Witch Hunt

by Ruth Warburton

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘It’s true! I was never taught any other way to take care of myself, any other way to live – I know nothing at all.’

  She rubbed her hands over her face, feeling the emptiness inside, and the ruby ring scratched at her skin, drawing a bead of blood on her cheek. She put her finger to the cut, and looked at it in the moonlight. ‘And I hate this ring. I hate it. I hate him!’ She began to pull at it, dragging it up her finger, her teeth clenched against the pain, until at last she stopped in despair.

  ‘We’ll get it off,’ Luke said. There was something almost angry in his voice. ‘I promise. We’ll get the damn thing off.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He took a step forward and then crouched beside her, putting his arm around her. ‘You’re shivering. Let’s sit for a bit, rest. Maybe with a bit of rest . . .’

  ‘I’m scared, Luke.’ She heard the crack in her own voice and hated the weakness. I will not cry. I will not. ‘If I don’t have magic – what am I?’

  ‘You’re still you.’ He got up, and for a minute Rosa thought he was going to leave, but he only moved across the clearing to where she’d left the saddle and began unwrapping the rolled-up blanket. The long, wicked knife flashed in the darkness and she heard the iron gag chink against the bottle as they slid to the forest floor. She felt her heart beat faster in spite of herself. This is Luke, she told herself. Luke. He is not one of them.

  But he came back with only the thin blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Behind them Brimstone gave a great sigh and heaved himself awkwardly to the forest floor, his head on the ground, and Luke and Rosa sat, leaning against his warm back, side by side, the ache spreading through their tired limbs.

  After a few minutes she reached out and put her arm around him.

  He went quite stiff and still for a moment, just long enough for her to think better of it, to consider pulling back, and to wonder how she could do it without looking like a fool. But then he put his own arm around her shoulders, pulling her close into his side, so close that she could feel the movement of his chest as he breathed. She sat in silence, thinking how strange it was, how wrong by all society’s codes and rules. They were not related. They were not married. They were not even of the same class. And yet his arm around her shoulders and the furrows of his ribs beneath her palm both felt completely right.

  ‘Luke . . .’ She took a breath, feeling his arm rise and fall with the rise and fall of her shoulders. ‘What made you join them – the Brotherhood, I mean? Who are they?’

  There was silence again, backed by the sigh of the woods and the patter of snowfall, until she began to wonder if he would answer her at all. Then he sighed.

  ‘D’you remember, I told you I was a coward, earlier today?’

  She nodded in the darkness, knowing he would feel the movement.

  ‘Well, this is how I know: when I was a child my parents were killed – by a witch.’

  Rosa let out a small sound. She had not meant to speak, but she could not help it. It was not quite a cry, but something smaller, more ashamed. She put her free hand over her mouth and waited for him to continue.

  ‘He came to our house in the night. My mother woke me up and I hid beneath the settle while he butchered them. Their blood ran down the walls and pooled where I was lying.’

  Rosa pressed her hand harder across her mouth, stifling the sob that was trying to rise up and choke her.

  ‘And I did nothing. I just lay and listened as they died.’

  For a moment she didn’t trust herself to speak. She pressed her knuckles against her mouth, breathing through her nose and swallowing hard. Then she spoke, trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘Luke, you were a child. What could you have done against a full-grown witch?’

  ‘I could have looked,’ he said, very quietly. ‘I know I could never have stopped it. But I could’ve looked and seen the man who did it. But I did nothing. I just watched his cane rolling across the floor towards me. I see it still when I shut my eyes at night; black with a silver snake, eating its own tail, rolling, rolling closer, and the hand, groping for it, ready to touch my leg. And I did nothing. I just closed my eyes and prayed.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ She shut her eyes, trying to shut out the picture that rose in front of her in the darkness: a terrified child, a killer, a couple dying in each other’s arms.

  ‘I’ve waited fifteen years to avenge my parents’ death.’ His voice was all the more terrifying for being so flat and soft. ‘And I thought the Malleus was the answer. I passed the test of fire and the test of the knife. And the last test was to kill a witch. Kill you. Do what I’d been waiting to do all these years. And I failed. I was too much of a coward.’

