The Familiars

by Stacey Halls

  Nick Bannister’s handwriting came to my mind: Alice Gray, of the same. It had been easy to put from our minds this far north, or at least it had been for me. I wondered if the child Jennet was still at Read Hall.

  “But the definition of witch is new.” Alice spoke from the end of the table, making me look up in surprise. “These are peaceful people, carrying on as they have for centuries,” Alice went on. “It’s only since the king came to the throne that people became fearful. Have you never needed the help of a wise woman?”

  My mother shimmered with hostility. “How dare you address me in so insolent a manner in my own house? Are you a midwife or an authority on politics?”

  I gave Alice a warning glance. A flush was creeping up her throat.

  “Jill merely means that perhaps not all those accused of witchcraft are guilty,” I said quickly.

  My mother had turned red as a nettle rash and turned her full force on Alice. “You defend these Devil worshippers? Who use blood and bones and hair to carry out their sorcery? What is peaceful about that? They are godless people.”

  Her words stirred a memory in me: my hair swept from the pillow; a bowl of blood disappeared. I glanced at Alice, but her eyes were on the table—she appeared to know she had spoken out of turn.

  “Enough of this,” my mother spat, straightening her napkin on her lap. “Let us return to the matter in hand—when you will return to Lancaster, and to your husband. You have had time apart, and now it is only right that you go back. You are a wife, and wives live at home, not with their mothers.”

  “What if Richard has moved that woman in?”

  “He would do nothing of the sort.”

  “So I suppose she will go on living at our house?”

  “Where else would you have her? She is not in your parish, not in your way. She is out of sight and out of mind.”

  I threw the king’s book onto the table. “She is not out of my mind. She might be yours but it is not your husband who has a woman. How can you defend her? And him? If he is such an angel, why does he have you furnishing your house like a yeoman’s wife? You would defend him if he had you use rushlights!”

  “I am content with my lot, as you should be yours,” my mother snapped. “That nasty temper of yours is no doubt what drove him away.”

  “What drove him away is his need for an heir, and his wife not being able to give him one.” My eyes stung and my throat was tight.

  “Fleetwood.” This time my mother’s voice was not so unkind. “Do you think Richard is the first man to have a mistress and a bastard?”

  The ghost of an itch sent my fingers to my scalp, my neck. “Next you will tell me that Father had twenty.”

  “Of course he didn’t. My father did, though.”

  I stared at her.

  “My father had three wives, and all of them had his children by the time they were married. When his first two wives died the next set was ready to move in. Not me,” she said quickly. “But I had many brothers and sisters. His will was ten pages long—he left something to all of us.”

  “So you are telling me,” I said slowly, “that if I die, this woman will easily take my place and move her children in, and nobody will remember me at all?”

  “The things that come out of your mouth!” my mother cried. “That is not what I am saying. While you can have children, your place in the family is safe. Deliver your husband’s heir and nobody will give a thought to this other woman, just as nobody gives a thought to the hundreds of other women and their bastard children in homes all over the country.”

  Her chair screeched against the flooring as she forced it backward and strode from the room. I waited until her feet were on the stone flags outside, then I took the king’s book and threw it at the wall.

  * * *

  But Daemonologie turned up again later that day on Alice’s bed. I asked her about it when she came in from the garden, her palms dirty. “I thought you could not read.” I pointed to it.

  “I can’t,” she said, pouring water from the jug into the bowl on the dresser. “I wanted to look at it. Would you read it to me? I want to know what he says. The king.”

  “Why do you?”

  Brown water lapped the sides of the bowl as she rubbed her hands and wrists. “Please,” she said, and then, “I spoke out of turn with your mother. I should not have been so bold.”

  “Think not on it,” I said. “I don’t.”

  I sighed and sat down on the end of Alice’s truckle bed, reaching for Daemonologie and leafing through it. “How odd, it’s written in dialogue.” Alice looked blankly at me. “Dialogue, like what is spoken in plays.”

  “I have never seen one.”

  I opened it at chapter three. “Epistemon says: I pray you likewise forget not to tell what are the Devil’s rudiments.”

  “Rudiments?”

  “I mean either by such kind of Charms as commonly daft wives use, for healing of forspoken goods, for preserving them from evil...by curing the worm, by healing of horse-crooks, by turning of the riddle, or doing of such like innumerable things by words, without applying anything, meet to the part offended, as mediciners do.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Doing things by words without applying anything. Curses,” I said. “Healing things or maiming them from afar. I find it hard to believe the king found time to write this when he was ruling Scotland.”

  “I don’t understand why he would write a book about it. But then, if I could write a book, maybe I would,” Alice said.

  I laughed. “You? Write a book? Women do not write books. You’ll have to learn to read first and that might be a lifetime’s work.”

