Witch Hunt

by Ruth Warburton

  He looked up, his face full of questioning wonder, and she knew he was seeing her magic flare and blaze.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked softly. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She tightened her arms around him and felt as if she would choke with it, with the fierce burning determination to keep him safe from harm and far from Sebastian’s clutches. ‘Nothing is wrong.’

  He hugged her back, his skin warm against hers.

  ‘Don’t let go,’ she whispered. The candle guttered and the dying light of the fire cast shadows around them.

  ‘I won’t.’ His voice was low; it made something shiver inside her. ‘Why, are you afraid?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head fiercely. ‘Never.’

  But it was not true.

  The poster beneath Blackfriars Bridge was frayed and water-stained but still legible, just, and the man reading it tipped his cap back and frowned as he spelt out the letters in the hissing light of a gas street lamp.

  It took him a while to work out the message between the gaps, but when he had finished it was clear enough.

  Someone else was looking for the girl. And not one of the Brothers. Someone with money, and no small amount of money either – a hundred pounds was an incredible sum, more than any of the Brothers saw in a year.

  The man beneath the bridge scratched his head and picked a fleck of tobacco from his teeth, spitting it thoughtfully into the gutter as he considered what to do. Was this good news, or bad?

  John Leadingham would know.

  He considered trying to pull down the remains of the poster, but the wet peeling paper came to bits in his hands as he tried, and in the end he left it. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that someone else shared the same aim as them – someone with money and resources. And that was going to interest John Leadingham very, very much indeed.

  Luke sat in the window seat of the narrow dormer window, his feet pulled up beneath himself against the cold. It was tricky squashing his six-foot frame into the narrow ledge, but he could not have stayed in bed with Rosa, warm and languorous beside him, her face soft and flushed with sleep.

  He thought again of last night and felt the blood rise in a tide from his chest to his throat and his cheeks. Did she know? Had she guessed how close he’d come to forgetting himself and his position, burying his face in her hair, pressing his lips to the soft shadowy curves that showed so painfully clear through the thin white chemise?

  He thought perhaps she did, and he didn’t know whether that made him want to laugh or cry.

  The worst of it was that, in some ways, what she said made sense. But it was impossible to disentangle the logical, sensible reasons for marriage from the painful longing he felt in his breast every time she laughed, or tossed her head in that funny, proud gesture. How could he think, when his heart leapt every time she touched his skin, her magic prickling through him like a current, sending him mad.

  He could not tell what he should do any more. He could only tell what he wanted. And what he wanted was Rosa. But that did not make it right.

  He longed for the cold steel-bright certainty of before – for the black-and-white clarity of the Book, for the clear single-minded rules laid down by the Brothers. Witches were damned in the sight of God, so they must die. It was simple.

  But where he was now, there was no Book to guide him. He was completely alone – save for Rosa, breathing softly in sleep just across the room, her bandaged hand on the pillow beside her cheek.

  He looked out of the window, pulling the gingham curtain aside. It was still dark, but there was a thin pre-dawn sheen in the sky and the mist on the ploughed fields was luminous with its glow. Somewhere, not too far off, a horse neighed, and he wondered if it was Brimstone. Across the fields he heard the clang of cow bells. They were being led for milking, perhaps. Full udders wouldn’t wait for dawn.

  For no particular reason he thought of Minna, walking to the dairy in the pre-dawn light, her apron painstakingly laundered and dried in their cramped rooms, spotlessly white.

  He wished he knew where she was now. He wished he’d had time to say goodbye. He thought of her as he’d last seen her, her face swollen with the phossy jaw. Would it heal, away from the factory? He didn’t know.

  He missed her like an ache in the heart. Her small impudent face, her thin dirty hands ‘like a monkey’s paws’, William used to say, as she came scampering in at the back door to swipe an apple off the kitchen table, or a slice of bread from William’s plate, back when Luke himself was just a skinny urchin and she a skinnier one.

