Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2)

by Ruth Warburton

  ‘A’course. I’m sorry Luke, I can’t . . . I didn’t . . . Oh God, I killed him. I killed a man.’

  ‘Listen, stay with William while I go for a doctor.’ He tried to stand, his rib creaking painfully, but he felt something pluck at his hand as he did, and he looked down to see William shaking his head, the smallest movement, but just visible in the gloom.

  ‘No . . .’ It was a croaking whisper, barely audible. ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘I must.’ It broke Luke’s heart to try to pull his fingers from his uncle’s grip, but he had to, he had to try to get help. But William only closed his eyes, and held fast.

  ‘I’m dying, Luke . . .’ His breath wheezed, painful and shallow. ‘You don’t . . . don’t recover . . . wound like this. Stay wi’ me.’

  ‘No!’ It broke out of him like a shout, a cry of sheer agony in the echoing warehouse. For a minute all he could think of was Rosa and Sebastian’s mother, and he longed to have even an ounce of her power to bring someone back from a mortal injury. Surely, surely if William could hold on for just a few hours longer . . . ‘William, no! For Christ’s sake, please. Please, you can’t do this . . .’ There were tears in his eyes, running down his face, mixing with the blood and sweat. ‘Please don’t leave me, William.’

  But William said nothing. He only lay, his hand in Luke’s, his eyes closed, and there was an expression of peace on his face that Luke could hardly bear, for he knew that it meant that his uncle had given up, that he was no longer fighting, that his struggle was done.

  ‘No!’ he sobbed. ‘God damn you, no! No!’

  William’s chest rose and fell, rose and fell.

  ‘Let me go, Uncle,’ he pleaded. ‘Let me go for the doctor. Please, I’m begging you. Don’t give up.’

  But William lay in peaceful silence. Only the sound of his slow, shallow breaths, and his fingers clenched on Luke’s, showed he was still alive.

  ‘Let me go,’ Luke begged again, but he did not move. He knew he would not move, could not leave his uncle like this, not without his blessing, and William would not give it now, that much was plain. He was almost beyond speech.

  His blood was pooling warm and wet beneath his body, and his face had grown very white – even his lips were white. His hand in Luke’s was cold – soft and malleable as clay.

  ‘Good . . . lad . . .’ His lips tried to form more words, but no sound came out, just the clicking of his tongue, as it tried to make the words.

  ‘No!’ Luke sobbed. ‘No!’

  There was nothing he could do but watch in the silence and the darkness as William’s life slipped from his body and his fingers grew cold and limp in Luke’s. The only sound was Luke and Minna’s sobs, and the almost imperceptible flutter of William’s breath, growing fainter and fainter . . . and then at last there was just Luke and Minna, and William was gone, his unblinking eyes fixed on some point beyond them both.

  Luke wanted to bellow and scream and rage, but he did not. He knelt in his uncle’s blood, on the abattoir floor, and his tears mingled with his uncle’s spent life on the concrete slab. He knelt there while Minna’s harsh sobs grew quiet and the only sound was of blood running into the central drain where it would flow into the sewers and at last into the great, dirty life-force of the Thames and away.

  ‘Luke,’ Minna croaked at last. ‘Luke. What we gonna do?’

  Luke looked up. The blood and tears had dried on his face leaving their stiff, salty tracks, he could feel it as he passed his hand across his skin, and he felt too the pull of the wound on his arm, where Leadingham had slashed at him, and the scrape and grate of the broken ribs.

  ‘You need to get out of here,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Don’t tell anyone what you did – understood? If people knew—’

  ‘I don’t want to stand trial for murder. But we can’t just leave ’em – what’re people gonna think?’

  ‘They’ll think they had a fight,’ Luke said. He got to his feet, his ribs screaming in protest, and looked down at the two bodies on the floor. ‘And in a way it’s true. Maybe it’s best we leave it at that.’

  His heart was near breaking at the idea of leaving William lying in his own blood on the floor of the abattoir. Who would take care of him, wash his body, keep the vigil while he waited for burial? William had no one but him. But he couldn’t stay.

