“My Goody’s not in there,” Anne told him brusquely. “He’s out in his fields, harvesting.” Then, out of the blue, she grasped Jacob’s forearms and stared pleadingly up into his eyes. “Promise me you’ll save the Pepys girl!” she implored him.

  It took Jacob by such surprise that he became dumbstruck.

  Abby stepped in. “You don’t believe Paulina Pepys is a witch?” she asked.

  Anne shook her head firmly. “Nay, not at all. Do you believe she’ll hang?”

  Abby found herself seriously considering the prospect for the first time. “Nay,” she replied, with more conviction than she felt inside.

  Jacob, buoyed, added, “We shall clear the good woman’s name and be gone by the morrow!”

  Anne narrowed her eyes. “’Tis not the word around the village.”

  “No person has been harmed, only crops,” Jacob assured her. “Even if she is found guilty, she will not hang. Anyway, we shall clear her good name.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” Anne replied, finally releasing her grip on Jacob’s arms. “For that young woman is no witch.”

  “You’d swear the same to Simon Hopkins?” asked Abby.

  “’Tis not my place to say, my dear. Who’d listen to a farmer’s wife? My fool husband and magistrate Bennett, they’re the ones.”

  “Where may we find your husband?” asked Jacob.

  “In the field below, with my three sons, harvesting the barley.”

  “How will we know him?” he asked.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Anne replied. “You’ll know him.”

  A man, whom they quickly assumed to be Goody Grimston, came charging towards them as they approached the barley field. He was carrying a pitchfork and bellowing, “Nay! Nay! I know who you are!”

  Abby and Jacob eyed each other nervously.

  “What should we do?” he asked.

  Goody ran at him, the twin prongs of his pitchfork aimed at Jacob’s midriff. Deftly, for one so well-built, Jacob sidestepped and tackled him around the ankles. With the farmer sprawled in the grass, Jacob clambered onto his chest, pinned his arms with his knees, and tossed the pitchfork aside.

  Goody’s head resembled a sunburned turnip: round, ruddy, and with thinning straw-coloured hair sticking straight up from his scalp.

  “Leave me be!” he yelped. “I’ll tell the magistrate!”

  Even from his lofty position, Jacob could smell the beer on the farmer’s breath. “But it was you who assaulted me,” he pointed out.

  “It matters not. Mr Bennett’s coming for you,” snarled Goody.

  Abby tugged on Jacob’s shoulder. “Let him go.”

  “She knows,” said the farmer, sneering, revealing gums where teeth should be.

  Jacob realised they had become surrounded by three men, his age and younger, with the hardened physiques of manual labourers. Goody’s sons, no doubt. None of them spoke a word; their glowering expressions did all the talking. One brandished a sickle; another, a flail; the third one, his fists.

  “We should leave,” said Abby.

  Jacob eyed each of the gnarly Grimston boys in turn and nodded. Better to retreat, to live to fight another day - that’s what his father had told him.

  The Grimstons jeered as the inquisitors left.

  “I know what I saw!” Goody called after them. “Your precious Mr Pepys’s daughter will hang!”

  Chapter eight

  Hopkins’s Arrival

  Simon Hopkins flushed bitter memories of Cambridge academia from his mind as he entered the town’s boundary. The ride from Manningtree had taken three days, via Colchester, Halstead and Haverhill. The summer had been hot and August’s roads and tracks - most commonly, compacted mud - were in a reasonable condition. Only in some of the more rural outposts had his jet-black horse, Jeremiah, slipped or stumbled.

  He passed through the town, with its mix of stone and timber-framed buildings, churches and inns, where merchants, townspeople, students and scholars mingled. Horse-drawn carts passed him, heading in the opposite direction. Market traders were selling fish and meats, bread and ale, textiles and tools - all manner of goods for the burgeoning area.

  Hopkins sighted the magnificent Gothic architecture of King’s College Chapel, then crossed the River Cam. There, urbanity gave way to more picturesque scenery, as people rowed small boats on the water. Hopkins sneered at openly cavorting couples, promising them Hell and damnation under his breath.

