The Dark Magazine

Wenham Magna, Suffolk, 1633

“The devil is everywhere,” James Hopkins, the vicar of Wenham, tells his youngest son one morn, his Apostle spoons laid out on the table before him. Heirlooms of silver, each bears the image of a saint moulded into the handle, along with the associate symbol, orb, key or cup. “The worm, unconquered, has slithered his way into the church and lays eggs in the heart of our most cherished faith.”

At thirteen years of age, Matthew has heard the grievances of enough visitors to the rectory to grasp that the worm, in this case, means the newly appointed Archbishop Laud. To the vicar, the bailiff and the marshal, William Laud is a thorn in the side of the Puritan rigour that the eastern counties have long favoured, a pompous oaf raised up by the refined, but backsliding King Charles. Against all reason, all reverence, Laud has insisted on the preservation of certain popish ceremonies by law. Worse, he’s upheld the Book of Common Prayer over and above the Authorised Bible. Worse than that, he’s done away with the very notion of predestination, the sacred, ordained divide between the damned and the saved, and threatens to usurp the Divine Plan entirely, plunging the country into chaos.

“Aye, sir.” It is best to agree. One of Matthew’s earliest lessons.

Most in the village lament the days of Old King James and his robust approach to the church. To Reverend Hopkins, shepherd of the hundred odd souls that dwell here on the edge of the Tendring Hundred, the Archbishop represents the Antichrist himself, a priest-cum-sorcerer, a seed of corruption in the barrel of God’s good fruit. One who would see them all blacken and burn in the creeping fires of Hell. ‘Tis a wonder, Matthew thinks, that he was baptised at all. Then again, his father takes care not to let his more seditious outbursts stray beyond the house in which they sit, the fine timber beams and the bare panelled walls soaking up the bulk of his outrage.

“Were I a younger man,” his father continues, gripping the psalter in his lap until his veins swell into knots, “I’d follow Winthrop o’er the sea to New England and play my part in the founding of the New Jerusalem, far away from all these heathens, papists and witch lovers who have taken such pains to taint our nation with wickedness.”

“Aye, Father.”

Matthew’s father is not young. His words hold the same fire he has always displayed in the pulpit; his rheumy eyes, shiny pate and trembling speak of the decline that comes for them all, quicker in these past few months since Laud’s ascent – an ascent his father deems too swift to be anywhere near righteous or just.

Satan’s hand, he likes to say, is in everything.

But Matthew, itching in his Sunday best in the autumn sunlight beaming through the parlour windows, only sees natural decay and fears that soon his father shall embark for less earthly shores. ‘Tis an everyday gripe. Three years ago, John Winthrop, a clothier and friend of the Hopkins family, had sailed off to become the first Governor of Massachusetts and despite his encouragement to the vicar via letters from that distant, unstained land, had thus escaped the snares and burdens of this one. Envy, as well as failing health, has spiced the stew of the Reverend’s bitterness. And increased his urge to impress on his youngest the need for the most severe devotion.

“Then let us proceed, boy. The catechisms. Recite.”

’Tis not Matthew’s favourite hour of the day. Nor is the accounting of his sins come supper. Since his older brothers, James the Younger, Thomas (also bound anon for Massachusetts Bay) and John have gone off to Emmanuel College at Cambridge, there is naught to stave off the querulous gaze of his pater, no breeches to hide behind. Nor are there any to share his misery, the endless rounds of Latin and Greek, the ethics, diction, reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography and handicraft to which his father subjects him, his last disciple, in the family home. And the religion, of course. The endless Bible lessons. James Hopkins will see all of his sons join the ministry, become pillars of the community like himself. They are soldiers in the battle to preserve the Puritan faith in England. And to Hell with Laud and his blasted uniformity, his anti-Calvinist leanings and immoderate rituals. Resentment, Matthew knows, has not helped Father’s condition.

“What is the sum of the Ten Commandments?”

