the seas and the journey had been remarkably smooth.
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