Witch Finder

by Unknown

  ‘Sebastian!’ Rosa’s voice was hoarse and cracked on the last syllable of his name. ‘Please.’

  Luke’s hands were clenched on the reins so that the tendons stood out. He concentrated on his hands, on the burns and smelts left there by years of work in the forge. Concentrated on holding in Castor, holding him steady, when all he wanted to do was turn the horse for home and gallop far away from this place.

  At last the sound of thrashing ceased and, in the silence that followed, he heard Rosa’s low sobbing breath. Sebastian seemed to hear it too, for he looked up, his face splashed with blood, but impassive. His eyes were very blue, the cold pale blue of the winter sky above.

  ‘For God’s sake, Rosa,’ he said. ‘It was only a dog – and a damned disobedient one at that.’ And then he kicked the corpse into the bushes at the side of the Row and mounted his horse in one swing, his spurs flashing in the sun.

  ‘Good day to you both.’ His voice was quite level and pleasant. Only the rise and fall of his chest and the flecks of blood across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose betrayed what he’d just done. ‘Miss Greenwood, please allow me to apologize for the damage to your habit.’ He gave a bow, raised his top hat and then turned to Alexis. ‘Alex, shall I see you at Raffles tonight?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Alexis said. He raised his own hat and Sebastian cantered off.

  Luke watched him go, disappearing into the throng of well-dressed ladies and men, his magic a pitch-black swirl of smoke dispersing into the bright sunshine and red-gold leaves of the autumn trees.

  He was still staring after Knyvet’s departing shadow when he heard Alexis’ voice behind him.

  ‘Come on, Rose, for God’s sake. Get up and stop acting like a Shakespearean tragedy. It was only a dog.’

  Luke turned. Rosa was sitting, collapsed against the tree trunk, her face in her hands. When she raised her eyes they were filled with grief and bitter accusation.

  ‘Look,’ Alexis said uncomfortably, ‘I’m not saying he was right to beat it but—’

  ‘He whipped it to death, Alex. In the park.’

  ‘It ripped your skirt! Look, a disobedient dog is a recipe for disaster. You can never eradicate bad blood. A dog who won’t obey commands has only itself to blame. Next it would have been going after sheep and snapping at children. Seb had no choice.’

  ‘He had a choice,’ Rosa said. Her voice was cold and bitter. ‘Of course he had a choice.’

  ‘Rose!’ Alexis said, his voice impatient. ‘It was a dog. A dog. What do you want? Black ostrich plumes and a hearse? Get back on Cherry and stop acting like he beat your first-born child to death.’

  ‘I will not.’ Rosa’s voice shook. Alexis’ lip curled in contempt.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ He kicked at Brimstone’s flanks and yanked the horse’s head viciously around. ‘I’m going.’

  ‘What?’ Rosa’s head jerked up.

  ‘I’ve had enough of your histrionics,’ Alexis yelled over his shoulder. ‘See yourself home. The sot can take you.’

  And he cantered away across the park.

  Rosa was silent as they rode home. Luke kept back, watching her as she sat very straight, her hands rigid on the reins.

  In the yard he jumped down and stepped forward to help her dismount. He had never helped a lady dismount before, let alone a witch, and he was painfully aware of it as he steadied the horse and readied himself to take her weight. As she stepped down he fumbled it, missing her step so that they both staggered, and his arms went around her, stopping her from falling to the muddy cobbles of the yard before he’d even thought of it.

  ‘I’m so sorry, miss!’ He felt a burning flush run from his throat to his forehead and his hands were all wrong, all in the wrong place – he couldn’t let her stumble to the ground, but anyone might look out of the rear window of the house and see him with his hands around her waist.

  ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ she said bitterly, but her voice broke on the last word, as if she were barely keeping the tears in check.

  ‘Miss Greenwood – please, please don’t cry.’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ she said stonily. He didn’t say anything, but let his hands drop. She led Cherry into the stable. Luke stood for a moment, full of fury at himself, at her for putting him in this position, at that damned Knyvet. Then he took a breath and followed her with Castor. She was in the stall, rubbing Cherry with a handful of straw, her shoulders bowed with misery.