Matthew is alone. His mother, Mary, darns socks, churns butter and chops onions in the kitchen, a pallid, impassive ghost among the drifting steam. His sisters, Alice and Grace, play in the nursery or the garden, girls both and as such ignored by the Reverend who sees no need for their education. Therein lies the nub of Matthew’s own green eye, for he would join them in a heartbeat if he could, flee the academic torment he endures. Oft he hears their laughter echoing about the house. ’Tis enough to curl his fingers into fists. Not that he’ll let his father see his discomfort. Such might well incur his wrath, the lash of the riding crop or a jaunt to the cellar for another session of ‘secret prayer’. The memory of that is enough to keep his young feet on the straight and narrow as it does this morn, him straightening in his chair and leaning forth to place his hands palms down on the table as usual, keen to impart the best of his learning.

“The sum of the Ten Commandments,” says Matthew, frowning under the dark wing of his locks, “is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind; and our neighbour as ourselves.”

“Good. What does every sin deserve?”

“Every sin deserves God’s wrath and curse, both in this life and the life to come.”

“Good. And pray tell, what shall be done to the wicked on the Day of Judgement?”

Here, Matthew falters. What oh what is the passage? Sensing his father stiffen beside him, the boy closes his eyes, willing forth the memory. ‘Tis akin to pulling on a mare stuck in mud. All he sees are letters on parchment, wheeling in the darkness like dandelion seeds, but he cannot glean their meaning. After a while, he stutters. Blows out his cheeks. Then he sags, defeated. When he opens his eyes, he dare not look up. If he looks up, he will surely see the Reverend reaching for a spoon. But he can hear Father well enough, the barely contained tut. The smell of medicinal herbs and motheaten garb as he reaches across the table, the clink of silver on silver. Perhaps ’tis Mark he chooses this time. Perhaps Judas.

Then Matthew is wincing. The Reverend Hopkins presses the spoon, edge down, into the back of his son’s left hand. Hard enough to part the bones and grind gristle. Pain shoots up Matthew’s arm with all the fury of the flames that rained down on Sodom. He clenches his teeth yet will not cry out. To cry out shall only bring further disappointment. Further castigation. This is his fault. He should have studied harder. He loves his father. He wants to please. Agony is his reward for failure. Christ suffered thus.

“On the Day of Judgement,” his father hisses in his ear, “the bodies of the wicked shall be raised out of their graves and sentenced, together with their immortal souls, to unspeakable torments with the devil and his angels for ever, and cast into the fires of Hell.”

The Reverend vibrates with ire. Then he is coughing, the sickness claiming him. Matthew finds himself released. His father cradles himself in his chair, shoulders wracked and red flecks of spittle staining the pages of his psalter. The boy knows better than to nurse his own appendage, smarting as it is. From the kitchen, he hears his mother come running, with a caudle, a curse, and should she see him so concerned with his personal woes then it will mean a thrashing for sure.

Instead, he rises, turns to his shuddering father.

“Forgive me, sir. I shall read the passage afresh.”

“Into Hell. Hell.” The Reverend seethes, lost in pain, nonsensical. “The wicked and Laud along with them. Burning until the End of Time.”

Matthew nods. He must return to his Bible at once.

Come supper, he knows that Father will ask him again.

His father spies daemons, witches and imps in every hedgerow, every tree and on every corner in Wenham. He spies Satan claw at the hearts of men like a living shadow and smells brimstone on the breath of every farmhand, tinker and cobbler who stumbles from the Crown. In the market square, in the streets, in unwed homes, he spies perversion and turpitude waiting to happen. Adultery down by the creek. Sorcery by the hearth. Blasphemous dancing in the woods. The Reverend Hopkins makes that plain to the villagers every Sunday in the parish church of St John, lambasting them for their sins and promising them eternal damnation in the Bottomless Pit. God, he says, has stripped the blindfold from his eyes and made him privy to the invisible world. And oh! like Ezekiel before the storm, how he wishes it were otherwise. How he wishes the burden was taken from him, heavy as it rests on his bent grey shoulders.

“When you come of age,” he has told Matthew many times. “When your heart is cleansed, you too shall inherit this holy light.”

Until then, Matthew must study and learn, which he does, longing each night as the moonlight plays across the rafters to see wonderment in them, spiritual evidence. How he yearns to make his father proud. To take up sword and cross and fight the Constant Enemy. Instead, all he sees is the muddy lane that snakes through the village. The fly-crazed midden heap. The thatched houses with their little windows. The poor country folk behind them in smoke-stained frock and smock. The children on the cart who get to go off to school in Ipswich. He sees foxes in the undergrowth and crows on clotheslines, but he only detects the natural in their gleaming eyes. The shadows on his chamber walls may well resemble spirits, but shadows are all they are. He sees the red-tiled roof of the ancient church and the square turret that seems to thumb at his ignorance and he thinks that praps the blessing has not been given to him. Praps a waif like himself, dark, long-nosed and unremarkable, holds not the strength to serve as a vessel. Praps he will never be chosen.

