The Familiars

by Halls, Stacey

‘I don’t understand. Would you come in? I’ll fetch some wine …’

  ‘No, thank you. I need to know if Roger has taken Alice to the gaol at Lancaster.’

  ‘He went out last night and hasn’t returned – he told me that’s where he was going.’

  So he didn’t put all his charges up in his house like an innkeeper. Just the ones he wanted something from. I took a step back and sighed, thinking of what to do.

  ‘Do you know a man named John Foulds?’

  Her face crumpled in confusion.

  ‘I’m afraid not. Should I?’ I shook my head. ‘Roger said you were with your mother in Kirkby Lonsdale for a spell,’ Katherine went on pleasantly. ‘Was it … enjoyable?’

  ‘Very. I have to go. I’m sorry, Katherine.’

  She wavered on her doorstep like a woman on the edge of a drop, as though she might jump and come with me.

  ‘Fleetwood,’ she called, and I turned. She appeared anguished, as though what she was about to say was causing her great torment. ‘He said he was taking a prisoner to the castle. I did not know it was a woman until I saw her in the carriage. She was your midwife?’

  ‘Alice is my midwife. Thank you, Katherine. You have been helpful.’

  ‘You won’t stay for dinner? Have some wine, at least.’

  I shook my head and said goodbye, going straight to the stable, where my horse was still drinking from the trough. I waited for it to finish before going back the way I had come. My head was thick with trying to understand all the implications of this dreadful situation, and the ride back to Gawthorpe was a slower one.

  When I arrived I dismounted and stood in the yard with a frown on my face, my hands still holding the reins. There was something I needed from the house before I went on the road again.

  Richard was in the great hall with James, surrounded by papers.

  ‘You are back early,’ he said. ‘Was Katherine well?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said absently. ‘Have you seen the dog?’

  Richard told me he’d last seen Puck in the parlour.

  ‘I am going riding,’ I announced.

  ‘Is that wise?’

  ‘Alice said so, and she has not steered me wrong thus far.’ I held his stare. ‘I’ll be back in a few hours.’

  Richard’s face was half amused, half annoyed.

  ‘Do you know, James,’ he said to the steward, ‘I wonder if the king has some sense in wanting to tighten the reins on Lancashire’s women. They are lawless, are they not?’

  There was a hint of malice about my husband as he looked closely at me. I’d seen the same glint of it at my mother’s house in the moment he decided he would tell me what to do, for the first time in our marriage. Now he was exercising his authority like a muscle, testing my limit and his.

  ‘I know not, Master,’ James replied soberly.

  ‘They are wild, are they not?’ he asked me.

  ‘They are also harmless,’ I replied carefully.

  ‘And who will be the judge of that?’

  Richard did not look away, so I smiled clumsily and left the room, but before I disappeared he called me back.

  ‘I am on business in Ripon today and will be away for the night.’

  I paused with my hand on the door.

  ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘Late tomorrow, or the morning after. But worry not – James will be here to keep an eye on you.’

  I went to find the dog. Walking across the bottom of the staircase, I felt the presence of my mother’s portrait at the top of the tower, as though she was standing on the gallery looking down at me. I shuddered and stepped back out into the chill morning.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was market day in Padiham, and the village was lively with people and animals and thick with the cries of traders and groans of cattle. I rode into the stable yard at the Hand and Shuttle, barely registering the curious glances that fell on Puck and me. I took him inside and asked a young boy with a rag in his hand for the landlord. He went off into the corridor I’d walked down not so long ago, before Alice told me to open my eyes. Now I wished I could close them.

  The same man as before, with a ruddy, inquisitive face and rotten teeth, appeared.

  ‘I did not introduce myself last time I was here,’ I said quietly. ‘My name is Fleetwood Shuttleworth. I live at Gawthorpe Hall.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ he replied, not unpleasantly. ‘I’m William Tufnell, the landlord.’

  That was when he noticed Puck at my side and almost jumped out of his skin.

  ‘No dogs allowed in here, Mistress. I’m sorry. Even yours.’

