Witch Hunt

Chapter Sixteen




The weekend’s good weather continued into Monday. In fact I might have almost described that day as glorious; I remember the sun being very bright and having a good go at warming the air around Colchester. Which made it not so bad when I got a call from Felix telling me he would be an hour late. His author needed to go over some contractual details and, although he was annoyed that this hadn’t been flagged up earlier, there was really nothing else to be done but take her through the small print.

I didn’t mind that much, instead taking the opportunity to have a wander through the narrow streets of the city centre. Colchester was a kooky kind of place; full of lanes and byways, Tudor homes converted into hairdressers, antique shops in modern shopping malls. I grabbed some lunch in a small café teeming with students fresh back from the summer break, bubbling with enthusiasm and new stories to tell.

With twenty minutes to kill I sauntered down to a place I’d passed near the car park where I’d deposited the car. St Boltoph’s Priory was a towering ruin of arches and windows that, at some point, must have been spectacular. In its centre a smattering of tombs and plaques peeped up between stubby brown grass and earth. Peacefully removed from the buzz of the main roads, a couple of late lunchers were sitting on the benches finishing their treats.

Making my way back up to the castle I nipped into the tourist shop opposite and bought a small handy guide to Colchester, which, the assistant assured me, contained a fair amount of history on the castle. On my way out I paused to check my reflection in the shop window. Not bad for a journo. I didn’t look overdressed for the occasion; slim black jeans and a navy sparkly jumper teamed with a tailored jacket and black boots gave me a professional but louche kind of attitude. Well, that’s what I thought until Felix marched up, a youthful energy to his gait. He bent down and stroked my cheek with his stubble and I felt his lips press against my face firmly. The breeze had picked up the ends of his hair and ruffled them about a bit. He pushed up his fringe and smiled.

There was something about Felix Knight that was really quite magnetic. I gave an approving nod to his out-of-office get-up: chinos, Converse, jacket – all immaculate and probably worth more than a month of my wages.

‘Hello, esteemed author,’ he said, stitching on that easy grin. ‘You’ve got lipstick on your teeth.’

Luckily olive skin hides blushes.

Once I removed the offending cosmetic accident I returned my face to him and shrugged. He dispelled my embarrassment by immediately blustering out apologies for his tardiness, promising to take me for a drink or ‘proper English tea’ after we’d toured the castle. I, of course, assented.

‘But first,’ he said breezily, ‘would you mind if I grabbed a quick bagel or something? I’m famished.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I passed a sandwich bar down the road, near St Botolph’s. Looked okay.’

‘St Botolph’s?’

‘It’s an old church further down. Nice grounds.’

‘Old?’

‘Church looks maybe a couple of hundred years old but the ruins are much older.’

‘Sounds great. I’ll get a sandwich and buy us coffees and we can have a late alfresco lunch. Do you mind?’

‘Not at all.’ The air was still bright, the sun peeping intermittently from behind white clouds. And Felix’s smile was warming. No, I didn’t mind at all.

I waited outside ‘George’s Tuck to Go’ while Felix got his sarnie (salt beef and dill), then we ambled down to the church and wandered around a bit before we hit on a nice bench beneath a tawny sycamore.

I brushed away the fallen leaves and we sat down.

‘Who is St Botolph then?’ Felix asked.

‘Aha,’ I said and took my guidebook out of my bag.

‘You must have been a girl guide,’ said Felix and sent me a roguish grin. ‘Always prepared.’

I looked down at the book. ‘I’m a writer. We’re always pre-prepared.’

He opened his mouth wide as he bit on the sandwich. ‘Uh?’

‘Research,’ I told him, conveniently overlooking the fact I had only bought the book half an hour since. ‘If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.’

‘Very wise,’ he said through a mouthful of beef and wiped his mouth on a serviette.

I looked the place up quickly. ‘Apparently no one knows much about St Botolph. He was alleged to have founded

a monastery around here, blah blah blah.’ I skimmed the

text. ‘Patron saint of travel. Gave his name to Boston in Massachusetts.’

Felix started and looked up sharply. ‘Are you joking?’

For a second his face took on a pinched shrewish look.

‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s what it says here. It’s a bit of a stretch, I’ll give you that – from St Botolph to Boston – but they have similarities: B, T and two “O”s.’

He shook his head, as if shaking out a thought. ‘No, not that. The fact that he’s the patron saint of travel and ended up going from here to Massachusetts.’ He searched my face as his voice trailed off.

I must have looked completely blank because he nodded then simply said, ‘Sorry. It doesn’t matter. I thought you said something else.’

‘Oh right.’ I must have missed something but had no time to reflect as Felix had already moved on, turning his attention to the book on my lap.

‘What’s that?’ He moved a fraction closer and pointed to a picture. There was a dribble of mayonnaise on his chin. I really wanted to lick it away, but managed to restrain myself and transferred my attention to the double-page spread.

There was a sketch of what the building may have looked like in its heyday: a Norman church, surrounded on its northern side by a chapter house, cloister, refectory and dormitories. It must have been quite an impressive sight pre-Reformation. Unfortunately most of the buildings were demolished by Henry VIII in the 1530s. ‘The priory church,’ I read aloud, ‘served the community until the siege of Colchester in 1648. Says here, that the siege happened during the Civil War. Well, in 1648. A year after Hopkins died.’ That man was never far from my thoughts, crouching in the corners of my mind, waiting to rise up at any opportunity. ‘The city,’ I continued, ‘was forced to open its doors to the Royalist army. When the Parliamentarians rocked up a siege ensued. Went on for eleven weeks, and ended with the surrender then execution of the Royalists’ leaders. After the constant bombardment of the Parliamentarian cannons the city was pretty much in ruins. St Botolph’s was particularly badly hit. It says here that local people are still turning up bullets and shrapnel in their walls and gardens.’

Felix nodded. The mayo had disappeared. He was wiping his hands on a paper serviette.

I cupped my coffee in my hand. Here was a curious paragraph, he’d enjoy this. ‘During the siege messages were sent to the Parliamentarians by concealing letters in hollowed-out bones and throwing them over the city wall nearby.’

‘They don’t mean human bones?’

‘Doesn’t say,’ I told him, glad that he was interested. ‘But the place was a graveyard. There were enough around.’

I watched his eyes wander over the scattered shards of tombstones. His eyebrows were wrinkled and he had swapped his smile for a face-scrunch. I expect he was imagining the grave robbing. ‘Pretty gross,’ he said finally.

My own eyes had returned to the book. ‘This is worse: “When Hythe Church was captured, its defenders were taken prisoner. Sir John Lucas’s house was then attacked. Soldiers broke open the Lucas family tombs in the chapel, cut off the hair from the bodies and wore it in their hats.”’

‘Grosser,’ Felix said and quivered with disgust. I laughed. Despite the reading matter I was feeling light and frivolous. ‘At least they were dead. You can see why the witch hunters came and went without much dissent. The war brutalised people. I guess life at that time must have been absolute hell: soldiers running round seizing what little resources you had, killing, pillaging and raping. Loads of them. Two different sides. Blimey. And all this comes on top of crop failures, famine, zero law and order. You’d have to be totally focused on surviving and looking after your own. Who’d care about a few old women hanged here and there?’

Felix sniffed in the air and tossed his head back. The sunlight touched his crown, picking out golden threads. ‘Puts it in context.’ He sat up brightly and crushed the empty coffee cup in his hand. ‘So, shall we sink into some more history? Is Ms Asquith ready?’

I nodded quickly and stood up. ‘Here,’ I said holding out my hand to him. ‘Give me your rubbish. I’ll put it in that bin over there.’

I honestly don’t know why I did the next thing. I suppose it may have been eagerness to get out and on our way round the castle. Maybe I was showing off to Felix. Whatever, it all backfired.

A semi-circular flowerbed stretched between our bench and the bin. I should have nipped round along the pavement to it but instead I decided to skip over the actual bed. The soil was wetter than I anticipated and, once I’d popped the rubbish in, I spun around and felt my heel slip. Failing to correct my balance I tried to take another step forwards, but was suckered into the muddy part of the bed and fell head first onto the dirt. Fantastic, I thought kneeling there on my hands and knees. Good look.

