Hummingbird Read online

  Hummingbird

  Susan C. Gore

  Austin Macauley Publishers

  Hummingbird

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Copyright © Susan C. Gore (2019)

  Acknowledgement

  Synopsis

  Ye Olde Map of Great Britain

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  About the Author

  Married for 45 years with two children and three grandchildren, Sue paediatrics. Sue is also a practising psychic/medium, some migrated to Australia in 1989 after several visits and settled in Queensland. She still works as a dedicated nurse, specialising in of her experiences have been added into this book. She is also a prize-winning, published author of poetry with an American magazine. A fun-loving, caring and sharing person that loves to put light in the life of people in need.

  About the Book

  Living in a man’s world in 17th-century England, Sarah is a woman with spirit and fortitude; she is a woman that will fight to the bitter end for her beliefs and the ones she loves. Confronted with betrayal, she suffers the torments and degradation that come from the actions of one who should have stood by her side. Will she survive the interrogation of a maniacal man and his comrades who are hell bent for self-gratification? Is there anyone that can save her from these tortuous lies?

  Dedication

  To Sarah, my Spirit guide, this book would not have eventuated without her.

  Copyright © Susan C. Gore (2019)

  The right of Susan C. Gore to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781528911955 (Paperback)

  ISBN 9781528959957 (ePub e-book)

  www.austinmacauley.com

  First Published (2019)

  Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

  25 Canada Square

  Canary Wharf

  London

  E14 5LQ

  Acknowledgement

  To my family and friends, all of whom played a part in the making of this book and encouraged me along the way; also to my daughter, Tammy J. Leeuwendal, artist of the sketches in this book.

  Synopsis

  A story of a young woman by the name Sarah Appleton who lived in the early to mid-17th century. The monarchy of the time was King Charles I: He succeeded his brother James I in 1625. It was a time where the monarchy was ill at ease with the parliament and religious sectors. King Charles had several dissolutions of parliament which led to mistrust from the people of the kingdom, many of whom supported Civil War at this time.

  It is a story of no ordinary woman; this woman has been gifted with a talent for communicating with the dead. As she matures, so do her skills of mediumship and psychic abilities. A talent such as this is strictly forbidden in England at this time and classed as Witchcraft, yet it is rife amongst the communities of the world. It is a story of love and loss, and the struggles of a young woman coming to terms with her abilities, knowing that she is pure of heart and not in cohorts with the devil as some would say. She struggles with the loss of family and having to fend for herself in an age where women were inferior to men. Sarah forges on and builds a life for herself with a bright future. She finds love and happiness only for it to be taken from her at an early age yet again. But being the resourceful woman that she has become, Sarah picks herself up and continues with the life she has made for herself and also the addition of her daughter Rose.

  The return of Sarah’s twin sister causes havoc; a jealousy she had not pre-empted comes forth, can this be the ruin of all she had built and loved.

  Would her life ever be the same? Or would her fate be sealed?

  Ye Olde Map of Great Britain

  Foreword

  As I look down on what was my earthly form; I see the flesh from my body smouldering and dripping into the fire; as the fat particles hit the embers, it creates sparks that shoot out of the flames toward the watching crowd. There are cries of sorrow from my friends and neighbours who believed in me, and there are cheers of joy emanating from the disbelievers, the ones that listen to the church and its blinkered way of viewing the world.

  This is what I had been reduced to; this is the result of living what I thought to be a pure and simple life, a life of healing and compassion to others, how could it have come to this?

  As I watch the flames leap around my mortal body and lick at the flesh that encased it, I recount the life that led me to where I am now, hovering above the final scene of Sarah Appleton, burning at the stake, convicted as a witch. I see my daughter fighting in vain to rescue the mother she idolised from the savage flames that consume her entire being.

  Chapter One

  My childhood was that of a simple country girl; I was the first born of twin girls born to a humble family that was filled with love and caring. Twins were not favoured in this day and often only one would survive due to lack of nutrition or poor sanitation. We were descendants of a family of apothecaries from my mother’s side; a trade that had been handed down from generation to generation. This was a skill that was highly admired and was in great need among both the higher and the lower classes.

  My father earned a reasonable wage from labouring at St Mary’s church; he worked long and arduous hours on the church grounds to support his family, making sure we were fed and clothed and with a roof over our heads which kept us safe and warm. This was supplemented by my mother’s business as an apothecary. William and Rose Croft were very much in love and adored their twin daughters Maud and Sarah. We were a solid family that worked hard and kept our private life mainly to ourselves, except for the church gatherings, where we would meet up with fellow parishioners and friends.