  I nodded, glancing around and noticing the fireplace Alice would have swept and the tables she’d wiped.

  ‘I won’t take a minute of your time, I only have one thing to ask,’ I said. ‘Have you ever heard of John Foulds or his daughter Ann?’

  He looked blankly back at me.

  ‘No one of that name in Padiham. And if he’s got a hand to lift a tankard, he’ll have been in here.’

  ‘There is an inn at Colne. The Queen’s Arms?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said warily.

  ‘I believe your employee Alice Gray came from there to here, looking for work.’

  ‘My brother-in-law passed her on, aye. She’s not here any more, though.’

  ‘What is your brother-in-law’s name? Is he the landlord there?’

  ‘Peter Ward, Mistress. And yes. You’ll find him there if you seek him.’

  The Queen’s Arms was on the edge of the village a few miles upriver, and I imagined Alice helping a feeble and petrified John Law along the pack road here. It was a small inn, no bigger than an alehouse, with the same smell of damp beer once I crossed the threshold. The place was empty, the benches and tables old but well scrubbed, and there was fresh sawdust on the floor.

  I left Puck outside, tying his leash to a post. A woman with a broom stood in a doorway behind the bar, telling a loud story. I waited for her to finish, my hands clasped in front of me. The woman realised she was being watched and as she turned to see me, her mouth fell open in a rude way.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  She looked me up and down, clasping the broomstick in her red hands.

  ‘My name is Fleetwood Shuttleworth. I am looking for Mr Ward, the landlord.’

  She could easily have called, but the woman went through the doorway and I heard her whispering. A moment later, a great barrel of a man with a shock of white hair stepped through. He was so large I felt his boots hit the packed earth floor.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Are you Mr Ward, who employed Alice Gray?’

  ‘If I had a feather in my hat for every person who came in here asking for Alice Gray, I’d look like a chicken. What’s she done now?’

  His choice of words surprised me.

  ‘She has done nothing. I wondered where I might find her father.’

  ‘Joe Gray? What do you want with him?’

  ‘I wish to speak with him.’

  ‘He don’t say much worth listening to.’ I waited. ‘He lives about half a mile that way along the woolpack trail, then right, a little way up where the trees stop. What’ll you want with him?’

  ‘That is my business. Who else has been asking for Alice?’

  ‘Oh …’ He waved a large hand. ‘Some magistrate, t’other week. I said, “Are you sure you’ve got t’right person?” Before that, you don’t even want to know – a beast of a slattern with one eye on Heaven and the other on Hell. And her mother, screeching like a pig in a slaughterhouse. God knew what they wanted with her.’

  ‘You mean Demdike? And Elizabeth Device?’

  ‘Demdike, aye. It means demon woman, did you know that? Two families around here have been locked away for witchcraft now, would you believe – the Devices and old Chattox and her daughter. Some folk were telling me they’re neighbours at war with each other, both of them in with the Devil. And that little ’un who was here a few month ago, asking after that poor sod
she’d cursed. Good riddance, the lot of them. I’m not having their sort in here – folk won’t come if they know witches have been in. That’s why I had to let Alice go: they were always asking for her. Years, she worked for me. But she were scaring the customers, the ugly wench.’

  ‘So you let her go,’ I said coldly.

  ‘She were caught up in it, rightly or wrongly.’

  ‘All she did was bring that poor man back here.’

  ‘I wish she hadn’t bothered. Brought me nothing but grief, he did. Wailing and weeping about dogs in his room and needles and curses. He’s the one needed locking up but she begged me to let him stay.’

  I looked around at the empty tables and chairs, the full barrels waiting to be drained into men’s bellies. He had a business to run, and there might have been some truth in what he was saying, but he was wrong to get rid of Alice, because in doing so he’d implicated her of wrongdoing.

  ‘Do you know John Foulds?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘You want him as well then, do you? She has bad luck with men, does Alice, what with her old dad and John Foulds.’

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘He comes in here, now and again. Well, he used to, until … He’s not been in for a while. I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Until what?’

  Peter reached around to scratch the side of his large belly.

