While I have been counting, the weather has changed and changed again: the pricking heat of late summer, and then the autumn chill. I have kept my count faithfully, showed myself methodical for once, like my brother. Now it is Christmastide: I know it is, for I have been notching a floorboard each day, as prisoners do in tales. But the later days, those later weeks as matters progressed, they are already starting to become somewhat bleached, somewhat blurred, like faces seen from a cart as it gathers up downhill speed. Each day, each of those first hours, is preserved like an etching, separate and clear. My coming home at the end of March, those first few days are still sharp in my mind. Nine months ago I had cause to come back to my own strange corner of Essex and since I did, things have happened that make it harder to say what I do and do not believe. I lived in London once: I can remember how to sneer.īut I am not in London anymore. I scorned the kind of folk who earnestly think he can put on physical form, like a coat, whether that form be like a cat or a dog or some warped combining of the two those who have it that the devil can enter a person in such a manner that he can be deftly taken out again, like a stone from a plum. (Apr.Once, I scarcely believed in the devil. Though histrionic towards the end, this is an entertaining yarn for readers who can’t get enough of the subject matter. After witnessing his failure to stop one particularly unspeakable act, she finally rebels, and he turns on her. As the hysteria, and his influence, grows, Matthew is called to other communities, forcing Alice to accompany him. As Matthew coldly and methodically goes about the business of “watching” several local women, keeping them awake and bound for hours on end while waiting for their devilish imps to appear, Alice becomes desperate to get to the bottom of what is compelling him.
She knows childhood trauma informs his actions-not only was his face disfigured in a mysterious accident as a child, but he was denied the opportunity to follow in their father’s footsteps as a minister. As Matthew’s ward, Alice can only watch as her brother’s behavior spirals into fanaticism and cruelty. Based loosely on the life of a real English witch finder named Matthew Hopkins, the story is narrated by his sister, Alice, who, pregnant, must return to her brother’s household in the village of Manningtree after the death of her husband in London. This debut historical novel is a well-written dramatization of witch hunting in Europe during the 17th century.
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