by Stacey Halls
* * *
I spent a long time getting dressed, and for the finishing touch added my black velvet choker with the plump pearl hanging ripe as a peach from it that Roger had bought for me one Christmas. My cheeks were fatter than the last time I saw him. I pinched them and dabbed rose oil behind my ears, at my wrists and at the dip in my throat. When I heard him arrive downstairs, I stared into the looking glass for another minute or two, tweaking my collar, patting my hair and trying to breathe normally. I was pleased to see my hands weren’t shaking, and said a silent prayer.
I heard Roger’s voice before I saw him, telling Richard some tale or other. They were in the dining room, and I paused in the doorway to take a deep breath before gliding in. He looked the same as ever—shiny boots, wide sleeves, glittering rings. It might have been any day in our friendship, but the memory of the last time I saw him returned. Something told me to be very careful.
“Mistress Shuttleworth,” he said genially with a graceful bow of his head.
I went to him and kissed him, trying very hard to do it as I might have done months ago. So much had happened since the supper at Read Hall, but one would never know it from his easy grin, his beaming cheeks. “You are looking very well,” he said evenly.
“Thank you. Will you have some wine?”
“I will always have some wine, if there is wine to be had.”
I went to the draw-leaf table to pour it and looked at the panels above the fireplace. Empty, gleaming wood filled the space around Richard’s initials.
“The Tower lies empty,” Roger was saying. “I told him I imagine it will be difficult to find a tenant afterward.”
“I could ask the bailiff,” Richard suggested.
“Tower?” I asked, going back to serve the wine.
“Malkin Tower,” was Roger’s reply.
I tried to appear lightly curious. “What is that?”
“The home of the Devices, near Colne. It’s a very strange place to look at. You hear tower and think it to be grand, but it’s like a spike coming out of the earth. It’s tall and round and made of stone, with one room at the bottom, and they climb rotten ladders to sleep around the walls. But they won’t have use of it for much longer—it’s been empty a month or more. Since Constable Hargrieves found the teeth and clay dolls under the ground there, I shall be surprised if anyone goes in there again.”
Silence fell as the food was brought in: a joint of roast beef, with fallow pasties and cheese. Roger eyed it hungrily. “Fleetwood,” he said, helping himself to sauce. “A friend of mine saw you in Lancaster the other day. What were you doing there?”
I kept my eyes on the food, cutting the beef into strips. “I was visiting a clothier there,” I said.
“All the way in Lancaster? Must be some fine material.”
I smiled and licked my thumb. All he needed do was ask the guards or the keeper Thomas Covell and they would tell him I had been there. “I stopped by the castle, too,” I said thickly. “I thought I might visit my midwife.”
I glanced at Richard. I’d told him of my whereabouts in case Roger did first, and was glad of it now, though he was not at all happy I’d ridden some eighty miles in a single day. I’d reminded him of Alice’s advice: that if I had always ridden, then riding was as dangerous as walking, so that was one balm at least.
Roger speared his meat with his knife and did not look up. He knew, then. “And why ever did you do that?” His voice was low and dangerous.
I pushed my plate away and reached in my pocket for my handkerchief to dab my eyes. “I have been feeling very unwell,” I said in a small voice. “I am worried for my health and the health of my child—I wanted to ask her advice.”
“And there is not one other midwife within forty miles that could assist you?”
“Alice has been a very good midwife—the best I’ve had.” I stopped dabbing and looked meekly at him. “I have never reached this far in childbed before, and I believe that is down to Alice. My lying-in will begin soon. Roger,” I went on, dab dab dabbing. “If you could just consider allowing Alice to live in custody here at Gawthorpe, for my own sake and for that of my child. Without her, I am afraid... Richard?” I pleaded, unable to go on because now I did feel tears come to my eyes.
