Witch Hunt

by Ruth Warburton

  There was silence from West, and then Luke heard their feet on the stairs and a big heavy door swing shut.

  He waited a few moments to make sure they were out of earshot. Then he filled his lungs and yelled.

  ‘Rosa! Rosa, can you hear me?’ He stopped, listening to his own voice echoing up and around the narrow room. ‘Rosa!’ he yelled again, his head throbbing with the shout. ‘Rosa, wake up, wake up!’

  But there was no answer. Only a silence that struck a coldness into his gut.

  She could not be gone. She could not have been sold already. He’d know – surely? He’d have felt it.

  ‘Rosa!’ he yelled.

  ‘Rosa! Rose!’ A hoarse shout filtered through into her dream, with a note of hopelessness in it, as if the caller had been trying for a very long time and was beginning to despair of an answer. ‘Rosa . . . Oh God please, answer me . . .’

  She surfaced from a horrible dream of clutching hands and arid deserts and croaked, ‘Yes . . . yes, I’m here. They took the gag off. Is it safe to talk?’

  ‘Rosa!’ His voice was croaky with relief. ‘Thank God! I’ve been calling for hours, on and off. Yes, they’ve gone out, but I don’t know how much longer we’ve got before they come back. Listen, I heard ’em talking; they’re going to sell you.’

  ‘Sell me?’ She tried to think straight, but her head was aching and swimming. ‘What do you mean? To who?’

  ‘I don’t know. But they said today. We’ve got to get away. I’ve rubbed my wrists raw but I can’t get out of these manacles. Is there anything you can do? Is your magic coming back?’

  Desperation rose inside her, a kind of despair as the fragments of memory clicked into place.

  ‘No . . .’ she managed. ‘Luke, they’re drugging me.’

  ‘In your food?’

  ‘I’ve had no food. In my water. I tried not to drink it – but oh God, I’m so thirsty.’

  She heard him swear, long and low.

  ‘It’s that stuff that John brews. I don’t blame you for drinking – thirst can drive you half mad. But – oh Jesus, what are we going to do?’

  She shut her eyes in the darkness, searching inside herself for a scrap of power to kindle into a spell. But she could feel only sick confusion; magic, but a muddled, twisted, directionless mass that she couldn’t shape to her purpose or force to do anything.

  Luke would die if they stayed here. Whatever, whoever, she was to be sold to, Luke’s fate was clear. And he was mortal and defenceless, and in this nightmare in part because of her – because he had refused to keep his oath and kill her.

  Very well then. If magic couldn’t help her, she would have to find something else.

  But how, with her hands bound behind her back? They were tightly fastened, no hope of wriggling her legs through the circle of her arms, even without her hampering skirts. And there was nothing in the little cell – nothing apart from the dish of poisoned water. It was not glass, but a kind of earthenware. But perhaps, if she were lucky . . .

  She twisted around, feeling for it with her fingers behind her back. When her fingers met the lip of the plate she grasped it firmly, then picked it up and brought it smashing down on the concrete floor.

  ‘Rosa, are you all right?’ She heard Luke’s shout filter through the damp cellar bricks.

  ‘Yes,’ she called back. ‘It was nothing.’

  No point in getting his hopes up. If there was a chance, it was slim.

  There were two shards she thought might be usable. The rest had just crumbled to splinters and chips.

  But two pieces . . . Behind her back she felt them with her thumb, rubbing the rough gritty edge. They were not sharp – but they were all she had.

  She began to saw at the rope binding her wrists.

  There had been silence from Rosa’s cell for a long time. Luke was tempted to call out to her, but then he thought better of it. Perhaps she was sleeping off the effects of the drug. If so, he wouldn’t wake her.

  Once he’d thought he heard a muffled cry, of pain, or perhaps frustration. But when he lay, holding his breath to listen, there were only the faint muffled sounds of the street. He must have imagined it, or heard some noise from outside.

  He was almost dozing when he heard a different sound: a key in the lock of the door at the top of the stairs. He was awake at once, his heart pounding, but he lay with his eyes squeezed shut, trying to give nothing away. If they thought he was asleep perhaps they might let slip something about their plans . . .

