When the other groups had hived off, Joy had kept Karen with her and appointed her Maiden – virtually assistant High Priestess – of the residual coven, where she and John could keep an eye on her. With Joy's death, Karen had been the only possible choice as High Priestess; she had taken over with energetic efficiency but surprising tart, handling John with a gentleness that had never been evident in her before. (One slightly astringent member remarked privately to her husband, 'Karen's not such a fool as we thought,' but her comment remained private.)
On the evening of 30 July, the whole coven – eight members in all – gathered at John's house to discuss the Premier's statement.
Grace Peebles, one of the original members with a congenital streak of nostalgia (John, while he could still be light-hearted, had often teased her with being an 'Old Gardnerian Holy-Writter"), was riding her favourite hobbyhorse. 'The whole thing's our own fault. Wicca should never have gone public. It started with Alex Sanders and it's got worse ever since. The old Craft was never like that – which is why it survived for centuries.'
'The old Craft when}' John asked wearily, no teasing in his voice now. 'During the seventeenth century? Of course it wasn't – you kept it secret or you ended on the gallows. Two thousand years ago? Of course it was – the festivals involved everybody. The last twenty years, Wicca hasn't deliberately gone public. It became public because thousands were turning to it naturally and no one was persecuting it. The Craft adjusts itself to the situation, not to any rigid pattern.'
'We've got some adjusting to do now, that's for sure,' Bill Lazenby said. 'For a start – what are we doing tomorrow, for Lughnasadh? Even if we hold it indoors, we're still an illegal religious gathering of more than six people. Do we cancel it? Or split into two fours? Or say, to hell with them – and get together with Anna's and Jean's?'
Karen said calmly: 'To hell with them… John?'
John was silent for a moment, and then said: 'Yes. We hold our Festival. And with Anna's and Jean's covens, if they're willing. The place near Virginia Water – we've never been disturbed there before, and it's in thick woodland a good kilometre from the road If anyone wants to
stay away, I won't criticize them.'
Nobody did and they began discussing whether to phone Anna and Jean or to send messengers. The matter was never resolved, because a sharp, imperative knocking on the front door silenced them.
Karen was the first to gather her wits. 'Bill, Penelope – upstairs, quick. That'll make us six. Legal, if this is what it sounds like.'
Thirty seconds later, John opened the front door.
'Mr John Hassell?'
'Yes.’
'We are police officers. We must ask you to accompany us to the station.'
John glanced at the man's warrant card, and asked: 'Are you arresting me – and if so, on what charge?'
'Preventive custody, sir, under the new Order in Council. Here is the magistrate's warrant.'
'So you have reason to believe I'm planning to contravene the Order? You're quite wrong, I assure you.'
‘I can't comment on that, sir; my superiors applied for the warrant, and it is merely my duty to implement it. But you have the right to make a statement to the court within…'
'I know my rights, officer. I've read the Order with great care.'
'Shall we keep it quiet and friendly, then?'
'By all means. Come inside and I'll pack a few things -for seventy-two hours.'
'As you say, sir.' When they were in the hall and the door was shut, the officer said awkwardly: 'Off the record, Mr Hassell, I'm sorry about this. I know what happened to your wife and if it had been up to me I'd have left you in peace. But that's how it is. I've got my job to do.'
John gave him a brittle, bright-eyed look. 'I know, officer. But cheer up. I'm sure you'll have far worse jobs to do before this is over.'
The policeman compressed his lips and did not answer. He glanced towards the sitting-room door, which was ajar and showed light from inside, but after a moment's hesitation deliberately turned his back on it.
'I'll get my things,' John said.
When John and the policemen had left, Karen closed the sitting-room door and stood with her back to the fireplace, looking down at the coven.
'Now,' she told them. 'We have a lot to talk about.'
Just how many High Priests and High Priestesses were taken into preventive custody that night the witchcraft movement never knew because no figures were published – in fact, although the police swoop was nation-wide and carefully simultaneous, the media only reported it indirectly and piecemeal. But within the movement the news spread like wildfire and no one was in any doubt that the arrests ran into several hundreds, or that the police knew exactly whom to take. In each area which was in the habit of holding collective Festivals, the year's Sabbat Queen, the Sabbat Maiden, and their respective Priests, were put under lock and key without a single exception; two who happened to be in hospital were placed under police guard and their substitutes who had been chosen to officiate at Lughnasadh were arrested as well. These seemed to make up the bulk of the arrests, though a handful of other key figures who might have been expected to step into the breach were also taken in. Officially, preventive custody was not 'arrest' but that was what everybody called it.
The effect on the witchcraft movement, already shaken by sudden and unheralded harassment after a generation of tolerance, was traumatic. In general covens withdrew into their shells; some celebrated Lughnasadh in groups of not more than six, others took a chance with full covens behind thick curtains, a few disappeared into woods or empty heathland with carefully screened candle-lanterns. Nobody risked the usual large-scale collective Sabbat, except one in Suffolk, one in Cornwall, and one – astonishingly – on Primrose Hill in London. These, to the bafflement of the police, were not in breach of the Order, because in each case a local clergyman (the Suffolk one a Catholic priest), his conscience outraged by the Order, had offered himself as official chairman of the gathering and been gladly accepted. Large contingents of police, arriving hurriedly at the three locations to break up the assembled witches and arrest the ringleaders, found everything legally in order, and themselves in the curious position of having to protect the witches against angry hecklers who wanted to take the law into their own hands. Next morning, three very indignant bishops had the culprits on their respective carpets, and the Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster demanded a joint meeting with the Prime Minister to devise a means of plugging the loophole in the Order immediately, lest any other of the more turbulent progressives in their own flocks might get the same idea. The Prime Minister was only too willing, and called in the President of the Methodist Conference and the Chief Rabbi as well. Within hours, an amendment to the Order was laid down that if, in the opinion of the police, a significant number attending any religious meeting were not genuinely of the denomination of the official chairman, that meeting constituted a breach of the Order. The progressives were even more outraged, quoting the Bible, the Koran and the Buddha with what might have been devastating effect if anyone had been listening; but few were and the loophole was plugged.
The Crusaders were not interested in legal niceties; they were out in force in search of Lughnasadh coven meetings and were unconcerned whether or not these exceeded the permitted number of six. How many curtained windows, up and down the country, which might conceal candlelight the Crusaders smashed that night, not even they bothered to count; and if quite a few of the curtains merely hid innocent people watching television, that was just too bad. (From then on, television-watchers developed the habit of leaving their curtains open.) In scattered areas the 'stormtroopers' succeeded in tracking down open-air Sabbats in what their celebrants had hoped were sufficiently isolated hiding places. All in all, according to the confidential report which reached Harley's desk in Beehive next day, 137 people were arrested for contravening the Order and twenty-eight under various headings from breach of the peace to grievous bodily harm. Of the three GBH arrests, only one had been an attacking Crusader; he had been unfortunate enough to be witnessed in action by a policeman with old-fashioned ideas about the beating-up of women.