Suffer a Witch

by Morgana Gallaway

  “God will punish you most grievously,” Hopkins warned.

  “God will forgive me for my human sins more readily than He will forgive your evil! You are the witch. It is you who was given the register of witches by Satan himself. It is not with the help of God but with the aid of the Devil that you have found fellow witches!”

  “I do not—I reject these outrageous—spurious—” Hopkins began to cough. He had no breath left. Her words echoed his own fears, his own deep suspicion that he was borne and owned by witches … she had come to claim his head at last … had he been working for Satan all along? Am I a witch? In a blinding flash of fear he realized that he’d been hearing their voices and they’d driven him forward. He had abused his body in atrocious ways, and had taken pleasure in it. Did that not make him one of them? Blinking away the wellspring of tears, he tried to believe that I am in church, I am safe, I do God’s work. His lungs screamed in agony. Bloody sputum erupted into his handkerchief. “She’s bewitched me with illness!” He took a shuddering breath and screamed, “Kill her! She is a witch! Kill her!”

  The men in the crowd were standing up. Hugh Felton, Philippa’s husband, was one of them. “No, Hopkins,” he said loudly. “You are the witch. And that greyhound of yours is your imp.”

  “That’s right!” said another man. “He has that dog at his heels, dotes on her, suckles her no doubt!”

  “Witch! He is a witch!” someone else shouted.

  The light of blood shone in a hundred pairs of eyes.

  The tide of them turned like a beast upon Hopkins.

  “Swim ’is self in the pond!” a grinning old woman suggested with a cackle.

  Hands clutched him and he cried out. He was swept out of the church, half-carried and half-dragged. “No! No! I can’t—I haven’t—!” His traitorous lungs did not allow any more protest. They bubbled and spasmed in his chest. He was without a voice.

  As a pair of angry yeomen dragged him by the elbows toward the pond, he passed near Philippa walking out of the church. In fact, she glided as though floating. On her shoulder was that dastardly raven. Where did that come from? It was her spirit familiar! He tried to point at the imp, but a rope had materialized from somewhere and his hands were bound behind him.

  The beady-eyed bird said “Sybil,” in the tone of an ethereal girl, that minister’s crazy daughter who had hanged. He heard it.

  The raven’s word was lost amidst the eager shouts of the mob.

  “Swim him! Toss him into the pond!”

  “He’s a witch!”

  “I been ill since he started his hunts! He’s bewitched us all into killing!”

  For a terrifying moment Hopkins hovered in the air as a dozen strong arms heaved him into the pond. The murky water rushed at his face and then he was submerged with a mighty splash. He did not know how to swim. Thrashing and gasping, he swallowed water on the first breath, and it seared his throat and mixed with the consumptive phlegm in his lungs. Oh God, oh God, oh God … Black spots swarmed in his vision like twitching flies, the vanguards of a torment that beckoned, a witch with her legs akimbo … Hell was coming, Hell was here …

  In the stolen moments when his head was above water, he could see the grinning, awful faces that lined the edge of Mistley’s pond, and he could hear them shouting, “He floats! He floats!”

  It did not feel like floating to him.

  He was dragged out of the water and onto the grassy bank. He moaned with fear. “No …”

  “He’s a witch!”

  “The ordeal proves it!”

  “Hang the fellow!”

  “We need a long rope.”

  “Here, right here!”

  “Up,” ordered a voice and Hopkins was hoisted up by his underarms.

  Someone had tied an inexpert noose and attached it to the gallows. It was empty, a gaping eye of rope waiting for his neck.

  “Enough of your witchery,” a man whispered in his ear.

  Hopkins’s last words were a violent, blood-speckled cough. The red of his own lung tissue edged his mouth and teeth. All of these people were under a spell. His work was unaccomplished. He hadn’t had enough time to name the witches, to destroy them, to break their hold over him, could not God save His own servant? He twitched weakly, knowing he was about to die, and nowhere near ready for it. He was bad, he was the witch, they had discovered him … he had tried so hard to be good.