  Luke stood helplessly, watching her as she groomed the horse, who whickered comfortingly, as if she knew something was wrong, but not what or how to mend it.

  ‘Go away,’ Rosa said hoarsely, without looking up. Luke felt frustration rise in him.

  ‘Miss, I—’

  ‘Please, just go away.’

  ‘How can I?’ he burst out. ‘I have to clean and groom Castor! What do you want me to do, go into the kitchen and say that I’ve left this horse in a muck sweat because you’re having a tantrum in the stables? I’ll be sacked!’

  ‘A tantrum?’ She swung round, her face swollen with angry tears. ‘A tantrum? Did you see what Sebastian did?’

  ‘Yes, I saw what he did. And I was disgusted too – but I’ve seen worse, ten times worse. I’ve seen a man beat his wife that way. Your brother’s right, it was a dog, no more, and I’m not losing my job over it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she spat, and turned back to Cherry. ‘Go back to the kitchen. Leave me alone.’

  ‘And say what?’ Luke said impatiently. He shut Castor into his stall and came to stand beside her. ‘Tell ’em I’ve left the lady of the house doing my work?’

  ‘No – yes – oh I don’t care!’

  She ripped off her hat, her hair tumbling out of its pins, buried her face against Cherry’s side and began to sob, hopelessly, helplessly, her shoulders heaving so that her red hair shivered like flames in the wind.

  ‘Miss . . . Rosa . . .’ Luke stood awkwardly, twisting his hands together. He put his hand towards her and then stopped, suddenly sick at the thought of touching her again, feeling her magic silk-soft against his skin. But the sight of her wrenching sobs was too much and he couldn’t stop himself from touching her shoulder, very lightly, the lightest possible brush.

  The sound she made at his touch was so grievous, so like the puppy’s whimper, that before he could think he’d put his arm around her shoulders, just as if she were Minna, and he just another boy, not mistress and stable-hand.

  ‘Hey there, don’t take on so,’ he said, his voice low. She shook her head, her eyes closed, the lashes wet with tears, and he pulled her to him, shushing her and gentling her as he gentled Minna’s little sisters when they fell and hurt their knee, as his father had used to comfort him when he was small.

  They stood for a long moment in the warmth and quiet of the stable, the horses breathing on their backs and whickering in gentle sympathy. Rosa fell quiet, the huge shaking sobs slowly subsiding until she was still and silent in his arms, limp in the exhausted aftermath of grief. And as they stood, locked together in the warm silence, it came to Luke like a cold chill draught, how impossibly, horribly wrong this was. She was not just a girl, she was his employer – and a witch. The witch he was sent to kill.

  He realized suddenly that his hand was on the back of her neck, the fine red-gold hairs tickling his fingers, and that the skin there was so soft and white he could hardly bear it.

  I could tighten my grip, he thought. How hard would it be?

  For a moment he imagined it – he’d hold her closer, and closer, until he had her so tight that she would never breathe again. There’d be a moment’s struggle, a cry smothered with a hand, or pressed into the cotton of his shirt. And then . . . nothing – just her body, limp and slack in his arms.

  Her neck felt so slim and fragile – how hard would it be to
snap it like the chickens John Leadingham despatched in a trice? It would take just the slightest shift of his grip – he could move his fingers up to twine into her hair, hold her skull, as gentle as a lover, and twist until . . .

  There was a crack in the yard, as if someone had trodden on a stick, and Rosa seemed suddenly to realize who and where she was. She leapt back, out of his arms, her face ghost-white, her eyes wide and dark. Then she began scrabbling her hair back into its pins.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She was whispering under her breath. ‘I’m so sorry – I don’t know – I can’t think . . .’

  And then she ran, leaving Luke standing like a fool, his arms empty, the stable his own domain again.

  Rosa flung herself on to her bed, her face burning with a mix of anger and shame and something else, something that made her writhe into the pillows, unable to believe what she’d done.

