The Familiars

by Stacey Halls

  I pondered all this while we walked twice more around the garden in silence, with Anne and Eleanor making uncomfortable little comments about the inclement weather, and how Westmorland was so far behind York with its fashions, and had any of the Bellinghams had a new frock made in the past five years?

  They did not stay much longer, and said they would not wait for my mother to return, but would go and collect their steward from the inn in the village and start on the journey back to York. But as we were walking to the stables, we passed the kitchen door at the back of the house, and it opened, and suddenly there stood Alice.

  Her mouth was a little O of surprise, and she had a basket on her arm, and an old apron over her clothes. We stared at one another for a long moment, and Anne and Eleanor noticed something was odd, for usually servants went unnoticed and unacknowledged.

  “Who is this?” Anne asked.

  I licked my lips. “No one. Alice, go inside.” I gave her a tight smile, and moved to continue on our path. Only when she did not move did I realize what I had said. I felt as though I’d missed a step, and the ground beneath me tilted, then righted itself. After a moment, Alice retreated, and the kitchen door closed.

  Dread grew in my stomach, twisting and sliding like an eel in murky water, and I dared not look at Anne or Eleanor, for I did not know how much or how little they knew. What I did know was that I had to act as though nothing had happened, and Alice was no one, which was difficult with my skin turned white and my heart racing. “Do you know, I am suddenly very tired,” I said weakly. “Shall we get your horses? I think I need to lie down.”

  Once they’d said their hurried goodbyes and went off down the windy slope, I went back into the parlor, where I finished the jug of sacke. Something had gone badly wrong, and I could not tell how badly. I had been foolish to tell them about Richard; it would do nothing for my position, and everything for his temper. And exposing Alice like that... They could not know she was the same Alice Gray, whose name was on a list in the next county, who may or may not be wanted for inquisition. Could they?

  By the time I went upstairs to my chamber, I was drunk and it wasn’t even noon. Alice was nowhere to be seen, so I sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off my slippers. Richard’s sisters and mother—if she didn’t already know—would surely have something to say to him about Judith, and he might be even more furious with me. Probably I would be the talk of York as well as Lancaster, my name mentioned in great halls and dining chambers and carriages. Well, I was more furious with him than myself, because all this was his fault, and my mother’s, too, knowing what she did about Judith and keeping it from me, and pressuring me to produce a child, as if I did not want to, as if I did not know how important it was. I used to think I was letting everyone down with my failure, but as I lay on the bed with the warm light pouring in, I realized everyone had let me down.

  Not quite everyone.

  I must have fallen asleep because I felt something damp being pressed against my face. When I opened my eyes Alice was standing over me with a bowl and cloth. “I thought you had a fever,” she said.

  My tongue was dry and I still had the dizzy feeling from earlier. Sweat gathered at my armpits.

  “I drank too much sacke,” I said. The child inside me was still, too, lulled by the sweet wine.

  Richard’s sisters’ words echoed in my ears: in Lancaster plenty is happening. “I am worried,” I said, sitting up. A small frown threaded between her eyebrows, and her eyes were troubled.

  “About earlier, in the garden?”

  “Yes. I said your name. I’m sorry. I don’t know if they know... I don’t know what they know. Or more worryingly, who they will tell.”

  “But there is nothing to tell. They would think nothing of you talking to a servant.”

  “Only if they did not know who you are. Oh, why could I not remember Jill? I wish I could sew my mouth shut.”

  She swirled the cloth in the bowl, and her expression was uneasy.

  “Alice,” I said. “My mother will be back anytime, so I must ask you this now. I want you to tell me what you were doing with Elizabeth Device.”

  Her hand stopped on the water, her fingers balancing lightly on its surface. As well as her usual scent of lavender, though I never saw her with it, there was an earthy scent, too, of soil and things nourished and growing. “I would not ask if I did not think it important.”

  After a pause, she went to the court cupboard and set the bowl down on it. With her back to me, she sighed. “Do you remember when we sat in your parlor and you asked me where I worked, and I told you the Hand and Shuttle? And you asked me how long I had worked there and I said not long?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d been there about a week.”

  I waited, hardly breathing.

  “And do you remember when you caught me with the rabbits the first time we met?”

  “Yes.”

  “I really was lost. I had just started work at the Hand and Shuttle and was finding my way.”

  She did not look at me, and I watched her long neck, her narrow back, as she spoke to the wall.

  “Before that I used to work at an alehouse in Colne. One morning I was walking to work and I came across a man lying on the ground. It was a quiet road and there was no one else around. He was a peddler—all his things were cast all in a trail behind him, pins and needles and scraps of cloth, as though he’d staggered about dropping them. I thought he was dead, but he was alive, muttering and mumbling. One side of his face was collapsed, like it had melted, and his eye wouldn’t open. I’d seen it before with my mother.”

  I could not breathe; the air in the room was thick and I tried to swallow but there was a lump in my throat.