  ‘Listen, Minna.’ He took her hands. ‘There’s something I’ve got to do. And I don’t know if I’m coming back.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Her small, pale face was a mix of fear and outrage. ‘You ain’t gonna go after her, are you? Me and William, we didn’t save you from the frying pan for you to throw yourself into the fire!’

  ‘I’ve got to do it.’ He felt tears prick again at the back of his lids, though he should have cried himself dry. ‘I can’t leave her. It’s because of me she’s here, they came for me, not her. If she hadn’t come after me, looking for me, they’d never have caught her.

  ‘What are you sayin’ then?’

  ‘I’m going after her. And I want you to go back to the forge and then tomorrow I want you to report William missing to the coppers.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So his body gets found. I don’t want him to rot here or get given to the bodysnatchers for an unclaimed corpse. I want you to say that he’d had an argument with Leadingham, make up something – about me, if you like. And that he and Leadingham had agreed to have it out here, tonight. Then if –’ he swallowed, his throat working painfully against the tightness, ‘– if I don’t come back, will you see to it that he’s buried, decent?’

  ‘How? I ain’t got no money!’

  ‘There’s money at the forge. In a strongbox under William’s bed. It should cover the funeral and leave a bit besides. You can stay at the forge until I come back, you and the kids.’

  ‘And if . . . if you don’t come back?’

  ‘Then the forge is yours. Find a man to work it. Charge him rent and use the money for yourself and the kids.’

  ‘What if they kick me out? Yer uncle’s mates? I’ve got no papers to show I’ve a right to be there.’

  Luke bit his lip. They were wasting time arguing, when he should be trying to track down Rosa. But she was right.

  He looked around the abattoir, searching for a piece of paper, anything, and his eye fell on a small desk in the corner by the door, scattered with receipts and orders. There was an accounts ledger open on the desk, and a spattered ink well. He strode across to it, ripped out a page, and began to write hastily.

  He shoved the page at Minna, and she read haltingly.

  ‘I do solmen . . . solemnly declare that I, Luke Lexton, give Minna Sykes permission to live at the Old Forge, Farrer’s Lane, Spitalfields until such time as I return from my travels. Sig . . . signed Luke Nathaniel Lexton. I never knew yer middle name was Nathaniel!’

  ‘Well, it is,’ Luke said shortly. ‘Now, I’ve got to go, Minna. Will you do it?’

  He didn’t trust her. He knew that it lay on a knife’s edge as to whether she would take the money in the strongbox and blow it on opium, forgetting William’s funeral, forgetting the kids in the workhouse, forgetting everything, until someone swindled the forge away from her and she died in the gutter.

  But she looked up at him, nodding seriously, and he wanted desperately to believe that this would be the making of her, the chance she needed. That she would get the kids back from the workhouse orphanage and make a go of it.

  ‘I’ll do it, Luke.’ Her eyes were wide and limpid. ‘You can trust me.’

  He shut his eyes, praying to all the saints and gods and forefathers he had betrayed that she would keep her word.

  Then he opened them and let his breath out.

  ‘Thank you.’ He kissed her forehead, the curls damp and cold beneath his lips. ‘Goodbye, Minna.’

  ‘I’m not sayin’ goodbye, Luke, because it ain’t goodbye. You got that?’

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said again. Then he tightened his muffler around his throat and walked o
ut into the cold, frosted night.

  In her room, Rosa paced backwards and forwards. There was a tray of supper on the floor, but the food was uneaten. Outside, night had fallen, but she had no means of lighting a candle and so she paced in the gathering darkness, as the snow fell.

  Luke. Sebastian. The Black Witch.

  Their names beat inside her head, making her dizzy.

  Had Luke known about the cane, about Sebastian’s link to his parents? Was this what he had meant that night above the forge, in each other’s arms?

  I gave up everything for you, his voice whispered in her head, and she remembered again his face in the candlelight and the feel of his touch in the darkness. She remembered the ridges of the brand beneath her lips as she kissed his back and his shoulders, and the weight of his body on hers. The Malleus, William, revenge for my parents – I gave it all up.

  He had seen Sebastian carrying the cane, he must have. And instead of pursuing the truth, he had chosen her. He had given everything up, just as she had for him. The past, the present, the unwritten future.

