The Familiars

by Halls, Stacey

  ‘Do not show yourself to them. You would be wise to stay in here.’

  ‘They don’t know who I am, do they?’

  ‘No, but they are dreadful chatterboxes and have noses for rumour like hounds, so keep out of their way.’

  I closed the door behind me.

  Eleanor and Anne were seated in my mother’s parlour, which was always chilly. There was a pleasant view of the old-fashioned knot garden at the back of the house though, the purpose of which was more functional than stylish because only the hardiest flowers survived on these high, windy fells.

  Both Richard’s sisters shared his fair hair and clear grey eyes, but Eleanor was pretty and Anne plain.

  ‘Fleetwood!’ they cooed as I entered.

  Both immediately noticed my stomach, where my sleeveless gown parted around the cloth of silver stretching in a sphere. We kissed and I sat at the window with the weak sun on my face.

  ‘We heard a rumour you were here, and it was true!’ Anne said saucily. ‘And without Richard?’

  ‘Yes, without Richard.’ I tried to force a smile. ‘From whom did you hear?’

  ‘We were staying with friends at Kendal – do you know the Bellinghams of Levens Hall?’ I shook my head. ‘One of their servants is cousin to one of yours here in the kitchen. We did not dare believe it when she told us you were staying here for the summer, but how many women are called Fleetwood Shuttleworth? And here you are! All alone?’

  ‘All alone.’

  Relief allowed me to sit back more comfortably. I had not yet rubbed my teeth and there was still the sour taste of morning in my mouth.

  ‘Not for long.’ Eleanor indicated my stomach. ‘You are a funny little thing, staying away from your husband when you are about to have a baby. I suppose wives of the gentry can do what they like around here.’

  She gave a little tinkling laugh. To listen to her, you would think she’d lived all her life in one of the London mansions.

  Before I could ask what else the servant had said, she went on.

  ‘How very exciting: a new Shuttleworth heir. Are you prepared? Do you have a midwife?’ I nodded. ‘Well, you shall have to pass her on to me when you are finished. I did make a hint to Richard in my last letter, but nothing was confirmed then. I am to marry before the year is out!’

  I made a delighted face.

  ‘That’s wonderful news – who is your husband?’

  ‘Sir Ralph Ashton.’

  Both Anne and Eleanor were older than me. When Richard and I married I had been thrilled to spend six months with them in London, but after thirteen years on my own I was not used to being spoken to, petted and teased at all hours of the day. All my life I had wanted sisters, and as soon as I got them I could not wait to be rid of them and their chatter, and their darting little hands and boundless inquisitiveness.

  ‘Fleetwood?’ Eleanor chided. ‘I said the wedding will most likely be at Michaelmas. Will the baby be born by the end of September?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  I wondered what they knew – if anything – of Richard’s other woman, Judith but before I decided whether to ask, Mrs Anbrick brought a jug of sack and three Venice glasses. She looked approvingly at our little feminine party, pleased that the house had opened its doors to society. I poured a generous amount into each of the glasses and toasted Eleanor’s forthcoming marriage. Anne was smiling but I could see that really she was downcast, with no husband arranged. Like Alice, I could not help but think her lucky. I drank deeply; the sack was sweet and burning at the same time.

  ‘Fleetwood, why are you here without Richard?’ Anne asked, wearing a thin smile and shifting in her dress.

  With their pale faces turned to mine, and their white ruffs gleaming in the sun, they looked like two daisies.

  I reached down the back of my own ruff to scratch.

  ‘I …’

  Suddenly the baby kicked, and my hands flew to my stomach in response.

  ‘Is it the quickening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can we feel?’

  I was too surprised to say no, and within a moment four small, white hands were pressed to my gown. I moved uncomfortably, wanting to pick their palms away.

  ‘How wonderfully strange,’ they said, their eyes wide and staring.

  I willed the child to be still, and it was.

  ‘How is your mother? She will miss you, Eleanor, when you leave Forcett.’

  ‘Yes, she is quite well but visits less often now,’ said Eleanor. ‘I expect she will pine for me. Anne will still be there, of course,’ she added smugly.

  ‘What news from Yorkshire?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing much of interest. Not like in Lancaster.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You will know all about them, of course – the Pendle witches? They say there will be a trial and upwards of a dozen hangings. The servants at Levens say it will be the most England has ever seen. You must have heard something of it.’

  I swallowed. ‘Something, yes.’

  I thought of Alice upstairs, bent over the cupboard with her quill. We had no parchment so she had been practising inside my mother’s copy of Daemonologie and, having mastered her first name, was now inking her surname.

  ‘Well, what do you make of it?’

  ‘I would not know because I have been here,’ I said coolly. ‘And I pay no mind to servants’ chatter.’

  That made Eleanor flush, and Anne gave a shudder.

  ‘I wonder what they look like. I am glad we do not have witches in Yorkshire, I would not sleep in my bed.’

  Eleanor gave a high, tinkling laugh.

