Witch Hunt Read online

  SYD MOORE

  Witch Hunt

  For those who were prevented from telling their story. And for Granddad York.

  ‘Besides, when any Errour is committed

  Whereby wee may Incurre or losse or shame,

  That wee ourselves thereof may be acquitted

  Wee are too ready to transferre the blame

  Upon some Witch: That made us does the same.

  It is the vulgar Plea that weake ones use

  I was bewitch’d: I could nor will: nor chuse.

  But my affection was not caus’d by Art:

  The witch that wrought on mee was in my brest.’

  Sir Francis Hubert Quoted in Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England by Alan MacFarlane

  ‘The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, ideas, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy. A thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children yet unborn.’

  Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone and civil rights activist

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Note to the Reader

  Q & A with Syd Moore

  For discussion

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  By the same author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  They told me not to come.

  He said ‘Twill do no good. Nay more.’ And he tried to touch my shoulder and bring me back into the court but I was too quick and ran pushing through the crowd. Some saw me and stepped aside, unwilling to be touched, as if they might catch my sin. Others shrieked.

  I made off through the side lane.

  And then I came here.

  I have put on my cap and wrapped a shawl over too. So none may see me.

  Though I see all.

  And I see them: bound and tethered in a pen.

  Like sheep.

  Then there are the others, the eager spectators.

  So many cluster before me, edging their way forward, craning to get a good view, that I can only catch glimpses through the space between my neighbours’ shoulders. On their faces some have smiles. The girl beside me, only two or three years younger than I, licks her lips and stands up on her toes. Her father, in starched lace and black, pulls her back down and, with a stare, admonishes her excitement. But the woman beside him, whom I saw at a stall selling nuts for the crowd, has a face full of glory. Her eyes are wide in anticipation. In her hands she has a knife and fingers it greedily. She will try to get some hair from the dead for keepsakes to sell on.

  A hush falls over the crowd as the first is helped up to the scaffold. I can see from the way she stumbles it is Old Mother Clarke. Her ancient face is creased with lines of age and knots of confusion. Two of the men assisting the execution have taken an arm each to support her, for she cannot stand firm with but one leg. She staggers forward and clutches the man on her right to steady herself as the hangman puts the noose over her head.

  A woman at the front of the crowd near the gallows hurls something rotten. It hits Mother Clarke on the chin and she looks about to throw some rebuke back but before she can open her mouth comes the push. Her wizened frame drops and cracks as the noose does its work. Quickly. Thank God. And she is turned off.

  Next it is Anne Leech. Younger than Mother Clarke, she wrestles with the hangman as much as she can with her hands and feet bound. There is little way to fight. But she will not go without one. One of the throng of eager spectators, a man with a red beard and broad shoulders, goads her and calls ‘Witch. You will go to the Devil now.’ Anne always had more spirit than others and she spits at him and calls out a curse. The crowd starts to move, excited by the show, laughing as the hangman roughly slips over the noose. But Anne is angry and wild. She begins to bring down a curse on the hangman, but cannot finish: a shove from behind stops her words. But it does not stop her life and she twists and turns on the end of the line like a fish from the brook. The hangman speaks to the man at his side and points to the cross beam. The rope is coming apart. He calls for a ladder but not in time for the rope to unravel and Anne falls with it to the ground, catching the side of the scaffold as she goes down.

  The crowd surges forward to watch. She is picked up and shown. To their delight they see she has dashed out an eye and is carried back up to the third noose and hanged once more. A deep red drip from her face darkens her dress yet still the twitching goes on. A girl at the front runs forward to pull on her legs but she is stopped by the broad-shouldered man.

  Above Anne the hangman and his men throw up another rope. Elizabeth Clarke is being taken down. I cannot see where they take her corpse.

  And there is another witch now on the platform. I do not know her name. She has soiled herself with fear. It is hot and her face is greasy with sweat. As she is brought to Elizabeth’s noose she falls down in a fainting fit and is dragged over to the side. The hangman calls for a pitcher of water to rouse her. She must be awake to see her end.

  And then she is there on the scaffold. Her long black locks move gently as she turns to the noose. I gasp as I see her watch Anne’s feet jerking without rhythm to her side. But she says nothing. She is solemn. Silent. Unhearing of the jeers of the crowd come to witness her end. But I see her eyes searching over the faces.

  For a moment I think perhaps our eyes meet and I see in them a movement, a quick darting, a widening of the whites. Does she see me? I raise up my face and move back my shawl, bolder now, unconcerned about what the spectators may do if they recognise me. My confidence is short-lived: I pull back suddenly and flinch as the noose comes down over her slender white neck. Her mouth opens and I think she is about to speak but I cannot be sure because she has been pushed from the stool. The noose has strung tight. Her neck snaps to an unnatural angle, the feet kick out and then are still.

