The Familiars

by Halls, Stacey

  ‘“Best get them all”, I said,’ Nick continued. ‘There can’t be harm in questioning them.’

  ‘Questioning who?’

  I was being awfully rude, but wanted Nick to finish his monologue and go, so I could think about what to do. Perhaps in the months it took for me to grow, Alice’s temper might cool, and she could be persuaded back?

  ‘The gathering of witches at Malkin Tower. He found quite the rats’ nest there. Not just the Devices but friends of theirs, the ones talking about killing Thomas Lister, and blowing up the gaol. There are a few local names on this list; no doubt it will cause a scandal in the community. Who would have thought, so much Devil’s work in this wet little corner of the land? And on Good Friday – ha! It won’t be a good one for them, not now.’

  ‘You have the list there?’ I nodded at the paper in his hand, something in his words making me curious. ‘What does it say?’

  Relieved by my interest, he asked for a knife, and I found one in the top drawer of James’ desk. He sliced open Roger’s scroll, letting it fall and holding it at arm’s length to read the words aloud.

  ‘“Jennet and James Device said they rode off on white foals after the meeting, and Jennet Preston bade them come to her house in Gisburn for their next meeting in a year’s time. Preston brought her familiar to the meeting: a white foal with a brown spot on its face.”’

  I felt my heart pumping in my chest.

  ‘The other people at the gathering on Good Friday: who were they?’

  It took an age for the elderly magistrate to find the names with his cloudy squint.

  ‘Let me see … ah, yes, here we are: “the wife of Hugh Hargreaves of Barley; the wife of Christopher Bulcock of the Moss End, and John her son; the mother of Myles Nutter; one Mould-heels, of Colne; and one Alice Gray, of the same.”’

  CHAPTER 9

  The sign of the Hand and Shuttle was a short distance from the river, before the road split to go north or west. I had passed it many times before but barely given it a glance. As I tied my horse in the yard, I realised that its name, of course, came from the Shuttleworth coat of arms: a shield of three shuttles, with a hand rising from it grasping a fourth. The same symbol was carved on a wooden sign on the side of the low building.

  The place went silent as I stepped through the door, and what felt like a hundred pairs of eyes came to rest on me, even though I wore one of my most modest outfits with a black wool cloak, and a simple black hat with a gold band. The place was small and low-ceilinged. A few groups of men sat around what looked like creepie stools laden with jugs, their faces hard and blank. A man behind a partition like a stable door waited to see what I would do, perhaps thinking I had walked into the inn by mistake. I moved towards him.

  ‘I must speak with Alice,’ I said.

  He had a ruddy face, and his mouth hung open, displaying unpleasant teeth. ‘Alice …’

  ‘Alice Gray,’ I whispered. ‘Is she here?’

  He nodded dumbly. ‘I’ll fetch her, Mistress. Might you want to go somewhere more private?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I followed him through a curtain of cloth and he led me into a narrow, dimly lit passage to the dining chamber, which was empty. The whole place was cold, with no fires lit, and stank like the brewery at Gawthorpe. I pulled my cloak around me and went to the window that overlooked the yard, where barrels were being rolled into the storehouse. I recognised them to be the ones from the house, stamped with the Shuttleworth crest. A door banging and footsteps in the passage made me jump.

  ‘Stop coming here.’

  It took a moment for me to recognise the raised voice as Alice’s. I placed a protective hand on my stomach and stepped into the doorway to look out. At the end of the passage was a dark-haired young man, whose grubby shirt and threadbare trousers did not detract from how handsome he was. He looked almost foreign, like a pirate or a prince, with black hair and tanned skin and fine, dark eyes. Alice was standing with her back to me, her hands on her hips.

  ‘You think you can just leave me?’ he demanded.

  ‘Leave a horrid drunk like you? Why on earth would I do that? Go home.’

  ‘There is nothing for me there. Not now.’

  His face crumpled, and he looked as though he might cry.

