Chapter 6
HISTORY OF WYCHWELL BY LIONEL TEMPLE
with contributions by Lilian Dearman.
Edward Sutton Dearman was a brutal, feared man in the county. When Henry VIII embarked on his project to dissolve the monasteries between 1536 and 1541, Edward saw his way to bring himself to the attention of the king at court and his toadying demeanour was attractive to the king’s vanity. Edward, it was said, could smell a priest hidden in the walls of a house as sure as a dog could smell a rat. Ironic that he convinced his fellows that this gift was God-given and not witchcraft.
As a reward for his duties, Henry ejected the Lord of the Manor Sir Percival Shanke and his immediate family, executing them for their allegiance to the Catholic faith, and gave the house and lands to Dearman.
Dearman forcibly married Elizabeth Swannecke, the niece of Percival’s wife, but after a succession of miscarriages, Dearman – who had made many enemies through his ruthless ambitions – decided there was black magic working against him.
In the woods resided a widow, Margaret Kytson. Some in the village, fearing the increasingly psychotic and paranoid Dearman might point the finger of blame at them, suggested that Margaret could be a witch stirring up evil. Indeed, Margaret grew medicinal herbs to trade for goods and was said to have a black cat. The villagers arrived mob-handed at Margaret Kytson’s cottage and found no cat but a newborn baby. In a kangaroo court, she was found to be guilty of witchcraft against the Lord of the Manor and sentenced to be thrown, along with her cat, down her own well which tapped into a natural spring. When no cat was found, Dearman was led to believe the cat was changed into the child to disguise it and invoke sympathy. Upon death the cat would show its bones, he was told.
As Margaret and the crying child were lowered into the well, she cursed the villagers and said that no one who bore the Dearman name would ever know happiness. The well was immediately demolished and covered over to seal in the bad luck and Margaret’s cottage was burnt to the ground.
Six months later, Elizabeth Dearman gave birth to a healthy son and Edward knew that he had done the right thing in executing the witch and the child. As he rode into the village with his newborn to show the villagers his heir, his horse bolted and threw them to the ground, killing them both instantly.
Fearing the wrath of Margaret, the village (called Aldwell originally) was renamed Wychwell, in an effort, maybe, to appease her spirit. The well still exists somewhere in the woods and though the exact location cannot be traced, it is thought to be somewhere to the south west of the village (see Chapter on Little Raspberries).
Elizabeth married Edward’s younger brother John, and had five children by him: Henry, William, James, Nicholas and Anne. By adulthood only James and Anne were still alive. James had married Catherine Blount who was barren. Desperate for an heir, it is said that he impregnated his own sister and he and Catherine raised the issue as their own. Anne, who was unmarried, was declared mad when she had safely delivered twin boys and interred in Bedlam asylum.
Flipping heck, thought Marnie, reading the first pages of the book which Lilian had given her that afternoon. She was home by herself waiting for a delivery from Ping Pong’s Chinese takeaway in Eccleshall Road. Justin had sent her a cheeky text saying that he wished he were snuggled up in bed with her instead of in the midst of people he couldn’t stand and that his son had broken out in spots, which was probably the onset of chickenpox. She wasn’t stupid, she knew he was laying the foundations of why the children wouldn’t be getting to know about the divorce this weekend. She ached to be with Justin openly and completely and though he informed her of all the tiny steps he and his wife were taking to dissolve their marriage, she was starting to question whether they were just walking on the spot. But then again, she had never been in a relationship with anyone who had children before. She wondered if Gwyneth and Chris had taken this long.
There was an old adage that you could fool everyone else, but not yourself; but it was rubbish because Marnie was very good at doing exactly that. She had learned to rationalise away anything that threatened to bash her in the heart, that held up a pin to those little bubbles of tenuous delight that came her way so rarely. The skill was born from some internal self-preservational part that wanted to see her happy, but this frustrating situation with Justin had gone on for so long now that it was really contesting her powers of self-delusion. Her brain was starting to ask itself some awkward questions and despite all the expert assurances Justin gave her, she was finding it harder and harder to keep convincing herself that she wasn’t being spun a very elaborate yarn.
Angrily, she picked up her mobile and replied to Justin’s message in emphatic capitals:
I DONT THINK THIS IS WORKING. LET’S CALL IT A DAY.
Her finger hovered over the send arrow. She imagined him falling into a tailspin on receiving it. Then she imagined him replying with a cool, YEAH, WAS THINKING THE SAME.
She flew into a panic and deleted the text. What on earth was she doing? He’d told her he knew that this wasn’t a traditional courtship but she had to trust him. He was under a lot of pressure. She should give him the benefit of the doubt. She’d promised she would. Not all men were bastards.
The doorbell rang and just for a second, her heart gave an excited little kick that it might be Justin surprising her after all. But it wasn’t. It was her chicken and mushroom Cantonese-style arriving from Ping Pong’s.