Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2)

by Ruth Warburton

  But something stopped him.

  He would not give John Leadingham another reason to kill him. If there was a way out of this it lay in reminding Leadingham of the cold truth of what he was doing: killing a man he’d known from a boy, the nephew of his friend.

  ‘If you won’t untie my hands,’ he said, trying to keep his voice steady, ‘at least take off my blindfold. Look me in the eye and tell me what you’re going to do to me. You owe me that, John.’

  There was a long silence, and for a moment Luke thought that John was going to ignore him, take refuge in that iron-clad silence he’d preserved throughout the night.

  ‘All right.’

  Luke felt John’s rough, scarred fingers at the back of his head, fiddling with the knot of the blindfold, and then the rag fell away and he was blinking in the light from the carriage lamps. John Leadingham’s wrinkled face was leaning over him, grim and cold.

  ‘As a Brother, I owe you nothing, Luke Lexton. For you gave the Brotherhood nothing. But as a man, you’re right. I owe you something. So here it is: you are to die. Because of your own stupidity in trying to save a witch who was fallen beyond saving.’

  And he looked to his right.

  Luke’s eyes followed his bright button-black eyes. And then he saw.

  Rosa.

  Trussed and tied like a prisoner, her arms bound to her sides, her eyes blindfolded, and her mouth gagged and stuffed with a rag.

  And Luke realized suddenly what he’d failed to notice during all the long hours of captivity – the stink of the chemical stuff John brewed was not on his hands or his jacket, but coming from the corner of the carriage, where Rosa lay bound and unconscious, her head lolling back against the hard bench seat, her throat bare and naked to any knife.

  ‘No!’ He began to struggle like a wild thing, kicking out in the narrow space, hardly knowing what he was doing, not caring that the ropes bit into his skin, not caring as John Leadingham’s hard hand came down over his mouth, stifling his agonized bellow. ‘No! For God’s sake, no! No! Rosa! Oh Christ, Rose, wake up, wake up—’

  ‘Somebody shut him up!’ John Leadingham yelled in a hoarse, furious whisper. ‘Or we’ll have half the inn out here!’

  ‘Rosa!’ Luke flung himself towards her, the ropes ripping at his skin as he strained to get close enough to yank the gag from her mouth.

  And then something huge and heavy cracked down on his skull, on the old half-healed wound where Sebastian had hit him so many weeks and months ago.

  He looked up for one long moment in silent astonishment, the blood running hot and dark down his cheek, to his throat.

  And then he slumped to the floor.

  ‘We get rid of her.’

  The voice was low and firm. Luke screwed his eyes tighter shut, seeing stars against the blackness of his closed lids.

  ‘What – for good?’

  ‘No, you fool. A damn sight more profitably than that.’

  ‘But she’s a witch – shouldn’t we try her?’

  ‘Damn it, man, who’s master here? Look, a trial means delay. It means keeping ’em both locked up, and keeping her dosed, day and night, or she’ll break out. We don’t have the time for that, nor the money to spare for men to guard her. Whereas if it’s just the lad, all we need is a good stout door and a skein of rope, and someone to come in once a day to feed him and empty the slops.’

  Luke’s head was spinning. He tried to lift his skull but it gave a great throb of pain that made him sick to his stomach, and he let it drop. The lad . . . the witch . . . he felt they must be talking about people that he knew – but he couldn’t join the pieces together.

  ‘So what will you do? With her?’

  ‘Never you mind. But there’s people been looking for her. People who’ll pay good money.’

  ‘And the lad?’

  ‘He’ll stand trial.’ The voice was troubled. ‘If he makes it.’

  ‘If he makes it,’ the other man said. ‘You hit him a blinder, John. What it he don’t make it?’

  There was a long, long silence. Luke felt his head loll and roll on the hard boards. Then the first voice spoke again.

  ‘If he don’t make it, then maybe . . . well, maybe it’s for the best.’