  A hand shoved him up the ladder and onto the narrow platform of the gallows.

  Elspeth’s frantic whine punctured his fear; a man had the greyhound on a lead, choking her, leading her toward the gallows, toward her master.

  Across the heads, he could see Philippa standing in the background with the black raven on her shoulder, her arm linked with her husband’s. She raised her other hand at him and made the Devil’s sign: two horned fingers that waggled at him, claiming him. He saw how well she had laid her spider’s trap. Witch, he tried to say, but his head was already through the rope.

  Beside him, Elspeth was strung up, and she gasped and thrashed.

  Oh God, no, God, no …

  Black and red and terror blossomed in his vision. His feet scrambled to find a surface but there was nothing but space beneath him. The rope held him, it hugged his throat in a deadly embrace … faces drifted and swiveled in front of him … for a thousand years he struggled … the last thing he felt was the trickle of warm urine down his expensive silk, and then a twisted, humiliating lust that made him stiffen in his wet breeches in front of all these people, and the white-hot fist in his lungs that squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed.

  An old woman and a young girl spirited through a wood at dusk. The currents of a gentle wind parted the green branches in front of them. The deep countryside was full of life on this warm spring day. The girl was smiling, for she was excited, and had been told of a great secret that was hidden in these woods. Her hair was fixed in curls that bounced with every step.

  The older woman wore a green hunting costume with a long jacket that billowed out behind her. From the way the skirts moved, she had foregone the usual layers of petticoats and her feet were bare underneath the expensive fabric. Her hair was the same dark shade as her granddaughter’s, except for a long streak of lunar white that began at the peak of her forehead and tumbled down in a side curl.

  All the world was silent except for the feet on the path, the distant song of the brook, and the rustling of squirrels who scrambled for a hide. Night was approaching and the owls would be on the hunt. People did not often tarry in these woods. They were rumored to be haunted.

  “Pip,” said the child, for that was what everyone called her grandmother, “why did you tell Mama that we were visiting Mr. Pye’s new calf? That’s the other way from here.”

  “Your mother doesn’t know about this place. This knowledge comes through your father’s side.” Pippa smiled, remembering how Lillibet had done this thing for her.

  “This place? Everyone knows about the woods!” Her tone was quiet, for she’d been told this errand was a great secret.

  “Not where I will take you, Beth. No one knows about it except for me, and now, you.”

  “Oh!”

  Beth Felton adored her grandmother. She loved how Pip did not talk down to her as most adults did. Just because she was nine years old did not make her stupid—even the Bible said, “And a little child shall lead them.” But Pip wasn’t like other adults. She made ribald comments and drank wine and sang happy songs. Beth knew that her father’s parents were wealthy—they lived in the manor—and so could do just about whatever they pleased.

  Pippa stopped next to a tree. She almost blended into its shadow. Kneeling, she took Beth’s hand. “You will swear an oath to me now. What I am about to show you, you will never reveal to another soul, except your own daughter or granddaughter.”

  Beth’s eyes widened. Feeling most solemn, and privileged that her grandmother trusted her so much, she nodded. “I swear to keep the secret.”

 
“You are a strong and wise girl,” said Pippa. “Now, feel here, along the tree …”

  Old, papery hands guided small, white hands along the trunk. The wind whispered along with Pippa as she counted off the paces for Beth. The ferns and the branches swayed. In this hollow, the very earth seemed to open for them, the good witch and her granddaughter.

  “Shhh, now, here is the way, and in we go … I will teach you everything here …”

  FOR GENERATIONS, a hidden history has been passed along, the kind of knowledge that grows beneath the notice of churches and governments. The practitioners of folk magic depicted in this tale, the cunning-folk, the wise women, the Christian witches, were—and still are—real in England. The man who hunted them, Matthew Hopkins, was real. Although some of the characters in this story are fictional, their experience was real.