  It was only one set of feet that he could hear coming down the stone steps though. Heavy feet, for a heavy man. Not skinny, wiry John Leadingham. West then? But no – John had told him not to come.

  Someone else. What was the name Leadingham had said? Arthur. Luke didn’t know any Arthurs in the Brotherhood, but that didn’t mean much. He didn’t know all the Brothers.

  The steps paused for a moment in front of Luke’s door. A slight sound came from the latch, as though someone’d laid his hand on the handle outside and then thought better of it. The footsteps moved on down the corridor in the direction of wherever they were holding Rosa. He heard them get fainter, and then the rattle of keys, and the scrape of a lock.

  But who was he? Why’d he come alone without John? What did he want with Rosa that he couldn’t have a witness?

  If you touch her . . . His fists inside the manacles clenched. If you harm her . . .

  Then what? What could he do? If this unknown man assaulted Rosa, then he would lie there in the dark and listen to it, because there was nothing else he could do. Just as he’d lain and listened as his parents were slaughtered by Sebastian’s father, the Black Witch.

  Fear and fury rose up inside him, suffocating him.

  And then he heard something. A crash, as if a door had been slammed shut violently, and a long drawn-out howl of agony.

  Luke leapt to his feet, forgetting the manacles around his wrists, and screamed as the cuffs ripped into his bloodied skin, jerking him to the floor with a bone-crunching impact.

  ‘Rosa!’ he bellowed. ‘Rosa! For Christ’s sake, say something!’

  The scream had died away and he lay there, trying to listen, but with his heart beating so loudly in his ears that he could hear nothing but its pounding and the roar and rush of his own blood.

  If you’ve touched her, you bastard . . .

  There were flurried footsteps in the corridor and he heard the scrape of keys in the lock and scrambled to his feet, in the crouched defensive position that was all the manacles would allow.

  ‘Luke!’

  For a minute he couldn’t believe it. Rosa? She was standing in the doorway, lamplight streaming past her into the cell. Then she staggered into his room and fell to her knees beside him. There was something in her hands – something that chinked as she tried with shaking fingers to hold it out. Keys.

  ‘Rosa.’ He could only kneel there, gaping stupidly, trying not to sob with gratitude and disbelief. ‘Rosa, what . . . ? How . . . ?’

  She had no magic. He could see something there, but it was a black, poisoned mass of sickness.

  There was blood on her dress and on her face.

  ‘I sawed through my bindings.’ She was sorting through the keys, looking for one to match the keyhole in the manacles, but her hands were trembling and she kept losing her place. ‘I hid behind the door. When he came in, I slammed the door shut on him. On his face! Oh, Christ, Luke, his face! I didn’t mean . . .’

  She was crying, tears making pale runnels in the dirt and blood on her face.

  ‘Well done,’ Luke said. There was a fierce triumph starting to burn in his gut. ‘I don’t care if you slammed the door so hard you broke his bloody neck. He went into your cell alone for a reason – and not a good one.’

  ‘But his face . . . Oh God, the blood!’ Her fingers slipped on the key again and she wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘Damn these keys. I can’t see what I’m doing.’

  ‘Give them here.’ Luke took them
and found the right key. He held it out to Rosa and she put it into the lock with shaking hands.

  ‘He was just an outwith, Luke – just a poor outwith. I think I killed him.’

  Then the manacles clinked open and Luke staggered to his feet, feeling the magnificence of standing upright after the long hours chained to the floor. He pulled himself to his full height and stretched, the blood rushing into his weary muscles and his joints snapping and cracking.

  He took the keys from Rosa’s hand.

  ‘Stay here – no, wait. Stay in the corridor. I’ll go and check.’

  ‘No!’ she cried, but he was already gone. Not to reassure Rosa – though he didn’t believe the man’s injuries could be as bad as she feared – but to lock the man in the cell. If he did come round, they didn’t want pursuers.

  The man was lying on the floor. He was breathing, bloody foam bubbling down his face, and Rosa had smashed the door into his nose so that he’d have a crooked profile for the rest of his life. But he wasn’t dead, not by a long chalk.

