The Familiars

by Stacey Halls

  “Fleetwood,” she said, lowering her voice and glancing over her shoulder to check the door was closed. I could smell the sickly pomade she dabbed at her wrists. “Richard tells me you are expecting again. If I am not mistaken, you have lost three children before they came to this earth.”

  “I have not lost anything.” I began to shiver.

  “Then I will put it plainly. Three times you have failed to carry a child. Do you in honesty think you should be throwing yourself off horses? You are not being careful enough. You have a midwife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you find her?”

  “She is local. From Colne.”

  “Might you have been wiser to employ a woman who came recommended from a family we know? Did you or Richard speak to Jane Towneley? Or Margaret Starkie?”

  I stared at Prudence’s plaster face. Her stoic gaze avoided mine, landing somewhere in the distance. I was a wife, the mistress of one of the finest households for miles around, and I was standing in my nightgown being scolded by my mother. Had Richard invited her? He knew how I hated her. I clenched my fists, once, twice, three times. “Whomever I employ is my decision, Mother.” I coated the last word with honey and her face, so composed at all times, betrayed a tiny flicker of fury.

  “I shall discuss it with Richard,” she said. “In the meantime, I want you to promise you are doing everything you can to carry this child into life. I am not convinced you are currently. More rest is required, and...indoor pursuits. Perhaps take up an instrument instead of galloping around like a squire. You have a fine husband, and if you start behaving like a wife and mother, God’s gift will come. I did not unite our families so you could play at being a princess in a tower. Now, I expect you to dine with me. Please get dressed and meet me downstairs.”

  I heard her descend the staircase and prayed that her portrait would fall from its hangings and flatten her.

  Richard poured a glass of red wine under my nose and passed it to my mother. It was dark as a ruby, the same color that had leaked from me three times—surprisingly beautiful in its richness, drenching the bed linen that had to be burned under the sky.

  To avoid its heady scent I lifted my face to the ceiling. The plasterwork in the dining room was decorated with dozens of bunches of grapes, their vines climbing out toward the corners, entwining like lovers’ hands.

  “No wine for you, Fleetwood?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Richard poured another glass for his friend, Thomas Lister, who was passing through on his way to York. We sat around the fire, which was low, and the smokiness of it was making me drowsy. Not drowsy enough, however, to miss how Thomas’s greedy glance slipped to Richard’s rings when he handed his friend the glass. His own bare hand flexed in response and he caught my eye, looking immediately away.

  In years, Thomas was somewhere in between Richard’s age and mine, and his wealth was somewhere in between a plain country gentleman and ours. He would have admitted to the first but never the latter. He and Richard had other things in common: they were both married four years, their fathers had died and they had inherited large estates with mothers and sisters to support. Four years earlier, Master Lister Senior had been taken ill at his son’s wedding, collapsing during the vows and dying a few days later. Thomas’s mother never truly recovered and hadn’t left the house in all that time.

  I found Thomas Lister a strange and rather interesting man—he did not easily make conversation, preferring to be somewhere on the edge of it. His wide eyes bulged slightly and he was very small and slim, like a woman. Richard said his build made him a great rider, that he held himself straight as an arrow.

  My mother failed to mix comfortably with young people: she had a way of making them feel like infants, and Thomas stuttered a polite response when she asked after his mother. He was rescued by the entrance of Edmund the apprentice, who told Richard that a woman had arrived from one of the farms with news of a dog that had withered a ewe. In those days we kept hundreds of sheep in the fields; the soil was too wet for anything else.

  There was a pause, in which Richard set his glass down. “To whom does the dog belong?”

  Edmund shook his head. “She knows not, Master. She found it running around, worrying the flock. She asks you to come quickly.”

  Richard hurried out. People were always coming to knock at our door and tell us their tales. Richard was generous, giving them grain when their crops were down and wood to repair their houses. There were two hundred families in Padiham and just as many problems laid at our door since we’d been there.

  “What takes you to York?” my mother asked Thomas. She was making the point of being a good hostess, which I was not.

  “I am going to a trial at the Lent assizes,” said Thomas.

  “A trial?”

  The logs in the hearth cracked and burned. I wondered how long Richard would be gone; it was the daylight gate, and darkness pressed in at the windows.

  “For what purpose?” my mother asked, draining her glass.

  Thomas shifted in his chair. “A murder trial,” he said softly. “The accused is a woman named Jennet Preston.”

  I sat up a little straighter. “Do you know her?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, very well.” A tendon jumped in his cheek. “She worked for my family for many years, but since my father died she has not left us alone. We gave her kindness and favors but she is ungrateful, always asking for more.”

  “Who is she accused of murdering?”

  “A child.”

  Both my mother and I were united briefly in shock. Thomas stared grimly at the fire.

  “Are you speaking for her?”

  Thomas looked sharply at me. “For her? Against her. She murdered another servant’s son—an infant, not a year old—brutally and heartlessly.”

  Before I could stop it, a memory crowded in: a small, cold body; two tiny rows of eyelashes that would never open. I closed my eyes and forced the image away.

