by James Darke
‘It’s her devil’s pet. She suckles that imp. Kill it.’
Bell was as frightened as its mistress. Jerked from a warm and comfortable sleep it had scampered between the legs of the screeching mob. Then it had paused on the fringes of the wood, looking back. Someone had kicked the lice-infested blankets into the fire, and the flames had spread hungrily to the dry walls of branches. Within three minutes the miserable hut was well ablaze. The yellow fire reflected in the cat’s frightened, green eyes.
‘It’s turnin’ to a girt demon,’ called one of the older women, pointing a finger at the frightened animal.
Her husband was at her side, already shaking with fear at what the witch-woman, Bathsheba, might do to him. Lately his own capacity for making love had seemed less reliable than it had been. Perhaps he was cursed like poor Henry. The thought was enough and he stooped, picking up a jagged flint. Hefting it at the cat without even thinking.
The stone was well-aimed and it caught Bell at the top of its left rear leg, sending it spinning to the frosty ground. It screamed in pain and fought its
way to its feet, back hunched, tail bushed out like a fox. Hissing its rage and terror.
‘Kill the bastard creature!’ shouted someone.
‘No,’ said Bathsheba Connell, the first intelligible word she’d spoken since they took her.
‘She, pleads for her imp,’ sniggered the wife of the alehouse keeper, bravely reaching out and slapping the prisoner across the face. The mark of her fingers bright against the pale skin.
The noise of the blow rose above the crackling of the flames and every eye turned to look at Bathsheba. In that moment the black cat decided that it would be best to be somewhere else and it disappeared silently into the dense undergrowth at the edges of the woods.
‘The demon has vanished!’ cried a teenage boy, his voice cracking with excitement and fear. Every person in the crowd immediately crossed themselves, pattering prayers against the evil they suddenly realised could be among them. A cat could become a wolf, or a horned beast from the midnight reaches of the Book of Revelations.
So they took the woman. Hustled her to where the Squire and Parson Frewin waited. Throwing her into the chill lock-up, to wait for Master Hopkins and his brace of helpers. Since the word had already reached Matthew Hopkins, he did the old woman the service of not keeping her waiting long.
He had arrived a little after noon, accompanied by John Stearne and a fat woman who was already drunk. To the surprise of the Squire there was
another man with Hopkins. Introduced as Robert Monk, with his companions, three surly gipsies and a second woman.
But only Hopkins, Monk and Stearne went down into the dungeon.
Time had ceased to have much meaning for Bathsheba Connell.
The hours blurred and the events that had her at their spinning centre no longer made any kind of sense to her fuddled brain.
She was naked, the shift torn from her by the muscular man called Stearne. He had mocked her, and touched her body. With strong fingers that had briefly roused her before pain swamped the momentary pleasure. He had pinched her breasts, punching her in the belly and laughing as she bowed to him, fighting for breath. Ragged nails had scored the soft flesh inside her thighs, making her whimper.
Another punch, this time to the side of her jaw, had laid her in the rushes, the stone cold against her bare skin. The woman had recovered consciousness, spitting blood and broken teeth, tied to a rough table, legs spread wide.
But there had been some moments when they had freed her. Stearne had taken her by a wrist, dragging her round and round the room, making her run. Letting her go and using a willow switch on her back and thighs to keep her moving, endlessly round and round.
Round, running.
‘Confess, witch.’ ,
On and on.
‘Confess and you may rest, witch.’ The voice calm and reasonable. The voice of a gentleman.
Endless running, until her feet bled.
‘Tell us of your pact with Satan. Name your allies in your wickedness.’
Pain jarring through her entire body. Numbness in her back from the whipping.
‘What of your imps? Your cat, that familiar of the Devil, old woman?’
‘A black cat, Matthew,’ said the one called Stearne.
‘It was named Bell,’ said the third man. Another gentleman. ‘Named after Beelzebub, perchance.’
Twice she fell, being roused once by heavy boots thudding into her ribs, leaving purple bruises. The second time she was drenched in brackish water.
