Dead Trees

by Brent Saltzman

  John Stearne gulped. “No, sir. I’m with you every step of the way.”

  “Good.” Hopkins slipped on his gloves and climbed up behind the horses. “Because as I am a patient man, I am also a man who is not afraid to act in his own best interests, should the need arise. Do you understand, Mr. Stearne?”

  “I do.” Stearne sighed and climbed up next to Matthew Hopkins. “I just hope we are careful not to stray too far from God’s will.”

  “My friend,” Hopkins smiled and cracked the horse whip, “we are God’s will.”

  -12-

  Making Monsters

  AUGUST 1645

  Two Weeks After the Arrest of John Lowes

  R ebecca West hummed as her and Gaule’s horses galloped down a long stretch of road, miles of endless fields surrounding them in all directions. In the distance, they could see a mountain range. Below that, a plume of smoke rising into the air. Gaule hoped that was smoke from the chimneys of their destination: Bury St Edmunds, the last place they had heard Hopkins was heading.

  “How much longer?” Rebecca asked with an exaggerated sigh.

  “Another hour, I imagine,” Gaule replied. “Maybe two. Are you bored?”

  “You have no idea,” Rebecca said. “Maybe to a degree which could be considered child abuse given the right mixture of crocodile tears in a courtroom.”

  “A child.” Gaule chuckled. “You call yourself one. I don’t buy it.”

  “And why is that?” Just as Rebecca asked, her pet rat emerged from her pack and took its familiar spot on her shoulder. “Is it because you consider rodents to be pets for children?”

  “Or food for dogs.”

  The rat twitched, as if it had somehow understood him. Rebecca calmed it down, stroking its fur. “Now, now, he was just joking.”

  “The intelligence of those animals has always surprised me,” Gaule said, glancing at the rat. “I’ve papers indicating that they could possibly outmatch the cerebral abilities of a housecat.”

  Rebecca smirked. “‘Cerebral abilities.’ You are sure you are a man of faith and not one of science?”

  Gaule shrugged. “I’ve never believed in the two being mutually exclusive. It is my belief that they have always complemented one another in various ways. Two ideas telling the same story in different languages. Trust me, Ms. West. I am a man of faith. I pray to God, and he sometimes answers. I use faith to steer men and women toward, I don’t know, a good path. That is why I believe in my faith.”

  “I still do not understand,” Rebecca said. “Are you a man of spirit or a man of science?”

  “Few things in this world cannot be explained scientifically. That is a reality that I have come to accept. But I am not ruling out God just because I can see the blocks with which he constructed our world. Science, Rebecca, provides the tools and ingredients that God uses. He is the answer to why. Science, I believe, is the answer to how.”

  Rebecca suddenly stopped her horse. Gaule, caught off-guard, stopped his a few meters up the road and turned around to face her. She was staring at the vicar with firm intent.

  “Rebecca, what’s wrong?”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked without a hint of playfulness in her voice.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You. John Gaule. Why are you so determined to stop Matthew Hopkins? What do you get out of this? Shouldn’t you be…be…I don’t know…seeing to your church in Great Staughton?”

  Thunder bellowed as lightning lit the sky on fire. The first raindrops of the coming storm began to fall. Gaule approached Rebecca and then got off his horse. He looked shaken. “Perhaps, we should make camp and wait for the rain to pass.”

  Twenty minutes later, Gaule had set up a large tent made of a fabric he’d purchased from a travelling salesman who’d promised it was waterproof. Gaule had the idea to use it to cover some of the more valuable outdoor statues in his church’s garden. However, it also turned out to make a great shelter from the elements. While far from completely waterproof, it did provide enough resistance to allow their campfire to roar.

  Gaule ate while Rebecca stared at him from the other side of the fire, their shadows flickering off the walls of the tent as the storm raged just outside.

  “You never answered my questions,” Rebecca reminded him. “A habit of yours, I’m quickly learning. Mr. Gaule, what made you wake up one day and decide to chase this cause? Especially as a man whose faith seems to be in conflict with that of everyone else?”

  “First off,” Gaule gulped his food, “my faith is not in conflict. I don’t know how many times I need to tell people that I am still a stringent believer.”

  “Then why hunt the witch hunters?”

  “Because I also believe in good. The good of my faith. The good of my church. And what Hopkins is doing, by allowing blind conviction to take control of his common sense, will destroy our faith.”

  “I don’t understand.” Rebecca shook her head. “This hunting of witches, of those who deal with the Devil, how will that destroy your faith? Will it not strengthen it?”

  Gaule finished his food and sighed. “We live in a world of opposing sides, Rebecca. That’s a good thing. It means that people are beginning to think for themselves. The problem is that, when you have sides of a conflict, whether it be something as simple as incense or no incense in a church, both sides will ultimately convince themselves that they are right, and that the opposing side is wrong. End of story. People too often see the world in black and white. But you and I, we know different. We know the world doesn’t work that way. The real world is filled with shades of gray. And that makes people uncomfortable. Having to accept the possibility that their own ideas might not ultimately be the right ones.”

  “You’re assuming human beings don’t compromise,” Rebecca said.

