‘One day I had to go to work and leave Ann at home on her own. John was nowhere to be found. He was supposed to come back. I was close to losing my job.’
Tears began leaking again from her eyes. Her face was carved with sorrow.
‘I still loved him. I always loved him, even when he wouldn’t come home. If we hadn’t had Ann, though, things might have been different. I might have left. Anyway, I went to work and asked Katherine to keep an eye on her. The next thing, she came running in saying, “Alice, Alice, come quick, you have to come now.” And we ran to John’s and she …’ Alice buried her face in her knees. ‘I shouldn’t have left her.’
I put my arm around her, feeling her thin shoulders. As I grew, she shrunk. My heart felt like it was breaking. It was a different pain from when I had discovered Judith. That time there was anger; this time there was only sorrow.
‘There was nothing you could have done,’ I whispered, pressing my cheek to hers.
Our tears mixed together and ran down to our lips. I tasted salt: mine and hers. We stayed like that as she shuddered beneath my arm, then after a while she grew still.
‘I think that’s why I wanted to help you so much,’ she said softly. ‘I thought maybe if I could keep your child alive, it would go some way to …’ She stopped, struggling to explain. ‘I’d failed to save one child, so I thought if I could give life to another …’
‘If the child is a girl, I will call her Alice Ann.’
She did not smile, but there was a shadow of comfort in her eyes.
‘I thought you wanted two boys.’
‘I do.’ I looked down at our skirts – shiny maize taffeta against filthy brown wool, and I held her hand again. ‘That has not changed.’
‘It’s awful in there,’ she whispered. ‘It’s like Hell. You can’t see a thing, and it makes you feel like the room’s turning. There’s a woman dying. Demdike. She’ll be dead before the trial. There’s no food.’
I closed my eyes and thought of the food I’d had that morning all to myself. I hadn’t even thought …
‘I’ll get you out of here,’ I said. ‘I promise. I will get you out.’
More tears slid down her cheeks.
‘I can see what all this has cost you,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t have you sacrifice any more.’
‘To Hell with what it costs me.’
As I said it, I felt the baby move, and was aware at once that while all three of us were here and alive now – Alice, the baby and I – one day very soon we might not be, and there was no way of telling which of us would make it. We were bound together in some dreadful destiny, and it was clearer now than ever that to survive, we needed one another just as equally, and just as desperately.
‘I will save you,’ I said again, gripping her fingers in mine.
She squeezed them once, and let go, then she looked sadly at me, and her lively golden eyes were empty.
‘I am not a dog you can save from a bear pit.’
‘I will save you from death, like you promised to save me. You will live.’
‘And Katherine,’ she whispered.
‘And Katherine.’
At that moment a great wail came from behind the locked door at the bottom of the steps, making us both jump. Then fists began banging and the wails turned to screams. Alice and I leapt to our feet as the gaoler hurried over and fumbled with the lock.
‘You’ve set ’em off, have you?’ he demanded.
‘What’s all this?’ another voice echoed down the staircase.
More men were approaching now. The gate clanged open and an iron grip held my arm. Alice and I were wrenched apart and suddenly I was outside the gate and she was being marched back down into the darkness.
‘Alice!’ I cried. ‘I’ll come back! I’ll come back!’
While a fierce bulk of a man escorted me back to the gatehouse, the door to the dungeon clanged open and the shrieking grew louder.
‘She’s dead! She’s dead! She’s dead!’
The words flew out like crows from a forest, echoing around the walls with nowhere to land.
Before beginning the long journey home, I stopped at an inn in the town, where I ordered three roast chickens, twenty meat pies and two gallons each of ale and milk to send to the dungeon. I had four boys carry the food and roll the barrels up the hill to the castle, and made sure that the same wheezing gaoler carried them down those steep stairs and came back with empty arms. I left him with another penny to shine his palm and gave one to each of the miserable guards too. I told them I would be back, and they smiled at me as though they knew better.
