And focused the will.
Nothing stirred in Dog Lane but the creaking board over the baker’s shop. The witness drew on the long stem of her pipe and blew a circle of smoke towards the misty moon.
Witchcraft ...
Cassy knew better than to waste breath arguing with Kate. She had never known a body more stubborn. As for actually going after the murdering devil, that she considered fearless to the point of stupidity. But Kate was not open to reason. She had slipped into one of her disturbingly intense moods and there was no talking to her.
Cassy had seen her like it before; that first night they had shared the tent, then again, one afternoon when she had come back from walking in Moorfields with François, and most recently, the night she limped all the way from St Giles graveyard, having lost her shoes somewhere. It was as though another, stronger self emerged – someone strange and awe-inspiring.
She had long ago accepted the fact of Kate’s second sight; that it was, in the main, a curse rather than a blessing but a fact nevertheless. And it was becoming more and more clear that there was more to it than just seeing. There was a depth in Kate that went far beyond the normal; something not of the ordinary, safe world.
At first, she had put the strangeness down to Kate losing her mother so young and in such a way – a retreat in times of direst stress – an occasional imbalance which, with patience would pass. With time though, she had been forced to come to terms with the distinct possibility that her friend was – and most likely always had been – what those ignorant villagers had branded her.
Kate was a witch.
Furthermore, she was a witch who had borne a murderer’s child. It was a truth she could no longer evade. And being true, she had to believe too, that Kate was right when she said that unless she found this beast who went by the name of Marsden, found and presumably destroyed him, he would come after her and François.
All this she had realized as she lay beside Kate on the front-room bed, waiting for the dawn. By first light she knew too that whatever else Kate might be, she was foremost her friend. And if she was hell bent on going after François’ father, then she was going to need her help to do it.
Dog Lane was waking to a fine drizzle and the waft of new bread from Hyslop’s bakery, when the two women reached it shortly after dawn. Throwing back the hood of her scarlet cloak, Kate strode on ahead of Cassy to the barred gate at the field end. Then she sauntered back again, past several straggling buildings to a two-storey house butting up to the pavement.
She stood on the pavement opposite, waiting for Cassy to catch up and squinted through the spatter of rain. It was a timber-framed house with basketweave brick infills. There were boards over the ground-floor windows, old boards carved with initials and stuck with weather-beaten notices. The higher windows though – those out of range of prying eyes – were unboarded. One directly above the padlocked door, she noticed, was flapping open. Moving to one side, she glanced up at the undulating roof, at the slate-slipped neglect and cracked skylight.
‘This one?’ gasped Cassy, reaching her at last. Kate took her arm, and stepping over a heap of manure, pointed to a brick path at the side of the house. They followed it round, through a tangle of overgrown shrubs and brambles, past an empty pigsty, to a back porch ankle-deep with old leaves. Cassy lifted the latch of the mouldering door within, and pushed. But it held fast.
‘Try again,’ Kate breathed over her shoulder. ‘It is not locked, only swollen with the damp.’ Without hesitation, Cassy put her weight behind it and this time the door groaned into an earthen-floored vestibule.
They stepped inside and were met with the reek of stale urine and damp plaster. Wedging the door shut behind them, they went through the kitchen, scattering mice busy with crumbs on the ale-slopped table, to the light-starved hallway beyond. As Cassy flagged behind, Kate lifted her skirts and took the first flight of stairs two at a time, until she reached the landing above. If her bearings were correct, the blank wall ahead of her fronted the lane, which meant that the open window would belong to the room on her left.
She reached for the doorknob. It was loose and rattled around its spindle several times before releasing the catch. She let the door swing inwards, then cautiously moved into the bright room.
There was a semblance of order about the folded blankets and dirt-free floorboards; about the careful positioning of the mattress under the open window and the pipe and tobacco pouch on the window sill above. The occupant of the room had gone ... but the traces – the presence Kate felt – were very strong.
She stooped beside the mattress and placed her hand on the impression in it. Still warm. Whoever it was had been watching the lane ... no doubt knew they were in the house.
