Anna was quicker. With a squeal of terror, she scrabbled from her hiding place and careered towards the open door. Then she flew – by Isabelle’s locked door – down the stairs. Pierre pursued her, careless now of his heavy tread on the boards. She grabbed the newel post at the bottom step and swung herself round towards the kitchen. He sprang over the handrail to cut her off, and landed on the torn hem of her skirt. Anna jarred to a halt. Yelping with desperation she stamped on the foot that had her trapped, kicked and punched.
But he had her. His arm locked round her chest, sharp steel pressed against her throat. There was no fight left in her as he pushed her into the kitchen, her mother’s old preparation room. As he closed the door behind him and spun her back against the scullery table to face him.
‘You!’ he hissed.
She clutched the grainy edge of the table and dropped her head so that her dark hair fell forwards over her face. He drove the point of the dagger into the table close to her left hand. Her moon face jerked up to look at him, her teeth chattering with fear.
‘You have been here before – you think I don’t know?’ he laughed disdainfully. ‘Widow Jeakes’ lunatic daughter ... you smell like a wet dog.’ Watching her face he touched her breasts. ‘You like to watch me, don’t you?’
Anna’s wide-eyed gaze slid past him ... to the shadowed figure standing there. The strong uplifted chin, the hair tied back, the brooding profile of the one who had bid her come to this place. The one who had first come to her on the stairs of this very house, five years ago; who sometimes called her to the graveyard of St Giles ... whose potent presence now calmed her floundering mind and stopped her trembling. He turned to face her, breathed new certainty into her. Be strong, Anna....
Words formed in her mind, words unheard by Pierre Chevalier. Anna smiled.
Pierre was disconcerted by that smile, by the otherness of her attention. But he would not turn to follow her gaze, would not be fooled by the ruse of a madwoman. Driven by her stillness, by the urge to dominate, he thrust the damp folds of her skirt between her legs and gripped her there.
Her gaze wheeled back to him, lips parted, eyes glittering. And the tremor that passed through her this time was not terror. His surety was on her, lifting her above mortal fear – elemental and intoxicating.
She pushed her pelvis hard into his grasp, held out her arms to him and twined her fingers behind his neck. The things she had wanted to do, the way she had wanted it to be that night under the tree with the militiaman.
Her hands fell to unbuttoning him – to exposing his roused flesh.
Pierre cast a furtive glance at the hall door. He caught her wrists. Discovery would be disastrous, the strongbox was still uncovered. Everything was now at stake because of this meddling bitch. He wanted to teach the spying slut a lesson she would never forget ... to frighten and have done with her. But somehow control seemed to be slipping from him. Reason despised her for a dirty, barefoot creature. But there was a peculiar excitement about such abandon – the provocative glint in her eye, the white breasts and neck, the animal scent. And his physical response was swift, confounding caution. Overwhelming him with the desire to inflict a most intimate violence upon her.
‘I watched you with her....’ she breathed.
He baulked at this. ‘Who was I with?’
‘Most times on mother’s old bed – once in my room. I know this house, I can make myself part of it so that no-one sees ... not her ... not you.’
Her voice had the playful sing-song quality of a child but there was nothing childlike in her attitude. She had seen him with Louise, that much was clear, for all he had counted himself discreet. Hiding under the bed, in a cupboard perhaps. At all times he had been alert to the whereabouts of his father and Isabelle; everyone in or out of the house, or so he had believed. He had known just how far he could drive the moment – long enough to keep Louise in his thrall – not so far that he could not vanish before Arnaud reached the landing.
He had not counted on the ghost in the shadows.
It came to him now what he had once heard Anton say of this creature: that for the sake of the mother, the Jeakes girl belonged in Bedlam.
‘Who would believe a madwoman?’ he asked coldly.
‘I wanted it to be me ... the fire is in me, not her.’ She wrenched a hand free of his grip, pressed it dramatically over her forehead and eyes and mimicked Louise:
‘Sweet Jesus, no! Pierre, please no‒’
Incensed, he snatched her towards him and stopped her words with a bruising kiss.