  Father was highly thought of within the parish, he was a hard working honest man who was up at the break of dawn and worked till dusk. He was always praised for the way he kept the church grounds, he took pride in his work and the parishioners were happy with the results of his labours. Father would say that he viewed this as the ‘Forever Home’ of the village ancestors and they deserve the respect of all who visit the hallowed grounds. He would come home at night weary and hungry from a day’s work of digging fresh graves and keeping the church yard in order. After his evening meal he would sit in his huge fireside chair with his pipe and a pot of ale. He was the man of the house and was respected as such, and Mother would fuss around him and make sure he was comfortable for the evening (even though she had worked hard all day long). There were times after dinner where we would sit around the fire with him, cosy and warm, and he would tell us spooky stories of ghosts that wandered around the church yard after the sun went down. Maud and I would sit on the floor and snuggle close to his legs for safety; after all, you never knew if one had followed him home? He would smile down on us with a twinkle in his eye and we knew we were safe. Mother would scold him for scaring the living daylights out of us, but we loved his stories and longed for more. At this point in time they were unaware that I was already having encounters of my own with the deceased.

  The church was the focal point of the village, i
t housed the Reverend Peter Cantrell who preached a sermon to behold, “Stray from the path and you would feel the wrath of the Almighty”! He was a foreboding man with an intolerant manner, who ruled his parish with zeal. On Sundays the villagers would flock to the church in their finery and sit in silence whilst the Reverend delivered his sermon. The sermon was always rich with the blessings of God and the good deeds of Jesus; but he would impose the outcome of your errors if you were to stray off the righteous path! You would be met with hell fire and damnation! Should this be so!

  After the service we would mingle outside for a while and the locals would catch up with each other for general chit chat whilst the children would play around the grave stones. My good friend Gareth would make a point of seeking me out and we would laugh and play together, he did not care much for my sister Maud; Gareth thought she was too snooty and rude. Maud did not mingle with the local children; she would stay by the elders and look on with disdain. Reverend Cantrell would also mingle with his parishioners and inadvertently invite himself to one or the other homes for a cooked Sunday roast. He would pay his respects to all of his parishioners throughout the week, thus ensuring a hearty meal every day; in fact he was so revered throughout the community, they would present him with eggs, milk, bread etc., plus a tipple of port to which he was very fond. I’m sure this way the village folk felt they were ensuring their passage to paradise.

  Mother was a gentle woman of creativity and resourcefulness; she knew all there was to know about herbs, potions and mixtures. Her natural remedies would cure all kinds of ailments and maladies; she was well-known in the village and people would come from far and wide for her advice and hopefully a cure. She would help the women during childbirth, ensuring a safe delivery of the new born even when there were complications. After a delivery, she would bring home a chicken or potatoes and vegetables, this was her payment, as people in the parish were cash poor but many grew their own produce. There were times when she would come home and just cry in her room, we knew then that either the baby had died or the Mother was lost, at times like these we just left her in peace. She was a kind woman with a heart of pure gold; nothing was too much for her, always ready to lend a hand and give advice where needed.

  In early modern England women were expected to learn the basic techniques needed to make home remedies. They followed old traditions of making medicines to treat their extended families, and poor women often sold herbs and medicines to support their families. Some women kept kitchen gardens that included medicinal plants for their own use but very few went ahead to study the art of an apothecary. Apothecaries were much more than drug sellers, they prepared medicines from materials like herbs and minerals. Apprenticeship training included medicinal gardens and learning techniques necessary to prepare medicines, including fermentation and distillation. They had to be skilful at extracting essences from natural products and compounding them into medicines. Apprentice apothecaries also needed to learn Latin in order to understand the different herbs and medicines of the past and present, all of which found their way into prescriptions of that era. Mother was such a woman, highly skilled and mostly self-taught. She was a woman of small stature yet strong and determined to achieve success in all that she attempted, she home schooled Maud and I to a level that we could commune with any and all manner of situations. I was very close to my mother and I was eager to learn all that I could from her so that one day I could help or take over from her just the way she had learned from her father, who was registered as an official apothecary.

  We would spend many hours together diarising her work and documenting the outcome of a new herb or potion. Mother and I would walk together to the woodlands and hedgerows collecting plants, wild herbs and fungi to refill her stock in the store room. I loved the outings, the fresh air and the freedom it ensued; I was eager to learn all that she could teach me. We lived just outside the village of Middleton in East Anglia, near the East Winch road; this is approximately three miles from Kings Lynn, which is our major town for trading. Middleton is a medium sized parish in west Norfolk and on the edge of the Fens. Settlements of the parish are fairly secluded and there are clusters of small villages, these being fair green, Middleton, Tower end and Blackborough End. Middleton is a common place name that comes from the Old English meaning ‘middle farmstead or estate’. Middleton had a thriving community and was frequented by many travellers and traders that sold their wares and replenished the items that our village was reputed to produce. The traders would bring us news of the capitol and what was happening in the world out there beyond, they would bring new textiles and spices.