  What had she been thinking? Sobbing on the shoulder of a stable-hand! Thank God no one had seen. And he – what had he been thinking? If Alexis or her mother had seen them, she would have been whipped and Luke would have been sacked for gross impertinence, and it would be no more than he deserved, putting his arms around her as if – as if . . .

  And yet, as Rosa’s face cooled, she thought that perhaps it wasn’t that, not really. There had been nothing impertinent about his expression as he looked down at her, nor about the way his hand had rested on the nape of her neck, on the tender slip of skin between her riding stock and her hair. It was as if . . . it was as if he thought for a moment they might have been – friends.

  He wasn’t a servant, of course. At least, not in the sense that Fred Welling or James were. They were born and bred to it, trained to service from their childhood. From what Ellen had said Luke was the son of a drayman, expected to become a drayman like his father, mixing only with others of his class and sphere and never thinking to so much as speak to a lady from one year’s end to another. So perhaps it was no wonder that he wasn’t used to mixing with his betters and acted so strangely ignorant of the gulf that separated them both.

  Rosa had no such excuse. She knew every inch of the great social chasm that yawned between them. And, too, she knew what he did not, could not. For they were separated by more than class, by a gulf just as unbridgeable: magic.

  That at least, she reflected, as she flung herself on to her back and put her pillow over her cooling face, was one comfort. If he ever showed any signs of getting above himself or taking liberties, she could sort him out with a few words of a spell, as Alexis had done with Becky time and time again. A few kisses on the landing, a few squeezes in the library, and the girl was batting her eyelashes over the morning tea and making veiled threats about presents and payrises. Each time it happened she sealed her own doom and the next day she would be clearing at breakfast just as blank and respectful as if the whole thing had never happened – which indeed, as far as she was concerned, it had not.

  The thought of Alexis was like a splash of cold water. He would be angry, very angry. And he would want her to make it up to Sebastian. The only question was how.

  ‘Is this true, Rosa?’ Mama looked from Rosa to Alexis and back again. They were waiting in the drawing room, where Rosa had been summoned to give an account of her actions. Mama was sitting on the chaise longue, her needlepoint spread across her lap, and the needle stabbed in and out of the silk as if she were stabbing an enemy.

  ‘Well?’ Alexis turned from where he was warming himself in front of the glowing remains of the fire and smoothed down his coat tails. ‘Cat got your tongue, Rosa? Or should I say, dog?’

  Rosa’s hand crept nervously to her locket and then she snatched it away, before Alexis had time to notice. Instead she picked up Belle, who was shadowing anxiously at her heels as if she sensed the gathering storm.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She was proud of the way her voice was steady, in spite of Alexis’ barely contained fury and Mama’s smouldering anger. ‘Yes, it’s true.’

  ‘You are telling me . . .’ Mama’s voice was dangerously low and she stabbed the needle into the hoop with a violence that made Rosa wince. ‘You are telling me, that you stood in Hyde Park and screamed at Sebastian Knyvet like a fishwife, berating him for beating his own dog in your defence? And for this you dared call him a brute?’

  ‘Yes.’ Rosa made herself stand straight. Belle cowered against her shoulder.

  Mama turned to Alexis and some silent communication passed between them, Rosa could see the flicker of it in their eyes. She turned away deliberately. Let them have their magical whispers. If they were too ashamed to say the words in front of her, she didn’t want to hear them anyway.

  ‘Rosa.’ Mama’s voice broke in on her thoughts. ‘We have not finished with this. For tonight you will go to bed without any supper. Tomorrow you will get up without any breakfast. However you will ride out, you will meet with and speak to Mr Knyvet and you will apologize to him for your disgraceful behaviour. Is that quite understood?’

  ‘But—’ Rosa began. Mama hissed the words of a spell and Rosa’s throat suddenly tightened and closed. The words she had been about to speak strangled before they reached her lips. Only when she tried again did two misshapen, mangled sounds come out: ‘Yes, Mama.’

