Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) (18 page)

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.

T
hey 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.

But in Scotland there was no such law. There, anyone older than fourteen could marry with a simple declaration. There was just one problem. They had to get to Scotland and live there for twenty-one days without being traced.

‘We’ll never do it.’ Rosa paced up and down the little bedroom. They were supposed to be packing – that was what they had told Mrs Cleave. But they had already packed the only possessions they had: Luke’s knife, rolled up in the blanket. ‘We’ll never make it for that long.’

Rosa reached the door and turned to pace the other way, back towards the window. As Luke watched, her uninjured hand crept to her throat, feeling for the missing locket, and then dropped again.

‘We must,’ he said. ‘We must do it, that’s all. Twenty-one days – how hard can that be?’

‘God!’ Rosa burst out. ‘If only I had the Grimoire! We were so close to it in London – I should have taken it. I was such a fool.’

‘It was best you didn’t. Lugging a heavy book along with us – it would have just slowed us down. But listen, it can’t be the only one in the world, surely?’

‘No.’ She bit her lip. ‘There are others, of course. Most families have one, or something resembling one. Notes handed down from mother to daughter. Charms that never fail to take out a stain, or heal a fever. But I can’t go knocking on doors asking if there’s a witch in the house. Nothing would get us noticed quicker.’

‘What about the old lady?’ Luke said. Rosa looked at him, chewing her lip doubtfully. ‘It’s worth asking, isn’t it? Her grandmother was a witch, she said it herself. And who else would she pass her book on to?’

‘I could ask . . . But what should we tell her?’

‘Tell her the truth – or some of it. Tell her we’re not married, but eloping, and that you’re on the run from a forced marriage. Tell her your family are on our trail and we need her help.’

‘But what if she doesn’t agree? What if she thinks I should be a good daughter, obey my family?’

‘Then we’re no worse off than we are now,’ Luke said grimly. Rosa thought about it for a moment and then nodded.

‘All right.’ She stood and brushed off her skirt. ‘Wish me luck.’

‘I see,’ Mrs Cleave said, as Rosa finished her tale. She was knitting and there was a long pause as she finished her row. Rosa waited, her heart in her throat, twisting her fingers together so that the injured stump throbbed painfully. She almost welcomed the pain. It was a distraction from the fear that had haunted her since Luke had suggested the plan: the fear that the old lady would voice all the doubts in her own heart, tell her she was an ungrateful daughter, that she was flouting the fourth commandment, that she should keep to her own kind and return home and beg for forgiveness from her family and Sebastian.

‘I have two conditions.’ Her voice was old and cracked, but firm.

‘Anything,’ Rosa said.

‘Don’t be rash now, duckie. You don’t want to go making promises you regret after. You’ve done enough of that already, if I’m not mistaken. No, my conditions are these: I’ll let you have the Grimoire – to borrow, mind, not to take – if you do two things for me. The first is this: I have a deal of firewood out the back and it’s a sore trial to me to split the logs. My eyes aren’t what they used to be and neither is my back. Your young man, your Luke, he’s to split the pile.’

Rosa almost laughed with relief, but she only smiled and said, almost giddily, ‘Of course! He’d split a whole forest for you, if you asked. And the second?’

‘The second is that you do my weekly wash for me. And put your dress and smallclothes in it. I’ll give you another night’s lodging and a hot meal into the bargain, but I’ll not have any girl leave my cottage in the state you’re in.’

‘V-very well,’ Rosa faltered. She looked down at herself. Was her dress really that bad? She peered at the soot stains and the blood, at the earth and grass stains and mud and all the rest. She had charmed herself into respectability for the doctor but it had worn off long since. Perhaps it was that bad. ‘But what will I wear while I wash them?’

‘As to that, you can have one of my old dresses.’

Rosa looked up from the copper, swiping sweat-soaked hair from her eyes. The promise of the Grimoire for just one week’s washing had seemed like a good exchange at the time – now she was beginning to think she had been cheated. The fire beneath the copper smoked and smuts fell into the tub, and she was afraid the skirts of the borrowed dress would catch fire. And this was only the whites – she would have to do it all again for the darks and the silks. Had the maids at Osborne House really done this every week?