  ‘You were not.’ Her voice shook. It meant so much that he believed her. ‘Listen to me, you showed me mercy. That was not the act of a coward. A coward would have killed me as I lay there dying, and gone back with the news to the Brothers.’

  He said nothing. She wasn’t sure if he was even listening.

  ‘Luke.’ She twisted against him, pulling her arm out from behind his back, and took his face in her cold fingers, turning it to look at her in the dark, trying to read his expression. ‘Luke, do you hear me? You are not a coward. My God, you – you . . .’

  She stopped, the words deserting her.

  Luke looked away, over her shoulder. His lips were pressed shut and she knew he would say no more.

  Damn him. Damn his silence. How could you argue with a man who said nothing, with someone who hid everything inside?

  For a moment she almost longed for Alexis, who blurted out the first thing that came into his head, whether that got him laughed at or punched. But Luke – she had never known what he thought beneath that quiet, unsmiling face.

  She thought of that soft deep dimple that came and went so quick she had to remind herself that it had really been there.

  ‘I wish you’d smile,’ she said, knowing it came out of the blue, that she sounded crazy. Luke said nothing. Then he sighed.

  ‘I don’t have much to smile about at the moment.’

  Luke was very cold. He was lying on the hard stone floor of his parents’ cottage, beneath the settle, the cold stone striking through his thin shirt. It was the old bad dream – his parents were dead again for the hundredth time, perhaps the thousandth time. And just like all the other times before, he could do nothing. Nothing but wait.

  The pool of blood came nearer and nearer. And he waited, for the clatter of the ebony cane, and the creep, creep of the black-gloved hand searching for it.

  But it didn’t come. Instead the blood carried on lapping, and rising, and suddenly he realized he was wet, floating, up to his chest in a stream of gore, struggling to keep his footing. He tried to reach out for something to steady himself, but his hands were full of Rosa’s limp dying body. He stumbled for the bank, through the river of blood, and her breath rattled in her throat, a stream of gore running from her mouth. And he realized that the river had been coming from her all along, that it was her life blood running away, threatening to drown them both.

  In the red swirl he saw the snake’s-head cane – Sebastian’s cane – bobbing away on the tide of blood, far out of reach, and he loosed one hand from Rosa, reaching, reaching after it . . . but it was gone, and he needed both his hands to clutch at the riverbank, dragging Rosa’s heavy blood-soaked body up the muddy shore.

  ‘Rosa,’ he tried to say. ‘Rosa, you can stop this!’

  But his voice was swallowed up in the roar of the river and the dying rattle of Rosa’s breath.

  He grabbed her, shaking her, shaking her furiously.

  ‘You’re not to die! Hear me? You’re not to die!’

  And then suddenly, cutting through the dream like a silver sharp knife, he heard a voice.

  ‘Well, well, well. What do we have here?’

  Luke woke abruptly, so fast that it took a moment for him to disentangle reality from t
he dream. There was no river; the roar in his ears was only his own blood and the frantic beating of his heart. But the cold – that was real. A thin veil of snow had fallen in the night and his cheek was burning with the chill of it. When he tried to open his eyes there were snowflakes on his lashes and his hand was frozen. The weight of Rosa’s body in his arms was real too. Her sleeping form was curled against him, her spine firm against his chest, his arms holding her hard, trying to keep them both warm. His coat was open, wrapped around them both, and the thin threadbare blanket was spread across them and as much of Brimstone’s rump as it could reach.

  But the voice . . . Was the voice real?

  For a moment he could not tell. Then it came again.

  ‘Take your hands off her, you filthy outwith.’

  There was a flare of magic, bright in the darkness of the wood, and Luke found himself suddenly snatched upwards and away from Rosa, so fast that he barely knew what was happening. The wind whipped past his cheek and then he was hanging in mid-air, pinned there by some unseen magic that gripped him almost too tight to breathe. There was a six-foot drop beneath him, to the forest floor.

  Below him Brimstone scrambled up, snorting with alarm.

  ‘Put me down!’ Luke gasped. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Put you down?’ The figure stepped into the pool of moonlight, his orange hair dimmed to a washed-out yellow in the pale light. It was Alexis. ‘And have you punch me like the great ham-fisted oaf you are? Not on your life. Do you think I’m stupid?’

