The Familiars

by Stacey Halls

  Richard had been unable to read John Foulds’s final sentence, scrawled in a drunk’s shaky hand in that pitiful candlelight, absolving Katherine Hewitt of any blame. The poor woman, a friend to Alice and her mother, had been found guilty, and hanged. Richard told me how after he had spoken for Alice, Katherine’s arraignment came next, and Roger was determined on seeing his own needs served. He bullied the jury, he shook his fists, and spittle fell from his lips as he drove the point home again, again, again how that woman, alias Mouldheels, who had delivered so many babies and made so many women mothers, killed a child for no reason other than the Devil told her to.

  It was too much for Alice, and Richard said she dropped onto the floor of the hall like a stone. After her chains were removed, she left the castle without looking back and wept all the way to Gawthorpe, clinging to Richard so tightly she ripped his jacket. She was free, but her freedom had come at a terrible price.

  Nine people from Pendle hanged that day, including Elizabeth Device, her daughter Alizon and her son James, leaving Jennet alone in this life. Six more went with them. All were present at Malkin Tower. Alice was the only one of the group to be set free.

  One woman was found guilty and given four days in the stocks and a year in gaol as punishment. Her name was Margaret Pearson, whose servant had seen a toad climb out of the fire. She was not present at Malkin Tower, so Roger was only half-interested in her fate, and was not prepared to go to great efforts to see her swing.

  Richard told me that in Bromley’s parting words to Alice, he urged her to forsake the Devil. That would have been easy, because as soon as she left the room, she was free of him.

  * * *

  “Someone is here to see you,” Richard said to me a few days later. “Shall I send them up?”

  “Who is it?” Hope bloomed in my chest.

  Richard smiled. “You shall have to wait and see.”

  Fatherhood suited him; he was besotted with his son. Somewhere he might have another one, or a daughter, but I pushed the thought from my mind.

  “I will come down,” I said. “I haven’t been downstairs yet and am forgetting what it looks like. Richard?” I said before I lost my nerve and he left the room. He paused in the doorway, one hand resting on the doorknob. “I’m sorry, but I shall have to buy you a new gun.” He looked puzzled. “I took yours the night I...the night I came back here. I lost it in the forest.”

  “You took my musket?” He seemed more astonished than annoyed.

  “Yes. I didn’t intend on using it—I didn’t know how. It doesn’t matter. It got soaked, besides, so I ruined it anyway.”

  He smiled. “You surprise me every day, Mistress Shuttleworth.”

  “Would you sit with me a moment? There’s something I want to ask you.”

  The mattress sank under his weight, and the baby mewled in my arms, flailing his little fists in his sleep before settling again. I handed him to his father and went to my cupboard in the corner of the room, moving carefully.

  I pulled out the doctor’s letter, which was torn and flimsy as an old rag by now. I held it in my fist and looked out the window at Pendle Hill. Then I handed it to Richard. “Why did you not tell me about this?”

  He frowned and took it with the hand not holding the baby. I watched his eyes move over it, then understanding cleared his face, and he frowned. “Where did you get this?”

  “James gave it to me months ago.”

  “You were not meant to see this.”

  “Do you not think I would wish to know that my own life—”

  “You were not meant to see this because it is not about you.”

  I fell silent. “What do you mean?”

  Richard sighed. “This letter is about Judith.”

  “Judith?”

  He patted the bed next to him and I went to sit. Months of turmoil were ringing in my head, and it took all my effort to listen.

  “You were not visited by this doctor—he is from Preston. I had him visit Judith at Barton when she lost...she lost the first child.”

  I closed my eyes to let his words sink in. “But it says your wife.”

  Richard bent his head, and said very quietly, “I had to tell him she was.”

  Black ink from the ledger swam to the front of my mind: Mr. William Anderton to bring marriage license from York.

  “Why did you have a marriage license brought?”

  “That was for James’s niece. She married last month. There is nothing now you do not know, I promise you.”

  I sat quietly, letting his words sink in. “Why do you go to her?” I whispered.

  He seemed to consider his answer for some time, and covered my hand with his. His rings glittered, and his voice was almost a whisper. “I saw how you were when the babies died. I saw how ill it made you. I was afraid of hurting you again.”

  Even then, after all I had been through, I could not hate him.

  “And now I could not be happier that we have a son.” Holding the baby in one arm, he took from the bed the rattle shaped like a sword, and smiled down at him. I watched them sadly, and happily, and wretchedly. It was too much to take in.

  “Did you say someone was here?”

  “Yes, in the dining chamber.” He left a kiss on the baby’s head and went so I could dress.

  I stood and twisted my hair into a cap. It had stopped falling out, and was strong and thick as a rope. I put a sleeveless gown over the top of my smock, and picked the baby up again to show him the rest of his house. I paused briefly on the stairs beneath my portrait and remembered how Alice said I reminded her of someone, and realized she must have meant Ann. My son might never know the woman who saved our lives, but perhaps it was better that way.

