The Compton Witch

The Summer after I finished my A levels I was invited to spend a week with my aunt, uncle and cousin at their home in the Compton Valley as a way of putting all the exam stress behind me. On my first evening with them they took me for a meal in the old pub in the village. It was a real old English pub, thatched and half timbered with black oak beams, a low ceiling and that unique scent made up of old wood, smoke and age itself. I have always been sensitive to what I call "atmospheres" which I define as that process whereby events record themselves in the atoms of buildings just as sound can be imprinted on a tape. As I sat and looked at the old blackened oak bar I reflected that men had leaned on that bar and debated the rights and wrongs of the beheading of Charles I. People had sat just where I was sitting and smoked clay pipes as they discussed the news from Waterloo and Trafalgar.

The establishment was called "The Witch's Revenge" and I asked my uncle if he knew the story behind the name. Apparently it was a well-known local legend and he told it to me with the more salacious bits interjected by my cousin who was just a year older than myself.

According to the tale, during the Civil War the village had been Parliamentarian and one day a young woman had wandered into the village from no-one knew where. The story went that she wore "Strange and immodest garb" and also spoke strangely. On the basis of this scant data the villagers had decided that she was a witch and set out to punish her but her womanly charms had affected the men of the village and the punishment became a long drawn out rape spreading over many days and nights. Eventually they finished her off in the market square just outside this tavern with a single sword thrust to the centre of her body which was then bloody, bruised and stained with the men's bodily emissions. No-one knows what they did with the corpse but that is not the end of the story.

The witch had cursed the village and shortly after these shameful events it was taken by Royalist forces under the command of an unusually vicious officer. In order to set an example to surrounding communities the officer had all the men in the village condemned as traitors to the King and they were all put to a horrible death in the market square where it was said the blood flowed an inch deep as the screams of the victims and the wails of the women echoed off the buildings. Apparently some years ago a historian had stones taken up from various points around the square and microscopic traces of old blood were found during tests of several of the samples so it does seem that a lot of blood had once been spilt over quite a wide area in the square.

Well it had been an intriguing story but the evening progressed and the legend was soon forgotten or at least relegated to some back attic of the mind. The following day we all went on an excursion along the Dorset coast enjoying the wide sea vistas, sands and the clear blue sky. Next day my aunt and myself hit the shops in Dorchester and the following day I had to myself. This was not at all a lonely experience as it is a facet of my personality that I need time alone to recharge. I hiked to the top of Hunter's Hill and then made my way down to the village seeking a tea shop; it was another warm day and my brief denim shorts and thin sun top were quite sufficient in the way of clothing.

As I approached the village I encountered a small girl in full period costume of long black dress and a white pinafore and mop cap. She had been sitting on the grass beside the road making a daisy chain but when she looked up and saw me her hand went to her mouth, she hitched up her dress and hurtled off towards the village at Olympic speed. I was just assimilating my encounter with the child when I beheld an old lady sweeping her front doorstep with an old fashioned broom. The woman made a sound which I would never be able to reproduce then she dashed inside her cottage slamming the door behind her.

This was the point where I registered the fact that I was walking on dust rather than tarmac and I wondered if I had stumbled into some local festival or even if a film company were using the village but it seemed strange that my uncle and aunt had mentioned nothing about such an event.

I had just decided to ask the next person I saw what was going on when three young men came into view advancing down the street. Two of them carried pitchforks and the third carried a full sized pike complete with a very meaningful spike on one end. The men all wore what I would call "Farm labourer's costume" and they shouted at me something which was loud, unintelligible and definitely threatening. In moments they were upon me and strong arms grabbed my forearms. I struggled and protested loudly but I was dragged helplessly through the village where some folk peeped out of doorways and men attached themselves to the crowd surrounding me.

My state of mind had now moved from puzzlement through confusion to full blown terror. I had not the remotest idea what was going on and events were moving far too fast for me. Everyone was speaking in a loud, guttural dialect in which I picked out just enough words to identify it as a sort of rural English but I could not make out any sentences which I could actually comprehend. If only someone would listen to what I was trying to tell them but I am afraid that as I became more and more frightened my screams became less intelligible.

The men handled me very roughly and I knew that I must be covered in bruises as I was dragged into the old church and rope appeared among the men to bind my arms behind me. I was pushed down onto the cold tiled floor and my ankles were secured and a scarf of some sort was forced into my mouth and very firmly tied to gag me.

A clergyman came through the crowd and the other men backed away so that the cleric and myself were in the centre of a rough circle. The clergyman held aloft a wooden cross and incanted some words which may have been Latin then there was sort of a conference. Everyone was very animated and waving their arms as they shouted and the cleric was trying to impose some sort of order. I lay on the floor struggling helplessly very aware of my top riding up to expose bare belly. I was shouting uselessly into my gag as I became aware that the cleric was losing the debate. The mob were shouting even louder now and pushing towards me. I came to see the cleric as my only hope of release but my terror deepened as the emotional temperature of the argument rose alarmingly. The cleric was now being pushed and jostled and the men at the back of the mob were shouting support for their leaders who were haranguing their Reverend.

