When finally their coach stopped outside The Bull inn, so aching and stiff were Abby and Jacob’s shaken limbs that they practically fell from the cab. “Odd’s fish!” exclaimed Jacob, looking up and around. “It is dark and quiet here. I fancy the moon has fallen from the sky.”

  He was right: it was indeed very dark and quiet at night in Brampton. The modestly sized village was nestled around the 13th-century Church of St Mary Magdalen, which loomed mere yards away from them, and was surrounded as far as the eye could see by flat meadows and woodland.

  To city-boy Jacob, it felt like the middle of nowhere.

  The market town of Huntingdon was two miles to the north, and Cambridge was 20 miles south-east. Might Simon Hopkins already be in Brampton, Abby wondered, plying his sinister trade?

  Her master had told her about Brampton. There were windmills and a water mill in nearby Portholme Meadow, she knew, where Master Pepys often strolled when he visited. Many here farmed and worked the land; elsewhere were butchers, the miller grinding the grain for the bakers, cobblers, carpenters, weavers, spinners… It was a microcosm of self-sufficiency.

  Candles had been lit in the windows of the two-storey, thatched Bull inn, and a quiet rumble of activity could be heard emanating from inside. Jacob opened the door for Abby, and, self-consciously, they entered.

  All noise ceased, and for elongated seconds the inhabitants - four men around one table; an extravagantly dressed couple, he with a loud voice; a man behind a counter at the far end; a serving maid carrying tankards of ale to another table of three - turned and stared. Jacob noticed the loud gentleman eyeing them particularly sourly.

  He removed his hat and fiddled with it. “I bid you all good evening,” he announced nervously. “I am…”

  The man behind the counter appeared in front of him and began furiously pumping his hand. “We know who you are, sir! We’ve been expecting you, Mr Jacob Standish!”

  He was a round-faced fellow wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, brown wool waistcoat and stout apron. He was rather short - his eyes were on the level of Jacob’s chest (though Jacob was unnaturally tall) - and he wore a patch over his right eye. This, he popped up and winked with the same eye. Clearly a card.

  “Bartholomew Nettlewood, sir. Friends, by which I mean all the village,” he laughed, still pumping Jacob’s hand, “call me Barty. As may you, sir, since any friend of Sam Pepys is a friend of mine.”

  The inquisitors noticed he was frothing at the mouth in excitement. It was the first time Jacob had heard his mentor cited so casually.

  “And Abigail Harcourt!” he boomed, turning to her. “A pleasure also to make your acquaintance!”

  “You know our names, sir?” she queried.

  “Naturally! Mr Pepys sent word ahead of you. You are expected. Your rooms are upstairs and your bill for a week’s stay is already settled.”

  Abby and Jacob exchanged looks, shaking their heads in wonderment. Was there nothing he did not think of?

  “And Mr and Mrs Pepys?” she asked, referring to Samuel’s parents.

  “All in good time, my dear. They live in a cottage but a short walk hence,” he said, pointing in its general direction. “Tonight, Mr Pepys was firm: you must rest and prepare for an arduous investigation.”

  Jacob butted in. “Is Simon…?”

  Barty smiled, anticipating the question. “Fear not, Mr Standish. We’ve seen no sign of Simon Hopkins. As I understand it, he remains engaged elsewhere. Though he cannot do so forever.”

  Weary, hungry, and thirsty, Samuel Pepys’s inquisitors settled at a table in the cosy Bull inn, gratefully polishing off a late supper of pottage with bread and cheese, washed down with an ale or two.

  Chapter four

  Simon Hopkins

  Simon Hopkins was born in the market town of Manningtree, Essex, in 1646, the year before his father, Matthew’s, death. Although he never knew the man, his mother, Grace, had raised him with the same Puritan zeal and godliness that her husband had instilled in her. The Puritan life was a simple one, devoid of luxuries, valuing hard work, piety and sobriety, moulded profoundly by biblical values.

