The Familiars

by Halls, Stacey

  The smoke was badly stinging my eyes now; perhaps Joseph thought I was moved to tears.

  ‘Mr Gray,’ I said again.

  His gaze cleared and he focused. His lips parted and I thought he would speak, but instead he showed all his brown teeth, and it was a moment before I realised he was laughing.

  ‘They burn witches, don’t they?’ he wheezed, pointing at the fire.

  ‘What?’

  I stood, even more alarmed.

  He pointed at my skirts.

  ‘They burn witches!’

  Flames were licking the bottom of my gown. Puck began barking, and horror hit me with such force I was almost blind with it. I ran to the door and flapped my skirts desperately in the open air. The fire seemed to falter but did not go out. I looked around in desperation for a trough, anything, and found an old pail against the wall filled with rainwater. With Puck barking and tearing around me, I tipped the whole thing over the side of my gown, and as the brown water puddled around my feet I saw the bright flames were gone.

  Inside, Joseph Gray was still laughing. I stood there panting, Puck circling with his back to me, as though fending off an invisible army. The wind pulled at me from every angle and drew fine, dark threads of smoke away from my ruined gown. The ruby red of my skirts had gone black and gaped in a horrible wound. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but Joseph Gray did not come out, and it took me a long time to stop shaking enough to climb on to my horse. I broke into a canter, with Puck streaking behind me. I could not have gone faster if I was running from the Devil himself.

  That night, something visited me in my chamber where I slept alone. I woke up because I felt warm fur brush against my hand. It was pitch-black, and all I could hear was my own breathing. I felt a weight shift on the bed somewhere near my feet. My breath died in my throat as it moved again, as though getting comfortable. I imagined Joseph Gray standing in my dark chamber with a dead rabbit hanging from his dirty fist.

  I closed my eyes and willed my heart to stop hammering. It’s only a dream. Yet I knew it was not.

  Through the spaces between my heartbeats I felt the weight disappear from near my legs, then there was the softest, slightest sound of something landing on the floor. It was too light to be Puck, too silent. My hands stayed where they were on top of the bedclothes; I was too afraid to move them. My child kicked, as if to say, I can feel it too.

  I waited: either nothing would happen or I would die of fright. Though everything was black, I saw something move towards the door, and then it was gone.

  Earlier, I’d crept into the house and hurried upstairs, wrapped in my cloak like a smuggler. After shoving it into the wardrobe, I’d gone to my chamber and noisily pretended a candle had fallen, burning my dress.

  ‘Oh!’ I shouted, hearing myself and almost believing it. ‘Oh, oh!’

  I blew it out so it would still feel hot and placed it on the floor by my feet.

  ‘My gown!’ I cried when one of the chambermaids came in.

  She was frightened; she probably thought I was losing the child. She guided me to sit down, and I puffed and panted and pretended I was scared, which wasn’t difficult: all I had to do was think of Joseph Gray’s wide, glassy eyes and the flames clawing at my hem.

  I lay awake as my face dried and my heart slowed and the child inside went back to sleep. I thought of Alice. My nightmare only happened when my eyes were closed, but Alice was living hers. Her father’s words came to me in the darkness: They burn witches, don’t they?

  I tried to picture Alice as a child, growing up in that draughty house with her strange father and kind mother. Though I’d now met two people from her life, I had no better understanding of her, the girl who did not know her own birthday and could not spell her name, but who had a masculine intelligence, and knew the properties of everything in the earth, and could still a bucking horse with the palm of her hand.

  I closed my eyes and prayed she was safe.

  CHAPTER 17

  The next morning I rose in the moments before sunrise and dressed quickly in the near dark, hoping I wouldn’t meet any servants on the way out. I unlocked the front door and slipped outside, closing it gently behind me and pocketing the key. The summer morning was before me, and I would have thought it glorious in another year, another lifetime. I yawned and watched the trees rustling awake, then I went to the stables. The cattle were lowing in the great barn, eager for their feed, and the river sighed behind the house. I had to walk much more slowly now, so I noticed these things. One of the stable boys was dressed, a pail in each hand, and I sent him to saddle my horse. When he came back, I told him I had a message for him to pass on.