  And now he was lying in some godforsaken cell in the Malleus’s stronghold, awaiting his death, and there was nothing she could do.

  She pulled again at the necklace round her neck, feeling it pinch against her windpipe and her breath grow short as she tugged at the constricting metal, and she remembered Sebastian’s drawling: You’ll have a little more difficulty in cutting off your head, I imagine.

  The ring had been his grandmother’s, he said. Was this, then, the secret of his family’s power? Had they been bleeding their womenfolk all these years, taking their magic for their own through the power of this stone?

  ‘You will not have mine . . .’ she snarled, the words shockingly loud in the silence of the room. She did not know if Sebastian was listening, but as she pulled again she felt the necklace tighten around her throat, making her breath strangle and her vision break into stars, and then loosen, like a teasing threat leaving her gasping and furious.

  ‘Damn you!’ she screamed, her voice hoarse with fury. ‘I would rather die, do you understand that? I will not be your wife! I will never be your wife!’

  She picked up a chair and flung it at the tall, barred window with the glimmering snow beyond, but it only bounced harmlessly off the glass and fell to the thick, muffling carpet, and she felt as if the whole house were laughing at her, conspiring against her, suffocating her with its luxury and its taunting extravagance.

  She could not escape. But she could find out the truth, at least. Luke had given up that chance, for her, and now they were both condemned. Luke would die at the hands of the Malleus, she had no doubt of that, and she would die before she married Sebastian – she had no illusions that the choice would come to that.

  But before she died, she could at least do this. She could find out for Luke the truth of his parents’ death, why they’d had to die, and at whose hand. Even if she could never tell him what she found, that one last thing, she could do for him.

  But she could not do it without her magic.

  Luke hitched a lift across London on the back of passing hansom cabs, holding on perilously above the rushing road until the cab turned off the route he wanted, or until the cabbie noticed the extra weight and chased him off with a curse and a crack of his whip. Then on to the next one, until that one too saw something amiss or a passing mate tipped the driver off. He earned himself a bleeding cheekbone from a cabbie who moved quicker than he did, and his rib was roaring with pain by the time he got to Knightsbridge, but at last he limped into Osborne Crescent just as the moon was rising high over Hyde Park, hoping to God that Becky was still awake, hoping to God that the new stable-hand wasn’t.

  He picked the lock on the mews gate easily enough and eased himself through the narrow gap into the cobbled yard, trying to walk softly in the shadows and not rouse the horses.

  He had only the faintest recollection of which window was Becky’s. He knew that Mr James slept to the front of the house, and the two maids at the back, and he thought the left-hand dormer was Ellen’s, but he couldn’t be sure. At last, realizing that he wasn’t going to get any nearer deciding by dithering, he took a handful of pebbles and flung them up at the right-hand window.

  They hit the glass and rattled back down, terrifyingly loud, and Luke waited, his heart in his mouth, but neither Becky nor anyone else came to the window. He tried again with a single stone in an effort to make less noise, the action giving his rib an agonizing twinge. But to his horror there was a dull crack and the pane split clear across.

  There was a deathly silence. And then he heard the rattle of curtain rings and saw someone in a white nightgown and mob cap pulling up the sash.

  ‘What in gawd’s name . . . ?’

  Becky. He felt almost weak with relief.

  ‘Becky!’ he shouted up in a hoarse whisper, and she looked down, blinking with astonishment in the moonlight.

  ‘Who the hell . . . ?’

  ‘It’s me, Luke! Luke . . . ’ He remembered just in time to give the false name he had used while he lived in Rosa’s house. ‘Luke Welling.’

  ‘Luke!’ Becky pulled a shawl around her shoulders, shivering in the night air, but she leant out of the window, smiling down at him. ‘What are you doing back here? We heard as you’d gone back home, sick!’

  ‘I did. I was. But R— Miss Rosa, do you know where she is?’

  ‘She’s missing, ain’t you heard? Run off, or maybe kidnapped, some says. No one knows where.’