  Get up, Rosa! Luke willed her. Wake up!

  ‘Well, you can’t be as stupid as you look,’ he croaked, in a half-gasp. ‘No one could manage that and keep breathing.’

  For a second the unseen hand tightened on his throat and he gave a strangled choke – and then Alexis gave a careless, brittle laugh.

  ‘Funny, aren’t you? Well, you’ll find it hard to crack a joke when Seb’s finished with you. I promised him I’d take you alive, but I imagine that state of affairs ain’t going to last long.’

  ‘Stop it!’ The voice rang out from somewhere below him, and there was a scrambling sound as Rosa staggered to her feet. Luke tried and failed to look down at her, but his heart flooded with relief. ‘Alexis, you bastard. Let him go!’

  ‘Sister dear,’ Alexis drawled, but there was a pant in his voice, and Luke could see that he was tiring. His face hadn’t changed – his self-satisfied smile was stuck just as firmly to his lips as ever. But his magic was flickering like a flame in a strong breeze. He was not a strong witch – not nearly as strong as Rosa. Or at least – not nearly as strong as Rosa had been . . .

  ‘Put him down.’ Rosa spoke dangerously, her voice calm and low, but Luke could hear the almost imperceptible edge of fear beneath.

  ‘Or what?’ Alexis said carelessly. ‘Seb told me he’d clipped your wings. Said I wouldn’t have any trouble from you.’

  ‘Put. Him. Down.’

  Alexis shrugged nonchalantly, but his magic was a strangled flicker. Surely he couldn’t keep this up much longer?

  ‘Very well then.’

  Suddenly, as if he had meant to all along, he let the spell go with an abrupt rush and Luke fell to the forest floor with a bone-rattling thud that left him gasping and winded, his head ringing with the blow. He tried to get up, but there seemed to be no muscles in his gut – he could only lie on the pile of leaves that had broken his fall, trying not to groan aloud.

  ‘What did you mean?’ Rosa was edging round, trying to get between Luke and Alex. Luke wanted to groan, tell her to stop, point out that she couldn’t protect him without magic – but he couldn’t get the breath to say the words. ‘Clipped my wings – what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Sorry, can’t help you there,’ Alexis drawled. He was enjoying this little moment of power. ‘According to the sot, I’m too stupid to know what I’m saying. Now, get over here. You too, Brimstone.’ He clicked to the horse, who gave a nervous snort and backed away.

  ‘I’m not coming.’ Rosa’s voice shook. ‘You can’t force me back.’

  ‘Oh really? I think you’ll find I can. I’m your legal guardian, until you marry Seb.’

  ‘I will never marry him!’ Rosa choked out. ‘Don’t you understand that? Why would I give myself up to a life of – of abuse and misery? He doesn’t love me! He hates me – he hates all women, I think. Why would I condemn myself to a marriage like that?’

  ‘Because,’ Alexis came very close, and put his hand on her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh, ‘because Mama and I say you will. Because you made a promise and I intend to see that you keep it. And lastly, dear little sister, because you have no other choice. Who else will want you, after you’ve spent three days whoring and slumming around the countryside with him?’

  ‘How dare you!’ Rosa snarled. She drew back her hand and smacked Alexis round the face, a ringing slap that cracked through the silent wood like a gunshot. For a moment there was complete silence, broken only by the screech and caw of birds startled out of sleep by the noise and the shocked scream of an owl. Then Alexis began to laugh and he flung out a blast of magic that sent Rosa tumbling to the forest floor, sprawling at his feet.

  ‘How dare I? My God, that’s rich! You little slut. You should be thanking God on your knees that Seb still wants you, not teaching me my manners.’

  ‘Why does he still want me,’ Rosa said thickly, ‘if I’m such a worthless slut?’

  ‘God knows.’ Alexis looked down at her with contempt. ‘But he seems to. Perhaps it’s precisely because you’ve run. There’s no fun in hunting, after all, if the fox doesn’t run. All those pretty English girls in India on the prowl for a husband, who sighed and gave up the prize for the asking – where’s the fun in that? What a man likes is the chase. The hunt. The fox at bay. And when a chap can have anything, perhaps it’s natural to want the one thing you can’t have. Perhaps Seb’s had enough of kissing girls who swoon. Perhaps he wants one that shudders instead. To be frank, I don’t really care.’

