Witch Hunt

by Ruth Warburton

  And then he felt something thick and strangling drop over his head and tighten around his throat, and he heard Alexis laugh, a long, half-hysterical cackle that went on and on.

  ‘You fool!’ Alexis’s voice was high and shaking with relief. ‘You dumb sot! Why didn’t you do it?’ He laughed again and tightened the blanket around Luke’s face and throat until Luke began to see stars. He dropped the knife, clawing with his fingers to try to pull it away from his throat, buy himself a little air, a little time . . .

  And then there was a ringing crack and a cry of pain – but whose?

  Luke stumbled forwards, still blinded by the blanket, but it was loose around his face and he was pulling free, able to breathe – only the air was full of terrible, choking fumes . . .

  At last he dragged the blanket away and drew a breath of the choking air, looking wildly around.

  And then he saw.

  Rosa was standing over Alexis’s prone body, her bound hands still clutching the neck of the broken bottle she had smashed over her brother’s skull. Her eyes, as she stared down at Alexis’s unconscious body, were wide and dark, dilating into black.

  ‘The bottle!’ Luke managed, hearing his voice hoarse and croaky in his own ears. ‘You broke the bottle! For God’s sake – cover your face!’

  The smell was making him feel faint and woozy, even as he wound the blanket back around his nose and mouth, trying not to breathe as he snatched up the rest of their belongings.

  Holding the knife awkwardly, he slashed the rope around Rosa’s wrists. She was still standing, gasping, her mouth and nose uncovered to whatever poison was in that bloody bottle.

  ‘Come on!’ he yelled. ‘Move!’

  She stumbled against him and he grabbed her shoulders, half dragging her along, away from the dizzying, choking fumes.

  ‘Is he . . . ?’ she slurred. ‘Will he . . . ?’ But she couldn’t finish. Instead she stopped to heave into the bushes at the side of the path.

  ‘Come on!’ Luke pressed the blanket against his face; the fumes were still making his head swim even ten, twenty, thirty feet away from the clearing. Rosa shuddered, wiped her mouth and let Luke pull her the rest of the way to the road where she vomited again, trying to hold her skirts away from the mess, tears watering down her cheeks.

  ‘Don’t look!’ she managed to choke out as Luke held her hair back from her face. ‘Go away!’

  At last the vomiting stopped and she was able to sit by the side of the road, her face white and her hands shaking.

  ‘Will he live?’ she managed. ‘I didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t know . . . What was it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Luke shuddered at the memory of the stench, at the memory of John Leadingham’s words as he handed it over: Whatever you do, don’t break the bottle or the witch’ll be the least of your worries. ‘Something like chloroform, I think. John Leadingham gave it to me. You’re supposed to put it on a rag – just a drop – press it over their mouth. It stops them from casting spells, sends ’em unconscious. I don’t think it’s supposed to kill them.’

  Not used as he’d said, no. But having a full bottle broken over your head and lying unconscious in a pool of the mixture?

  ‘He’ll be all right,’ he said at last. ‘He has to be.’ He had to be, because if he was not, Rosa would never forgive herself, would never be able to move on from this thing she had done, to save him, to save Luke. ‘He’ll be all right. Come on.’

  But Rosa didn’t move. She sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, shivering in the falling snow, her eyes wide and dizzyingly black. Her huge black pupils reminded him of the opium addicts down at the docks. What was in that bottle?

  ‘What did he mean?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know – look, come on. We need to get out of here.’ Sebastian might not have come himself, but he would certainly be keeping close watch on Alexis’s movements. It would not take them long to find Alexis – dead or alive.

  ‘Sebastian clipped my wings, he said. What did he mean?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘I do.’ Her voice was slurred, but there was a queer determination in her face as she held out her hand. ‘Give me the knife.’

  ‘What?’ He had not even realized he was still carrying it, stuck into his belt. Rosa stood, drunkenly, and pulled it from his waist.

  She spread her left hand out on a fallen tree stump, the fingers spread wide, the ruby ring flashing in the moonlight. Her other hand she clenched around the knife. Then she shut her eyes.

  The tip of the knife rested against the thin gold band.