Felix, being the gentleman he was, wasted no time in coming to my aid. This time even my olive skin didn’t manage to hide my flush.

He gallantly helped me to my feet and brushed me down, avoiding the smattering of mud on my arse. I was in full flow – apologising whilst focusing hard on scraping mud off my jeans, when I heard him say, ‘Good Lord.’

He was crouching over the earth where I had fallen. ‘What is that?’ he said, and poked a cluster of soil.

There was a slick furrow of mud where my boot had slipped. On one side, under the crumbly mass of earth I’d dislodged, something thin, whitish in colour, protruded from the ground. I put my hands on my dirty knees and leant over to inspect it more closely.

It was a small object, no more than three or four inches long, perhaps a quarter of an inch wide, hollow, like a whistle or a pipe.

Felix put his hand out to touch it and looked as if he was about to pick it up when an awful feeling of apprehension came over me.

‘Don’t. Don’t touch it,’ I shouted.

He withdrew his hand sharply and looked up. ‘Why? What is it?’

‘Don’t touch it.’ I moderated my tone. ‘I mean, you shouldn’t touch it. I don’t know what it is. But it might

be –’ the word on the tip of my tongue was ‘evil’. Where had that come from? Bloody ridiculous notion. Thank God I stopped myself in time I thought, and quickly substituted my chosen word for something far less hysterical. ‘Antique,’ I said. ‘Old.’

It was indeed ancient looking and fragile, but that wasn’t my worry. There was something indescribably nasty about the thing. I was sure it was made out of bone and had a feeling that it had once been human. ‘We should get someone official and tell them what we’ve found.’

‘Is it a pipe?’ Felix ignored my warning and stretched out his hand to prod it.

An image of the Witchfinder sucking on its end flashed in front of my eyes. Wasn’t he meant to have smoked? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t actually think clearly at all. In fact, I felt unaccountably wobbly.

A cloud briefly blocked out the sun, as the pipe flipped over to reveal a tiny row of characters on its underside.

‘Wow.’ Felix was fascinated. He picked it up. ‘Ouch,’ he hissed. ‘That’s sharp.’ The smaller, narrow end of the pipe was jagged like a broken tooth. ‘The damn thing cut me.’ Felix held up his hand to show me, a drop of blood bubbling from a thin horizontal slit in his palm. He cursed and pulled his gaze back to the thing in his hand.

‘Look, it’s got writing on it.’ His shirt cuff rubbed lightly against the pipe. The skinny red dribble of his blood smeared over the characters, the contrast lending them clarity. ‘I think it’s Latin. Quis.’

‘That means “who”.’ My grammar school education had its uses.

Felix was peering closer. The letters were minuscule. ‘Qui est iste qui venit.’

My Latin was worse than rusty, more like completely decayed. These days I could just about remember something about Caecilius in the atrium and that was it. But my head nodded almost without me being aware of it moving. ‘Who is it who is coming.’

I don’t know how I knew it but, there, I had said it. Sometimes, I thought to myself, these skills, strengths or talents lie dormant until we need to use them.

I wasn’t wrong.

‘Strange,’ Felix was saying as he got to his feet. I came to the same conclusion. ‘Vicious yet intriguing, don’t you think?’

‘Put it down.’ The sight of it in his fingers made me wince violently. It was an exaggerated reflex that went right through my body and down to the ground.

But he was rapt, spellbound, beyond caution now.

I noticed a vague nausea in my stomach. It started to strengthen, reaching out and up my throat as I watched Felix turn the thing over in his hand. Then, without any warning he lifted it to his lips.

Panic shot through me and I opened my mouth to yell at him to stop. I couldn’t bear the thought of that thing touching his lips, entering his mouth, contaminating his body. But it was too late. A dreadful sound came out of the pipe – high-pitched, faint, and unearthly, like the last rattling breaths of a hundred sacrificed souls. Darkness and earth. Despair, death and sorrow.

A wave of revulsion swept over me. For a moment I thought I was going to vomit.

