Witch Finder

by Unknown

  Luke felt the blow as if it was a punch to his own gut. For a minute he couldn’t speak, he was so choked with shock and fury that Knyvet would treat her like this.

  Then somehow the words roared out of him, almost of their own volition.

  ‘Leave her alone!’

  ‘Be quiet,’ Knyvet snarled, and something whip-tight curled around Luke’s shoulders like a rope. He staggered and nearly fell.

  ‘Please, Sebastian,’ Rosa sobbed.

  Another binding, a ring of steel tightening around his chest.

  ‘Knyvet . . .’ he gasped. He could hardly breathe.

  ‘God, you really won’t be told, will you?’ Sebastian sighed. He pointed and Luke felt his lips seal together as if they were one piece of flesh. He screamed, not silently, but through his nose, so that it came out more like a moan; a sound so muffled and pathetic it barely reached the door, let alone beyond. Why hadn’t he shouted when he had the chance?

  ‘Tówierpe!’ Knyvet spat, and Luke was flung backwards, to slam into one of the oak pillars holding up the stable roof. His head cracked against the wood so hard he would have gasped, if he could have. He drew painful shuddering breaths through his nose and heard his own breath whimper at the back of his throat.

  Fight me like a man, you damned coward, he thought. But the words would not come.

  Sebastian pulled a coil of cord behind the door and now he began to tie Luke to the post.

  ‘Just in case,’ he said pleasantly, as he pulled the knots tight, the ropes cutting into Luke’s skin. ‘I wouldn’t want the spell to slip while my attention was elsewhere.’

  Kill him, Luke pleaded Rosa with his eyes. You’re a witch – do something. Split his skull. Save us both.

  But she only stared at him with wide, horrified eyes as if she couldn’t believe what was happening.

  When Sebastian was satisfied that the knots were tight enough to hold Luke, even if the spells failed, he turned his back and looked at Rosa.

  ‘At least you know how to hold your tongue.’ He walked across to her and touched her gently on the cheek that had smacked into the wall. ‘I like that in a woman. What I don’t like,’ he helped her to her feet, ‘is infidelity. Unless, of course, it was not your fault.’

  Rosa said nothing, she only looked at him, her eyes huge and dark in her white face.

  ‘Tell me,’ Sebastian twisted her arm. ‘Tell me that he forced himself on you. That you couldn’t fight back. That his attentions were unwanted. Tell me, and I will kill him and spare you.’

  Luke shut his eyes. Her death, or yours.

  His heartbeat sounded in his ears, waiting for her response, and when she spoke it was almost too low for him to hear the words. Almost.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘But I can’t lie.’

  The blow was so fast Luke missed it. At the vicious crack and Rosa’s cry, his eyes flew open, but she was already lying on the floor. There was blood coming from her nose. Sebastian shook his hand, as if he’d knocked it against a door handle in passing. His face was pained, but calm.

  ‘Tell me again,’ he whispered. ‘My darling.’ He pulled her to her feet and wiped the blood tenderly from her cheek with his fingers. ‘Come, my darling. You can tell me. He’s only an outwith from the slums. Spare yourself, my darling. Oh my God, I love you so. I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me hit you again.’

  Rosa shook her head, not in denial, but thickly, as if she were trying to clear away confusion. Sebastian and Luke waited.

  At last she looked up.

  ‘I kissed him,’ she said, through bloodied lips.

  This time Luke saw the blow as well as heard it, saw Knyvet’s hand meet her face, saw her flung back on to the stone flags, heard the thud as her body hit the floor. Blood was flowing freely down her white dress.

  Fight back! Luke begged her in his mind. Why was she lying there when she was a witch as powerful in her own way as Knyvet? Her magic swirled and boiled around her in red-gold flames, and she wouldn’t use it. Why not? Why not?

  Fight back, he pleaded silently. Denounce me. Anything. Anything had to be better than this silence.

  But she only lay, still and unmoving on the cold stone floor. Her head was flung back and he could see the damage Knyvet had done.

  He wanted to scream. But his lips were sealed.