  ‘Rosa . . .’ He was suddenly alarmed, more than alarmed – frightened. ‘Rosa, what are you doing?’

  She drew a whimpering breath.

  ‘Rosa!’ he shouted and leapt forward – too late.

  There was a sickening crunch and Rosa screamed. Her hand was clutched to her breast and there was blood pouring down her dress – pouring, pouring as if it would never stop. Her magic blazed suddenly like a fire in the black night, blindingly bright and beautiful.

  And Luke could only stand, gasping in horror, as the ring fell to the ground. Rosa slumped after it, her eyes closed, her face pale and still.

  His blood was screaming in his ears, and his breath tore in his throat, and he found he was sobbing, ‘Rosa, Rosa, oh my God, what have you done, oh, Rose, oh my God . . .’

  He fell to his knees in the mud beside her and picked up her limp hand, where it lay cradled against her breast.

  The third finger of her left hand was gone, cut away at the joint.

  Luke vomited into the ditch. Again and again he heaved, where Rosa had been sick just a moment before, though there was little in his stomach to throw up, just spit and acid.

  Then he crawled back to Rosa, not wanting to look at her butchered hand, but unable not to.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he sobbed again. ‘Oh Jesus. What should I do?’

  Her finger was bleeding heavily and, at last, remembering what William had done one time when he’d ripped off a nail in the forge, he tore a strip off the bottom of his shirt. It was not clean, but none of their clothes were clean. He wrapped it around the stump of Rosa’s finger, trying to knot it as tight as he could to stem the bleeding. If only she would wake up.

  Her magic blazed around them both with a terrible dark beauty, and he realized how much a part of her it was, how she had seemed to be fading in front of him without it. He had never thought he could be glad to see the flare and burn of magic, but he was glad – more glad than he could put words to. It was part of her, as much part of her as her lost finger, and seeing her without it was just as wrong.

  At last her finger was bound and the blood seemed to be slowing. He had done as much as he could, and now the sky was paling in the east. Dawn was coming.

  He left Rosa while he tracked Brimstone to a nearby field, where he must have blundered in the night. He was peaceable and easy to catch, and stood patiently while Luke saddled him up and repacked their meagre belongings.

  He returned to Rosa, hoping she would have woken, but she lay still, very pale, her dress dark with blood down the front.

  ‘Come on,’ he muttered, touching her cheek. ‘Wake up, Rosa. Wake up. You can heal yourself, I know you can. Just, oh God, please wake up.’

  But she didn’t, and at last he managed, somehow, to heave them both on to Brimstone’s back, in a desperate slithering rush that left him frightened and sweating, and Brimstone sidling and snorting.

  ‘Come on, boy.’ He clicked his tongue to Brimstone and gave the horse a gentle kick with his heels. ‘You’ve done well tonight; just give me a few more miles and we can all rest when we’re away from here. Oh, God damn you, Rosa!’ He wanted suddenly to weep. ‘Wake up, please!’

  He had never felt more frightened or more alone. What would he do if she did not wake up? Was it the effects of the fumes, or the shock of cutting off her own finger? What if infection set in and he was powerless to prevent it?

&
nbsp; Only one thought kept him going as Brimstone clopped through the quiet night: Rosa had her magic back. She had been right – and whatever the price, perhaps it was worth it.

  It lapped around them as they rode, a dark flameless fire, a red-gold blaze of power, so beautiful and so terrible he could hardly bear it. And it seemed, or so he thought, to warm him as he and Brimstone rode in silence through the snowy darkness, filling him with a strange kind of comfort.

  As long as her magic burnt, she was alive. And as long as she was alive, that was enough.

  It was only as they passed the milestone marking 100 miles from London that he suddenly thought of the ruby ring, lying in the mud and blood where they had left it.

  For a moment he pulled up, Brimstone’s ears twitching curiously. Then he shrugged and pressed his heels to Brimstone’s flanks again.

  It was gone. Good riddance to it.

  She was free.

  She was free.

  A hundred and fifty miles further south, a man jerked upright in the darkness of his bedchamber, his heart pounding as if someone had touched him while he slept.

