Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2)

by Ruth Warburton

  She reached for Sebastian’s hand and Luke’s, and for a moment Rosa was flooded with thankfulness and relief that the horror was over.

  And then as the witch turned to face the void, Rosa realized the meaning of her words.

  ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Luke, no!’

  And in the same instant, the woman jumped.

  Sebastian cried out, a brief, wordless shout of fear.

  Rosa’s own despairing ‘No!’ echoed around the rooftop as she threw all her magic after them, every particle of it in a formless blazing rush.

  And Luke – Luke made no sound at all.

  They were gone.

  Rosa ran to the edge of the roof, staring out into the swirling white.

  There were three dark shapes far below, crumpled black masses against the snow.

  A scream rose up in her throat, but she pushed it back and began to stumble back through the slush-filled gutters to the fire escape, when she caught sight of Cassie, huddled against the edge of the roof, her face white and filled with horror, her blind eyes staring blankly into the night.

  ‘Cassie!’ Her voice was rough with unshed sobs and she grabbed the girl’s wrist. ‘Cassie, did you see? Did you see what happened? Are they alive?’

  ‘I tried to tell him!’ Cassie’s voice was an agonized whisper. ‘I tried to tell Sebastian what I saw – his death in the flames . . . Oh, Rosa!’ And she began to cry, the tears welling from her beautiful blue eyes.

  ‘Luke?’ Rosa managed. She knew she was being cruel, but at that moment she could not find it in herself to care about anything else. ‘Is Luke alive?’

  But Cassie could not speak, the sobs were choking her, and at last Rosa grabbed her arm and half led, half pulled her to the fire escape, dragging her down the slippery snow-covered rungs with a mixture of brute force and magic.

  ‘Come on!’ she begged as they stumbled past the open door that led to the prison wing, burning entirely out of control now. She had to shield them both from the flames roaring out of the open doorway. It would not be long before the whole wing collapsed – and with it the fire escape. If the structure fell she might be able to save herself, but not Cassie too. Not in this state of exhausted fear. And in the meantime Luke might be bleeding to death in the snow. ‘Come on.’

  She wrestled with the drawn-up ladder, and then it clanged down, and she was dragging and propelling Cassie down the next flight, and the next. They fell, more than climbed, the last few yards, landing in a heap of snow by the scullery door, and Rosa left Cassie sobbing by the foot of the ladder and stumbled round to the front of the house.

  They were there; she could see them, lying like jacks flung down by a petulant child at the foot of the steps that led up to the great pillared entrance.

  Sebastian had been thrown against the balustrade and he lay with his head flung back and his neck at a strange unnatural angle.

  His mother was crumpled in a heap against the bottom step. Her skull must have hit something on the way down for it had been caved in like a smashed egg.

  And last of all, further out in the snow that lay thick across the driveway: Luke.

  Luke: face down in the snow, spreading scarlet with his blood.

  She was almost afraid to touch him, terrified that he was alive but beyond healing, that she might cause him pain if she tried to move him. But she had to try.

  ‘Luke – oh, Luke! Please, please . . .’ She fell to her knees in the snow and put her hand to his shoulder, turning him on to his back as gently as she could.

  ‘Luke?’ she whispered.

  He lay, his eyes closed, his face pale as death and covered with blood. And then he coughed.

  ‘Help,’ he managed. Blood came bubbling out of his nostrils. ‘Help me sit up . . . choking . . . nose . . .’

  Almost crying, she helped him sit and lean forwards, so that the blood poured out of his nose on to the snow instead of running back down his throat. He coughed and spat, and coughed again, and then pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stem the flow.

  ‘Is it broken?’ Rosa asked through her sobs.

  ‘Maybe.’ He touched it gingerly and then shook his head, drops of blood spattering his shirt. ‘Maybe not. My rib is. Ahhhh . . . ’ He pressed his hand against the side where it hurt, his eyes screwed shut with the pain.

  ‘When you fell . . .’ She held on to him, her fingers gripping through his coat as if she would never let him go again. ‘When you fell . . .’

  But she could not finish. She only knelt opposite him in the snow, tears streaming down her face.

