Belinda saw nothing from her window and turned around to look at her bedchamber. She wondered, briefly, where Susanna had gone, and she felt both relieved that she was no longer around but also irritated that her absence meant a great deal of work for her. The farm required daily attention, as did the animals. She was no longer able to sleep in, and she also had to prepare the meals for both herself and her useless husband. She had to spend a great deal of time with Samuel, turning him on the bed, cleaning his sores, feeding, and cleaning him. She had no wish to be a nursemaid! She gritted her teeth in frustration and anger at how Susanna left without a word. The wretched harlot had even taken the stupid turnspit dog with her!
Belinda sat down on her bed and began to comb her hair, which she did every night before going to bed. She thought of hiring one of the village girls as a housemaid, but as these thoughts were in her head, she heard a strange sound in her room. She turned in the direction of the sound and saw, to her shock, that her looking-glass had turned into a viewing portal. There, upon a luxurious bed, was Susanna, naked, sitting astride a man. They were making love, though in Belinda’s eyes, they were rutting like animals. Belinda remained there, enrapt, as she continued to watch the lovers on the glass.
“What sorcery is this?” she whispered, her hand to her mouth in both surprise and fear.
The lovers were coming to a crisis, and when Susanna arched her spine in pleasure, tossing her long red hair back with her gyrations, Belinda saw the man’s face. But it was no man — it was some demon-faced monster! The image morphed into Sanguinem Castle, and Belinda then knew where her sister-in-law now was. Stifling her screams, Belinda ran as fast as her short legs would allow her, down the dark lane and into the centre of the village.
“Father!” cried Belinda, banging on his door with all her might. “Father! Open the door, I beseech you!”
George Winthrop, bleary-eyed, hobbled out of bed, lit a candle from his fire and made his way down the stairs. Belinda continued pounding her hands on the door and crying out for him. He opened the door and she clasped him by his nightshirt. “Father!” she spoke rapidly, “I have witnessed the Devil’s work tonight! Susanna is indeed a witch for has given herself to an incubus!”
“God above!” George Winthrop exclaimed, immediately making the sign of the cross. “Are you certain of this? What did you see?”
“I saw them fornicating together, and I know where they are — they are in Sanguinem Castle! Oh! He was an evil, horned creature, with the foulest look upon him. And he was doing to her what a husband does with his wife. Oh, my eyes! That God should have let me see such a sight!”
“This is most vexatious news! Have we not done our utmost to thwart the Devil in this village? Those Edmunds have been the cause of much disquiet, we should never have allowed them here. And I should never have allowed you to marry that Samuel!”
“Susanna will open the portal to Hell — she may have already done so!”
“Calm thyself, my child, for I will have her before the town for this! She is a witch, just like her mother before her!”
“Something must be done, father, tonight!” Belinda cried, grabbing onto his arm.
“Indeed, I will summon the council first thing in the morning. Stay here the night, daughter; I will not have you go back to sleep in a house which the Devil himself has no doubt entered.”
“Nay, father, I am not afeared. Susanna left us over six months ago. I do not expect to see her again, until the day I see her body dancing under the hanging tree for witchcraft. She is a good for nothing witch! Who knows how many imps she has in the village.” She opened the door to leave, “We must root the evil out, just as you once did!”
As he watched his daughter run into the darkness, the old man thought of the past. Indeed, George Winthrop had been the man who personally invited Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder-General, into Coffin’s Bishop that spring of 1645. It was Winthrop who accused Mary Edmonds of being a witch, for his loins had been set aflame from the moment he had first set eyes upon her.
He had visited the Edmunds Farm unannounced knowing that Mary had been left alone, her husband, Thomas, and their son Samuel, having gone to market in Northampton. She had graciously invited him inside for a mug of ale. She was intoxicatingly attractive, and he suddenly backhanded her and forced her onto the wooden table in the kitchen. As he began to lift her skirts, he looked down momentarily to undo the buttons on his breeches, inside which his member stood rigid, and slice! He clutched at the wound, blood oozing out of his cheek. Mary had slashed his face with scissors she had had in her sewing basket on the table.
