by Stacey Halls
At this, Mr. Covell’s eyes swiveled in his head, coming again to land on me with his eyebrows so far up they almost disappeared under his hat. He opened his mouth and closed it. “What is the name of the prisoner you seek to visit?” he asked.
“Alice Gray. She was brought here not two days ago.”
Thomas Covell regarded me again coolly, taking all of me in from my hat to my rings. His fat chin wobbled and he sighed. “You have two minutes. I will have one of the gaolers escort you.”
And so I passed under the gatehouse, just as Alice had two days before me, and thousands more would after me. There was only one way into the castle, and one way out.
Leaving my horse tied behind the gatekeepers, a thin, wheezing man with a pointed face like a rat took me across the castle yard—but not the way I was expecting, toward the main part of the castle. His gait was very wide, his legs sprouting from his hips, leaving a large space in between his feet, so he walked with difficulty, but also like a man determined not to show it. “What’n’ya want wi’these wenches, then, eh?” he said conversationally as we followed the interior wall of the castle.
I ignored him and stared up at the height of the stone, feeling the chill of the place even though it was a warm summer’s day.
I was not expecting us to stop so suddenly, and not outside: we were next to a low arch at the foot of one of the towers, covered by an iron gate. But the door did not lead out to the other side of the castle walls—the blackness inside meant it only went one way: down. I frowned. “Why are we stopping?” I asked.
“This is the Well Tower,” said my companion through a gummy smile.
“I don’t understand. Alice Gray will be in a cell awaiting trial. Can you take me to her, please?”
“She’s in ’ere.” He pointed at the arch that was so dark I could see why it was called the Well Tower—it was like looking into one. I could not see beyond one or two steps; it was as though a black curtain covered the rest. The gaoler extracted a large bunch of keys from his hip and spent a long time considering each one, as slowly the absolute horror of what I was seeing dawned on me.
Behind this gate, in this hole, was Alice. I had never been to a gaol and did not know what a cell might look like, but this was not a cell. It was a dungeon from a legend. It was as though the sun had gone out: all the heat and light left me, and I stood shivering, staring at the entrance to hell itself.
A curious noise came from somewhere behind the gate, and I realized it was a bird chirping. Hopping from one spot to another on the top step was a robin, trapped behind the gate. It might have been small enough to get through the bars, but it was asking for us to set it free.
“Bloody stupid vermin,” the gaoler muttered, unlocking and pulling open the gate. The robin froze, its freedom granted. “Get out of it.” He kicked at the bird and it went soaring up over our heads, over the walls and away.
I reached for the cool stone wall to steady myself.
“Int nowt to be scared of, you wanted to come, didn’t yer?”
No. I did not want to go down there for anything, not even Alice. But I had to, because I could come out again, and whoever was in there could not.
It was like going down steps into black water, so dense was the darkness. They went down and down into the earth, and at the bottom was another door of solid wood, or iron—it was too dark to tell. The gaoler closed the gate at the top of the stairs and locked it, and when I heard the clang and the key turn behind me, every nerve in my body was set jangling, and my head was light with terror.
“Stand back,” he wheezed, turning another key in the door at the bottom. “Or the smell’ll knock you out.”
I went back up a few steps, my pattens echoing on the stone. I still thought I might faint so I kept one hand on the damp wall. I heard the gaoler’s barking on the other side of the door, and waited, and then a pale face appeared at the bottom of the steps, and a slim body slipped through the doorway.
“Alice.”
I was ashamed to say I started crying: me, in my fine clothes with my stomach full of cheese and bread and my horse waiting for me outside the walls. She did not cry. I had not seen her in two days but it could have been years: she looked so different. Her long face was whiter than the moon, and there were shadows under her eyes that were not there before. She blinked furiously as though the dim light of the staircase was blinding. Her dress was filthy and looked damp, and her cap was streaked with dirt. Dark blood spotted the front of her dress and no doubt the back where she sat.
She said nothing, only held herself weakly against the wall, as though she had no strength. The gaoler appeared at her side, closing the door, and I heard shrieks and cries of protests from behind him as what must have been the only light was shut out. He was right: the smell was incredible. Alice had used to smell of lavender, and clean her hands in a porcelain bowl, and now she lived in a cesspit beneath the earth.
“Who else is in there?” I breathed.
“All of ’em,” the gaoler wheezed. “All the witches awaiting trial.”
“How many people?” I asked Alice.
“I do not know,” she said. “It’s too dark to see anything.” Her mouth was dry, her tongue peeling from the roof of her mouth as she spoke. The black pupils of her eyes were large as marbles.
I had traveled for hours and I could not think of a single thing to say. In that moment, I think I would have given the child in my stomach for her freedom.
The gaoler looked from one of us to the other, disappointed. “Well, this is quite the reunion, is it not? Do you have nothing to say to one another?”
“Do you have food?” I asked.
“A little,” she said.
When the gaoler looked away to sort his keys, she shook her head. I wished he would go away and lock himself in that infernal pit—how did the man live with himself?