  Would he ever see her again? Would he see any of them again? William, John, Minna – and beautiful, dirty, heaving London. His London, not Rosa’s – not the stuck-up white buildings and grand boulevards, but the real heart of London, the twisted foetid stinking streets that had raised him from a baby to a man.

  Those streets had nearly killed Minna.

  If only he knew if she were safe . . .

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  Rosa’s voice made him jump. He turned, his heart beating angrily. She was standing next to him, the sheets clutched to her chest.

  ‘Jesus! You nearly gave me an apoplexy.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She hitched the sheets higher and shivered. ‘I thought you’d heard me.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t.’ He swung his legs to the floor and was about to stand when she said again:

  ‘So, what were you thinking?’

  His instinct was to shrug it off, but he thought of the other day, of her furious cry: How can we argue, how can we say what’s in our hearts, if you close up every time you feel anything?

  ‘I was thinking of Minna, if you must know,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I was wondering if she’s all right.’

  ‘Oh.’ Rosa bit her lip. She looked at the ground, her dark lashes sweeping her pale nutmeg-freckled cheeks. Then she looked up again. ‘Do you . . . were you sweethearts, Luke?’

  ‘With Minna?’ He almost laughed at the notion. Perhaps he would have, if his heart had not been so heavy. ‘No! God no. It was never like that. She was always . . . I don’t know. A mate. I never had a sister, perhaps like that.’

  ‘But you do love her?’

  ‘Yes.’ He said it simply. His feelings for Minna were simple. He loved her, in spite of her faults – and God, she had enough of those.

  ‘I . . .’ Rosa took a breath and turned towards the bed. She picked up her skirt and stepped into it. Luke knew her well enough now to recognize the set of her shoulders and spine, to know that she was pretending carelessness, but that what she was about to say mattered very much. ‘I could . . . you know. Scry. If you wanted.’

  ‘Scry?’

  ‘Look for her.’ She began to lace her corset, wrapping the laces around her middle before she tied them. She had her back to him, but Luke still turned away.

  ‘H-how?’

  Something rustled and he guessed she was putting on her petticoats, or her bodice. Her voice was muffled when she spoke.

  ‘Water will do. Is there any in the ewer?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said automatically. Then. ‘No. I don’t want you to.’

  ‘But why not? You’re worried!’

  ‘I can’t – I can’t explain it. Later, maybe.’

  ‘Are you worried about it leading them to us? Or are you frightened of what I might see?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He bit his lip. Both, perhaps.

  There was a silence, and then he heard Rosa make a small sound of frustration and pain, and he turned to see her struggling with the last of her buttons.

  ‘Damn my finger!’ she burst out at last.

  ‘Here, let me.’ He came across to where she stood by the bed and lit the candle, the better to see. He bent down to look. His fingers were too big for the tiny pearl-sized buttons, and for a moment he felt like laughing. A blacksmith – playing the lady’s maid. But Rosa only stood quietly, trying not to breathe, looking down at the top of his bowed head, and at last the fin
al button slipped into place.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You’re welcome. How’s your finger?’

  ‘All right, I think.’ She held it out, but it was impossible to see much beneath the bandage. There was no sign of any seepage. But it looked horribly, horribly wrong – that shortened stump where her finger should have been but wasn’t. Like a street magician’s trick, gone grotesquely awry.

  ‘Rose—’ Luke began, but before he could finish there was a knock at the door. They both looked at each other, and then Luke tucked in his shirt and moved to answer it. The old lady, Mrs Cleave, stood outside, smiling.

  ‘Porridge is ready, my dears. Come on down. You’ll be hungry, I don’t doubt.’

  Luke scraped the last of the porridge from the bowl and licked his spoon. It was, if possible, even better than the meal of the night before. Then he had been too hungry even to taste the food; he had just gulped it down, inhaling the meat and potatoes more than eating them.

  Now he looked up hopefully and Mrs Cleave smiled at him, her wrinkled face crinkling even more.

