Farlow staggered out of The Bull and into the chill Brampton night.

  Chapter fourteen

  Hopkins’s Witch-hunt

  Simon Hopkins spent the night at The Blacksmith’s Inn, where he watered and fed his horse, Jeremiah. He made no friends there, sitting alone in a corner. Over the course of the evening, he nursed a single small ale - which parents gave to their children, as a healthier option to the water - with which he swilled down a bowl of pottage.

  The inn itself comprised a single tap-room on the ground floor with - Hopkins noted with approval - simply furnished guest rooms for travellers above, offering merely a straw mattress and a woollen blanket.

  A wood fire in a hearth and scattered oil lamps lit the downstairs space. There were a few tables and stools for patrons, and plain tapestries were hung on the walls for added warmth.

  The landlord and his wife ran the place; he was stationed behind a counter, she bustled about serving a handful of travellers and locals. Both of them seemed to know who Hopkins was, suggesting that word had spread, and they treated him warily, clipped in their conversation and averting their eyes. He enjoyed their fear.

  As he prepared to retire for the night, when the sun sank beneath the horizon around eight o’clock, an incident occurred.

  Two men seated together had clearly journeyed from London, as evidenced by their loud conversation, which had only grown louder as the beer flowed. When their talk turned to the theatre, one stood and began dancing, singing as he did so, and slopping his beer over the straw-strewn floorboards.

  Hopkins had not wanted to cause a scene - he preferred to keep a low profile until the time came to strike - however his patience had reached breaking point.

  He stood, bolt upright, pointing his staff at the drunkard. “Cease this heathen display at once!” he bellowed.

  The dancing man stopped and stared in shock at Hopkins. Squinting, he sized him up. He was bigger than Hopkins - and drunker. Seeing the other man’s Puritan garb, and perhaps recalling the tyrannical years of the Commonwealth and Oliver Cromwell, the arch Puritan, he spat on the ground.

  Although Hopkins’s upper lip betrayed the slightest of twitches, he held his ground. He had never had a fight in his life, although he had caused a few. “I demand a public apology forthwith,” he announced. “Such moral degradation shall not be tolerated in a godly society.”

  The drunkard took a step forward; Hopkins took a step back. The landlord appeared and spoke to the drunk man quietly. “Don’t mess with that man. Apologise to him and be seated.”

  When he did not acquiesce, but still eyed Hopkins menacingly, the landlord added, “Please.”

  Eventually, deliberately, the drunk man obeyed, all the while eyeing his accuser.

  Hopkins smirked and demanded they all pray, in atonement for such outrage.

  It was a tense prayer.

  Sarah and Prudence Sawyer lived in a thatched cottage on the edge of the hamlet. Since Sarah’s husband, John, had died of the plague a good year ago, the mother and daughter had had to work doubly hard to make ends meet.

  Sarah, 37, was a herbalist and midwife; Prudence, just 16, was a spinner, spinning raw wool on her wheel to create yarn, which she sold to merchants in Cambridge. Prudence had inherited her mother’s looks, both having long blonde hair that they tied back beneath linen kerchiefs, vivid green eyes and squat noses, though her mother’s furrowed skin spoke of hard days endured.

  Like the bundles of rosemary, lavender and camomile that hung from the beams of the cottage, their lives were about to become uprooted.

  “Domp! Domp!” came the knock on the door as Simon Hopkins’s staff made heavy contact twice. To Sarah and Prudence, it was the sound of doom, which they had been expecting since being notified of the witch-finder’s arrival the previous evening. Neither woman had slept.

  As they stared at one another, frozen, Hopkins’s face appeared in the window, and he rapped on the glass with his knuckles. “Open up!” he demanded. “In the name of the Lord!”

  In sharp contrast to Henry Drayton’s abode, the Sawyers’s was tidy and well-kept, a picture of resilience and dignity. A rural scene in cross-stitch and framed floral paintings adorned the walls. The room also smelled rather wonderful: a pervasive bouquet of herbs and wild flowers, the tools of the mother’s trade.