  “Yeah, I’m feeling fairly safe in that assumption. Not only do they not compromise, but they don’t empathize. Instead they often choose to demonize.” Gaule smirked and shook his head. “We live in a world where if someone has a different idea or perspective from our own, we make no attempt to listen or initiate dialogue. No, we create our assumption of this person’s entire character over a difference of perspective, and we treat them as a monster.”

  Rebecca dipped her head. She, too, had been guilty of immediately dismissing someone over having an opinion different than her own.

  “And let me tell you something, Rebecca. The fastest way to create a real monster, is to make someone into one in your head. When you shout at, scream at, or persecute people for having a perspective you do not understand, they get scared. They lash out.”

  He looked at the girl across the fire. “Hopkins thinks he will strengthen the church. But he will not. No one is going to let themselves be demonized, then wake up going, ‘Yes, the people threatening me, that’s the side I want to be on!’ Even if you are one hundred percent right and they are one hundred percent wrong, no good can ever come from antagonizing those who disagree. You do nothing but throw logs on the flames of your own burning cause. Hate will always ensure only one thing: more hate.”

  “I’m beginning to understand.” Rebecca crossed her arms. “You’re afraid that Hopkins will turn people away from the word of God.”

  Gaule nodded. “From the corpses of a thousand monsters that Hopkins has slayed in his head, there will eventually rise real ones. Angry, scared monsters. I will not let my faith be destroyed. Not by Hopkins. Not by anyone. That is my duty.”

  “Why is he doing this?” Rebecca asked. “Hopkins. Does he truly believe himself to be some kind of crusader?”

  Gaule’s memory flashed back to several weeks ago. When he was sitting next to Hopkins at a tavern in Chelmsford. “There is pain in his eyes,” Gaule said. “There are two types of drinkers in this world.”

  “You mean those who consume alcohol?” Rebecca said with a condescending tone. “Oh, what ever does that do? Little old innocent me has no earthly idea!”

  “Uh huh.” Gaule waved her
off. “Anyway, Rebecca, the two types of drinkers in this world are those who drink for fun…”

  Rebecca smiled.

  “…and those who drink to forget. I, I have been both in my life. I can recognize the eyes of both, as I’ve spent many nights staring into my own reflection, trying to come to terms with what my life had become. Matthew Hopkins was drinking that day in Chelmsford to forget.”

  “Do you think he feels guilt for the things he has done? Or perhaps does he not even truly believe? Maybe this hunt has been an elaborate money-making scheme and the marks on his soul are finally beginning to burn his insides. Maybe he’s human, after all.”

  “Maybe,” Gaule sighed. “I’d love to know myself. There’s a notebook he carries around. A leather one. Worn.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Rebecca confirmed. “He was reading from it when doing that stupid show with the shoe and the piss bottle.”

  “Yes. I have a feeling that we will find answers in that notebook. Answers to everything. Maybe even something to incriminate the man so he cannot harm again. I’m sure parliament will be on my side in a case such as this.”

  “Is that what you’re hoping for?” asked Rebecca. “Or are you really hoping that you will find something in that book to exonerate his soul from its crimes? Maybe, just maybe,” she made a pinching motion with her fingers, “you’re just trying too hard to find the good in everyone.”

  “Something that I’m finding more difficult with each passing day, unfortunately.”

  “I have something to tell you, Mr. Gaule. I do not want you to be alarmed.” She pulled herself closer to the fire, closer to Gaule. They watched each other through an undulating curtain of flames. “I was fond of my mother. She was a good woman. She did not deserve an early death, let alone such a grisly one at the hands of a man who spent what he earned for her life on breakfast.”

  Gaule knew where this was going. He knew this was a bridge he’d have to cross eventually. But he was hoping he had more time.

  “I do intend to bring harm to him,” Rebecca West said. “He is a man who deserves not the air he breathes, yet alone the riches of fame to which he’s grown accustomed. All I ask is that you do not try to stop me when that time comes.”

  “Hmph.” Gaule knew that there was little use of attempting to reason with a broken heart. “Perhaps I won’t have to. Perhaps, if that time comes, God will stop you.”

  “God has no control over me,” Rebecca said. “I refuse to believe anyone has control over me. No parent. No man. No magistrate.”

  Gaule nodded. “That explains many things about you.”

  “What things? Hmm?”

  “Your fire, for one.”

  “I just hate the idea of tradition determining my place in life. I don’t want to get married at sixteen and spend my days kneading dough while my husband works in a field.”

  “The world is changing, Rebecca. For the better, I assure you.” Gaule said. “But I understand that it is far from easy to look at things through a certain lens, or attempt to experience things through a different body. It is unfortunately quite difficult for people to see people different than them as people at all. We just see others as…objects…pawns in this great game of life which we are all playing.”

  “Everyone expects certain things of me,” Rebecca said, seemingly ignoring Gaule’s last insufferable diatribe. “I have to be proper and hope a boy chooses me as if I’m some sort of prize to be won in a tournament. I’m expected to want to have children and raise a family. Anything else, like wanting to see the world, or, or to study nature or mathematics and suddenly—”

  “You’re a witch.”

