Witch Finder (12 page)

‘She didn’t kill you though,’ Luke said. William shook his head, staring into the flames of the fire.

‘No. I killed her. With a rag over her face, full of that chemical stuff that John brews. She didn’t get more than two words of the spell out her mouth before she fell in a heap like a pile of rags.’ Then he sighed. ‘But I never did father a child.’

Something inside Luke went cold and still, and the hairs on his arms and neck shivered in spite of the warmth of the fire.

‘When did it happen?’ he asked, very low.

‘Near fifteen years ago, I suppose it must be. I joined the Malleus right after your parents were killed.’

‘Is that why . . .’ Luke stopped and swallowed, and started again. ‘Is that why you took me in then? Because you couldn’t have a son of your own?’

‘No.’ William put his big, heavy hand on Luke’s shoulder and turned him around, forcing Luke to look him in the face. ‘No, Luke. Never think that. I took you in because you were my brother’s son, and I loved him, and I kept you because as you grew I loved you too, and you were mine. The thing with the witch – it’s completely separate. And who knows,’ he gave a laugh, one without real mirth, ‘maybe I never had it in me anyway. There’s many a man never fathers a child, and witchcraft nothing to do with it.’

‘But you never married?’

‘No.’ William let his hand drop and took up his pipe from the mantelpiece. He knocked it out, packed the bowl very carefully with tobacco, then struck a match on his boot and lit the pipe with a hand that was almost steady. Then he threw the match into the fire and watched it dwindle to nothing. ‘No. There was a girl I might have married. But I didn’t think it was fair to the lass. All girls want a baby of their own, don’t they?’

‘You could have given her the choice . . .’ Luke began. But William was shaking his head.

‘No. What kind of choice is that? Give me up, or give up the babe you’ll never have? That’s no choice. That’s asking for one sacrifice over another, and neither of them fair for a woman who’d done nothing wrong herself. Why should she suffer for my sins? No. This way the sacrifice was mine, as it should be. I gave
her
up.’

Silence fell in the little room and Luke watched the fire and listened to the suck and pull of William’s pipe. Blue smoke wreathed in the rafters.

‘Can you stay the night?’ William asked, as the church clock tolled ten. He rose and put his pipe on the mantelpiece.

‘I’m supposed to be back tonight. But I sleep over the stables, so there’s no one to see me come and go. If I start before four, I can be back before the rest of the house wakes.’

‘Good.’ William put his hand on Luke’s shoulder as they turned to the stairs. ‘It’ll be good to have you under your own roof, even if it’s just for the one night. It’ll give you heart for the task, heart for what you need to do.’

What I need to do
 . . .

‘
It was a good plan, lad. Don’t blame yourself. And maybe it didn’t work, but you walked away in one piece, didn’t you? There’ll be another chance. Providence will give you a chance.’

‘Maybe,’ Luke said. He tried to smile.

‘Goodnight, lad. Sleep well.’

As Luke shut the door to his room behind him, he knew that he should feel full of zeal and determination, galvanized by William’s words. He was a fighter, a member of an elite band of warriors, fighting against the devil’s work. But he didn’t feel any of that. He felt only weariness and dread and a kind of sickness at the thought of going back to his task.

He sat on his own familiar bed and unbuttoned his shirt. As he pulled it off it chafed at the bandage over his shoulder and, in a fit of impatience, he tore at it, ripping off the dressing. There was a sharp jolt of pain as it stuck and then it peeled off, crusted and bloody, and he spat on his fingers and rubbed at the dried blood beneath. The mark was smaller than he’d thought, not much bigger than a sovereign, but it flamed like an angry sore and the skin around the burn was raised and red.

Still, there was no pus on the bandage, no infection to be seen. He threw the bloody dressing in the grate and lay down between the cold sheets, feeling weary to the bone.

He would go back.

He would go back and he would kill the witch. Because there was no way out of this, save one: death. Hers . . .or his.

‘W
here have you
been
?’ Becky hissed as Luke ran through the open back door, smoothing his rumpled hair and trying to stifle his panting breath.

