Witch Hunt

Chapter Forty-Eight




And so I walked like a ghost through the memories of my afterlife. For that was all it was: Mercedes Asquith was a phantom self, following in the footsteps of the bastard child, Mercy.

Mercy – a life that was what? A plea? A statement? A gift? Perhaps a destiny.

I don’t know.

I guess I never will now.

But then I’ve been guessing a lot. I guessed that Mum had tried to tell me, back then before she died. I think she knew she wasn’t going to hold on much longer, though it was the last thing she wanted to disclose. She must have known what the consequences would have been. I was a sticky little bugger. Tenacious and, to a certain extent, ruthless too. I obviously inherited that from my father. She must have expected I’d find out, bring it into the light. And I’m guessing she kept the certificate with the coordinates on to guide me to the document, as some poorly thought-out insurance policy. Hoping it might at least offer some power of negotiation if I ever discovered what happened to her, and who my father was.

We were both naïve on that count. Locked into our world of Essex witches, far removed from the power struggles of those whose path we had stumbled across. In some ways we were pawns, just like our ancestors before us. The female kind, that is. Except this time, I didn’t do what I was told. Though it cost me my life. Well, my identity anyway. This new one is several incarnations away from the one I took off Felix. And he’s right – I’m untraceable. You’ve got to give me credit for that – I never was a stupid girl. Naïve perhaps, but not thick. And that’s how I’ve managed to get word to Dan, who is doing okay now. He was going to tell me about what he knew when he saw me face to face. But obviously events conspired against us. He understands why I had to go. And he’s told Dad too. My real dad, Ted Asquith, who loved me and reared me and earned my respect. That’s what the word ‘father’ means to me. The blood running through my veins is that of an unwanted sperm donor who gave me life – but took my life, and who I blame for sending my poor mum to an early grave. I’ve had to think a lot about this and it’s not been a pleasant journey, but I’ve worked out that a child born of rape is not a child of hate. I can see that from the way my mother cherished me, protected me, loved me. And look at Rebecca too; searching across the centuries for her lost daughter, finding her line at last and finding too that they heard her cries.

For I believe somewhere back in the past, Rebecca is my ancestor. Which means I am born from her child, Mercy. My real name – that was the clue.

I’ve heard no more from Rebecca. I’m hoping she’s passed on now too. It was a strange tale and Joe’s still not convinced I wasn’t mad with grief – projecting my neuroses, enacting some freakish psychodrama that eventually uncovered an ancient truth. But I know that trying to explain it fully would be like trying to pin down why Hopkins started the witch hunts in the first place or fixated on the Wests. There’s too much gone into the darkness for us ever to know for sure. And sometimes you just have to accept that and move on.

That’s not to say you forget about it. That leads to ignorance and blindness. You commemorate it, like Flick is doing – bless her. The campaign I see on the website is gaining momentum too. And I see Amelia Whitting’s name signed up to it. Good for her. Good for all of you. It’s about time it happened. You see, when you fully acknowledge that bad stuff, you can at last draw a line under it and turn a new page. Start afresh. But you never forget and you sure as hell never let it happen again. Believe me – this is something I have some experience of.

The night that ended the life of my cousin forces outside of the mundane world were in control and coming through me. I was simply an instrument for their reckoning. But I took the advice of shamans: ‘When you walk in the woods, never leave tracks.’ Well, I didn’t, but you won’t know that till now. I’m not sure exactly how much you do know. Or how much damage Cutt’s people managed to limit. I can’t imagine they could have got it all. We’ve been monitoring the papers over here, whenever we can get them. I see the tide is turning against him now, just like it did with his ancestor, Master Hopkins. But I doubt he can run away from all this. Dan knows what happened with his medication was most likely down to them. And he’s prepared to testify. So too, the break-in had to be them. I don’t buy the kids on drugs theory. Not now.

They must have started the Phelps’s fire and all those other things too. You can work it out yourself. Or the police can. Send them a copy of this. It’s the truth about what happened. And I’ll send them the recording of Felix, which should back up what’s written down here: self-defence.

When you get this, Maggie, I guess you’ll know that Mercedes Asquith has gone. Ceased to exist. Flown away like a moth into the night. But honestly Mags, it’s okay.

Really it is.

I know this is not exactly what you wanted, and I’m sorry I’ve missed a deadline or two, but I’ve had quite a bit going on.

Still, you wanted something ‘contentious’ and I reckon this will hit the spot. Do what you will with it. Get a book deal. I don’t care how the truth comes out. But if it does then maybe we’ll come back some time. Just print this and we’ll see. Should get a front page or two.

Sometimes when Joe goes into town, I drag my chair out onto the porch and sit staring at the ocean. My mind is clearer now. Gone are the days when it used to buzz around like a bumblebee, chasing thought after thought. So I meditate upon what would have happened if I’d never been drawn to the witches or if Mum had never thought about writing or never wanted to get into publishing. But then I’m wondering myself out of existence. And although I wouldn’t have wanted things to pan out as they did, I am certainly glad to be here and I intend to enjoy it as much as I can.

There is a strange tranquillity that follows me now and I think I know what that is. As much as I struggled with it when I first realised, I get it now. You see, I am the Witchfinder, descendant of Hopkins, the last child of my line. And like he I have too hunted witches and so found my witch. But the difference between me and that Witchfinder of old is instead of fear I brought mercy.

And that is so very neat. It is almost perfection. A justice or symmetry of sorts. So, dear Maggie, it’s all here.