  ‘I do not think you are in danger, Anne. They only seem to curse each other and their strange little neighbours. Apparently they bury cats in their walls and prick babes to drink their blood. And Lancashire is positively full of them, by the sound of it. Are you sure you wish to return, Fleetwood, and raise your son there?’ Eleanor teased.

  ‘They murder children,’ Anne said gleefully. ‘And they’re said to have animals that are the Devil in disguise.’

  ‘Like toads and rats and cats!’ Eleanor shrieked, and the two of them writhed with giggling.

  ‘Do you know a woman named Judith?’ I interrupted them.

  ‘Judith? No, is she a witch?’

  I did not answer and filled our glasses again. The sack was going down easily and making me feel loose-tongued.

  ‘Shall we walk around the garden? It’s quite warm out.’

  The truth was I could not bear another moment sat in that poky room with them. The three of us stood, and I realised that I was giddy. I led them outside, where the sky was pale and the air warm and windy. We walked around the side of the house, and Eleanor picked a fistful of flowers and held them at her breast.

  ‘Do I look like a bride?’ she asked.

  ‘The most beautiful bride I ever did see!’ said Anne.

  They flounced in their skirts, twirling around and around, but Anne stopped when she saw me, for I was not laughing or playing along.

  ‘Fleetwood, you are different, you know,’ Anne said. ‘I cannot think exactly why; something about you is more … something.’

  ‘Eloquent as ever, Anne.’ Eleanor snorted like a pig.

  ‘In what way?’ I asked.

  ‘You have always been quite melancholy, really. But now you seem to … carry it better.’

  ‘Melancholy?’

  ‘Yes, a little mournful and sad. But now you seem different, older somehow … More knowing.’

  ‘I wish I was not knowing,’ I muttered. ‘I would rather not know.’

  Eleanor looked blankly at me.

  ‘Know what?’

  There was stillness around us; the wind had died for a moment. I felt quite light-headed from the sack and the bright sunlight and the green hills leaning all around.

  ‘About your brother,’ I said, my face innocent. Anne had stopped too and they were both looking at me dumbly. ‘And his other woman. Abou
t the infant she is expecting. You did not know?’

  The pretty bouquet fell from Eleanor’s hands, splaying on to the path. Their faces were identical masks of shock.

  ‘You aren’t serious.’

  ‘I saw her with my own eyes. She is at Barton, at my father’s house. That is where he keeps her.’

  A flock of birds flung themselves from a group of trees nearby, their wings cracking above us. I had sown the seeds, and now they would grow whether I liked it or not.

  ‘You are sure about this?’ Anne asked, her voice quivering slightly.

  ‘Quite sure.’ I swallowed.

  ‘But you have only been married …’

  ‘Four years.’

  I was seventeen now, but for all I’d been through I might have been twice or three times that. My husband already had a lover, but I was no old matron, with greying hair and wrinkles at my eyes. I suspected I was younger even than her, but every time I thought about her she only grew more beautiful. The baby I’d wanted to give as a gift to Richard was now a much more precious commodity: it secured my place in the home, and in the family. Without it, I would be an ornament, a wife in name only. I knew this now. If this baby died inside me like the others, I may as well move permanently into my mother’s house, for I would be less than useless. The thought of that made a hard kernel of dread in my stomach. I had to have Richard’s child to secure my future, for if it died, I may as well die with it.

  We walked twice more around the garden in gloomy silence, with Anne and Eleanor making occasional uncomfortable little comments about the inclement weather, and how Westmoreland was so far behind Yorkshire 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 Yorkshire. 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 between us, for usually servants went unnoticed.

  ‘Who is this?’ Anne asked.

  I licked my lips.

  ‘No one. Alice, go inside.’

  I gave her a tight smile, and went to continue on our path. Only when she did not move did I realise 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, 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.

  ‘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 gone back down the windy slope, I returned to the parlour, where I finished the jug of sack. 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 saying Alice’s name like that … Surely 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 no doubt have something to say to him about Judith, and he might now be even more furious with me. Probably I would be the talk of Yorkshire as well as Lancashire, my name mentioned in great halls and dining chambers. Well, I was more furious with him than myself. All this was his fault, and my mother’s too, knowing what she did about Judith and keeping it from me, always 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 realised they had let me down too.

  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 woozy feeling from earlier. Sweat gathered at my armpits.

  ‘I drank too much sack,’ 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 grew 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. Her expression was uneasy.

  ‘Alice,’ I said. ‘My mother will be back any time, so I must ask you this now. I want you to tell me what you were doing with Elizabeth Device that day in the woods.’

  Her hand stopped on the water, her fingers balancing lightly on its surface. As well as her usual scent of lavender, 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 parlour 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, still facing 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 pedlar. All his things were cast 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, 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 took 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.’

  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 pedlar 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 hear 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.’

  ‘Alizon Device,’ I whispered. ‘And did she?’

  Alice nodded, her back to me still.

  ‘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’d gone up she came running through again, so I went back upstairs to see John. He was in such a state, sobbing and shaking and pointing at the door. “She’s a witch,” he was 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 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 keeps to herself most of the time but local folk know her. I’d seen her around, heard what people said.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘That she’s an oddball, 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.’