  And I fall to my knees and am sick across the cobbles.

  Oh God have mercy, what have I done?

  What have I done?
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  Chapter One

  11th October, 2012

  It was the night that I bumped into Joe. So I guess, you could say that it wasn’t ALL bad. I mean, it was terrible. There was no getting away from it: painful, gut-churning and all the rest. But at least something good came from it.

  And when I say I bumped into Joe I mean exactly that. Literally. I was drunk, but in my defence I had had a seriously bad day. Anyway, there I was, coming down from the high giddy arc of a – even if I do say so myself – quite magnificent thrashing pirouette.

  I know. At my age: thirty-three going on fifteen. Ridiculous.

  Though to be fair, I had checked with the fount of all knowledge, Maggie Haines, beforehand.

  ‘Am I too old to slam in the moshpit?’ I had been swaying even then. Maggie, my dear friend, sometimes boss and celebrated editor of arts magazine, Mercurial, had peered at me and wriggled her button nose. Her face had a distinctly kittenish appearance, which was thoroughly misleading. The pretty feline exterior concealed a steely determination and unsettling intelligence that had notched up two degrees and an MA and which had far more in common with panthers than domestic cats. I knew Maggie would give it to me straight – no messing. She was sober and had a grim look about her. And she hadn’t wanted us to go to the club at all. In fact she’d been dead set on getting me straight home; I think I must have already been in a right old state when we’d left the pub. We were on the way to the local cab rank just a couple of blocks down when I heard the music coming from the basement of a venue and decided we should all go in. She’d said no. In fact she’d said ‘No way,’ and tried to wrap me up in her embrace and physically carry me down the road. But Jules, Maggie’s hubby, put a staying hand on her arm and said, ‘Let her.’ Then he’d turned to me and said, ‘Just for a bit, Sadie, okay?’

  This time, though, Maggie looked like she was coming back with a firm ‘no’, but Jules convinced her (I think he’d had a few drinks and was starting to liven up a bit himself).

  ‘Look around you, Sadie,’ he said in answer to my question, with a grin that was only half-formed. There was sympathy in it and hints of condescension, but I didn’t care. I followed his lead and stole a wider glance at the club. Stifling and dimly lit, it was packed full of sweaty bodies in varying states of inebriation and spatial coordination. The outfit on stage was playing at full pelt and the throng of clubbers clustered at their feet were going for it.

  ‘Go on then,’ Jules said. ‘But we’ll go straight home afterwards. Pogo is de rigueur here. Don’t worry about your age. It’s a punk covers band. We’re surrounded by middle-aged spread. That bloke down the front with the red mohican looks past sixty.’

  He was right. The place was jammed with bald heads and beer bellies. Not a pretty sight. The majority of blokes were in the full throes of midlife crisis, desperately trying to hold on to their proudly misspent youth. The band themselves would have averaged about fifty-five in a ‘10 Years Younger’ age poll. Though if you went on energy levels alone, you’d put them in their early twenties. They were setting the crowd on fire.

  Saying that, you can’t go wrong with the Buzzcocks, can you?

  So, once I’d been granted permission, I launched myself into the front of the crowd and for about three minutes and twenty seconds I was able to submerge myself in the thumped-up beat and drag my head away from the awful images reeling in my head. Ironically the only time my thoughts stilled that day were as my body whirled and whirled.

  For that, I will always salute thee, Punk Rock.

  So, what happened was this; the alcohol had interfered with my sense of perspective and, in addition, boosted my energy. The result was a grand overshooting of the moshpit. In fact, I think if Joe hadn’t been there with his mates, I probably would have landed flat on my arse amongst the broken glass at the edge of the dance floor.

  That would not have been a great look.

  But he was.

  A six-foot-something, human monolith, standing there, very upright, radiating principle and that good old-fashioned honesty of his. You could suss his confidence from the way he owned his space. He was firm. Unfazed. And, luckily, ready to cushion my fall. I remember the way he propped me back up and looked at me, and, because he was out of his usual context, I had a split second of objectivity. I took in the regulation cropped brown hair, the round wholesome eyes and not-so-designer stubble, casual t-shirt, jeans, trainers. He could have been a manual labourer: a carpenter or a builder. He had a pint in his hand and a cheeky grin on his face that gave him dimples. I remember thinking ‘Not bad at all,’ and then doing some hurried shoe shuffle on the floor to correct my balance and retrieve what shreds were left of my dignity. And then he said, ‘Nice of you to drop in on me like this, Sadie.’

