The Prisoner Read online

  The Prisoner

  Witches [1]

  James Darke

  Sphere Books (1984)

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  It was a time of fear. The great Civil War which had split the country from top to bottom still raged. The King was rumoured to have fled but robber bands of his troop still luked in the mist, marouding gangs of deadly spectres waiting for the innocent. In the absence of King and Parliament, terror ruled with mistrust and murder close behind. But there was no greater terror than the Witchfinders.....Living on torture, bribery and lust they took rich pickings as they scoured each parish and hamlet for victims. John Ferris was sworn to fight their rule of bloody atrocities-to take revenge for his father's death and his lover's abduction - to fight the storm of darkness with the sword.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A thread of bright blood trickled across the woman’s naked body.

  Outside the grey, damp, glistening walls of the dungeon it was bitterly cold. January the twentieth, in the year of Our Lord, sixteen hundred and

  forty-five. The eve of the day of the Blessed Saint

  Agnes. Though the time was barely three in the afternoon the bleak land beyond the low barred window was shading into darkness, a rising moon

  reflected in the steely puddles of ice-slick water in the rutted lane outside.

  ‘God’s wounds, but this cold bites through to the very marrow of my bones!’

  The speaker was a middle-aged man in a buff jerkin laced tight against the winter. His face was marked with the scars of the pox and there was a

  running sore at the corner of his lips.

  He rested his forehead against the cold iron of the window and looked out over the Suffolk fields and marshes. Through broken gaps in the blackthorn

  hedge on the further side of the lane he watched a hare run, trembling through the grass, leaving a faint track in the frost.

  ‘Come, John Stearne, and aid me in this questioning. Or has the ale fuddled your pate?’

  The other man in the chamber would not have seemed out of place in a court of law. He was small built, of a neat appearance. A narrow intelligent face, the eyebrows slanting upwards giving him a permanently surprised expression. His beard was trimmed to a point, speckled with grey.

  ‘Aye Matthew. You know me well enough and you know well enough that a quart of ale bothers me less than an ounce of feathers to a packhorse.’

  He tossed the words over his broad shoulders, eyes following a barn owl, setting off on its night’s hunting, swooping low over the lych-gate to the flint church of Stanston. It seemed to him that for all of its feathers the bird was a’cold.

  ‘John Stearne!’ The voice was sharper and he turned round to face his employer.

  ‘Well enough, Matthew. The wench will not be running far from us.’

  ‘More wood on the fire, man, and make haste to it. I swear that this chill will tear the flesh from my bones. I have never known such a cold.’

  The dungeon was some fifteen paces in breadth and nineteen in length. It lay beneath the tithe barn of Stanston, accessible by a spiral staircase of nine steps. The barn stood on a shallow eminence in the sullen land, so that the windows of the cellar were a foot or so above the level of the frozen earth around.

  The dungeon was old; older than any other building in the village. The priest dabbled a little in the ancient past and said that it might once have been the refectory of a very early monastery. But as long as anyone could recall it had been used as a lock-up for the surrounding hamlets to Stanston, holding sturdy malcontents and wandering vagabonds for a few days to curb their desire to stay in the district.

  Now it had a new use.

  John Stearne shuffled across the stone flags, hawking and coughing, spitting out a ball of phlegm into one of the two braziers that smoked in

  opposite corners of the chamber. His spittle hung on the glowing metal and hissed and bubbled. The man’s breath plumed out in front of him as he stooped and picked up some hewn branches from a small pile and laid them on the hot coals. Watching as they caught and flared at once, filling the dun-

  geon with aromatic scent.

  ‘I swear that the tang of burning apple wood is the finest of all, John,’ said the older of the men, restored to good humour by the increased warmth

  and light.

  As the wood blazed brightly it threw dancing shadows into the corners of the dungeon; an orange hue that illuminated the buttresses and pillars of grey, worn stone. A third man could now be seen, standing there, quite silent.