  “I helped him to the inn and the landlord helped me put him upstairs in a chamber and called a physick. The man kept muttering on about a black dog and a girl he’d met on the road, but his speech was slurred and we didn’t know what he meant. Then later that night a girl arrived.”

  “Alizon Device,” I whispered.

  Alice had both hands on the court cupboard as though steadying herself. “She was in such a state, sobbing and begging for forgiveness. I did not know what she meant until she spoke of cursing a peddler that same day. She was filthy, like she’d spent all day tramping about in the rain. I asked her to come in and get dry but the landlord would have none of it, telling me she was a beggar and he didn’t let her sort in. He told her to make herself scarce. Before she went, she told me her name was Alizon and she would come back tomorrow to check on the man.”

  “And did she?”

  Alice’s cap bobbed up and down. “And the next day, and the day after that. But Peter the landlord wouldn’t let her in—said she was trouble. By that time the man had woken up, and I could make out that his name was John. I sat with him, giving him beer and food and wiping his mouth when it fell out. His face was still all melted, like only one side of it worked. I don’t know if it will be right again. He got some of his speech back and told us his son’s name and to write to him, so Peter sent a man.

  “One day I was sitting with him on my own and the girl had been again that morning as usual, standing in the yard wringing her hands and crying, asking to see him. She was distraught, kept saying that it was all her fault. I decided to tell him that she was there to beg for his forgiveness, and asked did he want me to let her in, and he nodded.

  “Peter was out so I had to look after the customers. So I went down and told her to be quick. I stayed downstairs. Not long after, she came running through again, so I went back upstairs to see John and he was in such a state, sobbing and shaking and pointing at the door. She’s a witch, he were saying over and over.”

  At this point Alice walked to the window and looked out. The sound of the moor drifted in through the glass: a lonely wind whining at the casement.

  “Then what happened
?” I asked.

  “He told me that she had a black dog with her, the same one she’d had on the road. But I hadn’t seen one, I didn’t know what he was talking about or if he was dreaming. Then someone else turned up—the girl’s grandmother. She made the whole place go cold, she did. Everyone felt her coming in. Everybody knew who she was.”

  “Who was she?”

  “They call her Demdike. She kept to herself most of the time but local folk knew her. I’d seen her around, heard what people said about her.”

  “What did they say?”

  “That she’s an eccentric, a witch, she’s this, she’s that. Stay away from her, they said. But she wasn’t there to see John Law. She was there to see me.”

  “But why?”

  “Alizon must have told her that I’d found John and was looking after him. That’s when she started threatening me. She told me she’d put a curse on me if I didn’t lie for Alizon. She wanted me to say I’d never seen her, that the old man was making it all up, that his mind was weak and he couldn’t tell up from down.

  “But Peter had already written to John’s son, and Master Law arrived not long after, from Halifax or somewhere. John told him he’d forgiven Alizon, that he was a God-fearing man who believed in forgiveness and that’s what God wanted him to do. He’s a good man, John Law. But his son Abraham wouldn’t hear of it. He sent for Alizon and questioned her. Demdike came with her and they put the shivers in him, I think. Demdike was denying everything, screaming and spitting all over the place, and Alizon was crying, and I just stood there not knowing what to do. And the son turned to me and said have you seen these women here before? Did this girl curse my father?

  “I couldn’t speak, and John was squealing like a pig in the corner, and Abraham was red in the face and looked like he was about to kill someone, and I was frightened. So I said yes, I’d seen them.

  “He tried to make them break the curse but Alizon couldn’t, and Demdike said only the person who’d put it on could take it off. So that was that, and Abraham sent for the magistrate, and Peter asked me to leave because of all the trouble I’d caused.” Her voice was thick. “I worked there for nearly ten years. He knew I was a good worker so he found me a job at the Hand and Shuttle. His brother-in-law is the landlord.”

  My mind was empty. My thoughts were still. I stared at my stockinged feet, small and dainty in white silk. Alice did not speak, and we were silent for a long time, until a thought came to me. “But how does that involve Elizabeth Device? What were you doing that day with her in Hagg Wood?”

  Alice sat on the truckle bed behind her and kept her back to me.

  “She came to the Hand and Shuttle one night. Somehow they found out I was there, I don’t know how. Alizon and her grandmother had been arrested. People were giving her funny looks when she came to see me. Well, you’ve seen her. I was afraid I’d lose my job there, as well, so I said she had to leave. She asked me to go to her house that Friday, said she was having some neighbors round to talk about what they could do to help those that’d been arrested. She said I had to help, that I was...” Her voice shook. “She said I was the reason her daughter and mother were in gaol.”

  I shook my head but Alice couldn’t see. “She was desperate...angry. I could tell she just wanted to do something. And I wanted to help. Like a fool I went. I had to do something to stop them turning up at work and getting me in trouble. And even after that, after I went to Malkin Tower she was waiting for me near your house in the forest. I cannot escape them.” There was real fear in her voice, like when she whimpered in her sleep.