Faith.

On this day, Matthew climbs the stairs to his room to drink in his scripture. Heaven forbid that the Reverend should find him wanting. Next time will mean the lash. A third and he’ll be heading for the shrine in the cellar. The thought quickens his ascent. Halfway up, there’s the step he’s come to think of as the Gallows Hatch, for surely he would hang from it were he ever caught. From the step, one can look down into the nook that serves as a pantry for the Hopkins household. Of late it has become a source of great confusion for the boy. Was it not here that God afforded him such a terrible vision? Last Tuesday afore cockcrow, Matthew had hastened downstairs for water and seen his father with the maid, her with her eyes screwed tight and him grunting red-faced behind her, her skirts bunched up in his grappling hands. What reason for such a peculiar punishment Matthew could not tell. Had Sarah neglected to sweep out the ashes? Her blackened hands suggested otherwise. Had she let the milk turn sour? The Reverend had purchased his own cow. Nonetheless, his father’s exertions verged on violence and the poor girl looked ready to weep, the pots and pans rattling around them as he rode her like some bony mule towards an imagined Golgotha. Matthew did not tarry to witness the culmination of her penance. He scurried back to his chamber and hid beneath his blankets, breathless, panting and puzzled by an unbidden rising of his spicket, poking like a knife through his nightgown.

Aye, the world holds marvels and peril, his father might’ve said. God moves in mysterious ways.

This morn, Matthew only sees his sisters waiting on the top step, Alice and Grace. Both bear the same gaunt features as he. The long nose. The dark hair. The same black pearls for eyes. Have they been watching him below? From the smirks on their faces, he guesses so. They have seen him fail at the catechisms and Father stick him with the spoon. Alice, the elder of the two, holds her pet rabbit in her arms, stroking its sleek white fur. Grace, two years her junior at seven of age, clings to her sister’s skirt, the two of them oft appearing as one entity in the rectory. Matthew is never pleased to see them. To see the rabbit besides. ‘Angel’, she calls the beast. Alice. ’Twas a reluctant birthday present when she’d marked the creature at market summer last and begged and begged until Mother had displayed an unusual degree of emotion, thrown up her arms and surrendered to her daughter’s whines. Then later endured the Reverend’s objections, for such creatures were unclean, he said, and agents of Satan. But Alice had promised to feed the thing and keep it in a cage in the garden, and Father had relented. To Matthew, Angel represents more than his sister’s triumph. More than favouritism. The little blood-eyed bastard represents freedom, freedom denied him, and that he cannot stand.

“That . . . rodent should not be inside,” says he, a hiss in the face of Alice’s scorn. “I shall tell Father.”

Alice blinks at the veritable threat, but her smile only wanes a degree.

“Then I shall tell Father you pinched me,” she says sweetly.

Grace giggles. ‘Tis an old game and a diverting one, considering that only one of the three of them has anything to lose. Mother will shield the younglings, as she always does.

“Take it out at once.” Matthew squares his shoulders, the lord of the manor, and moves up a step to tower over them. “Thou mewling harlots. I have business with the Lord.”

“Indeed, brother,” Alice replies. “But does the Lord have business with thee?”

With that, they sweep past him, sniggering. But not loud enough, he notes, to disturb Father in the parlour. For all their taunts, they fear Father the same as he. And his anger sinks into despair as he watches them go, knowing that they’ll spill into the garden and sunlight, doubtless spinning tales of Queen Mab and all her faery court who they claim to observe in the hawthorn bushes down by the creek. He is sure his sister says so to spite him, wise to her brother’s blindness, the lack of insight that the Reverend is so keen to see flower in him. Alice and Grace, the harpies of Wenham Hall. Unchained.

Angel goes with them, sleek and dumb. Cradled and loved.

Later, when no one is watching, Matthew swears he’ll go into the garden himself. Piss on the thing.

