Free Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch by Nancy Atherton Page B

interested him because the man who wrote the text identified himself as Gamaliel Gowland. Gowland is a family name, you see. John Jacob may have believed that Gamaliel Gowland was a distant relation.”
    “Was he?” I asked.
    “As it turns out, yes,” said Amelia, with a satisfied air. “John Jacob was too busy accumulating oddities to give the parchment the attention it deserved, but Alfie wasn’t. He discovered that the memoir’s author, Gamaliel Gowland, was a many-times-great-granduncle of ours whoserved as the rector of St. George’s Church from 1649 to 1653.” She gave me an approving nod. “Your guess wasn’t so rough after all, Lori. The memoir was indeed written in the mid-seventeenth century.”
    “Hold on,” I said. “Let’s back up a step. Are you telling me that your many-times-great-granduncle Gamaliel was a rector at St. George’s Church in Finch ?”
    “Yes, I am,” said Amelia.
    “Wow,” I marveled, almost spilling my tea in my excitement. “I’d give my eyeteeth to read his memoir—and I’m terrified of the dentist. It’d be worth it, though, to read a firsthand account of everyday life in seventeenth-century Finch. The vicar and his wife will go bananas when they find out what you have. Where’s the rest of it?” I shrank back in my chair as a dreadful possibility occurred to me. “Please don’t tell me it was lost or destroyed, Amelia. I don’t think I could stand it.”
    “I can assure you that it wasn’t lost or destroyed. Here.” Amelia took an ordinary, spiral-bound notebook from the biscuit tin, opened it to a specific page, and passed it to me. “It will save time if you read Alfie’s translation for yourself.”
    I took the notebook from her and read her brother’s spiky, cramped scrawl silently.
I, Gamaliel Gowland, rector of St. George’s Church in Finch, writing alone at night in my private study, record in a secret memoir that which is too dangerous to speak. I tell the forbidden tale of Mistress Meg, known to some as Margaret Redfearn, a fearsome and most potent witch. To write the witch’s tale is to risk calamity for me and for my congregation. I will, therefore, divide and hide my memoir in hopes that it will be found by one who does not fear retribution, long after I and those I serve are with Our Lord. If you would seek the truth, follow the signs (clues?).
    Alfred’s English translation ended with a faithfully copied rendition of the glyph I’d observed at the end of Gamaliel’s Latin text: a cross within a shield-shaped lozenge.
    I handed the notebook back to Amelia and she laid it in her lap.
    “The memoir wasn’t lost or destroyed,” she said. “It was hidden. Gamaliel hid it because it contained a tale that might spell trouble for him and his congregation, namely, the story of Mistress Meg.”
    I nodded sagaciously. “Witchcraft was a pretty touchy subject in the seventeenth century.”
    “Witchcraft was regarded as a crime punishable by death,” Amelia stated firmly. “To praise it would be to risk dire punishment by church or civil authorities—sometimes both. To condemn it would be to risk a witch’s retribution. It’s not clear whether Gamaliel was afraid of the authorities or of Mistress Meg. All I know for certain is that he separated the pages of his forbidden tale and concealed them in various hiding places.”
    “Such as a cobbler’s chimney,” I said, as comprehension dawned. “Did the cobbler live in Finch, too?”
    “He lived directly across the lane from St. George’s,” Amelia informed me, “in Plover Cottage.”
    “Gamaliel hid the first page of his memoir in Plover Cottage?” I said, astonished. “Opal Taylor lives there now. She’ll be gobsmacked when she hears what was stuffed up her chimney.”
    “As rector, Gamaliel would have had ready access to Plover Cottage,” Amelia went on. “It would have been a simple matter for him to place the parchment in the chimney.” She glanced at her brother’s