CHAPTER 18
The next morning there was a crowd of servants at the front steps when I came down to breakfast. Richard’s bare head was at the front of the crowd, so I pushed my way through. Then I realised everyone was looking down at the ground. I stepped back in horror.
Richard’s falcon had been slashed to pieces. Lying in a pool of her own blood, she had been left as an offering on the top step, her wings folded, her eyes glassy and unseeing. The servants were hovering like a pack of flies on rotten meat, so I sent them away. Richard’s face was a mask of grief and anger, and I knew that one would soon surrender to the other, so I urged them back inside and closed the door.
‘Do you know who did this?’ I asked.
‘No, but when I find out I will kill them,’ he said quietly.
I allowed him to collect himself, thinking suddenly of the slash of fur, the glistening red of those butchered rabbits I’d seen in the woods all those weeks ago.
‘One of our tenants? Have you rowed with anyone of late?’
He shook his head and gazed on the pitiful creature. As he knelt, I watched his narrow shoulders slope in sadness, his hair stir in the damp wind, and felt a powerful surge of love. But also something else: a despondency – a shame, previously unknown to me – that he could feel something so strongly for a creature, and not for me, or for Alice. I felt like leaving him on the doorstep and going to where my breakfast was waiting in the dining room, but then an idea arrived. I asked a servant to bring a bathing sheet, then knelt to wrap the carcass up. The sight of it did not stir me – I had seen plenty of death. But something did cause me to hesitate: a few very fine orange hairs were caught in its wounds. I folded the sheet and bound it carefully around the bird.
We crossed the lawn as the skies opened. I stood with my husband in the downpour as he buried the bird behind the great barn in a sheltered spot by the river. I felt the rain run down my neck, soaking my jacket, and my child kicked inside me. When we got back into the house, and Richard pulled off his drenched jacket, I took his face in my hands. His hair was plastered to his head, and his eyelashes were wet. His grey eyes burnt.
‘Richard,’ I said. ‘I need your help.’
I spent a long time getting dressed, and for the finishing touch added my black velvet choker with the plump pearl hanging ripe as a peach that Roger had bought for me one Christmas. My cheeks were fatter than the last time I saw him. I pinched them and dabbed rose oil behind my ears, at my wrists and at the dip in my throat. When I heard him arrive downstairs, I stared into the looking glass for another minute or two, tweaking my collar, patting my hair and trying to breathe normally. I was pleased to see my hands weren’t shaking, and said a silent prayer.
I heard Roger’s voice before I saw him, telling Richard some tale or other. They were in the dining room, and I paused in the doorway to take a deep breath before gliding in. He looked the same as ever – shiny boots, wide sleeves, glittering rings. It might have been any day in our friendship, but the memory of the last time I saw him returned. Something told me to be very careful.
‘Mistress Shuttleworth,’ he said genially, with a graceful bow of his head.
I went to him and kissed him, trying very hard to act as I might have done months ago. So much had happened since that supper at Read Hall, but you would never know it from his easy grin, his beaming cheeks.
‘You are l
ooking very well,’ he said evenly.
‘Thank you. Will you have some wine?’
‘I will always have some wine, if there is wine to be had.’
I went to the draw-leaf table to pour it and found myself glancing at the panels above the fireplace. Empty, gleaming wood filled the space around Richard’s initials.
‘The tower lies empty,’ Roger was saying. ‘I told him I imagine it will be difficult to find a tenant afterwards.’
‘I could ask the bailiff,’ Richard suggested.
‘Tower?’ I asked, going back to serve the wine.
‘Malkin Tower,’ was Roger’s reply.
I tried to appear lightly curious.
‘What is that?’
‘The home of the Devices, near Colne. It’s a very strange place to look at. You hear tower and think it to be grand but it’s like a spike coming out of the earth. It’s tall and round and made of stone, with one room at the bottom, and they climb rotten ladders to sleep around the walls. But they won’t have use of it for much longer – it’s been empty a month or more. Since Constable Hargrieves found the teeth and clay dolls under the ground there, I shall be surprised if anyone wants to go in there again.’