  ‘His daughter died not long ago. How long would it be now, Maggie? Six months or so, I reckon.’

  ‘And he and Alice …’

  ‘Well, they were courting. He’d been married before – his wife died. She kept her cards close to her chest, did Alice, never did let on much. But they never did marry. You’ll not find Alice around here anyway, sorry to disappoint. If you’re asking her dad, he might not have much idea either. You could try at the Hand and Shuttle – that’s where she works now, in Padiham.’

  ‘What does he look like?’ My mouth was dry.

  ‘John? Dark hair, tall. Handsome chap, until the drink takes hold of him, eh, Margaret? I’ve seen you having a look.’

  Margaret rolled her eyes and slapped his arm.

  So the man who’d upset her in the passage at the Hand and Shuttle was John Foulds. The idea that Alice had murdered his daughter was impossible. And she his lover? He’d had a fine face, but idleness and wastefulness radiated from him like light from the sun.

  I thanked Peter and his wife flatly, and before I went to get my horse, I looked up at the little windows on the second floor of the inn. I wondered which one John Law the pedlar had looked out of from his sick bed.

  The road at the side wound down to Colne one way and ran out into open fields and copses of trees on the other. Birds sang around me, and the joyful chorus they made rang empty in my ears as I rode slowly away from the village. The road was muddy underfoot, and my horse’s feet were unsteady. Puck padded heavily beside me, and in the quiet and clear air I imagined Alice on this same path, as familiar to her as the woods at Gawthorpe were to me.

  I knew so little about Alice, yet she knew so much about me. She told me once that she came close to marrying, and that must have been John. She missed her mother dearly, and had found a kindred spirit in her old friend Mould-heels. She did not speak often of her father, and when she did it was not with warmth. All these little things I knew, but they were like brushstrokes at the corners of a picture: I could not see the full thing.

  The road cut through a wooded area, with trees that would dwarf Gawthorpe. I shivered as I thought of John Law meeting Alizon under their whispering leaves. I kept my eyes straight ahead until the trunks and boughs opened into wide fields again, trying to shake off the feeling that I was being watched. Just as Peter had said, the land began to rise up on the right, and a low, dark house squatted on the hillside. A mud track led to it, and I turned my horse uphill, guiding it around the worst of the bog. A thin thread of smoke drifted briefly out of a chimney into the air, only to be carried in all directions by the wind. The house was not much taller than I was, smaller even than the buttery at home, made of wattle and daub with a thatched roof. The windows were not glazed but had shutters that were open to let the light in. A low wall surrounded the cottage, and flowers lay dying or dead in their beds. A few colourful heads peered from beneath the weeds like lanterns. I remembered Alice talking of her mother’s herb garden and thought it must be around the back. The house was exposed on the hillside; it would have been difficult to protect growing things from the wind and driving rain here.

  I rapped smartly on the door and a few moments later it opened. Joseph Gray was older than I expected: older even than Roger. Or it might have been that he looked that way because he was poor. Hunched over, he gave the impression of constant movement even when he was still; his body trembled and his mouth worked around his teeth. Like Alice’s, his cream-coloured hair spiralled down to his shoulders. His eyes were a clear blue, and he was thin: his clothes hung off him and looked as though they needed leaving in lye for a week.

  ‘Mr Gray?’ I said. ‘I am Fleet—’

  ‘I know who you are,’ he muttered. ‘She worked for you, didn’t she? Come in. I suppose you’ve got summat to tell me.’

  It was very warm in the house: the fire in the middle of the room burnt as merrily as if it was December, not July. The rising smoke escaped from a hole in the centre of the roof of the cottage, and I thought how cold and draughty it must be with an opening to the weather. Two low beds stood either side of the fire – one unmade – and lengths of cloth hung over the earth walls that would no doubt be damp and cold to touch. A table, two stools and a cupboard were the only furniture. By the fire on the rush-covered floor lay some pewter pots and pans that looked used but not washed. So Alice and her father cooked, slept and lived in this house full of holes that the wind whistled through all hours.