‘I overslept. Had to run all the way from Spitalfields. Did anyone notice?’ Luke gasped. The clock chimed seven as he slid into the chair. He was sweating in spite of the cold, frosty morning and he needed a shave.

‘Mrs Ramsbottom was asking where you was at breakfast, but I said you were held up in the stables. Lucky for you, we’re all at sixes and sevens. An invitation arrived last night,
if
you please, and sent the whole house into a spin.’

‘An invitation?’ Luke poured himself tea from the enormous pot on the table and bit into a piece of Mrs Ramsbottom’s soda bread. The tea was lukewarm, but the bread was hot and very good.

‘It seems that Mr Knyvet enjoyed playing the gallant knight on horseback to our Miss’s damsel in distress.’ Becky was enjoying the moment of power, spinning out the information as long as she could. ‘He’s only invited Miss Rosa and Mr Alexis to his house in the country for a hunting party.’

‘Miss Rosa?’ Luke said, startled. ‘But how can she ride?’

‘Seems her ankle’s made a miraculous recovery overnight. Must be love. Or magic.’

Luke said nothing.

‘They’ll want the horses, of course. I don’t know whether they’ll go down by the same train or an earlier one.’

‘Horses? By train?’ Luke put his cup down.

‘Yes, ninny.’ Ellen came sweeping into the kitchen, her skirts rustling. ‘How else did you think they’d get there? You can hardly ride two horses all the way to Sussex, can you?’

‘Me?’

‘Well, you’re the stable-hand, or so they say.’ She banged down the tea tray she was carrying. ‘The horses won’t look after themselves on the journey.’

‘When are we leaving?’

‘Tomorrow. So you’d best look sharp and see that everything’s in order. Now, I can’t be standing here gabbing, I’ve got trunks to pack and dresses to mend and stockings to darn. Becky, I’ll need you to give me a hand with things when you’ve finished the beds, so no shilly-shallying, please.’ She swept out.

‘Hark at her!’ Becky said crossly. ‘Who’s died and made her queen? As if I spend my days shilly-shallying. I’d like to see her do twelve grates in . . .’

Luke chewed his mouthful mechanically, barely listening as Becky listed her grievances against Ellen. His mind was racing, wondering what this delay would mean for his plans, and how he could possibly accomplish the mission so far from home.

Rosa sat in the window seat, Belle in her lap and her sketch book in her hand. Every so often she touched her pencil to the page, but she wasn’t really drawing, she was thinking. Thinking about Sebastian, about that unexpected invitation and what it meant. A strange tangle of feelings twisted inside her. Some parts of it she could pick out, like unravelling snarled-up skeins of embroidery threads – there was pleasure at the prospect of hunting and a sickness at the thought of her old threadbare dresses. The invitation had mentioned a ball. She had no ball dress.

But mixed in were other feelings that she could not unravel – and knotting them all together was a fizzing, nervy thrill that could have been anything from excitement to fear. What was it? It was tangled up with Sebastian, with the way he looked at her, with the sound of his crop on his puppy’s back, and the sound of his voice calling her his darling. How could one man be so strange and contradictory? Which was the real Sebastian – the man who had saved her life, who had run to her and helped her tenderly into his carriage, or the one who had beaten his pup to death in front of her eyes?

She was afraid of him – although she could not say exactly why. But she was drawn to him too. He represented everything that was missing from her life – luxury, excitement, even tenderness. It was a long time since anyone had called her their darling – not since Papa had died, perhaps.

But most of all, he represented an escape.

The sketch book fell from her hand and Belle whined and jumped as the spine dug into her side.

‘I’m sorry.’ Rosa picked it up and stroked Belle’s warm, panting side, feeling the thrum of her heart beneath her fingers. ‘Oh, Belle. What’s wrong with me? I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I don’t want. I wish I could be like Clemency; she’s so happy with Philip.’

