But as I turned the pages, moving closer to the date of Father’s death, the writing grew fragmented, and it changed. Regret seeped in. I wish I had been able to resist the snares the devil has laid for me, he wrote. I wish I had been able to see through the fair guises of those who are false and riddled with sin. But it is too late now for me to amend where I have fallen short. I looked up from the page. I had never seen my father uncertain, never seen him cast down. I could not imagine what falling short he could have been speaking of: I thought of the daily small disputes he had resolved as minister at Wenham, the steady leadership he had provided, his patience with Mother and with Matthew. I read on, through his worries about Mother’s health, half expecting to find some reference to Matthew’s birth, but I did not, nor any more mention of the regrets he had spoken of; but then I turned back, leafing swiftly. That was when I saw it. There were pages missing, many of them. I had scarcely noticed it at first, but pressing the book apart in one place, and then another place further on, and then yet another, I saw what had been done. The pages had not been torn out, but cut precisely, and close to the spine.
I hid the book in my box, beneath my summer nightgown. I almost wished I had not opened it. That was the first time, there in my chamber, that I was frightened of Matthew, with a cold fear. For there was some deep matter, I saw, some deep thing that I was not yet at the heart of. Something had prompted him to so precisely and profoundly alter the record. I felt more vulnerable, more lost than ever. I think now of how as a child I had always wanted to read the books that Father said were too hard for me, not realizing yet that understanding a book is not the same as being able to spell out all the words.
16
That evening, I heard Sir Harbottle Grimston shout a greeting to my brother as his coach pulled into the yard. Despite my awareness of the daily book hidden in my box, despite my fear, as I listened to the backslapping coming up from below, my stomach growled. Grace had told me that there would be four kinds of meat. There would be spring greens and the kind of mushroom with the savoury taste that is almost like flesh. I had been smelling the result of the kitchen’s efforts all afternoon, but Grace had not yet brought up my tray.
Grimston must have been the last to arrive, for it soon fell quiet downstairs. I went back to thinking over what I had read in Father’s daily book; thinking, too, how I might return it before it was missed. I could not avoid the thought that on the missing pages there might be some version of what had happened the day Matthew was born: but if it was there, it could not be the whole and true version. For Matthew’s face had softened when he had spoken of Mother, the night I had come to the Thorn, it was Bridget he seemed to hate. I brooded on what the missing pages contained, and why they had been cut out.
Before long there was a knock at my chamber door, and I said, ‘Come in.’ I checked my shoulders were covered, eager for my supper. It was Grace, tired and hot, but she was holding no tray, and when she saw me in my shift, she said, ‘Oh – I beg your pardon, mistress. It’s the master. He asks if you will join them for dinner.’
‘But you said this morning that I should leave it to him.’
She shut the door behind her and came nearer. ‘Mistress, it was not the master as such, but Sir Harbottle. He did ask me if you had already supped, and it came to me that I had forgot you, and I said so before the company. Then one of them made a jest about the master’s ill manners, and all were calling for you to come down. They were banging on the table.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Sir Harbottle, in particular, is somewhat ahead of himself.’
For a moment I thought about pleading illness, but then I stood up and folded my blanket. ‘Very well, Grace. Tell my brother I shall be down.’
I took out the better of my gowns, the black one I had arrived in, and looked it over. It was a pity my new ones were not ready. At least, I thought, it would be candlelight. I put it on, struggling to lace it tight enough. I pinched my cheeks, though not too much. Then I followed the sound of laughter down the stairs.
On the threshold I hesitated, so none saw me at first. Sir Harbottle Grimston was seated nearest, his chair pushed back that he might rest his hands on his belly. Matthew sat to his right. There also was Richard Edwards, with his smooth head of golden hair, and Robert Taylor, the victualler. Two others, whom I did not know, completed the group, but how they were seated told me enough: Grimston at the head of the table, Taylor at the far end, the others in between. The room, which in daylight had felt large and sparse, seemed more welcoming filled with solid men and candles burning.