  ‘I like to see a boy with an appetite. My late husband was just the same, three bowls he could eat, and not a pick of flesh on him.’ She ladled another helping into Luke’s bowl and topped it with a slosh of creamy milk, and he set to again, the hot porridge scalding his mouth.

  Beside him Rosa was spooning busily, putting away her own portion with an efficiency that made the old lady smile and lean forward to top up her bowl as well.

  ‘That’s right. Flesh and bone won’t heal itself on thin air, you know. What happened to your finger, duckie?’

  ‘An accident,’ Rosa said. Her eyes flickered to Luke and they exchanged a look. ‘I was chopping wood.’

  ‘Oh dearie me. How sad. And if there’s one thing magic won’t heal, it’s a severed limb, heaven knows.’

  There was a clatter as Rosa’s spoon fell to her plate. They both sat, electrified but silent, for a long moment.

  ‘I b-beg your pardon?’ Rosa said at last. She picked up her spoon, but Luke could hear the tremble in her voice. He did not trust himself to speak. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no need to pretend in front of me, my duck. I have no power myself, but I do have the sight.’

  ‘What?’ It was Luke’s turn to drop his spoon, leaning forward across the scrubbed wooden table to where the old lady sat. He had to fight the urge to jump to his feet. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘The sight. I see magic. As do you, perhaps?’

  ‘I . . .’ He felt the colour drain from his face and his fingers tighten on the tabletop. Beside him, Rosa’s magic flared out in a panicked, directionless blaze.

  ‘Or perhaps you don’t?’ Mrs Cleave stood calmly and walked across to the porridge pot hanging above the fire. She gave it a stir with the long stick that rested on the side of the hearth. ‘You had a look to you of one who might, but perhaps I’m wrong.’

  ‘I . . .’ He found he could not breathe. Was it a trap? Had they come all this way and escaped so much, only to walk into a trap?

  ‘You have – what did you call it?’ Rosa’s porridge lay forgotten and cooling on her plate. Her eyes were fixed on the old lady, on her bent crooked back as she nursed the fire. ‘The sight?’

  ‘It’s not a common thing,’ Mrs Cleave said. She did not seem to have noticed their astonishment and alarm. She came to sit back at the table, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘They say it’s caused by magic turned inwards. My grandmother was one, of course.’

  ‘A – a what?’ Rosa said. Her voice was strangled.

  ‘A witch,’ Mrs Cleave said, as matter-of-factly as if she were saying a dairymaid or a Londoner. ‘My grandfather was an outwith. And my father, their son, an outwith too, for all anyone could tell. But it came out in me as the sight.’

  So there were others. Luke’s head swam with the knowledge of it. He was not alone. He was not a freak. And perhaps his uncle was right. His father might have been gifted like him; it could have passed down through the generations from— He stopped suddenly, confronted with the one immutable, impossible fact: from a witch. Somewhere in his family tree there must have been a witch.

  He turned to look at Rosa and he knew she was thinking the same thing; her eyes were wide with the strangeness of it.

  A witch. The irony of it made his head hurt: he was a witch’s child – and he had turned his power to harm them. He had given it over to the Malleus, for the Brothers to bend and shape and use to their own ends. He thought of all the names inscribed in the Book of Witches because of him. Men, women, even children he had seen in the street, pointed out, identified, trapped within its pages.

  And all the time, you were one of them.

  ‘Luke—’ She put out a hand towards him, but he pushed his plate away and stood abruptly, so that his stool fell to the floor with a crash.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said roughly. ‘I – I can’t . . . I’m sorry.’

  And then he almost ran from the cottage, out into the wild wet fields and away.

  Rosa found him at last. He was hunched in a small copse, his arms wrapped around himself against the cold, for he was only in his shirtsleeves. He was shivering.

  In his drab clothes, with his head bowed and his gold-brown hair the same colour as the few autumn leaves still clinging to the branches, she would never have found him, but for a whispered charm and the wind showing her the way as she searched the fields.