Silence fell as the food was brought in: a joint of roast beef, with fallow pasties and cheese. Roger eyed it hungrily.
‘Fleetwood,’ he said, helping himself to sauce, ‘a friend of mine saw you in Lancaster the other day. What were you doing there?’
I kept my eyes on the food, cutting the beef into strips.
‘I was visiting a clothier,’ I said.
‘All the way in Lancaster? Must be some fine material.’
I smiled and licked my thumb. Roger was always two steps ahead of everyone else: no doubt he had already asked the guards or Thomas Covell, who had confirmed I’d been there.
‘I stopped by the castle, too,’ I said thickly. ‘I thought I might visit my midwife.’
I glanced at Richard. I’d told him of my whereabouts in case Roger did first, and was glad of it now, though he was not at all happy I’d ridden some eighty miles in a single day. I’d reminded him of Alice’s advice: that if I had always ridden, then riding was as dangerous as walking, so that was balm at least.
Roger speared his meat with his knife and did not look up. He knew, then.
‘And why ever did you do that?’ His voice low and dangerous.
I pushed my plate away and reached into my pocket for my handkerchief to dab my eyes.
‘I have been feeling very unwell,’ I said in a small voice. ‘I am worried for my health and the health of my child – I wanted to ask her advice.’
‘And there is not one other midwife within forty miles that could assist you?’
‘Alice has been a very good midwife – the best I’ve had.’ I stopped dabbing and looked meekly at him. ‘I have never reached this far in childbed before, and I believe that is down to Alice. My lying in will begin soon, Roger,’ I went on. ‘If you could just consider allowing Alice to live in custody here at Gawthorpe, for my own sake and for that of my child’s. Without her, I am afraid. Richard?’
I glanced at my husband, praying he would play his part.
There was a pause, in which Richard licked his lips.
‘Fleetwood was very ill,’ he said quietly. ‘You saw her. She could barely eat a morsel. Her hair fell out in clumps. Somehow she is better than ever now. Alice would of course still face the assizes next month but we would keep her here under lock and key. She would not escape.’
‘And you could guarantee that how?’
‘The same way you could guarantee it with Jennet Device, who I believe is still at Read,’ I said.
‘Jennet Device is not on trial for murder,’ Roger said calmly. He picked up his knife again. ‘You would invite a child murderer and a witch under your roof?’
‘She is not …’ I whispered, but Richard gave me a look, and I went silent.
‘It is impossible,’ Roger announced, returning to his food.
I hated him more than ever in that moment. He was like a cat placing a powerful paw on a mouse’s tail before letting go and catching it again. Roger enjoyed letting people wheedle, and persuade, and beg, letting them think they were in with a chance, when his decision was already made.
‘I think the pair of you fail to grasp the seriousness of the allegations against the Pendle witches,’ he went on. ‘Witchcraft is punishable by death, but their crimes are altogether more serious. They have not only practised witchcraft, but their actions have caused the deaths and madness of many people. They are a danger to society. How would it look to the king, to ask for their pardon until the trial? No, it will not do.’
He dabbed at his beard, where beads of sauce clung to the silver hairs.
‘Which brings me to my next point,’ he said, this time speaking directly to me. ‘There is no use visiting the castle again, because you will not be let in. Visitors excite the prisoners, and what with your … condition …’ He gestured vaguely at me. ‘It whips them into a frenzy. Shortly after you barged your way into the Well Tower and had that door opened, a woman died.’
‘You are not suggesting—’
‘I am not suggesting anything; I am telling you,’ Roger interrupted. His eyes were fierce now, every line of his body taut with malice. ‘Do not go to the castle again. If you do, you will not be let out.’
My knife clattered against the table. I turned to Richard, who was pushing strips of fat miserably around his plate. He would not challenge Roger; I knew it. And I needed him on my side. Trying to disguise the fact that I was shaking, I sat back in my chair and let my hands fall to my lap.
