The Manningtree Witches

by A. K. Blakemore

  Helen watches mulish from the door. “Thick as clot!” Priscilla shrills at her. “Don’t just stand there! Send Michael out for Doctor Croke.”

  And off Helen dashes, tripping on her skirts.

  “And the Minister!” Priscilla hollers down the stairs after her.

  It is past midnight by the time Doctor Croke arrives, stately in his overcoat, with his long wisps of white hair and his hard little bag of pincers and pokers, urchin spines and saltpetre. Goody Briggs has left her son’s bedside for just long enough to comb out her hair and throw on a straight gown. She feels mildly guilty for even this brief abandonment, but reasons it is ultimately done in Thomas’ best interests, given that Doctor Croke is an eligible widower, and Priscilla herself expects soon to be a widow, too, a circumstance she will aim to correct as soon as it is respectable to do so.

  Thomas’ thrashing has dwindled to a ceaseless tremble, but his eyes remain lucid and his skin hot with sweat. “Poppets,” he gasps. “In the scuttle. And they keep birdies as pets as well.”

  The Doctor lifts the boy’s nightshirt and presses a hand to his quaking belly. Thomas attempts to wriggle out from beneath the coverlet and to stand back on his feet. Priscilla gently protests, trying to press him back down to the pillows, but the Doctor silences her, and indicates they should allow the boy to rise.

  Thomas Briggs does rise. He stands shivering by the bedside for a moment, then begins to walk, to walk, dead-eyed and in ever-expanding circles, around the room. He drags his left foot crumpled behind him—a limp where before the boy had none—and releases a laboured, hacking breath at every footstep. Priscilla babbles quietly to herself, alarmed to see her son so compromised. It is as though the healthful lad she left grouching in the bath has been carried away by devils and replaced by a superannuated drunk—a discomposing, palsied thing hauling itself around the room in an aimless stagger.

  Helen reappears at the doorway and says that the Minister has promised to come as soon as he is able. She fidgets with her apron and casts a nervous look at Thomas, dragging his left foot behind himself as though it is rotting off.

  “Ha!” Thomas shouts, spinning on the spot and jabbing a finger at the housemaid. “Ha! Sisters, and the fondling of sooty-ears! I saw her dugs once—” he declares, with an odd, lascivious smile. “Lovely they were, though the left is bigger than the right. She feeds me on pins!” He releases a sudden screech and falls to the floor, as though something has laid its hands on his shoulders and pushed him.

  Doctor Croke sweeps the lad up in his arms and returns him, at last, to the bed. Thomas is reduced once more to a collection of jittering limbs atop the blankets, and mutters in a sing-song voice, again and again, The Captain brings a monkey for the King, though the red-skin died, the Captain brings a monkey for the King, though the red-skin died, and whines and variously battologises. Helen backs away, a look of dumb horror on her face.

  The God-fearing Priscilla is grave. She presses a hand to her mouth and mutters, “Use not vain repetitions, as the heathens do,” through her fingers.

  Doctor Croke renews his examination, tugging at Thomas’ lower lids to inspect the veiny flesh beneath his rolling eyes, seizing the boy’s jaw and holding his mouth open to peer at his tonsils, purple and glistening. “And never before has he had such convulsions?” the Doctor enquires.

  Priscila shakes her head. “No, never before.”

  Doctor Croke makes a low, thoughtful noise, and sends for a wide dish and a wet cloth.

  “Aye, and fetch me a Holy Book, too, Helen,” Thomas interjects from the bed, in a high-pitched, needly voice that is not his own—and not like anyone else’s, either—“for I wish to make an evening snack from it.” He bursts out into guffawing and mashes his balled fists against his chest.

