The Familiars

by Stacey Halls

  My horse neighed and backed away, raising its legs in protest. I turned and saw the outline of a thin, ragged dog standing on the top of the hill, twenty or thirty feet away. It was still as a statue, watching me as I watched it. I moved first, swinging myself up onto the horse, using one of the fallen stones from the Tower, and by the time I collected the reins the dog was gone.

  I was alone on the hillside, but I felt far from it, and I could not look back at Malkin Tower as I retraced the horse’s tracks back to the road, though I felt it looking at me: the arrow slits were not unlike the thin strip of black in a cat’s green eyes.

  Now I had seen what she had left, how grand Jennet Device must feel staying in Roger and Katherine’s house, with their thick curtains and Turkey carpets and ink quills and servants. How she must have told him what he wanted to hear to let her stay, thinking long and hard beneath her counterpane about the tales she could draw out, long and shining like a spider’s web. Part of me did not blame the child, especially if she thought she might be kept like that forever, a cuckoo in the Nowells’ nest. As soon as the assizes were over, no doubt Roger would pawn her off to a farm in need of labor, or a house not unlike ours for a brewing or laundry maid. And how would she live the rest of her life: Would she believe herself elevated by fortunate circumstance, or be racked with guilt until the end of her days?

  By the time I reached where the path met the road, it was only midmorning, and the sun was high but dim in the watery sky. I looked left to go farther to Colne, and right to go back to Gawthorpe. A moment later my mind was made up, and I clicked my mouth and squeezed with my feet to walk on.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “You!” said Peter. I stood once again before the counter on the straw-covered floor of the Queen’s Arms. “We never have ladies at all in here, now it’s twice in one week.” A few drinkers were straggled around the tables, porters finished their shifts or messengers breaking for the day, but they didn’t take much notice and went back to their solitary tankards.

  “I am looking for an address,” I said. “You wrote a letter in March or April this year to a man named Abraham Law, a cloth dyer from Halifax.”

  Peter eyed me warily, his rotund middle denting where it butted against the counter. “I might have. What’s it to you?”

  I drew myself up to my full and insubstantial height. “I need to speak with him.”

  “What for?”

  “I have a large quantity of cloth on order from Manchester and I would like a quote to have it dyed. Alice mentioned Master Law, so I thought I might try him.”

  Peter exhaled. “Well, the Lord knows you gentry folk have needs the likes of us mere mortals can’t fathom,” he said. “I’ll go and find it, give me a minute.”

  I clasped my hands together and waited. Presently he was back with a single sheet of correspondence, which I all but snatched from his hand to read the address. “Many thanks, Mr...?” I said.

  “Ward,” he offered.

  “Mr. Ward. I shall write to him at some point.”

  * * *

  Five minutes later, with the sign of the raven, Haley Hill repeating in my mind, I was on my way to Halifax, having left Peter Ward with a palm of silver. I thought about all the coins I had pressed into hands recently and wondered how I would explain my traveling all over the county to James. Then I remembered he would probably never question me on anything again—even looking at me sent the tips of his ears red after I’d found the paper trail that started in his study and ended at Richard’s other life. I would take a much closer interest in management once all this was over—if I was around to. Soon there would be extra linen, towels, milk, caps and miniature gowns, not one set but two. It interested me to realize that thinking this didn’t send me into a blind rage: it was a fact, and not even an important one at this moment in time.

  I had to go fast, and by the time I reached the town I felt as though I had been put in a pillowcase and shaken within an inch of my life, and the baby inside me squirmed and kicked. Briefly I wondered if this constant journeying was doing it harm. But while it was moving, it was living, so I pushed the thought from my mind, dismounted, and paid the nearest boy to mind my horse and fetch it something to drink.

  The timber house at the sign of the raven was crammed in by others on both sides and hung over the street on its highest floors, so you had to lean back to see it. Children ran barefoot up and down in the mud, and people walked with purpose in and out of shops and houses. It reminded me of the buildings on London Bridge, with everybody living in each other’s pockets.

  I knocked on the door, my knuckles making a pattern that sounded more confident than I felt. It opened into a dark hallway and a young girl appeared on the other side. She looked at me in surprise. I was wearing my traveling cloak and everything was covered, from my hat to my hem. “I am looking for Abraham Law,” I said. “Is he at home?”

  “He is at work, miss,” she said. “I’m his daughter. Me mum’s home if you want to see her?”

  “Oh. I... Yes, I better had, then.”

  She stepped backward so I could enter, and I followed her into a warren-like low corridor with rooms leading off the left-hand side. “Wait here, I’ll fetch me mum,” she told me, so I stood, listening to the sounds of a busy household and the households on either side bumping and shouting and crying.

  A slender woman approached from the end of the corridor, wearing a corn-colored gown and an apron that needed darning. Several strands of fair hair straggled from beneath her cap into a kind face, and she was wiping her hands on a rag. “Can I help?” she asked.