  Luke pushed the man’s prone form out of the way, so that he was lying on his back in the centre of the cellar. He shut and locked the door behind him – and then stopped.

  Damn him.

  The man deserved to die but – choking on his own blood . . . He wouldn’t let a dog go that way.

  He unlocked the door, his fingers nervous now, conscious of the time ticking away and John Leadingham’s probably imminent arrival. Inside, he grabbed roughly at the man’s left arm and shoulder and rolled him on to his side, with his own arm and one leg as a prop, the way he’d seen William do for drunks. The blood would drain out of his nose that way, not pool in his lungs. And if he vomited, he wouldn’t choke on it.

  Then, angry with his own soft-heartedness, he slammed the door, hard this time, and locked it, his hands shaking with haste.

  Rosa was standing in the corridor where he’d left her, her hands by her side, her face white in the dim light. Her hair was in ragged streams around her shoulders.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘No. He’ll have a bloody sore nose for a few weeks, but he’s not dead. Now, come on, let’s get out of here.’

  Hand in hand, they ran up the stairs. The door at the top was not locked and Luke could hear music coming from outside. He flung it open – and they staggered out into the parlour of the Cock Tavern.

  For a moment everyone stopped. The pianist at the bar stopped banging out his Cockney crowd-pleasers. The lady hanging on his shoulder and warbling out the words stopped in the middle of a verse, her mouth hanging open.

  And at the bar Phoebe Fairbrother stopped too, the glasses on the tray she held sliding to the floor one after another: crash, crash, crash.

  ‘Luke?’ she gasped. Luke winced, hearing the crashes, as loud as pistol shots in the silent bar. If they’d had any hope of slipping out quietly, that hope was gone now.

  Then, behind his shoulder, he heard an echoing strangled gulp.

  ‘Luke!’

  He turned. It was Minna. Her face was white, her hands pressed to her mouth.

  ‘Jesus wept, Luke!’

  He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t find the words.

  Then she dropped her hands and he saw that her face was swollen, her legacy from Knyvet’s match factory.

  ‘Minna . . .’ He put his hand out, towards her cheek, but she jerked back.

  ‘Don’t you touch me, Luke Lexton.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to.’ He felt anger flare. ‘Why d’you do it, Minna? Why d’you sell me out for two shillings?’

  ‘I dunno what you’re talking about,’ she said nervously – but she did. He could see it in her eyes and the way she refused to meet his gaze, looking shiftily over his shoulder towards the lighted street.

  ‘You want to know why Leadingham wanted that address?’ he said brutally.

  ‘Not really.’

  She tried to push past him, but he grabbed her wrist, pulling her back.

  ‘Because he reckons I betrayed him. And he’s planning to kill me for it.’

  ‘Kill you!’ She gave a derisive laugh. ‘Don’t flatter yerself, Luke.’

  ‘Look at me,’ he snarled. ‘Look at me, Minna. Do I look like a man who’s been hit and starved and locked in a cellar in irons for three days? Because that’s what he did.’

  ‘Luke.’ He felt Rosa’s pull on his arm and heard her voice, low and urgent in his ear. ‘We need to go. They could be back any moment.’

  He clenched his fist, aching to throw a punch – not at Minna, she wasn’t worth it. And he would not hit a woman, not even one who’d sold their long friendship up the river so brutally. But he was desperate to hit something.

  He took a breath.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Luke . . .’ Minna put a hand on his arm and spoke, her voice low. ‘I’m sorry. Look – I needed medicine, yeah? I can’t get by no more without something to take the edge off. My jaw aches something cruel. I don’t take much . . .’

  ‘Laudanum,’ he said flatly. She said nothing, but the fact that she didn’t deny it told him all he needed to know. He could have wept. But really, what difference did it make? If she did have the phossy jaw, she’d likely die anyway. ‘Minna, the kids—’

  ‘Screw the kids,’ she snarled. ‘I never asked to be saddled with a pack of brats! I worked myself to the bone for them kids, Luke, and what do I get? “I’m hungry, Minna.” “I want a dolly, Minna.” “I peed my drawers, Minna.”’

