Despite the hideous visions of last night, or maybe because of them, I was determined to check it out. Part of me was tremulous at what the visit might prompt. Yet a greater part didn’t care: I felt drenched with anger and motivated by a feeling that was close to revenge. Seriously, I honestly felt that if I came face to face with any of those vile creatures I encountered in the ‘room’ last night, I’d be ready to swing at them. The upside of experiencing those kind of emotions is that you’re flooded by a kind of ‘storm surge’ of electrifying vigour. Since I had opened my eyes in the morning, I had been besieged by this edgy vigour.
I had expected to see or hear from Rebecca in Manningtree, but never anticipated anything like the experience I had gone through last night. I knew that the pardon might help her poor lost soul but it was clear now that there was something even darker going on. Something else I had to do to help her move on. I wondered if my conversation with Amelia had perhaps prompted the vision. Whatever, I was resolved to follow up her leads and hunt down the Witchfinder, despite the years. There was a lot to do.
I had packed an old map, which indicated St Mary’s was halfway up the road. According to my sources, the portico, which dated back to the 1500s, was listed. There was a picture of it in the book Amelia lent me: a small tower with an arched door, surrounded by trees. However there was nothing about to indicate any building had existed here at all. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing. I wasn’t even sure if the church ground had been annexed to the house next door. A discoloration of grass, in fuzzy rectangular shapes, was the only indication that it had ever been used to accept human remains.
I got out of the car and hopped over the low perimeter wall.
‘Come on then,’ I whispered through the grass to the spirit of Matthew Hopkins. ‘I’m here. Do your best, you old bastard.’
Nothing stirred the air – no melancholy, malice nor any of the loose sense of tragedy one sometimes feels in graveyards. It was almost like the place had simply ceased to exist.
I got back into the car, unsure whether I was relieved or disappointed. I was becoming used to coasting a range of emotions on a day-to-day basis.
As I revved up the engine I realised that I was feeling completely neutral about this place. Whatever happened there, it had no connection to me.
If it had been Rebecca who had messaged me last week, and now I was pretty sure it had been, she’d been right about one thing: Hopkins wasn’t buried here.
On my way home I detoured past a bookshop and picked up a map of New England. There was something I wanted to do. As I drove back I kept thinking about what Amelia had said about the first witch trial over there.
When I got home I googled ‘Early Witch Trials in New England’.
The first case I came across was that of Margaret Jones, who Amelia had mentioned. A midwife accused of having a ‘malignant touch’, she was the first person executed for witchcraft in New England. On June 15th, 1648. That was interesting. What I read on the website next got me completely fired up. ‘The case against her was built on evidence collected using the methods of the English Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins.’
I sat up and swallowed. Then I read on. The Governor, John Winthrop, attested that an imp was seen to go up to her ‘in the clear light of day’.
Imps. Hopkins’ favourite pastime – imp watching.
Of course his book, The Discovery of Witches, had been published the year before. A copy could have found itself on board a ship bound for Massachusetts. But what if Amelia’s speculations were right? What if it wasn’t only his pamphlet that had gone abroad? What if he boarded a vessel bound for Massachusetts to start a new life?
I scrolled down and found an entry by the American historian Clarence F. Jewett who listed twelve women executed prior to Salem. Margaret Jones of Charlestown, Boston in 1648. Followed by Mary Johnson at Hartford, 1650, who had a child while she was in prison awaiting execution.
Mrs Henry Lake of Dorchester circa 1650 demonstrated two themes I’d seen a lot in the confessions of the witches on