‘This?’ he snarled, winding his fingers in her hair and jerking her head away from him. ‘Is this what you want, eh?’
Under his thrust her pelvis was trapped against the edge of the table, her spine arched backwards. He wound his fingers tighter to her scalp, so tightly that her eyes were stretched open and teardrops sprang up in their corners. Anna remained defiant.
‘I am in the walls when you sleep. In dreams my spirit wraps itself around you, Pierre Chevalier.’ One of the teardrops spilled down her cheek.
Her guardian was beside her now; his chin close to his chest, his eyes focused on her. In the corner of her eye, Anna saw his hands come to rest upon the handle of the dagger Pierre had driven into the surface of the table. She alone was aware of the fingers passing idly back and forth across the blade.
Pierre dragged her back up to standing and began to lug her towards the scullery door. This time she fought him; coiled into him as he tightened his grip ... bit through the stuff of his sleeve, clamping her teeth into a shoulder muscle until she tasted blood. At the first sign of recoil she lunged at the dagger, with shaking hands wrenched it clear and lashed out at him.
‘You were at the window that night ... I wanted you to know,’ she gasped distractedly. ‘I wanted it to be you.’
Her words made no sense to Pierre. He stood off holding his wound, awaiting his chance to disarm her.
He ventured a hand in her direction. ‘Come,’ he urged raggedly, ‘I startled you upstairs ... I won’t harm you ... only give it to me and I will let you go.’ Just in time his hand flew clear, his body twisted away, narrowly evading the slash of the blade.
With a tortured howl Anna clamped the base of her clenched fists against her temples. Voices, so many voices in her head: Anna, Anna ... the patient but insistent voice of her father, so real that her eyes darted round in unreasoning hope; whoring witch ...her uncle Peter Soames screeching obscenities at her mother with such keen violence that her stomach lurched; Cassy’s voice repeating over and over: a lifeless ragdoll that’s what you was; Anton whispering to Kate about the madhouse. And Kate laughing with François, shutting her out....
His voice alone cut through her panic. ‘Come to me, girlchild.’ He was standing by the door which led back down to the cellar. He held his hand out to her. ‘This time, Anna‒’
In that moment she recalled a dream that of late had startled her awake more than once; a dream of running up a steep grassy slope – running hard to keep pace with the loping stride of the wolf; the sudden overwhelming terror, the unspeakable exhilaration, of suddenly bursting over a cliff edge into free space.
Pierre caught her wrist, for a split second checked her progress towards the cellar door and attempted to peel her clenched fingers from the hilt of the weapon. A growling sound welled from deep inside her, inhuman as the strength in her slender fingers. Flinching at the thought of exposing his neck to her teeth, he turned in towards her, trapping her forearm between his elbow and ribcage to isolate the knife in her hand. But there was no holding her. She merely shrugged him off and struck him a gashing blow across the side of his ribcage.
He hunched forward with a startled gasp.
Anna threw open the door back and stumbled down the cellar steps.
‘Come to me‒’
Heavy footsteps pursued her down the steps and across the tiled floor. Hands hurled aside the chair she had swung across his path.
‘What a
re you, eh? Possessed?’ Pierre had no care now for the noise he was making; no thought for the return of his father, or the ticket to France.
Light spilled through the opening from which Anna had carefully removed the grille on the way in. In its splay, she turned. Standing over the exact spot where he now stood, taking to herself his straddled stance ... feeling the warmth of his large hands as they curled around and became one with hers.
Beside himself, Pierre launched at her.
The knife entered his body just below the parting of his ribs. For one startled moment he clung to her shoulders staring down at the place.
‘I wanted it to be you!’ Too deep to be her voice, but coming from her.
The knife jagged upwards in her two hands; tearing, splintering, engulfing him with pain. Not a girl, not even a madwoman, but a demon possessed.