  Beneath the white silk Rosa’s ribs still rose and fell in slow, ragged breaths. Knyvet had been careful, in his own way. Rosa’s beauty was not ruined, only marred for a while. He had not gone for the spleen, or the kidneys, or anywhere that might kill.

  But he had done it sober. In cold blood.

  As Luke watched, Knyvet wound his hand in her hair and pulled her limp body up from the floor, her limbs lolling. He kissed her bloodstained lips, then let her unresisting body drop, with a thud, back to the flags.

  ‘Goodnight, my darling. Sleep well.’

  He turned to Luke.

  ‘As for you . . .’ He moved towards the pillar. Luke knew that he should feel fear, terror even. He had escaped death at the hands of one witch – he could not expect to be so lucky a second time. ‘As for you, outwith, I won’t waste my magic on scum like you.’

  He put his hand out, grabbed a fistful of Luke’s hair, and yanked his head as far forward as it would go. Then he banged it back, hard, against the oak pillar. Luke felt a white-hot blaze of pain explode across the back of his skull. Then nothing.

  When Luke woke he was in bed. There was a bandage on the back of his head and he had the worst headache he could remember in a long time. He groaned and opened his eyes blearily. A pair of bright-blue eyes were staring into his, with a concerned expression.

  ‘You’re awake!’ It was the groom who shared his room. He was dressed in his uniform and smelt of the stables. He grinned, relieved. ‘Mr Warren said to let you sleep so I didn’t wake you first thing, but I was worried you’d’ve copped it, so I came up to see if you was all right. When they brought you in I wasn’t sure you’d be here in the morning. How’d you manage to get a kick like that?’

  A kick? Luke licked dry lips and tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

  ‘We’ve all done it,’ the groom carried on. ‘Frisky horse, it’s easy enough to let yer attention slip for a moment. But blow me, he musta caught you quite a clip with his hoof. You’ve got a headache fit to kill, I reckon?’

  Luke nodded, setting small fires of pain ablaze in the back of his skull. They fizzled out and he lay trying to collect his thoughts. Had he really had a kick from a horse? He didn’t remember it.

  ‘I heard as you’re going back to London today,’ the other groom said. ‘You be all right on the train with two horses?’

  Two horses . . . A memory flickered . . . Cherry.

  ‘One horse,’ Luke managed.

  ‘Oh, a’course.’ The young groom slapped his forehead. ‘I’d forgotten it was your young miss what had the fall off the bridge. Blimey, it’s been bad luck for you, this journey, ain’t it? You’ll be glad to see the back of Southing, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Southing.

  Rosa.

  Something came back, a memory of Rosa’s face, covered in blood. But why – he’d had the fall . . . He lay still while the groom chatted on, wishing the man’d be silent just for a minute so he could grope his thoughts back together.

  ‘Well, every cloud and all that, eh?’ the man continued cheerily. ‘At least if you’ve earned yourself a bang on the head and your miss lost her horse, she’s gained a husband – and right plum too, so my mistress was saying. Are they announcing it when they’re back in London, you reckon?’

  Luke couldn’t answer. His limbs were suddenly cold beneath the thin, scratchy blanket.

  A ring, flashing with fire, on Rosa’s finger.

  Her face,
streaming with blood.

  Knyvet . . .

  ‘I’ve got to get up,’ he managed hoarsely, and he swung his legs out of bed, his arms trembling as he pushed against the hard, flat mattress.

  ‘Eh, mate, you’re in no state to go mucking out. I’ll do yer horses if you tell me which ones. Wait a while . . .’

  ‘I can’t.’

  He began to drag his clothes on, his head pounding. As he dressed he tried to think. He had to see Rosa. But how? A groom couldn’t go marching into the young ladies’ bedrooms. He didn’t even know where she was, in this great maze of a house.

  Rose! he thought desperately, pleading with her to hear. She was a witch, wasn’t she? Surely they could read minds, something.

  Then it came to him. The ladies’ maids.

