Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2)

by Ruth Warburton

  ‘It didn’t miss,’ she snapped furiously. Her cheeks were scarlet with some strong emotion – anger, or perhaps fear. Her magic crackled. ‘You’re covered in blood.’

  ‘Missed anything important.’ He thought of John Leadingham’s lessons on killing a witch. Aim for an artery or a vital organ. Spleen, kidney, carotid, femoral – not the lung or the heart: too many ribs to get through. Failing that, a tendon that could incapacitate long enough for you to get away.

  At last she had his shirt unbuttoned and pulled back to the skin, and he craned round, looking at the damage. As he’d thought, it was nothing like as bad as William must have feared. The bullet had torn a shallow furrow along his bicep, but it’d heal.

  Rosa was looking at it, her brows furrowed in concentration, and for a minute he didn’t understand what she was doing. Then he saw her lips move, and felt the hot tingle of her magic rush through his muscles like a drug.

  ‘Stop it!’ He began to struggle in her grasp, but she hung on, digging her nails into his bare skin and the material of his coat. ‘I don’t want your magic!’

  ‘Stop cutting off your nose to spite your face!’ Rosa cried. With a great effort he twisted himself out of her grasp with a wrench that sent her stumbling to her hands and knees in the alley. But when she looked up she was smiling, and as he pulled his shirt roughly back over his shoulder he could feel the skin was whole again.

  ‘Damn you! Don’t ever do that to me again!’

  ‘Why not? What’s wrong with it, Luke?’

  ‘It’s not—’ He stopped, struggling for words, his breath coming fast and white in the still air of the alleyway. Then a small fox-faced boy came down the street, kicking a stone in front of him, and stopped to look at them.

  ‘Bit early for a lovers’ tiff, ain’t it?’

  ‘Shut up and mind your own business,’ Luke growled.

  ‘Gissa penny and I’ll leave you alone,’ the boy said with a grin.

  ‘I said, get lost!’

  ‘Farthing?’ the boy called, dodging the stone Luke threw at him, and then he ran off up the alleyway. ‘A’right, I’ll settle for a kiss!’ he shouted out as he rounded the corner. Luke couldn’t stop a smile from twitching at the corner of his mouth, and somehow, as he buttoned his coat, the blood sticky beneath his fingers, he couldn’t find his anger of a moment before, only a ghost of it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rosa said quietly as they began to walk back towards the main street. ‘But you let me save you in the factory, Luke. Why is this any different?’

  ‘Because . . .’ But he trailed off. Why was it different? Because he had been about to die when he fell through the factory floor? Because, in that instant, he didn’t care whether he was saved by Rosa’s magic, or divine intervention, or a fairy godmother – he just wanted to live? He couldn’t answer. He just knew that it felt different, and that to sit there, helpless, consenting, as her magic burrowed into his skin was too much, too intimate. ‘Because I didn’t need saving this time,’ he managed at last. ‘I would’ve healed.’

  ‘Maybe,’ was all she said. They walked in silence until at last Rosa asked, ‘Where are we going, Luke?’

  ‘I don’t know. Far away from here. We need a horse. Unless we can get enough money for a train ticket.’

  ‘No,’ she said with certainty. ‘Not a train. When they find out I’ve gone they’ll ask at the train stations, and if the ticket office remember us, they’ll know exactly where we went, and when we get there we’ll be sitting ducks without any transport. No, a horse is better. With a horse, we could be anywhere.’

  ‘Well then, we need a horse. And the only horse I can think of . . .’

  ‘Brimstone.’ Her face was pale. ‘Or the carriage horses. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Oh God, Luke, I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can go back there. What if they see me? What if Sebastian—’

  ‘I’ll go. You can wait in the park.’

  ‘No – if the servants see you . . . they know you’ve been turned off. Oh God.’ She put her hands to her face and he saw the ruby give a flash of fire.

  ‘Cover that up!’ Luke said urgently, and Rosa gave an exclamation of frustration and thrust her hand inside her shawl. ‘Look,’ he said more quietly, ‘we’ll wait until dark, then go round by the mews. No one will hear us.’