  There was one crucial difference between Simon and his religious kinfolk: his father had been the country’s foremost witch-finder. Feared and abhorred by some, Matthew Hopkins was revered as a pious, moral crusader by others, having purged their communities of malevolence. And he was revered no more highly than in the small household he had left behind.

  To Grace, her late husband had been nothing short of heroic.

  During his early childhood, Simon was home-schooled by his mother, who taught him to read and write using the Bible and other religious texts. Later, he received a basic academic education within the local community, where fellow pupils began to find him aloof and distant.

  Aged 14, he was enrolled in his father’s alma mater, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, known for its godly and Puritan leanings. There, he began to stand out, for the intensity of his debate and for the questioning of his tutors, concerning what he considered to be doctrinal impurity. Some counselled that he would do well to temper his fervour.

  Outside of lectures, he would admonish fellow students for their behaviour, as a self-appointed moral guardian. Peers began to shun him, and he appeared not to care.

  One particular incident, the year before he graduated, almost led to his expulsion. A fellow student, Elias Whitmore, like Hopkins a loner, kept in his room a black cat, which he would talk to. The pair fell out over a minor religious dispute and Simon accused Elias of witchcraft, alleging the cat to be his familiar.

  Such was the resulting furore that an internal investigation was carried out, which found Hopkins’s allegation baseless, resulting in a severe reprimand and a final warning.

  His departing dissertation was titled: ‘A Puritan Discourse on the Wiles of Witchcraft - Exposing the Threat to Godly Society and the Path to its Eradication’.

  Many, both tutor and student, were glad when he left.

  With a classical university education now behind him, Simon Hopkins could have become an academic, or joined the civil service, become a religious author, or entered the legal profession. He did none of those things.

  Since a very young age, Simon had dreamed of but one thing: following in his father’s footsteps. Seeking out evil wherever it plied its heathen trade, identifying it, and erasing it. It was his fervent desire to keep alive his great father’s memory - which many others would prefer to forget - and to reaffirm Matthew Hopkins’s righteousness.

  He knew full well that the journey would be a hard one - the role of witch-finder had lost most of its cachet since his father’s day - and he embraced that. It excited him.

  Having spread the word that he, Simon Hopkins, would continue his father’s godly work, he set out on horseback in the summer of 1666, from Manningtree towards Cambridge. He was 20 years old, only seven years younger than his father had been when he died.

  This would be his second investigation, the previous one having ended somewhat unsatisfactorily with the acquittals of the accused. But he was learning his trade. Slowly, slowly, catch a witch.

  In this latest matter, a mother and daughter, Sarah and Prudence Sawyer, had been accused of witchcraft by their neighbour, the cattle farmer, Henry Drayton. Drayton’s wife, Lucy, had refused Sarah a cup of milk, and the old woman had been heard to curse under her breath as she left. That night, Lucy Drayton had fallen ill with a fever and within a week had died.

  In the aftermath, Sarah and Prudence had allegedly been seen holding a witch’s sabbat, in which they summoned their familiars and suckled them, praising the Devil.

  These were grave allegations, and Simon Hopkins’s attire bore testament to that. He wore a broad-brimmed hat with a tall crown; a cape fell down his back and his doublet was paired with a wide linen collar that lay flat over his shoulders. His bucket-top leather boots had spurs attached for riding. All were in muted shades; no hint of embellishment or embroidery. He also wore riding gloves and carried a long wooden staff.

  It was one of his father’s outfits. With his long, raven-black hair and beard, he looked so much like his father, his own mother could barely have told them apart.

  Chapter five

  The Pepys Household

  The inquisitors were up at dawn. Jacob had imbibed one too many ales the previous night and was hungover.

  Their rooms were simply furnished and rustic. Both had a wooden four-poster single bed with heavy woollen covers. Candles lit the room at night, along with an oil lamp on a bedside table. A small fireplace in each room had warmed the space prior to their arrival. Dried flowers in a vase and embroidered wall hangings, depicting village life, provided a decorative touch and helped insulate the room.

  Abby unpacked her bag and transferred its contents to a chest of drawers, then washed herself using the supplied water jug and wash-basin.