The two neatly-dressed men left at some time, and a fat woman came in. Called Goody by Stearne. She was the worst.
The running had stopped and once more Bathsheba was bound to the table. Stearne stood close by her, the coarse material of his breeches brushing against her hair. And the woman, drunk and foul-mouthed, began to touch her.
‘Where’s your imp fuck with you, witch? Here, at your saggin’ bubbies? Open your mouth and let’s see if there’s a teat hid there.’
Bathsheba had done as she was bid. Deciding that if she tried to keep quiet then they might leave her alone and not harm her further. If only she had known what it was they wanted her to say then she would have said it gladly. Just to make them leave her alone.
‘Keep your mouth open, witch,’ Stearne ordered her, and she had done what he said. ‘Goody, prove her. Find that suckin’ tit and then we can break her. Matthew insists on proving.’
‘We can swim her.’
Stearne laughed, busily unbuckling his breeches, tugging them down over his thighs. His penis, half erect, dangling against the mouth of the helpless woman, touching her swollen lips.
‘Don’t cast your damned spell on this, slut, or I’ll gouge out both your eyes.’
She’d serviced him, doing her best.
‘She loves it, the witch,’ said Goody Phillips. ‘Best save some of that for me tonight, or you’ll feel the weight of the back of me hand, Johnny.’
Stearne laughed, tangling his fingers in the hair of the helpless woman. Pushing his hips hard so that he filled her throat. Bathsheba shook her head from side to side, fighting to breathe, but Stearne was close to his climax and he ignored her struggles.
Bathsheba was tempted to bite down with her few remaining teeth, but she retained enough imagination to be certain sure what the brutal man would do to her. The pain from the ropes had faded and she no longer felt the cold on her naked body. Fingers squeezed her breasts and dug in the secret folded places between her legs, shaming her with their insistence.
‘Open your legs wider, witch!’ Goody Phillips punched the bound woman hard in the stomach, making her gulp, straining against the tight cords.
‘Careful!’ yelled Stearne. ‘She’ll gnaw off my dagger!’
‘I need to see. I’ll use a torch.’
There was a bunch of dry sticks and grass, bound with twine, lying near one of the braziers and Goody went and lit it, waving it to and fro with a rushing sound, making it blaze brightly.
‘Wait. . . wait a while and I’ll. . . I’ll nearly. . . Aye, there it be . . .!‘
He withdrew, leaving her slack-mouthed, jaw gaping and sore. He slapped her across the face as he buttoned up his breeches again.
‘Close your lips, witch, now you’ve been honoured by me.’
It went on and on.
‘Lift up your fuckin’ arse, witch!’ ordered Goody Phillips, snatching a handful of Bathsheba’s pubic hair and tugging her back off the splintered wood of the table. Blood had congealed and she cried out with the pain of the skin being ripped.
‘Hold the torch, Johnny,’ said the woman, licking her lips with pleasure at the suffering she was able to cause the other woman. ‘Closer.’
There was momentary heat on her legs, and Bathsheba closed her eyes at it.
‘There. Back of her cunny, in that fold. That be it, John Stearne, or my name ain’t Goody Phillips.’
Stearne leaned forwards, tryin
g to angle the light to see better. But his hand slipped and he nearly fell, the burning torch dropping on the naked belly, making the curling, grey hair flare and sizzle.
Bathsheba screamed then. Loud and high and thin, like a stallion at the gelding. The sound filling the stone cellar, echoing on and on until it scraped at the nerves. There was the stench of roasting flesh and burned hair.
‘Don’t scorch the witch yet, John,’ giggled Goody.
‘Time for that and plenty later. After Master Hopkins and his fine new friend are done with putting her to the question’
Stearne picked up the blazing torch and threw it casually into a corner of the dungeon, where it hissed and smoked and finally went out.
‘Good work, Mistress Phillips,’ dropping her a mocking bow.
‘Lord, Master Stearne. . . I vow you will turn the head of a poor maiden with your honey tongue.’