“Get out of here you pig-faced varmint!” Mary had exclaimed, her sharp scissors pointed towards him. “I swear if I so much as see your ugly countenance near this home again, you will be sorry for it!” She panted, her face red and angry, and this nearly inflamed him again.
He had given her one last look before he stormed out of the cottage, and that is when he became her enemy. The large scar she had left on his face was a daily reminder to him of that unpleasant and humiliating experience, and his desire turned to hatred. He found some morbid contentment when he saw her plunged into the water of Bishop’s Pond and fished out again dead. She paid for humiliating him so.
Even two decades after this, Winthrop felt the injury she had done to his ego acutely. To add insult to this injury, the bitch’s daughter, Susanna, a brat who should have followed her mother to the grave, blossomed into womanhood and was almost a copy of the woman he had so lusted after. It was the last cruel trick the dead witch had played upon him.
***
Griselda, licking fresh blood from her hands, waited patiently on the limbs of the gnarled dead tree in front of the cottage. She heard footsteps on the dirt road from the village, and observed Belinda trudging down the lane and down the path trimmed in lavender. A malicious smile crept across Griselda’s face, for she knew that this foolish human had done precisely what she had hoped for. She had conjured up the visions in Belinda’s looking-glass, and now, her attentions returned to the next part of her plan. Belinda had shut the door, and slowly lit a rushlight to take upstairs. This she used to light her way as she walked up the creaky wooden stairs towards her bedchamber. Before entering her room, however, she had a pang of emotion, perhaps of guilt, perhaps of a rare flicker of affection for her incapacitated husband, and she turned to go to Samuel’s room.
She scratched the door. “Samuel? Are you still awake?” she asked. “I must speak with thee about thy sister. Samuel?”
There was no answer. Belinda pushed the door open and walked in, holding the flickering rushlight before her.
“Husband?” she asked, moving closer to his bed. There was something covering his sheets, but she couldn’t make it out, so she placed her hand on the bed. It was wet, slimy. She slowly brought her trembling hand up close to the light to inspect it.
Blood!
“Samuel!” she cried, shining the light upon the bed. Belinda let out a blood-curdling scream as her mind registered the horrific scene before her. What remained of her husband was unrecognisable, for he had been savagely mutilated, and a great pool of blood had formed upon the floor beneath his bed.
She continued screaming as the door flung open to reveal Griselda, snarling in her vampire form. Belinda froze in terror.
“Your turn!” she said, lunging at Belinda before the wretch could even scream.
***
“Here, drink. You have lost blood tonight,” said Henry, holding a cup of wine out to Susanna. He had punctured her flesh lightly in several places and again sampled her blood. “But soon you shall feast and then sleep in my arms to-day.” He smiled brightly. The appetising aroma of roasted lamb permeated the air, and Susanna’s stomach rumbled with hunger.
She took the old chalice from him and sat down in one of the mediaeval chairs. “Oh, how wonderful is that smell? I think I could happily eat a whole lamb right now,” she exclaimed before gulping down the Rhenish wine.
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She was truly famished; the exertions of having congress with a supernatural being were almost too much for her, never mind the fact that he had sampled her blood from various places on her body. She was now quite weak, but happy.
The cook, Isaac, soon brought in a pewter dish with the roasted lamb with boiled carrots and potatoes and placed it on the great wooden table where Susanna sat. She immediately cut a piece off and placed it onto her plate. Toby sat beside her, wagging his little black tail, knowing she would soon give him a tender piece of meat.
“I’m still not used to the fact that you can never eat with me,” she whispered, spooning some potatoes and carrots now. There was a sprinkling of rosemary all over, which added to the pleasant aroma in the room. Susanna reached for the saltcellar and spooned some of the salt onto the food before her.
“I suppose I could eat with you, but you might find it puts you off your own food.”
