The Sorcerer (The Witch Trilogy Book 3)

by Cheryl Potter

  ‘What are you saying? That you fornicated with my own son?’

  ‘Something happened in France – a girl I think, you would know better than I. Pierre hates you for it. He bitterly resented our happiness.’

  Arnaud turned the idea over in his mind. ‘And you said nothing. You became his whore?’

  ‘How could I tell you,’ she choked, ‘without destroying your family?’

  His features suddenly stiffened. With the base of his palm he struck his own forehead.

  ‘Mais oui,’ he groaned, ‘Isabelle has told you about the de Breuille girl – that is how you know of these things, how you embellish this tissue of lies.’

  ‘As God is my witness, Arnaud.’

  He leapt at her then; grabbed her shoulders and shook her. ‘I will not hear this. My son unearthed the truth about Fuller. It was Pierre who exposed you both. You hope to disguise your own treachery by casting him as the villain‒?’ He dragged her off balance and hurled her across the bed. As he did so something caught his eye. He stalked round to his side of the bed and picked up the discarded tapestry cover.

  ‘You tried to steal from me?’ He stared at her in new disbelief.

  She levered herself off the bed and drew closer. ‘I know nothing of this.’

  She resisted his first incensed attempt to throw her back down upon the mattress. As he pulled her hands away from the bedpost, she clung to him instead so that he lost his footing and came crashing down on top of her. Pinned under him, her back overarched against the edge of the bed, she bit her lip to stop herself crying out in pain.

  ‘Must I beat the truth out of you?’ he hissed, his lips against her ear. ‘Who is this Jeakes that he should have such a hold over you ... that a man like Herries should seek to protect him‒?’

  Pain from her back had spread into her legs – unbearable now. She pushed hard against his chest, levering his body far enough away to slide under him down to the floor.

  ‘You wrong not only him but yourself,’ she gasped, squatting at the bedside. He stood over her raking his hands through his hair.

  ‘He has you blind, Louise ... possessed. In Paris he murdered a seamstress – your age, in your condition.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A Black Mass; human sacrifice ... a slow and brutal death.’

  ‘False accusations,’ she retorted, pushing herself up to stand.

  ‘That is what he would have you believe. Has he told you that he supplied poisons to the French King’s favourite mistress? That he was condemned to death for murder and for treason?’

  ‘You are the blind one, husband.’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘That I cannot deny, wife. But I will not let him have you, though he be Lucifer himself ... you, or the bastard you carry.’ He let his cloak fall on to the rug and undid his belt buckle. ‘I could have you arrested; consorting with a felon – adultery – attempted theft.’ He drew the leather strap free. ‘But first I would hear the truth from your own lips.’

  She ducked the first lash he dealt; dropping to her knees felt through the folds of his cloak for the pistol he had used against her father.

  ‘Like father, like son....’ she hissed. He was on her before her trembling hands could free the weapon, wrestling with her clothes, exposing her flesh to the flailing strap.

  Then the bedchamber door burst open.

  Arnaud straightened up. The belt dropped from his hand.

  ‘So the dog comes after the bitch in heat!’ he leered.

  François eyed him steadily. Without shifting focus he said, ‘Move away, Louise.’

  Confrontation

  François knew Chevalier’s intention; his focus tracked the impulse as it flashed from gut to brain to hand. He watched the fingers curl around the pistol handle – followed the tip of the middle finger on to the trigger as the barrel took aim.

  He opened his arms to expose his chest, declaring; ‘I have no weapon.’

  Louise crawled between them. Kneeling before her husband she brought her hands together: ‘This man has no knowledge of me, Arnaud. May God strike me dead if I utter one false word.’

  ‘A man may be gulled once in his own bedchamber,’ Arnaud sneered, ‘but not twice, eh Jeakes?’ He dropped the barrel down to his wife’s head then swung it back up at François. His elbow locked, his middle finger twitched – a reflex snatch. Then came the lightning spark, a crack of ignited powder. Too late Louise threw herself at Chevalier.