‘Do you mean to say I would be a prisoner?’
‘That is exactly what I mean. Be under no pretence: your advantage of birth is the only thing that stands in your favour. Had you not this house and husband, do you think you would be permitted to tear around the county unchecked, making your enquiries? You are no threat to the course of justice, as much as you design to be. But if you think you are free from the grip of the manacles, you are quite mistaken.’
At this, Richard interrupted. ‘Roger, be reasonable.’
My blood had turned cold, but Roger was not yet finished.
‘One of the accused is Myles Nutter’s mother. She, too, is a rich woman, a fine lady of standing. Land-owning, with educated sons. The problem is she curses her neighbours and they fall down dead.’
If only it was that easy to kill you, I would do it, I thought, but my mouth remained shut.
Roger leant in slightly to deliver his fatal blow.
‘In fact, Jennet told me you reminded her of Mistress Nutter. She can always be persuaded to think a little harder about who was there at Malkin Tower on Good Friday.’
His pale gaze rested unblinkingly on me, and I think that was the first time I realised who I was pitting myself against. This was not Roger, my father figure, who dined and hunted and played cards with us; this was the former sheriff, the magistrate, the Justice of the Peace.
‘That’s enough,’ Richard cried, stabbing his knife into the table, with a sickening crack.
We all jumped, and Roger sat back. I had not seen Richard this angry before.
‘I’ll hear no more of it.’
He pulled the knife from the wood and began eating again.
‘I am leaving this afternoon for Jennet Preston’s trial at York,’ Roger spoke quietly now. ‘The same judges who are hearing the case will be at Lancaster in August: Sir James Altham, who is very experienced and discreet, and Sir Edward Bromley. Do you know Bromley, Richard?’ Richard ignored him, his jaw still set with fury. Roger did not seem to notice. ‘He is the nephew of the former Lord Chancellor, who oversaw the execution of the Scottish queen. He is also the man who acquitted Jennet Preston at the Lent assizes.’
He took a noisy sip from his glass.
I remembered how Thomas Lister had seethed and shaken next to me at dinner at the mention of Jennet Preston; how he
had succeeded in committing her to trial twice in the space of a few months. One of the judges had found her not guilty a few months before; he could do it again.
‘How many weeks until the trial at Lancaster?’ I asked Roger.
‘Three or four. I expect both of you will want seats in the gallery? I am expecting it to be busier than the Rose on play night.’
Later, when the two men went out to look at Richard’s new gun, I stood for a long time at the window, thinking. Demdike was dead. Jennet Preston would be tried for murder by witchcraft tomorrow. While Alice was alive, and there was time before the trial, I could still save her.
The next morning I set out to find Malkin Tower. I rode in my travelling cloak, my skin slick with sweat, even though it was cool for July, and my mother’s voice ringing in my ears:
Fleetwood, you are making yourself ridiculous. Fleetwood, you are making a mockery of your family.
I thought back to those gentle, light-filled days at her house – a place I would never have imagined myself comfortable. The reason I found it comfortable was Alice. If I had sat night after night embroidering or reading Bible passages with only my mother’s sour face for company, I might have been driven mad. No, how could I think that? What would drive someone mad was night after night in a dank, pitch-black cell, surrounded by other sweating, weeping, vomiting bodies, with no water or food or place to relieve yourself.
The reason Alice was in prison was Elizabeth Device, who had wanted to save her child so desperately she had shackled herself to everyone around her. Perhaps she thought there was safety in numbers. She might never have expected her other daughter would bring about their downfall. I wanted to see where she came from, this astonishingly ugly woman with her spirit dog and bastard child. She had already lost her mother, and now the rest of her family were at stake – apart from the child Jennet. What life had this child experienced, which made her deliver her kin to Roger Nowell? Roger had said Malkin Tower was a miserable place, but it was the only home she had known, with the only people. The lure of a feather bed and meat pies at Read Hall would surely not be enough to make her betray her family.
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