Flood (The Fenland Series Book 1)

by Ann Swinfen

  The big women slapped me hard across the face. ‘None of that. We’ll have it off, will you or not.’

  There was a sound of ripping as they dragged off my shift and I stood naked, there in the centre of the room. In my humiliation I raised my eyes and stared straight at the men. I will defy them, I thought. Let them try to outface me.

  Both men were younger than I had expected. One was small, neat and dapper, a pile of paper before him and a quill in his hand, ready to take notes. He looked at me lasciviously, with a moist eye. His red lips curled in a smile as I was revealed in my nakedness.

  The other man, taller and thin, though also young, looked ill. He was pale and his eyes were sunken and bruised-looking. From time to time he coughed into his handkerchief, which he folded and hid, as though he had coughed up something unpleasant. I sensed that he too took pleasure in my nakedness, but that he was too tired or too ill to savour it to the full.

  The three women began to examine my body, poking and prodding every inch of my skin, even into my most private parts. I felt my face flush with rage and humiliation, but I would not cower before them, nor plead. I threw back my head and continued to stare straight ahead at the two witchfinders. The smaller man saw my defiance and I watched him make note of it.

  At last the big woman spoke.

  ‘We can find no witches’ marks, Master Hopkins.’

  The thin man, the one who appeared to be ill, gave a brief nod.

  ‘Very well. You may go.’ He looked at me. ‘You may dress yourself.’

  My hands were shaking as I pulled my shift over my head. One sleeve was partly ripped out and my fingers caught in the tear. I heard one of the men laugh. As quickly as I could, I donned the rest of my clothes, making a clumsy knot in the broken garter. At last I stood fully clothed, though I knew my clothes were disarranged and my hair, hastily bundled under my cap, threatened to fall down again.

  The smaller man, who must be John Stearne, shouted, ‘Guard!’

  I felt a spasm of hope. They had found no marks on me. Was I to be released?

  One of the men who had arrested us came in, carrying a large coil of rope.

  ‘Bind her,’ Hopkins said.

  The guard forced me down on to the chair, then pulled my arms behind it and tied them together. He carried the rope round my throat and back again, so that I could not bend my head forward without choking. Then he passed the rope under the seat and bound my ankles to the legs of the chair.

  ‘Now, Mistress Bennington,’ Hopkins said, ‘you will remain here and you will be watched, to see whether any of your imps or familiars visit you.’

  ‘I have no imps or familiars,’ I protested. ‘I am a yeoman’s daughter and a good Christian. You have no right to treat me thus.’

  ‘It is sad, is it not, brother,’ said Stearne, ‘when a woman of good family turns to the devil? An unhappy sign of these most unhappy times.’

  Hopkins ignored him and stood up, coming to stand close before me.

  ‘I will have your confession out of you, woman. Be sure of that. However long it takes, and by whatever means.’ He fixed on me the eyes of a fanatic, burning in his gaunt face. ‘It is my mission from God, our Holy Father, to root out this pernicious growth of witchcraft which has spread over this land like a choking vine. Be sure. You cannot hide from me.’

  I think he would have said more, but he began to cough, great racking coughs which shook his emaciated frame. He fixed on me a look of hate, as though he believed I had occasioned his illness, then turned and left the room.

  Stearne bustled about, a fussy, lesser man, one of those who must always make themselves appear more important than they are. He consulted with the guard, who nodded and left.

  ‘Now, woman,’ said Stearne, ‘you will be watched. As soon as you are ready to confess your loathsome deeds, your pact with Satan to raise the dead, you have but to speak and we will come to record your confession.’

  ‘I am no witch. I have made no pact with Satan. I have never raised the dead. Master Clarke was injured, but never dead. We nursed him back to health.’

  Stearne struck me across the face and I saw that he took pleasure in it.

  ‘Do not deny it. It has been attested that the man was dead and is now alive. Speak only when you are ready to confess.’