  Around mid-afternoon, he reached his destination, a small hamlet on the north-west outskirts of Cambridge. Brampton, his next port of call, once business here had been satisfactorily concluded, was just 20 miles away. A brace of witches had been reported there, and their time would surely come.

  Two dozen or so timber-framed houses with thatched roofs had smoke curling from their chimneys and a flickering glow in their windows. Animals - sheep, cows and chickens - in nearby enclosures called out. The only other sound, besides the clip-clop of Jeremiah’s hooves, was that of a blacksmith in his forge, nestled beside a tributary of the Cam, hammering away at metal. Beyond, stretched fields and woodland.

  Hopkins noticed an inn with a sign outside: The Blacksmith’s Inn. He was pleased to see a Norman church nearby, made from local stone with a tiled roof, although he disapproved of its central stained-glass window, believing its gaudiness distracted from the true faith. Within its grounds was a small graveyard.

  All was peaceful and bucolic, for the present.

  A middle-aged man in a long, filthy smock, appeared in one of the doorways, bustled towards the witch-finder, stopped and bowed. His feet were bare, his nose was bent and his face was pock-marked. “Mr Hopkins?” he asked. When Simon nodded, he added, “You look like your father, sir.”

  Hopkins, who had been taken aback by the man’s pathetic appearance, glowed with pride. Not only had he achieved his desired effect, but a peasant knew of Matthew Hopkins, even down to his abiding features.

  His horse, Jeremiah, snorted, perhaps registering the man’s pungent odour, and Hopkins dismounted.

  “Henry Drayton?” he asked.

  Drayton nodded, which he turned into another bow.

  “I come on behalf of God, to remove from this land the foul pestilence of devilry,” Hopkins told him, smiling at how it sounded.

  He had waited all his life for this moment, to serve the Lord and to redeem the numerous injustices and slurs directed at his father. Such a righteous path, to uphold the same virtuous pursuit! Let them come at him! He was serving God; his detractors lacked moral fortitude.

  If the stench of Henry Drayton had been bad enough in the open air, the inside of his hovel’s was overpowering. Cattle smells mingled with those of unwashed clothing and sour milk, bodily odours with those of a shaggy dog drooling in one corner. It was clear that the recently deceased Goodwife Drayton had been responsible for the housework.

  A rat appeared from beneath a sack of animal feed and fled the house.

  “Forgive the mess,” Henry said, and Hopkins laughed for the first time in perhaps years.

  He should have felt bad about it - all were God’s children, after all - but he did not.

  A fire was going in the hearth, over which a cooking pot had been suspended. A straw bed lay at the opposite end. A rickety table and two stools sat before the fire.

  Placing a handkerchief over one stool-top, to protect his breeches from stains, Hopkins sat down and bade the farmer recount all he knew concerning the Cambridge witches.

  Drayton began weeping almost immediately. The tears created a glistening path through grime on the poor man’s cheeks. He recounted the incident concerning the cup of milk: how his wife had refused Sarah Sawyer’s request - the pair having argued the previous week over an unpaid cheese bill - and had heard her mutter something as the door was closed, which she believed to be a curse.

  “That very same night she fell ill, sir, on that very bed,” Henry told him between sobs. “Shaking and vomiting, such as I’d never seen. Speaking in tongues, she was, cursed by them witches. I tended to her as best I could, but she grew only worse. A week later, my wife Lucy was dead, at the hands of Sarah and Prudence Sawyer, sir.”

  “Pray, what is thine proof that these women are witches?” Hopkins asked, aware that he would need cast-iron evidence to present to the local magistrates, with whom he was unfamiliar.

  “I saw them, sir, the very same night that my dear Lucy died. In a copse over yonder. Cavorting naked, they were, with the Kipling girl. A witch’s sabbat, such as I had heard tell of, but never thought I would see with my own eyes.”

  Hopkins’s face lit up. “There were three witches, thou sayest?” A veritable coven. The evil in this hamlet ran deeper than he had previously been led to believe.

  “Indeed, sir. Each did call to their imp, and the terrible animals came. I remember their names, sir!”

  They were: Prickears, a black rabbit (Sarah Sawyer’s familiar); Dainty, a tiny black kitten (her daughter Prudence’s); and Pluck, a brown mouse (Dorothy Kipling’s).