  At that, her shoulders sank, and she held the tops of her arms like I’d seen her do in the woods. I drew back in the doorway in fear they should see me. When Alice spoke next, her voice was thick.

  ‘We have to put it behind us.’

  ‘Easy for you to say, with your work and your new … position.’

  ‘Get out, will you.’

  He pushed his face into hers, and his dark eyes shone.

  ‘I can ruin that for you, if I like. I could tell them things … People have been asking.’

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she shrieked, and the hairs on my neck stood up. ‘Don’t you dare come back.’

  With a final withering look, he stumbled down the passage, past me and out into the yard. The unmistakable smell of ale clung to him. I took a few hesitant steps to where Alice was standing, facing away from me, still hugging herself.

  ‘Alice?’

  She spun around, her face a paler shade than usual. Her eyes were large and fearful – more fearful than I’d seen her earlier in the hall full of servants.

  ‘Fleetwood. What are you doing here?’

  I took her hand and led her into the room.

  ‘Will we be heard in here?’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Anyone.’

  She shook her head, and I closed the door.

  ‘Who was that?’ I whispered, my voice trembling.

  She shook her head. ‘No one. If you’ve come about the necklace—’

  ‘No, I haven’t, forget all that. Alice, I read a letter just after you left, from Roger Nowell to Nick Bannister. Do you know either of them?’ She shook her head again, and her face was so open and confused I did not doubt for a moment she was telling the truth. ‘Well, Roger knows you, or he will. Alice, how do you know the Devices?’

  Alice swayed like a felled tree and had to grip the back of a chair.

  ‘How do you know them, Alice? How?’

  ‘I do not know them.’

  ‘What were you doing at their house on Good Friday? They are accused of witchcraft, Alice. The grandmother, the mother, Alizon … The youngest daughter, Jennet, she is staying with Roger, telling him everything.’

  Her eyes darted around the room. ‘I …’

  ‘Alice, you have to understand: your name is on a list – a list that is in the hands of a very powerful man who makes the law around here. You will be arrested, and almost certainly arraigned for witchcraft.’

  All the colour drained from her face. I thought she might fall, so I ran to her, holding her by the arms and sitting her carefully in a chair.

  ‘I am … I will be arrested? And arraigned … But what does that mean?’

  I swallowed. ‘It means you will face trial at the assizes. Lent has happened, so summer, perhaps.’

  ‘Trial,’ she whispered. ‘But witches are hanged.’

  ‘Most of them are.’ I knelt before her, and took her hands in mine. ‘But you have not yet been arrested, and there is time to change Roger’s mind. Alice, you must tell me what you were doing with the Devices at Malkin Tower. I can help you; Richard can help you.’

  Still frozen in shock, she ever so slightly shook her head in disbelief. Then she balled her hands into fists, shoving them under her armpits, making herself smaller.

  ‘Who gave him my name? Elizabeth Device?’

  ‘Her daughter, Jennet, I think. What took you there, Alice? You have to tell me so I can tell Roger he has it wrong.’

  There were footsteps in the passage. My heart pounded with them until they went away, and Alice looked up briefly, distracted with fear.

  ‘Was he wrong?’ I asked.

  After what felt like an age, she sat up straight and tucked her hair beneath
her cap. Her wide mouth was solemn.

  ‘I do not know those people,’ she said.

  ‘Alice you have to understand they will think you do if you were there. They will see you as a witch.’

  She bit her lip and blood bloomed under her tooth. The pink tip of her tongue came out, serpent-like, to lick it.

  ‘Tell me. I will tell Richard, and together we will go to Roger and tell him he has made a mistake.’

  But she was not looking at me, her gaze somewhere beyond.

  Then she said: ‘No. I do not trust him. And neither should you.’

  ‘Trust who? Roger?’

  She closed her eyes and rubbed at them, as though she was suddenly very tired.

  ‘Richard?’ I said. Her mouth remained closed. ‘I can’t trust Richard? My husband?’ I rose to stand, but my meagre height meant I was only a head or two above her. ‘Is this because of what he said about the necklace? He knows you didn’t steal it – I’m certain he does. He was just angry.’