  With that, he bustled to the door, strutting peacock of a man that he was. He was met there by the guard returning with more candles, and by two women and a man. These, I thought, must be the Watchers. I licked away blood, where Stearne’s blow had opened the cut on my lip again. When Stearne and the guard had left, the Watchers came in, each carrying a chair and cushions. They meant to make themselves comfortable, then. One of the women went out again and returned with a tray on which stood a pitcher, some cups, and plates of food. My stomach groaned in anticipation. Perhaps they were going to feed me at last. But no, they arranged their chairs in a semicircle in front of me and sat down, the man in the middle. He doffed his hat and they all lowered their heads.

  ‘Dear Lord,’ he said, ‘help us in our righteous work this night, that we may bring this woman out of the clutches of the Devil and all his works. May you guide us to the truth, in the name of Christ our Saviour. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ the women echoed.

  ‘And I pray that the Lord God will guide you to the truth, that I am no witch,’ I said. ‘Dear Lord, open their eyes. Amen.’

  The man stared at me angrily. ‘Do not utter your blasphemies here, woman. Do you pray to your master Satan?’

  ‘I pray to our Lord God in Heaven,’ I said wearily. ‘And to Jesus Christ, our Saviour.’ But I regretted my outburst. It would do me no good. I saw that if Matthew Hopkins thought he could force me to say what he wanted to hear, then both the witchfinder and the Watchers could twist whatever I said to suit their own purposes. My only safety lay in saying nothing. I clamped my jaw shut. Very well, I would not speak.

  The time dragged slowly. After a while, the three Watchers helped themselves to food and drink, but none was offered to me, though I was becoming very thirsty. As the candles burned down, more were lit. I could not doze, for whenever my head fell forward, the rope around my neck throttled me and brought me quickly awake. And with my arms twisted behind my back, it felt as though they were being wrenched out of their sockets. The pain began to burn in my arms, my shoulders, my neck and head.

  The Watchers seemed accustomed to sitting like this, their eyes fixed on me. I wondered whether they were allowed to sleep in the daytime, else this punishment of forbidding sleep, the tormentum insomniae, was as harsh to them as to me. After my long vigils of sitting up with Gideon all night, I did not find the wakefulness that first night difficult, had it not been for the pain. By the time light began to filter in through the windows and the candles were burnt out, I was tired, but it was nothing I could not endure. It was the pain that preoccupied me. By now, my legs, too, were numb.

  With full morning, Hopkins returned.

  ‘Anything?’ he asked the man.

  ‘Nothing, sir, but a blasphemous prayer.’

  ‘Aye?’ Hopkins was interested.

  The man repeated what I had said, with perfect accuracy, but Hopkins shook his head.

  ‘Not enough. Give her to drink, then be off.’

  One of the women held a cup to my lips with tepid water. As I could not incline my head, much of it poured down on to my bodice, but what little I managed to drink moistened my mouth and relieved my thirst a little.

  The Watchers left and Hopkins sat before me. Now he was so close, I caught the rank smell of his sickness, sweet and sour together, and a smell of blood. That is what he has been spitting, I thought. And there was something else. A strong smell of onions. Consumption, it was a sure sign. He cannot have long left. Yet he will drag me down with him.

  He began to question me. How long had I had congress with Satan? Did he visit me at night to sleep with me in sin? What were my familiars? What harm had I worked on my neighbours? Who else wa
s in our coven besides myself and Hannah? It was known I was an intimate friend of Alice Cox, was she part of the coven? It was also known that we were intimate with Agnes Pettifer, who was already confessed and hanged for a witch. How had I raised the great thunderstorm which had recently swept the country? Would I confess to having laid a curse on the private parts of Master Edmund Dillingworth?

  At that, I nearly broke my vow of silence and could only with difficulty keep myself from laughing. So that was what he had told them! To knee a rapist in the groin was now the work of a witch! Oh, Edmund Dillingworth was carrying his revenge too far. But I must not speak.