  ‘But they’ve engaged another groom already, and he’s sleeping above the stable. Mama was spending money like water on the promise of my marriage to Sebastian. No, I must go. I can make myself invisible if the worst comes to it.’

  ‘But will that work against a witch?’

  She flinched, and he said, ‘What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?’

  ‘It’s that word,’ she said quietly. ‘W-witch. It’s not . . . not polite.’

  ‘What do you call yourselves then?’

  ‘Nothing. What do you call yourselves? Normal. We call your kind “outwith”, do you know that?’

  ‘No.’ He felt again as if he’d fallen down a rabbit hole. ‘At least – I think I heard Sebastian call me that, once. I thought it was an insult.’

  ‘It’s not insulting,’ she said slowly. ‘Although he might have meant it that way. It’s just . . . the word we use to describe someone without magic. But to answer your question, it’s complicated. Another, well, someone like me – we can see through a spell an outwith might not be able to penetrate. But we would have to try. We would have to notice that the spell was there in order to break through it. I suppose it’s a bit like being a confidence trickster. Maybe you’re more likely to see through a deception because you know how it’s worked, but that doesn’t make you infallible, it doesn’t mean you’ll never be duped yourself.’

  ‘So – you’re less likely to get caught, but it’s not impossible?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But if they catch you . . .’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was bleak. ‘I don’t think Sebastian will let me go. I know what he did at the factory. I could give evidence against him. And my mother and brother will be bankrupt without this marriage. I think they would force me into it, or try to.’

  ‘No one can force you to marry!’ Luke burst out angrily. ‘This isn’t the Middle Ages, Rosa!’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ Rosa said. Her face was tight, her lips pressed together. When she spoke again her words were clipped. ‘I’ve had no choices, no freedom, Luke. Not ever. It’s not like I can earn a living – I have nothing but what Alexis and my mother give me – whether that’s food, or clothes, or freedom.’

  ‘But no one can make you say, “I do”!’

  ‘Oh really?’ She looked at him, her small pale face full of a weary kind of anger. Luke shook his head, ready to argue his point, but found his head was no longer shaking but nodding. He opened his mouth to tell her to stop, to shout at her for playing with his mind like this, and he found his unwilling lips forming words that were not his own.

  ‘I . . . do . . .’ It came out like a strangled gasp, through lips that were stiff and teeth clenched together, but they were unmistakably words. Then, abruptly, she loosed the spell.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was cheap and cruel. But you see what I mean.’

  He shuddered, but still his mind refused to accept it.

  ‘But you’re a witch! You could fight them – fight the spell.’

  ‘I have magic, yes.’ Rosa pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders. ‘But I’m not particularly strong.’

  ‘You’re stronger than Alexis.’ He said it with certainty, remembering Rosa’s dazzling blaze of fire, compared to Alexis’s weak green haze.

  ‘Yes.’ There was no boasting in Rosa’s voice, just a statement of fact. ‘But there’s Mama too – I cannot fight them if they work together against me. This marriage is vital to them both. For her it’s her fortune, but for him it’s something more – it’s his future, it’s power and influence. And in any case, none of that would matter if Sebastian took their side.
I was never able to best him, even as a girl, and he’s only got stronger.’ She shuddered again, suddenly, convulsively. ‘Since his father died – I don’t understand it, Luke. No one should have power like he does. It’s like a hurricane.’

  Luke thought back to the black swirling cloud of hate that he had seen in the warehouse, before Sebastian jumped. Yes. He could see how no one could fight that. The thought of drowning in that darkness . . .

  ‘We must be quick,’ he said stubbornly. ‘And careful. That’s all. And once we have a horse we can be out of London in a few hours.’

  ‘But what about money? Even if we could get this ring off, would we be able to sell it? Wouldn’t they think we’d stolen it? I don’t exactly look like the kind of woman who wears a ruby ring any more.’

  Luke bit his lip. It was true. And worse – it would draw attention to them. Even if they found someone shady enough to give them money for the ring, it wouldn’t be a fair price, and it would more than likely set Sebastian on their trail.