  ‘Please go and find James later, and tell him I will be out all day, and he is not to tell the master about it when he returns. Tell him if the master finds out, I will throw his precious ledgers on a fire and he will have to rewrite them from memory. Can you remember that?’

  The boy, whose name was Simon, and who was probably only three or four years younger than me, nodded gleefully, thrilled at the prospect of delivering a threat to his superior.

  I strapped on a pack of food I’d taken from the kitchen and wrapped in a napkin – bread smeared with honey, cheese and grapes, with biscuits for later – and before the light had come up fully I was on the road north. If Richard was back tonight, I would need to be back, too.

  Several hours later, I welcomed the sights and sounds of a busy town. It was a bright summer’s day, and warm, and the journey uphill to the castle was slow, for the streets were crammed with carts and horses. Before I reached the gatehouse I looked back behind me, where Lancaster was spread far below, down a steep, winding street. Buildings were crammed in everywhere, with the hills rising up in the distance hemming them in. From the castle, you could see everything. On my horse I approached two helmeted guards standing with swords at their thighs like suits of armour.

  ‘I am here to visit a prisoner,’ I said.

  They regarded me lazily.

  ‘Name?’ one said.

  ‘Mine, or the name of the prisoner?’

  ‘Your name,’ he said impatiently.

  ‘Fleetwood Shuttleworth, of Gawthorpe Hall near Padiham.’

  He looked me up and down, taking in my swollen stomach. Then he turned and disappeared under the great yawning gate. My back ached and my legs burnt from the long ride, but if I dismounted I thought I might never get back on the horse again.

  Just as I began to wonder if the guard would return, he came striding out with a plump, slightly younger man with black hair. He was dressed finely in soft black boots, breeches and a black doublet with silver buttons fastened over his well-fed belly. Wide sleeves billowed at his wrists.

  ‘Mistress Shuttleworth?’ he asked politely. ‘Should I be expecting you? My name is Thomas Covell. I am the coroner and keeper of this castle.’

  I decided to stay on my horse to keep the advantage of height.

  ‘I am here to visit Alice Gray, Mr Covell, if such a thing is possible?’ When he looked no more enlightened, I said, ‘She was recently arrested by Roger Nowell, who is a dear friend of mine. I was in the area and wanted to … enquire after her welfare.’

  Clearly prisoners’ visitors were not a daily occurrence at the castle gatehouse, for Mr Covell was intrigued and suspicious. He placed his fingertips together.

  ‘Ah … We do not permit callers at the castle, I am afraid to say.’ His eyes slipped to my stomach. ‘Especially under certain circumstances – the prisoners can get quite excited by it, and it does no good for their dispositions.’

  ‘Mr Covell,’ I said, ‘I have travelled a long way – over forty miles.’ His face was impassive, as were the two guards’ either side, gazing into the distance. ‘My husband, Richard Shuttleworth, would be very disappointed to hear I had been turned away, especially considering his late uncle Sir Richard’s generous contribution to the Crown not fifteen years ago – that and the fact he was chief justice at Chester, and knighted at
court. So I am not sure that my late relative would look with agreement at his nephew’s wife being refused entry. I would hate to have to take the matter further.’

  Mr Covell opened his mouth and then closed it again.

  ‘What is the name of the prisoner you seek to visit?’ he asked.

  ‘Alice Gray. She was brought here not two days ago.’

  Thomas Covell regarded me again coolly, taking all of me in from my hat to my rings. His fat chin wobbled and he sighed.

  ‘You have two minutes. I will have one of the gaolers escort you.’

  And so I passed under the gatehouse, just as Alice had two days before me, and thousands more would after. There was only one way into the castle, and one way out.

