The Familiars

by Halls, Stacey

  I turned to look at the sleeping form of the woman who was my only means of achieving this. Her golden hair fell over the pillow and down her back, and her chest rose and sank peacefully. I thought of the man who’d upset her in the Hand and Shuttle, how she’d said children were more trouble than they were worth. I felt as though she was the first person I could call a friend, but how much did I really know about her?

  As though aware in some part of herself that she was being watched, Alice shifted in her narrow bed and whimpered. I watched her settle again, then she stiffened, her hands scrabbling at her covers.

  ‘Leave her,’ she whimpered quietly. ‘Leave her.’

  But before I could decide whether or not to wake her, as suddenly as she’d began, she melted into peace, her body relaxing and her face smoothing back into sleep.

  I sat with my hands on my stomach and watched the inky blue sky grow darker before it got lighter, and it was only when the birds began to pierce the silence that my eyes grew heavy and I climbed back into the bed sheets, which were cold.

  Breaking our fasts that morning, we made a sombre group. Alice went as though to eat with the servants but I asked that she sat with my mother and me, and when she refused I insisted. Neither she nor my mother were happy about it, and sat with their faces pinched as their eggs were set down in front of them. The bread was brought, but it was different from what I was used to. I remembered what my mother’s servant had said the night before, that they only had cheat flour, made of bran not wheat.

  I scratched at my clothes and cap where they felt tight and yawned. Alice was nibbling at a boiled egg, and I took one from the bowl and held its warm weight in the palm of my hand. Against the thick white of it, my skin looked almost yellow.

  ‘Fleetwood, is there something wrong with your egg?’ my mother asked.

  I bit into it and found it surprisingly delicious: salty and solid, not like the trembling, watery things my kitchen served in their shells. I had to put it down though to scratch my arm, rubbing the material of my dress hard where I could not reach the skin.

  ‘Fleetwood,’ my mother said, ‘do you have lice?’

  I thought I might, although I hadn’t seen any. It felt as though I was being tickled very softly and finely all over, from my ankles to my ears. I scratched at my neck, my face, my wrists and my stockings: anywhere I could reach.

  ‘Perhaps I do,’ I said.

  Poor people got lice, unclean people, not me, who rubbed myself with linen every day and dabbed rose oil at my wrists and throat.

  ‘Eat your breakfast,’ my mother said. ‘If only you had the appetite of your midwife.’

  Alice coloured and paused buttering her bread, setting the knife down slowly.

  ‘I prefer manchet to this cheap stuff,’ I said, hoping to make her colour in turn, which she did.

  But I was lying: the seed loaf was warm and nourishing, and delicious with the home-made butter. The itching started up again and my knife clattered to the table as I sprang up to relieve the backs of my legs.

  ‘Fleetwood!’

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’

  I stuck my fingers down the back of my dress, but while that brought relief, my arm tingled again where I’d rubbed it a moment before.

  ‘Control yourself. You are causing a display.’

  ‘This has not happened before, and the moment I come to stay with you I itch from head to toe. Do you wash the bed linen, mother?’

  ‘Of course it is washed, don’t be absurd!’

  ‘I need to get out of this dress.’ I stalked away from the table, then stopped in the doorway. ‘Jill, will you help me?’

  Alice looked relieved to abandon breakfast and followed me out of the dining chamber and upstairs. I was impatient as she unlaced every ribbon and lace that she had tied not half an hour before.

  ‘Hurry, please!’

  Finally the gown fell down around me and I stepped out of it; then my corset had to come off and the French farthingale be pulled from my hips. By the time I could sit down to untie my stockings, I was shoving up the sleeves of my underclothes to tear at my skin with my nails. I reached under my nightgown to get to the flesh at my stomach, which felt hard and smooth where before it was doughy. I pulled a pin from my hair and used it to scratch down the back of my neck.

  Alice watched, rubbing her neck thoughtfully as I contorted myself in front of her.

  ‘Perhaps a bath would help?’ she suggested.