‘Not in here Kate,’ Cassy hissed anxiously from the door, ‘the pamphlet said she was found in the attic!’
Kate leaned across the mattress and latched the flapping window. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, keeping her unease to herself.
The steps to the attic room were concealed behind a cupboard-sized door. Kate peered up the narrow well. If there was a door at the top, it was shrouded in darkness. Instructing Cassy to wait on the landing, she ducked under the transom and stretching her hands in front, began to climb; with every tentative step expecting to be confronted by the occupant of the room below.
Instead, after only a dozen steps, her fingers stubbed against the hardness of another door. Exhaling raggedly, she felt around and found a latch. And the door fell away from her.
She knew already what lay beyond; the slanted ceiling and cracked skylight, the stained mattress pushed into the angle of the wall. She walked in, her eyes drawn towards the corner to the left of the mattress, to the flaking whitewash, scored by the murdered woman’s shoulder-blades as she slipped down under her own weight, and the huge brown stains in the floorboards.
Kate knelt by the mattress and spread her fingers over the largest brown patch. She could see now that the mattress and the bottom of the walls were sprayed with liver-coloured splashes. Closing her eyes, she murmured, ‘Anna‒’
A sound barely uttered, yet it swelled to fill the room, boomed all around her, disturbing the heavy silence ... giving leave to the whisperers: voices stretched by lethargy, others cramming words unintelligibly. The early few were rapidly joined by others until her head was filled with their lisping babble.
Kate swayed forwards over her hands, disorientated by a powerful gripping sensation at the base of her skull. Her eyes snapped open but the room rushed out of focus and the terrible tightness in her neck steadily crept over her head. The blurred room began to reel sickeningly. The mattress rushed up at her.
Instinct brought her arm up. It braced against the wall just in time to save her crashing, head first, on to the floor. For several nauseating moments she rested her face on her arm until, at last, the tightness ebbed from her head and her spinning mind regained some kind of equilibrium. Then she summoned the strength to lift her eyes....
The room had grown dim; the faltering light of a single candle to relieve its gloom – a candle seen only as a flickering shadow on the wall she was facing – on the bloody imprint left there by her hand.
Slowly, she turned her palms up and stared down at hands dripping with fresh blood. Felt, before she saw the light reflected in it, the warm swirl of blood around her knees – the essence of Anna Davidson spreading through the material of her skirts, clinging to her.
‘How long were you standing over there watching me? ... Half a crown and a pasty....’
Kate rose and turned to face the one she knew would surely come.
He stood with his back to her; naked to the waist, his spine a line of shadow set in well-developed muscle, his neck broad under the tied-back hair, calf and thigh muscles taut beneath tight breeches.
She watched him turn to look over his shoulder, his eyes showering cold scorn on the abject thing lying between Kate and himself. She saw the measured twist of his shoulders and hips ... concealing until the
very last moment, the knife held with overlapping grip against his chest. She watched the slow blink of his eyelids, the flick of his tongue across parted lips – the pulsing of his penis beneath dark breeches – as the terror-stricken shadow stumbled towards the door. ‘Mol for God’s sake ... Mol!’ Anna clawing at the lock, scrambling away towards the corner.
And Kate.
She stood now between the demon force and the cowering shadow. She braced herself against its foul exudation – fascinated by the upwards jerk of the blade, by the travesty of a smile on his jaw-clenched face, by hatred unfathomable in his eyes....
Consumed, she did not fully conscience the voice which screamed her name ... until a winding force hurled her aside and pinned her face down on the mattress. It held her there under its panting weight with no air except that she could force through the mattress. Until she lay still.
Only then did she recognize the screaming voice as Cassy’s. Twisting her head round, she glimpsed a tumble of auburn curl and realized with a sinking in her stomach, that the stench and the blood were gone, that the room was restored to daylight.
She heaved a sigh. And the weight holding her down, shifted to let her get up. Cassy sat beside her on the mattress, hugging her knees and trembling violently. ‘He was going to kill you!’
Kate knelt up against her friend and hugging Cassy’s pallid face against her stomach, stroked her hair. It was the first time anyone had ever shared one of her visions. Not even he had managed that.