  François saw the lead ball catch on a slight imperfection just inside the lip of the barrel; watched the eccentric spin of it in flight. The sound of rushing water filled his mind. And the energy that had streamed through him in the cellar, coursed through him again – fingertips, hands, arms ... lifting him to a potency, an awareness, beyond the reach of men and bullets.

  Time and the waking world stood still.

  A slight movement to the left and he would dodge the bullet; a meted sweep of his right hand and he could catch it in flight. Instinct demanded it. But he did not move.

  Kate’s words pressed him ... flesh of my flesh, do not misuse your strength, however just you think the cause.

  The hatred he had felt for Comite Le Fouquet in that lonely corner of a Marseilles graveyard was not in him now, nor the vengeance that had moved him against Vincent Martel in the catacombs of Paris. His clothes were steeped in the blood of Pierre Chevalier – flesh of this man’s flesh. Punishment enough for the misery he had caused.

  The bullet would tear through the leather of his jacket, bury itself under his right collarbone ... his due for any wrong he had done Isabelle Chevalier. But even as the thought shaped itself he felt himself being thrust aside. And words crystallized replacing the deafening rush.

  This is not the way, François.

  Throwing Louise aside Chevalier stalked over to where François now crouched. François caught Chevalier’s wrist as he attempted to crack him over the head with the pistol butt; caught him and applied such punishing pressure that Arnaud had no choice but to release the weapon and fall to his knees.

  ‘It is true,’ spat Chevalier, ‘you are in league with the Devil. Look at you, you bleed and yet you have the strength of two men; you materialize and go again as you please. You enthral another man’s wife....’

  ‘Enough,’ François said heavily. ‘Can you tell me why Pierre has secured a passage to France this very night? ... You didn’t know? Or why in the last few days he has consulted a locksmith of dubious repute?’

  He watched Chevalier’s eyes dart in the direction of the strongbox.

  ‘My son‒’

  ‘Your son has misused your trust just as he misused your wife.’

  Chevalier’s face tightened into a cynical grimace. ‘The word of an escaped convict – a murderer, a liar, an impostor!’

  ‘Not mine alone – if you would come with me I will take you to the night-cellar, a criminal hideout, where Pierre made his contacts ... the locksmith, the captain of the ship bound for Marseilles. I will introduce you to the woman he lay with last night – the whore who will tell you of his boast that he has cuckolded his own father.’

  The lips curled but any retaliation died on Chevalier’s lips. Resistance drained from him. He turned to Louise and frowned, unable to fathom the situation.

  François released his grip.

  ‘Pierre is the father of this child,’ Louise echoed. ‘Would to God it were not so....’

  ‘This can’t be true,’ Chevalier breathed. He shook his head, then said dazedly, ‘I must find Pierre ... I will have words with my son.’ He staggered towards the door. Outside on the landing Anton waited holding the trembling shoulders of the young woman he had released from her locked room.

  Isabelle reached out for her father. ‘Pierre has gone, Papa.’

  ‘We will find him,’ Chevalier grunted.

  As he brushed past towards the stairs, Anton briefly closed his eyes then went after him. ‘Wait, Arnaud ... wait. I will take you to your son.’

  Franço
is took a pace back through the surgery door into the hall. Arnaud had butted him ahead downstairs as they followed Anton’s lead down to the cellar. Bellowing down Anton’s spirited defence Chevalier would not suffer François to lay a finger on his unconscious son as between them he and Anton carried Pierre through the house to the surgery table.

  Anton again checked the vital signs. As Arnaud Chevalier stroked away the hair from his son’s eyes, the pistol hanging limply at his side, as he shrugged off the tender embrace of his distraught daughter, François took a pace back into the hall.

  A moment of distraction.

  François looked at Louise who was standing at the bottom of the staircase, one hand pressed against the wall, the other braced against the polished newel post.

  And with the slightest of gestures he beckoned her.