  Jacob went to do the same and remembered he hadn’t had time to pack. He caught his reflection in a framed looking glass on one wall and shuddered. Stubble had grown haphazardly about his young face and his pale-blue eyes had dark rims. He noticed a dried blob of something brown - mud, he hoped - above his left eye and scraped it off.

  Abby opened the shutters to her window and looked out, encountering such a sight as she had never witnessed before. A rich orange sun was shining over the horizon, and greens and yellows of every hue stretched before her. Greenwich, where she had lived for a while with relatives, had boasted many sizeable gardens, but this was something else. She opened the window and breathed in the air. It was so wonderfully fresh, nothing like the smokey, ordure-ridden stench of London.

  A cow mooed in the distance, and there was warmth on her face.

  She would like it here in Brampton, she decided.

  To her left, Abigail spotted a row of cottages, in the same direction that the innkeeper, Barty, had pointed the previous night. Do John and Margaret Pepys live with their daughter, Paulina, in one of those? she wondered.

  Abigail and Jacob breakfasted together in the Bull’s tap-room, where they had feasted the previous night. They ate porridge sweetened with local honey, accompanied by fresh, plump plums and blackberries. When they had finished, a floppy-eared brown-and-white dog wandered in and sat beside their table, demanding attention and eyeing their leftovers.

  Last night’s serving maid, who turned out to be Barty’s wife, Harriet ‘Hatty’ Nettlewood, called the dog’s name - “Rusty!” - and shooed it away. Then she joined them at their table.

  Hatty was twice her husband’s size, bosomly with apron, and wore a cotton headscarf over tied-up chestnut curls. Her cheeks stood out like rosy apples and her voice was thick with catarrh.

  Though they were the only souls in the room, she spoke in a husky whisper. “What did Barty tell ’e last night?” she asked, leaning in conspiratorially. Her rural accent was alien to the inquisitors.

  “I beg your pardon?” asked Jacob.

  “What did ’e learn last night?” Hatty repeated, only louder, then looked around to see if anyone was listening in. They were not.

  “What did he learn last night?” Confused, Jacob turned to Abby. “Does she mean me?”

  The innkeeper’s wife regarded him as if he were simple, and Abby laughed. “’Tis a countryside dialect, Jacob. She means, ‘What did you learn last night?’”

  When he still looked confused, she laughed and slapped him playfully on the arm.

  Hatty appeared taken aback at such an interplay from a servant girl. Abby’s face reddened and she apologised, then was quiet for some time, brooding.

  So it was Jacob who explained what they had learned from Barty over supper.

  It went like this…

  Actually there were two women accused of witchcraft in Brampton: Paulina Pepys and her friend, the clothier, Rebecca Thacker. Samuel must have either been unaware of this or was purely interested in his sister’s welfare. (Jacob suspected the former; Abby, the latter.)

  Rebecca cut fabrics and sewed them to produce bespoke country attire for men and women. Since Paulina was a herbalist, the two had started an unusual joint venture selling herb-infused clothing, which they claimed had health benefits: enhancing the mood, uplifting the spirit, and curing headaches.

  Their accuser was a local crop farmer, Goody Grimston.

  He had drunkenly stumbled into Paulina and Rebecca’s clothing stall at the weekly Brampton market - according to Barty he was often drunk - muddying items and breaking jars of their herbs. They had sworn at him and made threats. The following day, he claimed, the two women had cast a spell invoking a heavy hailstorm - “Stones the size of apples!” according to Goody - which had badly damaged his crop of corn, losing him a significant sum of money.

  The following night he had found, on his doorstep, a poppet: a woven doll figure in his likeness, with a pin through its heart. It was made from straw and lavender stalks. Remembering their cursing, and aware that the women used lavender in their clothing business, he was certain it had come from them: a witch’s calling card. Since then, Goody claimed, he had lived in fear of being murdered in the night.

  To anyone who would listen, he would rant about Paulina and Rebecca being witches and how they should be made to pay for their crimes.