I could tell that Grimston, at the least, had been drinking before he arrived. ‘She’s a good cook, then, is she, this Grace?’ he was saying. ‘Now she would be the one with the …’ He made signs over his chest, like cabbages, and I caught my brother’s stricken look.
The dark-haired man across from Matthew snorted into his glass. ‘Well, sir, you were saying you need a pastry girl. Perhaps Hopkins can tell you if she has cold hands.’
‘Stearne!’ Richard Edwards shook his golden head, but he was laughing.
It was Matthew who spotted me, and stood up. He seemed so far from pleased to see me that it made me wish to behave perfectly; I resolved to keep my manners perfect, to listen to their talk, and learn what I could. I would find out more here than I would sitting in my chamber. ‘Sister,’ Matthew said, and the others stood too, except Grimston, who kept his seat.
‘Is this she?’ he said, straining to turn. I had seen him going by in his carriage before, but he had never had cause to speak a word to me. ‘Mistress Alice, forgive our loudness. Now, is not this table in need of a sweet face? Come and sit here, by me. Move up, Stearne.’
The man called Stearne and the one beside him rose and began moving their plates, cups and knives to the left. As they shifted Grimston introduced me to them: John Stearne and John Cutler. Men of business, Grimston said. I recalled Cutler’s name: I had heard from Grace how his boy had been carried off by a fever, not long before Edwards’s baby son had died. While the men took my hand in turn, Matthew was signing to Mary Phillips where to place the fresh dishes she was carrying in.
I had often dined at a table full of men, taking over for Mother when her spirits were low and Father was giving a dinner for some friend or other. But this felt different. Seeing my brother, my cheeks burned that he might have guessed I had been in his chamber, noticed the missing book. But there was no sign of it. His nod as I sat down was civil enough.
‘There now,’ said Grimston. ‘You sit here. Don’t mind the crumbs that foul creature Stearne has left on the cloth, you just sit there where I can look at you. God Himself must know why this rogue would keep you ferreted away upstairs.’
I glanced at Matthew. ‘Perhaps my brother does not trust you, sir. Among the women of his house.’ Grimston roared at that.
The one called John Stearne reached across to help me to the wine, telling me how he was in the midst of buying a property a few doors down. Though his voice was friendly, he had a forbidding brow, and large, blunt hands. I had to place my own over the mouth of the glass to keep it to half full. As the stir of my arrival passed, the men returned to their own talk. I took a helping of fish in butter sauce and looked around the table.
Grimston had grown redder, more hard-worn since I had seen him last. As well as serving justice, I knew that he had been sheriff in those years, and Edwards was doing a long turn as constable for the Tendring Hundred. They had been in those posts at the time of the riots. It had been a bad business: Bridget had written to Joseph of how the rioters had broken apart a house in St Osyth and Sir John Lucas’s house, near Colchester. Though Sir John was known to be a Papist he was a kind man, and had always been tolerated before, but Bridget said that the rioters would have broken him, too, if Grimston had not ridden out with the trained bands and put them down. Some of those gentlemen with Catholic forebears left our part of Essex after that; others let their houses sit empty and went to where the King was, which might have m
ade the godly men glad, except that it left fewer to manage the land and law-keeping.
Grimston, Edwards and the rest, they were the ones who had endured, and in the time I had been gone it seemed they had grown all the more tight together, perhaps for the knowledge of how many rougher folk they had between them to contain; like trees, knitting themselves into a hedge.
I sat quiet, and listened to their conversation. After a time, Grimston put down his glass. ‘It beggars me,’ he said, ‘how I spent six months, six months entire, at Harwich, on the sea defences there. Six months checking builders’ drawings, checking batches of stone, as if I know a damned thing about stone. It was the Spanish then, when we all thought the Armada might be back. We never thought to look within for any threat.’
Taylor nodded; it made his small beard twitch. ‘But the King did allow vipers into his household,’ he said. ‘Laud, those Papists around the Queen.’ He smiled as he wiped his mouth, but Richard Edwards did not smile, nor any of the others. The memory of Archbishop Laud was not cherished by them – he had been beheaded that January, for his love of music and other Catholic practices; beheaded, in truth, as a warning to the King, during the same freeze that had left Joseph dead and Mother lying unburied. But though those godly men disliked Laud, even they did not like such earnest talk against the King himself.