  “Why would she do that?” I asked.

  “Because she is a jealous woman,” Thomas said shortly. “She failed to seduce Edward and so took the thing that was most precious to him and his wife. She is a witch.”

  My mother leaned forward. “Another witch?” Thomas was confused. “You have not heard of the events at Read Hall?”

  “How do you know of the events at Read Hall?” I asked.

  She shrugged one shoulder dismissively. “Richard told me.”

  She said it in a way that implied of course he would inform his mother-in-law of every matter of which he knew. But she had a way of drawing things out of people, of picking up on a moment of hesitation or an offhand comment and worrying it like the dog with the ewe. Richard would not have spread his friend’s affairs about the county; my mother must already have heard it from someone else and no doubt questioned him while he was occupied and distracted.

  “What is at Read Hall?” Thomas asked, looking from one of us to the other.

  So my mother told him about Roger and the peddler John Law and the witch Alizon Device, and he listened with great interest.

  Stifling a yawn and searching for distraction, I turned my attention to the frieze that crowded the tops of the dining room walls. Mermaids, dolphins, griffins and all sorts of creatures, half-human, half-animal, fixed their attention on the center of the room, as though we were at some great mythical court. When I came to Gawthorpe the frieze was my favorite thing about the house, and I would walk round and round examining each figure and giving them names and little stories. Here were two orphan sisters who were princesses of the sea and ruled the waves; there was a lion army with their shields, primed to attack. I watched them grow darker and more mysterious as the daylight gate left and night arrived, and my mother and Thomas Lister nattered like two washerwomen. My eyelids began to droop; my mouth was dry and my back ached
. Until Richard came back I would have to sit here, and there was no sign of him.

  That’s when it occurred to me: Richard and I would have to sleep in the same bed as long as my mother was here. She had given no sign that she had seen the truckle bed, but perhaps Richard had closed the dressing room door.

  I pulled at the rolls in my hair and wondered how long until I could take them out.

  “The girl is at Nowell’s house,” my mother was saying, her eyes shining. “He is keeping her there so she can do no harm to others.”

  “And she confessed?”

  “So they say.”

  “And Nowell thinks there are others?”

  My mother nodded. “In the same family.”

  “Heavens, Mother. Anyone would think you had been walking alongside John Law when he was cursed,” I said.

  Thomas was looking thoughtful, clutching his glass against his chest.

  “Will you admire our mermaids, Thomas?” I asked. “Take a closer look. They are quite remarkable, designed by two brothers who carried out all the plasterwork at Gawthorpe.”

  Obligingly he stood and approached them, and I turned to my mother and whispered, “We do not talk of Roger Nowell’s business like village wives in this house. He is our friend. Now Thomas is going to take what you told him to York, which is farther than it needed to go.”

  My mother’s face grew sour. “I am merely informing your neighbor of what is happening under his nose. Everyone will know soon enough that there are witches in these parts. And so they should. Do they not say the women are wild here?”

  “I know not what they say, nor do I care to. And I’m not sure wild is the same as evil.”

  “Very skilled work,” Thomas commented politely behind us. “Extremely intricate. Quite fantastical.” He seemed stirred and didn’t come back to his seat. “I will set out again before it gets dark. I may call at Read Hall before my journey to York.”

  “Read Hall is five miles in the other direction,” I said.

  He reached for his cloak. “My regards to Richard.”

  He left swiftly, his boots echoing in the passage. There was a moment of silence, then I excused myself on the pretense of needing to go to bed.

  The candles had been lit in my chamber and I stood in front of the glass to remove the rolls from my hair. It looked weak and thin, and strands fell away to the floor when I combed through it. I went to the window to close the drapes and in the glass saw Richard’s outline in the doorway.

  “You’ll sleep in here tonight?” I asked.

  “I suppose.”

  I turned and my heart stopped in my chest. His hands were scarlet. Blood coated his doublet and there were flecks on his face and up to his elbows on both arms.

  “What happened?”

  “I’ve sent for a jug.” He wiped his hands along his arms but the blood was dried. The skin around his fingernails was already turning brown. “It was a mess. If I hadn’t seen the dog I would have thought a wolf had done it.”

  I walked over to the bed and sat on it to remove my slippers.

  “That’s impossible. There have been no wolves for a hundred years.”

  I thought about our bodies being close again tonight, his warmth next to me, spreading toward me. Maybe I could run my finger down his spine like I used to. Maybe he would turn and put his mouth to mine, his hardness inside me. Even if we never slept in the same bed again, I would never forget the soft warmth of his skin at the tips of my fingers. I thought of the secret letter, and the image vanished.

  “Was the sheep dead?” I asked, turning to let Richard unlace me.

  “No. I had to kill it.”

  “And the dog? What was it?”

  “A brown mongrel. It ran off before I could catch it. I’ll ask around to find out who it belongs to.”

  “I have hired the girl who rescued me as a midwife.”

  “Oh, yes, what was her name? She is a midwife?”

  “Alice. She is very experienced.” I did not meet his eye. “I hope you don’t mind—I’ve lent her a horse from the stables, for while she is visiting me.”

