When a child falls ill with a fever and starts to rave about covens and pacts, the questions take on a bladed edge. But then newcomer Matthew Hopkins, a mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, takes over The Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about the women of the margins. Rebecca West, daughter of the formidable Beldam West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only by her infatuation with the clerk John Edes. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers - the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued. In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow. Parliament is battling the King the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages.
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