The Manningtree Witches

by A. K. Blakemore

  Upstairs, the gaoler tells us, a summer fever has set in. A cutpurse and a cattle rustler have died in the night with their eyes wide open—a bad omen—the meat of their bodies cooked over with weals. “It seems the Devil followed you here,” he tells us. There is a wailing in what must be the night. I suppose there are ghosts in very old places like this, trailing green ermine through the twisting corridors, their pennants rippling in the odourless winds of Limbo. It does not frighten me. Here we live together, under-ghost. And under the Old Devil, too. Mother Clarke speaks to him in her sleep—or at least I hear her talking to someone. “I have brought them,” she will say, in her wafer of a voice, “I have brought them for you—” And sometimes she adds, “Banbury cakes, as you like them so well, my dear,” and I know she is dreaming of nothing more untoward than puddings, but sometimes—sometimes she does not.

  I keep one eye open, always, in the dark. He could be here, right beside me, and I would scarcely notice. We could light a candle to find him reclined in the corner, dandling a red velvet slipper off his slender foot, smiling proudly at his work. I did not know what I believed before, but now I know even less. An arm—it could be anyone’s—is thrown across my breast. Cold fingers brush against my cheek. In the dark I see my mother curl in on herself, pressing her hand into her side as though digging out elfshot—the cramp-pains attendant on an emptied belly.

  I dream. Taste a mouthful of forest and roll over, opening my eyes to find Master John Edes staring back at me, his eyes simmering with reproachful tears. Or else Master John Edes but dead now, maggots and luminous crawlers in the sockets where his eyes ought to be. Sometimes I dream of the Devil, who rolls me up in the waxy petals of some great flower and tells me to be very still or else they will catch me. But I can never remember what his face is like, upon waking, or who it was he meant to hide me from.

  Helen draws a skein of cotton from the fraying cuff of her nightdress, with which we play at Cat’s Cradle. The others watch in rapt silence as we count the figures off over our crossed knees: cradle, diamonds, fish, saw-horse, the two crowns. Our other entertainments are not so wholly frivolous. We discuss at length who we think it is that put us here, where we are always hungry, where we are going quite mad. Names are thrown out, repeated like a chant, our daily commination: Goody Miller, Goody Hart, Briggs, Hobday, Taylor, Croke. “The Devil take them,” sneers my mother. “The Devil take them all. For I will it, now—though it cost me my soul.” None of us argue.

  “Do you think they shall cut off our heads?” gulps Margaret, massaging her pouchy dewlaps.

  “Madam Moone,” smarms Helen, mouth downturned and marked near the centre with a sore. “Airs even as she trembles by the side of her grave. They won’t cut off your head, dear—they’ll string you up like a thrice-damned whelp.” She makes a chh-noise, pops and rolls her bright black eyes. Airs are some of the worst things a woman can have.

  “God help us,” Margaret whimpers.

  “He won’t,” answer three others, all at once, but I do not know which three, the candle being extinguished, their voices joining in the dark.

  The Widow Leech tells us of a woman in Ipswich, when she was just a girl, who was burned at the stake for witchcraft. “Murdered her husband with a Black Fast, so they said.”

  “Women are only burned for treason,” explains my mother, our expert recidivist. “So killing the King, or killing a husband. Or asking the Devil to do you for either, I suppose.”

  “But half the country wishes the King dead,” says Liz Godwin, frowning.

  “I’ll do it for them, if they’ll let me out,” Mother coughs.

  We eat, sleep, stare, think, stink—though each but the last, only barely. The unending nature of our confinement begins to make in the mind a state dream-like—how best to explain it? I begin to feel I no longer exist as a person in any sense. I am not of God or Adam’s image. I am a collection of wasting organ and rebel impulse and skin parched of sun. What I am is not human, and deserves not a name. Life does not exist, either, with the words by which we give the experience name and weight now empty of meaning, now blunted by banging against this thick entire darkness: day, night, rain, down, up, walk, nothing, nothing. Rebecca melts. I am able to flourish like this. My person, so frail and as yet indeterminate, shimmies out from beneath the tyrant’s boot like a voile; my mind, already so fractional in its operations, had no use for the conformities now stripped away. No. I have no wish to stay—if the turnkey left the door standing open, I would flee in a blink. But it suits me, more or less. In another life I might have been an anchorite, or perhaps a martyr. Or like Saint Simeon the Stylite shut away behind circling walls on his fifteen-foot pillar. I am pleased, at last, to be peculiar—at my emptiness I invite the Devil to nurse, for I would be known well.