They both laughed, ignoring the sobbing figure on the table between them. Stearne looked towards the window, showing a square of darkness. ‘Time
for you and Ito go and sup.’
She walked round towards him. Her face was broad, and in her youth she had not been thought ill featured. But now she was a couple of years the wrong side of thirty and too many days of drinking and too many nights of debauchery had left indelible marks. The cheeks were florid and seared with a network of fine veins. And the chin sagged towards the soiled bodice of the dress.
‘And after that. . .?‘
He reached for her, clasping her close and bussing her on the side of the neck. Though she might not be the finest of women as far as looks and manners went, John Stearne had never met a more vigorous competitor in the lists of love. If what they made twice or thrice a night could be truly called ‘love’.
There were times ‘when Stearne could have sworn that Goody managed two ups to his own one down!
Her thighs scorched, back bleeding and sore, jaws torn and face bruised, Bathsheba Connell watched with incurious eyes as her torturers kissed at her side. They were-as oblivious to her presence as if she had been a joint of smoked ham waiting to be cut down.
Her mind had never been keen. Nothing like it. But the events of the last hours had turned her quite mad. She even tried to smile at Stearne and Phillips as they made their way towards the heavy door, leaving her bound and naked.
The man paused at the top of the narrow flight of steps and looked back, his arm still around the spreading waist of his companion.
‘A familiar imp called Beelzebub that disappeared in front of witnesses. Your finding of her witch’s teat, so cunningly hid. The proven tales of her wickedness over the last many months.’ He ticked them off on the fingers of his free hand. ‘Aye, there be plenty there to satisfy the fumbling dotard of a magistrate on the morrow.’
‘With more of her kin, if she proves willing,’ cackled the harridan.
‘And for names in our book there’s silver in our purses.’
She was left alone, during that long, cold evening.
The following morning, Saint Agnes’ Day, the sun broke through heavy banked clouds. It had snowed during the previous evening, covering the leaden land with a blanket of clean white. The watery light barely managed to throw any shadows as Robert Monk prepared to leave the village of Stanston. He sat his black stallion, attended by the Mendoza brothers, all wrapped up against the cold in layer after layer of thick clothing. Liza Hall was seated on a small cart, holding the reins in gloved hands. She had passed longer than she’d intended with Goody and later with John Stearne and her mouth felt thick and furred from the drinking and there was a soreness to her loins from Stearne’s sexual aggressiveness.
Matthew Hopkins had come to see his pupil off, though Stearne and Phillips had kept late to their beds. Partly because the ale had taken its toll of them.
And partly because the Witchfinder-General was greatly angered, blaming them for the loss of revenue.
The two older men shook hands, gravely, like clerks in a religious tribunal who have seen their masters reach a satisfactory conclusion. To a casual onlooker they would have looked oddly similar. Both neat and trim and grey. The overwhelming colour of Monk and Hopkins was greyness.
‘I thank you for the lessons of the last day, Master Matthew.’
‘I wish you well, Robert Monk.’ Hopkins hesitated a moment. ‘And if there is more I can do. . . or if there be some mighty coven that you uncover and require aid...?’
Monk smiled, rare as snow in August. A smile that struggled for existence on the fringes of his cold lips and never even considered trying for his eyes. ‘I thank you. I understand the offer.’
‘And the bargain?’
‘Aye. I shall keep me to Hertfordshire and the western parts of Essex, Master Hopkins. And leave you the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and all north of there.’
Monk’s horse whinnied nervously and shied a few jittering steps, hooves striking fire from the flints in the snow-crusted lane. It had been frightened by the door crashing open on the building near them. Stanston’s tithe barn. A hulking figure lurched out, breath pluming around his bearded face in the bitter cold. The horse moved again, so that Monk struck it a blow between the ears and called down a curse on it.
‘it’s but a body, you poxy animal, so stand you still.’ The body of a proven witch, Robert,’ whispered Hopkins.
‘So-called, but not tested in the court. As you have told me must be, Matthew.’
The barb was well-placed. Hopkins and Stearne and Goody Phillips would get little beyond the expenses for their journey from Bathsheba Connell.