  A tub was brought and jugs of water from the kitchen. Then a chambermaid knocked on the door with a slice of soap, which was soft and black and home-made, not like the solid white cakes we bought. I did not know how to ask Alice to turn away as I undressed, but she did anyway. As my underclothes fell to the floor, I half-expected to see tiny black things crawling up and down my flesh and in and out of my clothes, but there was nothing. My skin was white all over, not flaming red as it felt. I started to laugh. Alice half-turned from her truckle bed.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s nothing there. No lice. No rash. I must be addled.’

  I lowered myself into the water and splashed it all over, extinguishing the itching like so many little flames licking my skin.

  ‘Would you like me to leave?’ Alice asked, still facing the wall.

  ‘No, stay,’ I said.

  She kept her back to me, folding her legs beneath her to become more comfortable. The water settled and I stared down at my stomach, which was much bigger than the last time I’d bathed. I couldn’t see the coarse black hairs below it. I moved the soap all over my skin, making it slick as an eel, and the itching dulled. I filled the jug and tipped it over my head, lathering my hair so it tangled into a knotted mess. The water lapped gently around me and I sighed, letting my mind wander back to something that I’d been thinking about ever since I rode out with Richard and Roger on that misty hunt in April.

  ‘Alice, have you heard of familiar spirits?’

  I heard her weight shift on the bed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Jennet Device told me her mother had a dog, and I saw a dog with her when you were …’

  Alice went still. ‘When I was what?’

  I swallowed. She turned and looked straight at me over her shoulder, her eyes bright and clear.

  ‘When I was what?’

  ‘Alice, do not look.’

  I attempted to cover myself in the tub, but her gaze did not stray from my face.

  ‘Were you spying on me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I … I went out riding to meet you. I saw you with her in the forest.’

  She turned again to the fire and reached for the poker, pushing it into the splintered coals.

  ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why did you not make yourself known?’

  ‘I … I was afraid. Of her. Of the woman. Elizabeth Device.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Her eyes. They frightened me.’

  How awful she had looked when she turned towards me, staring wildly in different directions.

  ‘Her daughter, Jennet,’ I went on. ‘I cannot fathom why Roger believes everything she tells him. How can he? She is just a child.’

  As I said it, I thought of myself at that age, and how I’d told no one about what happened to me, knowing no one would believe it. But that was different – Jennet’s stories were full of magick and spirits, like a tale told to a child to get them to sleep.

  ‘Maybe he wants to believe it. Maybe he is telling her what to say.’

  ‘Roger would not do that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He is a good man. He has been good to us.’

  As my words rang out into the room they sounded hollow. Did Roger know of Richard’s woman too? That would be a betrayal twice over, and worse even than my own mother’s. He called Richard and me the turtledoves. Either he was ignorant or cruel.

 
; ‘Alice, I am sorry for spying, I did not mean it,’ I said after a long silence.

  My thoughts were becoming too tangled for me; I needed to separate them and follow each of them in turn. I watched Alice pick at something on her skirt. Her old dress badly needed mending and washing, and her cap starching. I decided I would have it done here. I wondered when the last time she bathed was – if she too longed to scrub herself clean.

  ‘Alice, would you like to bathe?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I can have more water sent up.’

  She bristled. ‘Do I smell badly? Do you think I have given you lice?’

  ‘No, of course not. There are no lice. I imagined it …’ I looked at the white pile of my underthings on the floor and watched them again to see if they crawled. ‘Alice, do you think my skin looks yellow?’

  She glanced dismissively at me.

  ‘I couldn’t say – it does not look healthy, but then it never does.’

  She was full of resentment, and for the first time I wondered if I’d been right to bring her here with me. Something had shifted in her the day Richard implied she had stolen my necklace. Still, I was used only to being deferred to, and she treated me almost like an equal. Yet I realised I did not mind.

