The Familiars

by Stacey Halls

  “Who is your friend, Roger? Will you not introduce me?”

  “This,” he said, “is Alizon Device.”

  I felt as though my skin had been brushed with feathers. So Roger was parading the witch around Pendle and had brought her to Gawthorpe. There was something in Alizon’s proud stare that led me to believe she knew this, and I felt a twinge of sympathy.

  “Don’t let the dress fool you—it’s Katherine’s. She has been staying with me these past few days. We are going to Ashlar House for a meeting with some of Alizon’s relatives,” he said jovially, turning back to his charge.

  The girl did not speak, but shimmered with her hostile force. In the silence that followed, a rook cried out from the trees and a gust of wind moved the forest around us.

  “Give Richard my best. And Friday sennight, you’ll come to dine at Read? Katherine is so looking forward to seeing you.”

  “It would be our honor.” I curtsied, and let my eyes flick once more to Alizon Device, who was still as a statue.

  He raised his hat and mounted. I watched them go, seeing Roger’s many-ringed hand rise up in farewell. Then I called for Puck and started back toward the house.

  * * *

  As it was the last day of Lent and Mary Barton did not care for fish, and Margery the cook always remembered, we sat down to a rich dinner of cheese pies with potatoes, fruit, bread and beer. I nibbled at crusts and crumbs but was so used to not eating I barely felt hungry anymore.

  My mother disapproved of all our servants apart from the cook: she decided they were surly and ungrateful and said that it was only a matter of time before the silver and silk began to go missing. Sometimes I wondered if I lived in my own house or hers. I could tell she missed the days of her great house and large staff. Richard and I used to call her Gloriana of the Manor when she visited us after we were married, trying to direct us as though we were both her children. Until then I’d never had anyone to make fun with. We would stop up our mouths with food when she said things like: Really, Richard, I never knew a man to wear as much jewelry as you, and You should have your crest put on your bottles for serving wine—it’s the fashionable thing, you know—they are even doing it in York.

  On that morning she decided to take issue with the set of panels above the fireplace.

  “Richard, I see you have still not had my daughter’s name scribed on the overmantel,” she announced. Five solid wood squares were engraved with various names of members of the Shuttleworth family, and Richard’s initials were added to the fourth before we married. He meant to have a carpenter put my initials with his but had not found the time, so R and S floated on their own, waiting for a companion. It was a bruise that my mother could not stop pressing, as though the wooden panel was the only evidence of my existence and not simply decoration.

  “There is no great urgency, Mother,” I said.

  “Is four years not enough time?”

  “I will add it to my ever-growing list,” was Richard’s genial reply.

  It was decided she would leave the following day, Easter Sunday, and we went all together to church. I might have been imagining it but my waist felt thicker overnight. I sat during the service staring at my hands folded neatly in my lap, wondering where Alice Gray was and what she was doing. All the people from the town were staring at me a beat longer than usual; I knew I looked ill. I stuck to wearing black—colors highlighted the gray of my face, which was dull as a raincloud. The addition of my mother earned us more than a few extra glances. She kept her face passive with indifference, but I knew inside she was purring like a cat.

  During the service as the curate spoke, I moved my eyes over the hats and caps, looking for a twist of golden hair, but saw none. I caught the eye of a young woman sitting a few pews across, dressed in a fine warm cloak, her globe of a stomach pressing through it. She looked at me in the bold, friendly way countrywomen look at one another, as though to say “we are one and the same.” But we were not, and I looked away.

  My hands were like ice, so I sat on them until they were numb. The nausea had crept back that morning, persistent and unwelcome. Colne was a few miles away and had its own parish, so it was unlikely Alice would be a worshipper at St. Leonard’s. But she worked at the Hand and Shuttle, less than a mile away—dare I show my impatience and visit her there? I had invited her to come on Good Friday, but she said she could not and would come after Easter.

  I saw the apothecary sitting a few pews away with his family, his well-meaning face turned to the pulpit like a growing flower looks to the light. Would Alice grow the herbs herself, or buy them from him? And if she did, would she be discreet?

  John Baxter the curate had a high, clear voice that rang up into the eaves of the church, banishing darkness from every corner. “And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad,” he was saying. “For he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him, and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.”

  Up there with him at the pulpit was the new King’s Bible we had bought him in London. It was the first time I’d been in a printer’s, a tall building in the city that to me was as narrow as a wardrobe. In the streets outside, children carried baskets of loaves on their heads as though we were in Galilee. Inside the printer’s it was a different world entirely, half-scholarly with its atmosphere of paper and ink, and half like a torture chamber with huge, groaning wooden contraptions.

  “And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him. And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate.”

  The new Bible had been printed last year and we bought three copies: one for the house, one for the church and one for Richard’s mother. All of them were objects of beauty, edged in gold, the paper inside as thin as petals.

  “But they cried, saying crucify him, crucify him. And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him, and let him go. And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified.”