Then he has larger concerns. Alice, he suspects, is the ringleader. The girls have torn a page out of his Bible.

’Tis the one that concerns the Day of Judgement.

Such cannot go unpunished. On this occasion, his sisters do not escape it. Once Matthew has advised his father of the desecration (it took him hours to muster the courage), the Reverend Hopkins has the three of them take off their shoes by the hearth and place their feet alongside each other on the bench. Alice whimpers. Grace sobs. Matthew only glares. Father, a shadow over them, calls for his riding crop. Sarah brings it from the boot room at a scurry.

“Babylon shall become a heap of ruins,” says Father, trembling fit to fall apart, “a haunt of jackals. An object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants. Jeremiah fifty one, thirty seven.”

The sun is sinking into the fens, blending with the crimson light of the fire, the gloom bleeding across the parlour. Thwack! Mother makes busy setting the table for supper, barely flinching as she lays out the family silverware. Thwack! Only the finest for the Reverend Grindley, their guest, who is riding the twenty odd miles from Coggeshall to join them for Reformation Day. Thwack! ’Twas on this day, a hundred odd years ago, that Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Saxony, in the Holy Roman Empire. Thwack! In the village, the thirty first of October also goes by another name, but Father will not have it spoken of in the rectory. Thwack! Every carved turnip he spies on a window sill is a cause for genuflection as he passes by. Thwack! He has forbidden the lighting of bonfires. Thwack! Come Sunday, he’ll chastise any who dared to flout his command and assure them that the Doors of Hell stand wide and waiting for them, along with an eternity in the Lake of Fire. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

Later, his soles smarting to rival Jesus, Matthew sups his stew in silence and listens to Father and Grindley talk. They talk of Laud and his deviltry, his love of jewels and profane religious practices, which James had seen the end of. They talk of his heir, the dandy king, his pandering to Catholics and all his blasted compromises. They talk of a Parliament that fails to restrain him. The ship tax. The dissent in Ireland. The promise of a New World. They talk of a realm being torn apart and the trouble it may bring them. They chew meat, sip wine and mutter of witchcraft unchecked in the land, the long fingers of Satan closing upon Blessed England. When Father nods, sleepy, and Grindley seems unable to lift another glass, Matthew glowers across the table at Alice. Alice, who has been forbidden to cry on pain of further punishment, rewards him with a tongue poked between her teeth. Mother, slump shouldered and wan, ushers them off to prayer while Sarah clears the plates.

Matthew kneels at his bedside, but he does not think the Lord will help him. The Lord likely has a law against the burning of dolls and the pulling of hair.

The Lord would not want him to piss on Angel.

When he falls into sleep, Matthew’s dreams are deep and red.

At some point past midnight, the moon fat, the boy is awakened by a tapping at his window. Thrusting himself up from the bed, muss-haired and scowling at the disturbance, he traces the echoes of it. The house is still, a well of creaks and distant snores. Wincing on bruised feet, he goes to the glass, looks down upon the garden. A milky sweep, the sward rolls down to the creek and the trees there, skeletal under the stars. He marks no bird, no perching owl, which he expected to find on the sill. No rain falls from the sky. Night cloaks all in silence with only the faint tang of woodsmoke to speak of life out there, no doubt some forbidden ritual in the woods, pagan and black. Unlike Satan, his father cannot be everywhere.

Thought of infernal doings grip his mind and when he spies the figure under the old oak, he curses his imagination. Then the figure moves, perhaps marking his shadow at the window, and his heart flips over like a fish on land. Someone, something, lurks at the bottom of the garden. ’Tis pale, vague in the murk, but Matthew makes out white in the undergrowth, the sweep of tattered cloth.

A ghost? A visitation?

Even as he thinks it, a thrill shudders up his spine – one that feels like triumph. Aye. A ghost would mean he’s gained the sight, that he observes the presence of the invisible world. But dread soon eclipses his wonderment. The figure darts forth, slipping into unshaded moonlight, and the vision stabs at him across the distance. With a cry, he stumbles backward, too startled to call upon Christ. He trips over his feet and lands with a bump on the floorboards, his rump sore.

Faith.

