Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) (25 page)

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—’

‘And I still think,’ Leadingham broke in, hard and suddenly very dangerous, ‘if you keep asking questions you’ll end up with a knife in your side. And mebbe it won’t be one with a false blade, neither.’

There was silence from West, and then Luke heard their feet on the stairs and a big heavy door swing shut.

He waited a few moments to make sure they were out of earshot. Then he filled his lungs and yelled.

‘Rosa! Rosa, can you hear me?’ He stopped, listening to his own voice echoing up and around the narrow room. ‘Rosa!’ he yelled again, his head throbbing with the shout. ‘Rosa, wake up, wake up!’

But there was no answer. Only a silence that struck a coldness into his gut.

She could not be gone. She could not have been sold already. He’d know – surely? He’d have felt it.

‘Rosa!’ he yelled.

‘Rosa! Rose!’ A hoarse shout filtered through into her dream, with a note of hopelessness in it, as if the caller had been trying for a very long time and was beginning to despair of an answer. ‘Rosa . . . Oh God please, answer me . . .’

She surfaced from a horrible dream of clutching hands and arid deserts and croaked, ‘Yes . . . yes, I’m here. They took the gag off. Is it safe to talk?’

‘Rosa!’ His voice was croaky with relief. ‘Thank God! I’ve been calling for hours, on and off. Yes, they’ve gone out, but I don’t know how much longer we’ve got before they come back. Listen, I heard ’em talking; they’re going to sell you.’

‘Sell me?’ She tried to think straight, but her head was aching and swimming. ‘What do you mean? To who?’

‘I don’t know. But they said today. We’ve got to get away. I’ve rubbed my wrists raw but I can’t get out of these manacles. Is there anything you can do? Is your magic coming back?’

Desperation rose inside her, a kind of despair as the fragments of memory clicked into place.

‘No . . .’ she managed. ‘Luke, they’re drugging me.’

‘In your food?’

‘I’ve had no food. In my water. I tried not to drink it – but oh God, I’m so thirsty.’

She heard him swear, long and low.

‘It’s that stuff that John brews. I don’t blame you for drinking – thirst can drive you half mad. But – oh Jesus, what are we going to do?’

She shut her eyes in the darkness, searching inside herself for a scrap of power to kindle into a spell. But she could feel only sick confusion; magic, but a muddled, twisted, directionless mass that she couldn’t shape to her purpose or force to do anything.

Luke would die if they stayed here. Whatever, whoever, she was to be sold to, Luke’s fate was clear. And he was mortal and defenceless, and in this nightmare in part because of her – because he had refused to keep his oath and kill her.

Very well then. If magic couldn’t help her, she would have to find something else.

But how, with her hands bound behind her back? They were tightly fastened, no hope of wriggling her legs through the circle of her arms, even without her hampering skirts. And there was nothing in the little cell – nothing apart from the dish of poisoned water. It was not glass, but a kind of earthenware. But perhaps, if she were lucky . . .

She twisted around, feeling for it with her fingers behind her back. When her fingers met the lip of the plate she grasped it firmly, then picked it up and brought it smashing down on the concrete floor.

‘Rosa, are you all right?’ She heard Luke’s shout filter through the damp cellar bricks.

‘Yes,’ she called back. ‘It was nothing.’

No point in getting his hopes up. If there was a chance, it was slim.

There were two shards she thought might be usable. The rest had just crumbled to splinters and chips.

But two pieces . . . Behind her back she felt them with her thumb, rubbing the rough gritty edge. They were not sharp – but they were all she had.

She began to saw at the rope binding her wrists.

T
here had been silence from Rosa’s cell for a long time. Luke was tempted to call out to her, but then he thought better of it. Perhaps she was sleeping off the effects of the drug. If so, he wouldn’t wake her.

Once he’d thought he heard a muffled cry, of pain, or perhaps frustration. But when he lay, holding his breath to listen, there were only the faint muffled sounds of the street. He must have imagined it, or heard some noise from outside.

He was almost dozing when he heard a different sound: a key in the lock of the door at the top of the stairs. He was awake at once, his heart pounding, but he lay with his eyes squeezed shut, trying to give nothing away. If they thought he was asleep perhaps they might let slip something about their plans . . .

It was only one set of feet that he could hear coming down the stone steps though. Heavy feet, for a heavy man. Not skinny, wiry John Leadingham. West then? But no – John had told him not to come.