  He felt it, her magic wrenched away, slipping through his fingers like water as he struggled to hold on to it.

  And then it was gone.

  How? How had she done it?

  He snarled and swung his legs out of bed, cursing in the darkness. Alexis. He should never have sent that fool to do his work for him – like an idiot he had thought that Rosa might trust her brother, might even surrender to him. He was not naive enough to think that she would give herself up to him, but to her own brother? Perhaps. And if not, what was one un-magicked witch and one helpless outwith against a full-grown witch like Alexis?

  The answer, incredibly, seemed to be that they were not just a match for him, but more than a match. They had bested Alexis, they must have.

  Alexis, he did not care about. But the ring – what had she done with the ring?

  Rosa woke, but didn’t move. She lay blinking in the soft rose-coloured light that was breaking across the hills.

  For a long time she just lay, feeling the glorious ripple and flex of her magic bubbling like an irrepressible spring from within her. I’m back! she thought exultantly. Do you hear me, Sebastian?

  The thought crackled over her skin and suddenly, unable to help herself, she sent sparks shooting into the air in the sheer exuberance of being alive and with power. She knew she should be keeping her magic for what mattered – healing her hand and protecting Luke and herself from Sebastian – but just at that moment she did not care. She watched them as they flew into the air like fireworks and drifted back down, fading as they came.

  She was lying in a hollow beside a hedge, Luke’s greatcoat thrown over her like a counterpane. Turning her head she could see Brimstone stood placidly grazing at the edge of the field, his ears twitching occasionally in the breeze.

  She was cold. At least, her face and feet and right hand were cold. Her left hand was not. Instead it throbbed agonizingly, with a worrying heat.

  Cautiously she sat up and began to pick at the blood-crusted bandage.

  ‘You’re awake.’

  The voice came from behind her and she turned. Luke was sitting on the bank and he was smiling, the dimple deep and soft in his right cheek.

  ‘Hello.’ She was suddenly shy. It was stupid. She had lain in his arms three nights now, and ridden astride in front of him in the saddle for three days.

  ‘I was worried. You passed out – I don’t know if it was the stuff in the bottle or your . . .’ He stopped and she saw his face shut at the memory. She knew him well enough to know that it was when he was at his softest and most vulnerable that the shutter came down, closing his face into blankness. Though he couldn’t quite hide the shudder that passed through him in the silence between his words and hers.

  ‘I’m all right now,’ she said simply. She knew she did not have to explain, that he could see her magic as well as she could feel it – see it flex and shimmer and burn beneath her skin. What was a finger, compared to that?

  ‘What do you think happened?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It was the ring – Sebastian’s ring. I don’t know what he did to it, but it was doing something to my magic, draining it, taking it away . . . I’ve never heard of that before, but it must be.’

  ‘You gave yourself to him . . .’ Luke said slowly. ‘And he took everything.’

  Everything. She shivered.

  ‘Your finger. Can you heal it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked down at the bloodied bandage and again felt the hot throb of infection, its heat shooting up her arm. ‘I can’t grow another finger, if that’s what you mean. Magic can do what your body can – no more, no less.’

  ‘But that’s not true! Sebastian’s mother – when you were dying . . .’

  ‘I’m no healer, Luke. Her gift – I’ve never seen one like it. But even then, I wasn’t dying. I was just gravely wounded. Punctured lungs can mend. Ribs can heal. But if a wound is unhealable, it’s unhealable by magic. And this . . .’ She touched the bandage gently, then winced. ‘I think it’s infected. I can probably keep the infection away, but . . .’

  ‘You need to get it looked at by a doctor.’ Luke’s face was closed, but she could tell he was worried.

  ‘Doctors cost money.’

  ‘You need to get it stitched.’

  Rosa bit her lip. It was true. She could keep the infection at bay and stop it hurting, but only by constant, draining use of magic she should be saving for other things. She had no idea how a severed finger would heal. If it would heal.

  ‘All right.’ She sat up straighter, pushed her hair out of her face. ‘So we have to find a doctor. And then . . .’