  Luke burst into the servants’ hall so fast that the door thumped against the wall. There was only one maid there, sitting at the table doing some darning.

  ‘Lordy love us!’ She looked up. ‘Who tied a firework to your tail?’

  ‘I need to get a message to – to my mistress. How can I do it? Could you take her a note?’

  The girl laughed comfortably, tied off her darning and bit off the end of the thread. Luke wanted to strangle her for her slowness.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well yourself! Who’s your mistress when she’s at home?’

  ‘Miss Greenwood. Rosa Greenwood.’

  ‘Well, Mr Well, you’re out of luck. They’ve left. Didn’t they tell you?’

  ‘Left?’

  ‘Yes, she caught the early train back to London this morning with her brother. I expect you’re to follow with the horses. Why Lordy, what’s the matter with you? You’ve gone quite pale. Here, sit down.’

  She shoved a chair at him and Luke groped his way to it and sat, feeling the blood pound in his head.

  ‘Had a bang on the head, did you?’ She looked sympathetically at the bandage and he managed to nod.

  ‘Nasty things, horses. I never did like them. My dad was an ostler and his father too, but it skipped a generation with me. To me they’re just nasty great beasts what’d step on your foot any day of the week and never say sorry. Here,’ she pushed a huge brown teapot at him, and took a cup from a shelf, ‘have a cuppa, and I’ll run out to the yard and see if the head groom knows what you’re to do.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Luke said hoarsely.

  ‘Miss Greenwood,’ the girl said slowly as she filled up his cup. ‘She’s that lass what’s just got engaged to Mr Sebastian, right?’

  Luke nodded, dully, the pain in his head throbbing until he thought he might be sick.

  ‘Well, isn’t that nice,’ she beamed. ‘Nothing like a wedding in the family to cheer things up. We’ll be seeing a fair bit of you round here, I dare say.’

  After she left Luke put his head in his hands. He didn’t feel like tea – he felt sick and faint, and full of dread-soaked questions. What would happen when he got back to London? Would he be sacked? Why had Knyvet allowed him to live, after what he’d seen? And, most importantly of all, why did everyone think Rosa was still engaged to Knyvet?

  Rosa was sitting in her bedroom, staring blindly out across the roofs, when she heard the slow, weary clop of hooves in the mews alleyway behind the house. When she looked down, through the gathering fog, she could see the dark shape of a horse and rider approaching. Only one rider and only one horse. Cherry . . .

  For a minute her eyes pricked with tears and she thought that she would give way to one of the helpless fits of weeping that had taken her since she’d arrived back in London. But she drew a deep, shuddering breath and pressed her lips firmly together, pushing the tears back down where they belonged. She would not give in. Not to this. Not now.

  The rider turned in at the gate and then dismounted. Through the thick yellow fog she could see only the outline, but it was Luke, she would have known his silhouette anywhere, the slow deliberation of his movements as he unbuckled Brimstone’s harness and led him into the stall, next to Cherry’s empty one.

  He looked bone-weary, his movements slow and dragging. She watched him until he was gone from sight, inside the stable, and then turned her eyes back to the rooftops, to the spiky chimneys and the circling starlings, looking for a place to roost. The sparrows and pigeons were long gone, to wherever they sheltered, and a thin sickly moon was on the rise, its light a sulphurous yellow through the swirling fog. How could London be so beautiful and so filthy at the same time? She thought of the wide gleaming lawns at Matchenham, at the soft golden stone of the house in the winter sun, and the tears rose inside her again, a trapped grief trying to get free.

  ‘Rosamund,’ came a voice from the doorway, and Rosa turned, her heart beating fast. It was Mama. She stood in the doorway, her emerald-green silk skirts rustling against the threadbare carpet as she came into the room.

  ‘You know what you must do.’ Her expression was unsmiling.

  Rosa closed her eyes. Yes, she knew.

  ‘Come.’ Mama put a cold hand on Rosa’s cheek, against the worse of the purple bruising. Rosa steeled herself, forcing herself not to flinch away. ‘It’s not pleasant, I know, but it must be done. You’ve done well; don’t falter at the last fence.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Go now, before he goes into the kitchen.’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  She looked at the carpet, refusing to meet Mama’s eyes. She could not bear the reflection of herself that she would see there.