She grimaced. “Yes, it’s not like you can kill someone in another room and drink out of a mug.”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t do that. I mean to say that I could possibly save the blood and drink from a vessel with you.”
“I’m sure we’ll come to an arrangement in time.”
She smiled at him from across the table, and he returned the look two-fold. He enjoyed watching her eat with spirit, and his mind could not help but recall some of the scintillating images he now had in his brain following their frolics upon the marital bed. He remembered how his hands skimmed over the soft, downy hairs upon her legs, her rough knees, the fiery red hairs upon her mons pubis. That he had known her in that way, that they had been one, engulfed his heart with a great felicity. He took delight in watching her consume her food, and tear bits of lamb meat with her little teeth. He allowed himself to fantasise about the lush, hot, confines of her human body. He rubbed his full lips with his fingers as he thought of her.
Susanna noticed the look of lust upon his face, and wiped her mouth and hands on the linen cloth. She stood up and slowly, tentatively walked over to Henry. She bent down and kissed him full upon the lips. Whilst Susanna and Henry enjoyed every moment in each other’s company, Griselda was soon to bring the worst misery imaginable into their world.
Chapter 17:
The Witch Hunt
In the crumbling, damp-smelling village hall in Coffin’s Bishop, the male village elders had gathered to discuss the repercussions of Belinda’s information.
“Gentlemen, I thank you all for coming hither on such short notice. It is my duty as the magistrate of this town to uphold the law and keep the people safe. My daughter, one of the most honourable and respected women in this village, as you all know, came to me in the early hours of this morning to tell me of the lurid things Susanna has done. She stated that she had a vision of Susanna copulating with an incubus, a devil’s head on a human male body. She then saw a vision of Sanguinem Castle, so this must be where Susanna has been indulging in her witchcraft and fornicating with this devil.”
All the men in the room where aghast at this news, but not surprised. Susanna had been considered a notorious wanton for the past few years.
“I always knew the Edmonds girl was a good-for-nothing harlot, but I never thought she would have given herself to the devil,” stated Farmer Smith. His son, one of the three who had raped Susanna, had been brutally murdered by Henry. “Three horrific murders, now this sign of Susanna copulating with a demon, why what is happening to this village?”
“The Devil slaked his lust in Susanna Edmonds,” replied George Winthrop, magistrate of Coffin’s Bishop. “No doubt the Anti-Christ had already been planted within her womb.” He licked his lips as he remembered the countless times he had experienced lustful thoughts about the girl himself. He shook his head as he dismissed these lurid thoughts. She was devilish temptation, just like Mary had been.
Winthrop turned to the shorthaired men, who all wore black, in his presence. “The people of this village fear, as I do, that the gates of Hell have been opened by the actions of this woman. She should have been married long ago and so avoided Satan’s temptations.”
There was a generally buzz of agreement throughout the room.
“It is a woman’s curse — her wandering womb has driven her mad and opened her to the demon world. Only with man’s seed can a woman be at peace,” said the tanner, Morton. “She ought to have married the man whose child she gave birth to.”
Winthrop shook his head. “We never ascertained who the father was. She would not tell us, and Samuel Edmonds told us to stop questioning the girl, so we did.”
“I wonder about those three poor young men, including your son and mine, butchered and left in the village square. Would it be possible that one of them fathered her bastard child? We must remember that each had the word ‘ravisher’ carved into his chest,” stated Farmer Smith.
“How you could even think that any man in this village, let alone my Peter, or your Geoffrey, could have ravished that harlot is beyond me. Have respect for the dead.”
“What a waste of a young woman!” cried Winthrop, as he went over to the window, it was another dark, misty day. “She will feel the lash of justice, even if I have to administer it to her myself.” The thought of whipping Susanna excited him, and again visions of her danced in his mind’s eye. His real eyes then focused on the view beyond the pane of glass before him. He saw Goody Miller running towards the square, she was howling and crying. Winthrop bolted out the door and down the steps.