  I speak little and listen much. I am listening on the thirty-sixth night of our captivity, when we have snuffed out our sullen candle and retired to our shared bed of rags. Margaret Moone’s snoring, Mother Clarke’s muttering, and a new sound over the moaning of the fever-stricken prisoners held above. I hear footsteps, and I hear the scrape of spurs on the stairs. I flinch at the sudden skewer of lantern light as the door is cracked open.

  “Miss West,” Hopkins calls, his face invisible, his voice unmistakable, “come with me.”

  22

  Chapel

  AT FIRST I DO NOT KNOW IF I AM ABLE TO trust the withered muscles of my legs to carry me further than the threshold of the cell. But they do. Out of the cell, up the stairs and down the corridor, my eyes stung by the lavish flame of the Witchfinder’s lantern, its brilliance almost divine-seeming after my long month locked away in obscurity. The other prisoners moan and shift in their fevered sleep as we pass. Hopkins walks quickly, and does not look behind to ensure I keep pace. He keeps his kerchief pressed tightly over his mouth. Curiously, I no longer mind the smell, which must be ripe, must be morbid. I have been inured to stench through long and close acquaintance.

  I barely remember these corridors from when we were brought here, and I am surprised to find we emerge at the gatehouse. Here, he produces a set of heavy iron keys and begins to remove my manacles, silent and businesslike. He stands close to me to do this. I can smell summer rain on his clothes, and the fields too, fresh. He wears corselet and tassets now, of polished metal—why? have the roads become so dangerous, or has witchfinding?—beneath his black coat. The same broad-brimmed black hat and collar of sable beneath the same thin, raptor face.

  “You are to stand hard by me, Miss West,” he instructs. I rub at my wrists, stunned to be suddenly relieved of the burden of manacles. It is a queer feeling—like my hands, so light now, might simply pop from my wrists and float up to the ceiling. He moves closer and secures a heavy cloak and hood at my throat. So we are going outside. A mixture of excitement and terror churns the paltry content of my stomach.

  “We are not going far,” he says.

  It occurs to me that perhaps I am being taken somewhere I will not come back from. He takes my arm, but I stay right where I am. “Sire—will I be returned? My mother . . .”

  He peers down at me, piqued. “You will be returned here,” he says.

  The night is of a deep, enchanted blue. A big moon glazes the rooftops beyond the castle wall. And stars. Stars! My breath catches in my throat at the freshness of it all, tender all almost forgotten, so many stars clustering and wandering, small and large, dim and unfeeling and legion. Hopkins, watching me, makes a nearly amused sound. “Sometimes beauty is the only argument He has any need of,” he says, his hand on my shoulder.

  I look at Hopkins, who is still looking at me. I am surprised to hear a man like Hopkins express his faith in terms so graceful.

  “I had forgot it,” I say.

  He waits, then—he gives me some minutes with the stars before he grasps peremptorily at my arm and leads me away from the glowering bulk of the castle, towards an arched entryway in the thick walls of the grounds. From there to a narrow side street, li
ned with slumping houses and boarded shops that stand silent; it must be late indeed. Or very early. There is no other soul abroad, it seems, except the two guardsmen who have followed us at a distance from the castle, their helmets gleaming in the moonlight. I suppose they are here in case the Devil deigns to lend me his teeth that I might tear Hopkins’ throat out. Carefully, I pick my way barefoot across the slimy cobbles. Rain drips from the gutters, and somewhere nearby I hear the quiet whickering of stabled horses, dreaming their horse dreams. Smell them, too. They smell better, more wholesome, than I do. At the end of the side street is a squat, square building of mottled stone, with a high, vaulted window on the north-facing wall. Hopkins pushes open the heavy door and draws me inside. It is a chapel. Or was. Now it is a bare stone chamber with an empty altar table and torn hangings, the walls scribbled over with profane arabesques of graffiti. It smells of stale piss.

