by Stacey Halls
I heard my mother shifting in her bed. “Fleetwood,” she said. “Are you listening? I asked if you liked Richard.”
“I suppose he will do,” I had replied, and blew out my candle with a smile.
* * *
I rose awkwardly, my limbs stiff, and went into the long gallery at the front of the house to walk back and forth. To my surprise, Roger was there, examining the royal coat of arms above the fireplace with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Fear God, honor thy king, eschew evil and do good. Seek peace and ensue it,” I recited the motif on the mantel from memory.
“Very good, Fleetwood. Consider it a promise from your justice of the peace.”
“Richard’s uncle Lawrence had that put in. I think he hoped King James would hear about it and not feel the need to visit.”
“The Shuttleworths are loyal to the crown, of course.” There was an edge of warning in Roger’s tone.
“Faithful as dogs.”
Roger was thoughtful. “More demonstrations of loyalty need to be made in these parts. But how to make them?”
“I think it is not so much lack of loyalty but confidence. Besides, he would surely avoid these areas, with their old ways of faith.”
“This corner of the kingdom with its Catholic heritage causes His Majesty a great deal of anxiety. A lot more could be done to honor thy king and eschew evil, as you Shuttleworths say.” He learned forward and frowned. “I had not noticed the words around the king’s arms. What does it say?”
“Honi soit qui mal y pense. ‘Shame on him who thinks evil of it.’”
He made a face, as though he was considering it. “Indeed. But thinks evil of what, Lawrence will never be able to tell us. Maybe I will ask the king himself.”
“You’re at court soon?”
Roger nodded. “His Majesty requires all of Lancaster’s justices of the peace to make a record of every person who does not take communion at church.”
“For what purpose?”
“Oh, Fleetwood, you need not concern yourself with matters of the court, they hardly affect the life of a young gentlewoman. You do your duty and give your husband lots of little Shuttleworths, and I will do my duty in keeping Pendle safe.” I must have looked displeased, because he became genial and looked more kindly on me. “Well, if you must know, His Majesty is still very...uneasy after the events at Parliament seven years ago. And you may have heard the whisperings about some of the treasonists escaping to Lancaster. Something must be done to demonstrate the county’s loyalty to the crown, because currently the king is very mistrustful of our little part of the north, and the lawless people within it. He thinks us a pack of wild dogs, compared to the genteel lords and ladies of the south. We are very far from society here, and I think he is afraid. But do you know what else he is mistrustful of?”
I shook my head.
“Witches.” There was a gleam of triumph in his eye, and it took a moment for me to understand.
“You mean Alizon Device?”
Roger nodded. “If I can convince the king that the people of Lancaster are under threat from the thing he hates most, his sympathies might extend to us, and he might grow less suspicious. If I am seen excavating the bad seeds, if you will, the county may grow and prosper, and we may rejoin the kingdom with a new reputation.”
“But Catholics and witches are not the same thing. There are plenty of the first here, but not the latter.”
“More than you think,” was Roger’s easy answer. “And the king sees them as the same thing, besides.”
“Well, I doubt very much that the king should worry about us storing gunpowder around here. It’s far too wet,” I said, and Roger laughed. I wondered if I should tell him about my letter, folded deep in my pocket. Might he know already? “Where is Richard?” I asked instead.
“He has some business with his steward and then he is showing me his new falcon before accompanying me back to Read. Will you join us?”
“He spends more time with that creature than me. No, thank you. But you could tell him to ask Henry Hopwood the tailor, to call. I need some new clothes.”
Roger laughed as we passed the entrance to my chambers and reached the top of the stairs. “You and my Katherine are two equal forces. But still, neither of you are a match for Richard. He has the largest collection outside of the king’s wardrobe.” He paused at the top of the staircase. “You will come and see Katherine soon? She often asks after you and your latest fashions. She is fascinated to see what the young people are wearing.”
I smiled and bowed as he descended the staircase that curled around the tower, but before he disappeared I called his name again, because I felt a sudden ache, and wanted desperately for him to embrace me as a father might. Roger certainly smelled as a father might—or so I imagined—of woodsmoke, and horsehair, and tobacco. He stood waiting below the portrait of my mother and me as a child—the one I would not hang in the long gallery or anywhere else. The reason was nobody paused for long on the stairs, meaning guests walked past it and often forgot to mention it by the time they reached the next floor. In the picture, which was about the same height as me, my mother dominated the frame in her wide collar and gown of scarletwork. I occupied the bottom left corner, my mother’s arm bent toward me as though about to hurry me out of the frame. A little blackbird sat on my hand, the pet I kept in a cage in my room made immortal. I could still recall the unpleasant silence while sitting for it in the great hall at Barton, and the pointy-faced artist with the colored oils on his lips; the blackened tip of his tongue that flicked out of his mouth like a serpent.
“Roger...” My voice died in my throat. “Do you think John Law will live?”
“Do not fret,” Roger said. “His son is caring for him.”
I went back to my chamber and wondered how Roger Nowell slept with a witch in the house, and decided soundly.
