it was quite ordinary. Built in 1723, it was a simple construction: unimposing and Georgian in its rectangular structure with four windows on the first floor, two on the ground. The entrance to the ground floor was on the left-hand side. The owners had obviously tried to camouflage any residual evil with coat upon coat of buttermilk paint. But I could smell its malevolence. It stank the place out, crawling up from cracks in the bricks and mortar.
Once a coach house for Mistley Hall, it was now an upmarket gastro-pub that offered cookery courses. It, along with the surrounding property prices, had gone up in the world since the dark days of the witch hunts.
The price of the room covered dinner and I was told the by the bar staff that I could expect breakfast too. I noted the rural lilt to their accent that the tramp in Colchester had spoken with. In the heightened state I was in, it seemed to combine wholesome hints of apples with superstition and ancient custom.
Despite its antique origins, my room was furnished in a contemporary style that complimented the old wooden rafters: the bed was comfy and covered in Egyptian cotton, the carpet thick and luxurious and neutral, the colour scheme blues, greys and mulberry with a floral patterned wallpaper on one ‘feature’ wall.
I sat on the bed feeling the mood, and looked out the window. Above the river the sky mottled like grey-white marble, darker cloud lines drooping over the shores of Suffolk on its further shore.
Once he’d achieved his kill at the Chelmsford Assize in July, Hopkins headed over to there. I thought of Rebecca, carried off in the arms of some servant to who knows where … What had happened after that? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Her life was like a horror film. Awful.
Not so for Hopkins.
He netted a huge haul of witches in Suffolk and made a small fortune. Some say there were at least 150 overcrowding the prisons in Bury St Edmunds. Their gaoler was able to make a pretty profit by charging the curious a penny to gape at the unfortunates. For an extra sum they could beat them. One of them was the preacher, John Lowes, who had come into my mind in my strange exchange with Dan. It was his death that had some positive impact, if you can call it that, turning the tide against Hopkins. But only because it was so very shameful.
Lowes had given shelter to a local woman accused of witchcraft and had scolded the mob at his door, telling them that she was no more a witch than he. Hopkins took this as a confession and Lowes was swum in the moat at Framlingham Castle. Afterwards he was ‘walked’ till he lost his senses and finally confessed to sending imps to wreck ships at sea. At court he retracted his confession. But it didn’t matter. He was convicted anyway, along with one other man and sixteen women. At the gallows his last act before execution was to read the office and commit his body to the ground and Christian resurrection.
The hanging of a vicar for witchcraft was so shocking it forced influential figures to take a look at what was going on in the east of England.
But not soon enough to prevent Hopkins and Stearne entering Northamptonshire and pointing fingers at Anne Goodfellow, and a ‘young man of Denford’. The Witchfinder was rewarded generously for detecting those witches and paid to give testimony during the trials.
Hopkins was an impossible man to understand. He repelled and fascinated me, as much as the witches had him. But I was going to bring some semblance of justice to the alleged witches he’d killed. Flick had sent a text earlier. She had put out feelers to form a legal team and was hoping to meet up next week to come up with a proposition for the pardon. She’d added that she’d already got a lot of interest locally by starting a Facebook group. I sent her a message congratulating her and confirming I would attend the meet.
I opened the window to get some fresh air in the room.
The thought that I could, perhaps, be sleeping in the room where much of the witch hunt had taken place was pretty unnerving. But I knew I had to do it. I wanted Rebecca to manifest. I needed to communicate to her somehow that mercy was on its way.