‘He was bloody well going to knife you!’ she choked.
‘No ... not me.’
‘The bastard was almost on top of you! I saw him!’
It had taken courage for Cassy to come to her aid, Kate realized, to come within arm’s reach of a demon she believed to be real. She leaned down and kissed her friend’s glistening forehead. ‘Not me ... Anna.’
Cassy shuddered. ‘My God! The hatred in his eyes.’ She wept then, until Kate’s soft whispers quelled the unmanageable fear. But even as she soothed, Kate was remembering the expression on his face as he jerked back the knife. And the words that blew like aspen-chatter across her mind: This night she will suffer in your stead ... this night you will see. And she knew that she was responsible for the death of Anna Davidson.
A woman, any woman ... a surrogate she.
She had hoped for more of the attic, had been certain that here she would learn something that would lead to his whereabouts. But the vision had passed and she was too drained to attempt to revive it again today. So, as soon as Cassy was over the initial shock, she guided her towards the narrow stairwell.
Kate emerged first from the small door on to the landing. She held the door open for Cassy then, without warning, something hard butted her between the shoulder-blades.
‘Filthy bitches!’ It was a tortured howl, deep with emotion and hatred. ‘Saw the stains, did you?’ The hard object jabbed again. ‘Did you?’
Taking advantage of Cassy’s sudden appearance at the foot of the attic stairs, Kate spun round. And found herself staring along four feet of musket barrel at a rusting flintlock mechanism and a finger-curled trigger.
‘Just can’t leave her be, can you?’ She was a thin woman, her eyes casting dark shadows in a sallow face. Her lips were twisted into a loathful sneer. She stood, legs wide apart, bracing herself against the weight of the gun. And forced Kate’s chin up with the muzzle. ‘Filthy bitch! I ought to blow your head off!’ She laughed harshly. ‘Would they come do you think, to see where your brains were spilt? Nah ... not spicy enough, eh?’
‘You found her, didn’t you Mol?’ Kate murmured, confident that this was the occupant of the room she had been into, the one Anna had called out to. ‘You were the friend‒’
‘How do you know my name?’ The muzzle dug harder into the soft flesh under Kate’s chin. ‘Who told you?’
‘Anna....’
The dark eyes widened with rage. ‘Leave her out‒’ Thrusting the gun up again, her finger had accidentally caught the trigger. Slack-jawed her gaze plummeted towards the mechanism.
Kate watched the dog-head drop towards the steel plate, her hands already swinging up. Instinctively, her mind focused on the flow of energy; on the sound and heat of impact, on friction become spark – coursing into the priming pan, on the violent expansion of the powder as it blasted the iron bullet along the gun tunnel. In her mind’s eye she saw it begin to spin, caught on an imperfection in the barrel. She locked on to its spiral flight to the very brink of release – then with a synchronized roll of her left hand, caught the emerging bullet.
For one frozen moment, she held her clenched fist level with her chin. Then Anna’s friend staggered backwards, dropping the gun. Kate uncurled the fingers of her left hand and stared at the silver-grey sphere.
‘S’truth!’ Cassy breathed over her shoulder. ‘You caught it!’ Kate clenched her fist around the bullet and threw it over the landing rail. As it clattered on the flags of the hall below, she turned to the bemused woman.
‘She called to you, Mol ... when she knew she was trapped, she called out your name but the sound didn’t carry.’
‘What are you?’ gasped Mol. ‘Who in hell’s name are you? Christ almighty, you know where he is, don’t you? That’s how you know. You’re hiding him!’
‘No, I don’t know where he is ... I had hoped by coming here I would find out.’
‘She-devil!’ Mol spat, hysterically. ‘Should have shot you on sight! By Christ, I’ll have him though ... if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll have that murdering‒’
‘Not without her you won’t!’ Cassy snapped, pointing to Kate. ‘She is your one hope of avenging Anna, believe me.’
‘I must know what Anna said before she died,’ urged Kate.
Mol glared at her. ‘Why should I believe either of you? For all I know he could have sent you.’