  “They danced in a circle, praising the Devil, then suckled their imps, who disappeared from whence they came, sir. A most terrible sight. I thank God I was not seen by them.”

  Having finished his tale, the farmer slumped, exhausted.

  “God is merciful,” said Hopkins. “But he shall show no mercy to these abominable sorcerers. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ Let us pray and give thanks together, Henry Drayton. And that tomorrow I may succeed in bringing these foul demons to justice.”

  Chapter nine

  Incident at Supper

  It had been an illuminating, if frustrating, first day of investigation for the inquisitors. If they had hoped to manipulate their main suspect towards a confession, through the sheer weight of Mr Pepys’s influence, they now knew they were sorely mistaken. An uneducated farmer, Goody Grimston may have been; easily cowed, he was not.

  All that tied Paulina Pepys and Rebecca Thacker to the charge of witchcraft were Goody’s accusation and the fact that both women worked closely with potions and herbs, which were the witch’s stock in trade. This evidence, such as it was, was flimsy at best.

  However, Abby knew the methods of the witch-finder: let the evidence mount while playing psychological tricks on the minds of the accused. If one alleged witch could be turned on another - which appeared already to be happening in Brampton, even before Simon Hopkins’s arrival - then the upper hand was gained.

  Hopkins could offer Rebecca Thacker immunity from punishment, if she joined the prosecution. Then Paulina Pepys would be on her own - the Brampton witch.

  In such cases, a wise and balanced magistrate might be relied upon to quell the rising hysteria to make light of the witch-finder’s so-called evidence, and to take the facts of the case at face value. That is how many accused women had escaped the noose, or had even been found innocent of all charges and the case thrown out of court.

  From what the inquisitors knew, Brampton did not possess a wise and balanced magistrate. It had Bulstrode Bennett.

  The situation was serious indeed.

  Having freshened up perfunctorily in their rooms at The Bull, Abby and Jacob were both shocked to find Goody Grimston seated with his wife in the tap-room when they went downstairs for supper. The farming couple were washing down bread and cheese with beer while playing cards.

  Immediately the farmer saw them he rose from his stool, sending it toppling backwards. He marched towards them, weaving unsteadily on his feet, clearly inebriated.

  When Jacob stood to confront him, Goody thrust something into the inquisitor’s face. It was a doll made of woven straw and herbs, fashioned into the shape of a man. A pin pierced the figure where its heart would be.

  “See this!” he shouted, slurring. “The witches’ curse on me, which they delivered to my door. The pestilent agents of Satan are at work, but I will have justice before they strike.”

  It was an undeniably arresting statement.

  “The poppet could have been left at your door by anybody in this village,” Abby countered.

  “Smell it!” demanded Goody, thrusting it towards her.

  She did so, not wishing to rile him further.

  “Lavender!” declared Goody, then belched. “Such as the Pepys girl uses in her daily trade. The woman is no herbalist. She’s a witch!”

  The tap-room had fallen very quiet; everyone present was transfixed by the scene. How would Mr Pepys’s inquisitors react to such a display of aggression, from one so far beneath their purported station? Word had spread throughout Brampton that they were the finest inquisitors in the land. One circulating rumour suggested that they had, on one occasion, been commissioned by the King himself.

  In the event, Mr Pepys’s inquisitors reacted with stunned silence.

  They were saved by the innkeeper, Barty, who was accustomed to confrontations among his customers. Although he was half the size of the hulking, vegetable-headed farmer, he strode forward and pointed towards Goody’s table, where his wife Anne was still sitting, head down, embarrassed.

  “Be seated!” he ordered him.

  Leering, Goody pushed the poppet into Jacob’s hand and snarled, “You keep this. With good fortune, the witch’s curse will become yours.”

  Goody Grimston was not the simpleton John Pepys had suggested. He was a dangerous adversary with powerful allies. If Abby or Jacob had hoped they might breeze through the case - and they surely had in heady moments - they were now fully disabused of the idea.