  John Baxter was old, his skin the color of Bible pages, but his voice carried like a much younger man’s over the coughing and shuffling and mumbling of infants. My head felt light, as though I was an hourglass needing to be tipped upside down.

  “For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bear, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.”

  I felt my mother move next to me, her dress crushing against mine. My corset was tight and my blood beat in my neck. My head was so empty I thought it might detach from my neck and float like feathers into the rafters.

  John Baxter invited us to rise, and the crowd moved upward, carrying me with it, and the room warped and swam. Then everything went black.

  * * *

  The following morning, instead of waiting for Alice at the windows, I decided to join Richard on the lawn where I saw him training his new falcon. A dark cloud had lifted since my mother had left, but the old one had taken its place once again, following me around. Picking my way across the wet grass to where Richard was standing by the steps, I stopped quietly behind him so as not to frighten the bird, which was tied to his wrist by a string. Blinded by its hood, it flapped confused above our heads, driven to distraction by the scent of chicken flesh in a pouch at Richard’s thigh.

  If there was an art to the training of birds, then Richard was a master of it. He made a clicking noise and pulled the string so the falcon came down with it, scrambling about until it found a perch on his glove. He tossed it a bit of meat.

  “I shall never know why you do this yourself and leave the falconer idle,” I said. “I am surprised you still have eyes in your head.”

  “Because it’s most s
atisfying,” he replied easily. “Besides, she is only ever yours if you do it the long way. Loyalty is earned, not demanded.” The bird took off again, getting a shock when it reached the end of the string and shrieking loudly. “This one is from Turkey. She will need no bells if she insists on making this noise.”

  “She is cursing you,” I teased.

  “I did not know you spoke Turkish.”

  “You still have much to discover about me.” We smiled at one another, and my thoughts rushed again to the surface. I pushed them down.

  “Something is troubling you?” Richard asked.

  It would be so easy to go and fetch the letter from my cupboard. “Tell me why you have kept this from me,” I would say, handing it to him. “Tell me it isn’t true.”

  Instead, I shook my head and fixed my eyes on the bird. “Roger has invited us to dine on Friday,” I said.

  “Yes, he told me he saw you. He had his witch with him?”

  “She was a strange creature. I am not sure what chilled me more—her presence or Roger’s indifference. She must be dangerous or she wouldn’t be manacled. Why would Roger bring her to our house?”

  “He has made her his shadow. As long as she is in his sight, he is in the king’s. I’m sure he will dispose of her once she has served his purpose.”

  “That’s a callous thing to think about your friend.”

  Richard looked sideways at me. “That’s an innocent thing to think about yours. That will be quite a bruise,” he said, touching the blooming stain at my temple with a gentle thumb.

  “It already has more colors than my dress,” I said. “My pride is bruised more than anything—all those people who watched me go down.”

  “We shall have to lock you in the house. First falling from your horse, then fainting in church. Whatever will we do with you?”

  Barrels of wine were being rolled into the bottom of the house behind us, tumbling over the stone passage that led into the cellar. Richard’s attention moved back to the bird, and I followed his gaze to admire her bright talons, her gentle wings struggling against the string. After a few months of this, a dead hare stuffed with a live chicken would be used as prey, then a hare with a broken leg. By the time she went on her first hunt I might be buried in the churchyard.

  The falcon shrieked and flapped above us, and between the flapping was the sound of hooves. Richard brought the bird down to his glove, and that’s when I felt it for the first time: the quickening. Palpable, and yet before I realized it was happening it stopped, so suddenly I wondered if I imagined it. But I knew it from once before: it felt like I was a barrel of water and a fish was turning inside me. I gripped Richard’s arm, my ears ringing, my whole body ringing.

  “Fleetwood, are you well?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “The baby... I felt it moving.”

  “But that’s wonderful!” He beamed, and I couldn’t help but match his smile.

  His bird flapped impatiently, and before it could take hold of my head I backed away. “Alice should be on her way—I will ride to meet her on the Colne road.”

  “Your wrist is well enough to ride?”

  I held up my bandaged arm. “Almost like new.”

  * * *

  In the clean air with the river on one side and forest on the other, with every jolt of the horse I felt my thoughts slip further away from my own life and further toward Alice’s. There was so much I didn’t know. As I walked her out of Gawthorpe, I’d inquired after her father, and Alice told me he was ill and unable to work. I wondered if they had a close relationship, or if Alice dreamed of marrying so she could move out. Poor girls were so unlike rich girls, who only had to wait in their houses for the day a husband arrived, like turkeys fattening for Christmas. Poor girls could choose for themselves, perhaps even as equals: a neighbor might catch their eye, or a shop boy they visited each week to buy their meat. I tried to imagine Alice with a man—her long white fingers touching his face, him moving a twist of gold from hers—and couldn’t.