  “If you can write a letter, why not a book?”

  “Alice,” I said gently. “It’s not what is done.” I had a thought. “Have you seen your own name?” She shook her head. “Would you like to?”

  She nodded, so I took out Richard’s letter, still wrapped in ribbon, and brought a feather and ink from the desk in the corner of my mother’s room. I sat down beside her on the truckle bed. In one quarter of the paper, bordered by ribbon, I wrote Alice’s name and blew on it to dry the ink before handing it to her. She smiled and took it from me, holding it up as though it shone in the light.

  “What does that say?” she asked, pointing to the letters curling up around the red ribbon.

  “That’s my name.”

  “Why is it longer than mine when they take the same time to say? Fleet-wood. A-lice.”

  “That isn’t how it works,” I said. “Each of those things is a letter. A-L-I-C-E. They each make a different sound, but when you say them altogether they sound different again.” In the top right-hand square I wrote her name in separate letters then handed her the pen. “You try.”

  She gripped the feather in a way that made me smile. “No, like this.”

  I showed her. In a shaky hand, she copied the A in a new square followed by the other letters. I burst out laughing when she showed me.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “The way you’ve written it with the A so far away, it looks like a lice.”

  “A lice?”

  “If you separate the A from the rest of the letters, your name becomes a lice.”

  “What?” She screwed her face up in such a way that I could not help but laugh. Then she began smiling, and before long we were rolling about like two daft milkmaids, clutching ourselves as tears ran down our faces.

  “Get the A right first,” I told her. “Then the other letters after.”

  That night as Alice untied my gowns and corset, I saw the paper on the desk with the quill lying next to it. Richard’s words remained wrapped up and unread, and in the one remaining corner a little army of As traveled across the page, like an infestation of lice. An infestation of Alices. It made me smile.

  CHAPTER THIR
TEEN

  The window of the chamber Alice and I were staying in overlooked the front of the house, as well as the approach uphill, and the woodland on either side that was thick with partridges and pheasants. One morning I heard hooves outside, and thought Richard had finally come. But standing at the casement, peering through the glass, I saw a young woman—wearing a beautiful green gown with a waist I could only dream of—dismounting her horse, while another, plainer woman in scarlet waited beside hers. I gasped as I recognized them.

  “Richard’s sisters are here,” I told Alice, choked with panic.

  I’d got up late that morning, feeling hot and lazy, and had only finished breakfast in my nightgown. I jumped back from the window and began putting my hair in rolls. My mother had gone to the village, but I had not been listening when she told me, and did not know when she would be back, so I would have to be hostess.

  Mrs. Anbrick the housekeeper came to the chamber door and rapped smartly. “Mistress, your sisters-in-law have come to pay you a visit.”

  The housekeeper was a warm, pleasant woman with soft skin and twinkling eyes—how she and my mother rubbed along together I had no idea. Now her tone was excited, impressed, even: visitors were rare at this house. I thanked her and when her footsteps had died away, I turned to Alice, keeping my voice low.

  “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 chatterers and have noses for rumor like hounds, so stay out of their way.” I closed the door behind me.

  Eleanor and Anne were seated in my mother’s parlor, which was always chilly. But there was a pleasant view of the old-fashioned knot garden at the back of the house, 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 gray 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 sun on my face.

  “We heard a rumor 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 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, when York was only the next county along. 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 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 of Judith, if anything, but before I decided whether to ask, Mrs. Anbrick brought a jug of sacke 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 to Eleanor’s 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 sacke 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 were like two daisies.

  I reached down the back of my 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, but Anne will still be there, of course.”

  “What news from York?” 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 upward of a dozen hangings. The servants at Levens say it will be the most this county 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 practicing inside my mother’s copy of Daemonologie, and having mastered her first name was inking her surname.

  “Well, what do you make of it?”

  “I would not know because I have been here. 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 York, 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 filthy neighbors. Apparently they bury cats in their walls and prick babes to drink their blood. And Lancaster 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 they 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 sacke 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 sitting in that room with them. The three of us stood, and I realized that I was giddy. I led them outside, where the sky was blue 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, pirouetting in circles, 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, and I felt quite light-headed from the sacke 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 dumbly at me. “And his other woman. About the infant she is expecting. You did not know?”

  The pretty bouquet fell from Eleanor’s hands, splaying on 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 nearby trees, their wings cracking above us. I had sowed the seeds, and now they would grow whether I liked it or not.

  “You are sure about this?” Anne asked, her face pale.

  “Quite sure.” I swallowed.

  “But you have only been married...”

  “Four years.”

  I was seventeen, but for all I’d been through might have been twice or three times that. My husband already had a lover, but I was no old matron, with graying hair and wrinkles at my eyes. I thought I was younger even than her, and in my mind 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.