For a moment, he sits, breathing hard. The house folds wings around him, dark and quiet. No one has roused to his clamour. That alone deserves thanks. When he finds the strength to creep to the window again, the figure has gone. But in his skull, printed there by lunar rays, he sees the beast in the garden. The hairy jag of its face. Its hollow eyes, watchful. The curl of horns that rise from its brow, sharp under the branches. There is no gainsaying the vision.

Matthew has seen his first devil. God has seen him bear witness.

“And you saw this. You swear it?”

’Tis the next day in the parlour. At Matthew’s confession, Father has forgotten all about the catechisms. The Day of Judgement is far from his mind. Matthew could tell him that God told Gabriel to play a jig on his trumpet and fornicate with goats, and he thinks it would pass without comment. Spine straight, aflame, the Reverend peers down at his son at the table and his face holds fervour alone.

“Hairy it was, brown and black.”

“A cow perhaps. Mired in mud and bracken.”

“But the beast stood upright.”

“A cow will sometimes rear against a tree.”

“’Twas too slender for a cow, sir. It wore a shift of white.”

“A sheep then.” His father looks ready to believe, but must need perform prosecution. “Wandered from Old Ned’s farm.”

“A sheep with horns? It was no ram, Father.”

The Reverend purses his lips. He cocks an eyebrow. In his face, Matthew marks a ripple of doubt and fears that the matter is slipping away from him, a horse bolting from a stable. Should Father disbelieve him, there may be a beating at hand. This is his only chance. What he has waited for. A vision to impress on his pater that the hour has come, that God has spoken to him. That he is ready. Once elevated, perhaps all the torments will cease. Praps the catechisms too. Praps Father will pluck out coins from the chest in his study and send him off to Cambridge, there to join his brothers and the clergy. ‘Tis the panic that flutters in his breast that spurs him to scramble for the reins.

“And . . . and embers in its gaze, aye,” Matthew goes on. “Bright with the fires of Hell.”

“Embers, you say?”

“Indeed.” Matthew licks his lips. “And smoke, sir. Black smoke, curling from its mouth.”

The Reverend crosses himself.

“God in Heaven. The very devil. The devil at our door.”

“I swear I saw it with mine own eyes. I swear it on the Good Book.”

“And did it speak to you, this beast?”

Matthew squirms at this. ’Tis a question he did not foresee. Glancing at his father, he senses a test, but he cannot be sure how to weigh it. Diminish the lie for the sake of authenticity? Elaborate further to foster awe? The old man is quivering, and more than usual. On the table, the Apostle spoons quiver too. His excitement is plain. ’Tis a fever in itself, Matthew thinks. A fire. And, taking a breath, the boy decides to feed it.

“It did, sir.”

“What did it say?”

“It said . . . come to me, Matthew. Come to me in the garden.”

“Lord save us.”

At this, Father is on his feet, spluttering. He tries to utter a prayer, but the words fail him. Instead, he reaches out for the jug of water that Mother has placed there, almost tips it over in his effort to pour. After tipping back the cup, he wipes his lips. The morning sun is in his eyes, igniting him in his sickness. The coals of them settle on his son. As does his hand, falling on the boy’s shoulder. Firm. Trembling. Matthew has experienced Father’s touch before, but not like this. The Reverend steadies himself on his son.

Matthew sits up, steadfast. In place of shame, a warm glow spreads in his chest. He wants to please. He tries so hard. Now, in his father’s expression, the boy reads pride.

“The devil is everywhere,” the Reverend tells him in a wheeze. “What he craves most is the light. But he shall not have those I hold closest to my heart.”

Matthew wants to weep. What heaven could shine brighter than this, here in the parlour of Wenham Hall?

For the following week, the Reverend takes Matthew with him on his pastoral duties. The studies continue, but they are oral for the most part. Questions while Father prepares the church for matins. Proverbs on the way to visit an elder or a newborn in the village. Prayer when they go to bless a pagan well that a farmer has unearthed in the woods. Oft, Matthew finds himself pointed to a cat on a wall or a rook in a tree and his father asks him what he sees there, what he senses. What God whispers in his heart. Each time, wiser by the minute, Matthew replies that he sees vessels. Aye, vessels of blood and bone that serve to house shadows and imps, servants of Satan. Familiars, his father calls them. And each time the Reverend nods, pats the boy’s arm and strides on with a smile on his face. The Apocalypse comes and it gladdens him to share it. Prophet and disciple, the two of them stride through Wenham and Matthew no longer spares a thought for his sisters in the garden. Let them play with Angel till the End of Time. He is Isaiah. He is Daniel. He is on a ladder to the sky.

