Syd Moore - Witch Hunt

‘Starving Marvin, as they say in South Park ,’ I said and immediately regretted the crass pop culture reference.

‘Quite,’ said Mr Knight. He reached for a document at the side of his desk. ‘We’re all quite enamoured of your colloquial style. You don’t come across writing like that very often. Wondered if you’d speak like it too. So often you get authors who write in one way and speak in quite a different manner. But you seem to be the genuine article.’

What was that meant to mean? Genuinely working-class? Genuinely Essex? I didn’t want to risk offence by asking for clarification so simply smiled. Felix did too – that wide gleaming grin (no overbite, white pearls verging on perfect), displaying zero visible dental work, evidence of good, strong, well-nourished stock.

He selected a pen and pushed the wad of papers towards me. ‘Let’s get your signature down here. Then we can release the funds.’

The restaurant was Spanish, full of little round tables. Across the walls hung strings of what I first thought were tacky plastic garlic bulbs and chillies, but then realised were the real McCoy.

After signing the contract Delphine popped in to let us know our taxi had arrived and since arriving at the restaurant our conversation had spun away from work into taste in food. It was only after we’d knocked back our first glass of wine that we got down to nitty-gritty book talk.

I explained that I’d already written an introduction about the factors that led up to the witch hunts, then, developing my original proposition, outlined the fact I was planning on setting the work out in three sections: the hunts up to 1644; the Hopkins campaign of terror; and then the decline of prosecutions up to the last known arrest of Helen Duncan, aka ‘Hellish Nell’, who went down for witchcraft in 1944, if you can believe that. Hers was an odd case. She was convicted of fraudulent ‘spiritual’ activity after one particularly informative séance in which she gave out classified information about military deaths. I had to include it. Felix was fascinated. Or at least, he gave the impression of being utterly absorbed; the eyes zoomed in on my face, his mouth set into a line. His expression was neutral, listening, but there was a shadow of a wrinkle across his forehead which betrayed intense concentration.

Enjoying the attention, I went on to explain I had pretty much sketched out the first section and was now focusing on Matthew Hopkins.

‘I don’t know a great deal about him other than what you’ve précised in your synopsis.’ Felix leant forwards across the table expectantly then reached out and refilled my glass. ‘Please do go on. You’ll have to excuse my ignorance on the subject.’

As it was fresh in my mind, I took him through an overview of that particularly nasty witch hunter who had made such an impact on my county.

‘What do you think his motive was? Power? Greed?’ Felix asked as the tapas arrived on the table. I took a modest forkful of meatballs, but didn’t start on them.

‘Of course: they’re your basic tools of capitalism at a time when that economic system was emerging.’ I took a breath. The final cadence of my sentence made me sound way too preachy. I moderated my voice and glanced at Felix.

He didn’t seem to mind and nodded me on, eyebrows higher, a smile twitching at the corners of his lips.

‘I mean,’ I went on, ‘yes, he gained financially from the deaths. And, yes, I’m sure that that was certainly a motivating factor. In one town alone he made about £23 from the executions, which works out to about £3.5k today. Some sources reckon, he netted the equivalent of about £100,000 for a year spent witch hunting. Quite an incentive.’

Felix swirled his wine glass, sniffed it, and took another swig. ‘Exceptional.’ I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the vintage or the witch hunter’s income. ‘But to kill in such quantities? To witness the last moments as the life was squeezed from them. And then to continue – he’s got to have been mad, surely?’ He tilted his face towards me, as if waiting for me to clear up that quandary.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I think he must have partly believed what he was doing. I mean, he had to believe in witchcraft and the Devil. Everyone did at that point in time. The country was one hundred per cent convinced not only of the existence of witchcraft but the idea that its practice could empower some people. Witchcraft was as real to them as, I dunno …’ I searched around for a contemporary angle, ‘… electricity is to us.’

‘That is a fact, however,’ he said. ‘Electricity is real.’

‘Yes, but we can’t see it. We see the results of manipulating or conducting it. We don’t see “it”. But we believe it.’

A slight droop of the eyelids told me the metaphor wasn’t working, so I moved on. ‘Well, anyway, my point is – he probably did believe that some of them were witches. I mean, in a few of the confessions you get the sense that some accused may have been convinced that they had caused their victim’s misfortune: you go begging, someone refuses you charity, you curse them, then they die or fall ill. That sequence of events might have happened fairly regularly – the psychological stress that people underwent when they were “hexed” probably did have a pretty negative effect on their health. Your average seventeenth-century villager hadn’t got a clue about strokes, heart attacks and fits. It was all the work of the Devil.’

‘So, by contrast, he was doing God’s work?’ Felix offered. ‘That’s how he saw it?’

‘Christ no,’ I said quickly. ‘Hopkins made stuff up to convict them. He fabricated stories and coached the accused so that they’d be convicted. I think he enjoyed it.’

‘He was a serial killer then,’ my editor spoke up once more. ‘He got a kick from seeing the cases through from hearsay to execution. Or else why do it?’ Felix shone his metallic eyes on me. ‘Where did he stand with God? How did he reconcile what he was doing?’

I reflected for a moment. ‘I don’t know. The rubbish that he came up with in his book, The Discovery of Witches , reads like he was on the back foot, defending himself, like he knew he’d done wrong. Some of the justifications for starting his campaign are insane.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like seeing an imp transform from a greyhound with the head of an ox into a child of four who ran around without a head!’

‘Ah, but you can’t put yourself in the shoes of those in the past. All these apparitions and manifestations seemed very real to those who lived amongst them.’

I took another sip of my wine. It was exceptional.

Felix looked into the mid-distance. ‘Wasn’t there some suggestion that hallucinogens were part of the witch craze?’ He returned to me.

‘Plants with potentially hallucinogenic effects were used in ointments and medicines during that period. Deadly Nightshade, mace, nutmeg, even saffron, contain essential oils that can have that effect. But you’re probably thinking of ergot fungi. It grows on grasses and cereals and can bring on hallucinations too. There was a book out in the seventies which suggested the Salem witch trials were due to young women eating ergot-infested rye.’

‘What do you think about that?’

‘Well, I’m no biologist but I imagine it’s doubtful. You’d have to consume a lot of it. You know I once read an article that talked about the impact of tobacco and pipe smoking in the seventeenth century and suggested that Hopkins was a stoner. As, like most gentlemen of the time, he was often seen with a little white pipe.’

‘Was he?’

‘I’ve not found any evidence myself yet, but you never know.’ I smiled. ‘The problem is, any explanations of that type just sound like an excuse: “I’m sorry, Your Honour, but I was drunk/stoned/smashed.” You know the kind of thing. That doesn’t cut it with me. Not if you look at the detail.