I prayed he would say what I asked him to, and there was a pause in which Richard licked his lips. “Fleetwood was very ill,” he said quietly. “You saw her. She could barely eat a morsel. Her hair fell out in clumps. Somehow she is better than ever now. Alice would of course face the assizes next month but we would keep her here under lock and key. She would not escape.”
“And you could guarantee that how?”
“The same way you could guarantee it with Jennet Device, who I believe is still at Read,” I said.
I have eyes in the forest, Roger had said all those months ago. “Jennet Device is not on trial for murder,” he said calmly. He picked up his knife again. “You would invite a child murderer and a witch under your roof?”
“She is not...” I whispered, but Richard gave me a look, and I went silent.
“It is impossible,” Roger announced.
I hated him then, for everything, but just then for toying with us, like a cat will place a powerful paw on a mouse’s tail before letting go and catching it again. Roger enjoyed letting people wheedle, and persuade, and beg, letting them think they were in with a chance, when his decision was already made.
“I think the pair of you fail to grasp the seriousness of the allegations against the Pendle witches, as they are colloquially known. Witchcraft is punishable by death, but their crimes are altogether more serious—they have not only practiced witchcraft, but their actions have caused the deaths and madness of many people. They are a danger to society. How would it look to the king, to ask for their pardon until the trial? No, it will not do.” He dabbed at his beard, where beads of sauce clung to the silver hairs.
“Which brings me to my next point,” he went on, this time speaking directly to me. “There is no use visiting the castle again, because you will not be let in.” My mouth fell open. “Visitors excite the prisoners, and what with your...condition...” He gestured vaguely at me, as though being a woman was a condition, which I suppose it was. “It whips them into a frenzy. Shortly after you barged your way into the Well Tower and had that door opened, a woman died.”
“You are not suggesting—”
“I am not suggesting anything. I am telling you,” Roger interrupted. His eyes were fierce, every line of his body taut with malice. “Do not go to the castle again. If you do, you will not be let out.”
My knife clattered against my plate. I realized I had forgotten to breathe, that my mouth was opening and closing like a fish on a riverbank. I turned to Richard, who was pushing strips of fat miserably around his plate. He would not challenge Roger; I knew it. And I needed him on my side. Trying to disguise the fact that I was shaking violently, I sat back in my chair and let my hands fall to my lap. “Do you mean I would be a prisoner?”
“That is exactly what I mean. Be under no pretense, your advantage of birth is the only thing that stands in your favor. Had you not this house and husband, you think you would be permitted to tear around the country unchecked, making your inquiries? You are no threat to the course of justice, as much as you design to be. But if you think you are free from the grip of the manacles, you are quite mistaken.”
At this, Richard interrupted. “Roger, be reasonable.”
My blood had turned cold, but Roger was not yet finished.
“One of the accused is Miles Nutter’s mother. She, too, is a rich woman, a fine woman of standing, with educated sons. The problem is she curses her neighbors and they fall down dead.”
I wish she would curse you, I thought, but my mouth remained shut.
Roger leaned in slightly to deliver his fatal blow. “In fact, Jennet told me you reminded
her of Mistress Nutter. She can always be persuaded to think a little harder of who was there at Malkin Tower on Good Friday.”
His pale gaze rested on me, and I think that was the first time I realized with a crushing certainty who I was pitting myself against. This was not Roger, my father figure, who dined and hunted and played cards with us; this was the former sheriff, the magistrate, the justice of the peace.
“That’s enough!” Richard cried, stabbing his knife into the table.
We all jumped, and Roger sat back. I had not seen Richard this angry since the necklace went missing.
“I’ll hear no more of it.” He pulled the knife from the wood and began eating again.
“I am leaving this afternoon for Jennet Preston’s trial at York,” Roger began, setting his knife on his empty plate. “The same judges are hearing the case who will be at Lancaster in August—James Altham, who is very experienced, and discreet, and Sir Edward Bromley. Do you know him, Richard?” Richard gave a tight shake of his head, his jaw set with fury. Roger did not seem to notice. “He is the nephew of the former Lord Chancellor who oversaw the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. He is also the man who acquitted Jennet Preston at the Lent assizes.” He shook his head and took a noisy sip from his glass.