* * *
I’d hidden the pan under the bed for when I needed it and covered it with a cloth, but Richard still recoiled when he walked into the bedroom. I was lying in my nightdress, weak and empty, what little pike I’d had at dinner clinging to the bottom of the bowl. Richard sighed and came to kneel by me.
“Are you no better? You’ve barely eaten. I so want you to be well.”
I pulled at my nightdress so the tiny mound of my stomach showed through. Richard gazed at it, resting a gentle hand on the bump. I twirled his gold ring, the one his father gave him that he never took off. I could not decide what was worse: how sick I felt or not knowing if my husband was keeping this great truth from me, for at some point that evening it had dawned on me as I sat in my chamber with only the candles’ cheerful sputter for company: of course Richard valued his child’s life more than mine. Would any man not who had a great deal to leave behind?
“Richard?” I asked. “What will happen if I cannot give you an heir?” I thought of the old kings’ wives’ necks on the chopping blocks. What would be better: to go messily and painfully, thrashing about in a blood-soaked bed; or clean and resigned, wearing your best dress? Divorce was decades old, but the word struck as much fear as death.
“Don’t speak such things. It will not happen this time—the Lord will be kind to us. We will employ the best midwife.”
“We had a midwife last time. She did not stop it from coming out dead.”
He stood to undress, the candlelight casting off his buttons, then settling on his bare skin. I watched him change into his nightshirt, then he came to my bedside and took my cold hand and held it, pink against gray. Although his voice was calm, his face was worried. “Until you are well again, I will sleep in the dressing room.”
My stomach lurched. “No! Richard, please, I won’t hear of it. I’ll not be sick again. I’ll have a maid remove the pan.” I tried to climb out of bed but Richard stopped me.
“I will only be in the next room until you are
better, which will be very soon.”
“Richard, don’t. Please. I don’t like sleeping alone, you know I don’t—The Nightmare.”
When I woke soaked with sweat and blind with terror, he would hold me until I stopped trembling. It only happened a few times a year, but he knew I would be terrified if he was not there.
“Please don’t sleep in the dressing room. Please stay with me, I’m afraid.”
But he kissed my forehead, and with a pained face left with my undigested dinner at arm’s length. I slid down in our bed, feeling tears press at my eyes as I thought about how he would never have done this when we were first married. After the wedding, in the house on the Strand, I could not sleep with the chaos outside the window. London was new to me, and everything in it—carriage wheels rolling, and the sounds of boatmen coming ashore, and the cries and bells and crowds of people. Richard would sit up with me at night, reading or drawing or just lying quietly stroking my hair. When it got colder and we moved farther out to the fields and wide skies of Islington, I told him I’d grown used to the sounds of the Strand, and now wouldn’t be able to sleep because it was too quiet. He laughed and said I was far too spoiled and the only thing for it was for him to make the noises for me. Night after night, just as I was about to fall asleep, he neighed into the darkness, or gave the cry of a knife sharpener, or juggled like a coal seller pretending to scald his hands. I’d never laughed so much in all my life.
Once, when it was snowing outside and the fire was low in the grate, I asked to see what he was drawing. He told me to wait until he was finished. I watched him work, his face taut with concentration, his hands making quick little movements and soft noises on the page. When he turned the paper around, I saw myself. I was wearing a beautiful trimmed hat, a fine ruff and collar and elegant Spanish slippers. Around my shoulders was a cloak that flowed off the page, pressed with Paris buttons. I could almost feel its thickness.
“What color is it?” I whispered, running my fingertips along the lines.
“The cloak is of branched satin and orange wool,” he said proudly. “I’ll have it made tomorrow and this is what you will wear to ride home in. To Gawthorpe.”
Nobody had ever done such a thing for me before. When the winter ended, we arrived at the brand-new house that no one had ever lived in, just as he said. The journey took nine days, and all I could think about the whole way was arriving in Lancaster as Mistress Shuttleworth, wearing an outfit the likes of which not a soul in these parts had ever seen. Richard looked equally fine in an outfit he designed himself, a dagger and sword at his hip. Villagers lined the streets as we drew closer to our new home, smiling and waving. But with time the picture had changed in my mind, and all I could see was two children dressed for a play.
I blew out the candle and listened for noise from the other room. That was the first time in our marriage we were both in the house and I was sleeping alone.
* * *
He did not come to me the next morning, going down to break his fast without waking me. He read his correspondence while I sat opposite, trying to force bread and honey into my mouth and keep it down. I watched his face, creasing or brightening as he read; I did not ask who wrote. As the servants passed in and out of the dining chamber I wondered who knew a truckle bed and fresh linen had been placed in the dressing room next to our bedroom. As though in answer, one of the kitchen girls caught my eye and looked hurriedly away, the tops of her ears turning red. I felt cold, and could not eat or say what I wanted to, so like a coward I went to walk up and down the long gallery and pray, hoping for a sign from God. I watched the trees and the sky, and felt that burning itch to be outside without my thoughts instead of inside with them.