  She imitated a child’s whine with uncanny accuracy and Luke flinched.

  ‘So what if I have a drink every now and again, and something to help me sleep? I don’t get no help from nowhere else. Now, if you ain’t gonna buy me a drink you can piss off with your sanctimonious talk, Luke Lexton. You always was a self-righteous shit.’

  For a minute Luke drew a breath – and then he stopped himself. Rosa was right. They had to get out. Leadingham could be back any moment and, though Rosa was still and silent next to him, he could feel anxiety emanating from her like an electrical current. He turned to go.

  ‘Go,’ Minna shouted as he pulled open the pub door with a hand that shook. ‘Go on, piss off and take Lady Muck with you! Where was you when I needed you? Where was you when I was selling Bess’s bones to the knackers? Playing kiss-me-hand to another man’s fiancée, that’s what. Bet she don’t look so tasty now you’ve dragged her down into the gutter with you, eh!’

  For a second he stopped, his hand on the door frame, his head bowed between his shoulders, trying to master his anger.

  Then he felt Rosa’s urgent pull on his sleeve and he followed her into the night.

  Outside in the narrow alleyway down the side of the pub, Rosa pulled her shawl around her face. It was drizzling – a fine mist of rain that drifted in the night air, making blurry rainbow auras around the gas lamps. She tried to cast her mind back to the night they had left the Cock at dawn in the drifting snow, but she could not remember which way they had turned. Her head felt thick and stupid from the poisoned bottle.

  ‘Luke, where now?’

  He looked dazed and almost punch-drunk.

  She tried to imagine standing in his shoes, seeing all his kindness turned to poison and thrown back at him. She wanted to put her arms around him and tell him that it was not his fault, that Minna had to fight her own demons, and Luke could not have fought them for her, even if he had been there to do it.

  But now was not the time for this. Now was the time to run.

  ‘Luke,’ she said more urgently. ‘Come on.’

  He seemed to pull himself together and nodded.

  ‘All right.’ He took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘We . . . we need to get out of Spitalfields. Fast. The markets are full of Brothers and it won’t take them long to get word out. Let’s go down to the Thames; maybe we can get aboard a barge or something.’

  ‘So which way to the Thames?’

  ‘That way.’ Luke pointed up the alley and they began to walk
towards the road.

  They’d only gone a few yards when a carriage drew across the opening ahead of them. Rosa’s first thought was that it was oddly grand for Spitalfields. It was high and polished, with a beautiful matched pair of horses and a liveried coachman on the high driver’s seat.

  Then it swung to a halt and she saw the side door. And the crest emblazoned on it. Sebastian’s crest.

  She heard Luke’s strangled gasp and she knew that he’d seen it too.

  For a minute she stood, frozen by the awful impossibility of it. How? Had he tracked them down?

  Luke grabbed her arm and they turned as one to run down the alley in the opposite direction.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not a dead end?’ Rosa gasped. The high brick walls seemed to disappear into drizzling darkness.

  Luke shook his head and panted, ‘No, keep going; leads into Commercial Street.’

  As they got closer, a long rectangle of gas-lit street emerged out of the gloom.

  Knyvet’s carriage door slammed shut and they quickened their pace.

  Then a man turned into the alleyway.

  Rosa carried on running, ready to barge past, but Luke stopped dead. She skidded to a halt.

  ‘Luke!’ she implored. ‘What the hell are you doing? Come on!’

  ‘Hello, Luke,’ said the man at the far end of the alley. His voice was a pleasant croak. He began to walk up the narrow gap between the buildings, and Rosa could see that he was a small, wiry man with a muffler round his chin and a packet in his hand. ‘Din’t expect to see you here.’

  Rosa ran back to Luke and grabbed his hand.

  ‘Come on!’

  Whoever this man was, he was just an outwith. Their chances with him had to be better than facing Sebastian.

  ‘It’s Leadingham,’ Luke whispered dully. He didn’t move. ‘He’s one of the Malleus. He knows.’

  Rosa stopped. She looked down the alley at the man walking towards them. Then she looked back to the other end, where Sebastian’s coach still stood beneath the gas lamp, the rain glittering on its polished sides.