  Something was starting to make me tremble and I realised it was fear. I wanted to prise Alice’s hands away from her face and make her look at me.

  ‘I do not think you comprehend how much danger you are in.’ My voice shook with emotion. ‘Roger is on a witch hunt. He is collecting women like cards at a table. I have come to warn you, and offer my help. That’s if you want it, which I think you do. And I would advise you stay away from Colne for now.’

  ‘But that is where I live.’

  ‘And that is where they will look for you. You should stay with a friend, or family. Roger and Richard know your first name, at least. It won’t take them long to realise you’re the same Alice on Roger’s list.’

  ‘Then why have they not burst through the door to arrest me?’

  ‘Because they do not know yet, and I will not lead them to you.’

  With that she made a noise that sounded like a scoff. I reached for the door handle.

  ‘I will go home and explain everything to Richard, and he will go to Roger.’

  ‘You adore your husband.’ Her voice rung out clear in the cold, empty room.

  ‘Of course I do. What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Do not go to him.’

  ‘Why?’ Hot fury bubbled up again. ‘Do you not comprehend how much influence my husband has? Are you saying you do not need our help? That you will somehow get through this on your own? Alice, your life is at stake. Roger will not be made a fool of in front of the London justices if I know him at all. He made a list of people to arrest, and your name is on it. What of this do you not understand?’

  Again she put her head in her hands. She had aged ten years in one afternoon.

  ‘Alice, are you listening to me? Do you not trust me?’

  ‘Yes, I trust you,’ she said.

  It was a small triumph, and despite my anger, her words glowed in my chest. They’d never been said to me before, or needed to be.

  ‘But you don’t trust Richard? Why?’

  Very slowly, she turned her face to look at me.

  ‘The ledger,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The ledger your steward keeps. Everything you buy and everything that leaves Gawthorpe goes in there, you said. Is that right?’

  I nodded, bewildered.

  ‘Look at the ledger.’

  ‘But … How do you know what’s in there? You can’t read.’

  In her wide amber eyes there was an inexplicable sympathy.

  ‘I don’t need to read things to see them.’

  I went straight to James’ study. Even though the fire was lit, I was cold as stone and my teeth chattered as I drew out the thick book bound in calfskin. In James’ neat handwriting was a list of everything bought and paid:

  March: two loads malt; roundlett of sack; three great salt lings delivered to Thomas Yate in London …

  What was I supposed to be looking for?

  April: Michael Thorpe to Colne with bacon; half a year’s rent for Ightenhill Park; the carriage of a gun down from London.

  Could it be the gun? I knew about the gun.

  Mr William Anderton to bring marriage licence from York.

  I paused on this, my finger holding the place. Why would anyone at Gawthorpe need a marriage licence? No one was betrothed, as far as I knew.

  That’s when I noticed a word so familiar to me I had overlooked it altogether:

  Sweet soap to Barton.

  Coals from Padiham pit to Barton.

  Chickens bought at Clitheroe to Barton.

  Barton.

  Barton.

  It had been my name and also my home. But nobody lived there; it had been empty since my mother and I moved out four years before.

  ‘Mistress, here you are.’ James stood in the doorway, his usually composed face a mask of concern. I closed the book. ‘Was there something you needed?’

  ‘No, James, thank you.’

  I slammed it shut and moved around the desk, embarrassed. But when I brushed past him into the passage, suddenly the rage returned: how was I doing something wrong by looking at my own household ledger? Why shouldn’t I care how the property I’d brought to this family was being kept? Something told me I had to be careful. When I’d left Alice in that dank little room at the alehouse, these were my parting words to her, too.

  ‘Where will you go?’ I’d asked.

  She had only shrugged, and stared at the empty hearth. I’d been too consumed to offer my help, and galloped the short ride home in a fog of my own turmoil.

  ‘The master has been searching for you,’ said James.