Far off he heard a choked whimpering and knew that it was coming from himself. The left side of his chest suddenly imploded; blood belched up into his mouth. No longer able to cling to her, he twisted and fell ... slowly, it seemed to him, as if in a dream ... towards the tiled floor.
Where there had been light, now there was only darkness. Curled in upon his injuries, he lay fighting for breath. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth; it oozed between his fingers pressing against his chest. His life-blood surrendering its heat to the cool of the cellar tiles.
He could not see her but he knew she was there; the tacky click of her feet as she padded around him; the sudden brush of cloth when suddenly she swooped down at him.
Pierre Chevalier prayed for death, for a swift deliverance. But even as he prayed he knew that his prayers were no match for the evil that enveloped him; that she was not done with him yet.
A brush of cloth. A violent gasp. And in the murk he saw that she was not alone. That another had taken her hand.
He screwed his head back in a soundless scream. Then he knew no more.
The Witness
Margot knew what she must do. The instant Lord Herries sealed the pistol-waving Chevalier into the privacy of his private rooms, she put on one of the men’s skirtcoats drying by the kitchen hearth and slipped out to the stables.
Gerard Armagne who was still on light duties while recovering from his hernia, found her there. Guessing her intention, he ignored the stableman’s protests that the bay horse – the only one saddled ready, was too masterful for a woman – and helped her up.
Checking the stirrups he asked under his breath; ‘You know where to look for him?’
She nodded. Her finger had traced the route from Pall Mall to St Martin’s Lane on François’ crumpled military plan so many times that she knew it by heart: left into St James’s Square, right into Charles Street ... past Shaver’s Hall in the Haymarket ... Leicester House and Charing Cross. The way to the back alley was between the third and fourth shops on Long Acre; the route she was supposed to have taken to visit François’ mother before they knew that Louise Chevalier was now living there ... before François became involved with the new occupants of his old home and somehow forgot that she had not met Kate yet.
She was at home in the saddle, as a child had ridden bareback astride nags lumbering under the weight of panniers laden with grapes from Carrière’s vineyard on the edge of her village. She had honed her skill upon the backs of the Arabs her cousin Jean groomed at the Carrière’s stable – breakneck gallops through the forest.
The bay responded to her now. Once under the stable arch and out into Pall Mall, she leaned into its neck and eased it into a gentle gallop around St James’s Square.
How many times of late had she lain alone in the gauzy bed, or become lost in thought working with the women, wondering how it was between François and Louise, imagining what drew him to St Martin’s Lane ... and loathed herself for such doubts.
Now there was no choice but to go after him; Arnaud Chevalier knew his real name, without doubt suspected the worst. If she could find François before anyone else, if only she could warn him ... where better to look for him than under Chevalier’s own roof – the one place the man might not expect to find him.
She swung past a dray on the corner of Long Acre and overshot the passageway she was looking for. Springing down from the saddle, she thrust the bay into the charge of an elderly man who was smoking a pipe outside a drapery, then ran back.
Between the shops, past the backyard of a tavern where a huddle of men playing dice on an upturned barrel looked up at her passing. Beyond to where the alleyway became a succession of high walls and private gardens. She stopped by an iron gate. Through the bars she could see the sweeping branches of a tree, distinctive spirals of bark around its wide trunk; the chestnut tree just as François had described it. She pushed the gate open and went in.
Shielding her eyes to peer into the gloomy interior, she looked in at each of the three rear windows. She had no qualms, no sense of trespass. Even before they came to London, she had somehow known that this moment would come; that Captain Frank Fuller was living on borrowed time. It was the man, not the captaincy or its trappings she cared for. She would go to the ends of the earth with François – anywhere, so long as it was away from London, from its stinking water and foul air. Away from the suffocations of the past ... and the dangers of the present.
There was a strange abandon about the house. Not a soul was to be seen in the rooms, or beyond through the wide gaping doors.