  After a time, Stearne took over. His questions were more prurient, and he touched me intimately several times, but all I did was glare at him, though it was difficult not to flinch. Three times during the day I was given a drink, but no food. When night came, the witchfinders left and the Watchers returned. This time they carried iron probes, of the kind sometimes used on cattle. I thought they were going to torture me, but as the night wore on, I discovered their use. By letting my head lean a little to the side, I found the rope did not choke me and I would begin to slip into blessed sleep, despite the burning agony of my body. Every time, one of the Watchers would drive a probe into my side to wake me up.

  This second night I was beginning to suffer from the lack of sleep. Moreover, my limbs and back were becoming even more numb from being tied with ropes so long. For long stretches I could not feel my feet at all, then sensation would flow back into them with excruciating pain, as if they were being stabbed with a dozen knives. The whole of my spine was a burning pain. All this time I had not been allowed to relieve myself. To my shame, my clothes were soaked with urine.

  For whole minutes together, I would seem to sleep, although my eyes were open. My mind wandered away from the great bare room, lit by flickering candles, and from the three people watching me. It was as though I moved inside a dream, a kind of shell which held me, within the outer shell which was the torture room.

  The next day the questions continued, first Hopkins, then Stearne, then Hopkins again. Their voices braided together, a meaningless sound. My ears had become deaf, my hearing turned inward to the drumming of my chained blood, the shrieks of my paralysed limbs. No longer did I need to struggle to keep silent. My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth and my thoughts were as scattered as leaves in the wind. No words came together to form meaning. That night as the Watchers came, the door stood open and I heard a distant screaming, but my blurred mind made no sense of it.

  That night – I think it was that night, the third, or the fourth, but perhaps it was the fifth – I watched the Watchers as their heads began to balloon above their shoulders. Their mouths gaped and their eyes bulged. Then all the flames of the candles joined and danced about me, like the flames of a funeral pyre, such as I have read about in Tom’s chapbooks of strange tales from the Indies. At first I watched the Watchers with interest, and wondered whether they knew their heads were like to explode at any moment. But I could not tell them. I must not speak.

  Perhaps I had bewitched them. Perhaps I was indeed a witch after all. I found myself shaking with inward laughter. All this time, I was a witch and did not know it! Gideon had been killed by the soldiers, lain dead in my arms, and by my witchcraft I had brought him back from the dead! I felt a surge of terrible power, and I broke free from my bonds and rose up into the air, where I looked down on the body of that poor, misguided girl, Mercy Bennington, who sat chained by the agony of her mortal body, while I could fly away. Away from the pain. Away from the questions. Away from the screams I could hear, nearer and more distinct.

  My mind tumbled down from the ceiling and collided with my body again. The male Watcher had fixed me with a keen stare. Had I uttered something, without realising? For I knew now that those screams came from Hannah.

  A cold sweat had broken out all over my body and I began to shake. My teeth rattled together in my head and I could not grip them tight enough to stop the sound.

  ‘Liz,’ said the man, ‘fetch Master Hopkins.

  The younger woman rose from her chair and shook out her skirts, then went quickly from the room. The man fetched a cup of water and held it for me to drink, but clumsily, so most of it ran down my chin. A little managed to find its way between my clattering teeth and down my throat.

  It seemed a long time before the woman Liz returned, bringing Matthew Hopkins, who had dressed hastily and carelessly, but his eyes shone with excitement. He drew the man aside and they spoke together, but I could hear them.

  ‘She went into a fit, and we saw her imp fall from her mouth and run across the floor.’

  The older woman nodded. ‘Aye, a black imp, in the form of a rat. I saw it with my own eyes.’

  I wanted to shout, ‘They lie!’, but I would not speak.

  ‘And you, Liz?’ Hopkins said. ‘Did you see the imp?’

  I watched the younger woman struggling with her conscience. At last she shook her head. ‘No, Master Hopkins. I must have looked away. Certainly the witch had a fit, but I did not see the imp. It must have been there, but the dark, the shadows . . .’ Her voice trailed away.

  One of them was honest, it seemed. Through the fogginess of my brain I thought: That is good.

