I pushed away my laptop, unable to face the next entry. There weren’t that many left, and I suspected that by the time I finished with the journal, Marjorie would allude to both the charges against Alys and her execution for witchcraft. I had done what I’d set out to do. I’d filled in the blanks in Alys’s story with the limited information I had, and it all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, but there were still a few key pieces missing. Marjorie stated that Alys was to be married and would be leaving Ashcombe Manor before Christmas. That would have to have been the Christmas of 1639. I hadn’t found any record of Alys’s marriage. Did that mean the marriage had never taken place or that it had and there was no record of it? At that time, all marriages were recorded in a parish register, but after nearly four hundred years, what were the chances that the parish register had survived? It stood to reason that Alys and her intended married at St. Botolph’s, which would mean that the parish records would have to have been moved before the village was flooded. There was only one person who might know where. I pulled out my mobile and placed a call to Reverend Hargreaves. He answered after the second ring.
“Oh, hello, Nicole,” Jonah Hargreaves said, sounding genuinely pleased to hear from me. “Were you able to continue with your research? Oh, I do hope you found something. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about our conversation and wondering if we might be able to resurrect Alys Bailey from the dead.” He laughed guiltily. “Perhaps that’s the wrong choice of words for a vicar, but you know what I mean.”
“I do, and I have,” I said, unable to contain my smile. His enthusiasm was contagious. “I’ve discovered a journal written by Marjorie Lockwood. It was hidden among the books in the library.”
“Good Lord,” Jonah exclaimed. “How exciting. Any chance I can see it?”
“I don’t have the actual journal. I didn’t think it would be right to take it without permission, and I have reason to believe the Prentisses wouldn’t welcome my request to borrow it. But I took photos of all the entries and have been studying them in my free time. The ink is badly faded, and Marjorie’s handwriting is difficult to decipher, but I’ve nearly finished transcribing it.”
Jonah sucked in his breath, clearly excited that I was willing to share my findings with him. “Did you learn anything new?”
“I was able to corroborate some of the facts and create a loose timeline of events, but the last entry I transcribed mentions that Alys Bailey was about to be married. This is the first piece of factual evidence to suggest that Alys was married.”
“It is, indeed,” Jonah Hargreaves agreed. “Whom did she marry?”
“It doesn’t say,” I said, sharing his disappointment.
He sighed. “I suppose it would be too much to ask that Marjorie Lockwood throw us a bone,” he joked.
“She wasn’t big on divulging information, possibly for fear of giving too much away should someone gain access to her private thoughts. The entries don’t mention anyone by name and are fairly abstract, except for this last one, where she finally names Alys as her nemesis.”
“Does she now?” Jonah exclaimed.
I laughed. “Well, not in those exact words, but she was clearly jealous of Alys’s beauty and believed her husband was besotted with her. She thought they were having an affair and was glad that Alys was about to leave the manor for good.”
“Are the entries dated?” Jonah asked.
“No, but she mentions that Alys is to be married after Christmastide. Since Alys was hanged in 1640, this would have had to be December 1639.”
“Yes, that would make sense,” Jonah agreed.
“Which brings me to my next question. What happened to the parish registers from St. Botolph’s? Were they transferred somewhere before the village was flooded? Is there a way to access them?”
“Yes, the registers were transferred to an archive in Chesterfield and eventually transcribed onto microfiche. They are now available online, but the earliest entries are from 1756,” Jonah said, his voice dipping with disappointment.
“Don’t tell me,” I moaned. “The previous registers were destroyed?” That was often the case with records that went so far back. The local clergy had done their best to preserve the registers, but nature wasn’t on their side. There were fires, floods, dry rot, termites, and just basic carelessness.
“Yes,” Jonah said with a sigh. “There was a terrible storm in the summer of 1755. St. Botolph’s was struck by lightning and burned nearly to the ground. The church was rebuilt fairly quickly, in time for Christmas, in fact, but all the records perished in the fire. There is no way to check if Alys Bailey was married.”
I sighed, not ready to give up. “Was a marriage license not required to get married in the seventeenth century?”
Jonah considered my question. “Normally, in a place such as Ashcombe,