  Goody Briggs snaps her fingers at Helen, who is pleased to have this excuse to absent herself. By the time she returns, Thomas’ affliction is modified once more, and Priscilla and Doctor Croke watch the boy with mute concern as he gallops and careens about the room as though he is riding an invisible hobby-horse, his hands tight around spectral reins. But where a child indulging in such play might usually click the tongue to denote hoof beats, Thomas instead barks like an angry terrier. His flagrant rejection of dramatic veracity is deeply unsettling to all. With great difficulty—and, for Helen’s part, with reluctant compliance—the three of them eventually wrestle the boy off his ghostly steed and into a chair, then cover his head with a wet cloth so that the Doctor might administer fumes of hartshorn. The bedchamber is choked with a mealy, sour odour, like hot piss, and Priscilla gags and chokes as she helps Croke stall the boy above the steaming bowl. As soon as the wet cloth is removed from his head, Thomas begins a bout of vomiting miraculous in its longevity, and kicks the bowl over, and is returned to the bed once more, shuddering and slick with sweat and his own effluvium. It is a waking nightmare.

  “A jaybird, plucked and disembowelled, is one remedy for the Falling Sickness—” Doctor Croke gamely interpolates, as he dabs a kerchief on his glistening brow. “Although I concede, a jaybird may be difficult to obtain at the present hour.” His black humour does not find an appreciative audience in the frantic Goody Briggs. But fortunately (though not for Thomas Briggs), all options are not exhausted. The boy is pinched and bled, heated and cooled, sprinkled with powders, spread with salves and a gritty mucilage of peony seeds and cat’s cruor.

  Minister Long arrives too late to corroborate the miraculous nature of the vomiting episode, and soon wishes he had stayed away entirely. He improvises a number of spiritual diagnostic techniques, and they reach a consensus that in his present condition, the usually devout Thomas is wholly unable to recite the Lord’s Prayer without barking, which must be significant somehow. The Minister, however, sees which way this whole affair is going, and is chary of performing any procedure that might be thought by Doctor Croke and Goody Briggs too closely to resemble the Popish ceremony of exorcism. (Secretly, however, he wishes that the Pope were here, and thinks that he would have a better idea of what to do.)

  By daybreak, it is concluded that the only explanation for Thomas Briggs’ prodigious malady is bewitchment. Maleficium. By mid-morning, half the town has heard the same.

  The Information of Grace, the wife of Richard Glascock of Manningtree, taken upon oath before the said Justices, 1645

  This informant saith, that there being some falling out between Mary the wife of Edward Parsley of Manningtree, and one Helen Clarke, the wife of Thomas Clarke (which said Helen is the daughter of Anne Leech) this informant heard the said Helen to say, as the said Helen passed by this informant’s door in the street, that Mary the daughter of the said Edward and Mary Parsley should rue for all, whereupon, presently the said Mary the daughter, fell sick, and died within six weeks after.

  10

  Sermon

  THE NEXT DAY IS ONE OF WINTER PURE AND true, bitterly cold and overcast, with a powdery sleet falling over Mistley. Mother takes one look at the swirling cloud from the kitchen stoop, and declares that she will not leave the house for all the silver in Seville, but I—being hard compelled by curiosity, which is, of course, the first sin of woman—decide to go in spite of it.

  The pews are cold enough to turn your buttocks pink beneath your skirts—but the congregation is nonetheless swollen to great number, despite the filthy weather, by the promise of gossip. Goody Briggs’ unprecedented absence from her front seat only serves to confirm the outlandish rumours that have circled the slender hours, passed from door to door by errand-bound boys, and by the red-cheeked housekeepers emptying ash pails onto midden heaps (the Widow Leech among them). It is clear from the opening formalities of the sermon that Minister Long’s auroral brush with Pandemonium has imbued him, in the eyes of his flock, with a certain glamour (Frances Hockett flutters a hand before her breast and declares she could just eat him up in a pie, which seems to me an excessively libertine pronouncement). Minister Long notices this newfound regard, and it seems to please
him. He is a different man. He swaggers and swashbuckles at the pulpit, Essex’s own Jeremiah, pushing his mop of brown hair from out of his eyes, his lace jabot at a rakish angle.

  His sermon keeps even the restive back rows rapt. As we all know, he says, as we all know—God’s work on Earth is nearly done. Things draw, resolutely, to their close. As that celestial arrow of intent nears its target, the Devil redoubles his efforts to send it astray, and plunge the world into the thicket of anarchy. I think the metaphor somewhat torturous, but the congregants’ eyes widen. The venerables in the front pew press their hands to their sallow throats.