  “Not one of mine?”

  “No, the gray draft mare. She is quite old now. Richard...” I swallowed. “Will you stay in here from tonight?”

  “Many men and their wives sleep in different rooms, it’s not unusual,” he replied, not unkindly.

  “It should be.”

  “Nonsense. Besides, you are already with child. It is not as though we can make another one.”

  But I did not hear him, because I’d lifted my smock over my head. A fine thread of scarlet was trailing down my thigh. I halted it on its path with a finger, bringing it to my mouth. I sat naked on the bed, not wanting to turn round, not knowing what to do now that the moment I had been dreading was here. Panic rolled toward me like storm clouds, and I closed my eyes and prayed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I lay awake, stiff as a board next to Richard’s soft snores, rising finally to walk in the long gallery while the moonlight streamed in. The house was silent, and the polished floors gleamed bright as snow. The flooring creaked under my silent tread as I went up and down, east to west and back again. I returned to bed before the day arrived. More than once I looked at the dried streak of red that had faded into my skin to prove it had happened, or rather had started to happen, and then stopped.

  Alice had asked me to give her a few days to collect some herbs that would make me stronger, and it already felt like an eternity, so in the morning while everyone breakfasted, I walked out to give Puck his exercise. I could not eat because my stomach was like a bag of eels again, but with worry this time. We turned right out of the house and went along the edge of the lawn, following the river and passing the great barn and outbuildings. The dogs in their kennels caught Puck’s scent and drove themselves into a fury. He sniffed around the corners and walls, ignoring them. Sometimes I wondered if he knew he was a dog. I wondered if he could remember anything from before I’d rescued him and hoped he couldn’t.

  “Good morning, Mistress,” the farming men and apprentices said, laden with tools and ropes and things I had no idea the uses of.

  “Good morning,” I said, and walked on.

  The house and all its buildings were soon swallowed by the trees, which closed over it like a green drape. They rustled around me and I followed the narrow road that went away from Gawthorpe, occasionally watching Puck as he explored, flitting through trees, his nose fixed to the ground.

  When I was a quarter of a mile or so from the house I could see two figures approaching on horseback. I stepped closer to the trees and waited, recognizing the larger shape to be Roger. When they were ten yards or so away, he spoke briefly to the person on his right—a woman, in a plain wool dress. My eyesight was poor, but I knew it was not his wife, Katherine. Roger dismounted and approached holding the reins of his horse, which I noticed was roped to its companion. A prisoner, then. I looked up into the pale, shrewd face of the young woman, with dark eyes and thin lips. Her spindly white hands were bound in manacles, which were tied to the reins. My gaze lingered a moment too long on them, and when I looked up, she was regarding me with a hostile sort of pride.

  “Mistress, I am pleased to see you out walking on this fine day. You look to be in invigorated spirits,” said Roger.

  “Are you visiting us?” I asked, holding my hand out to let him kiss it.

  “A different kind of visit today—more an invitation for Richard, in fact. Is he at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he have free time this morning?”

  “He leaves for Manchester in an hour,” I lied. Richard was not going off with Roger and leaving me alone with my mother if I had anything to do with it. “His things are being prepared. Is everything all right?”

  He nodded. It was strange for him to not introduce his com
panion, especially not to me. “That’s disappointing. I am going now to Ashlar House.”

  “James Walmsley’s home?”

  “Indeed. I wondered if Richard would be interested in accompanying me—I have two interviews to conduct and would appreciate his assistance.” He leaned closer. “He is going to do great things one day, your husband. Mark my words, he will be high in government by the time he is as old as I am, and I plan to help him on his way. He has the advantage of birth that I did not, and his uncle was well-known at court. At some point I will introduce him to the king, and I wish for him to have a hand in these developments at Pendle because they are important, not just for me but for him. They could further him in the eyes of the crown. I trust his opinion, as does Master Walmsley, but we shall have to get on without him today.” He turned to glance back at his companion, whose quiet presence was somehow unnerving.

  “I hear you have employed a midwife,” Roger said unexpectedly.

  I blinked in surprise. It was hard to stay present with the malicious radiance emitting from Roger’s unknown companion. As magistrate, he was often carting felons around the county and sometimes took them up to the gaol at Lancaster.

  “I have,” I replied, wondering how he knew. Richard had not seen him since their hunt.

  Roger beamed. “Wonderful. There will be an heir at Gawthorpe before the year is out. Is it the same woman as last time? From Wigan?”

  “No. A local woman.”

  “Jennifer Barley? She was Katherine’s.”

  “No,” I said reluctantly. “A girl called Alice, from Colne.”

  Then something strange happened. At the mention of Alice’s name, Roger’s acquaintance made a sudden movement that startled her horse. I glanced up at her, and quickly away when I saw she had not removed her gaze from my face, as though she was reading something quite fascinating. How could Roger carry on our conversation as though she was not even here?

  “We shall have to arrange a gift for your confinement,” Roger was saying. He looked pleased. “What to buy for the woman who has everything?”