“I will help you,” I said. My voice echoed on the walls. It sounded pathetic, like something a child might say.
Alice had stopped blinking so rapidly and her gaze was now vacant.
“They got Katherine, as well,” she said, her voice thick.
“Who?”
“Katherine Hewitt. My mother’s friend.” That’s when she started crying. Mouldheels: her mother’s partner in midwifery. I remembered her telling me in that warm, lofty chamber in my mother’s house, long ago in a different life.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s my fault.”
“What’s your fault?”
“Now, now,” said our acquaintance, uncomfortable.
“Will you leave us for a moment?” I demanded.
“Leave you? I cannot do that.”
I fumbled at my skirts and took out my purse. “Here.” I held out a penny and he fell on it like a starving dog. “You can leave us locked in, just come back when I call. Don’t go far,” I said.
He staggered up the steps, breathing raggedly, shutting the gate behind him and locking it again. His figure blocked the light momentarily, and only when he moved away could I see Alice again.
“Come up,” I said, retreating up the staircase. “You need air and light.”
She followed me and we sat on the top step with our backs against the gate. I tried not to breathe in the stench coming off her: stale sweat and vomit and something else that I knew at once to be fear. I’d never smelled it before on a human, but I knew it right away. She had stopped crying but the tears carved clean paths down her mucky face.
“Tell me about Katherine,” I said gently.
“She is accused, too, of the same thing. It’s my fault—she’s done nothing.”
“Alice, you have to tell me everything. Why are you accused of murdering John Foulds’s daughter? He was the man at the Hand and Shuttle, wasn’t he, when I came?”
She nodded and licked her lips, though her tongue was dr
y so her mouth made a sticking noise. “I loved him,” she said in a very faint voice. “And I loved Ann. I loved them both. Me and John were...together. He used to come to the Queen’s Arms, that’s how I met him, a couple of years ago. He had a daughter—his wife had died. He was funny, and kind. At first. I thought we would get married. Ann wasn’t two years old when we met. I used to look after her when he went to work, if I wasn’t working. She was like a little angel, with fat cheeks and yellow hair that wouldn’t lie flat no matter how much you combed it.”
She was almost smiling now, her face lost in memories. Then it clouded over and she sniffed. “John said he wouldn’t get married again, not after losing his wife. It was too painful, he said. So I stayed, and it was like we were married. I lived with him, and my dad as good as disowned me. He called me a whore. He said I’d never be a wife, that I was good for nothing but lying down for John after he’d been drinking. But I was happy, with John and with Ann. We were a little family.”
She swallowed. “Then he started staying out longer, and later. Me and Ann were on our own a lot of the time. Most of the time. John was either at work or at the alehouse, while I was pretending to be his little wife at home. I was lying to myself.”
She shifted her feet and wrapped her arms around her knees. I looked again at the blood on the front of her dress, at her unwashed hair trailing from under her cap. I wished I could wash her and put her in a clean nightshift and tuck her in bed like a child.
“Even when folk started telling me he had other women, I didn’t want to believe them. And life went on, and he got meaner, and cheaper, and me and Ann were living off my wage because he spent all his. And she started having these... I don’t know what you call them. She would go stiff and her eyes would roll in her head, and her tongue was too big for her mouth. I thought she was playing up because her dad wasn’t around. He didn’t believe me when I told him. He thought I was making it up to get him to come home. I tried all the plants I could think of, all the herbs. I went to Katherine for help, but even she couldn’t do anything. Ann was fine most of the time, it was just when this happened she was...it was like an evil spirit was choking her.
“One day I had to go to work and leave Ann at home on her own. John was nowhere to be found. He was supposed to come back. I was close to losing my job.” Tears began leaking again from Alice’s eyes. Her face was carved with sorrow. “I still loved him. I always loved him, even when he wouldn’t come home. If we hadn’t had Ann, things might have been different. I might have left. Anyway, I went to work and asked Katherine to keep an eye on her. The next thing, she came running in saying, ‘Alice, Alice, come quick, you have to come now.’ And we ran to John’s and she...” Alice buried her face in her knees. “I shouldn’t have left her.”
I put my arm around her, feeling her thin shoulders. As I grew, she shrunk. My heart felt like it was breaking. It was a different break to when I found Judith. That time there was anger; this time there was only pain.
“There was nothing you could have done,” I whispered, pressing my cheek to hers. Our tears mixed together and ran down to our lips. I tasted salt: mine and hers. We stayed like that as she shuddered beneath my arm, then after a while she grew still.
“I think that’s why I wanted to help you so much,” she said softly. “I thought maybe if I could keep your child alive, it would go some way to...” She stopped, struggling to explain. “I’d failed to save one child, so I thought if I could give life to another...”
I nodded sadly. “If the child is a girl, I will call her Alice Ann.”
She did not smile, but something lit up behind her eyes. “I thought you wanted two boys.”
“I do.” I looked down at our skirts—shiny maize taffeta against filthy brown wool, and I held her hand. “That has not changed.”