  The trees thinned out and made way for the open sky, and green hills billowed around in the manner of fresh linen being put on a bed. The river rounded in front of me and I had to cut into Hagg Wood, moving out of the open and into the trees. The horse’s hooves were quieter there, and after a minute or so I saw two figures ahead in a clearing—women, wearing dull colors and bright white caps. They hadn’t noticed me. I pulled in the reins to slow down, when I realized one of them was Alice, and her voice was raised and angry, traveling through the trees. I slid down from my horse’s back and left her where she was, crossing silently over the mossy ground toward them and stopping behind a tree, where I had a clearer view of the other woman.

  She was the ugliest person I’d ever seen in my life, so much that she was frightening to look at. She was poor: that was clear. Her dress was so baggy and shapeless it looked as though she had stitched sacking together, making her appear thin and deformed. But the most alarming thing about her was her eyes: they were set in different parts of her face and not level with each other. One sat high, gazing up at the leaves of the trees around her, and the other, lower in her face, examined the roots. I could not tell how she could see like a normal person. She stood with her mouth open, letting her tongue pass over her lips as Alice spoke, sharp and low at once.

  I could not hear what was being said, and as I strained forward, a movement next to me made me jump. A thin brown dog with ragged fur trotted out from the trees at the side of me, skirting past me and going toward the women, who did not pay it attention. It cut through the small gap between them and passed on into the trees beyond. The ugly woman’s pet, then. I thought about turning away before I was seen, but Alice made as though to stalk off toward me and my horse, and I froze. The woman spoke in a rasped, harsh voice, saying some admonishment or other.

  The dog barked far off, and the woman looked over her shoulder briefly before—chillingly—turning her wayward eyes in my direction. My skin pricked all over, and I willed my dark green dress to make me difficult to spy. She spoke once more to Alice, then lumbered off after the dog, muttering to herself.

  Alice stayed for a moment in the clearing and I saw her fists clench and unclench. She rubbed the tops of her arms as though she was cold—a vulnerable gesture that made me feel guilty for concealing myself. Then she went off in the opposite direction, making directly for the river.

  I could not see her horse anywhere, and did not hear hooves on the forest floor. Unsure of what to do, for a minute I watched her go, then climbed astride my horse and cantered the short distance home. Dismounting breathlessly at the bottom of the steps, I turned to look the way I’d come and after a few minutes saw her bowed form hurrying from the bank of trees east of the park. There was stealth in her stride, and grace, and authority, and she crossed the lawn in front of the house quick as a rabbit, bent into the biting wind. She wore no cloak. Her expression was dark, and she looked troubled.

  “Where is your horse?” was the first thing I asked her.

  Before she could reply there was the sound of a dog barking from the direction we had come. She looked back, distracted.

  “Alice?”

  The front door opened, and Richard stood at the top of the steps. “Ah, the two wood sprites are returned from the forest. Pleasure to make your acquaintance again, Miss Gray.”

  Alice nodded, her eyes on the ground. “You, too, sir.”

  “You are taking good care of my wife?”

  Alice nodded again.

  “Fleetwood, is your horse to walk herself to the stable?” Richard asked. I gathered myself and took the reins, ready to take her the short distance, but Richard stopped me. “Your midwife can do that.”

  I looked anxiously at Alice, who was out of breath and red about the cheeks, as though ill with a fever.

  “Unless she objects?” Richard asked her.

  With a pained expre
ssion, Alice took the reins from me. I watched her go, hunched against the animal, then gathered my skirts and entered the house.

  “She does seem young for a midwife,” Richard said as I moved past him into the dark hallway. The wall lamps flared in the draft as the door shut.

  “She is about your age.”

  “I still think you should go to London. There are hundreds of midwives there, if not thousands, delivering infants every day.”

  “Don’t make me go to London, Richard. I want your heir to be born at home.” That seemed to do it, and he reached for my hand, squeezing it once. “Alice and I will be in my chamber while she examines me.”

  I thought I saw a low shape move behind him in the shadows of the hallway and slip into the buttery, but I thought nothing of it until I climbed the stairs to my chamber, where Puck was lying in front of the fireplace.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later there was still no sign of Alice, and I got up from the floor where I was stroking Puck to go to the top of the stairs. There she was, standing beneath my portrait, staring at it. She did not know I was there, and I saw the edges of her lips curve up, as though she was smiling, lost in some fond memory.

  “What do you think of my mother?” I asked, startling her.

  “She is very...pointy,” was her reply, which made me grin. “That’s you?” She nodded at the child in the picture.

  “What were you smiling at?”

  “Your face is very serious for one so small. You remind me of...” she trailed off.

  “Who?”

  But she did not answer, moving as if disturbed from a daydream, picking up her skirts and joining me at the top of the staircase. We passed the dressing room where Richard was sleeping, the truckle bed clearly visible, and I noticed for the first time her arms were empty; she had nothing with her.

  “My husband wondered how many years you have,” I said, closing the door behind us.