  Watching.

  ‘Can I set to with this slut, Matthew?’ asked Stearne, wiping dust from his large, capable hands on a torn linen rag that he wore tucked into the

  broad leather belt.

  Matthew Hopkins, who men were beginning to call the Witchfinder-General, warmed his hands at the flames. Sighing gently as he looked across at the

  helpless woman.

  If only she had been a little younger. . .

  Not that it mattered to his assistant, John Stearne. Young or old, pretty or ugly, healthy or halt. It was all one to him.

  Outside they were interrupted for a moment by a great cackling of laughter and the smashing sound of a bottle being hurled against a wall. And there was the shriek of a woman, either drunk or in pain. Hopkins recognised the tones of his female assistant, Goody Phillips, and guessed that it was ale that set her yelping.

  Stearne also looked up from the stained wooden table, towards the crossed bars that glimmered red in the light from the fires. ‘Goody,’ he grunted.

  ‘And those damned gipsy brothers of . . .‘ letting the sentence dangle, gesturing towards the third man who still stood half-hidden in the deep pools of shadow.

  ‘Perchance you would talk to the Mendozas later, friend Stearne. Big though ye be, they would enter into discourse with you.’

  The voice was soft. Hopkins was blessed with something of an imagination and in his mind he likened it to a finger-nail drawn softly down a black velvet curtain.

  And the threat carried by the voice penetrated even through to the brutish brain of John Stearne. He turned to face the man in the shadows and his tones were more carefully considered.

  ‘I wished no offence, Master Monk,’ he said.

  ‘I am sure of that, Stearne,’ replied the gentle voice, ‘and I am certain that the Mendozas will also be sure of it.’

  Hopkins felt that control of the questioning was slipping away from him and he coughed. ‘If you please, gentlemen. You had wished to see how the

  Witchfinder-General sought out the malevolent evil of these creatures, did you not?’

  There was a flicker of movement in the dark shadows. Stearne poked sullenly at the wood in the braziers, clearing his throat again, glancing at Hopkins for instructions.

  ‘Aye. I shall ask her again. Remove the gag from the crone’s jaws, Stearne.’

  There was a twist of dirty linen rag knotted in the woman’s mouth, held there by a cord of thin hemp. A cord that had been tied so tightly it had cut into the stretched skin of her cheeks, leaving a raised weal of flesh all around her face.

  As soon as Stearne removed the crudely effective gag the woman began to pant for breath, a harsh rasping sound filling the freezing dungeon. Her

  eyes rolled from side to side and she fought to turn her head to see the third man, hidden in the shadows, as though he might have the magical

  power of freeing her from the waking nightmare.

  ‘Spare me, Masters,’ she whispered, voice cracking, air whistling in her scrawny chest. Hopkins noticed how the cold was making her withered dugs stand out as though she was aroused.

  ‘Shall I begin again, Matthew?’ asked Stearne.

  Outside there was another burst of
noisy laughter, and a duet of drunken women’s voices, singing an obscene ballad about a virgin and a donkey.

  Hopkins looked towards the figure leaning against the grey, dusty pillar. ‘Your Mistress Hall has found her sister ‘neath the skin in our Goody

  Phillips.’

  Robert Monk yawned, dabbing delicately at his lips with a gloved hand. ‘Aye, Master Hopkins.

  The servants of the Lord must use what vessels they find, flawed though they sometimes be.’

  Stearne laughed, the sound grating and loud, filling the underground room. ‘You would ride many a country mile ‘ere you find a vessel more

  flawed than our Goody. Many a time I’ve swived with her and tied me ankles to the foot of the bed, less I wake and find I have been quite sucked into

  her cavern of love.’

  ‘Hold your tongue, Stearne,’ snapped Hopkins. ‘I will not have such license when we are about our work.’