  I recognised the voice and looked closer and said, ‘Oh. Joe?’

  And he laughed and said, ‘One and the same.’

  But after that, it’s just fragments.

  I must have talked to him and his mates for a bit till I returned to the dance floor, pulling Joe greedily and then taking him with me. I don’t think he particularly wanted to dance. In fact, even though my perception was pretty clouded, I got the impression he was just going on bodyguard duty for me.

  Then I rebounded back to Maggie and Jules and introduced him. I think they were saying that they wanted to go but I wanted to stay, and made some big dramatic thing of finding my drink and downing it in one. I bet that’s what pushed me over the edge, because the next moment I was in the toilets revisiting the dignified spread that had been supplied earlier at the pub.

  When I came back Maggie and Jules had got my coat and Joe had got his.

  Maggie said, ‘I dunno – he’s offered to drive us home. How many has he had?’

  I laughed and said, ‘Not likely to have had any, Mags. He’s a copper.’ Then I got twisted up in my coat and Jules frowned.

  I think Joe must have heard all that because he leant over and flashed his warrant card and said, ‘It’s all right, I’m not over the limit. She’s off her head and needs to go.’

  And I put my arm round his shoulders and said, ‘But I haven’t been cunting at all Drinkstable.’ Then I hiccupped.

  When I woke up in the back of Joe’s car we were outside my flat. Maggie and Jules had already been dropped off. Joe brought me up the stairs of my small flat. I think he even carried me into my bedroom, laid me on the bed and took my shoes off. And that was over and above the call of duty to be sure.

  I remember trying to kiss him. And that he pulled away and said, ‘Not tonight, Sadie. I would but I can’t.’ Then he did that phone thing that people do with their hands – an L-shape like an old receiver – you call me or I’ll call you.

  I think he was sympathetic.

  But when he closed the door I started bawling. And I carried on doing that till I passed out.

  What a mess.

  To be expected I suppose.

  After all, it’s not every day you bury your mum.

  Chapter Two

  Tuesday, 17th October

  It began like a drip in a far off place. A vast echoing chamber. Or a faltering trickle into a dark yawning cave. First sibilance. Just off a hiss. Followed by a wheezy gasping sound. ‘Ssss – rhey.’

  Was it drawing closer or becoming louder? It was certainly getting clearer, wafting to me on an unfelt breeze. ‘Sorr- rhey.’ Puffed out in tones of torment. Fleshed out with a sob.

  Falling on my ears, with a cold snatch of breath I got it. The single word. And it was on my lips. ‘Sorry.’

  Then I was sitting up in bed, awake. Fully alert. Despite the lightness of the cotton nightie sweat had pooled under my breasts. I was gulping down air as if I had only just reached the surface of some dark, subterranean lake. The bed sheet was twisted around my legs like a boa constrictor trying to eat me alive and my heart was banging like mad.

  What was that?

  Had I said that? Or was someone in the flat?

  I strained to liste
n into its depths.

  The hum of the fridge. The trees shushing in the breeze outside my window. The sound of roadworks further up the hill. A door slamming in the neighbour’s flat. The deceleration of a train pulling into Chalkwell station.

  But nothing else. No one in the flat.

  It must have been me.

  Well, I knew I had just articulated the word – said it out loud as I was coming into consciousness. But I had a notion that I was merely repeating someone else’s plaintive cries.

  Sorry.

  It had happened several times since the funeral. Each time I had woken up from a nightmare I couldn’t remember, with the absolute conviction I was not on my own.

  But then, the mind has a funny way of dealing with grief.

  And of course, I was sorry.

  Terribly.

  The guilt was almost unbearable.

  I knew Mum had been trying to talk to me. That last time we were alone at the hospice. I’d walked in to find her sleeping, so had kissed her on her forehead. Her hair was spread like a black fan across her pillow. She had been a young mum, and if you looked past the lines the illness had carved on her face, with her perfect semi-circles of long dark lashes and her thick black hair, she was still as serene and beautiful as a Renaissance Madonna.

  But she’d woken at my touch and when she realised it was me she’d made a big thing of trying to meet my eyes. At first I thought she said, ‘Sadie – fit.’ It was difficult to tell. Her speech was much impaired since the last stroke. She’d been left with paralysis on the left side of her face and was unable to move her left arm.

  ‘You okay, Mum?’

  She was frustrated. ‘Ift.’

  I said nothing, waiting for her to try another attempt.

  She struggled up a bit. I reached behind her and helped her sit up onto the pillows, plumping them carefully as she rested her neck.

  She took a breath and looked at me. Her mouth opened, tongue lolling to the front. ‘Gift.’

  ‘A gift?’

  She nodded.