Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2)

by Ruth Warburton

  ‘Is it possible Sebastian doesn’t know we’re here?’ she asked desperately.

  ‘Oh, he knows,’ Leadingham said. He spoke in a conversational tone, but the alley funnelled and shaped his voice, bringing it to them as clearly as if he spoke in their ear. ‘Oh yes, he knows.’

  ‘What?’ Luke swung round, facing Leadingham. He put Rosa behind him, as if his body could protect her. She wanted to laugh at the futility of it. She wanted to kiss him for trying. ‘How the hell d’you know Knyvet?’

  ‘Leadingham and I came to a temporary arrangement some weeks ago.’ A low drawl came from the other end of the passage and a familiar top-hatted figure stepped out at the end of the alley, silhouetted against the shifting lamplight. Rosa’s fingers closed on the back of Luke’s coat. That soft, rough voice, like velvet rubbed against the grain. Pictures rose in her head: Sebastian’s fist against her face; his teeth grazing her lip; the sound of a whip against flesh and a puppy’s screams.

  Her head reeled and for a moment she thought she might pass out, but the sickness passed and she stood, panting with fear and anger, ready to fight.

  ‘What?’ Luke turned from Leadingham, to Sebastian, and then back again. Rain dripped from his hair and ran down the bridge of his nose. There was a kind of incredulous disbelief on his face, as if someone had just struck a huge blow at the foundation of everything he thought was true. ‘Leadingham, tell me this isn’t true?’

  But Leadingham only shrugged.

  ‘No.’ Luke was shaking his head. ‘No. How can you condemn me when you – you—’

  ‘Don’t start on that with me,’ Leadingham sounded weary. ‘I never betrayed my oaths, Luke. I did my best to protect my people and my patch, that’s all. Sometimes that means compromises.’

  ‘But – but . . .’ Luke’s hands were in his hair, tearing at his face as if he could pull out his eyes and not have to see or hear this any more. ‘Why? How?’

  He stopped, gasping, unable to find the words.

  ‘We stumbled over each other looking for you,’ Leadingham said dryly. ‘And, well – I knew who he was, of course, but there was no sense in fighting a war on two fronts. We had a . . . discussion, let’s call it, and agreed to drop arms against each other for the time being, concentrate on our joint aim. I’ve been able to do Knyvet the service of returning his fiancée. And him – well, let’s just say he made it worth my while.’

  ‘Very,’ Knyvet said, and he smiled, a smile that thinned his lips to a bloodless white line.

  ‘Sebastian . . .’ Rosa’s hand crept to her throat and then she dropped it. She would not show him her fear. She would not show him her revulsion.

  If there was a way out of this, it did not lie in running.

  She stepped away from Luke, up the alley, towards the top-hatted figure.

  ‘Sebastian, let me go.’

  He said nothing and she moved closer to him, her hand outstretched.

  ‘You could have any wife you wanted. You could have beauty, riches . . . anything. Find another wife. One who loves you for who you are.’

  ‘One who loves me . . .’ There was a silence and then he began to laugh, a long, rolling, bitter laugh. ‘One who loves me for who I am. And what is that, Rosa darling? What am I? A madman?’ He stepped into the light at the end of the alley and Rosa saw the thin white line that traced his cheek from lip to ear, where she had slashed him in the factory: a dueller’s scar. ‘A killer?’ He came closer, his hand outstretched. ‘You’ve made a monster of me, Rose.’ He reached out and traced a finger down her skin from cheek to jaw, his fingers imitating the raindrops that caressed the line of her throat and soaked into her shawl. ‘Your disloyalty, your perfidy, your beauty. You’ve turned me into this, Rosa. I burnt innocent men and women, children, because of you. I will have to live with my actions until I die. And so will you. A kind of justice, is it not?’

  ‘No . . .’ She was not sure if she was telling him, or begging him. ‘Sebastian, no—’

  ‘How dare you blame her.’ Luke’s voice behind her was hard and cold. ‘You owned that factory, you chose to lock us in and leave us to die. You did that – not her, you.’