  Goody Grimston was a troublesome type, the innkeeper had assured the inquisitors, always playing practical jokes, to the great annoyance of many of the villagers. Some did not believe him; however, a substantial number of credulous souls in fear of witchcraft surely did.

  It had been hoped that the incident would blow over, and that had looked possible until the local magistrate, Bulstrode Bennett, became involved. He had taken Goody’s accusation very seriously indeed, riding personally to Manningtree to call on the services of the witch-finder, Simon Hopkins.

  After the innkeeper finished relating his story, there had been an incident. The smartly dressed patron - the loud one who had been drinking wine with his ladyfriend - stopped at their table on his way out. “I know who you are,” he told Abby and Jacob. “And you are not welcome here.”

  “That,” Barty told them, “was Bulstrode Bennett.”

  Hatty Nettlewood listened intently, nodding occasionally. When Jacob finished, she folded her stout arms. “My husband do love his gossip and tells a fine tale. Ain’t nothing more I can add.”

  “We must go and speak to Mr Pepys’s sister,” said Abby.

  Jacob raised his finger. “Mrs Nettlewood, I wondered… Do you have any spare clothing that I might borrow? Mine is long-travelled and rather…”

  “Stinking?” suggested Hatty.

  He grimaced. “I was inclined to say ‘soiled’. Though now you mention it…”

  Hatty pointed out that her husband’s clothing would be several sizes too short for Jacob. “Try the Pepys girl’s friend,” she told him. “Clothing’s her business. She’ll find something for ’e.”

  John Pepys’s house was indeed in the row of dwellings Abby had seen from her window. It was barely a ten-minute walk from The Bull, following a footpath that skirted meadowland.

  Functional yet quaint, it was typical two-storey, timber-framed, lime-plaster building with a tiled roof instead of thatch, dominated by large chimneys. Set before it was a large lawn bordered by flower and herb gardens, with cherry trees and a summerhouse.

  While she and Jacob were still some small distance away, a young woman flung open the front door and came running out to greet them. The hem of her housecoat billowed behind her as she ran, its collar flapping wildly.

  “Mr Standish! I’m so happy to see you!” she called out.

  Paulina Pepys - for it had to be her - practically bowled Jacob over as she hurled into him and clung on, like a drowning woman clinging to flotsam.

  Noticeably uncomfortable at such over-familiarity, he only gradually returned Paulina’s gesture, and considerably more tentatively.

  Suddenly aware of her social faux pas, she let go, stepped back and curtseyed. “Please forgive me,” she said quietly. “I have awaited your arrival with great anticipation.”

  Twenty-six years old, she had a pale complexion and freckled cheeks. Her dark blonde hair was pulled back and covered in a white linen cap. As she stood there, finally sensing support after the growing anxiety of the witchcraft allegations, she began to cry.

  Jacob looked about to run away, so Abby stepped forward and put a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. They had never met before, although her master occasionally spoke of his sister.

  Paulina withdrew sharply. “I need no solace from a serving girl, thank you,” she snapped, instantly all out of tears.

  Abby’s mouth fell open. She was aware that Pepys had installed Paulina in his own house, prior to her time in his employ, as a maid. Does it still rankle? she wondered. “I’m here because your brother entrusted me to help Mr Standish,” Abby pointed out.

  Paulina glared at her. “And I fail to understand what assistance you could possibly offer.”

  It appears that it does, Abby concluded.

  As Jacob stood stiffly, unsure what to say, he felt something wrap itself around his ankle. Leaping up onto one foot, he looked down to see a white cat staring up at him, its erect tail twitching.

  “Be gone, Sugar!” Paulina scolded the creature, and it darted off towards the summerhouse.

  At least the incident had broken the tension.

  Immediately the three of them entered the house, they were in the hallway. The ceiling was much lower than in Jacob’s townhouse, and he smacked his forehead on the door frame.

  Samuel Pepys’s parents stood stiffly side by side, awaiting their introductions. John and Margaret Pepys were in their mid-60s and retired. Both had grey hair, his receding and hers largely covered by a bonnet. It helped that their doting son had provided for them a comfortable place to live, in the open country air, and that he paid towards their upkeep.