Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) (29 page)

‘Help you?’ The woman began to laugh, a hoarse cackle. ‘Help you cuckold my son? Help you disgrace my name?’

‘
Your
name?’

‘Why not? I am a Knyvet, after all.’

‘But . . .’ Rosa put her hands to her face. The woman turned away, indifferently, and Rosa sank on to the ottoman at the foot of the bed, watching her.

Suddenly, to Rosa’s horror, she put her hand towards the fire and picked up a red-hot coal in her fingers. She turned back and flicked it towards the bed. Rosa gave a gasp and jumped up to stamp on it, before she realized her feet were bare. She looked around for a book, a rug, anything, but by the time she turned back the coal had burnt out, leaving a dark weal on the floorboard.

Rosa let her breath out in a ragged trembling rush. And as she sank back on to the ottoman she noticed something, something she had not noticed before in the darkness. The boards and the rugs in the room were pitted and spattered with black welts, the twins of the one left just now by the burning coal. The painted skirting boards were disfigured by little smoky smuts, patches where the paint had bubbled as a coal burnt out against the wood. Even the curtains had patches and holes where the flame had caught at their foot and been beaten out in time.

The woman crouched at the hearth watching, her eyes glittering, and she smiled, so that Rosa saw her bared teeth beneath her thin, bloodless lips. The resemblance to Sebastian was suddenly marked – and terrifying.

‘Get out,’ the woman snapped, and Rosa saw that her fingers were spitting sparks, that there was smoke coming from beneath her nails. When she opened her mouth to speak, there was smoke on her breath. ‘Get out.’

‘Come, Rosa,’ Cassie whispered. ‘There is no dealing with her when she’s like this. We will come back another day. Next week perhaps.’

Another day! Next week! Rosa’s heart filled with despair. In another day, another week, Luke might be dead – and she might be married to Sebastian, or dead herself.

‘Please!’ she begged the woman, pulling her arm out of Cassie’s tugging fingers. ‘Ma’am, I beg you. I know he’s your son, but can you countenance this? A woman married against her will to a husband she does not want?’

‘Get out!’ the woman screamed, and the room began to fill with smoke.

‘Rosa, we should go,’ Cassie said. Her voice was shaking. She opened the door and pushed Rosa into the corridor, coughing against the smoke. Then she slammed the door shut and locked it from the outside.

For a moment Rosa could not speak, she was too horrified by what they had seen.

‘I’m sorry,’ Cassie said. She opened the door to Rosa’s room and pushed her gently inside. ‘I didn’t think . . .’

‘What – what’s wrong with her?’ Rosa sank on to the bed. Was this her future if she stayed here?

‘They say . . . they say she is mad.’ Cassie’s voice was a whisper. ‘But I think it is something more than that. Something else. Her magic is black and uncontrollable. It’s a kind of curse, I think. She wasn’t always like this – she was very beautiful when she was young. But she did something unforgivable, I’m not sure what. It was before I was born. My father locked her up here and he tried to contain her magic.’

She stood and walked carefully to the dressing table, then felt her way delicately to a miniature that was hanging between the two windows, taking it gently from its hook.

‘I am told that this is a portrait of her when she was twenty-one.’ She held it out to Rosa, and Rosa looked down at the portrait in its gilded frame. It showed a woman – astonishingly beautiful – her ebony hair piled high on her head. She was dressed in walking clothes and there was a little white-haired boy on her lap – Sebastian perhaps?

Her face was a china oval, her eyes large and lustrous, but she was not smiling, and there was something hard about her face, something that reminded Rosa of Sebastian. It was not a pretty face – it was too uncompromising for that. Her lips were set firmly, and the artist had caught the light that burnt in her eyes, as if there was a flame inside, waiting to consume her from within.

No, it was not a pretty face. But it was a remarkable face; the face of someone who would burn bright and fierce.

There was something in her hand, something that caught the light and threw it back at the artist, and Rosa held the portrait closer, trying to see what it was.