’Tis on Friday when the Roma come, threading through the village. Their wagons, brightly painted and high wheeled, speak to Matthew of lands unknown and strange customs besides. Soon winter will smother the land and the nomads travel south, according to his father, heading for the warmer climes of the Stour and the Blackwater. Matthew is wise to hide his wonderment too, for Father only sees heathens, those fallen from the grace of God. As the caravan passes, the Reverend mutters imprecations. He crosses himself and calls upon Christ. He states that the Roma ride on the road to Hell and only perdition awaits them. ’Tis Laud, he says, who has permitted such rot to seep into the realm. Why, the Archbishop turns a blind eye to the witches in their midst, for every Roma knows a witch. He will purify the very earth o’er which they pass, he says, with holy water and prayer. His village, an isle in the rising sea of darkness, shall remain unsullied.

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

Matthew is nodding beside him when the last wagon goes by. On the footboard, he spies a child, some ragged urchin of the woods, stained by woodsmoke and mud. But its face resembles that of a beast, all woven horsehair and horns daubed with reddish clay. ’Tis plain to Matthew that the mask hails from some country fayre or other, praps even a play, which the Puritans revile so. He knows that he should not fear it. Still, his stomach churns in a most peculiar fashion. Heat prickles under his skin. Wings flutter behind his eyes, black with suspicion. When the urchin, seeing the boy stare from the verge, lifts the mask to stick out a tongue, Matthew all but folds himself into his father’s cassock.

“Faith, son. God shall protect you.”

Matthew cannot meet his father’s eyes. ’Tis not damnation that troubles him.

The moon has half waned by the time Matthew spies the devil again. Long enough for him to doubt his own eyes. Long enough for the seed to fester, a cause of narrow looks and silence in the rectory, for he will not give his sisters the satisfaction. Alice preens. Grace titters. Resentment pours into the cracks like clay, hardening around their stalemate. Mother cooks, oblivious. Sarah scrubs floors and washes clothes, wise enough to forgo enquiry. Father turns to his books in his study, content with the order of things under his eaves. From the parlour wall, Christ on the cross looks down, the only ornament in the house. All say their prayers.

Every night, Matthew sits in the gloom of his bedchamber, glancing up on occasion from his damaged Bible to peer out of the window. He squints into the shadows under the oak as if to pierce the veil betwixt life and death, but only shadows reward him. His boots and breeches he keeps on until he is too weary to look any longer and surrenders the game for another night. If only he could see the imps in the thicket like he claims. If only he had marked Satan’s gaze in Old Ned’s dog. Heard infernal psalms in the cluck of Goodwife Tillow’s hens. But these untruths have taken root and there seems no way to undo them. To undo them would mean ‘secret prayer’ and worse. Father will lose all faith in him. It has proved an ill education; Matthew has learnt the value of lies.

“For thus hath the Lord said unto me. Go, set a watchman. Let him declare what he seeth.”

Matthew knows the verse by heart. Terrible as it is, he views his vigil as vital, a sacred duty. He is unsure about the declaration part. If he is right, then declaration will bring a particular kind of pain, plunging him once more into darkness. Yet he must know.

Then, on Wednesday eve, he stiffens by the sill. The night lies darker now, deeper, the days stretching towards winter. But when it appears, the figure under the branches still wears naught but a ragged white frock, dancing, he sees, in a fashion most ungodly. Hollow eyes peer up at his window. Horns sketch a silhouette against the scrub and the sheen of the creek. The rest is hair, matted with mud. The beast is wild, a daemonic thing, and even as Matthew hastens from the room he tries to quell the notion of fangs sinking into his flesh, claws reaching for his galloping heart. Come what may, he shall not submit himself to Satan.

Somewhere in the house, he hears coughing, thick and harsh. Father is awake in his chamber and the boy makes sure to tread lightly on the stairs for all his intent. Across the Gallows Hatch, past the nook and into the kitchen he goes, another spectre. The door of the boot room has stiffened in the cold, yet Matthew thrusts his shoulder against it, spilling out into the garden with a grunt. In the murk, Angel rustles in its cage, blood-eyed and startled. Matthew ignores the pest. Under the half-moon, fleet as the wind, he dashes across the sward for the old oak.