  Sebastian thrust out a gloved hand, palm first, and Luke slammed back and upwards into the wall of the alley, his feet dangling, his head smacking against the brick. He gasped and a thin line of fresh blood trickled from the wound on the back of his head, mingling with the rain that ran down his throat.

  ‘Sebastian!’ she gasped. Sebastian only smiled and closed his fingers into a fist. Luke’s groan strangled and then died in his throat. There was silence in the alley now, so quiet she could hear the pub songs floating in the night air and the patter of the rain that dripped from the eaves and puddled on the floor.

  ‘Sebastian!’ she begged again. Luke’s chest rose and fell, heaving for air. His eyes were screwed shut, as if he were fighting something . . . as if he were losing.

  ‘Sebastian!’ she screamed. ‘Let go of him!’

  ‘Come with me,’ Sebastian said, low and soft, his voice caressing. ‘Your life for his – wasn’t that what it was always about?’

  For a moment Rosa stood in the passage, looking from Sebastian’s tall silhouette to Luke’s agonized, crucified form, splayed unnaturally against the brickwork. Luke’s face had darkened from red, to a kind of purple.

  ‘Please . . . You’re killing him.’ She turned to Leadingham in despair. ‘How can you stand by and watch this? Isn’t it your mission, to protect your kind from ours? Do something!’

  ‘Luke forfeited our protection.’ Leadingham’s voice was as implacable as his face, hard and cold. ‘When he chose you over his Brothers, he forfeited any right to our blood spilt in his defence.’

  She would have screamed if she thought it would do any good. She could have sobbed and pounded them with her fists. But she knew that none of this would move either of the two men standing sentinel at each end of the narrow alley.

  ‘Let him go.’ She spoke to Sebastian, not Leadingham. ‘Let him go, and I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Do you swear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He released the spell and Luke fell to the wet ground, his head lolling painfully. Rosa ran to him, kneeling in the muck and silt of the alley by his side, but before she could do more than smooth his rain-drenched hair back from his forehead she heard Sebastian’s voice, hard and sharp as a gunshot.

  ‘Touch him again and he dies. Now, get back here.’

  Slowly, she stood. But she had seen what she wanted to know – Luke was breathing. His colour was fading to normal. He was alive.

  ‘Come here.’

  She went, hating herself for her obedience, but knowing that fine gestures could achieve nothing now.

  With an elaborate flourish, Sebastian held open the door of the carriage and bowed.

  ‘Your carriage awaits, milady.’

  Hating him, hating herself, Rosa put one foot on the step. Then she turned back, to Leadingham, still standing implacable at the far end of the alley, his arms crossed in the dim, shifting lamplight.

  ‘If you kill him,’ she spoke very low, but somehow she was sure her words would reach him, ‘if you kill him, I will find you. No matter if it takes me a year, five years or twenty. You will never hear a door bang, but wonder if it’s me, coming for you. You will never hear a creak in the night, or a branch tap on your window, without thinking of my promise. I will come for you. And you will suffer ten times whatever you inflict on him.’

  ‘For Gawd’s sake,’ Leadingham’s voice was full of a biting sarcasm, ‘shut her up, Knyvet. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a crowing hen.’

  Sebastian gave a short laugh, and Rosa let herself be pulled into the carriage, and Sebastian slammed the door closed.

  The last thing she saw as the carriage pulled away was Luke’s body, lying in the muddy, rain-soaked alley, and Leadingham standing over him, his arms folded, like his murderer.

  Rosa stayed at the carriage wind
ow as long as possible, until the rain closed behind them. And as the coachman touched his whip to the horses and they picked up their pace along Brick Lane, she could think of only one thing: she had not told Luke that she loved him. And now perhaps he would never know.

  It was growing light as the carriage swung into the drive at Southing and wound down between the frost-rimed trees to the great house. The rain had turned to snow on their journey down and the carriage wheels made a soft shirring on the freshly fallen flakes that lay undisturbed on the drive.

  The horses were tired, their breath rising white in the cold dawn air, but at last they came round the last curve, into sight of Southing itself, still and silent in the white landscape. Last time Rosa had seen it, it was ablaze with light and life, the doors flung wide, footmen lining the drive in serried ranks to receive their visitors. Now the windows were dark and shuttered inside.

