Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) (5 page)

‘Yes.’

‘So I’ll have to ask.’

‘Yes, but, Luke, they’ll tell you he’s not home anyway. He’s not going to come to the door for a—’ She stopped, not wanting to wound him, but she could see he understood. It was a part of his life as much as hers, after all. He had had eighteen years to get used to her class looking down on his.

‘No . . . he won’t come to the door for a stable-hand, but I don’t need to see him.’ He began to walk again, and they continued in silence up Piccadilly until they reached the turn-off for Clemency’s house.

‘Left here,’ Rosa said, and then, as they rounded the corner, ‘the third house on the right is Clemency’s – the one with the rhododendrons in the front.’

‘Stay here,’ Luke said. He dropped her arm.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Going to find out if her husband’s there – what’s his name, by the way?’

‘Philip. Philip Catesby. But, Luke—’

But he had already gone up the road, knocking on the big polished front door.

Rosa flattened herself against the railings, her heart in her mouth, and listened as a maid opened the door. She heard Luke’s murmuring voice and the maid’s tart response.

‘No, he ain’t at home to the likes of you. And next time, come to the tradesmen’s entrance.’

Rosa watched through the rhododendron leaves as Luke pulled off his cap, his straw-coloured hair tumbling over his forehead, and smiled at the girl.

‘Sorry, miss,’ she heard. ‘I’ll know for next time. It was only I had a message for him, from Mr Greenwood.’

‘Well, he’s down at his office,’ the girl said, mollified. She brushed an imaginary speck of dust off her white apron. ‘If you fancy coming back later, he’ll be here around four. Or you can leave a note.’

‘Not to worry,’ Luke said. He flashed another smile and a dimple appeared in his cheek. ‘But I might take the excuse to come back if I thought I’d get a smile from you. Think you could manage one before I go?’

‘Oi, cheeky!’ the girl said indignantly. But she
was
smiling, looking at him under her lashes as she shut the door.

So Luke could flirt! Who would have thought it – silent, taciturn Luke. Rosa watched through the leaves as he came back down the path, the smile gone from his face, his expression serious again.

‘He’s out, did you hear?’

‘Yes.’ The question only remained, was Clemency? There was only one way to find out. ‘You’d better wait here while I go and speak to Clemency.’

‘All right.’ He bit his lip, looking down at her, the dimple buried as if it had never been. ‘Be careful.’

‘I will be.’

Her heart was pounding as she went up the path to the front door, where Luke had knocked only a moment before. She plied the knocker again and heard the girl’s footsteps.

‘I told you,’ she heard as the girl opened the door, ‘smile or no smile, it’s the tradesmen’s— Oh! Who’re you?’

‘I’d like to see your mistress,’ Rosa said. The girl frowned, taking in her shabby, burnt clothes and cheap shawl, but puzzled by her accent. ‘Mrs Catesby. Is she at home?’

‘Not to you.’ The girl came down with a thump on the side of suspicion and folded her arms. ‘What of it?’

‘I don’t want any of this “not at home”,’ Rosa said impatiently. ‘If she’s here, she’ll be at home to me. I’m an old friend.’

‘Oh really!’ The girl raised one over-plucked eyebrow. ‘Queen of Sheba, are we?’

‘If you don’t go and get your mistress immediately,’ Rosa hissed, ‘I’ll see to it that you’re sacked. Tell her Miss Greenwood is at the door and you’ve kept her waiting by refusing to pass on a message. Look.’ She fumbled in the pocket in her skirt and pulled out a card – smudged and sooty round the edges – bearing the name ‘Miss Rosa Greenwood’. The girl looked down at it, chewing her lip, and seemed to make up her mind.

‘Wait here,’ she said haughtily, and shut the door in Rosa’s face. When she opened it again it was with a slightly sour expression. ‘You’d better come this way.’

Rosa followed her down the hallway into the drawing room, where Clemency was sitting on an overstuffed sofa. She had a needle and thread in her hand, but she flung down the embroidery hoop at the sight of Rosa and hurried across the silk Turkey rug with her hands outstretched.

‘Rosa! My God, what’s happened to you? That’s all right, Millie,’ she added to the maid. ‘You can go.’ As the girl withdrew reluctantly, she turned back to Rosa. ‘When Millie said there was a shabby woman at the door with your card I didn’t know what to think. Rosa, are you all right?’

‘No.’ Her chin began to wobble at the sight of Clemency, so normal and so concerned. ‘No, I’m not all right. Oh, Clemency, we’re in such trouble – I didn’t know where to turn.’

‘We?’ Clemency took Rosa’s hand and tried to lead her across to an armchair. ‘Who’s “we”? Sit down, for pity’s sake, Rosa. I’ll call for tea.’

‘No, I can’t stay, and I can’t sit, I’ll ruin your chair.’

‘Damn the chair!’ Clemency said. Her plump, comfortable face was anxious. ‘Rosa, please tell me what’s happened? Your dress – it’s all burnt! Where’s your hat? And where in heaven’s name did you get that horrible shawl? It looks like a dishrag!’

‘It was Sebastian—’ Rosa began, but she couldn’t finish. Suddenly the strain, not just of the night, but of the past days and weeks, seemed to well up inside her and she found she was sobbing. Clemency pushed her to a chair and forced her to sit, and somehow Rosa found the whole tale spilling out – how she had agreed to marry Sebastian against her better judgement, in spite of her growing fear of him, and how Luke had caught her crying in the stable after she had become engaged, and they had ended up kissing.