Too late, the devil marks him. Horns swing around to face him. In the murk, he sees the eyes in the hollows, wide with earthly alarm. On level ground, the ghost, the visitation is somewhat shorter than he. The beast gives a yelp and turns, keen to withdraw into the undergrowth. Little stones fall from its hands, which he deems it meant to hurl up at his window should he have lain slumbering, as he did before. In a tangle of scrawny limbs, the boy falls upon his quarry. The two of them land on the damp ground, among the daises and thistles.

“Would thee make a fool of me?” Matthew straddles the devil and grasps its wrists, the creature wriggling under him. “Down, Satan! Down!”

The devil gasps as he tears at its face, which he now notes is a shoddy thing. ’Tis cobbled together from bark and hide, and plastered with river clay. The horns are no more than antlers, doubtless plucked from the woodland floor. When he tears the mask free, he finds himself confronted by Alice, his sister. Surprise twists her expression, but there is none in his. The lass has deceived him.

“Why have you done this? Why?”

But Matthew knows why. Or he can guess at it. Where he has looked in envy at the girls in the garden, free to play with the blasted rabbit and dream up faery kingdoms by the creek, Alice has begrudged him his place at the parlour table. Perhaps not so much his education as the keen regard of their father. Would she prefer the grind of the Apostle spoons to her days spent unseen in the rectory? In truth? Aye, he thinks so. ’Tis regard from which Alice has spun her web, feeding his longing with her masquerade, making a liar of him. Did she mean to later confess, expose him as some beef-witted knave to the Reverend? Tear his ascension out from under him? Send him straight to Hell?

Aye.

An owl hoots as if in objection. There comes a moment then, a space for compassion, for Alice and he remain blood and well he can grasp her reasons. Desire has made them weak. Ripe for Satan. Oh, but she is so much the weaker, a frail, pribbling lass! Tempted him she has to falsehoods, a veritable Eve plotting his Fall. Does not the Good Book warn about her kind? Despite himself, tears prick his eyes. An ache spreads in his chest and it pains him to know that ‘tis for her, his sister. The poor misguided thing.

Cursing, he releases her, climbs to his feet.

“Alice . . . ” says he.

Alice laughs. She laughs up at him. There is no mirth in the sound. In her face, Matthew reads only scorn. As pathetic as he finds her, ‘tis plain she finds him the more so. She has made of him a dunce and led him along the path to perjury, so eager to pander to Father’s beliefs. His visions. His holy eye, which Matthew has come to suspect is madness, illusions born of his worsening health. Lashing or no, the boy understands that he alone shall pay the price of it. And the red of his dreams descends like a shroud, Alice blurring before him on the ground.

Numb, he reaches out for the tree, snaps off a low-hanging branch. In truth, a dead sprig. Later, Matthew will swear he does not remember it, does not recall his own actions. A puppet on strings of rage, he raises the makeshift whip high over his shoulder. It gives him an unbidden thrill to see the grin slip from his sister’s face, usurped by a sudden dread.

“Confess then,” he tells her, the sprig biting into his hands. “Confess, you little witch.”

The sprig comes down. Snick. It comes down again and Alice cries out, her hands raised to shield her face. Snick. It comes down to paint welts on her arms, her legs. Snick. It smears her nightgown with black muck. Snick. Alice cries out and tries to flee, scrabbling on the sward. Snick. Matthew, blind and swift, steps forward to pin her between his boots. Snick. Snick. Snick.

Alice screams. She screams so loud that the roosting birds take to the air. She screams and the echoes shudder off the rectory, waking Grace in tears. Alice screams until lanterns glow in the house and Sarah comes running, barefoot and wailing across the garden. A backhanded lash catches the maid’s cheek, quick enough to draw blood, before her hands fall upon Matthew.

The boy slumps, burning, onto the ground.

The screams continue, scolding the night.

“War is coming.” His father declares this in the rectory cellar, sombre as a church bell. It is far from the first time; the Archbishop is leading them all to destruction, he likes to say, and will cleave England in two. “The Lord shall not find you wanting.”

’Tis the sixth time that Matthew has been sent to the shrine. On one occasion, he left the gate open and the cow wandered free. On another, he cursed at Mother after she caught him scrumping in Old Ned’s orchard. On this occasion, the sin is much worse.