  I scooped water over myself once more then stood up, meeting myself in the mirror at the dresser. My hair was wild, bunched up around my ears like a bird’s nest. My paps were full with dark rings around the nipples, the buds of which were also dark, and shadows hung beneath my eyes. I pressed myself with clean linen towels and wrapped a bath sheet around me to sit on the bed. Alice had not moved from where she was. I thought about where she might want to be. It was not here, but instinct told me she did not pine for the place she had left either – impossible anyway, now it was unsafe. Perhaps the place she felt most comfortable was somewhere I had not pictured her: in a lover’s arms beneath old sheets, or sitting comfortably with her father outside on a warm spring evening.

  ‘Alice, tell me,’ I said as I pulled a clean smock over my head. ‘Am I keeping you from your father?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or anyone else?’ She shook her head. ‘The man in the alehouse …’ I hesitated.

  She looked sharply at me. ‘You saw him?’

  For the second time I’d admitted to spying. I coloured slightly, and nodded.

  ‘Just in the passage as he was leaving. Did he upset you?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  She turned so I could not see her face.

  I combed my hair and picked up my corse wrapped in pearl-coloured silk, rapping it lightly with my knuckles. I decided I would wear my gown without it today; I could not bear to bind my stomach again. Alice saw me playing with it.

  ‘Do you ever tire of wearing clothes you cannot put on yourself?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said truthfully. ‘I only dress once a day. Apart from today.’

  We smiled at one another, and I felt I was forgiven. A knock came at the door and someone collected the bathwater, while another servant brought sugar biscuits and hot milk, which I shared with Alice. She said that she had eaten better in twenty-four hours than she had all year. We sat eating the biscuits and feeding crumbs to Puck, and with sugar crystals on my lips, my hair clean and soft, and my gown fresh, it would have been easy to forget why I was here, but I couldn’t quite manage it. The reason Alice was with me was because I was growing heavy with child, and the reason I was here in this bright, airy chamber fifty miles away from my own was because my husband had another woman. It was all such a mess, but somehow it didn’t feel completely hopeless. Not yet, anyway.

  Before long my mother came in, and made no attempt to hide her displeasure at the sight of Alice sitting on her bed, her legs tucked to the side, a cup of milk resting on her skirts that were dusted with sugar. Alice coloured slightly and sat properly.

  ‘Will you dress again today, Fleetwood?’ my mother asked.

  ‘Perhaps.’ I saw her eyes flick momentarily to my stomach, which was more pronounced in my shift with no layers of silk or velvet or wool piled over it. ‘Have you no wood for the fires? We are like two servants hunched over these dying coal embers.’

  Her eyes shone very black.

  ‘We keep a good economy in this house. If you prefer a wood fire I can fetch you an axe.’

  We glowered at one another, then she left, closing the door firmly behind her.

  ‘No wood, no wheat and no wax candles,’ I thought out loud. ‘I am beginning to think my mother is growing cheap in her old age.’

  Alice prodded the ashes in the hearth.

  ‘How does she get her money?’ she asked.

  ‘I have never thought about it, but I suppose … from us.’

  A bird sung in the canopy of trees beneath the window, sweet and clear. Us. I had always known that word to mean my husband and me, but all along he had been living two lives. Which of his women did he think of first? I slid my wedding band off my finger and slipped it on again. Off, on, off, on.

  ‘You grew up here?’

  ‘Here? No. I grew up at Barton. My mother has only lived here a few years.’

  ‘Barton? But isn’t that …’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her eyes were wide. ‘Your husband keeps his mistress at your house?’

  ‘I don’t see it as mine, but yes.’

  ‘Why not?’ I felt her golden eyes on me.

  ‘It was not a happy place.’

  She let out a laugh, curling her feet beside her once again.

  ‘How can a manor house not be a happy place? Did you not have fancy gowns, and fine food, and servants?’

  I did not smile. Earlier she had allowed me a glimpse into her life – a keyhole’s worth, but still a glimpse. Now she waited for me to decide how much to tell her, her clever eyes never leaving my face. I sighed, and crossed my legs to mirror hers.