“It’s awful in there,” she whispered with her dry mouth. “It’s like hell. You can’t see a thing, and it makes you feel like the room’s turning. There’s a woman dying. Demdike. She’ll die before the trial. There’s no food.”
I closed my eyes and thought of the food I’d had that morning all to myself. I hadn’t even thought...
“I’ll get you out of here,” I said. “Alice, I promise. I will get you out.”
Salty tears slid down her cheeks. “I can see what all this has cost you,” she whispered. “I can’t have you sacrifice any more.”
“To hell with what it costs me.” While I said it, I felt the baby move, and was aware at once that while all three of us were here and alive now—Alice, the baby and I—feeling the stone steps beneath us, and breathing in the dank air beneath the castle, one day very soon we might not, and there was no way of telling who would make it. The three of us were bound together in some dreadful destiny, and it was clearer now than ever that to survive, we needed one another just as equally, and just as desperately. The future for both of us was as dark as the hole at the bottom of the staircase—with Alice in there, I might not survive the birth, nor my baby its chance at life. But I was no use to her wherever I might be; except, no, I had to be. While she was in there and I was out here I could help; I knew I had to be able to in some way, however small.
“I will save you,” I said again, gripping her fingers in mine.
She squeezed, once, and let go, and looked sadly at me, and her lively golden eyes were empty. “I am not a dog you can save from a bear pit,” she said.
“I will save you from death, like you promised to save me. You will live.”
“And Katherine,” she whispered.
“And Katherine. She is in there with you now?”
Alice nodded. At that moment a great wail came from behind the locked door at the bottom, making both of us jump. Then fists were banging on the door and the wails turned to screams. Alice and I leaped to our feet as the gaoler from earlier hurried over and fumbled with the lock.
“You’ve set them off, have you?”
“What’s all this?” said another voice. More men were approaching like bats from the shadows in the castle walls.
The gate clanged open and an iron grip held my arm. Alice and I were wrenched apart and suddenly I was outside the gate and she was being marched back down the staircase. “Alice!” I cried. “I’ll come back. I’ll come back!”
As a fierce bulk of a man escorted me back to the gatehouse, the shrieking escaped as the door to the dungeon clanged open. “She’s dead! She’s dead! She’s dead!” The words came out like crows from a forest, echoing around the walls with nowhere to land.
* * *
Before beginning the long journey back I stopped at an inn in the town, where I ordered three roast chickens, twenty meat pies and two gallons each of ale and milk to send to the dungeon. I had four boys carry the food and roll the barrels up the hill to the castle, and made sure that the same wheezing gaoler from earlier carried them down those steep stairs and came back with empty arms. I left him with another penny to shine his palm and gave one each to the miserable guards, too. I told them I would be back, and they smiled at me like they knew better.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next morning there was a crowd of servants at the front steps when I came down to breakfast. Arrived back from Ripon, Richard’s bare head was at the front of the crowd, so I pushed my way through. He was still wearing his cloak. But there was no one at the door, nor a horse in front of the house. Then I realized everyone was looking down. I stepped back in horror.
Richard’s falcon had been slashed to pieces. Lying in a pool of her own blood, she was left as an offering on the top step, her wings folded piously as an angel’s, her eyes glassy and unseeing. The servants were hovering like a pack of flies on rotten meat, so I sent them away, and could not help but put my hand on Richard’s arm. His face was a mask of grief and anger, and I knew that one would soon surrender to the other, so I closed the door and led him back into the house.
“Do you k
now who did this?” I asked in the dark hush of the entrance.
“No, but when I find out I will kill them,” he said quietly, though his voice shook with conviction.
I allowed him to collect himself, remembering suddenly the slash of fur, the glistening red I’d seen in the woods all those weeks ago.
“One of our tenants? Have you argued with anyone of late?”
He shook his head. Then he wrenched open the door, and knelt to gather up his precious bird. I watched his narrow shoulders slope in sadness, his hair stirring in the wet wind, and felt a powerful surge of love. But also something else: a despondency—a shame, previously unknown to me—that he could feel something so strongly for a creature, and not a human woman. I felt like leaving him on the threshold and going to where my breakfast was waiting in the dining room, but then an idea arrived. I asked a servant to bring a bathing sheet, then knelt and began to wrap the carcass up. The sight of it did not stir me—I had seen plenty of death. But something did cause me to hesitate: a few very fine, orange hairs were caught in its wounds. I folded the sheet and bound it carefully around the bird, aware all at once of my own fate hanging like a rain-filled sky.
We crossed the lawn and the heavens opened. I stood with my husband in the downpour as he buried the bird by the stables in a sheltered spot by the river. I felt the rain run down my neck, soaking my jacket, and I felt my child kick inside me. When we got back into the house, and Richard sent for some aqua vitae and pulled off his drenched jacket, I took his face in my hands. His hair was plastered to his head, and his eyelashes were wet. His gray eyes burned. “Richard,” I said. “I need your help.”