  They took a table as far from the Grimstons as the tap-room would allow, only to realise they were seated just two tables from Bulstrode Bennett and the woman they assumed to be his wife. Once again, the couple were dressed in unnecessary finery for a meal at a local inn, and his booming voice rose high above the crowd’s general murmur.

  So the inquisitors were grateful for the distraction when Hatty Nettlewood appeared at their table, to take their order for supper.

  “Didn’t put Goody Grimston in his place, did ’e?” she suggested, folding her arms.

  Jacob’s gratitude slipped away, and he stared into his ale.

  “’Tis but our first day in Brampton, Hatty,” Abby replied. “We do well to avoid making a scene.”

  Hatty looked unconvinced.

  Both inquisitors were aware that they dare not lose the confidence of the locals. Word of mouth, gossip and rumour were rife among these rural communities; turning those in their favour would be a strong weapon in the battle with Simon Hopkins. The opposite did not bear thinking about.

  Jacob spoke up. “See this.” With some effort he reached in beneath his new shirt, which clung too tightly to his chest, and extracted a thin gold locket. Abby had never noticed it before. It was finely engraved with a family crest and was clearly an expensive, exquisite piece of work. “This was given to me by Mr Samuel Pepys, in gratitude for my retrieval of his stolen diaries. Inside is a miniature portrait of Mr Pepys himself. A keepsake he gifted me.”

  Abby kept her counsel, knowing that Master Pepys had done nothing of the sort.

  Hatty leaned in close, cooing. “May I touch it?”

  Jacob hastily pushed the locket back inside his shirt. “Nay, you may not,” he told her. “We hunger. Bring us your finest supper! And quickly!”

  Hatty tipped her cloth cap and bustled away, apologising as she went.

  In a whisper, Abby asked Jacob, “Who gave you the gold locket?”

  He retrieved it and showed her the picture inside.

  “Your father, Sir Miles?” she asked.

  “It was given to me on the occasion of his death.”

  “You tricked her.”

  “I did indeed.”

  Just then, a disturbance caught their ears.

  Goody Grimston had fallen backwards off his stool and lay convulsing on the floor. His body juddered as he waved his arms manically in the air, as if fending off imaginary flying beasts. Anne began screaming hysterically and Barty, who had been standing at their table, bent over Goody’s thrashing figure, uselessly repeating his name.

  The inn’s patrons craned their necks to witness the spectacle, then, one by one, gathered closer to watch. All beside Bulstrode Bennett and companion, that is, who were engaged in an argument the inquisitors could not help overhearing, concerning his wastage of food.

  A man wearing a plain dark-blue doublet and breeches began pushing his way through the small crowd of spectators, carrying a buckled leather bag. On noticing him, the onlookers willingly parted, murmuring to one other. The local physician, thought Abby.

  Goody’s convulsions having ceased, he lay on his back with his hands shaking, wreathed in sweat.

  “’Tis the witches’ curse!” someone cried, to murmurs of agreement.

  The physician knelt and took Goody’s pulse, then inspected his eyes, lifting each upper eyelid in turn. “Goody? Goody?” He spoke calmly, but received no response.

  The farmer began mouthing wordlessly, frothing at the lips.

  The physician reached into his bag, sifted through its contents, and pulled out a stoppered bottle of brownish liquid. “Fetch a cold compress!” he called out. “And a blanket!”

  As Barty and Hetty Nettlewood busied themselves with these orders, the physician tried pouring the liquid into his patient’s mouth. Goody merely spluttered, and the tonic being administered dripped uselessly down his cheek and onto the floor.

  The physician returned to his bag, seeking an alternative treatment.

  Goody lifted his head off the floor, bloodshot eyes wide, staring into space. “The b…,” he groaned.

  It was his final mortal utterance. His head fell back and he lay motionless.

  The tap-room fell eerily silent, broken by Goody’s wife’s awful cry of anguish.

  A voice piped up, “What did he say?”

  “The b-something,” replied another.

  Bulstrode Bennett rose from his table, his chair scraping loudly across the floor, drawing all eyes to him. “The Brampton witches!” he announced with practiced authority. “Those were the words Goody Grimston sought to speak, ere death’s cruel hand clutched his heart. The Brampton witches.”