  A small kitchen area occupied one corner. Next to it were row upon row of variously sized bottles and jars, all neatly labelled: ’Yarrow’, ‘Feverfew’, ‘St Johns Wort’… As Hopkins eyed them up, Sarah knew precisely what he was thinking: witches’ brews.

  She was at her work bench, wearing a simple woollen dress with an apron, preparing a medicinal salve with a pestle and mortar. Prudence, similarly attired, sat at her spinning wheel by the crackling fire. Its gentle whirr-and-clack provided the rhythmic backdrop to their days, but now it had ceased.

  “Thou knowest who I am and why I am here,” said Hopkins. “The gravest of accusations, of such demonic nature, have been made against thee. Thou art witches.”

  Sarah threw herself at his feet, clinging to his ankles, while her daughter began to cry. “We aren’t witches, sir! I’m a humble herbalist, and my daughter spins her yarn. We never did no harm to that poor woman. Please, sir, you must believe me!”

  Kicking, Hopkins freed himself from her grip. “Where be Prickears? And Dainty?”

  When both women looked non-plussed, he added: “Thine imps. One a black rabbit, the other a black kitten. Thine demons whom you do suckle.”

  “Sir,” said Sarah, still kneeling on the floor before him, her hands clasped together. “We know nothing of such imps. We are but humble folk who earn a meagre living as herbalist and spinner. We are not witches. If anybody is evil, ’tis that Henry Drayton, making up these tales about us. ’Tis revenge, sir. He…”

  “Be quiet, woman!” Hopkins thundered. “The Lord God himself shall judge thee, not I.”

  He truly believed it.

  Hopkins sought out the third alleged witch, Dorothy Kipling, and dragged her from her home. Though her husband protested loudly, he was cowed by the power Hopkins exuded and the threats that he made. She was thrown into the village hall where she tripped and fell. Sarah and Prudence were already there, seated obediently, silently quaking.

  When Dorothy looked up, clutching her pained wrist, she noticed two other women from the hamlet standing behind them: Faith Jarvis and Hester Quill. Jarvis glared at her with folded arms; Quill was biting her lip, blinking. Both had been hired by Hopkins, to aid his interrogation.

  Dorothy was an old woman, almost 60, who made jams and preserves with fruit and vegetables that grew in her garden, which she sold at market. Her silver hair was tied in a bun, wisps escaping at the temples. Her pale-brown eyes watered constantly, and her hands bore a network of veins and wrinkles. Her grey dress, which had been mended numerous times, was faded and well-worn. She had no teeth.

  Chapter fifteen

  Pitchforks at Dawn

  Ashort while after sunrise on Wednesday 5 th September, 1666, Abby rapped urgently on Jacob’s chamber door at The Bull. Before he was even fully conscious, she entered.

  “We must leave quickly,” she told him, opening the shutters on his window. “My master’s sister is in grave peril.”

  Jacob swung out of bed and sat up, rubbing his eyes against the pale daylight. He was fully dressed.

  “Mr Standish,” she said. “You sleep in full clothing?”

  “Mmm. The nights are cold,” he mumbled blearily, wishing he was still asleep. In his dream, he had been chasing fleeing figures through a forest of infinitely tall trees, always a few paces behind, and now he would never know the ending.

  When he arrived in the tap-room, Abby was polishing off a plate of bread and cheese. At previous breakfasts, the inn’s dog, Rusty, had been sitting there, waiting for scraps - shooed away by Hatty when she spotted it - but this morning the animal was absent.

  “At last!” Abby exclaimed while chewing, though he had taken barely any time to compose himself. She gulped down the last mouthful. “We must hurry to Paulina’s. According to Hatty, she was set upon by villagers last night.”

  Thrusting Jacob’s cloth-wrapped breakfast into his hand, she was gone.

  As the inquisitors approached the Pepys family’s home, they were surprised to find it quiet, as if nothing untoward had occurred. Paulina did not rush from the front door; not a soul was around. The vista was a warmly lit pastoral idyll, to which they were becoming pleasantly accustomed.

  When Jacob rapped on the door, no one answered. He looked through the window and saw Paulina hunched over the dining table, her shoulders juddering in time with her sobs.

  Finding the door unlocked, he hastened inside, followed by Abby.