  When he woke again, it was to the feel of hands beneath his armpits, dragging him, and the cold rush of air against his face. He opened his eyes to a world that spun, but even in his concussed state, he knew. He was in London. He could smell it in the air, taste it in the snow-filled fog. He was in Spitalfields – and William was somewhere near. He was home.

  The knowledge was like a river running through him, with all the slow force of the Thames. He felt a momentary strength return to his limbs and he kicked out, making the wound on the back of his head scream with pain and the world around him shudder as it whirled.

  ‘He’s coming round,’ he heard a voice cry out, and felt the hands beneath his armpits falter and then grip harder.

  ‘Never you mind him!’ the cry came back. ‘He’s weak as a cat. The girl’s the one you gotta mind, she’s the killer. Make sure that rag’s bound in good and tight.’

  ‘She’s out like a light,’ said another voice. ‘Never fear.’

  ‘Then come on, stop gassing like a pack of women and get them inside ’fore the peelers start asking questions.’

  Luke had no strength to fight any more, and he let his head fall back and his eyes close. But he was not done yet. He was still captive. He was still condemned. But he was in London.

  Rosa woke to darkness and a splitting headache. Her hands were bound behind her back and there was a rag in her mouth choking her, making it hard to breathe. As she pieced together where she was, she couldn’t stop a kind of panic spreading through her, her heart beginning to race, the air dragging fast and painful through her nostrils.

  Luke – where was Luke? Where was she? Someone had tracked them down. Not Sebastian, she was sure of it. That spell had held.

  But who?

  The answer came with the stench of the rag in her mouth, and she realized with a sinking heart. The Malleus. She and Luke had been so busy worrying about Sebastian they had almost forgotten there were other dangers out there, not all of them witches.

  She lay in the darkness, trying to calm her thumping heart and summon a little magic to get the bindings off her.

  Come on . . . come on, Rosa.

  She couldn’t say the words of the spell, not with the spit-covered gag in her mouth, but she thought them with every muscle and nerve and bone in her body. Unwríð! Unwríð!

  But the ropes did not shift, and she could feel there was almost nothing there, only a thin thread of fuddled magic, poisoned and quelled by the stinking rag.

  Try harder.

  She wasn’t even trying for the words of the spell now, just concentrating every fibre of her being on the gag. Please . . . please . . . come on!

  She felt a great tide of frustration and fear rise up inside her, threatening to choke her, and she tried to force it back, but it tore out of her in a snorting, gasping sob that hurt her throat and eyes and nose.

  Please let me go!

  But there was no power there. Whatever was soaking that gag, it was the same dizzying, acrid stuff that had been in Luke’s bottle, that had made her magic quail like a frightened animal. She thought of Alexis, lying in a pool of the poison, and the sob rose up again. Whatever he had done, he was her brother and she had left him there, perhaps to die. The sound that broke out of her was not a cry or a sob, but something more animal, a kind of bellowing moan that echoed around the little room, taunting her in the darkness, filling her ears with the sound of her own dumb misery and despair.

  Then through the thickness of the wall she heard a cry, muffled by the bricks. She held her breath, listening, trying to silence the thumping of her heart, and it came again. It sounded . . . it sounded like her name.

  Was it real? Had she really heard it, or was it her mind playing tricks?

  ‘Rosa!’ This t
ime it was a long, drawn-out cry, made faint by the distance, but she could not mistake the words. It sounded like a man.

  Her heart was pounding as she began to inch her way painfully across the floor, the cold stone scraping her skin as she pushed herself along with her fingers and feet, until at last she was hard up against the wall where the sound had been coming from.

  ‘Rosa!’

  It was Luke! It really was Luke. She did not know whether to laugh with relief that he was alive, or cry with horror that he was in the same mess as her. But it was him – and so close she could hear his voice, and yet . . .

  ‘Rosa?’ he called again, more faintly, and there was a note of despair in his voice. ‘Rosa, are you there? Answer me!’

  But how could she? She couldn’t speak. She could only . . .

  She twisted round and banged the wall with her feet, hard enough to send shock waves through her body to her pounding head, hard enough to make her joints ache in protest, desperately hoping the sound would be enough to travel through the bricks and carry to wherever he was.