  The other looked away, spitting in the rushes that were scattered on the flags of the floor. Glancing out of the corner of his eye at Robert Monk,

  thinking how alike he was to the Witchfinder himself, Matthew Hopkins. Both smallish, neatly made men, dressed in quiet, well-fitting clothes.

  Both with trimmed beards and moustaches and both wearing costly silver-hilted swords on the left hip.

  Monk had appeared three days back, with his own entourage: the slattern, Liza Hall, who Stearne had vowed to tumble before they parted company, and the three hulking gipsies, Daniel,Benjamin and Abraham Mendoza, all close to six feet in height, with tight black curls that seemed pasted to their skulls. John Stearne was no stranger to violence and he saw the menace in the trio and kept himself more in check than was his wont.

  It was a time for caution. The great War that split the land from top to bottom still raged, though in the South and the East it seemed to favour the men of the Parliament. There was even talk that the

  King had fled the shores, though his damned cavalry were still likely to appear like smoking spectres from the mists at any moment. The country was

  filled with doubt and mistrust, the woods riddled with deserters from both sides. Twice Stearne and Hopkins had been stopped by such ragged bands.

  Once a handful of small silver had turned the day, the second time it had taken a ball from one of Matthew’s pistols through the teeth of the leader of the vagabonds before they had broken and run.

  Stearne wondered where this man Monk hailed from. There seemed the trace of a nasal Midlands sound in his clipped voice and he had once mentioned the awful state of the highroads from the North. He had turned up and closeted himself in deep conversation with Matthew Hopkins for three hours. Stearne had only caught snatches of their conversation, but he had learned enough to know that Monk wished to enter the business of witch finding. Gold had changed hands and there had been an agreement that Monk would keep away from Suffolk and East Anglia where Hopkins and Stearne were doing Such fine trade. With government near broken down in London, there was precious little power left from that source. Which meant that the little men had come into their own.

  The real rulers of the land were now the magistrates and petty gentry. Those who had not gone to fight for either King or Country now stayed at

  home and held sway over their fellows with life in one pudgy hand and death in the other.

  And they were the easiest of meat for a shrewd man like Hopkins who would feed them tales of vile wickedness. Tales that would often give these

  men the opportunity to rid their communities of the half-witted, the gossips, the lame and the elderly.

  For a little torture and an occasional small bribe these hamlets like Stanston were rich in pickings of witches and warlocks. It was a craft built on cunning, and one that Master Monk had come to learn.

  Hopkins stood close to one of the braziers, and warmed his hands at the flames. ‘Step in here, friend Robert, and watch how we find out the truth

  of evil coursing through this village. Watch and learn.’

  He nodded to Stearne. The sign to begin.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bathsheba Connell was forty-seven years old. Give or take five years. Her father had been a cord wainer and her mother had been part Welsh, travelling around the country as Josiah Connell lost job after job from his liking for good ale.

  For the last eleven years Bathsheba had lived alone in Stanston, keeping body and soul together by doing a little baking and some sewing. Occasionally making a shilling on the side by obliging some travelling tinker or journeyman with a bed for the night. A bed and her body.

  Her mother had been something of a wise woman, with secret knowledge of herbs and plants. And Bathsheba had inherited her skills. Starting to give yarrow or comfrey to some of the men who visited her. Mixing up her potions in a small cauldron of black iron, ladling it into chipped earthenware beakers and stopperless vials. Most of the unguents were harmless and some of them might even have done some good. Particularly those that loosened cramped bowels and emptied ailing stomachs.

  But what brought more and more men from Stanston and around to her hovel at the fringe of the forest was her willingness to let them lay her.

  Hoicking up her muddied skirts and ramming into her. Bathsheba had never been loved by any man, and she came to believe that these faceless labourers were truly lovers. She even stopped asking them for their shillings. Content to let them use her in any and every way they wanted. Catering to them in twos and threes, lying still on her torn mattress while they used every orifice of her aging body. It didn’t matter to her what else they did. The blows and the kicks were part of life to her and she

  welcomed their company.

