Ninety Eight
Chapter Hundred and Twenty One
Keep Reading Barbara Erskine’s Novels
Matthew Hopkins was, of course, a real man and Manningtree and Mistley are real places. But this story is fiction. The parish about which I write does not exist. Neither does Mike’s church, rectory or street. Neither does the lane where Emma lives, nor is there a surgery where I have put one.
The old churchyard appears on maps and in guidebooks, but is now private land. The real church at Mistley does not appear.
Present darkness LAMMAS
Lightning was flickering over the low Suffolk hills and thunder rumbled in the distance, louder this time. Bill Standing glanced up at the sky where the clouds piled threateningly one on the other, black on purple above the land. He hunched his shoulders and walked on.
He had come out here to think, to clear his head and listen to whatever it was that was battering at his brain, trying to make itself heard. The tide was nearly high, the broad estuary a carpet of white-topped waves hurling themselves inland off the sea. Above his head a gull circled, letting out a wild, mournful cry, then it turned and flew away towards the coming darkness. Bill watched it go through narrowed eyes, feeling the wind on his face. The thunder was louder now and one by one the first heavy drops of rain were beginning to fall. It was early afternoon but it felt like night. Behind him the town was closing down ahead of the storm. He could feel it waiting, watching, bracing itself for what was to come.
His unease was not only caused by the impending storm. There was something else in the air and it scared him – scared him more than anything, in all his eighty-six years, had scared him before.
The old evil there beneath the surface was awakening. It would take very little to set it free. A lightning bolt into the river, a clap of thunder up on the heath, a flash of fire in the furze bushes on the hill and the dark would rise again and envelop the shore, the town, the whole peninsula.
He had known it would happen one day. His father had told him, and his father’s father had known it before him. Why now, he didn’t know yet, but there was no one left to stop it.
He pulled the collar of his coat up round his ears and looked up at the sky which had grown yet darker. He knew what to do, of course. More or less. But he was an old man, and alone. Were there others out there who could help him? He frowned unhappily, his weather-beaten face wrinkling into deep folds and canyons. If there were, he hadn’t seen them yet. What he had seen were signs of trouble, like the blue flames licking from tussock to tussock down on the marsh, fairy sparks, they called them, the sign of danger to come like the black mist hanging on the horizon far out to sea. Darkness long laid to rest was threatening to stir as it had after the Reformation, when the priests who knew how to mediate the dark were overthrown. Hundreds of years before that the evil had come from across the sea; native and Roman gods, and the Christian alike had been vanquished before it as it sucked black energy from this wild, mysterious borderland between sea and shore. For aeons it had lain sleeping, but now he could feel it growing restless. He remembered the words, the ceremonies, to contain it, but did he have the power?
Another clap of thunder echoed over the water and he jumped. It was drifting closer on the wind, circling the town. Lightning flickered behind as well as in front of him now and it was growing darker still, as though the whole world were hiding from the light.
Past darkness AUTUMN 1644
The room was dark and he could see nothing, but he could hear the creature in the corner, snuffling quietly to itself. He lay quite still in the high bed, staring up towards the tester he could not see, wishing he had not drawn the curtain so close around him. He was sweating profusely, his hands gripping the sheet, holding it tightly up against his chin.
Where was it? He hardly dared blink his eyes. It had moved. He could hear the scrape of claws against the boards.
Don’t stir.
Don’t