  ‘Rosa?’ The sound came again, a shout this time, full of a kind of desperate hope. ‘Rosa, is that you? Answer me!’

  She banged again, willing him to understand.

  ‘Oh God, the gag!’ She heard his muffled groan of frustration, and then, ‘Are you hurt? Bang once for no, twice for yes.’

  She banged once and then listened with a thudding heart, begging him to hear the questions screaming in her skull. Luke! Are you hurt? Where are we? Will they kill us? What’s going to happen?

  ‘Thank God.’ His voice filtered thinly through the walls. ‘I’m all right too.’ Her heart leapt with joy. ‘I’m manacled, but I’m not gagged. They’ve chained me to something and the door’s locked, but I can sit up. Listen, can you cast spells?’

  The sob rose up again with fury at herself, frustration at her power for being so weak and pointless and easily cowed.

  She banged once with her heels on the wall. One blow for no. The single thud echoed in the little room with a horrible finality.

  There was a long, long silence.

  Then at last Luke spoke. She could hear the despair in his voice and the way he strove to hide it for her.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’ll come back. It’ll be all right. We’ll be all right. We’ll think of something.’ Then his voice came again, quicker and fainter, not quite a whisper, but not the shout of before. ‘They’re coming back. I can hear feet. Don’t bang until I call.’

  And then nothing.

  In a cell just up the corridor, Luke lay back, panting with the effort of shouting through the thick brick walls. He was pretty sure they must be in the cellar of a pub. Earlier, he’d heard barrels being rolled down a ramp not far away, thumping on to the hay-filled sack at the foot of the chute. Most likely it was the Cock Tavern. But the knowledge was of precious little use down here. The cellars were huge and rambling, and the Brothers would make sure that no one would hear their cries. But at least now he knew that Rosa was here – and alive.

  He lay quiet, listening to the footsteps coming closer, and then a key grated into the door and he tried to sit up. His wrists were chained to the floor.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he said, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

  ‘Shurrup,’ growled a voice, and a man shuffled into the cellar, his face hidden by a black mask. Luke knew the boots though, and the bottoms of his trousers: Benjamin West. He could see his glasses glinting through the eyeholes of the hood.

  ‘Ben,’ he said hoarsely, ‘Ben, don’t do this. Think about what William—’

  ‘I said, shurrup, traitor!’ Ben shot back, but his voice trembled as he slammed down the plate of food and the tankard of water.

  ‘Loosen my hands a bit, Ben, so’s I can at least eat. Please, I—’

  ‘I said shut up!’ Ben bellowed, and he kicked Luke in the side, so that he gasped and fell silent, choking for breath.

  Then he was gone, the door slamming behind him.

  Luke lay crouched for a while, trying to get his breath back. He should try and eat something, he knew, though he didn’t feel hungry.

  His hands were manacled to a ring on the floor on a length of chain maybe six inches long. It passed through the ring, so that by crushing one hand against the ring he could reach six inches in either direction. Benjamin West had left the food maybe eight inches away.

  Luke sighed. He pulled himself around, the rusty metal manacles biting into his skin, and by straining all his weight against the ring he could just reach the plate with his shoulder. He pushed against it with his upper arm, trying to get a purchase on the thin, slippery plate without spilling the contents, but it flipped and the bread fell to the damp, dusty floor. Luke gritted his teeth and shoved it again with his shoulder, dragging it across the flags. Slowly, slowly he edged it nearer until he had it within reach of the ring. He sat up, his muscles shaking with tiredness, and picked it up in his fingers. It was damp and covered in black dust from the floor, but it still made his mouth water. By crouching down and pulling the chain upwards as hard as he could, he could just get it to his lips. He chewed slowly, filled with thankfulness, feeling the energy slowly return to his limbs and the cold exhaustion ebb a little.