  ‘Come with me now‒’

  The House of Women

  Louise shadowed François down the apothecary path and out into the lane. And though he slowed his pace to match hers, though Arnaud Chevalier’s cry went up within seconds of their flight, the enveloping fog and his knowledge of local passageways covered their escape. With his coat draped around her shoulders, Louise walked alongside François, clutching his arm in numbed silence until at last they reached Crich Lane.

  ‘You will be safe here,’ he told her, drawing her past the rainwater butts and goose pen to the kitchen door. As a young boy Cassy had guided his fingers into the laying straw, showing him how to handle the warm eggs, laughing at him when feisty pecks drove him back. Chevalier might look for them at Kate’s house in Tyburn Lane but he was unlikely to be familiar with this place.

  The kitchen was danker than usual, though; the fire cold and the pots unwashed. He drew Louise down the dark passageway and found Joanne propped against the staircase wall, asleep. Clarry met him at Cassy’s door holding a candle. One look at her drawn face was enough. He touched her arm and she stood back for him to pass.

  In the flickering light of the candles positioned around the bed he could see one of Cassy’s girls sitting in the window hugging her knees, another knelt on the floor weeping softly for her dying mistress. And curled up asleep beside the rattling, slack-jawed figure in the bed, was his sister Anna.

  ‘He’s still out there,’ announced the girl in the window. François glanced at Clarry.

  ‘A soldier on a black horse,’ she explained, ‘watching the place from the gateway across the way ... a punter, maybe, or the law ... bastard’s been there a while.’

  François went to the window but could see little for the fog and the descending dark of early evening. He drew Clarry out of the room and gently shut the door.

  ‘Is Kate here?’ he whispered.

  Clarry shook her head. ‘No, but she will come back tonight, you may count on it ... I swear it’s the only thing Cassy’s holding on for.’ She reached out to touch the cap of his left sleeve. ‘Blood? You are hurt‒’

  François drew her hand away and pressed it in both of his. ‘Forgive me, but I must ask a favour....’

  Clarry led them up to the room Cassy reserved for receiving patrons. Their door would not be open to trade tonight, she assured them, Louise could rest there undisturbed.

  Alone with François, Louise looked around her at the cushions and the tasselled rug, the pair of gilded cherubs standing either side of the fireplace. In the fraught days after the collapse of the Soames’ trial and the devastating news that François had died in Paris, she had visited this house with Kate to make arrangements for the care of little Anna while she and Kate were away in France.

  A house of women, her father had warned her, a brothel.

  But, just as her experiences in France with Kate had changed her, so time had changed her father. For it was in this very room, only hours ago, that she had discovered him sleeping naked with Kate.

  Kate and her father. A different generation but still a Jeakes and a Morin. After the anger and the ugliness, there was solace in the thought.

  ‘I swear I do not know what happened to Pierre,’ François said, placing a lantern on the mantelshelf. He sounded tired.

  The first words she had uttered since the fight with Arnaud came out as a cracked whisper; ‘I heard what my father had to say to Arnaud: if Pierre lives then it is because of you. That is all I need to know.’

  He took her into his arms. ‘Clarry will let Kate know that you are here ... I will come back for you.’

  ‘Arnaud will not let this rest,’ she murmured. ‘Someone will be made to pay.’

  ‘But not tonight,’ he whispered, ‘not yet.’ He pressed his lips against her forehead. Then he was gone.

  François retraced his steps through the yard then scaled the chest-high wall into the neighbouring garden. Pulling himself clear of a claw of brambles, he stepped over a low gate on to a pathway running behind the houses that bordered the pastureland beyond; a track he had not forgotten.

  The fog was dispersing now, giving way to shadowed night. The damp earth yielded under his boots as he passed the last three of the abutting properties and doubled back on the opposite side of Crich Lane. Keeping tight to the house-fronts he headed back towards Cassy’s house.

  The horse stirred as he approached, bringing its silhouette into focus. As the rider pulled on the reins, the window of Cassy’s room was thrust open. Then he heard Clarry’s voice: ‘Can’t you just leave us in peace, you devil? A woman lies dying. Begone, there’s nowt for you here!’