In the end the tide of men just surged forward pushing the cleric out of the way and rough hands grabbed my bound legs and my body bearing me up and dragging me out of the church and into the town square which lacked the painted signs over the shops to be seen in the modern town. This was just a cluster of thatched buildings around an area of brick paving and I was dumped on my back in the centre of the square as the shouting continued. Hands ripped away my top as if it were paper and my brief white bra followed while other hands clawed at my shorts and briefs and dragged them down exposing my little furry bush and intimate cleft. I was writhing and trying to kick with my tied feet but it was futile and my efforts only served to make me look more arousing to the mob which I realised was now totally out of control and being spurred on by some dark primeval force.

Heavy chains appeared from amongst the crowd and, despite my best efforts, my ankles were bound over the top of the rope by lengths of chain and other chains were wrapped about my body enclosing my arms. I was almost hysterical as cold, heavy chain went around my throat and I felt it being pulled in all directions. As if the mob were one single beast it lifted me up and bore me to a barn behind the town street where I was taken in and more chain was used to fasten me very securely to a great vertical beam which supported the roof.

This being done the mob withdrew to stare at their weeping, naked captive as I stood there against the beam. I think they wanted to post a guard on me but none of them would stay in the barn without the rest of the mob and they withdrew slamming the door behind them and making a lot of noise outside as I imagine they secured the door.

Left alone I began to quieten down but I was still in the grip of terror as I half expected them to set fire to the barn with myself inside. I think it was only the risk to surrounding wooden buildings which prevented them from doing this.

The human mind is pre programmed to try to make sense of whatever input it receives, that is why we have superstitions. Primitive people saw the sun move across the sky and came up with the story of a sun god riding a fiery chariot. We cannot just leave things alone, we are bound to put them into some sort of story which attempts to explain what we see. And so my mind called forward stories which I had read of so called "time slips". For no particular reason both stories were said to have occurred in France; in the early twentieth century two ladies believed that they had accidentally wandered into the gardens of the Palais de Versailles during the reign of one of their many kings called Louis and they described in great detail the costumes of the people they saw there.

Then there was the curious story of two English couples holidaying in rural France who spent a night in a very reasonably priced pension next door to a police station. It was much later that they discovered that the uniforms of the gendarmes they saw belonged to a previous era and that the police station on that site had closed many years before their visit.

Of course as I stood there chained, cold and alone in that barn my mind turned to the tale of the witch's revenge. I was a strangely dressed young woman who had strayed into this village and been taken for a witch. Had I somehow slipped through a crack in time? Was I in fact the origin of the story which I had been told four hundred years after it happened? Or had I somehow intertwined my life with that of a genuine victim of those dark years of Civil War?

The terror was returning now as my mind began to dwell on what, if the tale were true, was the ordeal into which I was about to be plunged. My body began of its own accord to pull against the iron which held me in a desperate bid for freedom but there was no inch of give in my bindings. I used every last ounce of strength to try to wriggle free, sweat began to run down my skin and I was panting fit to burst my lungs.

I have no idea of how long I fought those cruel chains but I froze when I heard sounds at the barn door and a group of young men came in fastening the door behind them, I smelt the strong odour of hops on their breath and the reek of their seldom washed bodies stung the back of my throat....

HERE BE A GAP IN THE WRITING

It is a known fact that the human brain is able to protect itself by obliterating, or at least suppressing, any memory with which it cannot deal. I believe that I have cause to be grateful for this provision. Sufficient to say that my next memory is of finding myself rising to consciousness as if from a long sleep and finding that I was fully clothed and lying on my back in a field. When I attempted to move I found that every part of my body hurt so I lay still for a while before again trying to move but this time very carefully.

All four limbs ached and I had a pain like a very bad period cramp which caused me to curl up. Doing this caused me to fall sideways with my back against the very slight mound on which I had been lying. Very gradually I found that I was in a position where I felt able to attempt sitting up although doing so hurt my head. I was sitting on the ground with my knees bent and I found that the low mound from which I had rolled was long and narrow and its size and shape suggested nothing other than a grave. At the time I did not pay very much attention to this fact as I was more concerned to clear my head and get myself firstly into a kneeling position and then to my feet.

Eventually, and with several stops to rest, I made my way back to my aunt's although I said nothing of my macabre experiences of the day. I had paid so little attention to the exact location of that field that I have never been able to find it since so I have not been able to revisit my "grave". On one level I have no wish to ever return to that place but, on the other hand, if I ever could find it again I may be able to dig down to discover if the bones of the Compton Witch lie buried beneath. If there are no bones there then perhaps I would have to accept that the Compton Witch is still walking around and it is I.

I did make one more discovery which relates to this disturbing affair. When I showered upon returning from my day I found that my body was bruised in a great many places and just below the level of my breasts, right in the centre of my abdomen, was a vertical mark about three inches long. When I ran my fingers over the mark I found that it was perfectly smooth. It was a dull red like the mark of a very old wound which had healed but it had not been there before although it is still there to this day.