  Sebastian helped her from the carriage and she walked, in a kind of waking dream, or perhaps a nightmare, across the soft carpet of snow and into that tall pillared porch where just a few weeks before Sebastian had given her a rose made of ice.

  She remembered the entrance hall as it had been then, full of footmen and maidservants, the butler standing by, a fire roaring in the grate. It was silent now, the furniture shrouded in white dust sheets, the grate dark. Only a single oil lamp burnt, high in the rafters.

  ‘Welcome home, my darling,’ Sebastian said as the door closed behind them, and he kissed her left hand, dirty and bloodied as it was. His lips curved in a thin, wry smile. ‘I suppose you thought you were very clever, chopping off your finger?’

  ‘Not clever, no,’ she whispered. ‘Stupid, for not realizing the truth before.’

  ‘Alexis found the ring, you know, when he came round after your trick with the bottle. I had it reset.’

  ‘He’s alive then?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ A voice came from behind her. She turned, and there was Alexis, his hands in his pockets, standing in the doorway to the drawing room. His red hair was dishevelled and he was white and sweating. Rosa realized he was drunk, though the sun had barely come up. ‘Were you worried?’

  ‘Yes! Of course I was!’

  ‘Touching solicitude, considering you left me for dead in a pool of – what was that stuff? It knocked out my magic for a good couple of weeks.’

  Rosa shook her head.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. Luke had it . . . Alexis, please.’ She stepped close to him, lowering her voice, although there was no hope of Sebastian not overhearing. ‘Please. Think of what you’re doing. Think of what this will mean to me. Is it really worth selling your own sister for a post at the Ealdwitan? For God’s sake . . .’ Her voice was pleading, though she hated herself for it. ‘Think – think of what Papa would say!’

  ‘Him!’ Alexis gave a laugh – not a pleasant one. ‘This whole situation is dear, precious Papa’s fault, if you must know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If he hadn’t tied up half the estate in your marriage portion . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘B-but we’re penniless. He died and left us penniless.’

  ‘He left us penniless, yes,’ Alexis said. ‘He spent Mama’s dowry, mortgaged the house, sold my future up the river. About the only thing he didn’t touch was your damn marriage portion.’

  ‘Is that what this is about?’ she cried. ‘Some trust? I’ll sign it over! I’ll give it to you, for God’s sake, Alexis, please!’

  ‘You can’t,’ Alexis said dismissively. ‘Don’t think we didn’t look into that. Mama’s had the best lawyers in the Ealdwitan looking at the terms of that trust. It’s marriage or nothing.’

  ‘How can that be?’ Rosa said bewildered. ‘What if I’d died a spinster?’

  ‘Oh, it reverts to you on your thirtieth birthday if you’re still unmarried. But unfortunately we can’t keep afloat that long.’

  ‘But – but if I marry, it becomes mine. How can that benefit you?’

  ‘If you marry,’ he spelt it out, ‘it becomes your husband’s.’

  ‘And he has promised it to you.’ Her heart was sinking. She felt like the bottom had fallen from her world. Not just advancement. Not even friendship. But money. That was all it came down to. Money Alexis felt should have been his. Money he could not touch, except by betraying his sister.

  ‘I did not choose this,’ she said, her voice very low. ‘I didn’t ask for this. You’re punishing me for something I had no part in. How could Papa know, Alex? I’m sure he didn’t mean . . . he never meant . . .’

  ‘I really don’t care what he meant or what he thought.’’ Alexis looked at her and there was something close to disgust in his face, or perhaps it was hate. ‘Father was a fool and a drunk who fell under a carriage when he was soused without a care for his wife and son. And if you’d ever acted like you gave a damn about me, all these years—’

  ‘As if I gave a damn?’ Rosa gasped. She looked at him standing there in his stained britches and waistcoat, his freckled face damp and waxen with drink, and she shook with anger. ‘Alex, you had everything! You had Mama’s love, you had all the money there was, you had clothes and education – there was nothing left for me, nothing! Why should I be sorry for you? You condemn Papa for a drunkard – well, look at yourself. Perhaps he tied up that money because he looked at you and refused to throw good money after bad.’