  And then she kissed him, through the blood and the tears and the melting snow. She felt his mouth, hot against hers, and she tasted blood and Luke, and she found she was shaking.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, her words blurred by their kiss and her tears, but she knew he would understand. ‘I love you, Luke, so much.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  He wrapped his arms around her carefully, pulling her into his uninjured side, and she felt his strength like a rock, his warmth encompassing her as her magic flooded out to him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed. She spoke into his chest. ‘I let you down. I tried – I tried to stop you fall—’

  ‘I’m alive,’ he said. He pulled back, looking into her face, his rough hands stroking her hair. ‘I’m alive because of you.’ He looked over at Sebastian and his mother, sprawled in the snow, and his face was pale. ‘Can you do anything for ’em?’

  ‘No,’ Rosa shook her head. ‘No, they’re gone, beyond saving.’

  They were still looking at each other, shivering in each other’s arms, when there was the sound of bells from far away. Luke struggled to his feet, peering into the darkness, his hand shading against the moon and the swirling snow.

  ‘What is it?’ Rosa stood too, stiffly, brushing the melting snow from her skirts.

  ‘Fire engine, I think. That maid must have raised the alarm.’

  Sure enough, in a few moments they heard the sound of galloping hooves and a fire cart rounded the corner, the bell ringing like bedlam, two shire horses between the traces and a farm boy seated aloft, whipping the horses for dear life. The men were not like the uniformed firemen Rosa had seen in London – they were just villagers: farm hands and servants, she guessed from their clothes. But they leapt down and began shouting orders.

  ‘Where’s the fire?’ one of them called to Luke. ‘Round the back?’

  ‘Yes, round to the right.’ He pointed, and the farm boy seated on the back of one of the shire horses gave it a whack with the whip and began to steer the apparatus round the corner.

  ‘All hands to the pump!’ one of the men shouted. ‘Jim, you go for the doctor, for them two out the front.’ And then, ‘Who’s that girl? Get her out the way!’

  ‘Cassie!’ Rosa gasped. She had completely forgotten. She ran after the fire cart and there was Cassie, still huddled at the foot of the fire escape.

  ‘Stop!’ Rosa shouted to the men, already training their hoses at the burning building. ‘Wait!’

  She crouched beside Cassie, trying to pull her to her feet.

  ‘Cassie darling, come with me. There’s nothing you can do here. Come away – we’ll get you to the village.’

  ‘They’re dead, aren’t they?’ Cassie raised her thin, white face to Rosa’s. ‘Both of them. They’re both dead.’

  ‘Cassie – I . . .’ She didn’t know what to say. She thought of when they had come to tell her about Papa; she could remember almost nothing, just the look on her mother’s face and her voice saying, My dear, I have some dreadful news . . .

  ‘I have no one,’ Cassie said. Her voice was strange and wondering, almost calm. ‘I have no one.’

  ‘You have me,’ Rosa said. She put her arm through Cassie’s. ‘Come, you are cold and they need to set their hoses to the buildings. We can’t stay here. We must go to the village, someone will take us in. And then . . .’

  And then? And then what?

 
But she could not think of that now, she could not think of the future. Just of tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after that. Time enough for the rest in the morning.

  ‘Fire at the manor!’ the small boy shouted. ‘Fire at the manor! Two dead! Master and mistress dashed their brains out on the drive! Fire at the manor!’

  ‘Hush, for God’s sake!’ Rosa stuck her head out of the window at the inn, beside herself with fury. Cassie had not slept all night and now she was finally collapsed into unconsciousness. The last thing she needed was to be woken by this horrible, bloodthirsty urchin. ‘Take yourself somewhere else, for pity!’

  ‘Hush yerself!’ he retorted. ‘I’ve got papers to sell, ain’t I? How’m I supposed to shift ’em if I can’t cry me wares?’

  ‘Oh, go away!’ Rosa hissed. ‘I’ll buy a stupid paper, if that’s what it’ll take. Just go away!’

  ‘Six,’ he said firmly. ‘Six papers. That’s what I’d’ve sold on this corner, I reckon. So you should compensate me for me loss.’