  Joseph spoke. ‘I suppose you’re here about the nag?’

  ‘The nag?’ I asked.

  ‘The nag you give our Alice. You’ve got it back though now, so I don’t want no trouble.’

  I stared blankly at him.

  ‘The horse that went missing?’

  ‘Aye.’ His mouth kept moving even when he was not speaking and I wondered if he was chewing tobacco. ‘I give the money back to the fella. And was she grateful? Was she fuck.’

  He ambled over to his bed and sat on it. I remained where I was, struggling to breathe in the fire’s oppressive heat. Joseph licked his lips and picked a tankard off the floor, examining its contents and throwing them into his mouth.

  So that’s what had happened to the grey draught horse: Alice’s father had sold it. And she, somehow, had got it back. My chest felt heavy suddenly, and for a brief moment I felt overcome with emotion. But I straightened my skirts and stood straighter.

  ‘Mr Gray, I am not here about the horse. I have it back now, so no matter. I am here because Alice has been arrested by the magistrate Roger Nowell, who seems to be under the impression she has murdered a child.’

  His eyes remained glazed and vacant, resting on the fire, and after a few seconds he pulled them towards me.

  ‘Eh?’ he said.

  ‘Mr Gray, your daughter is in a great deal of trouble. I will do everything I can to help her but I thought you must know about these fatal claims. She has been taken to Lancaster gaol to await the assizes next month, but it can’t get that far. I won’t let it. Mr Gray, are you listening to me?’

  ‘Bet you don’t even need that horse, do you? What’s one more nag to you? Bet you have a whole stable of ’em lined up like soldiers, waiting to be called to attention.’

  He gave a half-hearted salute and again tipped his grubby tankard into his mouth, though it appeared to be empty.

  ‘Mr Gray! Are you listening to me? Your daughter is accused of being a witch and is in gaol. Do you know anything about this?’

  He burped. ‘Guess she’ll be going same way as her mother then.’

&nb
sp; With one finger he drew a line across his neck.

  My mouth fell open.

  ‘She could be hanged, and you don’t care? You have no interest in helping her?’

  ‘What I have an interest in … is …’ He lost his words and grew vacant again. ‘Where is my ale coming from? Cos it i’nt from her! Or that tight-fisted bugger Peter Ward. He is only down the road, but now I have to go further ’cause he won’t serve me. I’m an old man, Mistress What’s-Yer-Name.’

  The heat was so intense, the fire blinding, and Joseph Gray so infuriating and strange, I felt I couldn’t stay for a single second longer in his hovel. But I had come for a reason, and I owed Alice everything. I rose slowly to go to the unmade bed in the dampest corner of the room. Even the great barn at Gawthorpe was warmer and drier – no wonder she had taken so easily to the idea of going with me to my mother’s.

  There was something lying on her bed – a bundle of rags, though it might have been something a cat dragged in. I lifted its damp, lifeless form – not a creature, but old wool, crudely sewn. Made as though from a handkerchief, it appeared to be a human form, stuffed with hair, with a head, and two arms and legs. There was a curious mass attached to it, and though the smoke and the heat were overwhelming, my skin went cold when I realised it was the figure of a child bound with hair to a woman. Black hair. I remembered the strands covering my pillow, and how they had disappeared. There was the faintest scent of lavender, then it disappeared. Inexplicably, my eyes filled with tears, and I set the poppet back on the bed.

  ‘Mr Gray,’ I said, going back to where he sat, jerking and muttering. ‘Alice told me about her mother, Jill.’ I waited for a response, and something stirred in his blank blue eyes. ‘She misses her very much, as I’m sure you do. You have already had one member of your family taken away. Would you not do everything in your power to stop it happening to Alice? She is the only family you have.’

  His head snapped as though he was dreaming. He was staring wildly at something I could not see. With difficulty, I crouched down, my skirts bunching around me.

  ‘Your daughter has been very loyal to me, and helped me greatly over the past months. I am sorry that I took her away from you,’ I lied. ‘I will help her; she has helped me and now I must return her kindness.’