The Familiars

by Halls, Stacey

  But you hated your home, a voice persisted. And your mother.

  As much as that was true, I told myself I would never have betrayed my mother. But then, I was not sure what it would take for a child to do so. Neglect? Cruelty?

  I did not know where to find the tower, nor whom to ask, so I set out on horseback towards Colne. I left Puck at home, knowing I might regret it later when the wind whistled on the moors and Joseph Gray’s wind-battered hovel came back to haunt me.

  They burn witches, don’t they?

  With my cloak covering my head and stomach I might have been anyone, or no one, so nobody paid me much attention on the quiet road. Three or four carts passed me, piled with vegetables and bolts of cloth, but I kept my eyes down, remembering how I’d been seen in Lancaster.

  I have eyes in the forest, you know, Roger had said.

  I knew that if I stayed on that road, eventually it would lead to Halifax, and to John Law and his son Abraham. To think a simple pedlar who was asked for some pins started all this. To think what might have happened if he had given them. But even if he had handed them over to Alizon Device, Alice would still have lived with her grief, would have gone on working at the Queen’s Arms, cooking what little they could buy for her miserable father under the hole in the roof. And where would I be? I may have been dead; I may not. I may have never found out about Judith. But wherever I was, I would not be on the road searching for a stone tower sticking like a spike out of the will.

  Grey and green, grey and green, as far as the eye could see, now and again passing the odd home made of crumbling stone or crudely slapped together from mud. Long, low farmhouses stretched along the hills like cats, but there was no tower. I decided to ask the next person I saw: a man travelling in the opposite direction on an exhausted-looking mule.

  ‘Excuse me, do you know where I can find Malkin Tower?’ I asked.

  He shrunk back in alarm like I had told him I was a witch, and without saying a word shuffled away on his dusty beast, glancing back over his shoulder.

  I sighed and came to a stop. Just when I was deciding what to do, two more figures appeared on the road: a woman, dressed plainly, tugging her daughter along.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I tried again. ‘I am looking for Malkin Tower.’

  The woman stopped, and her daughter, dozy with the heavy summer air, almost walked into her.

  ‘What do you want with Malkin Tower?’ she asked.

  Her dark eyes glittered suspiciously.

  ‘I’ve heard of the Devices and have a bet with my sister – she doesn’t think they are real, or their house. I have a penny on finding it.’

  ‘It is real all right, and so are they. Tell your sister she should believe what she hears, folk aren’t likely to repeat falsehoods around here. They’ve been an odd family for years, and now we know why. My mother used to buy remedies from Demdike but I was having none of it. I leave the Lord to do his good work, I don’t dice with the Devil.’

  She licked her lips. Her daughter stared silently at my cloak, my face.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Burnley.’

  ‘You’ve come a way to settle a bet.’ She nodded in the direction behind her. ‘Leave the road half a mile up and join the path up to the top of the moor. You’ll find it up there. I don’t like it myself; there’s something not right about it. Like I say, my mother used to go up there when we were ailing; she took me a few times. I wouldn’t take my own there if the Lord told me to himself.’

  I thanked her and went the way she said, leaving the road for a narrow path between two dry-stone walls. A dog barked in the distance, and I thought of the one I’d seen in the forest with Elizabeth and Alice, and how Jennet had said hers had not yet appeared to her. Could there be truth in familiar spirits, and did Roger really believe in them? I leant backwards on my horse as the land rose up slightly with wide fields on either side. The brow of the hill came closer but there was no sign of the tower, and then I was at the top and looking down the other side, and there it was: a dull, grey, tall-ish building, like a short table leg. It was in the old style of towers, like the one built at Gawthorpe hundreds of years before. But the Devices were not a noble family or even yeomen – they were poor as church mice, so how they came to live in this place was a mystery.

  As I came closer I saw great chunks of the building had fallen off and were scattered around the ground. I went to what seemed to be the entrance: a large, thick door at the bottom. Arrow slits in the walls would be the only source of light, and probably a hole in the roof for the smoke to get out.

  I climbed off the horse and walked once around the base of the tower. An odd little garden had been attempted and abandoned, squared off in bits of dry-stone wall. I did not think I wanted to go in, but I needed to see where Jennet Device had come from. I went to the door and tried the ring pull. There was no lock and it jolted open easily. Inside was dark, and I thought again of the gaol cell the family now lived in. I left the door as wide open as it would go to let in more light and stepped inside.

