were, are, scapegoats onto whom fantastical fantasies were, are projected.’
‘Same as today,’ he repeated sadly. ‘Well, good luck with it. Let me know if I can be of any help.’
Our conversation had come to a natural end so I paid for a couple of local interest books and bid him goodbye.
I had been alert to, but not put off by, a slight drop in Phillip’s features when I had first mentioned Hopkins’ name. I could understand it. Manningtree was so much more than just a magnet for ghouls with an interest in the Witchfinder – it must be irritating for the locals to have their home characterised by the malevolent blip in the town’s history. Not much predated the Tudor period but Manningtree’s architectural legacy was extensive. Its buildings ranged from the cutting edge in modern construction techniques to sixteenth-century idylls. And there was the river too – so picturesque and pretty. The honk of geese carried to me on the breeze and the overpowering scent of malt filled the air. To the innocent eye it was a gorgeously placid rural scene.
The site of the gallows proved disappointing. In fact, it was located in the most built-up part of town – a small industrial park. There wasn’t anything to mark the significance of the spot, so I scrambled up the riverbank. This must have been the last view the victims saw: the flattened landscape spreading outwards, the river heading off to the east, the outskirts of the little town cascading down the hill. It would have been cold and windy and HE would have been there. Watching them. They would have seen him, in the crowd, doing what? Gloating? Looking smug? While their friends and neighbours stood about them to witness the hangman put on the noose.
Contemporary accounts talked of the ‘hangers on’. Though the term today implies sycophants and toadies, in its original context it referred to the friends and family of the convicted who would jump on the legs of those twitching and jerking through their last moments of life, to hasten their death and end their excruciating suffering. A hanging could often take over twenty minutes.
A cold north-easterly wind had come up, bringing dark clouds. Across the river I saw a figure on the bank. Clad in grey, I watched it as she, in turn, watched me. Tatters of fabric swam out from her side caught in the drift of the wind. She waved at me. Or maybe someone else.
I shivered, keeping my hands in my pockets.
She gave up and turned away and so did I.
On the way back to the hotel I stopped at the place Phillip had told me the witches were swum. The Hopping Bridge was a redbrick humpbacked bridge on the north side of a pond.
It was approaching dusk now and the bridge felt quite lonely. I remembered reading something about a ghost sighted here one dark night in the sixties. A local man, Herbert Bird, claimed that he had seen ‘an apparition’ which ran across the road as he was approaching. As he walked up to the bridge it vanished. Passing by again the next night he studied the grass where the thing had disappeared and saw a patch of thicker dark grass, about six foot by three, which gave him the notion that there might be a grave of some kind underneath.
The info in the museum hinted that this was where Hopkins had been swum, lynched and buried after the ordeal. Many historians had dismissed it as fancy but there was no denying it had a strange atmosphere.
I craned my neck over the red bricks of the wall into the muddy brown pool beneath. It was impossible to get a good look but it seemed important that I should.
A sign to my left indicated the presence of tearooms the other side of the pond so I ambled up the side road.
The rooms were situated in a mini farm. I paid the entrance fee, walked over a crunchy gravel path and, spying a small wooden gate towards the bottom of the slight incline, deduced that this must lead to the pond.
I was right.
The track led out alongside ‘the lake’. The shady woodland area that circumvented the water was crowded with majestic weeping willows, gnarled and knotty oaks. Ducks gathered around the water’s edge.
A darting, scampering thing scurried across my path. I was just quick enough to glimpse the sleek glossy back of a water vole racing for the haven of the nooks