Felix felt something too, I was sure, for the pipe dropped from his fingers and rolled into the soil. He took a step backwards, shook his head and rubbed his chin. ‘Did you hear that?’ He swallowed.

I got myself together and nodded.

‘Peculiar noise,’ he said. ‘Do you think maybe it was used in rituals? Ceremonies?’ He laughed but it was hollow. For a minute we didn’t speak, just stood there gazing at the thing which had produced that dreadful sound – white bone reddened by blood. A sacrifice. Or a summons.

It felt like the damage had been done.

I edged away from it. ‘I suppose we might as well take it to the castle museum now. As we’re going there.’

Felix shook a hanky out of his jacket and wrapped the pipe, popping it into his breast pocket for safekeeping. I didn’t like the idea of it being so close to his heart. It was like it might infect him. He already looked a little peaky. I think the sound had shocked him.

‘We should definitely let the castle experts deal with it,’ I said.

‘Sure thing,’ he replied and smiled weakly. I tried to return his smile as we headed out of the priory but I couldn’t muster much at all. A terrible feeling of doom had fallen across me. The sun receded behind a cloak of clouds and the daylight had grown dim. A stale mustiness pervaded the air.

Felix swallowed. ‘Come on. It’s exciting isn’t it? Could be the greatest archaeological find of the decade.’

I glowered at the grey flagstones under my feet. I think somehow I knew that now he’d blown on the pipe nothing would be the same.

He called him, you see. And we both felt it. It was cursed. And his blood had whet its appetite.

It had broken the veil.

Though, of course, it didn’t register at the time. It was just a weird thing that had unsettled me. Another weird thing.

We reached the castle and sauntered across the wooden bridge to the vaulted entrance. A young bloke at the till inspected the pipe and called a female colleague down from an office. They were both interested and asked us to come to the office. I gently declined, guilting Felix into accompany-ing the castle staff by pointing out that I’d already been delayed (by him) and really needed to get stuck into my research. Plus I didn’t want to be near that revolting relic.

Felix didn’t need much persuasion. In fact, as he told the staff how we came across it, his eyes kept darting back to the bone pipe. You could see he was quite taken by the thing.

I was more than happy to leave them to it.

I paid at the entrance then passed under the eyes of a stone sphinx depicted perching on the mangled remains of a human head, hands and bones, and then through into the museum proper.

Colchester Castle was a gloomy structure indeed. Mind you, the place had a huge legacy: once the capital of Roman Britain, many of the displays in the cabinets testified to its early importance. There were ancient vases and plates; some gorgeous necklaces, the like of which might have been replicated and displayed on several D-list celebrities of today; a replica chariot used by the warrior queen, Boudicca or Boadicea, as she was known in my childhood. I don’t know when her name changed but I really preferred the original. Mum had too, telling me that nobody really knew how it was pronounced and I could say it whichever way I wanted. She liked the warrior queen but she thought her story wasn’t all there. ‘History,’ she’d tell me, ‘is a matter of who tells the tale and why.’ I remembered her having a bit of a rant over Tacitus’s account. ‘He was writing years after the events but we take his words as gospel. It’s us who allow time to reduce history to a half truth. It’s only one person’s perspective. You got to watch out for that, Sadie.’ Well, I certainly was. I was here in Colchester Castle wasn’t I? Getting my own perspective on the place. She’d be pleased about that – solid primary research.

I was looping through the Middle Ages section when Felix found me, lingering on an ornate hair clasp. Woven into its design was a cluster of butterflies and moths. One of them had been darkened by some kind of chemical technique to accentuate the pattern.

‘The moth and the butterfly were Japanese symbols of the soul,’ read the accompanying text. A vision of Beryl Bennett’s mouth flashed up. But it was gone in the next instant when Felix began to speak.

He was full of the ‘bone pipe’, and told me how he had signed an ‘entry form’ and would be contacted once they’d identified it and had been able to assess its historical

significance.

‘My object,’ he repeated, chin jutting out with pride. (God, he’d taken ownership of the thing.) ‘That’s what they called it. It will be returned to me. Unless of course, I want to donate it to the museum, if it’s of any historical significance.’