Someone else. What was the name Leadingham had said? Arthur. Luke didn’t know any Arthurs in the Brotherhood, but that didn’t mean much. He didn’t know all the Brothers.

The steps paused for a moment in front of Luke’s door. A slight sound came from the latch, as though someone’d laid his hand on the handle outside and then thought better of it. The footsteps moved on down the corridor in the direction of wherever they were holding Rosa. He heard them get fainter, and then the rattle of keys, and the scrape of a lock.

But who was he? Why’d he come alone without John? What did he want with Rosa that he couldn’t have a witness?

If you touch her
 . . . His fists inside the manacles clenched.
If you harm her
 . . .

Then what? What could he do? If this unknown man assaulted Rosa, then he would lie there in the dark and listen to it, because there was nothing else he could do. Just as he’d lain and listened as his parents were slaughtered by Sebastian’s father, the Black Witch.

Fear and fury rose up inside him, suffocating him.

And then he heard something. A crash, as if a door had been slammed shut violently, and a long drawn-out howl of agony.

Luke leapt to his feet, forgetting the manacles around his wrists, and screamed as the cuffs ripped into his bloodied skin, jerking him to the floor with a bone-crunching impact.

‘Rosa!’ he bellowed. ‘Rosa! For Christ’s sake, say something!’

The scream had died away and he lay there, trying to listen, but with his heart beating so loudly in his ears that he could hear nothing but its pounding and the roar and rush of his own blood.

If you’ve touched her, you bastard
 . . .

There were flurried footsteps in the corridor and he heard the scrape of keys in the lock and scrambled to his feet, in the crouched defensive position that was all the manacles would allow.

‘Luke!’

For a minute he couldn’t believe it. Rosa? She was standing in the doorway, lamplight streaming past her into the cell. Then she staggered into his room and fell to her knees beside him. There was something in her hands – something that chinked as she tried with shaking fingers to hold it out. Keys.

‘Rosa.’ He could only kneel there, gaping stupidly, trying not to sob with gratitude and disbelief. ‘Rosa, what . . . ? How . . . ?’

She had no magic. He could see something there, but it was a black, poisoned mass of sickness.

There was blood on her dress and on her face.

‘I sawed through my bindings.’ She was sorting through the keys, looking for one to match the keyhole in the manacles, but her hands were trembling and she kept losing her place. ‘I hid behind the door. When he came in, I slammed the door shut on him. On his face! Oh, Christ, Luke, his face! I didn’t mean . . .’

She was crying, tears making pale runnels in the dirt and blood on her face.

‘Well done,’ Luke said. There was a fierce triumph starting to burn in his gut. ‘I don’t care if you slammed the door so hard you broke his bloody neck. He went into your cell alone for a reason – and not a good one.’

‘But his face . . . Oh God, the blood!’ Her fingers slipped on the key again and she wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘Damn these keys. I can’t see what I’m doing.’

‘Give them here.’ Luke took them and found the right key. He held it out to Rosa and she put it into the lock with shaking hands.

‘He was just an outwith, Luke – just a poor outwith. I think I killed him.’

Then the manacles clinked open and Luke staggered to his feet, feeling the magnificence of standing upright after the long hours chained to the floor. He pulled himself to his full height and stretched, the blood rushing into his weary muscles and his joints snapping and cracking.

He took the keys from Rosa’s hand.

‘Stay here – no, wait. Stay in the corridor. I’ll go and check.’

‘No!’ she cried, but he was already gone. Not to reassure Rosa – though he didn’t believe the man’s injuries could be as bad as she feared – but to lock the man in the cell. If he did come round, they didn’t want pursuers.

The man was lying on the floor. He was breathing, bloody foam bubbling down his face, and Rosa had smashed the door into his nose so that he’d have a crooked profile for the rest of his life. But he wasn’t dead, not by a long chalk.

Luke pushed the man’s prone form out of the way, so that he was lying on his back in the centre of the cellar. He shut and locked the door behind him – and then stopped.

Damn him.

The man deserved to die but – choking on his own blood . . . He wouldn’t let a dog go that way.

He unlocked the door, his fingers nervous now, conscious of the time ticking away and John Leadingham’s probably imminent arrival. Inside, he grabbed roughly at the man’s left arm and shoulder and rolled him on to his side, with his own arm and one leg as a prop, the way he’d seen William do for drunks. The blood would drain out of his nose that way, not pool in his lungs. And if he vomited, he wouldn’t choke on it.