  “But what happened at Malkin Tower? What did they speak of?”

  Alice shrugged. “We ate a meal and they talked about how they could help Alizon and Demdike. It was just a meeting of people who knew the family, neighbors and the like. Apart from me and one other person.”

  “Who was that?”

  At this, Alice bowed her head. “Mouldheels. My mother’s friend Katherine.”

  “Why did she go?”

  “She was with me when...”

  We both jumped out of our skins when the door flung open and my mother swept in, her face hard with displeasure. “You did not think to send someone to the village to fetch me?” she commanded.

  I sighed. “Richard’s sisters did not stay long. They were traveling from Kendal back to Forcett.”

  “How did they know you were here?”

  “A servant here is cousins with someone at the house they were staying.”

  Her black eyes were penetrating. “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  The silence that followed demonstrated that she did not believe me. “Supper is almost ready,” was all she said, and she left the door open behind her.

  I went to close it quietly, and crept back toward Alice. All the questions I could have asked were ripe, hanging in the room; I could have reached anywhere and plucked one easily, but I chose the first one that came into my head, from the last thing she had said.

  “Alice, you said Mouldheels was with you when...what?”

  Alice was silent, and the wind rushed down from the moor, sounding almost like a child crying. Then she covered her face with her hands.

  “Alice! What’s the matter?”

  “I cannot speak of it,” she whispered. “I cannot bear it.”

  “Whatever it is, it cannot be so bad.”

  But she would not tell me, and I could feel the waves of irritation from my mother lapping at the door. The last thing I needed was another afternoon of combat. I felt troubled as I went downstairs to dinner, as though something apart from the wind was pressing in at the windows, wanting to be let in.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  That night I had The Nightmare. I woke, crippled with fright, to a candle at my side, a familiar but frightened face behind it. My legs were twisted in the sheets and I was wet with sweat from my hair to my legs. I was so scared I thought my heart would leap right out of my chest, and Alice sat with me until my breathing slowed and the shadows at the corner of the room grew less frightening. I hoped I had not been screaming, but an alarm in Alice’s eyes and a tightness in her jaw made me think I had.

  “It’s all right now,” Alice whispered. “Was it the boars?”

  I nodded, and gasped, and that feeling of dread arrived again, and I checked between my legs for a trickle of blood. But they were dry, and Alice went back to bed, and eventually her breathing slowed, too. We had been at my mother’s for a month, and in all that time I’d been free of The Nightmare.

  Since that breakfast my mother had not mentioned my going back to Gawthorpe, and neither had I, but I should have known her better than that. Perhaps if I had the plaster figure of Prudence with me in my chamber I might have remembered to exercise it once in a while, but my old friend remained in my chamber at Gawthorpe, gathering dust.

  I was sitting in the kitchen with Mrs. Knave eating biscuits hot from the oven when Mrs. Anbrick came to tell me someone was here for me. I’d known it from the moment I woke up: a change in the atmosphere, a shifting sense of unease in my stomach. My time was running out.

  “Who is it?”

  I did not need ask. The black skirts of my mother entered the kitchen before she did, smooth as a fish gliding in a pond. Her face was set for battle. “Fleetwood, come out of the kitchen now,” she said. The dread stirred in my stomach, stuck me to the chair.

  Mrs. Knave bowed her head, her chubby hands brushing awkwardly at her apron. I fixed my mother with the coldest look I could summon and stepped past her, remembering how she’d untied Richard’s letter, then kept the contents to herself. I had not thought to ask her what he had said, and his letter lay unopened still on the desk in my chamber.

  “You cannot avoid him forever, Fleetwood,” my mother’s voice rang behind me in the hall as I went to wait in her parlor. I had decided
I would not speak to her again.

  I sat shivering even though the room with its high, narrow window was close and stuffy, even with no fire. Dust danced around in the watery beams of light, and a chessboard lay on a stool by my chair. My mother sometimes played chess with the housekeeper and sometimes with herself. It was something she had always done, but for the first time I realized how sad that was, with her alone in this room and me upstairs. Well, she could have asked me if she wanted to play: I would not feel sorry for a woman who chose so often to be alone. I drew my sleeveless robe around my stomach, put my hands in my lap and waited.

  Puck came in first, greeting me with his tongue when he saw me and coming to sit beside me. My mother came in next, her pattens clacking on the stone flags, with a deeper, heavier tread of soft calfskin boots and that familiar jangle of coins behind her.

  “Fleetwood.” I heard him and saw him at the same time. His earring caught the light and his clear gray eyes shone. He looked first at my face, then my stomach. You are still with child, I heard him think. I had forgotten how conversations could be held in silence when you are married, when you know the flesh and bones and touch of someone and could know them in a dark room. Why not their mind, too? My mother looked blinkingly from one of us to the other.

  “You look well,” Richard said.

  I said nothing.

  “Fleetwood?” My mother spoke.