‘You shouldn’t have it back,’ I said. Another shudder went through me.

‘Why ever not?’ he asked. ‘Could be old. Roman even. A little bit of our ancestors’ empire. I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t want it.’

‘Just makes me feel odd,’ I told him, expecting him to disagree or make some joke, but he nodded.

‘It’s quite an odd sort of thing,’ he said. ‘Can’t say I like it. But certain collectors may. Don’t you think it’s intriguing? If I sell it on, you can take a cut. If you hadn’t fallen I never would have found it.’

It was generous of him but I declined. ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with it. It’s yours.’

‘Spoken like a historian of witches!’ he said and winked one ironic eye.

‘It’s not that,’ I said, but it was.

‘Well, then I’ll lay claim. If you don’t mind. You don’t, do you?’ His voice was casual. I could see him in the reflection of the glass cabinet in front of me. He glanced at me from under a tuft of fringe, one hand thrust deep in his pocket, but the other reaching up nervously to scratch the back of his head. He wanted it. A lot.

‘No, it’s fine,’ I told him.

‘Fantastic,’ he said with far too much zeal.

I didn’t know how to respond so I just went, ‘Mmm.’ And he didn’t come back with anything.

A dismal sort of anti-climax trickled down over us.

Felix shrugged and offered me his arm. I threaded mine through his and thus we continued to work our way through the sections. We both tried to be bright, with quips here and there, but there was a crookedness about us that we just couldn’t shift. It felt like we were still carrying the bone pipe with us.

Despite Felix’s wit and charming company I found myself becoming nervy. As we turned a corner into the Middle Ages I came face to face with a weary-looking dummy in the stocks and screamed to high heaven. Felix thought it was hilarious and insisted on taking a photo of me next to the display. I tried to laugh it off but my chortle was fake; tension in my shoulders had forced them so far up that they were touching the bottoms of my earrings.

We were nearing the prison.

The castle, I was fully aware, was where the accused witches were transported after they had been tortured and confessed. In fact, most of the building was used as a gaol during that period.

Certainly it was here that he conducted further interrogations and here that many of them perished before trial.

It wasn’t difficult to see why.

The dungeons felt subterranean. I wasn’t sure if they were, as there was virtually no natural light. An artificial yellow haze amplified the sinister atmosphere.

We stepped down into an antechamber, which formed the entrance to the cells. It was full of information boards about torture and crime, with some interactive pieces for kids, attempting on one hand to be educational and bright, and on the other to thrill and horrify with grimly salacious details.

On one side of the wall was a feature about the Witchfinder General and the women he had sent to this place. A paragraph mentioned young Rebecca West who was indicted in March 1645. Another sentence told of how, in their village, the Wests were thought of as ‘saintly’, pious and devoted to God. Rebecca was only fifteen at the time. The plaque detailed that on the 18th of April she was interrogated alone by Hopkins. One could only wonder what happened to her when the Witchfinder took her from the communal prison into some other godforsaken part of the gaol.

Whatever occurred, Hopkins managed to bring about a heart-breaking betrayal: Rebecca West turned on her own mother.

How awful for them both, I thought. To be suckered into that trumped-up charge. It was almost like becoming an accomplice to an act of mass murder. And for the daughter it was matricide.

Some writers speculated that Hopkins may have developed a relationship with Rebecca West – she was at the time only eight or nine years his junior and probably the prettiest of the witches. If there was a sexual element motivating his persecution of the women, I shuddered to think of what she must have gone through, all alone with the Witchfinder.

Separated from those she knew, locked up in some dark corner of the castle with that man, Rebecca confessed she had joined a satanic coven on her mother’s insistence. But unlike so many of the witches’ hallucinatory declarations, this wasn’t an orgiastic witch group. No, Rebecca’s testimony began in a fluffy, teenage manner – a whimsical fantasy in which she kissed and cuddled the witches’ imps, which, funnily enough, appeared in the form of adorable kittens.

After she had pledged allegiance to the Devil, he popped up in the form of a little black dog and jumped playfully onto her lap. So, as most teenage girls would, Rebecca stroked and petted it.