  I left my horse tied behind the gatekeepers. A thin, wheezing man with a pointed face like a rat took me across the castle yard – but not the way I was expecting, towards the main part of the castle. We followed the interior wall around to the right, towards a cluster of huts and stone outhouses. His gait was very wide, his legs sprouting from his hips, so he walked with difficulty, but also like a man determined not to show it.

  ‘What’n’ ya want wi’ these wenches ’en, eh?’ he said conversationally.

  I ignored him and stared up at the height of the stone, feeling the chill of the place even though it was a warm summer’s day. I was not expecting us to stop so suddenly, and not outside: we were next to a low arch at the foot of one of the towers, covered by an iron gate. But the door did not lead out to the other side of the castle walls – the blackness inside meant it only led one way: down.

  I frowned. ‘Why are we stopping?’ I asked.

  ‘This is the Well Tower,’ said my companion through a gummy smile.

  ‘I don’t understand. Alice Gray will be in a cell awaiting trial. Can you take me to her, please?’

  ‘She’s in ’ere.’

  He pointed at the arch. It was so dark I could see why it was called the Well Tower – it was like looking into one. I could not see beyond one or two steps; it was as though a black curtain covered the rest. The gaoler extracted a large bunch of keys from his hip and spent a long time considering each one as, slowly, the absolute horror of what I was seeing dawned on me. Behind this gate, in this hole, was my friend. I had never been to a gaol and did not know what a cell might look like, but this was not a cell. It was a dungeon. It was as though the sun had gone out; all the heat and light left me, and I stood shivering, staring at the entrance to Hell itself.

  A curious sound came from somewhere behind the gate, and I realised it was a bird chirruping. Hopping from one spot to another on the top step was a robin, trapped behind the gate. It might have been small enough to get through the bars, but it was asking for us to set it free.

  ‘Bloody stupid vermin,’ the gaoler muttered, unlocking and pulling open the gate. ‘Get out of it.’

  He moved towards the bird and finally it took flight, flitting past us to freedom. I reached for the cool stone wall to steady myself.

  ‘In’t nowt to be scared of. You wanted to come, din’t yer?’

  No. I did not want to go down there for anything, not even Alice. But I had to, because unlike her, I could come out again.

  The gaoler closed the gate at the top of the stairs, and when I heard it clang and the key turn in the lock, every nerve in my body was set jangling, my head light with terror. It was like going down steps into black water, so dense was the darkness. They went down and down into the earth, and at the bottom was another door of solid wood, or iron – it was too dark to tell.

  ‘Stand back,’ he wheezed, using another key in the door at the bottom. ‘Or the smell’ll knock you out.’

  I went back up a few steps, my pattens echoing on the stone. I heard the gaoler’s barking on the other side of the door, and waited, and then a pale face appeared in the dim light at the bottom of the steps, and a slim body slipped through the narrow gap.

  ‘Alice.’

  I am ashamed to say I started crying: me, in my fine clothes, with my stomach full of cheese and bread, and my horse waiting for me outside the walls. She did not cry. I had not seen her in two days but it could have been years: she looked so different. Her long face was whiter than the moon, and there were shadows under her eyes that had not been there before. She blinked furiously, as though the gloom of the staircase was blinding. Her dress was filthy and looked damp, and her cap was streaked with dirt. Dark blood spotted the front of her dress, and no doubt the back too where she’d sat.

  She said nothing, only held herself weakly against the wall, as though she had no strength. The gaoler appeared at her side, closing the door, and I heard shrieks and cries of protests from behind him as what must have been the only light was shut out. He was right: the smell was incredible. Alice had used to smell of lavender, and clean her hands in a porcelain bowl, and now she lived in a cesspit beneath the earth.

  ‘Who else is in there?’ I breathed.

  ‘All of ’em,’ the gaoler wheezed. ‘All the witches awaiting trial.’

  ‘How many people?’ I asked Alice.

  ‘I do not know,’ she whispered. ‘It’s too dark to see anything.’

  Her mouth was dry, her tongue peeling from the roof of her mouth as she spoke. Her pupils were large as marbles.