“What troubles thee, Goody Miller?” he shouted, running towards her. Various people had heard the commotion and now circled around them in the midst of the square.
“Brace yourself, Sir,” she said, crying wildly, “For what I have to say concerns you more than anyone else.” She was wringing her hands upon her apron.
“Pray, tell me at once!” he exclaimed, fear rising in his chest.
“Murder! Thy Belinda’s dead, and Samuel, too! They’ve been murdered most foully!” she howled hysterically.
“What in Heaven’s name?” he exclaimed in horror.
“The cottage door was wide open, and I was surprised by this, for Belinda hates flies and open doors, and I knew something was amiss. I called out to her, ‘Belinda!’ but she did not reply, and so I went into the kitchen, but she was not there. I climbed up the stairs, first to her room, then to Samuel’s, and there, that’s where I found ‘em both! Murdered!”
“Oh, black, lamentable day!” Winthrop fell to his knees. “Both of my children, now dead! How can this be?”
“But that’s not all, Sir,” she said, snivelling. “I know who done it.”
Winthrop raised himself up off the ground and looked her in the eye. “Who did it?”
“It was Susanna Edmonds, I saw ‘er with me own eyes! She’s a witch, just like ‘er mother! She came out of the cottage, evil hellfire spewing from her eyes, and she held a bloody axe aloft in her hands. It were Samuel’s axe, it were!”
Winthrop’s eyes could have spewed molten lava at this. “Let me see what that evil whore has done to my child!” The villagers followed close behind him and down the muddy lane towards Edmonds Farm. They stormed into the cottage and up the wooden stairs to Samuel’s room.
There, on the floor and in a pool of her own blood, lay the lifeless body of Belinda. Her head had been severed from her body, which had also been grossly mutilated. Samuel was in an even worse state upon the bed. Winthrop held his handkerchief to his mouth as he nearly vomited. He turned, the veins in his neck almost bursting, to face the others and bellowed, “Fetch your ropes, weapons, and torches — we shall now go to Sanguinem Castle and bring that witch to justice!”
And so the vengeful villagers of Coffin’s Bishop lit their torches and made their way through the gloom and fog of Sanguinem Wood, heading in the direction of the Castle, and Susanna.
***
Susanna yawned and stretched as she awoke from a deep slumber, only to have Henry wrap his cold arms around her and pull her clo
se to him again.
She giggled, “Please, Henry, I have to get up!”
“I’m already up,” he said, with a devilish grin.
“You’re terrible!” she said, turning around and throwing her arms around him this time and showering him with kisses. “I cannot stay in bed with you all day.”
“I think you’ll find that you are my wife, and that we can stay in bed as long as we like,” he replied, mischievously.
“Very well, I am defeated! I shall stay in bed with you all day, but first, I must avail myself of the chamber pot, but in the other room. I refuse to do anything of the sort in the same room as you.”
“As you wish, but hurry back,” Henry said, running his hands up and down her soft, warm arms.
“I’ll be back by-and-by,” she said, laughing, and planting a kiss on his forehead. Susanna then carefully stepped out from the darkness of their bed, her eyes squinting immediately from the brightness of the day. It was very chilly in the room, and she was surprised to discover that Alice had failed to neither leave out Susanna’s dressing gown nor her slippers as she so had done every day since she first came to Sanguinem Castle. She padded over the large crimson rug and opened the door. Alice was not outside either. She was concerned for her maid, who was so diligent, but also quite old, and she might have had an accident. Susanna’s teeth chattered as she wandered down the ancient hall towards her bedchamber, not knowing that the corpse of her maid, Alice, lay in one of the unused chambers. The cook, Isaac, and the stable boy had, too, been murdered. Each drained dry.
Susanna opened the door into her room and walked inside. She used the chamber pot and then looked for, and found, a shawl to wrap around her shoulders. She fetched another pair of slippers and popped them onto her cold feet.
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