Hopkins must have been so frustrated to hear of such an innocent encounter with the demonic. So on he went, drawing out more.

A fifteen-year-old pauper, isolated from her mother, questioned by a higher-ranking gentleman, frightened, alone, damned; either Rebecca’s instinct for survival kicked in or perhaps she was tortured into confessing or Hopkins’ authority induced her to please him. Whatever occurred in that interview, something changed in the girl and soon her tale took on a more sensational tone as the Witchfinder retold her confession: that night however the ‘Divel’ came to her in the form of a handsome young man and pledged to marry her. When asked by the worked-up inquisitor if she had had carnal copulation with the Devil, Rebecca admitted she had. He must have wet himself. It was just what he needed.

In her later trial Rebecca told the court, amidst heckles and jeers, that she was asked ‘divers questions by a Gentleman that did speake severall times with her before and afterward (giving her godly and comfortable instructions) she affirmed that so soone as one of the said Witches was in prison, she was very desirous to confess all she knew, which accordingly she did’.

She, surely, could not have recovered from her treachery? It would have been too great a burden to bear. Like most of the women, no one knew what happened to her after the trial. Only that she was freed.

And her mother? One can only speculate what she felt. To see her daughter turn against her like that must have been more devastating than the torture she endured. Or perhaps she was prepared to sacrifice herself to see her daughter escape the noose?

I jotted down some of the details with a sigh.

The cell in which Rebecca and the witches had been held first was in front of me, through a low, arched doorway fastened with a heavy wooden door. It was wedged open with a block of wood. An iron grid was embedded at head height. I touched its metal and chilled. Part of the flaking wood detached itself and fluttered up past my face to one of the display lights. I retracted my hand immediately.

‘You all right?’ Felix had seen me shiver.

I looked again at the flake skittering about the light bulb. ‘Just another moth. Creepy.’

‘Where?’ he said, following my sightline.

I pointed to where it had been but it had merged into the metallic support beneath the bulb.

I shrugged. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit jumpy.’

‘You’re bound to feel sensitive, given your research.’

I smiled, gratefully, pleased that he was here and stepped over the threshold.

The whitewashed room was three metres square with a fireplace near the door. This was the gaoler’s quarters.

In the corner opposite stood a small wooden cupboard. A man in his forties was explaining to his son that this was where they put you if you were too ‘loud and naughty’. His son stared at it a moment then tugged on his dad’s sleeve and asked to leave. I knew what he meant. It was nasty down here.

To the north and east side of the gaol were the cells: one for men, one for women. These were large windowless rooms, separated from the main room by a thick wooden wall. Like the door, they had metal grilles fastened across a small window. But for a slit high on a slanted wall, the grilles would have let in the only other light, and even that would have been the weak glow of the fireplace or the gaoler’s candles. The atmosphere was morbid: the air stifled by dust and our appalled gasps.

A disembodied recording told us that the occupants, despite their forced incarceration, had to pay the gaoler a penny a day for their food and water or else simply go without.

Being here really brought it home. My heart heaved with compassion for those doomed wretches. Before the July Assize of 1645 there were over twenty-nine of them in here, old, infirm or poor. They would have been shackled to the wall. Never allowed out, not even to wash or piss or shit, rats slithering between their manacled limbs, biting and nibbling at those comatose or in brief fits of sleep. Or dead. Not to mention how they dealt with periods. The stench of it all must have been awful. It was a small wonder that only four died before they made it to trial. A lot of them were kept down here for nearly four months, until they were forced out into carts and transported to Chelmsford to stand in the dock, filthy and malnourished. The spectators would have been full of hate, the magistrates and clerics repulsed by the accused’s ravaged and wasted appearance.

And the women? They must have at least been utterly bewildered. And so frightened. Perhaps knowing that the next step from the dock was to their death. What they must have gone through.

They all pleaded ‘not guilty’ but justice did not come for them.

‘Hello?’ Felix’s voice broke through my thoughts.

I turned around to find him speaking into his mobile: ‘Hang on,’ he said then mouthed at me, ‘Got to take this call.’ He pointed upstairs. ‘Back in a sec. That okay?’