  ‘Can’t you magic some up?’ he asked crossly, hating to ask. But she shook her head. ‘Why not? Not now, I mean, I know you’re tired, but later . . .’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ she said again. Her face looked pinched and tired. ‘Look, there’s two ways of creating something like money. Either you do it for real – change the real, base nature of the elements – and that’s very difficult magic: alchemy, it’s called. You need to be very strong and very practised and it can go horribly wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’ Luke echoed. ‘How?’

  ‘Think of Midas,’ Rosa said shortly. ‘Once you start changing things, it’s not always easy to know when to stop, how to stop.’

  ‘And the other way?’

  ‘Illusory magic. You don’t really change boot buttons to sovereigns, you just make the shopkeeper think it’s a sovereign in his hand. But that’s dangerous in its own way too.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because the illusion can only hold as long as the spell holds – as long as I concentrate on keeping it up. So I can make you think I have a bacon roll in my hand . . .’

  He blinked, and suddenly there was a bacon roll on her outstretched palm. He reached out for it, but it felt wrong in his grip – thin, insubstantial – and when he sniffed it, it didn’t smell of bacon, but like the memory of bacon – an ersatz nondescript savouriness. It was like food in a dream. As he watched, Rosa exhaled and the roll dissolved into nothing, leaving him grasping at air.

  ‘It’s dangerous because it’s very obvious,’ she said regretfully. ‘If we walk away and the innkeeper finds he’s holding dried leaves instead of banknotes, how long do you think before he comes after us? And how long until the story spreads – back to Sebastian, or back to your kind?’

  Luke nodded, a bitter resignation spreading through his bones. It seemed as though witchcraft should be good for something at least. And yet Rosa, in her own way, was as powerless as him.

  ‘Clemency . . .’ Rosa’s voice broke into his thoughts.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Clemency. My friend, Clemency. She has money. And she might—’

  ‘No.’ Luke cut across her furiously. ‘We can’t trust her!’

  ‘Because she’s a witch? Is that it?’

  ‘No, because . . .’ Because she’s a toff – one of them, was what he’d been about to say. But wasn’t Rosa one of them too?

  ‘Look.’ She grabbed his arm. ‘I let you take me to that place, that pub. You vouched for Phoebe and I trusted you. Won’t you trust my word on Clemency? Luke, she won’t betray us, I promise.’

  He took a deep breath – held it – counted to ten while he thought. Then he let it out with a gusting sigh.

  ‘All right. It’s your funeral.’

  ‘I hope it won’t come to that for either of us,’ Rosa said, with slight acidity. Then she pulled her shawl around her shoulders and stood up straighter. ‘Let’s get walking.’

  God, it was a long way. What made it worse was that Luke seemed immune to it. He never complained, never stumbled over piles of rubbish on the pavement, never slipped into a puddle of filth. He just strode beside her, not panting, not grumbling, but walking tirelessly. At Covent Garden he took her arm to forge a path through the throngs – it had seemed as if they would be stuck for ever in the shifting mass of traders and carts. Rosa let herself be pulled in his wake as he shoved and pushed with one shoulder, ramming through the tight-packed crowd. After that he kept hold of her arm, tugging her along, helping her to keep pace.

  Even so, Rosa’s feet in their tight-buttoned boots were crying out, and her free arm throbbed painfully. It was too bad that she had spent all her magic healing Luke’s shoulder. Not that he was grateful for it, she reflected bitterly as they crossed Piccadilly. She should have saved her energy and healed her own skin first. Now she would be lucky if it didn’t scar.

  She thought again of the smooth pale skin of his shoulder, the veins blue beneath the glaze of blood, the muscles shifting and tense as he strove to pull away, and the soft brush of hair beneath his arm. She could not remember ever having touched a man’s naked body before. She had seen boys, of course: Alexis and his friends bathing in the lake, and once, as she spied through her bedroom curtains, Luke himself stripped to the waist and bathing beneath the pump in the yard. But touching a full-grown man so confidently, so intimately? That, never. The thought of what she had done – stripping back Luke’s clothes even as he struggled away from her – both amazed and appalled her. Where had she found the courage?