  I noticed with alarm that he was not just concerned, but very pale and grave.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘One of the servants has been taken ill: Sarah, the chambermaid. Richard has asked me to send for the doctor.’

  ‘Very well. What is the matter?’

  ‘She complained of a headache, and now is in a fever. She is delirious and asking for her mother.’

  ‘Then send for her mother. Or can she be sent home?’

  ‘I think it might be best, once the doctor has seen her. In case it’s catching.’

  I frowned. There was far too much in my head at once, with supplies being sent to Barton and servants being struck down with illness, and Alice’s association with the Devices, and the ruby necklace. More had happened today than in a year.

  ‘She seemed fine earlier,’ I thought out loud, remembering how she spoke up in Richard’s household meeting.

  Then I remembered Alice’s pink cheeks and hard gaze, and my stomach sank. I prayed silently that the sweating sickness or some other deadly disease had not come to this house.

  The passage outside was dark, and James’ study friendly and warm. I had no wish to make a twenty-mile ride, but it had to be now.

  ‘James, I need you to do two things for me: have my horse saddled, and pass Richard a message.’

  ‘The master is due to return any moment—’

  ‘The message is this: I am going to Colne, where I will take a room at an inn for a night or two and try to persuade Alice to return as my midwife.’

  He looked at me in astonishment. ‘But, Mistress—’

  ‘I feel Richard handled the necklace business quite poorly. He humiliated our loyal staff. You saw it. But of course you won’t tell him I said that. I am afraid he has cost me a skilled midwife, who I trusted and liked very much, and I will have no one else deliver my child. Tell him what you will. The real reason, James, is that I cannot stand to look at my husband for the way he treated the servants. You are all loyal and precious to me, and I hope you won’t think badly of him for it. That is why I am staying away from Gawthorpe, because I am upset. Please tell him not to follow me, and I will be back in the morning.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded smartly.

  ‘Yes, Mistress.’

  I turned, and then, as though I’d just remembered, half-turned back, hoping my face was hidden in the darkness and did
not give me away.

  ‘Oh, and James? How are things at Barton? All in order?’

  His face fell at once, and he went quite grey. It was all I needed. He opened and closed his mouth a few times like a dying fish while I waited calmly.

  ‘Might you need something fetching from there, Mistress? It has been shut up for—’

  ‘Four years, has it not?’

  His Adam’s apple quivered as he swallowed his words.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Very well. I will get my cloak.’

  I arrived shortly after nightfall. There was no moon, only cloud, so everything was black, but I saw the vast shape of the house lurking ahead, and warm light burning merrily in a room on the ground floor. I had not wanted to come back here ever. I did not want to see the chamber my mother and I shared. I did not want to see the parlour where my childhood ended in the time it took my mother to fetch something. I did not want to see the creaking staircase, the high, cold ceilings or the empty cage where I had found Samuel dead one winter morning after he’d been left too close to the fire.

  I had dismounted outside the house when a noise – or rather a presence – made me turn my head, and something very low and slim crossed the grass to my right. It was no more than a silky shadow, but it paused, its brush-like tail straight out behind it: a fox. It froze, still as a statue, and we stared at one another, and my skin tingled. But then it bolted and disappeared in the blackness, and I carried on alone, stumbling on the front steps and cursing the clumsy pattens protecting my slippers. I flung them off and they clattered to the ground.

  The door opened with no resistance, and the entrance hall was very dim, with no torches lit and that familiar old chill caressing me on the threshold.

  ‘Hello?’ I called.

  I could not – dared not – think of what, or who, was in the room I knew to be the great hall. At worst it might be a vagrant – or would that be best?

  My feet were almost silent. The only sounds I could hear were my breath ragged in my chest and my blood pounding in my ears. I walked blindly in the dark, my hands out in front of my face, to where the door for the great hall was, feeling my way along the walls. I tried to ignore the creeping thought that I might touch the face of a person waiting for me noiselessly. After combing the walls from top to bottom, I found the handle I’d been searching for and pulled it.