Eek. I didn’t really want to be left alone down here, but what could I do? Tell him I was a p-ssy and ask him to hold my hand?

Not my style. I squeezed out a bright grin.

Felix gave me a thumbs up and marched out of the gaol.

I was alone.

There was, of course, nothing to worry about, I reassured myself. Thousands of tourists passed through these cells every year. Nothing untoward happened.

I straightened my shoulders and stepped over to inspect the other cell. It was only slightly wider than the first and smelled rank. Curious dark patches stained the lower half of the walls. ‘Don’t even go there,’ I told myself firmly. In a place like this it was important for a reporter to keep their imagination under control.

The documentary soundtrack came to an end. The few school kids that had been squealing in the antechamber had gone now, having exhausted all the interactive buttons. But for the sound of my breathing, the silence was unbroken.

I peeped through one of the metal grilles at the cruel i

nterior beyond. Dingy and damp. The cell was so small, barely four and a half metres square. I could imagine the moans and pleas falling on the merciless ears of the gaoler, who, I had read, liked to beat those that cried out too loudly. The corners were particularly dark. That’s where they crawled to die.

I was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic, so decided to head for the exit. That was enough for now. I had a sense of what it was like to be here and a few extra details for my research. I could meet Felix upstairs.

I fumbled with my bag, opening the flap to replace my notebook.

A loud clattering bang echoed about the room.

Looking up I saw, in the entrance arch, the heavy wooden door had slammed shut, leaving me locked inside the gaol.

For a moment I stood still, hesitating. Perhaps I should phone upstairs to reception? One glance at my mobile told me there was no signal in here. Bugger.

So instead I took a wavering step towards the doorway then stopped: something rustled in the straw of the cell behind me.

Surely a mouse. This was a dungeon. In a castle. Of course they had mice. And rats probably too.

Nevertheless, the thin stretch of hairs on the back of my neck prickled to attention.

The unseen thing rustled again. Though this was less of a rustle as such – more like the lurching sound of something heavy dragged across the dungeon floor.

Although I didn’t want to, I felt a compulsion to turn my head in its direction. So, slowly, feeling like I was trapped in some kind of surreal horror film, I moved my shoulders and body to face the sound. It was coming from the furthest corner of the cell, where the dying were chained.

I couldn’t see through the grid, so took a step forward.

The rustling receded and stopped.

I stopped too. And strained my ears.

Nothing.

Twenty seconds passed as I held my breath and listened.

Nothing.

Whatever was there it had shuffled off into the gloom.

I was just about to go back again and try the door handle when I heard another noise. This time I froze.

At first I thought it was a hiccup, but it repeated itself; a high, faltering sound. Quiet but clear.

A sob.

A woman’s sob.

To convey the fragility of the noise and the emotion it was steeped in, to describe it fully is impossible. All I can say is that it was like a whimper quivering with endless misery, the sound of utter dejection.

And it was coming from the corner of the cell.

The lower portion of my throat made a muffled squeaking noise, like the surprised yelp of a wounded dog.

‘Get a grip, Mercedes, it’s the recording. It’s started again but with effects.’ I said it out loud. My voice was reassuring: it was real, a product of cause and effect, the words vibrating on my vocal cords and then issuing into the air.

But then another voice reverberated through the cell. ‘Are you there?’

I was fixed to the spot.

No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. Not here. Not now. This wasn’t real.

I was imagining it. It was some kind of aural projection.

Then it came again. ‘I can hear you.’ Fragile, young, female. ‘I’m sorry.’

I clapped a hand over my mouth and for a moment the bang bang of my heart overwhelmed all other senses. I took a gulp of air through my fingers and was filled with an intolerable stink: sulphuric, stagnant, death-bringing.

But still the sobbing went on: ‘Mercy.’

Then another voice cut through, louder. A kind of throaty gurgle. Far more horrible than the one before. Nasty, ill, wheezing.

My breath was coming in quick pants. Beads of sweat ran down the sides of my face.

Then the dark voice came again, harsh, full of bass and resonance: ‘Leave us.’