  When the bread had gone he lay on his side and tried to find a comfortable place for his head on the stone floor. The back of his skull hurt like a bastard where he’d been hit and he could feel crusted blood on the back of his neck, but that might be the least of his worries soon. How would they do it? Quick and clean, or slow and drawn out? He remembered John Leadingham’s abattoir, with the pink, naked pigs swinging from their hooks and the grating in the middle of the floor where the blood pooled and drained.

  Once he’d imagined himself on the end of one of those hooks, his ribs split open and his blood dripping on to the concrete floor. But now – now as the bread sat heavy in his belly – now it was Rosa’s naked, gutted body he saw swinging from the hook. He remembered the night he had spent in her arms, the feel of her long slim side beneath his hand, the soft rise and fall of her ribs, the hot smoothness of her skin, and the sound she had made as he touched it with his lips.

  And he thought of her corpse swinging in that abattoir . . . and he was filled with a cold, dread-filled rage.

  He pulled at the manacles with all his weight, the rusty metal biting into his skin, the blood running down his hands, making them slick and wet. But the chain did not snap and the manacles were too tight for him to force his hand through.

  At last he gave a great cry, a shout of frustration that echoed through the vaults, and he let his head fall to the floor. There was nothing he could do.

  It was dark, so Rosa could not tell whether it was morning or night, but she was sleeping the sleep of the dead when a man came through the door. He put his foot on her back, between her shoulder blades, and pressed her face into the stone. She heard a knife coming out of a sheath and her breath caught in her throat in a scream that died before it was born.

  Then there was a snick. She felt hair fall to the ground either side of her face and the gag was off.

  The man ran for the door and she rolled over, blinking and bewildered, and wondering what on earth was happening. Her mouth felt rancid and as dry as dust, and there was cut hair beneath her cheek, but then her face knocked against something that glinted in the scrap of lamplight beneath the doorway and slopped when she rocked it.

  Water.

  With her bound hands she could not lift the dish, so she crouched above it, sucking and lapping like a cat, and feeling the coolness drip down her throat. It tasted strange – metallic and bitter.

  It was only when the stuff hit her stomach that she realized her mistake.

  It was drugged. With something similar to the liquid in the bottle – maybe even the same stuff, diluted.

  She knelt on the floor trying to master her thirst, but her head was already starting to reel and the dry ache in her throat was too much. She put her face
to the dish and sucked and sucked until it was dry, knowing that she was sealing her fate but unable to stop herself. She felt the chemicals flooding her body, chasing out the magic from every cell.

  ‘Luke!’ she called thickly, too dazed to work out whether calling for him was a good idea or not. ‘Luke!’

  But there was no answer. If he could hear her, he wasn’t giving anything away.

  Her head spinning, she crawled across the floor to lie pressed against the stone wall where she’d heard Luke’s voice, trying to keep herself awake, keep herself listening, as she slipped back into darkness.

  Luke woke from a half-drowse to the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. A candle flame showed thin and wavering through the crack beneath the door and he heard a voice.

  ‘. . . today, probably.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ It was Ben West, his voice plaintive. ‘She’s condemned – why can’t we try her alongside the boy? Why sell her on?’

  ‘Never you mind.’ Leadingham’s voice, sharp and angry.

  ‘And who’d pay a price like that anyway? It’s madness!’

  ‘I said,’ Leadingham spoke low and full of menace, ‘never. You. Mind. If you know what’s good for you, West, you won’t go blabbing about this, neither.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I said, shut it. Or do you want to be in violation of your oaths, like our friend here?’ And he hit Luke’s cell door with something hard that chinked against the iron work.

  West said nothing, but Luke could almost hear the uneasy reluctance in his footsteps as he walked away.

  He heard the two men go up the corridor in the direction of Rosa’s room and then the sound of their footsteps as they passed back up, towards the door to the street.

  ‘No need to come back tonight, Ben,’ said Leadingham’s voice. ‘I’ll get Arthur to come with me this evening. I know you’ll have yer work to do.’

  ‘All right, John.’ Benjamin West’s voice, thin and unhappy. ‘But listen, man, I still think—’