‘What is it she’s holding?’ she asked Cassie, and then blushed, realizing what she’d said. ‘I’m sorry – I forgot you can’t . . . It doesn’t matter – it looks like a cane, but it’s familiar somehow. That’s why I wondered.’

‘There’s no need to be sorry,’ Cassie said lightly. ‘I know the cane you mean. It is familiar because it is the same as the one Sebastian has now. With the head of a silver snake eating its own tail. I used to play with Mama’s when I was a child – I loved to run my fingers over the snake, feeling it twist and turn.’

‘But . . .’ Rosa stopped. She was trying to remember where she’d heard that phrase: the snake eating its own tail. She remembered Sebastian saying, ‘
It was my father’s . . . I would not lose it for the world
.’ But someone else had described a cane so similar . . . someone who could not have seen it. An ebony cane with a head of silver in the shape of a twisted ouroboros . . .

Luke.

It was like a cold touch down her spine.

She remembered his voice in the forest night as they lay huddled in each other’s arms. She remembered him describing the witch who had come to his parents’ house in the depths of the night and killed them both, so that the blood ran down the walls while he huddled beneath the settle and saw only the snake’s-head cane rolling towards him.

It did not make sense. Nothing made sense.

‘But – but Sebastian said . . .’ She swallowed, her throat too dry to speak, and then tried again. ‘Sebastian said the cane was his father’s.’

‘I said the same
as
his cane,’ Cassie corrected. ‘Not the same cane. They were a pair – her wedding gift to him. Sebastian has my father’s cane now. My mother’s – I suppose it is still in her room.’

The blood beat in Rosa’s ears.
She did a terrible thing . . . It was before I was born
 . . .

‘Rosa?’ She heard Cassie’s voice as if from very far away. ‘Rosa, are you quite well? You sound—’

She managed to shake her head, feeling the exhaustion run through her muscles like water.

‘I’m very tired. I need to rest – to think . . .’

Luke
.

‘L
uke!
’ The voice was a hiss, like the sound of a snake spitting, and for a moment Luke thought he had imagined it, that it was all part of his dream: the twisting, silver snake, poised to strike, Rosa with her hands outstretched and the snake wrapped around her throat, hissing, hissing...

‘
Luke!
’ It came again, a sibilant whisper in the dark. He scrambled to his feet, looking wildly about. The crack of light was gone from beneath the door and he had no way of knowing where he was in the darkness. He put a hand in front of his face and felt nothing.

‘Luke! Are you in there?’ The sound was slight, but in the silence it bounced off the bare walls, filling his cell with its whispers.

‘Yes!’ he called, his voice shaking. ‘Who are you?’

‘It’s me, lad.’ A different voice: deeper, louder, less afraid. One that made his heart leap into his throat and his pulse quicken. One that made him want to fling himself against the door.

‘Uncle?’ he called back. He could tell where the voices were coming from now. William’s deep, sure voice was easier to place than the first echoing whisper, and he felt his way across the dark space to the direction of the sound. The brick walls were cold and damp to his touch, until he came to a metal door. ‘William!’ He wasn’t sure whether to sob or laugh. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘We’ve come to get you out.’ There was a grim purpose to his voice. ‘Stand back.’

Luke heard a scraping from the outside, as if something were being forced into the crack of the door. Then there was a crunching screech, metal on metal, and he heard William’s desperate groan as he heaved with all his strength.

‘Shove the blocks in, there’s a good lass.’

A good lass? Luke’s heart leapt. It couldn’t be . . . Rosa?

There was a thud as wooden blocks were forced into a narrow gap and then another shrieking crunch as William put his crowbar to the gap once more. Then with a suddenness that made him almost jump out of his skin, the thick metal hinges gave with a shrieking bang and the door crashed backwards on to the concrete floor.

Outside, in the dim light of a single lantern, William and Minna stood, both of them grinning from ear to ear.

Minna. Luke’s crushing disappointment was swiftly followed by shame, that he could feel so, when he should have been thanking her with all his heart for freeing him.