  There was a powerful smell, but of what I was not sure. Damp, certainly, and decay, but something animal too, like wet fur that had been left to dry. It did not take long to look at everything. A cooking pot bigger than Joseph Gray’s sat in the centre of the dirt floor. A straw mattress lay nearby, but there were no hangings to keep the draught out of the spaces between the stones. I watched a woodlouse crawl lethargically over the greasy linen that covered the mattress. Plates and cups lay forgotten on the ground. A wooden ladder led up to a rotten-looking platform, where there must have been more straw beds. On my right, a table was pushed against the wall, which curved around in a circle. Some things were on it and when I went to inspect them, I immediately recoiled. Here were the remains of Elizabeth’s clay doll in an unshapely mound, stuck in places with pins. And in the lumps and crumbs of clay, they were unmistakable: teeth. I picked one up and held it in front of me, a creeping sensation flooding my scalp and going down my neck.

  An almighty crash made me almost expire from fright. The door had slammed behind me. I dropped the tooth and ran to it, fumbling in the gloom for the handle, and finding it, pulled at it, panic rising to a high, clear note that sang in my head. The wind was on the other side, clamouring to be let in, but I pushed against it and was finally out on the moor again, panting and frightened. What was I thinking, touching this family’s devilish instruments? The creeping feeling came over me again, and I had the curious sensation of being watched.

  My horse neighed and backed away, raising its legs in protest. I looked around to see what might have spooked it, and there, on the top of the hill twenty or thirty yards away, was the outline of a thin, ragged dog. It was still as a statue, watching me. I moved first, swinging myself up on to the horse using one of the fallen stones, 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 found I could not look back at Malkin Tower as I retraced the horse’s tracks back to the road.

  Now I had seen what she had left, I realised how grand Jennet Device must find Roger and Katherine’s house, with their thick curtains and Turkey carpets and ink quills and servants. How she must have told Roger what he wanted to hear, hoping he might 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 labour, 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 mid-morning, and the sun was high but dim in the watery sky. I looked left towards Colne, and right to Gawthorpe. A moment later my mind was made up, and I
clicked my mouth and squeezed with my heels to walk on.

  CHAPTER 19

  ‘You!’ said Peter.

  I stood once again before the counter on the straw-covered floor of the Queen’s Arms.

  ‘We never have ladies in here at all, now it’s twice in one week.’

  A few drinkers were straggled around the tables, porters finished their shifts or deliverymen 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 a little where it butted against the counter.

  ‘I might have. What’s it to you?’

  I drew myself up to my full, 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 Mr 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 Ward,’ I said. ‘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 all my travelling 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. But I would take a much closer interest in the household management once all this was over – if I was here to. Soon there would be extra linen, towels, milk, caps and miniature gowns – not one set but two. It interested me to realise 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 next county I felt as though I had been put in a pillowslip and shaken within an inch of my life, as 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. Here, children ran barefoot up and down in the mud, and people walked with purpose in and out of the shops and houses.

  I knocked on the door, my knuckles making a rhythm that sounded more confident than I felt. It opened into a dark hallway and a young girl appeared. She looked at me in surprise: I was wearing my travelling 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 back 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.

  I stood, listening to the sounds of a busy household as well as the households on either side. To my great surprise, I heard someone cough on the other side of the wall. After a minute, a slender woman approached from the end of the corridor, wearing a corn-coloured gown and an apron that needed darning. She had a kind face and several strands of fair hair straggled out from beneath her cap. 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. This woman would have no idea who I was, or why I was here, and the effort of explaining myself suddenly seemed exhausting. 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 dim despite the bright day. Heaps of things were piled on every available space, and several children and a dog occupied the floor space, moving constantly, so I had to step cautiously. There was a man in a chair looking out of the window: 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 returned with a cup of beer for me, and 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 children to sit down. She took the other seat.

  ‘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.

  ‘A matter involving your father-in-law? What happened to him set off a series of events that … I’m not sure if in Yorkshire you’re aware of what is happening in Lancashire?’

  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 she 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.’

  A small child was using Liz’s 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. She 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. The child began to cry.

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

  She sat up straight and picked the child up on to 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 weak light from the window. I followed her, and my mouth fell open.

  John Law was shrunken like an old apple, crumpled into 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, Mr Law,’ I said, failing to hide my shock.

  He moved about, but the side closest to me remained 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.’ My voice faltered and I cleared my throat. ‘Mr Law, my name is Flee
twood Shuttleworth. I am a friend of Miss Gray’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 and talk to him – he might say something. I have things to get on with. Could you just hold this one for a moment while I clear this cloth?’

  She handed me the small boy, smocked and sticky, 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, before leaving the room yet again. I looked around. With most of the cloth moved, the surfaces were clean – the table was polished and free of crumbs, and I realised too that the children’s faces weren’t dirty like the others I’d seen in the street. 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 the old man and sat beside him.

  ‘Plenty to see, isn’t there?’ I said. He made a noise of agreement. ‘Mr Law, I do not mean to upset you or cause you further grief, so please forgive me for troubling you. But I was trying to find out what happened that day on the woolpack road in Colne, when you met Alizon Device.’