She pulled back the lace curtain and looked out of the window, down to the yard. The back door opened and out came a figure. It was Luke. For a moment he just stood in the courtyard, his head down, his neck bowed. Then he seemed to shake himself and he walked across to the pump and stripped off his shirt, sticking his head under the faucet. Rosa shivered in sympathy as the icy water gushed down, soaking his hair and spilling over his shoulders and back. He stood, shuddering, rubbing his wet face with his shirt, trying to chafe some warmth into his body. His skin was raw with cold, the muscles on his back and shoulders hard and taut as he shivered.

As he scrubbed his damp hair with his shirt she noticed the dressing was gone. In its place was a blurry scar on his shoulder, red as fire from the cold and the chafing. The door opened again and Becky came out.

Luke stopped stock-still, his shirt in his hand. Then he dragged the wet shirt over his head and almost ran to the stable block.

‘Luke!’ Becky’s cry filtered faint through the closed window. ‘Luke! Wait!’

‘Can’t stop,’ he shouted back. Then the door to his room slammed shut. Becky stood for a moment, the ribbons on her cap blowing in the wind. Then she turned on her heel and went back into the house.

‘Miss Rosa.’

Rosa jumped and dropped her book heavily on to Belle, who squealed and ran under the bed in a huff at this final injustice. Ellen was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips.

‘Ellen! You almost gave me an apoplexy.’

‘I’ll thank you to make yourself scarce, Miss Rosa, for I’ve your drawers to turn out and your trunk to pack.’

‘Oh, Ellen . . .’ Rosa felt her face fall. ‘Must we do this now?’

‘Tell me when you’d like me to do it, Miss Rosa?’ Ellen opened Rosa’s chemise drawer, pulled out a handful of white lawn and then shut it with a resounding thump that made the brushes on top of the chest clatter in sympathy. ‘Because I have to have all your belongings laundered, darned, pressed and packed by this time tomorrow.’

‘Never mind.’

Rosa picked up her book and went downstairs to the drawing room, but she knew she’d made a mistake as soon as she opened the door and the smell of Alexis’ cigar filtered out.

‘What?’ He turned as she peered in and his face over the top of the chaise longue turned red and ugly. ‘Oh it’s
you
.’

He had been drinking already. The brandy decanter was open on the table beside him.

‘I’ll go.’

‘Yes, do.’

She backed out and shut the door and then laid her forehead on the silky wood, feeling that she did not belong here. Matchenham was her home – it always had been. If she were at Matchenham she could saddle up Cherry and go for a gallop across the fields, letting the cold clear air and the fierce exhilaration of the ride chase away all her fears, along with the headache that was making her skull feel as if an iron band were closing around her head.

I want to go home
, she thought, feeling the tears rise inside her. But she could not.

There was only one place in this house where she did not feel harried and miserable. One place where she belonged. The stables.

Luke paused from his mucking out to wipe the sweat from his forehead and for a moment stood, leaning on the pitchfork, looking out across the yard. The manure heap steamed in the cold air and he was hot and tired. In the big house he could hear the clatter of washing up in the kitchen and the sound of Mr James lecturing the boot-boy about work ethics and elbow grease. In Rosa’s window he could see Ellen traipsing to and fro across the bedroom, shaking out frocks and linen, her crossness palpable even at this distance.

But his work wasn’t finished and, if he were going to get the stable clean and swept before supper, he needed to get on. He picked up the fork again.

‘
Luke!’
It was a whisper, nothing more. He stood for a moment, looking about, and then shrugged. His tired mind was playing tricks.

‘Luke!
’

There it was again – no mistake this time. A girl’s voice, hoarse and low. It seemed to come from the lane behind the yard. He put down the fork and strode to the gate, looking up and down the lane. He almost missed her, even so, a pile of huddled rags pressed against the wall to the stable block. It was only when a familiar voice said hoarsely, ‘Luke, thank gawd it’s you!’ that he turned and looked.

‘Minna!’

She’d been crying, clean tracks across her dusty face.

‘Minna, what’s wrong?’

