PART 2: The whispers in town were one thing, but the secrets the women kept were quite another. For every suspicion murmured over the fence, there was a written truth, hidden away, out of sight. The first of these truths came from the diary of Sarah Dilling, the village midwife. She was a quiet, reserved woman who had delivered half the children in the county. Decades after her death, a folded page was found in an old medical textbook. The entry, written in a hasty but legible hand, described in detail the night she had been summoned to the Vancraftoft farm.
The birth was a secret. Ellis was the mother, but Sarah’s notes focused on the father, Joseph. He was present in the room, a presence described as overly intrusive, overly watchful. The grandfather might have worried, but this was different. He was a protector. The midwife’s most poignant observation concerned the baby itself, a fragile and silent infant. She wrote, “There was something strange about his gaze,” a vague but deeply unsettling description, suggesting an anomaly deeper than mere illness.
Sarah Dilling never went to court. Her fears were twofold. She dreaded Joseph’s wrath, a cold, silent anger that foretold disastrous consequences. But she also feared the Church and the town itself. Later, in a hushed conversation with a neighbor, she confided what she sincerely believed: that Joseph Vancraftoft was indeed the child’s father. But revealing such a thing aloud would bring misfortune upon her. So her entry in the diary remained hidden, and the silence continued.
Continued on the next page
ADVERTISEMENT
