Robert Neill – Witch Bane

Robert Neill – Witch Bane   (Arrow 1968, 1970: originally Hutchinson, 1967)

Blurb:
Lancashire in the time of Cromwell, a county cursed, like the rest of England, by civil war and beliefs in witchcraft ….

Accused of the murder of her husband by witchcraft, Mary Standen is only saved from hanging by the intervention of a young commander of a Troop of Horse as she lies naked and bound hand and foot. That same night, as an unwilling witness to a graveyard orgy, she sees for herself that there is indeed a witch coven in the village. Refusing to betray the participants, some of whom she knows, she finds suspicion once more pointing at her, and as the scene is set for a double battle – between royalists and parliamentarians and the witches and their persecutors – Mary is forced to flee for safety at the same time as the Scots march into Preston and Cromwell comes through the hills from Skipton.

see also the Witch-Bane thread on the Vault forum

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