  ‘Very well then, six!’ she snarled. ‘Just go away!’

  ‘That’ll be a shillin’.’

  Her fingers shaking, Rosa scrabbled on the dressing table for a coin and flung it down. In return the boy bound up six copies with string and launched them through the open window. They thumped on the rug. Rosa slammed the window shut and looked over at Cassie, still slumbering in the bed.

  She would have to get rid of the copies before Cassie woke. The easiest way would be the fire. She snipped the string, and began to separate the pages for burning. One, two, three fed into the fire, but by the time she got to the fourth it was burning too fiercely and the grate was too full of ashes.

  She stood, smoothing her skirts, and walked up the corridor to the room where Luke was staying.

  Luke was sitting in the window seat, a book in his hands, but he had not turned a page for a long while. Instead he was staring unseeingly out into the street, thinking.

  At last he turned with a sigh back to the book, but when he bent his head to read, the stiff collar dug into his neck. Not so much mutton dressed as lamb, as a pig in a bonnet, he thought, pulling at it. And a too-small bonnet at that. The collar, along with the rest of his outfit, belonged to the innkeeper’s own son, away at university. Luke had tried to protest, to say that he would rather have a spare shirt from their groom, but the innkeeper had refused. Nothing was too good for Miss Cassie, and by extension for Rosa and Luke. The innkeeper’s son was tall, as tall as Luke, thankfully. But he’d not spent his life beating hot metal, and the collar, as well as the fabric over Luke’s right shoulder, was uncomfortably tight, so tight that he feared he might split the jacket when he breathed.

  But that was not what had been distracting him from his book this last half-hour. That had been something else.

  He knew he should be thankful, most of all for the fact that they were free, free of the Brothers, free of the Greenwoods, free from Sebastian’s pursuit. John Leadingham was dead. The witch hunt was over.

  Except it was not over. Somewhere, Rosa’s name was still written in the Book of Witches – and Cassie’s too, for all he knew. He should have burnt that book when he had the chance, flung it into the fire in front of all the Brothers to undo the harm he’d done. It was not just Rosa: there were other lives forfeit because of him, because of his sight. He remembered walking the streets of London as a child, John Leadingham’s hand at his back. ‘Him,’ he would point and John would nod at a Brother and set him off to trail the witch to his destination. ‘Her. And that girl with her too.’

  How proud he’d been of his gift. And how wretched the memory made him now.

  He thought of his father, who had taken that same gift and made something noble out of it: who had protected the powerless without resorting to hate. Rosa’s words rang in his head: You were a child – you didn’t know any better!

  No. He’d not known any better. He had grown up with ignorance and fear and hatred, drunk it down with his bedtime milk, chewed on it with his morning bread, learnt it alongside his ABC and the Lord’s Prayer.

  But he knew now what he’d done, what it felt like to lie in chains, awaiting your death. He knew the stink of the bottle and the feel of a knife against skin. He knew what it was like to wish a girl’s death – and how impossible it was ever to atone for that sin.

  ‘Luke?’

  His head jerked up.

  Rosa stood in the doorway, her magic a ripple of flame against the wood panelling. She was dressed and her hair swept up in a silver comb. For the first time in many weeks she looked completely and utterly what she was: a lady, through and through, and the knowledge made his heart thump with a painful missed beat, and his breath catch in his throat just for a moment.

  He was almost afraid to touch her, but she walked into his arms and put her hand against his cheek, meeting his eyes with a look so hungry his heart twisted in his chest.

  ‘Rose,’ he whispered, and then her lips were on his, soft and warm and open, and his senses slipped from him. She was light in his arms, but strong and tough as wire. ‘My God, I love you,’ he said, his words smothered against her skin, but she heard, and her fingers tightened on the muscles of his arms, her nails digging through his shirt sleeves until he groaned against her throat.

  Then something slipped from her hand and landed with a thump against the floor, and they both laughed, a shaky trembling laugh, and pulled apart.

  ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ Luke asked.

  Rosa picked it up and put it on the windowsill beside him.