  Alice had gone when I was asleep, and the blood washed away and the baby wrapped, slipping out of my chamber without anyone noticing. Richard said it was a full day and night after our son was born, and the house was busy with people coming up and down the stairs bringing bowls of hot water and fresh linen, so nobody noticed. She was there, and then she was gone. She had not said goodbye, though she had kissed me with a mother’s tenderness I’d never known.

  A tiny, glinting part of me hoped it would be her sitting in the parlor. I wanted to cherish the thought for longer, so I made my way very slowly down the stairs, rocking and murmuring to the baby. The servants were enamored with the new addition to the household, and could not stop beaming at me. They assembled in a little group in the entrance hall to smile and watch me carry him down the last of the stairs, and I smiled back.

  The parlor was empty.

  “Mistress?” one of the kitchen girls said at my back. “She is in the dining chamber. She is hungry from her journey so asked for food.”

  My mother rose from her seat the moment I entered, with her face serene and arms outstretched like the Virgin mother. “My grandson,” she cooed, and came to take him.

  I hesitated, then passed him over.

  Richard beamed wider than he ever had showing off a new gun or a suit of armor—this was a different pride altogether.

  “Richard, would you leave us for a short while? I want to spend some time with my daughter.”

  “Of course.” He bowed and stepped out.

  My mother’s eyes raked over my skin, my hair, my body. “You look well, Fleetwood. Your pregnancy was not a kind one.”

  “No.”

  “You are recovered?”

  “I think so. I lost a lot of blood, so Cook has me eating meat almost every hour. This is my first time downstairs.”

  She smiled and put her face to little Richard’s. He blinked slowly and flailed his tiny fists, and she put her finger inside his palm.

  “A little boy,” she said happily.

  But there was something she was hiding; I knew it in her voice. “What is it?” I asked, and she turned to me, and smiled
bravely.

  “Richard is a father twice over.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  The feather in her hat trembled. “Because I wanted you to hear it from me, and not some newsmonger in the village, or in someone else’s dining chamber.” She sighed. “I know you might never forgive me for keeping what I did a secret, but I thought it was the right thing to do, and knowing would only bring you unhappiness. Who would want that for their child, if they could help it?”

  She looked down at the baby, and I noticed the lines around her eyes and mouth as she spoke. “When your father died, I was...adrift. I was alone with an infant daughter, and...”

  “You could not wait to be rid of me,” I said dully. “You married me off straightaway.”

  She shook her head. “That was a decision your father and I made together. We needed a man to take responsibility for us, and your father was ill. What would have happened to us? When Master Molyneux came to your father with an offer, he had little choice but to take it.”

  “I did not know Father arranged it.”

  We sat in silence for a minute or two, looking at the fine black hair on Richard’s head, and his pink ears like little seashells. Already I missed his weight in my arms, which hung uselessly in my lap.

  “I was so unhappy in that house,” I said. “I spent every day of my childhood worrying that the next day you would send me away to him.”

  “I would not have done that.”

  “You threatened it when I misbehaved.”

  “For that I am sorry. I would never have done it. It’s difficult, raising a child without a father. You will say anything for a moment’s peace.”

  “You know he... When he came for the first time, he...” My voice shook. “You left the room.”

  My mother looked away. Her eyes were darker than ever, and her mouth turned down at the corners, though her hand went on reflexively patting the baby, and she was rocking very gently. I had never seen her with an infant before. “That is why I had the marriage annulled.”

  I stared at her. “You knew?”

  “When I came back, I could tell what had happened. He looked guilty as sin, and your little face...” For the first time in my life, I watched my mother’s eyes fill with tears. “I felt responsible,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do, how to get out of it without your father to tell me. I knew I could never, ever hand you over to that man.” Her voice trembled with emotion.

  “I thought it was annulled because Richard was a better match.”

  My mother sniffed, and smiled weakly. “And wasn’t he?”

  Slowly, I sat back in the chair. Sunlight streamed in through the windows—it was a beautiful late-summer day. “I am glad Richard put his woman in there because now I never have to go back.”

  “I hated it, too,” said my mother, surprising me. “I never settled there. I hoped that when you married you would put me somewhere else, and you did.”

  Richard did. I had nothing to do with it, had no interest in my mother’s desires when I married.

  “Well, now it has a new mistress. Judith Thorpe of Barton. She is welcome to it.”

  My mother leaned in. “I took all the best silver before I left.”

  We smiled at one another. I was about to ask if she’d had a son, or a daughter, then decided I did not want to know.

  The servants began bringing in dinner, and Richard came back in. We sat down to a joint of roast beef and a huge wood pigeon dripping in sauce. My appetite was unrecognizable from five months ago—I could have eaten the whole pigeon myself.

  “I saw on my way through Padiham a woman in the stocks with a bag over her head that had ‘witch’ on it,” my mother said as we ate.

  “Margaret Pearson,” said Richard. Since attending the trials he’d taken a keen interest in the events of that summer. He even had a theory about our old friend Master Lister: that Jennet Preston was his father’s mistress, and with his mother still living and frail, he wanted her out of sight and out of mind. Either that, or she knew something about him, and he would rather have her dead than have it known.