  ‘Good.’ Mama’s lips smiled, but her eyes were still cold and angry. ‘Now, listen to me, Rosa. Sebastian has the power in the palm of his hand to repair our fortune, to secure Alexis’ future and to save your family home, and you throw all that away over a disobedient dog and your own love of histrionics. What do you think Papa would think of your abominable selfishness?’

  Rosa shut her eyes. She would not cry. Not in front of Mama.

  ‘The mortgages are up on Matchenham in two months.’ Mama picked up a sheaf of papers from the desk and threw them at Rosa’s feet. ‘Two months. If you wish to see your father’s home sold to the highest bidder then you are going the right way about it. Now, go to your room. I do not wish to see you again tonight, do you understand?’

  Any words of protest died in Rosa’s throat. Instead she just nodded. Then she turned and left, still holding Belle. As she climbed the stairs to her room she felt the first stirrings of hunger in the pit of her stomach.

  It was nearly midnight before Luke finished grooming the horses and cleaning the tack. Late in the evening Alexis had sent word downstairs that he and Rosa would be riding again tomorrow, and that the horses were to be immaculate, and the tack and brasswork too.

  When Luke finally made it up the stairs to his little room, he lay on the hard, narrow bed with his arm flung over his face as if to hide from the world. What had he been thinking, there in the stable? He’d risked everything – and for what? To comfort a girl who was his mortal enemy, who would be dead at his hand within a few days. And instead of plotting her death, he’d risked his job and his mission to comfort her over the death of a worthless pup.

  For God’s sake, lad, what’s wrong with you?

  It was John Leadingham’s accusing voice that rang in his ears. But it was William’s face he saw when he squeezed his lids tight shut – William’s face, filled with disgust and grief at his betrayal.

  Suddenly he couldn’t bear his own thoughts any longer. He sat up and walked to the window, as if the cold night air could chase away his hot shame. He leant on the sill, resting his forehead against the breath-misted glass, and stared into the night. Knightsbridge was not like Spitalfields. Instead of the dark, crowded slums punctuated with burning street braziers, it was bright with gas street lights, there were candles at every window, stretching away and away into the distance, even the odd house that blazed with electric light. He looked up, above the roofs, hoping to see the stars. They at least would be proof that however far away home felt, he walked under the same skies as William and Minna and John and all the other friends he’d left behind. But the night was dark, with thick sooty clouds that shut out the s
ky.

  He sighed and was about to turn to go to bed when a movement at the window across the yard caught his eye. A window was alight in the big house. It was lit with a single candle, and someone was sitting there, staring into the darkness. In the soft candlelight all he could see was a face and a flicker of white nightgown. But as the figure moved slightly he saw the blazing river of hair that fell to her waist, a stream of molten iron that caught the light of the frail candle flame and threw it back as fire.

  Rosa.

  No, God damn her, not Rosa. The witch. He must stop thinking of her as a girl, for she was not a girl. She was a witch – damned in the sight of God and condemned by man and by the word of the Bible. Condemned to—

  The breath caught in his throat and he wrenched his gaze away from her and threw himself back into his hard narrow bed, his fists clenched in cold self-hatred.

  She must die. That was all there was to it. He had pricked her name with his pin – fate had chosen her, not him. If he didn’t return of news of her death within the month then it would be his blood spilt, not hers.

  Within the month. How long, exactly? Luke began to count back to the night in Fournier Street, and his heart became colder and colder with each backward step. It was more than a week ago, ten days, in fact. He had just eighteen days left. Eighteen days to kill her and return with the news to the Brotherhood.

  But he didn’t need eighteen days. It only took a moment to kill – he just needed an opportunity. A plan that would not leave him swinging from the gallows or gutted by a spell.

  And suddenly a way of doing it came into his head – and it was so simple he could have almost laughed. Only, it all depended on whether she would ride out tomorrow to meet Sebastian Knyvet. Would she?

  Luke slept badly that night, torn between thinking of all the ways that his plan could go wrong and the chance that it would not happen at all. Would she really ride out to meet Knyvet, after all that had happened yesterday?