  “Mistress Pepys!” he said, his voice choking with concern. “What has occurred here?”

  Paulina lifted her head. Her red eyes were swollen and her flushed cheeks were damp. She was wearing a long linen chemise, but no nightgown, and was shivering - due to the cold or through fear, they could not tell. It was a pitiful sight.

  “Oh, Mr Standish!” Paulina wailed, throwing herself at him.

  This time she registered no social faux pas, such was her distress. Jacob stood there woodenly, arms hanging at his sides, wincing. When Abby gently peeled her off, she did not protest.

  Returned to her chair, Paulina gradually recovered her spirits sufficiently to relate the night’s events.

  A good while after the household had retired to bed, Paulina told the inquisitors, she had been awakened by shouting and a commotion outside. When she opened her shutters to see what was happening, the scene she beheld turned her insides.

  Lit by dancing torchlight were two dozen or so villagers, gathered beneath her window, some waving pitchforks, others bearing torches. “Their faces were distorted with rage,” she recalled. “They looked like monsters.”

  “What did they proclaim?” Jacob asked.

  Paulina began to weep again, her voice breaking as she spoke. “They called me a witch,” she sobbed. “They declared that I had cursed Goody Grimston and that his death was on my hands. They began to chant…” Her voice trailed off, overcome by emotion, unable to repeat the words.

  Abby had a few ideas, which she did not voice. Most likely, she suspected, they chanted, “Hang the witch!” No innocent woman deserved such terror levelled against her.

  “Did you know them?” Abby asked gently.

  Paulina gazed up at the inquisitor, her raw eyes pleading. “I knew them all!” she gasped.

  Of course, Brampton was a tight-knit village. One need only witness the rapid circulation of gossip.

  Abby rephrased the question: “Who among the mob had made accusations against you?”

  The focus took Paulina’s mind off her woes, and she exhaled deeply. “Grimston’s sons were there,” she recalled barely above a whisper, revisiting the fearful scene in her head.

  “Who was the ringleader?” Jacob asked eagerly.

  Paulina moaned loudly and buried her head in her arms. “Bulstrode Bennett, sir!”

  “He oversteps his authority!” Jacob declared. “The actions of a magistrate are to uphold public order, not to incite a mob to terrorise a defenceless woman.”

  “Aye, but we must tread with caution,” Abby warned. “Magistrate Bennett’s word is law in Brampton, and he has Lord Fairfax’s ear. He’s a powerful and dangerous adversary.”

  Jacob asked Paulina, “What made the mob disperse?”

  “My father woke in his chamber, alerted by the chanting. Though he and my mother are both most unwell, he ventured outside to challenge them.” Her voice faltered. “Eventually…”

  John Pepys himself appeared in the doorway. He looked even more frail than on the inquisitors’ previous visit, his pallid cheeks more sunken, and his breathing in gasps. Abby quickly moved to his side, took him gently by the arm, and guided him to a chair.

  After a while, John gathered the strength to take in the candlelit scene. “Young Abigail! And Mr Standish!” he croaked, his recognition dawning. The sight of them clearly cheered his spirits as he managed a sartorial quip: “I see we wear the same shirt, Jacob. You shall become a Pepys yet.”

  Abby shot Jacob a knowing glance, which he studiously avoided.

  The inquisitors were both struck by how a man in such a frail state could have confronted an angry mob on his daughter’s behalf. It brought a lump to their throats.

  “Father, you must return to bed,” Paulina urged, reaching her hands across the table towards him. “My brother’s inquisitors are here now, and they can deal with this dreadful matter.”

  Abby noted with satisfaction that Paulina no longer thought of her as a mere housemaid. She had a burning question on her mind, although she thought twice about asking it. “Forgive me… I know tonight has been…” she began, then, finding no delicate way to phrase it, simply asked, “Was Will Farlow here on the night of Goody’s death?”

  Paulina jolted upright. “Aye, he was here,” she replied, adding firmly, “We are to be married at the end of this month, and I love him dearly.”

  “Did he sleep here?”

  Paulina gasped and glanced, horrified, at her father. “Goodness, nay!” she exclaimed. “That would not be…”

  Abby’s impertinence sparked Paulina’s father into life. “I would never countenance such a thing!” he declared, then began coughing violently.