  Since 2003, archaeological excavations in Cornwall, England have revealed a surviving pagan history, a ritual site where a circle of swan skins were buried for reasons unknown, by persons unknown. The site was dated to the 1640s, the same era as this story. Other archaeological evidence of what the English call cunning magic includes charms inscribed on paper and over doorways of cottages; shoes and bottles and nails buried beneath hearthstones; and court records of the business transactions of these cunning-folk, men and women who earned a living by casting spells. Their world was magical, and it is a part of history.

  Matthew Hopkins, the infamous “Witchfinder General,” was the leader of a sudden and brutal witch craze that swept through the eastern counties of England during the 1640s, while the civil war between King and Parliament raged. I have elaborated on his character and family history in ways that would surely infuriate him; however, I have tried to weave my story without contradicting what is known about his personal history. Indeed, very little is recorded of Hopkins’s life before the two years of his activity, only that he was a young Puritan man with legal inclinations, and died in August 1647, buried at Mistley.

  Many historians believe that because the civil war had effectively dissolved the King’s courts of justice in pro-Parliament areas, this left a power vacuum where local magistrates were able to take justice into their own hands. In a world where witchcraft was real, disease rife, and the country at war, it was all too easy to seek a supernatural explanation for the ills afflicting England. It was the perfect opportunity for Matthew Hopkins to seek witches and secure hundreds of dubious convictions in so short a time.

  Witch hunts elsewhere in Europe, such as France and Germany, were on a low simmer for hundreds of years. In England the pattern was different: they were a flash fever, a sudden and violent outbreak, and then there were none for many years.

  During the 1640s, it was Matthew Hopkins who instigated one of these terrible fevers that ended as suddenly as it began, with as many as three hundred women and men as victims of the noose.

  Figure of Matthew Hopkins from the frontispiece of his book, The Discovery of Witches, 1647

  For research I am indebted to the following historians, authors, and primary sources:

  Davies, Owen. Popular Magic: Cunning Folk in English History (Hambledon Continuum, 2003)

  Durschmied, Erik. Whores of the Devil: Witch-Hunts and Witch-Trials (Sutton Publishing, 2005)

  Gaskill, Malcolm. Witchfinders: A Seventeenth Century English Tragedy (John Murray, 2005)

  Godbeer, Richard. The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

  Hopkins, Matthew. The Discovery of Witches (1647)

  Jackson, Louise. “Witches, Wives, and Mothers.” Women’s History Review (1995) Vol. 4, No. 1

  Orme, Nicholas. Medieval Children (Yale University Press, 2003)

  Ryken, Leland. Worldly Saints: Puritans As They Really Were (Zondervan Publishing House, 1986)

  Scot, Reginald. The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584)

  Sharpe, James. Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997)

  Valiente, Doreen. Where Witchcraft Lives (Aquarian Press, 1962)

  Any factual or historical errors are my own.

  Morgana Gallaway is also the author of The Nightingale.

  She lives in Arizona with her husband, dogs, and a pet snake.

  Find her online at www.morganagallaway.com

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for purchasing my book! I hope it sparked your imagination, and that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. As an independent publisher, I am committed to keeping my stories affordable and accessible.

  If you liked Suffer a Witch, please take a moment to leave a review online. Your recommendation helps others find their way to my writing.

  Morgana

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: The Thorn Inn

  Chapter 2: The Green Man

  Chapter 3: The Cunning-Folk

  Chapter 4: The Dark Places

  Chapter 5: The Speaking Raven

  Chapter 6: The Fevered Land

  Chapter 7: The Meeting of the Roads

  Chapter 8: The Discovery

  Chapter 9: The Watchers

  Chapter 10: The Turning of the Worm

  Chapter 11: The Gaol

  Chapter 12: The Dissolving World

  Chapter 13: The Pigeon in the Rafters

  Chapter 14: The Last Dance

  Chapter 15: The Skull in the Hollow

  Chapter 16: The Pond at Mistley

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Research Acknowledgments