  In that moment, seeing her distracted politeness, I was suddenly startled by the sheer weight of my own task, but also the indulgence of it. Here were people whose lives went on because they had to—she would have no idea who I was, or why I was here, and the effort of explaining myself suddenly seemed exhausting because I wasn’t sure where even to start. But she must have seen this, for she asked me to come in and have some beer, so wordlessly I followed her into a wide room that was still dark despite the bright day, with old paneled walls that sucked the daylight from the room. Heaps of things were piled on every available space, and three or four children and a dog occupied the floor space, moving constantly so I had to step cautiously. There was a man in a chair facing the window looking out: I could see the top of his balding head.

  I unfastened my cloak and held it, unsure of where to set it down. The air in the little room was stifling. The woman had stepped out and came back presently with a cup of beer for me. I drank it gratefully.

  “I am Liz,” she said. “You were looking for my husband?”

  “Yes,” I managed. The beer was light and good. “My name is Fleetwood Shuttleworth. Forgive me for trespassing like this... I hardly know where to start.”

  “Please, sit down.” She indicated a chair on one side of the empty hearth and I waded through the mess of children’s limbs and dog’s to sit down. She took the other.

  “I suppose I wanted to speak to Abraham about something that happened a few months ago in Colne.”

  Liz Law’s face instantly took on a different expression, one of tiredness and even pain.

  “With your father-in-law? What happened to him set off a series of events that... I’m not sure if in this county you’re aware of what is happening in Lancaster?”

  She shook her head, and one of the children wailed for her attention. She spoke to him kindly but firmly and turned back to me. Of course Liz Law knew nothing: she was up to her eyes in running her household.

  “What’s happened is... My midwife is a woman called Alice Gray.” I swallowed and saw her eyes flick almost imperceptibly to my stomach, then back again. “She has been caught up in accusations of witchcraft, as have many others. About twelve, at the last count.”

  Liz was staring blankly at me. A small child was using her skirt to pull itself up, and
began banging on her knee with a chubby fist. Was there no nurse, or maid to take them off her hands for a single moment?

  “Alice Gray worked at the Queen’s Arms, which is where your father-in-law was taken after he was...after he met Alizon Device. Alice found him on the woolpack road and cared for him there, but the Device family began threatening her to change her story. Now they have dragged her into these horrid accusations, and there will be a trial in a few weeks at Lancaster.”

  Liz was still listening but I could sense she was distracted. She removed the child from her skirts and tried to put its hands by its sides, to no avail, and the child began to cry.

  “Sorry, I know you are very busy. I wondered first of all how your father-in-law is, and second, if I could ask him some questions about what happened that day in Colne?”

  She sat up straight and picked the child up onto her lap. “You can ask him yourself, but you won’t get much sense from him. Dad?” She went over to the man I’d noticed before, positioned in the light from the window.

  I followed her, and my mouth fell open. John Law was shrunken like an old apple, crumpled to one side in his chair. One side of his face looked as though it had melted, with the eye closed, and the other roved wildly over me and Liz, as though he was frightened. I had the impression of a much larger, stronger man who had lost a lot of weight quickly; his skin sagged, and I could have grabbed fistfuls of fabric from his clothes.

  “Hello, John,” I said, failing to hide my shock.

  He moved about, but the side closest to me stayed limp and heavy. “Whaaant,” he said loudly.

  I looked at Liz.

  “We understand him but no other folk do,” she said. “Dad, this lady is here to see you. Do you know her?”

  “Nnnnnnn,” he cried.

  “No, he doesn’t,” I said. My voice shook and I cleared my throat. “John, my name is Fleetwood Shuttleworth. I am a friend of Alice’s, the woman who took you to the Queen’s Arms after you were...after you were attacked.”

  He gave some lamentable cry, and I had no idea if he understood.

  “Alice Gray?” I tried, but he squirmed and his eye moved away to look out the window again.

  “He’s been like this ever since,” said Liz. The infant in her arms was tugging bits of her hair from under her cap.

  “I thought...” I swallowed. “I thought he could speak.”

  Liz shook her head. “He could at first, but he’s got worse as time’s gone on. Some days he makes more sense than others but...today isn’t a good day. I can leave you with him, so you can try to talk to him—he might say something. I have things to get on with. Could you just hold him for a moment while I clear this cloth?”

  She handed the small boy, smocked and sticky, to me and began lifting piles of cloth from every surface and taking them from the room. It was the first time I had ever held a child. He dangled like a sack of flour from my rigid arms, staring at me with astonishment, and I at him.

  In no time at all Liz Law was taking him back. My hands fell to my sides, they left the room and I looked around. With most of the cloth moved, the room was clean—the table was polished and free of crumbs, and the children’s faces weren’t dirty like the others I’d seen in the street. I realized that the Law household was one of modest respectability, and the addition of Abraham’s father was stretching them beyond their means. They might have left him in a bed all day, but he had been placed before a sunny window overlooking a yard, where women did laundry and more children and dogs ran about. I pulled my chair up to John and sat beside him.

  “Plenty to see, isn’t there?” I said. He made a noise of agreement. “John, I do not mean to upset you or cause you further grief, but I was trying to find out what happened that day on the woolpack road in Colne, when you met Alizon Device.”