  Hopkins removes his hat and sets the lantern down on the altar table. “What know you of Saint Helena?” he asks, drawing over an upturned stool and an empty crate from the corner. “Sit,” he commands, waving me towards it.

  Saints. It is a test.

  “I know nothing of a Saint Helena, sir. The scriptures make no mention of her, sir, to my memory.” I sit down obediently on the crate, by the altar table. It is cold in the chapel, and the vaulted stone roof throws my voice’s mocking twin back to me—I know nothing of a Saint Helena, sir. I find that without meaning to, I am grasping at my wrists, so accustomed to the manacles have I grown. I feel denuded without them, now the Witchfinder has brought his gaze to rest on my dirty face.

  “She was the mother of an emperor—the first emperor to abandon the pagan faith of his forebears and embrace the one true God,” he explains, brightly, and—curiously—not as though he imagines I am very stupid. “Some say she built this very chapel. I thought—perhaps—you might wish to pray, while we are here?”

  Another test. I look about at the rough stonework and peeling plaster, and shrug. “I need not visit a chapel or a church to pray, sir,” I answer, tartly. “God lives everywhere.”

  Hopkins’ mouth curls into the customary rictus. “Quite so,” he answers. “Victuals, then?” He produces an oily packet of brown paper from the inside of his cloak and opens it out upon the altar table. Blushing cold cuts of ham, thickly sliced, and a wedge of cheese. I feel my parched mouth flood with spittle just at the smell of it and fall hungrily on this repast, tearing at it with my bare, dirty fingertips. I must look half-wolf, but I am too hungry to care. Hopkins watches with remote interest. Watches my fingers move in and around my mouth, I notice. O defilement.

  “I feared you had come to take me to trial, sir,” I say, swallowing.

  “Trial? No,” Hopkins answers. “You are not to be tried until the summer assizes.”

  It was late in March when we were arrested and bound over. It must now be nearly June. The summer assizes must be soon indeed—a matter of days, even. I feel a sudden rush of nausea that is stymied by Hopkins speaking again: “. . . next summer’s assizes.”

  So we are to wait a year or more. “And we are to be kept at the castle?” I ask, my voice edged with indignation, for all my efforts to remain temperate, to appear obedient.

  He peers at me. He nods. He takes a little leather-bound log book and pencil from his cloak and sets them out on the altar table. So that is it. Those with the authority to pass judgement upon the matter, and thereby close it, have other priorities. The witches of Manningtree are beneath the notice of such lofty persons—and so, by implication, is Matthew Hopkins, minor country gentleman. It galls him, I can tell.

  I wipe my lips on the back of my hand. “It is very long to be bound over, sir,” I say. “There is gaol fever above, and Mother Clarke is already ailing in her—”

  He holds up a hand for silence, in that way he has. He restores his smile. “Perhaps you are truly blessed, in your bondage,” he says, “for such hardships bring us closer to God, in his infinite mercy. Removed from all temptation, one might more readily beseech Him for knowledge of your sins, and with ready mind, perform your penance. Truly,” he continues, “I do not think there man or woman alive whose soul would not benefit by so . . . concentrated a period of reflection. For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

  I watch him as he says all this and I can find nothing there. Where does he keep himself? What is Matthew Hopkins, truly? Did he have a mother? Is she alive, and does she know her son? What makes him laugh? Did angels come in the night with knives of silver glass to pluck out his squirming mortal heart and carry it away? “Yes,” I say. “I will entreat God.”

  He presses his pencil to the blank page of the log book. “Now,” he says. “At the house you share with your mother, there was a cat. Large and yellow in colour.”

  “Vinegar Tom.” A flash of loose body, limp paw, red fur. We had a cat once. A cat in a house, curled up by a fire. How little I appreciated the quaint nicenesses of it, that being-a-person business.

  “Vinegar Tom,” Hopkins repeats, noting it down in cramped shorthand. Shorthand—for the first time in so many weeks John Edes wanders into my waking mind, in his fetching blue doublet, with his battered leather portfolio tucked under his arm. “And did your mother christen this cat,” Hopkins asks, “or otherwise anoint it with oils?”