  “Yes.” Rebecca sounded exasperated, on the verge of tears. “I don’t want other people to look down on me when I don’t do what they want me to do. It drives me mad. It makes me feel lost. I do not want to be controlled. Not by you. Not by a county. Not by anyone. God gave me my life, and I trust he also gave me the sense, and the freedom, to use it how I so choose. I’ve done a few bad things. Sure. What of it? Condemn me. I don’t care.”

  “Child,” Gaule said, “we have all done bad things. What’s important is not so much what we have done, but why we have done it. One day, you will understand. I promise. You are a remarkable human being, Rebecca West. And remarkable not because you stick to convention, but because you don’t. Do not let the world tell you who you are. Let your actions show them.”

  Rebecca sniffled. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For calling me remarkable.”

  Gaule walked over and hugged the young woman. She hugged back even harder. He got the distinct impression that it was the first time anyone had listened to anything she had to say in quite some time.

  Outside, the horses stirred. It appeared that the storm had passed. “It’s time,” Gaule said. “Let’s head to the village.”

  As the two packed up the tent and rode off toward Bury St Edmunds, neither had any idea that they were about to witness perhaps the most heinous and iconic act of the career of Matthew Hopkins.

  -13-

  Sinking Guilt

  AUGUST 1645

  J ohn Gaule and Rebecca West rode into town an hour after packing their tent, only to find that a large crowd had already gathered at the base of a castle. There seemed to have been a commotion at the lake right next to the castle, and villagers looked on curiously at something along its muddy banks.

  Gaule and Rebecca West tied down their horses and rushed to see what was going on, rudely pushing their way to the front of the crowd. When they arrived, they saw Matthew Hopkins standing at the end of a pier. And strung up on rope like a fish was an old man. He didn’t writhe or cringe. In fact, he didn’t move at all; he looked completely defeated.

  “This so-called priest, a supposed defender of our faith,” started Matthew Hopkins to the crowd. “This man has been accused of making a pact with the Devil to take the lives of fourteen innocent men off the coast of Harwich. Vicar John Lowes did not like these men because of their drinking habits. Their desire to have a little fun offended him.” He looked to the crowd for approval. Many of them nodded. “And as such, he is accused of having had them eliminated.”

  “A witch!” came cries from the crowd. “To the gallows!”

  “Now, now.” Hopkins patted the air, a gesture to his crowd to calm down. “We are a civilized society with civilized rules. You see, John Lowes here has been a faithful servant of his church for many decades. It is my belief, as should be all of ours, that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Four days of sleep deprivation did not yield a confession. So, I have decided to turn to more drastic measures.”

  The night before, Matthew Hopkins was in a panic. He had just accused a member of the clergy of witchcraft, so he was already playing an incredibly dangerous game. But now, the old man, after four continuous days without sleep, was still not confessing. The magistrate was running out of patience, and Hopkins knew that if he had falsely accused a priest of such a terrible crime, he’d never be taken seriously again.

  You must have the strength to do what is necessary.

  Matthew heard the words of his father ringing in his head.

  It is easy to give your life to a cause. It is much more difficult to give your soul.

  Matthew knew that his soul had long since gone. He also knew that unless he extracted a confession from the vicar as quickly as possible, it would derail his mission.

  So, ever the clever man, he came up with a solution.

  And that’s what led to the vicar John Lowes being hung up like meat over the lake. The rope was connected to a pulley on the pier, which was itself connected to a winch.

  “John Lowes,” Hopkins said, “has renounced his baptism as a condition of his pact with the Devil.” He was reading from his leather journal, a fact that had not gone unnoted by both Rebecca West and John Gaule. “Therefore,” continued Hopkins, “water, being a substance so pure that it rejects evil beings, will tell us whether John L
owes is truly in league with dark forces. If the man sinks, he will be proclaimed innocent. But if he floats, then there will be only one explanation as to why.”

  Gaule shook his head. I can think of a million scientific explanations off the top of my head!

  Rebecca looked over at Gaule. “I don’t understand. People float all the time. Witch or no witch.”

  “People will see,” Gaule sighed, “what they want to see. We will trick our minds into believing what we want to believe.”

  Hopkins yanked on the winch. Lowes dropped a few feet toward the water before Hopkins pulled it taut again. Then, he kicked the winch and the man plummeted into the lake with a splash. He writhed and screamed and spat out water.

  All while, apparently, floating on its surface.

  The crowd cried out in triumph. “I knew he was a witch!” “Let him burn!” “Convict!”

  One of the men from the crowd walked out onto the pier. He appeared to be one of the town’s magistrates, there to attend the dunking. “Mr. Hopkins,” the magistrate said, “need I remind you that we will need a confession to convict.”

  “Despite this obvious proof!” Hopkins nodded to the struggling Lowes. The effect was quite mesmerizing. The vicar was writhing on top of the water as if they were separated by a sheet of clear glass, his robes barely touching the surface.

  “Proof is not a confession, Mr. Hopkins.”

  “Alright,” Hopkins snarled. “I have the impression that Mr. Lowes is about to give us that very confession.”

  In the water, unnoticed by many due to his squirming and twitching, Lowes sank.

  Just a little.

  Just enough.