  ‘My father died a few years after I was born. I don’t remember him. Then it was just my mother and me. I had no friends or cousins or anyone to play with, apart from my bird, Samuel. One day I left Samuel’s cage too close to the fire and he died. He was the only friend I had. I was a miserable child. Whenever I misbehaved my mother threatened to send me to my husband. I should have got another pet, something to keep me company, but I didn’t.’

  ‘Your husband?’ she asked suddenly. ‘You mean Richard?’

  ‘I was married before Richard.’

  Before I could stop it, the memory that I had fought so hard to forget leapt into focus: the parlour, my mother’s skirts disappearing around the corner, my husband’s deep, cracked voice: ‘Come to me, Fleetwood.’ His large hand reaching to sit me on his lap.

  ‘You were married before? So you were … You are divorced?’

  ‘Heavens, no. The marriage was annulled so that I could marry Richard. My mother decided the Bartons and the Shuttleworths made a more advantageous match. If Richard had not agreed I would still be wed to Mr Molyneux.’ I had not spoken his name aloud in such a long time. ‘And I do not think he was a good man.’

  Alice was quiet and thoughtful.

  ‘How old were you when you married the first time?’ she asked.

  ‘Four.’

  Alice was shocked into silence. Then she said, ‘How old was he?’

  ‘About thirty.’

  ‘How awful,’ she whispered.

  ‘I only met him twice: once at Barton, and the second time at our wedding. After that, my mother took me home to live until I was ready to be his wife. Thankfully that day never came.’

  There was pity in every line of Alice’s face, and something else: a grave kind of understanding, as though she, too, knew what went on in the world, and had seen some of it.

  ‘Why do you look like that?’ I almost laughed. ‘Did you think I could choose a husband? Catch someone’s eye in the alehouse?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘The thing is, if I could, I would still have chosen Richard.’


  ‘You must love him a great deal.’

  ‘I do,’ I said simply. ‘He rescued me from a different future, and gave me a new one. I had no say in the matter. But you – you are lucky. You can choose whomever you like.’

  She gave a small smile. ‘I have never been called lucky before.’

  ‘Do you meet lots of men at the inn?’

  ‘Drunks, plenty.’

  ‘A world of choice, then.’

  We both laughed, and there was a comfortable pause. I wondered if this was what friendship felt like.

  ‘I can’t imagine going home,’ I said after a while, growing serious again.

  ‘What will you do?’ Alice asked.

  ‘I have no idea.’ I twirled my wedding band around and around. ‘Do you want to hear a story?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I do not know where it came from but people in the village at Barton, where my house was, say that a wild boar was running around causing havoc in the forest. My father offered up my hand in marriage to the person who could slay the boar. A hunt followed, and on St Lawrence’s Day, the eldest Shuttleworth son slew it. There is an inn on the site called the Boar’s Head, though I’m not sure which came first, that or the story.’

  Alice was confused. ‘But your father died before you were …’

  ‘It’s just a story. And do you know the best part? I am terrified of boars.’

  ‘Why?’

  I shrugged. ‘I have nightmares about them chasing me. I must have heard that story when I was a child because I’ve been afraid of them for as long as I can remember. The Barton family crest is three boars.’

  I had never told anyone but Richard so much about myself, and felt slightly exposed. Alice was quiet.

  ‘I bet you are not afraid of anything,’ I said.

  ‘Of course I am,’ she said, and she pulled at a loose thread in her apron. ‘I am afraid of lies.’

  That night, in the early hours, I woke suddenly. The room was black, with the faintest smell of burnt candle wick. Something had woken me – a noise or a movement. It might have been Puck – he had taken to sometimes sleeping in the room with us. I closed my eyes again and tried to get comfortable beneath the counterpane, but could not dismiss the feeling I was being watched. I pushed off the covers and crawled to the edge of the bed to look over at Alice’s truckle bed, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. There the white linen glowed faintly in the moonlight. The narrow bed was empty.