  “We grope,” Minister Long intones, “even now, along a darkened path, beset by fiends. Hands reach out to us through the black. But how are we to know if they offer to guide us true, on our way through the shadows, or seek to lead us further from the way of redemption, and unto the very jaws of the Beast?” As the Prince of Hell is invoked a gust whips felicitously at the boarded windows. In the third row, I see Mary Parsley reach to clutch at her sister’s arm. Even here, he explains, in Manningtree, the Devil’s servants abound, like rancorous toads at the bottom of the grain-sack, revelling in their own slime. And now their master galvanises them to mutiny against the town, against the neighbours who have long offered them protection and succour, against Parliament, and against England itself. “The world will be made anew,” he says, eyes sweeping and reeling as though he traces the progress of some invisible bird over the front row of pews. “Do not doubt it, for it is written that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat . . .” He inhales. Blinks.

  “A new world. But will it be a world for the righteous?” He moistens his lips and pauses, his eyes flickering closed in a subtle invitation for his congregants to envision the alternative: hedgerows bursting into flame, no doubt, and magpies picking at the faces of dead lambs, and pigs and dogs alike walking on their hind legs, wielding rusty cleavers of their very own.

  “And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen”—and some of our more tendentious neighbours, who know well their Revelation, bend their lips silently along to the familiar passage—“and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” Minister Long lifts his arms to the rafters. “How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her! For she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and I am no widow, and I shall see no sorrow. Vigilance!” he shouts, smacking his hands down hard upon the lectern. A shiver passes through the congregants.

  Of whom might Minister Long be speaking? There are many widows in Manningtree, and their number is growing. The general opinion concerning widows is that—once time has blunted the edge of their bereavement—they tend to fuss about and make unconscionable demands upon the commonwealth. A knob of butter here, a loaf of bread there, just until I am able to get back on my feet, Goodwife. Some take to languishing abed while their homesteads fall to ruin and their children, unattended, make a nuisance of themselves in the streets. Some of them, having lost their own husbands, cast about for other people’s, all heaving bosoms and wet doe eyes and please just hold me George it’s been so long since I felt the touch of a man. Yes, the left side of St Mary’s might be forced to concede, they can see how a woman like that, riven by emptiness, might find it consuming her. They can see how she might look for things to fill it with, set about stuffing the fissure with whatever ghostly shreds come to enwrap themselves about her shoulders at night. They say the Devil is a cunning trickster, a two-faced sweetheart. He dangles a patient ear as often as he does a pretty bauble. And women hate widows all the more because they are just a tumbling scaffold at the shipyard or a storm on the channel or a bullet from a hedgerow away from being one themselves.

  “Vigilance,” Long repeats, intently. “Vigilance and faith. He who overlooketh the sins of his neighbour, sinneth himself. The Devil cometh amongst us in all manner of disguises, both astonishing and base: the wanton girl, the conjurer, the Cavalier with his feathered hat, bent on defilement and rapine: or else he appears as no more . . . no more than a rabbit by the door, the dog . . . the dog who walks in your shadow the whole road home. Ever His dominions increase, and encroach—from east and west, from north and south, and he hopes that he might truly be called King in this world! We must see to it”—he raises a trembling finger heavenward, here—“that among the righteous, he findeth no recourse, no sanctuary. Be alert, saith Peter—for your enemy, the Devil, prowls around you as a roaring lion, looking for one to devour.”

  He draws to a close, touching a hand to his pigeon chest. The church is silent, save for the rustle of collective in-drawn breath. I feel that I am being looked at—I am being looked at. Eyes round the white wing of a cap, a furtive hindward glance. I pinch hard at the skin of my wrist.

  THE CHURCHYARD IS GLUTTED WITH THE LAST fallen leaves, shades of leathery brown and livid yellow, the earth turning up a leprous cheek. The women have made uncommon haste back to home and hearth, most half-expectant they will find cauldrons upset and laundry despoiled by spectral burglars in their absence, nasty fingerprints on their underthings. But the men remain behind and mill about, congratulating the Minister on his sermon, and discussing, with doom-laden expressions, the events of the preceding night.