Take it and have Mercy.

Much love,

From me.

Your friend.





Note to the Reader




Using Occam’s Razor, i.e. the theory that the simplest explanation is most probably the correct one, it seems pretty likely (however unjust and boring) that Matthew Hopkins met his end of tuberculosis quietly, surrounded by his family in Manningtree. Although there were consequently many outbreaks of similar witch hunting, using the methods he outlined in his Discovery of Witches, the consensus is that it was his book that travelled out to New England, not he. For a full and very evocative book which examines the Civil War witch hunts, I would recommend to any reader what was commended to me; Witchfinders, A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy by Malcolm Gaskill.

Rebecca West did testify against her mother and friends at the age of fifteen. There are no documents in existence that record what happened to her thereafter.

The story of the boy and his mare and all of the witches’ tales are, regrettably, true.





Q & A with Syd Moore




Where did the idea for Witch Hunt come from?

I think the idea of writing something about the witches was always lurking at the back of my mind (just like Sadie), but it fired up while I was researching my first book The Drowning Pool. I came across the statistic about the number of Essex folk indicted for witchcraft and was pretty taken aback. I never had any idea that so many were accused. I had heard about the Pendle witch trials, the Scottish witch trials, Salem and the terrible continental craze for witch hunts but I hadn’t come across much about the Essex witches. Which was odd really as I was born and bred in the county. So I started reading around the subject and that’s when I found out about Matthew Hopkins and his witch hunt.

I’d heard of the Witchfinder General before but I had a notion that his spree took place in Suffolk and Norfolk and that Essex had little to do with it. When I mentioned this to friends and acquaintances I found I wasn’t on my own in that regard: many of my fellow Essex girls and boys were also oblivious to the local connection. As I drilled down further and uncovered the stories of the witches, I found myself becoming not only upset and saddened but also outraged. Their stories sank into me. In fact, I couldn’t get them out of my head. The one that I kept going back to was that of Rebecca West. The idea that this poor fifteen-year-old was responsible for the death of her mother and her friends was appalling. I mean, she was only fifteen! I remember what I was like at that age – not very responsible, nor sensible nor long-sighted. Then, when I looked at her in the wider context of Hopkins’ evolution/deterioration into a full-blown Witchfinder, I could see that her complicity quite possibly fanned his monstrous ego and bloodlust, thereby indirectly condemning hundreds of other souls to dreadful deaths. I tried to imagine how she felt after the trial and the executions, and was inspired from that daydream to write what would later become the prologue of the novel.

How did you write it? Did you plot it out before you started?

I knew Sadie had to have a connection to either Hopkins or Rebecca or both, so I plotted those connections out first of all. In my first draft Sadie’s mum, Rosamund, was alive for the first third of the book, which allowed me to explore the parallel mother-daughter relationship with that of Anne West/Rebecca West and Rebecca’s daughter, Mercy. It was all good stuff but it didn’t really belong in a ghost story so I cut it out. I haven’t discarded it though and hope someday I might return to it, maybe as a short story.

How much research do you do for your books?

A lot. It usually starts with the internet, then moves on to books, then I’m off round the country viewing original documents and authentic contemporary accounts, visiting sites, interviewing people. I love that side of it, and quite often experience strange synchronicities on my travels: when I was in Chelmsford researching, I went to find the spot where the gallows were erected for the July 1645 executions. I was early for my next appointment and, fortuitously, seeing that there was a pub (the Saracen’s Head) right opposite where the site would have been, decided to go in an get a drink then sit outside and soak up the atmosphere, make notes etc. Walking in I heard my name called out and found myself face to face with one of my old students. When I told her about my research she made a few calls and, within an hour, we were able to descend into the bowels of the old pub and view these horrid, tiny cells which, local custom insists, were where the witches were held before trial. It was very spooky and gave me a lot of material for several ghostly scenes.

Lots of the research for Witch Hunt distressed me, mostly because this stuff was real – people had to live and die through it. It was a terribly, bloody time and I’m glad I live in a twenty-first-century England.

At the moment I’m writing about an eerie fictional village on a remote island in Essex. It has a creepy Wicker Man atmosphere which I’m having lots of fun with. To develop my descriptions I’m visiting similar places, seeking out derelict churches and making weird ‘fairies’ out of coat hangers, fruit and candles. I love this job!

Class seems to be a big theme. Do you want to expand on that?

Witch hunts were about scapegoating and power, or lack of it. It was unusual to find the rich being victimised. When Hopkins got involved he used finger-pointing and neighbourly feuds to whip up hysteria, detect witches and so exact a fee. He made the whole thing into a commercial venture. And I thought that it was important for Sadie to be (or to think she was) an Essex Girl as that stereotype is on the receiving end of a whole host of pejorative judgements about sex and class, just like the witches. It made Sadie more likely to sympathise with the underdogs.

Some of your scenes are terrifying. Do you ever scare yourself?

Yes and no. I scared myself with the Pitsea station chapter. The little boy hanging was such a pitiful image. However, once I get those kind of scenes out of my head and onto the page they stop ‘haunting’ me, so to speak! I think it’s a bit like ‘tag’ – the stories touch/scare me, I write them down and send them out into the world to touch and scare others. What I hope to do is raise awareness of what happened back then and also, at some point, try to garner enough interest and funding to erect a monument to those lives that were lost whilst simultaneously drawing attention to the fact that witch hunts are in some form, shamefully, still trundling on.