She tried the partially-glazed doors leading into the garden but they were locked; followed the building round to her left, skirting a bay window. And came upon an opening between stone flags. It was close to the base of the house wall and in the wet grass nearby she noticed an iron grille.
The hole was narrow – a cellar light perhaps, but the displaced grille and flattened grass around it suggested that someone had entered that way. Not François – a grown man would not squeeze through so tight a gap. She, though, might just wriggle through....
She stooped beside the hole and peered in. In the gloom she could make out crates, what appeared to be items of covered furniture, and directly below – a pair of smallish slippers. She had begun to unbutton the bulky skirtcoat when a sudden commotion down in the cellar made her leap back from the line of sight. There was sharp bang as if a door had been flung back against a wall, more crashing then a flurry of movement.
Her heart pounded, a trickle of sweat ran down her temple as she edged closer to the hole. Glimpsing a mass of tangled hair, a billow of skirt, she guessed it was Louise Chevalier ... so close now that she could hear the rasping catch of her breath.
Margot watched as the figure spun to face her pursuer. Her stomach lurched fearing that it might be François; that she had stumbled on some lovers’ play. Murmuring something soft and unintelligible, the woman skewed her head as if she were exposing her neck to a lover’s kiss. And Margot knew that the white flesh shivered in the anticipation of pleasure; that the eyelashes fluttered wantonly....
But the face turned partly upwards was that of a girl not a woman.
Not Louise but some other. And now she could plainly see a dagger clenched in the girl’s fist. The girl stumbled back a pace and a man leapt into view. Margot’s hands went up to silence her mouth as with sudden swift savagery the blade arced up into the man’s flesh. She heard his winded grunt, saw the tapering white fingers cling to the girl’s shoulders before he collapsed to the cellar floor, scattering the slippers.
Scarcely breathing she watched the barefoot girl circle the crumpled form ... round and round ... until horror overcame reason. Until the lunging figure took on the shape of a great wolf circling its wounded prey. Margot shook her head in disbelief, her hands dropped to her sides. She was not aware of having moved forward, but now she found herself teetering on the brink of the opening.
Searching for the light, the eyes of the injured man found her there; for one cruel moment she saw his expression flick from terror to hope. The muscles of his neck and shoulders strained towards her, his mouth fell o
pen in appeal. But if he uttered a cry it was lost beneath the gasping snarls of the wolf so intense now that she could feel the resonance through her feet. Then the final spring; straddling, cloaking his face. There was no help in her, no help in anyone for the man beneath the muscular body and bared fangs. No rescue from the fury ripping and gouging his face and neck, his loins, his chest....
Margot tottered back from the ghastly sight and sounds of the cellar. Her stomach clenched, bile belched into her mouth. She stumbled away, legs trembling and so leaden that she tripped over the discarded grille. It only took a second to right herself, two at most, but as she stood up again she was startled by the sudden appearance of a man close to the cellar opening.
His dark hair was tied back and apart from a white collar and cuffs he was dressed all in black; a style plain and long out of fashion. His left shoulder was pressed against the house wall and balanced on the tips of his fingers a plumed black hat swung idly back and forth as he peered down into the cellar – standing on the very spot she herself had just moved from. There a familiarity about the man, something she could not quite place.....
As she stared, he slowly turned his gaze upon her. And though they stood a man’s length apart it seemed to her that he had her trapped in his consciousness; that the potency of his will overwhelmed hers ... that she was at his mercy.
From nowhere a strong wind whipped up. And though she knew the chestnut tree had shed its leaves, a loud rustling blocked out all other sounds. As it subsided words formed in her head, words she knew were his: ‘François is beyond your help, Margot.’
‘You know my name‒’ she breathed. ‘Who are you?’
‘I am the one who summoned him back to this place ...he has no master but me.’
His hand reached out to her, commanding her to draw nearer. Fear had tightened her chest, her breathing was shallow and rapid. Drawing on every last ounce of strength, she stood her ground.
The Sorcerer (The Witch Trilogy Book 3) Page 12