For such a sacred place in the Hopkins household, the shrine is not much to speak of. The space is cramped and reeks of damp. Rats scuttle in the corners. Father has done his best with candles to make the cellar serviceable. He has swept the earthen floor. A plain wooden cross adorns the wall under the timber hatch. A shelf bears the Bible of King James and a worn copy of his Daemonologie, a tome which the Reverend has promised that Matthew will one day inherit should he ascend to the priesthood like his brothers. Next to that rests the mask, shoddier looking in the wan radiance. A cruel trick. The obvious work of a child. Alice has since confessed all and been confined to her room, denied bread and soup, and her dolls taken from her. Grace has been left to feed Angel. To whimper. To Matthew, bent over the stool with his hands bound, Paradise could never sound as sweet. Envy for his sisters has soured into something fouler. It writhes behind his eyes, a nest of worms. His sisters have brought him low.

“Father, I beg thee . . . ”

The cellar makes a poor Gethsemane. If he twists a certain way, the boy can make out the shape behind him, stooped, trembling and grim. The passion that has lit the Reverend’s face this past week has gone, replaced by an iron expression. He hides the wound in his heart well, for his son has surely speared him. The Apocalypse belongs to Father alone. The light unbestowed. But the sickness lingers. His voice cracks a little as he speaks.

“What is required in the Ninth Commandment?” his father asks him.

“The Ninth Commandment,” Matthew says, dutiful, “requires the upholding and advancing of truth between man and man, and the good name of his neighbours.”

“Is any man able to perfectly keep the commandments of God?”

“No mere man, since the Fall, is able in this life to perfectly keep the commandments of God.”

His father grunts. But he is not satisfied.

“Pray tell. What are the sins of the flesh?”

Matthew swallows. He wants to please. ’Tis all he wants. Wanted.

Fornication. Uncleanliness. Idolatry. Sorcery. Jealousy. Outbursts of rage . . .

There are others, but Matthew seems unable to force them from his throat. His gorge rises, thick with tears, and he gives a sob. Well he knows the ritual by now. The catechisms, recited without flaw, will not spare him. Nor is his father truly listening. Afore, his father told him that a boy must know the sting of sin in order to better defend oneself from Satan. In the cellar, his father becomes a different man. The cellar holds the whole of his darkness, he says. ’Tis locked deep in the ground.

“Father, the lie was not mine! She . . . she . . . ”

Thanks to his sobs, his defence is denied him. Nor would it serve him.

At his back, Matthew hears a whisper of leather. His father removes his belt.

The devil is everywhere, e’en here in Wenham Hall.

Afterwards, the moon low, Matthew limps into the garden. The first snow is falling, flakes drifting over the sward as if to cleanse the scene of his Fall. Aching and sore, he stands and looks up at the swathe of clouds. Heaven is veiled from him, the ladder since withdrawn. The oak tree looms in a lost Eden, bare of leaves, of judgement. Its fruit has been debasement. The boy bleeds but a little. He has spoken the vows and taken his penance. According to his father, he is forgiven. Pure.

Inside, Matthew only gauges darkness, deep as a bottomless pit.

’Tis this that leads him to the rabbit cage. Blood-eyed, the creature regards him. Its ears twitch at his approach, disquieted. It struggles and kicks when he lifts it in his arms. It has no reason to love him, nay. For a moment, he soothes the creature, clucking softly. He does so until the rabbit falls still, its heart thudding along with his. Then Matthew takes Angel to the tree.

The oak tree, he knows well enough, can be viewed from the bedchambers at the rear of the rectory. Why, has he not spied a devil from his own? Above, the glass makes a line of lightless squares and he cannot be sure that anyone stands at one, Alice or Grace. Not at this hour. But come morn, with a fresh blanket of snow, what child would not gaze out in wonderment?

Faith.

“Oh Lord. Oh, God of vengeance. Let your glorious justice shine forth.”

Matthew breathes the psalm to the night. Then he twists the twine from the boot room around the rabbit’s neck. He binds it tight enough to hold, deaf to the creature’s squeals.

’Tis a ceremony of sorts, he thinks. Festive.

Come morn, his sisters shall spy an angel hanging from the tree.