  ‘You bastard,’ Rosa’s voice shook.

  ‘Don’t swear, you horrible child,’ Alexis said in a bored voice. ‘Now.’ He pulled a twist of rope from his belt. ‘I’m going to tie your hands. Don’t make me gag you as well. It won’t look nice when we stop at inns.’

  ‘You’re going to drag me home to London with my hands tied!’ Rosa said scornfully. She climbed to her feet, brushing the leaves from her scorched and stain-marked skirt. ‘And you expect people to stand by while you do this?’

  ‘I’ve got the carriage, you little fool. You didn’t think I walked all the way here, did you? No one will know what’s happening behind the doors, much less care. Now, keep still.’

  He said the words of a spell, there was a brief flare of magic and Rosa turned suddenly rigid against the moon, still as a post while Alexis bound her wrists together with laborious thoroughness. Luke seemed to have been forgotten about – almost. Just a few feet away across the clearing he could see something silver-pale glinting in the moonlight. The knife. If only he could reach it before Alexis noticed . . .

  He edged himself across the carpet of leaves, keeping low, trying to time the rustle of the leaves with Alexis’s bouts of swearing. Four feet away. Three. Two.

  Then he heard Alexis give an exclamation of satisfaction.

  ‘There, get out of that, if you can! Now, where’s the sot?’

  Abandoning caution, Luke leapt for the knife and scrambled to his feet, holding its blade out in front of him.

  ‘Keep still,’ he snapped at Alexis. ‘I know you’re a witch, but I can gut you before you finish a spell and, trust me, I will.’

  ‘What?’ Alexis said delightedly. He gave a long, sneering laugh, as if this was the best joke he’d heard all day, and took a step towards Luke. ‘Gut me? You couldn’t pick your nose, unless I let you.’

  He spat out a word in that foreign spell-casting tongue they all used, and Luke found himself suddenly as heavy as molasses, his limbs stuck
to his side. He swore, but he was not motionless, not by a long stretch. With a huge, trembling effort he took a step towards Alexis and then another. Alexis’s eyes widened and, for the first time, Luke saw fear there.

  ‘What? God damn you! Belúcan!’

  This time it was easier – Luke shook off the words like shaking off a heavy tiredness. He took another step. Another. And then he gripped Alexis around the throat.

  ‘Who are you?’ Alexis gritted out – it was half a snarl, half a whimper. His skin felt clammy beneath Luke’s fingers and his pale-green eyes were wide and wild with fear. ‘Who are you? You’re no God-damned outwith! No outwith should be able to do that.’

  ‘Who am I? I’m a man.’ Luke was panting heavily with the effort of holding off the spell. There was sweat running into his eyes, in spite of the coldness of the night. ‘Which is more than I can say for you. How do you want to die?’

  ‘I don’t want to die.’ Alexis looked suddenly ill with fear, as though he’d realized his predicament. In the moonlight his face was fishbelly-white, his freckles standing out dark against the bleached skin. ‘P-please. Don’t kill me.’

  The knife was against Alexis’s throat, the tip pressing into the pale skin above his cravat.

  ‘Please!’ Alexis moaned. His voice cracked, high and shrill with fear. ‘Please don’t do it!’

  Luke pressed harder and harder, thinking of John Leadingham’s words. Carotid artery. Stick ’em quick and get out, before they can bewitch you. Don’t look back.

  A bead of blood appeared at the tip of the knife and Alexis gave a high, keening cry . . .

  And Luke stopped.

  It was not the spell. He could still feel it, weighing down on him, sucking at his limbs like thick mud, trying to stop his every movement. But it was not what was stopping him from killing Alexis. All that would have taken was one small shift – but he could not do it. It was the same story. The old story.

  Coward.

  He hesitated just one second too long – and then there was a sudden blinding crack of light and Alexis was no longer in his grip. Luke whipped around, the knife outheld – but he couldn’t see; he was blinded by the flash and Alexis seemed to be nowhere in the clearing. Where was he? Where was he?