Richard was in the great hall, seated with James the steward, the household ledger open between them. The Gawthorpe ledger was as important in our house as the King’s Bible: everything we bought, every bill we paid and everything that came in or out of Gawthorpe—whether on wheels, horseback or rolled in a barrel—was inked on its thick pages in James’s immaculate hand. Suits of armor, tapestries and other frivolities that Richard liked to spend his money on were committed in ink, as well as everyday things: stockings for the servants, cork for the wine. But like me, Richard took little interest in it, preferring to leave it to our men, so when I found him I knew he would be impatient: talk of quit-rents and profits bored him. As if reminding him to take the estate’s business seriously, the grave portrait of his uncle the reverend Lawrence sat overlooking them, the words death is the way unto life painted at his shoulder.
I swallowed. “Richard?”
He looked up quickly, welcoming the distraction. Then two things happened at once: James turned a new leaf so the pages were blank, even though they had only been halfway down the last, and I noticed Richard was dressed to travel.
“You are going away?”
“Lancaster. I leave tonight.”
“Oh. Did someone write to you this morning?”
“Only my sisters with news from London. They always write me a letter each but it might as well be one—they only talk of the same people and plays and the latest victim of scandal. At least there is more to entertain them there than at Forcett with my mother. I expect they’ll never want to move back to York. Did you need me?”
Yes, I need you. The room rang with silence. James’s feather quivered, its inky point eager to scratch. I wanted to say “Don’t go,” but instead replied, “How are the Mistresses Shuttleworth?”
“Eleanor hints at something that has quite excited her, but Anne refers to it not at all.”
“Perhaps she is engaged.”
“It is not like Eleanor to be subtle.”
“Perhaps she hopes to be engaged, then.” I continued, though James cleared his throat pointedly. “I am going into Padiham this morning for some linen from Mrs. Kendall’s. Is there anything you need?”
“Why don’t you have one of the servants go?”
“They will get the wrong thing.”
“You are well enough?”
Lawrence’s gray eyes stared at me from the frame. Death is the way unto life. “Yes.” I did not want him to go; he was always going, and I was always staying. “When will you be back?”
“In a few days. Shall I check on Barton on my travels?”
“Why? My mother no longer lives there, there will be nothing but empty rooms and mice.”
“I should look in every now and again to check all is in order.”
James sniffed and shifted in his seat. I was taking up valuable time with his master. Perhaps then Richard looked at me properly, for he came to me, tilting my chin to his face with his finger.
“And how about we fit in a trip to London soon? Eleanor and Anne have made me miss it. We can get you one of the best midwives, and the Lord knows we are starved of entertainment in these parts. This dreary hall could use some joy. James, find out if there are any players traveling in the area that could come and perform. Or send for some.” He wrapped an arm around my waist and held my hand as though we were about to dance. Puck shuffled up to us, grunting curiously. “Otherwise I shall have to train Puck to be a dancing bear. Behold!”
He discarded me and pulled the dog up to his height so Puck’s great paws rested on his shoulders and his monstrous head was level with Richard’s. I could not help but smile as they sauntered in an awkward dance, Puck’s tongue lolling as his feet staggered on the stone flags before he crashed ungracefully to the ground. He came immediately to me for a rewarding pat.
“Useless creature. We will have to work on our routine,” said Richard.
He left me with James, and James with their unfinished business. I knew I was not the only person in the household left disarmed at times by my husband’s shifting moods that were like clouds scudding across the sun. I watched him go, feeling his kiss feathery light on my cheek, and the weight of everything else heavy a
s a wet cloak around my shoulders.
CHAPTER FOUR
I’d heard of wise women, who could give you a cup of something and make you bleed so your stomach went flat again. Just as there were herbs and potions to make it come out, were there not different ones to make it stay in, make it live? The little I’d heard was in snatches of conversation I was on the edge of, when the servants hadn’t known I was sitting quietly in the next room, or from pursed lips at a dinner table in some hall or other, before the topic swiftly moved on to one more tasteful. If only I had a friend I could ask; I could hardly speak to the apothecary myself.
The ride from Gawthorpe to Padiham was a pleasant one through wide-spaced trees until the land opened out onto the road. It was cold and bright, and I was glad my thick wool cloak covered me. I tied the horse outside the clothiers, stroking her coal-black mane once, twice, before leaving her.
“Good morning, Mistress,” said face after plain face.
I returned their greetings, noticing them greedily examining every inch of me, from my hat to my gloves. It was impossible to be inconspicuous.
I paused at the apothecary’s door, my hand half raised to push it open. In the dark, narrow little shop, with all its scents that pressed in and made my head spin, were dozens of miniature bottles and tapestries of herbs hanging from the walls. It was very possible some might stop the sickness coming, stop the child leaving. Stop me from dying, even. But it was a different language, and one I could not speak.
I ordered my linen from Mrs. Kendall the clothier and thought I saw her bright little eyes flick down my front. It was hard to tell with village people, if they suspected you were in childbed or were admiring your Paris buttons.
“Mrs. Kendall,” I imagined whispering. She would no doubt grow confidential and press her round stomach against the counter, leaning forward. “Do you know a wise woman?”