  ‘Very well.’ He became brisk. ‘Goodman Thomson, untie the witch. Then walk her for the rest of the night. That will make her speak at last.’

  With this he left. Back to his warm bed, no doubt, though I heard him coughing as his steps receded. The man Thomson began to tackle the knots in the rope, but they were damp and swollen with my sweat and blood, so at last he drew out a knife and sawed through them, strand after strand. I stared at him. While Hopkins was there, my head had been briefly clear, but now there seemed to be a buzzing in my ears and my sight was blurred. After what seemed like hours, the last of the ropes dropped away and I fell forward out of the chair, striking my face on the floor. My arms were so numb I could not put them out to save me.

  ‘Come, on your feet!’ Thomson took hold of my right arm and pulled. I gave an involuntary shriek.

  ‘Careful!’ The woman Liz knelt down beside me. ‘She will not be able to move. You must wait.’

  She rolled me over and began to rub my arms and legs, not with any great kindness, but as if she were dealing briskly with an injured animal. The pain as my frozen limbs came back to life was like nothing I had ever felt before, as if thousands of knives were piercing my whole body. I drew in air in great shuddering gasps. The other woman knelt to help Liz and between them they brought some movement back to me. The man stood impatiently tapping his iron probe against his leg, waiting for them to finish.

  At last they got me to my feet, though my knees buckled and my right ankle turned over.

  ‘We must walk you,’ Liz said. ‘It will help.’

  The women took an arm each and began to walk me up and down the full length of the room. The flames of the candles wavered and flickered with the disturbance of our movement, and our shadows danced grotesquely on the walls. Gradually I gained control over my limbs, until I was able to stand and walk by myself.

  ‘Enough,’ said Thomson. ‘Let her go.’

  The women stood back.

  ‘Now you must run,’ he said. ‘Quick now. Run to the end of the room and back.’

  I stared at him. I thought my torment had stopped, but it seemed another was beginning. As I did not move, he struck my back with his probe, holding it like a whip.

  ‘Run!’

  He ran me up and down that room as the sky grew pale outside the windows and the sun came up. Again my mind seemed to separate itself from my body and watched this poor shambling creature stumbling and weaving across the floor, like an injured beetle. In a coolly detached way, I felt sorry for the foolish woman who would not speak, would not confess that she was a witch. Why not speak, and end this torment?

  Some time later, Hopkins and Stearne came into the room together and dismissed the Watchers, who seeme
d glad to go, for they had been kept there much longer than usual. As they went, I sank to the ground, for I could not move any more. I wished I could faint, as Hannah had, but my body would not give me that respite.

  Hopkins came and stood looking down at me, where I sprawled on the floor.

  ‘So, you have still not spoken, even though they have seen an imp spring from your mouth. Will you admit your devilment now, to spare yourself more torment?’

  I stared up at him, but kept my lips, dry and sore as they were, pressed tightly together.

  ‘Very well. Tomorrow we will swim you, as final proof.’

  ‘But we do not need it,’ said Stearne, and I saw that he rubbed his hands together.

  ‘No, but we will observe the rules, that there can be no doubt before the magistrate.’

  In my foggy brain I could not understand their meaning. What did Stearne mean, that they did not need final proof?

  As if he read my thoughts, Hopkins smiled.

  ‘Hannah Green has confessed herself a witch, admitted to many crimes. And she has declared you her fellow witch, who did bring back Gideon Clarke from the dead.’

  He began to cough again, and I saw that his handkerchief was stained with blood. When he could draw breath, he squared his shoulders, like a man who is pleased and proud at having accomplished some difficult but worthy task.

  ‘We hanged her this morning.’

  Chapter Twelve

  I was returned to my cell, though I was barely able to walk across the courtyard and down the slippery steps. It was the same gaoler who escorted me, the one who had fetched me to the questioning. He said nothing as we made our stumbling, weaving way back to the prison, but he went slowly and supported me with a strong arm under my elbow.