‘Minna. Uncle.’ He staggered forward on shaky legs and fell into his uncle’s strong arms, feeling the tears come hot to the back of his eyes as he leant on his uncle’s hard shoulder and felt his hand clap him firm on the back, holding him as if he’d never let go.

‘My God, thank you – you don’t know . . .’ His voice cracked and he couldn’t carry on.

But William was shaking his head, his face grim.

‘I can imagine, lad. But come on. We’ve got to get out of here before Leadingham comes back.’

‘He’s in league with Knyvet,’ Luke gasped as William shouldered the crowbar and pulled his muffler over his face. He flung another one to Luke. ‘All this time.’

‘Minna told me.’ William nodded at Minna, standing in the corner of the abattoir. She tossed her head.

‘Don’t I get a kiss for being yer knight in shining armour?’

‘Thank you.’ He moved across to where she was standing, but he didn’t kiss her. Instead he put his arms around her, feeling the sharp edges of her limbs, her cheekbone hard against his chest. ‘I’m sorry, Minna. In the Cock, I didn’t mean—’

‘Yes, you did. And I deserved it. But c’mon. We ain’t got time to stand here gabbing.’

She grabbed his hand, her fingers thin and wiry in his, and pulled him towards the door where William was standing.

‘Come on,’ William said. He turned towards the door to the street, his hand outstretched for the latch.

Then everything happened very quickly.

As he put his hand out there was a sudden rush, the door flung open and a man came barrelling in.

He had a club of wood in both hands, held high above his head, and before William could do so much as cry out, he brought it crashing down.

William fell to the floor with a thump and blood began to pool around him.

Luke froze in horror. He wanted with all his heart to run to William and gather him up. But the man stood over his prone body, the club in his hand. He was wearing a hood and muffler, but Luke knew who it was before he looked up, pulling away his scarf.

‘Hello, Luke.’

It was Leadingham.

‘You bastard,’ he managed, though his voice was choked and raw with fear for William. ‘What did he ever do to you? It was me you wanted. Not him.’

‘He got in the way,’ Leadingham said flatly. ‘There’s no more morality to it than what happens to a man who steps out in front of a galloping horse. Don’t look at me like that, lad. If you do something stupid, you may get it in the neck. That’s all there is to it.’

‘I’m not your lad.’ Luke’s voice shook with rage. He looked to where the butcher’s knives stood against the wall, great heavy things in wooden slots in the butcher’s block.

‘Give up,’ Leadingham said flatly. ‘Give yourself up and I’ll get a doctor here; maybe it’s not too late.’

For a minute Luke wavered. He was within reaching distance of the knives. But was it worth it – to carry on fighting and bleeding and hurting, and to risk William’s life? It was true after all; he had betrayed his oath. He had betrayed the Brothers. He’d known the price he would pay before he did it, so why was he trying to wriggle out of paying it now?

‘Come on, lad . . .’ Leadingham said warningly. ‘Your uncle’s bleeding to death while you tap yer foot. You ain’t got long to think about this.’

Luke put his hands to his head. He just needed a minute to
think
. But all the time, William was lying on the cold stone floor, the blood black and glinting around his head.

‘Luke!’ Leadingham snapped. ‘Come on, lad, this is your last chance. I’m running outta patience. If you want your uncle to live . . . I’ll throw in the girl’s safe passage too, for good measure, so make up your mind before I run out of goodwill. Five. Four—’

‘Oh, shurrup,’ Minna growled from behind Luke. ‘Luke, don’t listen to ’im. He knows full well we ain’t never getting out of here. He can’t afford for us to blab what we seen.’

‘Shut up, you little bitch!’ Leadingham snarled, but it was too late. Luke saw that what Minna had said was true. It was not just William’s life ticking away. Either he fought, or they
all
died.

He took a step towards the butcher’s block and grabbed a knife.

Leadingham’s wrinkled brown face split into a great, wolfish grin, and Luke saw that he was in some perverse way
pleased
, that he had known it would end like this, that for all his protests he had
wanted
Luke to fight, to die like a man.