  As for Roger, our paths would certainly cross again, but the magistrate had disgraced himself slightly on his voyage for power. He had shown himself as a man who traded lives for a comfortable retirement; souls for new furnishings afforded by the king, all for the sake of adding a final few glory days to a golden career in justice. Among the gentry of the north, such ruthless ambition was considered rather desperate, and many dining chambers had closed to him.

  “She will do four market days in the stocks and then go to gaol, where she will probably die, because she will not be able to pay her bail once her sentence ends,” Richard was saying.

  “Why was she not hanged?” my mother asked.

  Richard shrugged. “A shred of sense prevailed? I don’t know.”

  My mother shuddered. “I heard there were thousands in Lancaster on hanging day.”

  “Nothing excites the living more than death,” I said.

  “What happened to that girl Jill? Or was it Alice? Was she not arrested?”

  Richard and I shared a glance. “She was found not guilty.”

  “Well, that’s remarkable, is it not? I certainly thought they’d find them all guilty if they found one. Weren’t they conspiring to kill Master Lister?”

  “Who knows?” I said. “There were no witnesses, apart from a child. Besides, Alice was innocent.”

  “How do you know?”

  My hand went to the scar at my elbow and traced it over my sleeve. “All she wanted to do was help people,” I said.

  “Where is she now?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Has she family?”

  I thought of Joseph Gray, drinking himself to death in his house made from mud. “No.”

  At that moment the baby began crying from his cradle in front of the fireplace. The nurse was eating with the servants, and my breasts were full and threatening to spill, so I got up and went to lift him from the oak cradle my mother had given me all those years ago. I stood up slowly and came face-to-face with the set of engraved panels on the mantelpiece.

  I blinked, and looked all along them, then stared again. I could not believe what I was seeing. Next to Richard’s initials, in the space that had been left blank since the house was built, was the letter A.

  I would recognize it anywhere, had seen it scrawled dozens of times in the shaky hand of someone learning to write. But there it was, whole, and clear. I stood frozen in astonishment, and then I began to laugh, and tears came to my eyes.

  “Fleetwood? Why are you laughing?”

  I spun around, lifting Richard up above my head and dancing with happiness as my husband and mother looked at one another in baffled amusement. “She is well!” I cried. “She is well.”

  Alice Gray was the only friend I ever had. I saved her life. And she saved mine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Five years later

  Richard was dressed to hunt. He put his head in the great hall, where I was sitting mending Nicholas’s silk stocking. With two sons, I had grown much better at embroidery because of the rate at which they poked holes in things, or skidded on the floor and tore their cloaks, or ripped their collars climbing through branches. At one elbow was the mending, and at the other was an ever-growing list of things I wanted James to fetch from London. Whenever something came to me I would take up the quill and scribble it down. I had just remembered I needed ambergris for my perfumes, when the boys, who were clashing wooden swords together in an attempt at a duel, dropped their swords to the floor with a clatter.

  “Father, will you duel with me? Nicholas fights like a baby,” said Richard, thrusting his brother’s toy at his father. He took after me, with coal-bla
ck hair and serious dark eyes.

  “He is a baby,” I said, smiling at Nicholas, who was as different from his older brother as I was from Richard. He had his father’s warm gold hair and gray eyes, with rosy apple cheeks.

  “I will when I’m back, so don’t splinter them before then.” Richard pressed a sword into each of his sons’ arms and wandered over to me. He looked distracted.

  “What’s the matter?” I said, briefly looking up from my sewing.

  “The king is touring the north.”

  I stared at him. “When?”

  “Next month.”

  “And does he plan to stay here? He is not welcome.”

  “Thankfully not, although to refuse him would be treason. I’m glad the tour is not next year when I am sheriff, because he almost certainly would. But he does plan to lodge at Barton.”

  “At Barton? Why?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. He is staying at Hoghton Tower before that, and Barton is halfway between there and Lancaster.”

  “But it’s empty.”

  “The king does not concern himself with inconveniences.”

  I put down Nicholas’s stocking. “We would have to furnish it, and hire servants... It will bankrupt us. The king travels with a party of a hundred or more.”

  “It’s the king,” Richard said simply. “I am no more happy about it than you.”

  “That house,” I muttered. “It’s like a curse.”

  Richard ignored my remark. I knew he kept Judith and their son somewhere in Yorkshire now, but I had no interest in where. As long as she was out of sight, and I had my boys and my home, I could quite easily ignore the whole thing. Richard nodded at my list on the table.

  “You know what ambergris is, don’t you? Whale vomit.”

  “Richard!” I batted him away and he darted out of my reach, straight into the sticky grasp of his sons, who pawed at his legs and begged him to play.

  “Enough! I am going hunting and if you do not let go of me this instant I am using both of you as bait.” He picked Nicholas up by the ankles and tipped him upside down. Nicholas shrieked and squealed, helpless with laughter, and his brother pretended to jab him with the sword, crying “Die! Die!”