I remembered how Thomas Lister seethed and shook next to me at dinner at the mention of Jennet Preston, how he had succeeded in committing her to trial twice in the space of a few months. One of the judges had found her not guilty a few months before: he could do it again.
“How many weeks until the trial at Lancaster?” I asked Roger.
“Three or four. I expect both of you will want seats in the gallery? I am expecting it to be busier than the Rose on play night.”
When the two men went out to look at Richard’s new gun, I stood for a long time at the window, thinking. Demdike was dead. Jennet Preston would be tried for murder by witchcraft tomorrow. While Alice was alive, and there was time before the trial, I could still save her life and my own, as worthless as they were to anyone but us.
* * *
The next morning I set out to find Malkin Tower. My mother’s voice rang in my ears as I rode out in my traveling cloak, my skin pricked with sweat even though it was cool for July. Fleetwood, you are making yourself ridiculous. Fleetwood, you are making a mockery of your family.
I thought back to those gentle, light-filled days at her house—a place I would never have imagined myself comfortable. The reason I found them comfortable was Alice. If I had sat night after night embroidering or reading Bible passages with my mother’s sour face the only company, I might have been driven mad. No, how could I think that? What would drive anyone mad was night after night in a dank black cell, surrounded by other sweating, weeping, vomiting bodies, with no water or food or place to relieve yourself.
The reason Alice was in prison was Elizabeth Device, who wanted to save her child so desperately she had shackled herself to everyone around her. Perhaps she thought there was safety in numbers. She might never have expected her other daughter would turn the key in the lock. I wanted to see where she came from, this astonishingly ugly woman with her spirit dog and bastard child. She had already lost her mother, and now the rest of her family was at stake—apart from the child Jennet. What life had this child, that made her deliver her kin to Roger Nowell? Roger had said Malkin Tower was a miserable place, but it was the only home she knew, with the only people. The lure of a bed of feathers and meat pies at Read Hall would surely not, could surely not be enough.
But you hated your home, a voice persisted. And your mother. I smoothed it over with my own assurance: I would never have reported on my mother. But then, I was not sure what it would take for a child to do so. Neglect? Cruelty? They were my old bedfellows, like Prudence and Justice now.
I did not know where to find the Tower, nor whom to ask, so I set out on horseback toward Colne. I left Puck at home and would regret it later when the wind whistled on the moors and Joseph Gray’s wind-battered hovel came back to haunt me.
They burn witches, don’t they?
With my cloak covering my head and stomach I might have been anyone, or no one, but nobody paid me much attention on the quiet road there. Three or four carts passed me piled with vegetables and bolts of cloth, but I kept my eyes down, remembering how I’d been seen in Lancaster. I have eyes in the forest, you know.
I knew that if I stayed on that road eventually it would lead to Halifax, and Abraham and John Law. To think a simple peddler who was asked for some pins started all this. To think what might have happened if he had given them. But even if he handed them over to Alizon Device, Alice would still have lived with her grief, would have gone on working at the Queen’s Arms, cooking what little they could buy for her miserable father under the hole in the roof. And where would I be? I may have been dead; I may not. I may have never found out about Judith. But wherever I was, I would not be on the road to search for a stone tower sticking like a spike out of the moor.
Gray and green, gray and green, as far as the eye could see; now and again passing the odd home made of crumbling stone or crudely slapped together out of mud. Long, low farmhouses stretched along the hills like cats, but nothing looked like a tower.
I decided to ask the next person I saw: a man traveling on an exhausted-looking mule the opposite way to me. “Excuse me, do you know where I can find Malkin Tower?” I asked.
He shrank back in alarm like I had told him I was a witch, and without saying a word shuffled away on his dusty beast, glancing back over his shoulder once.