A witch who died during a swimming was one thing, but one that died of the cold because her interrogators left her naked and tied in an underground cell through a January night. . . that was something else.
But it had been an interesting and instructive time or Robert Monk. Hopkins had been open and expansive over a pheasant, some well-cooked venison and some good claret. Telling the inquisitive listener how to question suspects. Of running and swimming and testing for marks. It wasn’t hard, and there were books and documents on how it should be done.
Hopkins was particularly informative on what corners might be cut and how suspects might be led along the paths you wished. How a single success was
of scant worth. But when some old woman or man was tired and beaten, then you would promise an easing.
Hopkins’ small eyes had lit up over the remnants of their meal as he discussed that part of the task.
Offer a warm bed and their own clothes. A quart of ale or a pipe of tobacco. Comfort for them, Master Monk. Rest from the running and the promise of a swift ending for them. Many fear the fire and will reach out to embrace the mercy of the noose. Suggest other names. Local tattle will aid you in the posting of such names. And then. . . then. . .‘ He had allowed the sentence to dangle in the stillness between them. Pointing to a circular pool of spilled wine that lay on the table. Dozy in the heat of the alehouse, several large flies had been investigating it. And one by one
they had been lured into it, and there they had fallen victim to the fumes and all lay helpless.
Monk understood the allusion well enough.
‘First one and then many,’ he had said, rubbing a forefinger delicately across his lips.
It had been a useful day and night.
Now he watched Hopkins disappear again inside the alehouse, huddled against the chilling wind that came clawing in from the east, seeking out the marrow of men’s bones. Small wonder that the lonely old woman had succumbed to the frost during the night.
Before setting his spurs to the flanks of his animal Monk paused and gazed at the corpse. The vi11ager who had been allocated the task by the Squire of removing it had found it frozen stiff. To give the corpse any ease of handling he had been forced to take a large wedge-hammer and break the elbows and knees. Otherwise the body had set in the cross shape where Stearne had left her tied.
Chary of actually setting his hand to what everyone now
believed had been a true witch, the man had taken a meat-hook and attached it to a length of stout cord.
Driving the metal hook through the taut skin of the old woman’s bruised cheek, digging it hard into the angle of the jaw. Then heaving it with all his strength, rocking the body up the stairs, ignoring the way the rough stone scraped at the flesh. Ignoring the un dignified flapping of the broken limbs and the unsightly spreading of the legs.
Excrement fouled the woman’s thighs and blood came dark from nose and mouth.
It was a chilling vision for Robert Monk to carry with him as he rode off on his new profession.
Witchfinder.
CHAPTER THREE
The greening seemed as though it would never come to England that year. It was almost as if the Almighty had set his face against the country for permitting the awful Civil War to continue with its ravages and its bloody atrocities. Yet, during that long, hard winter, the fighting had been less. The cause of the Parliamentary forces swayed in the balance and only the New Model Army seemed to hold out hopes for the New Year. Money was being
raised and friends called upon to lend their support and sometimes even their own swords, to aid the anti-monarchists.
Yet for John Ferris, a gentleman of Hertford town, the War was over.
And not over amid the crash of cannon and the huzzahs of a wild cavalry charge. For him the fighting had ended in a stupid accident.
Though the battles at the beginning of the conflict had seen him deep in action, earning swift promotion to the rank of Captain and, his own command of a squadron of horse, since the autumn of forty-four there had been less bravado and daring. The Royalists, led with dash by Prince Rupert himself, had become the threat with lightning attacks where they were least expected. And the cavalry of the Parliamentary side were made to seem plodding by comparison.
Yet, just as the New Year came shuddering in, Captain John Ferris had been promised new adventures. As part of the formation of the Model Army,
his commanding officer had selected him to take charge of an innovative unit. A hundred of the best riders and bravest spirits, with the finest horses that money or scrip could buy. Or could be stolen. To live off the land and plunder the supplies of the King’s men. Harry and kill, coming out of the woods like avenging angels and then disappearing as swiftly.