  “Hmmmza-tch. Seeurst me nnnnn kamme.”

  I watched him speak from one side of his mouth, trying to understand, but it was hopeless. His blue eye was fixed on me, willing me to comprehend. When I didn’t, he dropped his gaze sadly and seemed to hunch even further. I covered his nerveless hand with mine. He looked at my rings, the gold and rubies and emeralds fastened around my fingers.

  “John, do you know Alice Gray? Nod if you do.”

  His chin went down into his neck, then up again.

  “Do you think she is a witch?”

  His face went off in the opposite direction, then back toward me and again.

  “Would you be prepared to say that at the assizes? Are you going to the trial?”

  His head did not move; his eye roved wildly.

  “Have you been invited to speak at the trial?”

  He nodded, or what I understood to be a nod. If only he’d regained his speech, he could speak freely for the others’ innocence.

  “Do you think Alizon Device is a witch?”

  He nodded, then shook his head. He looked greatly pained, and his searching blue eye filled with tears that spilled onto his face. His right hand moved as though to wipe them, but only got so far as his chest. I took a handkerchief from my pocket and did it for him. Poor John Law was a living puppet; he would be carried in as proof of what had happened, then carried out again, unable to use his own voice. Alizon Device could have walked away and none of this might have happened had she not turned up day after day at the Queen’s Arms and admitted her own guilt. No wonder her family wanted to change the story: it was her story. This man had none.

  I sat a while longer with John and we watched women bending over tubs and brushing sweat from their foreheads. The sun was high, and their work was hot. They were not afraid of their skin browning; they had no choice. On a day like today I would be riding by the river under the cover of trees or even sitting by the window like an ornament, no more useful or purposeful than John Law.

  An almighty crash sounded from another room, and Liz Law began scolding someone. “Jennie!” I heard her shout, and one of the women in the yard looked toward the house, holding her hand over her eyes. It was the young girl who had answered the door, but really she was not much younger than me. I watched her walk back into the house, the smell of lye coming with her. I thought of her life here, with infants to play with and a mother whose lap she could rest her head on at night while her father read them a passage from the Bible.

  There was banging at the door to the street, and shortly afterward Jennie came through to tell me the boy I’d paid to mind my horse had to be getting home. I rose stiffly and thanked John Law, and went to thank Liz, who was feeding a child with a spoon in the hallway, crouched on the floor. “I’m sorry to have troubled you,” I said, having to step around her.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I hope you aren’t too disappointed. John wishes he could talk, I know he does. We all do.”

  “He said he would be at the trial in a few weeks’ time?”

  She looked up distractedly. “What trial?”

  “The assizes at Lancaster, where the witches are on trial.”

  “Oh, yes, someone did write about that. I will have to speak to Abraham and see if he can take him.”

  “Good day to you, Liz.”

  I stepped out of the dark house into the bright street, where at least there was a breeze. Sweat ringed my armpits and sat above my lip. I was no closer to anything; I felt as though I was walking around the center of it all in ever-wider circles, gaining nothing. And with little Jennet sitting high in her tower at Read Hall spinning stories, she was tying the family’s nooses one by one. But she was a child.

  I could not see a way out of it for Alice. John Law did not think she was a witch but could not say it; her own father was indifferent to her fate, and her landlord cared only about his business. Who else was to speak for her, then? I thought hard all the way home, but I felt like I was staring at a wall.

  By the time I arrived back in the stable yard at Gawthorpe, I felt as ex
hausted as if I’d been carrying a sack of bricks. But I had an idea burning in my mind like a tiny ember. I just needed to give it enough space to catch alight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Richard was away again when I got home, gone to Preston, which I assumed meant Barton, as it was the nearest town. He left no note, and I wondered if he was angry with me, then I remembered that I had every right to still be angry with him, but anger was difficult to summon. At least while he was away I did not have to be discreet about my wild ways, as he called them. Before all this, he indulged and even admired my lone wanderings, my propensity to leave the house tidy and arrive back muddy and wet with pink cheeks and bright eyes. Could he not see that those pursuits were girlish, and now they had purpose? But perhaps he saw more than I thought. I went to the study and took ink, a quill and paper to my chamber.

  The next morning, the sky was a bright blue and there were no clouds. I took the two letters from my desk, written the night before, and tucked them into my skirt ready for the long journey ahead. Overnight my fingers had swollen, and there was a funny feeling in my chest, as though inside it was being pulled taut like a sheet. I ignored the persistent thought that these were symptoms of the sun setting on my earthly life, that the next one was drawing ever closer. Perhaps death was right behind me, stepping with me, moving in my shadow, and at any moment it would gather me in its cloak. I glanced behind me, as though I might see it. Then I gathered my nerve, glanced at Prudence and Justice, and went downstairs.

  * * *

  Katherine Nowell answered the door, her eyes wide with concern. “Fleetwood? Back so soon? Do come in.”

  I leaned on the doorframe with one hand; with the other I cradled my stomach. “Katherine, please... I need help. My child... I am in pain. I need my midwife.”