  Did her family know she’d been found? Clearly the servants had not been told – and he could hardly go and quiz Rosa’s mother. Would Sebastian have taken her to his house in London or his place in the country? Instinct told him the country, but it would be a long journey if he was wrong.

  ‘Mr Alexis then, is he here?’

  ‘He’s gone down to Mr Knyvet’s place in Sussex. You know, the gentleman Miss Rosa was to have married? He’s been a marvel, I must say. Wouldn’t hear of calling off the engagement, though there’s not many would have stood by their fiancée like that, even if it weren’t her fault. But no, he’s made sure it’s hushed up, told everyone she’s gone to the country for her health, though he could’ve married a hundred other girls in the meantime, with his looks and money. But he’ll have no other girl but her. It must be true love for him.’

  She sighed romantically and Luke curled his fingers into a fist. But she had told him what he needed to know. If Alexis was down in Sussex, ten to one Knyvet and Rosa were there too. He only prayed he was not too late.

  ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you,’ he whispered up to Becky. ‘I’ll go now, you be getting back to bed – you’ll catch your death, and I don’t want to get you into trouble. I’m sorry about the window. Tell ’em a bird flew into it, cracked the pane.’

  ‘All right.’ She looked down at him, twisting a lock of her hair round her finger. ‘You always was a funny one, Luke Welling. Listen, now you’re better, you ever come up west?’

  He drew a breath, not wanting to lie, but desperate to keep her sweet and get her back to bed, happy and unsuspicious.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he lied. He tried to force a smile, though his face felt stiff as a mask and his rib was crying out with pain. ‘Maybe. Why, is there a reason for me to come?’

  ‘Could be.’ She smiled down at him, her fingers twining and releasing, twining and releasing. ‘Maybe a girl could be persuaded out for a cuppa, or a glass of ale, if a young man was to come calling.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ he said. ‘I remember your afternoon off is Wednesday, in’t it? If I’m up this way on a Wednesday evening, I’ll call for you, I promise.’

  He could make that promise safely, he thought, with a pain in his chest that was not just from his rib. It was not likely he would ever see London again, let alone come up west on a Wednesday night.

  ‘Good night, Luke Welling.’ She smiled down at him, and then pulled down the sash and let the curtain swing back. He stood f
or a moment, waiting to be sure that she’d gone back to bed. Then he turned, but not back to the gate. Instead he went across to the stable.

  There were new horses inside: a beautiful Arab in Brimstone’s stall and a slender thoroughbred grey in Cherry’s, shining in the moonlight like a ghost. But it was neither of these that he went for. It was Castor, the big bay gelding who had the stamina of the ox and a heart even bigger than his body. Castor gave a soft whickering neigh as he saw Luke and pushed his head eagerly over the stall door, shoving his whiskery nose into Luke’s palm and butting him with his head.

  A lump rose in his throat. Castor, who’d carried him so faithfully, through so much.

  ‘I’m sorry, boy,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve got no sugar, but will you come? One last ride, eh?’

  The horse threw up his head, for all the world as if he were nodding, and Luke slipped the bridle over his head and led him quietly from the stable, the saddle slung over his arm.

  Outside in the lane, he saddled him up, and then he took one last look at the darkened house, pulled himself up into the saddle with a scream of protest from his injured rib. Then they were away, riding swift through the moonlit shadows and the cold, shifting fog.

  ‘Yes, miss?’

  The maid outside the bedroom door looked frightened, her face white and pale in the darkness. Rosa wondered what she’d seen in her time at Southing, what horrors the locked wing held.

  ‘Would you light a candle for me?’ she asked. ‘I have no magic to strike a flame. And would you –’ She swallowed, feeling the collar tight against her throat. ‘Would you tell Mr Knyvet that I have thought long and hard, and would like to see him.’

  Her pulse beat in her throat, against the collar’s constriction. She could be wrong, horribly, fatally wrong. She had so little to go on, after all. And if she was wrong . . .

  The candles flared up as the maid lit them, casting a golden, shivering light across the room. Rosa shut her eyes, the flames still burning against her closed lids.

  If she was wrong, the fight would be lost a little earlier than she thought – that was all. It wouldn’t change anything, not really.