  ‘Some horrible child was shouting the headlines in the street, so I bought a bundle to shut him up. I didn’t want him to wake Cassie, least of all with grisly details about her family’s death. I burnt half in my grate but it couldn’t take the rest. Can I use yours?’

  ‘Of course. What does it say though? The article about the fire?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why?’

  ‘Does it mention us?’

  Rosa’s eyes widened and she unrolled the top copy. The first page was advertisements, but the second was an account of the fire. Rosa scanned it, Luke reading over her shoulder, his hair falling in his eyes.

  TERROR AT SOUTHING

  RESIDENTS of the small hamlet of Southing in Sussex were woken in the night by news that Southing House, the family seat of the Knyvets, great landowners in these parts, was burning to the ground. Villagers and firemen rushed to the scene and battled the inferno with great determination and at risk to their own lives, but all efforts to quench the blaze proved unsuccessful, and your correspondent is led to believe that this great manor, once described as ‘the jewel of the Downs’, is no more.

  The owner of Southing, Mr Sebastian Knyvet, showed enormous courage and fortitude in his attempts to rescue his invalid mother from the rooftop, whence she had fled in terror from the inferno below. His determination and filial loyalty showed no bounds, even to the extent that he ventured up on to the slates where Mrs Knyvet had taken refuge, at great risk to his own life. Alas, the inclement conditions, combined with his mother’s fragile state of mind, led to a double tragedy and both mother and son fell, and were dashed on to the driveway beneath, where they died instantly. Miss Cassandra Knyvet, who is only fourteen years of age, is the sole surviving member of the family.

  The late Mr Aloysius Knyvet, who served for a time as Governor of Bengal, under the then Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, died last month after a short illness.

  ‘How dare they!’ Rosa’s cheeks flushed as she looked up at him. ‘Sebastian showed enormous courage and fortitude? What about you? Risking your life for—’

  ‘He did show great courage. And I’m bloody thankful they didn’t put my name in the paper. As far as the Brothers are concerned, I died somewhere at John’s hands. And as far as your family are concerned, you were in that house when it burnt to the ground. D’you realize what this means?’

  ‘It means . . .’ She stared at him, her gold-brown eyes wide and dark, dil
ating to black. ‘It means we are free.’

  The words were still ringing in her head as she made her way back up the corridor to the room she was sharing with Cassie. It had been hard to leave Luke, the warmth of his fire, and the comfort of his company, but she did not want Cassie to wake and find herself alone.

  Free. Free to do – what?

  She opened the door to the room, quietly, trying not to wake the sleeper inside, but as her eyes adjusted to the dim light she heard a rustle, and saw Cassie struggling up against the pillow, her hair in tangled rats’ tails.

  ‘Oh, you’re awake!’ Rosa exclaimed stupidly. ‘I’m sorry – did I disturb you?’

  ‘No, no, I was waking anyway.’ Cassie rubbed at her eyes. ‘I had been lying there, trying to understand, to believe . . . For a moment I thought it was all a dream – and then I remembered . . .’

  ‘Cassie, I am so very sorry . . .’ Rosa trailed off, twisting her fingers. But Cassie was shaking her head.

  ‘No. I am done crying. Mama – Mama leapt. She leapt into the void. She chose death over that miserable existence. And she took Sebastian with her. I cannot help but think . . .’

  ‘What?’ Rosa went to the bedside to take Cassie’s hand in hers. ‘What, Cassie?’

  ‘I can’t help thinking that she did not want him to live. That she knew she had that one chance to end it all and to take the darkness with her. They say suicide is a mortal sin, don’t they? But perhaps – perhaps it was a noble thing that she did. In a way.’

  ‘Perhaps it was,’ Rosa whispered. She felt her eyes well with tears and for a minute she blinked, trying to clear her vision. Then she coughed and turned away to the fireside.

  ‘What will you do, Cassie? You can’t stay here for long – do you have family? Will you go to London?’

  ‘Southing is entailed, I’ve been told,’ Cassie said wearily. ‘Along with the London house. I don’t know who they will go to – some distant cousin, I believe. But I dare say the factories are mine, if I wanted them.’