  I had travelled for hours and now I could not think of a single thing to say. In that moment, I think I might have given the child in my stomach for her freedom.

  The gaoler looked from one of us to the other, disappointed.

  ‘Well, this is quite the reunion, is it not? Do you have nowt to say?’

  ‘Do you have food?’ I asked.

  ‘A little,’ she said.

  When the gaoler looked away to sort his keys, she shook her head.

  ‘I will help you.’

  My voice echoed on the walls. My words sounded as pathetic as a child’s.

  ‘They got Katherine as well,’ she said, her voice thick.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Katherine Hewitt. My mother’s friend.’

  That’s when she started crying.

  Mould-heels: her mother’s partner in midwifery. I remembered her telling me about her in that warm, lofty chamber in my mother’s house, long ago in a different life.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean? What’s your fault?’

  ‘Now, now,’ said our acquaintance, uncomfortable.

  I turned to him.

  ‘Will you leave us for a moment?’ I demanded.

  ‘Leave you? I shan’t be doing that.’

  I fumbled at my skirts and took out my purse.

  ‘Here.’ I held out a penny and he fell on it like a starving dog. ‘You can leave us locked in, just come back when I call. Don’t go far.’

  He staggered up the steps, breathing raggedly, shutting the gate behind him and locking it again. His figure blocked the light momentarily, and only when he moved away could I see Alice again.

  ‘Come up,’ I said, retreating up the staircase. ‘You need air and light.’

  She followed me and we sat on the top step with our backs against the gate. I tried not to breathe in the stench coming off her: stale sweat, vomit and dried blood, plus something else that I knew at once to be fear. I’d never smelt it before on a human, but somehow I knew it right away. She had stopped crying now but the tears had carved clean paths down her mucky face.

  ‘Tell me about Katherine,’ I said gently, taking her hand.

  ‘She is accused too, of the same thing. It’s my fault – she’s done nothing.’

  ‘Alice, you have to tell me everything. Why are you accused of murdering John Foulds’ daughter? He was the man I saw you with at the Hand and Shuttle, wasn’t he?’

  She nodded and licked her lips, though her tongue was dry.

  ‘I loved him,’ she said in a very faint voice. ‘And I loved Ann. I loved them both. Me and John were … together. He used to come to the Queen’s Arms, that’s how I met him, a
couple of years ago. He had a daughter; his wife had died. He was funny, and kind. At first I thought we would get married. Ann wasn’t two years old when we met. I used to look after her when he went to work. She was like a little angel, with fat cheeks and yellow hair that wouldn’t lie flat no matter how much you combed it.’

  She was almost smiling now, her face lost in memories. Then it clouded over and she sniffed.

  ‘John said he wouldn’t get married again, not after losing his wife. It was too painful, he said. So I stayed, and it was like we were married. I lived with him, and my dad as good as disowned me. He called me a whore. He said I’d never be a wife, that I was good for nothing but lying down for John after he’d been drinking. But I was happy, with John and with Ann. We were a little family.’ She swallowed. ‘Then he started staying out longer, and later. Me and Ann were on our own a lot of the time. Most of the time. John was either at work or at the alehouse, while I was pretending to be his little wife at home. I was lying to myself.’

  She shifted her feet and wrapped her arms around her knees. I looked again at the blood on the front of her dress, at her unwashed hair trailing from under her cap. I wished I could wash her and put her in a clean nightdress, tuck her in bed like a child.

  ‘Even when folk started telling me he had other women, I didn’t want to believe them. And life went on, and he got meaner, and cheaper, and me and Ann were living off my wage because he spent all his. And she started having these … I don’t know what you call them. She would go stiff and her eyes would roll in her head, and her tongue was too big for her mouth. I thought she was doing it because her dad wasn’t around. He didn’t believe me when I told him. He thought I was making it up to get him to come home. I tried all the plants I could think of, all the herbs. I went to Katherine for help, but even she couldn’t do anything. She was fine most of the time, it was just when this happened she was … It was like an evil spirit was choking her.