  ‘Come.’ She knelt beside him and tried to drape his coat around his shoulders. ‘Come home, Luke darling. You’ll freeze out here.’

  ‘Please leave me be,’ he said miserably.

  ‘No.’ She took his lapels in both hands and forced a smile, in spite of the cold and the misery on his face. ‘I’ll stay here with you, and we’ll both freeze together, if that’s what you want. But I won’t leave you out here in a field to wallow in your guilt.’

  ‘Who was it?’ He stared at her, unmoving, unable to shake the thought of what he’d done. ‘Was it my grandmother? Wouldn’t William have known though? Was it one of my great-grandparents? Was it even my mother?’ His face looked grey with the horror of it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said softly. She helped him to stand, his limbs stiff with hunching in the cold for so long. ‘But, Luke, does it change anything? What you did – you were a child. You didn’t know any better.’

  ‘I know.’ He put his hands to his face. ‘It was a sin no matter what, but somehow . . .’

  He did not say what he was thinking. The fear that somewhere on those lists that he’d helped to write was a relative of his own: one of the family he had never had, save William. A cousin. A great-uncle or aunt. Put there by his own hand and condemned to death.

  It should not make it any worse. It was true what he had told Rosa – the sin was the same, the blood on his hands was as real and red as before. It did not matter if it was his own blood – did it?

  But he could not help looking down at his hands, thinking of the men and women he had helped to murder – his own kin, perhaps.

  They were almost back at the cottage when he put his hand on Rosa’s arm and stopped.

  ‘Wait. Before we go inside, there’s something . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ She looked up at him, the wind blowing her curls into her face. She brushed them away, tucking them behind her ear. In the soft wintry light he could see the strands of red that had escaped the dye, like the scrap of fire that lurks in the centre of a burnt-out log, wanting only a breath to kindle into flame. ‘What is it?’

  ‘What you said – last night.’

  ‘About . . . ?’ she started, and then stopped. He saw emotions flicker across her face hope, doubt, a kind of fear, almost. He took her hands in his, feeling the bulk of the bandage and the slimness of her small fingers on the uninjured hand. ‘D’you still want it?’

  ‘Yes.’ One word, spoken very short, as if she were afraid to say any more.

  ‘Then . . . I agree
. Rosa, will you marry me?’

  He could not say why he had changed his mind. It was not what the old lady in the cottage had said – or not completely. It was everything. Rosa’s small, worried face. Her bravery. The fact that she’d come for him, refusing to condemn, refusing to be pushed away.

  To his surprise she did not answer – or not immediately. She was searching his face for something; he was not sure what.

  ‘Is it what you want?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and suddenly he was sure. ‘Yes. It’s what I want. If it will help protect you, if it will keep Sebastian at bay for a little longer . . .’

  She nodded, her small face very serious and pinched with the cold. Then she smiled, and in spite of himself, his heart gave an answering lift.

  ‘Isn’t life strange, Luke?’

  He curled his fingers around hers, feeling their fragility, and their strength. Yes, life was strange – and painful, and perhaps wonderful too. He felt his heart fill with all the words he had not said. Is this what you want? she had asked. And he had answered with the truth, but not the whole truth.

  The truth was that he wanted this more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. More than peace and his forge. More than revenge for his parents. More than anything – he wanted her, in his bed, in his arms, in his life. And the truth was that he had always wanted her, from the first moment he had seen her in the stable, with her magic blazing around her like a crimson fire.

  But he said nothing. He just stood, holding her hand.

  The wind gusted again, plucking at her skirts, at the worn and battered greatcoat.

  ‘Rosa . . .’ he tried. But he could not find the words.

  ‘Come,’ she said softly. ‘Back into the cottage. There’s a fire there and we can work out what to do next.’

  So he nodded and followed her back into the warm, woodsmoke-smelling room.

  They were both too young to marry without the permission of a guardian – in England, at least. Luke might have got away with it and passed for twenty-one, but not even the kindliest priest could believe Rosa was of age.