  Luke didn’t speak as they tramped across London, and for that she was grateful. Other men would have made solicitous small talk, remarked on the weather, the crowds, the likelihood of rain. Not Luke. He walked in silence, his arm firm beneath hers, just glancing at her from time to time to make sure she was keeping up. And she herself had no breath to spare for chat.

  At last they passed Fortnum and Mason’s and she was able to let out a sigh of relief. Not far to Clemency’s now. Pray God that Philip would be at the Ealdwitan for business. The thought gave her sudden pause and she stopped.

  ‘Luke.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Clemency is married.’

  She waited for him to respond, but he did not, and she was forced to continue. ‘I trust her, but not her husband. He is a member of the Ealdwitan, our ruling council, and he reports to Sebastian. What shall we do?’

  Luke thought, still in silence. Then, just as she was about to prod him in despair, he said, ‘Well, we’ll have to find out if he’s home. The servants would recognize you, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So I’ll have to ask.’

  ‘Yes, but, Luke, they’ll tell you he’s not home anyway. He’s not going to come to the door for a—’ She stopped, not wanting to wound him, but she could see he understood. It was a part of his life as much as hers, after all. He had had eighteen years to get used to her class looking down on his.

  ‘No . . . he won’t come to the door for a stable-hand, but I don’t need to see him.’ He began to walk again, and they continued in silence up Piccadilly until they reached the turn-off for Clemency’s house.

  ‘Left here,’ Rosa said, and then, as they rounded the corner, ‘the third house on the right is Clemency’s – the one with the rhododendrons in the front.’

  ‘Stay here,’ Luke said. He dropped her arm.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Going to find out if her husband’s there – what’s his name, by the way?’

  ‘Philip. Philip Catesby. But, Luke—’

  But he had already gone up the road, knocking on the big polished front door.

  Rosa flattened herself against the railings, her heart in her mouth, and listened as a maid opened the door. She heard Luke’s murmuring voice and the maid’s tart response.

  ‘No, he ain’t at home to the likes of you. And next time, come to the tradesmen’s entrance.’

  Rosa watched through the rhododendron leaves a
s Luke pulled off his cap, his straw-coloured hair tumbling over his forehead, and smiled at the girl.

  ‘Sorry, miss,’ she heard. ‘I’ll know for next time. It was only I had a message for him, from Mr Greenwood.’

  ‘Well, he’s down at his office,’ the girl said, mollified. She brushed an imaginary speck of dust off her white apron. ‘If you fancy coming back later, he’ll be here around four. Or you can leave a note.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ Luke said. He flashed another smile and a dimple appeared in his cheek. ‘But I might take the excuse to come back if I thought I’d get a smile from you. Think you could manage one before I go?’

  ‘Oi, cheeky!’ the girl said indignantly. But she was smiling, looking at him under her lashes as she shut the door.

  So Luke could flirt! Who would have thought it – silent, taciturn Luke. Rosa watched through the leaves as he came back down the path, the smile gone from his face, his expression serious again.

  ‘He’s out, did you hear?’

  ‘Yes.’ The question only remained, was Clemency? There was only one way to find out. ‘You’d better wait here while I go and speak to Clemency.’

  ‘All right.’ He bit his lip, looking down at her, the dimple buried as if it had never been. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘I will be.’

  Her heart was pounding as she went up the path to the front door, where Luke had knocked only a moment before. She plied the knocker again and heard the girl’s footsteps.

  ‘I told you,’ she heard as the girl opened the door, ‘smile or no smile, it’s the tradesmen’s— Oh! Who’re you?’

  ‘I’d like to see your mistress,’ Rosa said. The girl frowned, taking in her shabby, burnt clothes and cheap shawl, but puzzled by her accent. ‘Mrs Catesby. Is she at home?’

  ‘Not to you.’ The girl came down with a thump on the side of suspicion and folded her arms. ‘What of it?’

  ‘I don’t want any of this “not at home”,’ Rosa said impatiently. ‘If she’s here, she’ll be at home to me. I’m an old friend.’