  “I do not think Tom would have borne anointing, sir.”

  “From whence came the cat?” he asks, his mouth set straight as the London road.

  I say I know not. That we had Tom from since he was kitling. For as long as I can remember. Hopkins’ pencil loops to a sudden halt and he raises his eyes to my face. “As long as you can remember, say you? Unusual longevity for a cat, do you not think?”

  “A—it was a turn of words, sir.” I shrug. I lack the strength for these games. “You think him an imp, sir—a familiar, as you call them. But he was just a cat. A good mouser, in point of fact. Liked to curl in a nice sun-spot, as cats are wont.”

  Hopkins cants his head as if to say perhaps—or perhaps not, then smartly turns a page and rummages in the satchel he carries. This time, he produces two most peculiar objects and lays them side by side on the table, on the greasy ham wrappings. They are two dollies, manikins about the length of a palm, one in likeness to a woman and one a man, in miniature hats and gown, faces scratched from nubs of wax. A skein of yellow horsehair sticks from beneath the tiny cap of the girl-dummy, and a sewing needle is impaled through her ribboned waist. He studies my face as he sets them out. “Do you recognise these?” he asks.

  I do not, I tell him. But my stomach tightens, because these images were not made without purpose—and they were not made far from Manningtree, either, if Hopkins is showing them to me. “Have they resemblance to any particular person, to your eyes?” he asks.

  I look back down at the manikins with their obscene, bloodless little smiles. They remind me of England—and therefore death. “They resemble everyone,” I say.

  “And what of this one, in particular?” He takes the girl-doll up in his gloved hand and holds it out before me, teasing at the blunt fuzz of yellow horsehair with his thumb.

  “Judith has red hair,” I say.

  His smile widens, and I cannot immediately think why. And then I realise I have given it away. His face says I have, and that it works to his benefit. The cold cuts, his gentle politesse, and he made me forget I am swimming with black snakes. As punishment, I twist my fingers sharply at the tender skin of my wrist. It was Master Edes who told me of Judith Moone’s bewitchment, on the very night it was supposedly made manifest. Edes, Stearne and Hopkins—who else would have known? No one. And now I have told Hopkins that I know. And he himself did not tell me, and neither did Stearne, and so it is only a matter of time before he might surmise who did, and that to tell me Edes must have seen me—and what we did when he saw me—

  “Judith Moone? No.” He sets the dummy back down by her stiff brother. “No.” Pause. “Though it is intere
sting that you mention her. No. It was Goody Hart I meant. Goody Hart was with child when you were last in Manningtree . . .” He remembers to flatten his smile just in time, remembers to pretend he is not enjoying himself. “She was miscarried of her babe, not two weeks hence. A son.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I pray that the Lord will comfort her, in her loss.”

  Hopkins peers into my flat face. I peer back, mild and inexpressive. He moistens his lips. “Goody Hart has said that you long held her to be your very great enemy,” he ventures.

  “That is untrue, sir,” I answer. I tell him that though Goody Hart and myself were not companions, I never wished nor spoke any ill upon her.

  Hopkins dips his chin. “You will remember she was in very robust health when you left Manningtree,” he says. He keeps saying it like that: left Manningtree, when you were last in Manningtree, as though I have chosen to take up residence in the Colchester gaol on account of the serviceable appurtenances.

  I shrug again. It begins to wear upon me, this back-and-forth, this circumvention. I tease at a string of pork gristle caught between my teeth to show him he no longer warrants even my pretence of rustic good manners. “If you mean to say, sir, that it was by some curse her baby was lost, then it cannot have been I who worked the conjuring. We have been kept at Colchester a month or more.”

  “A witch”—he smiles—“may easily be in two places at once, by way of her compact with the Devil—distance is irrelevant to the efficacy of her black arts.”

  Then what, possibly, can I say to exonerate myself? Does he even hear what it is he says, a man of learning? “One might think, sir,” I snap back, unwisely, “that being so, we might be more trouble to imprison.” We. Why did I say we?