As I recoiled from the awful sound a dark horrid sensation came up from my stomach. A tense, knotted emotion – displeasure, fear, repugnance, disgust, horror – all of that, all at once, rising up from my very soul like the spasm of an unflexed muscle or a memory, long-forgotten.

Something in the prison made a creaking sound and suddenly very real terror was upon me.

There was a footfall in the cell.

Fear spilled over and I thrust out my hand, ready to defend myself, reflexively rotating my head to the sound, tensing myself for a fight. Through the cell window I was just able to see a glimpse of something that looked like a stained sack moving against the far wall.

And then the lights went out.

Something screamed from within the gaol. It could have been me. I don’t know. But it triggered a charge of chemicals that flooded my body, commanding my limbs now to flight. I raced over to where I hoped the door would be and met the cold, hard curve of the fireplace. My hands, shaking up to the elbow, felt along the wall, as I sidestepped, crablike, until I reached the wood of the door. My breathing was becoming fitful, the air harder to take down into my tense closed lungs, whilst all the time that awful scratching, lurching sound was getting closer and closer. Heart hammering right up against my ribs, trying also to escape its cage, I pounded on the wooden planks, a dreadful uncontrollable hysteria overtaking me.

‘Help me. Let me out,’ I howled through the grid.

I can’t be sure as I recollect now, as at that point the light of consciousness was dimming, but I thought something touched me on the leg.

There was an icy blast on the back of my neck, and then nothing as I blacked out.

When I came round I was in the antechamber. Felix and one of the staff we’d seen earlier had me propped up against the wall. The attendant was holding a glass out and urged me to drink.

I squinted at them and straightened my body. My brain was still wonky, thoughts random, scattered about by the overload and consequential shutdown.

What had happened there? The door had closed, then I’d heard a man’s voice, then – what? I couldn’t remember.

The officer held out a hanky. I took it and dabbed my face. I was still hot.

‘I’m sorry about that, dear,’ she said. Her face had a worried look, Health and Safety rules probably fleeting across her official brain. ‘Must have given you a fright. Bloody kids, they do that all the time. Usually to each other, though.’

Felix was standing above me with his hands on his hips, his expression half bemused, half concerned, like he was struggling with which one to go with. ‘I think you fainted. Do you usually faint?’

I shook my head, too confused to talk, glad to be out of the room, but not totally reassured. I could see the cells opposite. Danger still clung to the air around me.

I took a sip of water and nearly gagged. The dreadful sinister atmosphere of the place had seeped into my bones. I needed to get out of there. ‘It was the voice. The man’s voice. Horrible.’

The attendant tapped my shoulder and laughed, a full belly laugh, like she was properly amused. ‘It’s the soundtrack.’

No, it wasn’t just the soundtrack. I had heard something move in there. Part of it was coming back to me. ‘Then there was someone else in the cell. I heard them. They said “leave us”.’

‘That’s just the information spiel.’

I grimaced at the memory. ‘It was quite scary though. I think it’s a bit too much for a public museum. Especially with kids around.’

The officer folded her arms and said to Felix, ‘Well, we’ve never had any complaints before.’ Then she looked at me sympathetically and loaded up a sort of ‘come on – pull yourself together’ smile. ‘You’ve given yourself a fright. There’s not much air in there,’ she added.

‘Then the lights went out,’ I said to them, trying to reassemble the memories that were coming back.

The woman jerked her head at me but addressed Felix. ‘Vivid imagination, your girlfriend’s got, eh?’

Felix ignored her comment and knelt down. ‘Sadie, the lights were on when we found you.’

‘They never go off till we lock up at night,’ confirmed the officer.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘They did go off. And there was someone in there. It was a shock.’

Despite my inner chaos, I think I must have looked blank, for the officer clucked her teeth and shifted, as if I’d conceded to her explanation. She slapped a big jolly grin on. ‘Just imagine what it was like for those locked up, eh?’

‘I can,’ I said grimly and got to my feet. Though I couldn’t make sense of it, I could see that my editor was beginning to look embarrassed.

‘I need to get out of here,’ I said.

‘Good idea,’ he said.

The woman apologised again and Felix took me by the arm and led me outside.

I have never been so grateful to be in the open air.