‘You fool!’ hissed Cassy. ‘Do you think Anna was the first he’s butchered? Tell her, Kate, tell her that unless you find him, there will be more Annas.’
Mol looked from Cassy to Kate. ‘Is it true?’
Suddenly overcome with exhaustion, Kate leaned against the banister and nodded. Mol stooped beside the musket, then glanced up at her. ‘The bullet, how‒’
Kate shook her head. ‘I cannot explain.’
‘You saw it though, didn’t you?’ demanded Cassy. ‘Even though you nearly killed her, she hasn’t lifted a finger against you. Has she? Tell her what Anna said.’
‘What will you do, when you find him?’ Mol intoned.
‘Whatever she can,’ said Cassy. ‘Whatever will stop this butchery.’
Mol dropped her head on to her knees and sighed loudly. ‘Much good it’ll do ... just one word, over and over.’
‘Tell us,’ coaxed Cassy.
Mol shrugged. ‘The shepherdess ... that was all she said, the shepherdess. Sweet Jesus!’ A sob escaped her. ‘She was in such a state, poor Anna ... poor old girl!’ Kate knelt down beside the sob racked woman and stroked a wisp of silvery hair out of her eyes.
‘Help me find him, Mol,’ she whispered. ‘I am the shepherdess.’
Sons of Solomon ...
Wednesday 15th August 1666
The victory salute of the Tower guns had woken Marsden. He pushed back the bed hangings, slid from the soft arms that hung limply over his chest and threw open a casement window.
At the corner of Gracechurch Street and Lombard Street, a bonfire sent sparks and ash into the air. Around it street urchins cheered the lazy brawling of drunken revellers. Snatches of music and bawdy laughter drifted across the rooftops from distant parts of a capital heady with the latest victory over the Dutch.
He had heard the news in a Cornhill coffee shop; 160 Dutch ships taken for a loss of five naval fireships, and a town destroyed into the bargain. It was a good omen, he felt it – the perfect night for his acceptance into the Brotherhood. A night of victory.
There was a rustling of bed hangings, then the naked figure of Cecilia
Aldrigge padded to his side. She peered heavy-eyed over his shoulder.
‘I can think of better ways to celebrate,’ she yawned, pressing her lips against the nape of his neck. ‘No doubt Sir Anthony will be in his cups, in a port somewhere’ – she waved her hand vaguely – ‘no use to woman or beast.’ She laughed suggestively.
Marsden stared out across the rooftops to St Paul’s. ‘Is that any way to speak of a vice-admiral?’ he asked with an ironic grimace. ‘The more so since he is your husband.’
Cecilia linked her arms around his neck and pressed into the warmth of his back. ‘he has only one passion,’ she murmured, ‘he makes jokes about it when we dine in company; he loves to ride his Virgin – the purest, most biddable of ladies. He never tires of the witticism.’ She sighed. ‘Strange ... he is not unhandsome, yet he prefers plank and sail to flesh and blood.’
Marsden turned in her arms and forced her chin up with a sudden kiss to her throat. ‘Beauty should never be neglected,’ he breathed, working his lips up to her jewelled ear.
‘Later, Matt,’ she gasped feebly. ‘There is little time before your appointment at Mason’s Hall‒’
‘More than an hour.’
Cecilia pulled away, rubbing her forehead thoughtfully. ‘You must have time to dress – I’ll send Agnes to the Boar’s Head for victuals, then it will be time for the carriage. It is a great honour to be accepted into the Brotherhood.’
‘I am not at their beck,’ he said coldly. ‘They want what I have to offer.’
‘And they can offer you much in return,’ she reasoned. ‘You can not be late tonight.’ Undaunted by the darkness of his smile, she went into the adjoining closet, unlocked the top drawer of her dresser and brought out a neatly wrapped parcel. When she turned he was standing in the narrow doorway looking in.
‘For you, to wear tonight,’ she said, holding it out tentatively. ‘I bespoke it of a silversmith, a token.’
The Witch (The Witch Trilogy Book 1) Page 18