  Mama turned and left, and Rosa stood, letting the blood come back into her stiff limbs. Before she left the room she turned, quite deliberately, to the mirror over the dressing table. For the journey back to London she had worn a veil, for there were limits to what magic could heal. She had done her best – the bruises were purple, not black and blue. Her eyes were bloodshot but the bones in her nose had started to knit. The kink would remain, a broken ridge to remind her, always, of Sebastian’s power.

  A fall out riding, Mama had told Ellen. Most unfortunate. Miss Rosa will keep to her room for a few days while the bruises heal.

  But she would not hide herself from Luke. He had seen the worst already.

  Her own eyes met her in the mirror, gold-brown and red-rimmed.

  It was time.

  Luke was sweeping Cherry’s empty stall as Rosa entered the stable and did not immediately hear her above the slow rhythmic swish of the brush. She stood in the shadows, watching him, wanting to remember this moment always. A single lamp burn in the window and the light glinted from his straw-coloured hair, catching the small golden stubble on his cheek and at his jaw as he turned. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and she could see the muscles in his arms move and flex as he methodically worked his way across the small space. Brimstone nuzzled at his shoulder as he came close, more trusting and affectionate than she had ever seen him with Alex. A lump rose in her throat and she stepped forward into the light, before she could think better of this.

  He turned as he heard her footsteps and his breath caught in his throat.

  They stood, neither of them saying anything, and then he crossed the stall to her and took her shoulders, turning her face to the light.

  ‘My God.’ She could feel him shaking. ‘I’ll testify against him if you want to prosecute. I’ll speak for you in court, tell ’em what he did.’

  She would have laughed if she hadn’t felt so like crying. Testify! He would never even get to the court. It would be his death.

  ‘I came to tell you . . .’ She tried to make herself hard, cold, as Mama would be. ‘I came to tell you . . .’

  She couldn’t finish. The words stuck in her throat, choking her.

  ‘Rose . . .’ he began. There were tears in his hazel eyes. She could not bear it. Then his gaze went to her finger, where she was still wearing the ring. The colour
left his face. ‘Why . . . ?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said stupidly. It was not what she had meant to say. This was turning out all wrong. ‘Luke, oh Luke, I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘Take it off.’

  ‘I can’t.’ It was true. The ring had shrunk, the metal band biting into her finger until it could not be removed.

  ‘What?’ He took her hand and his eyes widened. ‘We’ll get pliers – nippers. I’ll get it off, I promise.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m not . . . I’m not going to take it off.’

  ‘What?’ He gripped her very hard and she fought against the stupid treacherous tears. ‘Rose, don’t do this – there must be another way. Are you afraid of him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. At that one word, as if he couldn’t help it, he pulled her into his arms. They stood for a long moment, clinging together, her face against his chest, listening to the frantic pounding of his heart. She could feel him trying to form words, trying to speak, and she knew that she must speak first, before he broke her resolve. She rested her cheek against the soft roughness of his shirt and drew a breath.

  Like this, not looking at him, she could do it.

  ‘Listen, Luke, there’s no way out for me. I have to do this – for Mama, for Alexis, for Matchenham.’ For you, she added silently in her head. She swallowed, trying to make him understand. ‘I have no choice – there’s no escape except through him.’

  ‘He’s no escape, Rosa, can’t you see that? He’s just another prison and a worse one. Please . . .’ His arms tightened around her. ‘Come away with me. We’ll start again.’

  ‘Can’t you see, it’s impossible? The difference between us . . .’ She couldn’t finish, but it hovered there, the impossible chasm of identity and class and magic that lay between them. He was a stable-hand and, worse, an outwith.

  ‘So that’s it? That’s what it comes down to, he has money and I don’t?’ He pushed her away and she heard the crack in his voice as he turned, as if he couldn’t look at her. ‘You’re selling yourself for a house, Rosa.’