  ‘He tied up that money,’ Alexis snarled, his spittle striking her face as he enunciated the words so that she could not mistake a single syllable, ‘because he didn’t love me. Because all the affection he had was sucked out him by you, you little leech. And you expect me to feel sorry for you because of that? Well, damn you, Rosa. Damn you to hell. Do you think I enjoy crawling to Seb for what should be rightfully mine?’

  He turned on his heel and began to walk away, leaving Rosa speechless, almost winded by his vitriol. How long had he and Mama known this, known that she was sitting on the last asset the estate possessed? Since Papa’s death? Before, even?

  ‘Oh, and by the way,’ Alexis said carelessly as he caught the library door in his hand, ‘you owe me a new horse. Bye, Seb.’

  The door slammed and he was gone.

  Rosa stared at Sebastian, who gave a shrug and then held out his arm.

  ‘Shall we?’

  ‘He’s mad,’ Rosa whispered. ‘You’re mad. Don’t you care how people will see your actions? How can you go from loving me, to trying to kill me, and now to this? To a forced marriage?’

  Sebastian smiled.

  ‘I have to own, Rosa. I have to control. My family have always been commanders of one kind and another: generals, judges, bishops, admirals, ministers of parliament – and yes, businessmen and factory owners too. We have fought and killed and subdued to our will – that is what it means to be a Knyvet, Rosa. It’s what I was bred to, from my cradle. And when I saw you – in the drawing room at Osborne House, with your eyes so wild and afraid, and your spirit so unquenched, your fire undimmed by the London fog – there was something about you, Rosa. You were so impossibly different from all the women in India, starched and sweating and damp with their ardour and their greed. Beside them you were a little vixen. You were that little wild girl running in the woods at Matchenham, with her hair loose and her skirts ripped. And I knew I had to have you. There are many kinds of possession, Rose. Many ways to tame and silence and control. They are all facets of the same thing.’

  He came very close and put his fingers on her neck, where the pulse beat hard and fast beneath her ear and the skin was thin. She felt his breath on her face and smelt the sourness of old cigar smoke, but that was not what made her shudder.

  ‘Do you know what the French call the act of love?’ His fingers against her throat were hard and cold. She shook her head, trying not to show her fear. He whispered the answer and she felt his breath, cool against her cheek. ‘Le petit mort – the little death.’

  He would never
let her go. It came to her as she stood, rigid with fear, her magic a small, cowed thing deep within. He could not let her go, for she would tell the truth about everything. In truth this marriage was a death; a living death. She thought of Sebastian’s mother, a prisoner upstairs. Had this been her fate? Perhaps the madness had come later . . .

  She swayed and almost fell, and Sebastian’s arm went around her, carefully, solicitously.

  ‘Darling, you are tired. Let me show you to your room.’

  ‘My cell.’

  But she followed him up the stairs, her feet shushing on the thick carpet as he turned down corridor after corridor, until they came to a thick baize door, soundproofed with padding. He unlocked it with a key.

  ‘I thought you would like to get to know my mother. So I have put you in her wing. The rest of the house is shut up, in any case. She is asleep, I believe. But later I hope you will meet. This is your room.’

  He opened a door to his right and Rosa looked at the tall windows with their iron bars, at the flowered yellow wallpaper, incongruously cheerful. At the bed. A double bed.

  She walked to the window, her heart beating hard, and looked out over the parks and woodland. The bars were laced with spells, she could feel the magic. Oh, just a night or two of rest and her power would be back!

  She shut her eyes.

  ‘Please, I’d like to rest,’ she said, her voice sounding hard in her attempt not to give way to the churning fear inside. ‘If you could leave now.’

  ‘Of course, my darling. You’re tired. All that travelling . . . Oh, just one more thing,’ Sebastian said, almost carelessly, as he turned to go. ‘Your wedding ring. As I said, I had it reset.’

  He reached into his pocket and held up a necklace, a narrow band of filigree gold, shaped like a slender collar, with the ruby burning at its heart.

  ‘Fríes-þu!’ he snapped, and almost before Rosa had realized what was happening, she found herself rigid, her arms locked by her side, her feet fastened to the carpet as if made of stone.