  Then what? She might have got her magic back, but this cat-and-mouse chase couldn’t go on for ever. She and Luke running, Sebastian sending his hounds after them, and then coming in for the kill.

  ‘We have to fight back,’ she said slowly. ‘We can’t keep running blindly. It’s what the unsuccessful fox does, the ones who end up getting caught. They run scared. The clever ones, the ones who live – they think ahead. They lead the hounds down to the river where they can break the scent. They plan. They go to ground.’

  ‘We’re not foxes, Rosa.’ Luke sounded weary and irritable, as if he was trying not to snap back. ‘And there’s nowhere we can go to ground, is there? There’s nowhere Sebastian can’t find us eventually.’

  ‘No, but . . .’ Rosa bit her lip. An idea was forming at the far corner of her mind, something almost unthinkable, so crazy it would be the very last thing Sebastian would ever expect. But would Luke ever agree?

  ‘Rosa?’ He leant forward, as if he was reading her mind, though that was impossible. His forehead was furrowed. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She shook herself and began pinning her hair with the last remaining hairpins, not nearly enough to hold her heavy mass of curls safely, but enough to look respectable at least. ‘Come on. We’ll need to brush ourselves up if we’re to gain entry to a doctor’s office.’

  Luke said nothing. But he stood and began tucking in his shirt.

  ‘Come on then. Let’s get going. Which way?’

  Rosa stood too and scanned the horizon. Then she pointed.

  ‘Look. There are carts going along that road across the field. There’s another. Laden with chickens. It must be market day at some town. If we follow the carts we can’t go far wrong.’

  ‘Doctor’s?’ The woman selling apples looked them up and down as she handed over the fruit. ‘The only doctor in this town is Doctor Faulkes. He lives at the white house by the clock. But he charges a pretty penny.’

  ‘We can pay,’ Luke said flatly. ‘Come on, Rosa.’

  They wound their way through the throng of people picking over the fruit and vegetables and haggling over the shrieking chickens, eating an apple each as they went. After the quiet of the countryside the din was almost diz
zying. The crowds should have made Rosa fear – after all, the more people, the more chance of being identified. But paradoxically she felt safer in their midst – a needle in a haystack of townspeople.

  At the horse trough by the clock, Luke looped Brimstone’s reins over a railing and put their last apple on the side of the water trough. Someone had already punched a hole in the thin ice and the horse stood, gratefully sucking the cold water and twitching his ears in the breeze.

  It was clear which house the woman had meant: there was a brass plaque beside the tall black door.

  Dr. N. M. Faulkes.

  Consulting hours 10 to 11a.m. and 4 to 5p.m.,

  except Wednesday.

  They both looked up at the clock. It read five past ten. Luke shrugged and rapped at the door.

  A maid answered, her white streamers fluttering in the breeze.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’re here to see the doctor,’ Luke said without preamble. ‘We . . . my . . .’ He looked at Rosa and she saw something in his eyes, a kind of doubt. What story would the doctor be most likely to believe? ‘My . . . um . . . my wife has hurt her finger.’

  The word gave Rosa a strange little shiver and her fingers tightened on Luke’s arm.

  ‘Hmm.’ The maid looked them up and down, clearly doubting their ability to pay, but she stood back and opened the door wider. ‘Come in, then, Mr . . . ?’

  ‘Williams,’ Luke said, after a moment’s pause.

  ‘Come in then, Mr and Mrs Williams. The doctor has a patient just now, but he will see you shortly.’

  They sat on a hard bench in the dining room and waited. Rose felt her finger throb in time with her heartbeat and listened to Luke fingering the coins in his pocket. She wished she knew how much this might cost. For all Luke had said they could pay, the truth was they could pay only up to a certain amount. She doubted they had more than a guinea left, and this doctor looked prosperous and well-to-do. Well, if the worst came to it, she would just have to magick the pennies into sovereigns, and pray the enchantment lasted long enough for them to get out of the village. She did not like the thought though. It was not just the risk of being caught, or attracting attention. It was more the fact that however you looked at it, using magic that way was a kind of stealing, no better than taking sovereigns from a purse. I shall let the outwith be, and no harm will come to me . . .