  “Bewitchment?” John Edes enquires of Minister Long, elevating his eyebrows. “You are certain the boy makes not . . . well, mere sport? A jest by which he means to fright his mother? A fit of mulligrubs? Goody Briggs is, after all, a woman of nervous disposition.”

  The Minister shakes his head. “If the boy play-acts, he suffers for it out of all proportion. No. In my opinion—and that of Doctor Croke—his affliction is very real. And its causes . . .”

  “. . . are supernatural,” interjects Matthew Hopkins, his collar pulled high around his beard. He sets the word out with care, but also gratification, as if it were fine glassware.

  Minister Long nods. His face, now he has left the pulpit and conceded the authority conferred by that elevated position, is soft, malleable and more than a little desperate-looking. In his pride, he has started something, he knows, with the talk of lions and defilement and nasty, filthy birds. He is like a child who, joyously up-ending a bag of marbles, ends up scrabbling to stop them rolling away into the dark. “But. But I would urge against too precipitous judgement in the matter—”

  “Was the boy’s body inspected for marks?” Hopkins interrupts.

  “Marks?” repeats Long.

  “Witch-marks. The Devil stamps them about his children, to put them always in mind of the covenant they share. Or so I have read,” he adds, twitching his reddened nostrils.

  Long peers up at Hopkins. They all do, gathered in their little knot by the church door. “You mean to suggest that Master Briggs, himself, affects this ailment?”

  Hopkins shrugs. “Nay—but he is chosen as a recruit, perhaps. A lively, impressionable youth whose burgeoning vitality might be redirected towards maleficent ends.” He cocks his head, thoughtfully. “Who else is of his household?” His manner is cool and authoritative, but the way he shapes his mouth to the cramp-words (burgeoning, maleficent) is almost titillated.

  Richard Edwards, another neighbour, volunteers the information: “Outside of the boy and his mother . . . they keep two servants, I believe. Michael Wright, bound over from Clacton, and a maid, Helen Clarke, who was recently wed.”

  “I see,” says Hopkins. “I trust you will be attending to the matter closely, Minister Long? Your sermon reassured me of your very great eagerness to protect our town from the scourge of witchcraft, even as it seared me with hot reminder of the depravity we face.”

  Long tugs at his jabot and nods vociferously. “Of course, Mister Hopkins. I shall render the Goodwife Briggs every assistance possible.”

  “As will we all,” ventures
Edwards, to a general murmur of assent.

  They stand about there for a little while longer, narrowing their eyes against the saline wind, each absorbed in his own thoughts, each privately calculating the level of credence he is willing to venture on the paroxysms of an adolescent boy, the terrors of a lonely mother, and the professional guesses of a spineless cleric and dipsomaniac physician (the latter also widely believed to hold Popish sympathies). Then they leave, and the Steward extinguishes the dozen on dozen candles, one by one, taking care not to turn his back too long on the encroaching shadow.

  Dark falls early over the little town, and the sleet rarefies into a silk mist, a devil’s web spanning the dishevelled rooftops, smothering out the stars.

  11

  The Incubus

  A WEEK PASSES, AND I HEAR NOTHING ELSE spoken of in town but the bewitchment of Thomas Briggs: its symptoms, its nature, any possible cure—more pertinently, its cause. Precedents are found in literature by the learned men of town: Darrell’s True Narration of the strange and grievous vexation by the Devil, of 7 persons in Lancashire; Denison’s Most wonderful and true storie of a certaine Witch named Alse Goodridge of Stapenhill. These and suchlike pamphlets are passed about the inns and ordinaries, and much spoken over through mouthfuls of greasy brawn. And meanwhile, Briggs’ condition, like the weather, neither worsens nor improves. His teeth chatter in his head, his eyes roll back so that only the whites of them can be seen. The little Briggs body contorts and locks into dismaying postures the like of which all avow they thought the human body incapable of assuming. He takes a thin gruel twice daily, says Grace Norman. He vomits up dusty feathers and miniature teeth, claims Mary Phillips, like to an owl’s leavings. Doctor Croke arrives periodically to slather him in stuff. But no good seems to come of it.