  A distraction; time enough for François to leap forward and seize the harness. He held on as the horse attempted to rear. Dodging the first stab of the rider’s toe, he shouted;

  ‘I am Captain Fuller of the Prince’s army, state your business.’

  ‘François? ... Mon Dieu, c’est moi, c’est Margot.’

  Clarry stood in the window space, dark and featureless against the candlelight.

  ‘A woman,’ she declared with a dry laugh. She watched the rider reach down to help François up into the saddle behind her. Watched them turn and with a perfunctory wave, canter away. ‘A bloody woman!’ she sniffed. Then she swung the casement shut again.

  The Shepherdess

  In times of distress Kate’s dreams turned to Blackwood Top. Of all the Cotswold hills this one for a time was hers. Her mother’s cottage stood in the lee of its wooded slope and from the top – if the day was clear – she could as far as Wales and the Bristol Channel.

  On Blackwood Top François’ father-to-be first came to her – as she had seen he would. The foreshadowed vision of Matthew Marsden climbing the hill towards her, no more than a black dot at first, obscured and revealed by a bank of dancing poppies, taking the shape of the man who was to change her life forever – that vision sometimes came back to her so vividly in dreams that it seemed more real than the waking world.

  In the uncertain days after François had been arrested in Paris accused of the murder of the seamstress Jeanine Pascal, the old dream came again but with cruel a twist. For in that dream the face of Matthew Marsden – so long the face of malice and cruelty – became one with the face of their seventeen-year-old son. Then she had refused to accept that it was a sign. François was a healer, not a murderer. That certainty had carried her through Paris and his years of absence ... that and the rock of Cassy’s friendship.

  For all the priest had received short shrift a few days before Cassy’s death – for all his dudgeon, at the end he did not deny her the Christian burial she hankered after; an endowment of one hundred pounds saw to that.

  Earth to earth....

  There were few mourners: the four girls from Crich Lane, a neighbour and two curious bystanders. Kate would have liked Anton to have been there; she had sent word that their mutual friend had passed away. But the burial was swift, the sexton impatient.

  Ashes to ashes....

  Ursula, who had been her maid throughout her years as mistress of the St Martin’s Lane apothecary, found her at the graveside. Kate had her arm around Joanne who after Clarr
y’s browbeating for bringing trouble on the house, needed someone to persuade her that she was not to take Cassy’s death on herself.

  Dust to dust....

  Clarry followed the priest’s lead and cast a handful of earth on to the coffin. Clutching a posy of snowdrops and herbs Joanne sank to her knees. She reached into the grave as far as she could and with a wretched sob let go of the flowers.

  Kate stood back. She had a strong sense of Cassy’s presence; she could hear her irreverent laughter. The essence of her old friend was free and she was glad of that.

  When it was done she lingered awhile leaving Cassy’s girls to take the carriage back to the house without her. As the sexton shovelled back the claggy earth, she pulled off her glove and opened the locket to see again the lock of fiery red hair twined with the brown of her own.

  On the night Cassy died, Kate had been out searching for Anna. The girl had eventually made her way back to Cassy as she had so often before. Kate found her there, curled up asleep beside her old friend, unkempt as a street waif. Finding Anna’s hair pressed against Cassy’s face, she eased her daughter away. As she did so Cassy’s hand found hers. And when Kate leaned down to kiss her, Cassy spoke for the last time.

  ‘Look to Anna, Kate‒’ Her words were clear, the press of her fingers meaningful. ‘Look to Anna.’

  Gripping the locket in her fist, Kate dwelt on the words as she watched the earth pile in over the coffin. Cassy had loved Anna; she had been a second mother to her ... if only the meaning of those words had been less shadowed.

  Thinking the others had all gone, she was startled when Ursula tapped her on the shoulder.

  ‘Something terrible has happened‒’ the words spilled over each other, ‘the master’s son has been found near done to death ... I’m sorry to have to tell you, Mistress Kate, but they’re out to arrest Master François.’