  Mother would buy the exotic spices for fermentation and distilling that would boost the products she made. It was exciting to hear all the tales that they had encountered from far and wide. My sister was more interested in this type of news than I ever was and she would listen to conversations that were not for her ears, yet held her captivated. Maud had no interest in Mother’s field of work or any other field of work for that matter, other than daydreaming and time wasting. She dreamed that one day her knight in shining armour would whisk her away to a life of decadence and fancy. Maud had been a sickly child and my parents thought that she would not survive from her frailties; she was treated with kid gloves and was spoilt rotten. Maud and I did not get along well at all, we did not have that bond that twins were supposed to have; we argued constantly, and Maud would try her best to cause trouble by blaming me for something she had done, or hiding things from me that she knew I needed. She always thought she was better than me and swore that I was not her twin and had been adopted from a beggar family; secretly I thought it was the other way around. She would always escape her daily chores as Mother thought her to be a little delicate and needed to be treated gently; “tread carefully” she would say to me, “or she will go into one of her infamous tantrums”. I swear that these tantrums were made-up and overzealous just to get her out of a state of affairs! She had learned how to manipulate a situation and take full advantage of the label that Mother and Father had given her in order to get what she wanted.

  Mother would say that I was made of tougher material with traits from her side of the family and that I should just let things slide for the sanity of the household. This was a hard task to be afforded as I hated injustice and would often rebel. Maud would sit back with a sly grin on her face in triumph as I was scolded and taken into account for reacting. We were poles apart in looks and character; She was fair haired, I was dark, she had porcelain skin, I had a slightly olive tone, there was no blemish upon her body, where as I had a birthmark upon my shoulder. Mother drew a sketch of it for me to see, it was a pretty birthmark, some said it was the image of a humming bird, to which I agreed and was proud, yet I was bidden to keep it covered? The reason why was a mystery to me, but I would eventually find out; none the less I kept that sketch on my dresser by my bed, I was proud to have this mark on my shoulder.

  As a child I was more like a Tom Boy, I loved to climb trees, fish in the local waters, collect bugs and study them. I had a notebook full of sketches of different bugs and creatures, what their names were and what their cycle of life entailed. I was never one for the prissy dresses that Maud would wear, I loved the more practical plain attire that helped me blend in rather than stand out. I would think nothing of mucking out the animal pens, rollie pollies down the grassy banks, apple scrumping and blackberry picking; these were all great pleasures to me (though Mother would cringe at the state of my clothes).

  Our home was a modest one which had belonged to our family for generations and held many treasured memories. We had several acres of land which afforded room for chickens, a vegetable garden and a herd of Angora goats which we bred successfully. The goats provided fresh milk and wool for spinning; this helped with the household income, as Angora wool was well sought after by the traders from the capitol. My mother taught me how to clean the goat fleece, spin the wool, and prepare it in hanks ready for selling in the markets. We would
also sell goat’s milk, vegetables and fresh eggs. I would spend many hours preparing the fleeces and sitting at the spinning wheel in quiet contemplation. I would reflect on all that I had learned and ponder my own future as an apothecary; it was the only time where I could seek solitude tucked away in the back barn and left to my own private thoughts and feelings. It was here that my thoughts would drift away to another world, I felt that I had a connection with something of a higher nature; I had started to hear voices in my head that were from people I knew to be deceased yet came through so clearly. At times they would appear in front of me plain as day, then they would just fade away; were they just a figment of my imagination? I realised that I had a knack of knowing things about the past, present and future; I found that I could predict the outcome of an event that had not yet occurred. I was not fazed by any of this; to me it was normal and pure of heart.

  One beautiful summer’s morning, I was strolling towards the woodlands keeping an eye open for a fresh batch of blackberries when I encountered a young girl sat on an embankment, she was crying, she was holding her apron to her face to catch the tears. I was about eight years old and she would have been roughly the same age. I sat beside her and asked if she was alright, maybe she had taken a fall I thought? After a few seconds she raised her face from her hands and looked at me; she was very pale with long brown wavy hair, her eyes were dark and sunken, yet the whites were blood shot from crying, her skin was white as snow. She looked at me and she said, “I’m lost,” then she just vanished into thin air. I was taken aback at first but then realised that I had encountered my first face to face contact.