I said, ‘I have a memory that Archbishop Laud did once come to Manningtree. Before we lived here. But some of you, masters, must remember his coming. Did he not give us some communion plate?’
John Cutler shifted in his chair. ‘Aye, that stuff. It fetched enough to put plain glazing in the church windows, against Dowsing last year.’ He raised his glass, and Edwards laughed.
‘I remember Laud’s coming,’ Taylor said. ‘His pomp and pride, his wheedling. No one who thinks on sin could forget that day.’ He did not see John Cutler glance at Richard Edwards and lift his eyes to Heaven, or Richard Edwards smile behind his hand.
Mary Phillips came in, to clear what was finished with, and Edwards coughed a little. ‘We have not yet thanked you, Hopkins, for your efforts these last weeks.’
‘Aye,’ said Grimston, tapping his glass for Mary to fill.
My brother smiled, inclined his head. ‘Stearne has done as much as I,’ he said.
Swallowing his mouthful, Stearne glanced sideways at Robert Taylor. ‘Though Bess Clarke did give us trouble,’ he said. ‘Did you hear? She would not admit to Taylor’s horse.’
My brother shook his head. ‘Nor did she admit any murder. Though she told us much else, sirs, and, as you know, I was able to discover from her, after long watching, the names of those who did mischief to these two gentlemen’s sons.’
He spoke matter-of-factly and, loading a morsel of bread with sauce, he missed their faces falling, Edwards bringing his napkin to his lips and Cutler pushing his glass away, as if his son was standing again at his shoulder, a lively boy and tall for his age, but silent now, leaning on his father’s chair; in Edwards’s lap a little bundle, stilled from the fits that had taken him. Matthew did not see those first-born sons, but went on calmly with his wine and his fish, exempt from the shudder that had passed around the table, the touching of wood.
I think now that is why they trusted him, with this their most delicate business: his ability to talk of witchcraft, and still to finish his dinner. He had all their trappings, but he was not like those men, my brother. They were afraid, but they feared not so much the devil in himself, but rather – it was as Bridget had said – the ill will that might reach out from his servants to hurt their wealth and families. They believed in witchcraft, and yet they didn’t; it was one of several convenient labels to put upon their fear. But Matthew believed in it wholly, and they saw that clarity in my brother, that certainty. They chose him for it, yet it made them uneasy. As Matthew went on eating, I saw Stearne and Edwards look at each other.
‘Gentlemen,’ Stearne said, ‘this is heavy talk. We have not met since Hopkins was promised to Richard Edwards’s lovely sister, and with Mistress Alice captive here, we can find out all his secrets and whisper them to his bride. Then she will know what a poor bargain her brother has struck for her.’
Cutler grinned; Edwards planted his elbow on the table and laughed. Stearne had clearly sought only to lighten the mood, but from the corner of my eye I had seen Matthew’s gaze move straight to my face. I tried to fix my smile. Promised to Ruth Edwards? I thought of him introducing me to her at church. His face had been calm and there had been nothing in his voice – but in hers? I thought of when she had been rude to me about the minister, then of Mary Phillips asking whether I had met her that day, whether I had thought she looked well.
‘To begin with,’ Stearne said to me, ‘you can tell us in which of Sir Harbottle’s orchards your brother did go scrumping.’
‘Sir!’ I smiled, recovering myself. ‘A shocking suggestion.’
Edwards was smiling, too. ‘Your brother. What a child he was! I remember once he asked my father what he did earn in a year. Came out with it, just like that. “You need not be exact,” he said. “It is a round figure I am interested in.” ’
Laughing, Grimston belched. Robert Taylor was laughing, too. Grimston said, ‘But has not asking your questions served you well, Hopkins? I never knew a more rigorous man for business. If everyone at this table had made of their inheritance what you have made of yours, they’d all be as rich as me.’ Sir Harbottle, laughing at his own joke, thumped himself on the chest, and turned to listen to Stearne and Cutler, who were talking of the war again.