‘It’s Bess, Luke. She’s dying.’

‘Minna, no.’ He put his arm around her awkwardly, and she gave a great sob, pressing her small, skinny, snot-nosed face into his shirt. ‘I’m . . . Isn’t there something we could do?’

‘What? I took ’er to Billy Bones. He says she won’t last the week.’

‘Billy’s no horse doctor. You need to take her to a vet, Minna. A real one, not a quack like Billy.’

‘And where am I going to get the money for a bleeding horse doctor?’ Her small face looked up at him, fury mixed with misery. ‘I ain’t even got enough to feed the kids, let alone get some ponce to look at Bess and tell me she’ll be feeding hounds in a week. I need a job, Luke. I came to ask – d’you think they’d take me on here?’

He looked at her, at her bare, dirty feet, her tangled hair, her pinched face covered in tears and snot and the dust of the streets.

He shook his head.

‘I’m sorry, Minna. They’re no better than paupers themselves. I’m working for nothing.’

‘For nothing?’ Her face was aghast. ‘Why in hell would you want to work for nothing?’

‘Long story. But they’re not going to be taking on new staff, trust me. And I wouldn’t want you here even if they were.’ Luke rubbed his hand over his face. Then he remembered something. ‘Wait here.’ He disentangled himself from Minna. ‘Right here, understand? I won’t be a tick.’

Upstairs in his room he stood for a minute, looking at himself in the mirror, thinking about William’s sacrifices and all he’d done for him. Then he pulled up the loose board, took out the two sovereigns and shoved them in the pocket of his work trousers.

Luke clattered back downstairs and out into the yard – and stopped dead. Minna was in the centre of the courtyard, right in front of the stables. And she was not alone.

‘Rosa . . . Miss . . . What . . . ?’ he stammered. Damn Minna. Damn
her
.

Next to Minna she looked like a rare exotic bird, her hair glowing like fire in the winter sun, her golden-brown eyes wide, her magic glowing and shimmering around her like a heat haze on this chilly day. In a strange way they were so alike – both of them young, both of them small and slim – skinny you might have called it – eyes large and dark in their faces, personalities too big for them. But Rosa was simply built like that; you could see it in her narrow bones and long slim fingers, in the shape of her face. Minna was half starved, skinny by force rather than nature, and that was the difference. Next to her Rosa seemed to glow.

‘I met your friend,’ Rosa said. Her face was troubled. ‘She says she’s walked all the way from Spitalfields looking for work.’

Dammit
. His fingers clenched on the sovereigns in his pocket.

‘Yes, miss.’

‘I’m so sorry. I wish we could offer her something here.’

I’m not
, he thought. Not for anything would he have had Minna mixed up with this, with the witchcraft and deception and the blood that would follow soon enough.

‘But I was just telling her about Mr Knyvet. His family runs soup kitchens and factories in the East End. Here.’ She took out a pen and scribbled on a bit of card. ‘This is the name of the street where the soup kitchen is. If you go there and show them my card, tell them I sent you, they’ll give you a hot meal – maybe even a job, if they’ve got one in the factory.’

‘Thank you, miss.’ Minna smiled, the skin stretched tight over her bones. When had she last eaten a hot meal?

Behind Rosa’s back Luke shook his head, willing Minna with his eyes not to take the card, not to get mixed up in this, with Knyvet, with everything else. But Minna bobbed a curtsey and put the card in her pocket.

‘Did you want something, miss?’ Luke said, his voice expressionless, but trying to tell Rosa without words that she was not wanted here, that this was not her place, but his.

‘I . . .’ For the first time she faltered. ‘I – I just wanted to see Cherry.’

‘She’s fine, miss. No need for you to worry. I looked her over after yesterday and you wouldn’t know anything had happened.’

‘It wasn’t . . .’ She stopped and then seemed to fold, turning her face away so that he could not see her expression. ‘Thank you. Never mind.’

As she turned to go back into the house she looked very small and Luke had the strangest impression that she was steeling herself to go back in.