  Paulina shook her head miserably and began to cry.

  Chapter sixteen

  Magistrate & Wife

  “What possessed you to ask such a question?” asked a stunned Jacob, when they were safely outside. “Paulina has endured so much, why would you add to her distress?”

  “If we’re to be diligent inquisitors, Jacob, we must be prepared to ask difficult questions,” she replied firmly. “We cannot allow society’s politics to obscure our path to the truth. People will lie to us, and we must discern when they do. Will Farlow claimed he slept with Paulina on the night of Goody’s death, yet she and her father vehemently deny it. If he lied about that, can he be trusted?”

  Jacob blinked several times. “Then you… You believe Will Farlow killed Goody?” He fell silent, defeated by the logic. “For what reason?”

  “I have only theories for now, Jacob, not conclusions.”

  He was eager to hear them, and she obliged as they pressed onwards, past Rebecca Thacker’s front garden.

  Paulina Pepys’s wedding, she recalled, had been moved forward after the witchcraft allegations were made. Rebecca had told them so. Whatever fate a witchcraft trial held for Paulina, she seemed determined to face it as a married woman.

  They had witnessed first-hand that Farlow was a rogue, she said - a fact to which Paulina seemed blinded. Rebecca had intimated that his interest lay more in the Pepys family name than in Paulina herself. “What if he realised he could retain the Pepys influence, having wed Paulina, then rid himself of his wife?” Abby suggested, to Jacob’s great consternation.

  Although Goody’s allegations played into his hands, Abby said, Farlow knew that an accusation of witchcraft might not permanently clear Paulina from his path. However, Goody’s subsequent murder might well serve that purpose, the crime being punishable by death.

  “Will Farlow murdered Goody Grimston!” exclaimed Jacob, rather too loudly. Up ahead was the Church of St Mary Magdalen, and in its grounds they could make out a handful of people gathered. The church bell began to toll solemnly.

  Abby held a finger to her lips. “Please, Jacob, lower your voice. ’Tis only a theory, and it rests on Farlow being a liar. I suspect others may also be playing loose with the truth.”

  As they drew closer to the activity in the churchyard, they could make out a few faces: a Grimston lad or two, and their mother, Anne. The group was gathered around a plain wooden coffin, their heads bowed. Of course, it was Goody’s funeral, ill-attended as they might have expected.

  Hoping they had not been seen, the inquisitors ducked down and ran until they were obscured from the funeral party by the ancient ash trees in the graveyard. Cutting through an area of gravestones, they emerged at the rear of St Mary Magdalen’s and joined the main road that traversed the village.

  Turning north at a T-junction they soon spied Bulstrode Bennett’s house, as Barty Nettlewood had advised they would. It towered above all the thatched, single-storey labourers’ cottages around it. Built of red brick, three storeys high, it had been commissioned by a rich London merchant as a countryside retreat.

  The innkeeper told them that Bennett, keen to advertise his wealth and prestige, had snapped up the property when the merchant moved abroad. He was known to open the third-floor window, directly beneath the apex of his steeply pitched roof, and call out to passers-by, waving. A few villagers thought he was being friendly; most knew that he was showing off.

  As Abby and Jacob started down the gravel driveway to the house, there came a cry in a voice all too familiar from their nights at The Bull. “Ho there!”

  They looked around to see where it was coming from.

  “What business have you here?” called out Bulstrode Bennett.

  They spotted him, hobbling at a pace towards them from a stable block at the rear of the property. Growing in clumps at the base of the stable wall, Jacob swore he identified more of those deadly black berries.

  Two servants were preparing an ornate coach for travel. While one tethered the horses, the other was polishing the black-and-gold paintwork.

  “Ho there!” Bennett repeated, furiously waving his arms in the air.

  The inquisitors exchanged panicked glances - not that they had expected a gracious welcome.

  The magistrate reached them wheezing and coughing, puce in his gaunt face, though he had stomped only some 30 yards. For someone whose work required an air of sophistication and dignity, his attire, which sagged from his thin frame, was rather… garish.