I sighed and came to a stop. Just when I was deciding what to do, two figures appeared on the road: a woman, dressed plainly, tugging her daughter along. “Excuse me,” I tried again. “I am looking for Malkin Tower.”
The woman stopped and her daughter, drowsy with the heavy summer air, almost walked into her. “What do you want with Malkin Tower?” she asked. Her dark eyes glittered suspiciously.
“I heard of the Devices and have a bet with my sister—she doesn’t think they are real, or their house. I have a penny on finding it.”
“It is real, all right, and so are they. Tell your sister she should believe what she hears, folk aren’t likely to repeat falsehoods around here. They’ve been an odd family for years, and now we know why. My mother used to buy remedies from Demdike but I was having none of it. I leave the Lord to do his good work, I don’t mess with the Devil.” She was set on a path now and would not come off it. She licked her lips. Her daughter stared silently at my cloak, my face. “Where are you from?”
“Burnley.”
“You’ve come a way to settle a bet.” She nodded in the direction behind her. “Leave the road half a mile up and join the path up to the top of the moor. You’ll find it up there. I don’t like it myself. I don’t like to look at it. There’s something not right about it. Like I say, my mother used to go up there when we were ailing, she took me a few times. I wouldn’t take my own there if the Lord told me to himself.”
I thanked her and went the way she said, leaving the road for a narrow path between two dry walls. A dog barked in the distance, and I thought of the one I’d seen in the forest with Elizabeth and Alice. Had it been a familiar spirit or a family pet? To think Elizabeth Device had been so close to my house, with all its entrances and windows...
I shivered and leaned backward as the land rose up slightly with wide fields on either side. The brow of the hill came closer but there was no sign of the Tower. And then I was at the top and looking down the other side, and there it was: a dull, gray, tallish building like a short table leg; in the style of the old towers like the one built at Gawthorpe hundreds of years before. But the Devices were not a noble family or even yeomen—they were poor as church mice, so how they came to live in a tower was part of the mystery.
Great chunks of it had fallen off and were scattered around the bottom, and I went to what seemed to be the
entrance: a large, thick door in the bottom. Arrow slits in the walls would be the only source of light, and probably a hole in the roof for the smoke to get out.
I climbed off the horse and walked once around the Tower. An odd little garden had been attempted and abandoned, squared off in bits of dry wall. I did not think I wanted to go in, but I needed to see where Jennet Device had come from to determine where she might want to go.
I went to the door and tried the ring pull. It jolted open easily—there was no lock. Inside was dark, and I thought again of the gaol cell the family now lived in, how much their home was like one. I left the door as wide open as it would go to let more light in and stepped inside.
There was a powerful smell, but what it was I was not sure. Damp, certainly, and decay, but something animal: like wet fur that had been left to dry. It did not take long to look at everything. A cooking pot bigger than Joseph Gray’s sat in the center of the dirt floor. A straw mattress lay nearby, but there were no hangings to keep the draft out of the spaces between the stones. I watched a wood louse crawl lethargically over the greasy linen that covered the mattress. Plates and cups lay forgotten on the ground. A wooden ladder led up to a rotten-looking platform, where there must have been more straw beds. On my right, a table was pushed against the wall, which curved round in a circle. Some bits of things were on it and I went to it, and immediately recoiled. Here were the remains of Elizabeth’s clay doll in an unshapely mound, stuck in places with pins. And in the lumps and crumbs of clay, they were apparent: teeth. I went to pick one up and held it in front of me, a creeping sensation flooding my scalp and going down my neck.
An almighty crash made my heart almost stop. The door had slammed behind me. I dropped the tooth and ran to it, fumbling in the gloom for the handle, and finding it, and pulling at it, panic rising to a high, clear note that sang in my head. The wind was on the other side, clamoring to be let in, but I pushed against it and was out on the moor again, panting and frightened. What was I thinking, touching their devilish instruments? The creeping feeling came over me again, and I had the curious sensation of being watched.