  But the women of Stanston came to dislike her. Then to hate her.

  And it was only a month or so ago that one of the thin-lipped, tight-hipped goodwives of the village first dropped the suggestion to a neighbour.

  ‘The beldame’s witched our men.’

  ‘A witch?’

  Of course.

  That had to be the answer. Why else should good husbands and fathers desert their beds and go into the damp green to lie with a woman who was sliding fast into her dotage? Why else but witchery?

  Deviltry!

  It was enough to get tongues wagging. Women gathered at the shallow part of the stream where they did their washing and they chattered as they banged the rounded stones on the wet clothes. Remembering things that had gone unaccountably wrong in Stanston over the previous days. For days and months and years: the Higgins’ cow that had unaccountably trampled on both its new-born calves and killed them; and hadn’t Ruth Higgins had a falling-out with Bathsheba only a week before that day? What of poor Jem Wallis? Only a day after Bathsheba had caught him throwing stones at her pet cat he had fallen from the back of his father’s bay mare and cracked his skull. Lying sleeping for two weeks and four days, close to death. Still not right in the head.

  So the talk spread. Like a knob of butter dropped into a pot of heated water, it spread slowly, until it seemed to fill the place. Frightened of being witched by Bathsheba the men stopped calling on her. The stories gathered a vicious momentum when Henry Lockeston braved the tattle-tales and visited the old woman. Only to be stricken down with a plague of sores all around his mouth that festered and hung there like lumps of poison.

  ‘And you know what is said?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Of Henry?’

  ‘Tell us, neighbour.’

  The head turning to make sure nobody was overhearing the scandalous gossip. Voice dropping to a whisper.

  ‘After he went with that woman . . . after ‘tis said that Henry was no longer a true man.’

  Hiss of indrawn breath, lips pursed. ‘You mean he could not . . .?‘

  Nodding, arms folded across the breasts. ‘He was not able to perform his husbandly duties. She had laid a curse on his privy member so that it slept

  and would not waken.’

  ‘Oh, the horror. . . the horror. .
.‘

  Bathsheba heard nothing of the gossips. It puzzled her that the men no longer came to her, but it didn’t interest her why they had stopped. The women of Stanston had never bothered to speak to her at the pump by the green when they came for water. Backs turned to her.

  She had no way of knowing that the talk of her unnatural skills had reached the ears of Squire Pollinger who had invited kindly Parson Frewin

  over for claret and some venison. The two men had talked long, finally agreeing that a messenger should be sent for the so-called ‘Witchfinder

  General’, reputed to be doing God’s work in a nearby hamlet.

  if she be innocent then she has nothing to fear,’ said the priest, battling to conceal his own doubt over their course of action.

  ‘And if she be guilty . . . then Master Matthew Hopkins will have earned his fee.’

  Bathsheba had thought it a nightmare.

  She had been sleeping, wearing only a cotton shift, her fingers knotted between her thighs for comfort and warmth. A heap of stained blankets covered her against the biting cold outside and a merry fire still crackled in her stone hearth. Her black cat, Bell, was curled up in a withy basket near the fire, sleeping contentedly, the light gleaming off his glossy coat.

  It was the day before the Eve of Saint Agnes. The nineteenth day of January. The year of Our Lord, sixteen hundred and forty-five.

  Bathsheba Connell had no lock on the rickety door of her hut near the woods. With no possessions there was little point in guarding against a

  thief. But the men who came for her — and their women — still kicked the door down. Bursting in and dragging the old woman from her bed, out into

  the frozen track. Hauling her by the wrists, mocking her fear and distress.

  ‘Not so mighty now, witch!’

  ‘Strip her naked!’ yelped another of the wives of Stanston.

  ‘Nay. Save that for the Witchfinder,’ protested the bailiff of Squire Pollinger. ‘She must not be harmed.’

  ‘There’s her cat. Look.’