‘And have you heard in Somerset, those club men they have now?’ Stearne was saying. ‘Neither for one side nor the other, they say, but they protect each other’s houses, and the womenfolk, when the armies are near.’
‘When the King’s army is near, you mean,’ said Cutler. ‘For our soldiers are better governed. Everyone speaks of their discipline.’
‘And yet Waller is resigning, for he cannot hold them steady.’ John Stearne picked up the bottle, to offer round again. There followed a little more talk of who would command, and I could see my brother calming himself.
But then John Cutler turned to me. ‘Mistress Hopkins,’ he said. ‘What would you say, then, is the mood in London at present? All this talk one hears, of public meetings – but perhaps they are more peaceful than they sound?’
Grimston snorted. ‘What would she know of public meetings? A little girl keeping indoors with her needlework –’ The men laughed. Grimston turned away, and I could not help it: I answered John Cutler, and as I did so, I raised my voice.
‘The mood is uneasy, sir,’ I said. ‘There are many abandoning their parishes. Meeting in new congregations, under those who say they are Bible men. But if they can read the gospels, then it is because they have taught themselves.’ I faltered, aware of eyes on me: Grimston’s, Matthew’s. ‘They are wild men, mostly, and poor,’ I continued. ‘I have heard them say that they will not forgive the generations of slights they have been offered.’
Grimston made a dismissive sign. ‘It is no slight to be born into a lowly state,’ he said. ‘That is the world, how God has ordered it.’
Robert Taylor frowned. ‘I must confess, it is hard to think when you would have had occasion to hear such talk, Mistress Hopkins.’
Matthew cleared his throat. ‘My sister did have reason to walk abroad in the city. She was a midwife.’
‘Ah,’ Taylor said.
Richard Edwards turned to Matthew. ‘My wife spoke of learning that trade, but in the end I did not permit her. Out on the roads all hours, you know –’
‘For good cause, sir,’ I said. There was silence for a moment, at my cutting across him; I dared not look at my brother.
‘But it is a respectable trade, surely, in a married woman,’ John Stearne said, his easy tone strained. ‘For instance, Mistress Hopkins, I’m sure your husband saw you between houses at night?’
I looked at the men around the table, their flushed drunk faces.
Suddenly I wanted to make them see what it had been like in London, for me, for my landlady, for women like her. I wanted to show them some scrap of the truth. ‘Most midwives I knew, sir, had no husband to see after their safety.’
Robert Taylor made a noise. ‘But what could an unmarried woman want with such a trade?’ he said.
‘They were not unmarried, sir. But since Marston Moor last year, I knew many midwives who were made widows.’
Richard Edwards looked confused. ‘But that fight went for us – scarce any of our side perished there –’
‘You are right, sir,’ I replied. There was a moment, as they digested what I meant.
Robert Taylor pursed his lips. ‘Your sister favours the King, then, Hopkins. She names Papists among her friends, it seems.’
‘London is like that, Taylor,’ John Stearne said, uncertain. ‘You do not choose who you live cheek by jowl with.’
‘Thank God,’ I added quietly. I could not look straight at Matthew, but from the side of my eye I could see that he had gone very still. Yet I turned back to Robert Taylor. ‘I am no Papist, sir. But those friends I made, I was proud to know them. And, believe me, not one of them chose which side in this war it pleased her husband to prefer. Not one of us chose that there should be a war at all.’
I sounded very calm, but in my lap I could feel my hands shaking. The men were all averting their faces; uncomfortable, they were turning to my brother.
Robert Taylor looked just as helpless. For a moment, he looked as though he would answer me, but then he put down his glass. ‘I thought we were come to talk of the witch business,’ he said. ‘I am anxious that we should be thorough, sirs, and certain that all the guilty have been named.’
Matthew looked at him. ‘Be assured, it still holds my fullest attention,’ he said.
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