‘Sebastian walked in on us,’ she said, wiping her nose with her sleeve. Nothing could make the dress more soiled than it already was. ‘And, oh, Clemency, he was so angry. He . . . he beat me. And he must have beat Luke, although I didn’t see that.’

Clemency said nothing, but Rosa could see the thoughts flitting across her face, her sympathy for Rosa mixed with revulsion at the idea of kissing an outwith and a servant, and with the thought that any man of pride might have lashed out if he caught his new fiancée in the arms of a stable-hand.

‘I thought he would break it off,’ Rosa continued, her voice low and hoarse. ‘The engagement. But he
didn’t
. And I realized that somehow the whole episode had only made him want me more. I never thought a man would want a woman who didn’t love him, but, oh, Clemmie – it was as if the more I hated him, the more he was excited by it, and the more he
had
to have me. Does this make any kind of sense to you?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Clemency said. Her blue eyes were fixed on Rosa, her rosebud lips were tight, reserving judgement. ‘Perhaps. Some men are creatures of strange tastes, that much I know, and I can see that perhaps your . . .
indiscretion
, let’s call it – might have hurt his pride and made him more determined to hold on to you. But that doesn’t explain all this . . . What happened with your dress?’

‘Luke was turned off, when we got back to London, of course,’ Rosa gulped, and Clemency nodded.

‘Of course.’

‘I was trapped. If I broke it off with Sebastian he would expose me, and worse, he would very probably take his revenge on Luke. And I felt so guilty – it seemed to me that if Sebastian were prepared to forgive me, shouldn’t I be able to forgive
him
? So I tried to carry on, I tried to be a good fiancée and take an interest in his family’s work and their charitable concerns. So I went to the East End, to his factory, and – oh, Clemency, what I found . . .’ She broke off, reliving again the horror of those dimly lit rooms, glowing with the ghostly luminescence of the phosphorus, and the men and women and children with their faces eaten away by the chemicals. She remembered the smell of it – flesh and bone liquefying into a stinking, oozing putrefaction. ‘They were dying, Clemmie. The outwith workers. There was no way they could have stayed in that poisonous place willingly. They were drugged with magic – chained there – like slaves.’

Clemency bit her lip. Her face was very still, very serious.

‘So what did you do?’

‘I tried to persuade them to leave, but they wouldn’t listen to me. The charms were too strong – I don’t know how, but they were like iron, far stronger than I could break. I pleaded but they just ignored me and carried on. And then I recognized one of the workers – a girl. She was a friend of Luke’s. And I thought if I went and got him, he might be able to help, she might listen to
him
, if not me. But . . . ’ She stopped.

This was the one part she must not tell Clemency. She could betray her own secrets, but not Luke’s. Luke’s identity as one of the Malleus Maleficorum must remain secret at all costs, even from Clemency, or they were
both
dead. Clemency would never agree to help them if she knew. And there was also the cold immutability of a fact that she had not yet quite faced: Luke had been tasked to kill her and, though his nerve had failed him at the last moment, he had tried to carry that task out. She did not know if she would ever be able to forget the sight of him raising the hammer above his head, the hate in his eyes . . .

‘Yes?’ Clemency prodded. Rosa took a breath, picking her way carefully between the truth and the omissions.

‘He didn’t remember me. I took his memories when he went away, and he no longer knew who I was. So I returned alone and confronted Sebastian – to try to make him lift the spells.’

‘It didn’t work,’ Clemency said, in confirmation rather than question.

‘No. And he shut me in the warehouse and set fire to it – I suppose to hide what he’d done, and perhaps because in that instant he realized that he had lost me, and he could not bear for that to happen.’

‘He locked you in?’ Clemency’s normally rosy face was pale, and her wide blue eyes were even wider than usual. ‘He left you to
die
?’

Rosa nodded.

‘Yes, but Luke must have remembered something, because he came after me in the end, and helped me escape. But now, Clemmie, you must help us. We have to leave London, before Sebastian finds us.’

‘Oh God, Rosa.’ Clemency stood and began pacing the Turkey rug back and forth, back and forth. ‘What can I do? I really think – surely your mother—’

‘Mama?’ Rosa knew the bitterness in her voice was unpleasant, but she couldn’t hide it. ‘Ha. She’s so afraid of losing Sebastian’s money – she’d sell me to him in an instant. She’d sell
herself
even, I think.’

‘But, darling, think!’ Clemency’s plump comfortable face was contorted with distress. ‘Think what you’re saying . . . You’re proposing – what? To run away with – with this
stable-hand
? You’ll be ruined! And how will you live? Go home, please, darling.’

‘Clemmie, listen to me. Sebastian Knyvet tried to
kill
me. Do you understand what I’m saying? I think he is mad. I saw it before, but never so clearly until that night in the factory. I cannot go home – even if Mama and Alexis believed me, Sebastian would know I was there. I must get away before he finds me – before he kills us both.’
Or worse
, she added silently in her head. To be married to Sebastian, that could be a living death in itself.

‘But . . .’ Clemency wound her fingers in her handkerchief until they were bloodless, and then released them. ‘But Philip has the carriage. What can I do?’

‘I can manage horses. We just need money, Clemmie. Only a little!’ she added pleadingly, as she saw Clemency about to protest that she had none, that it was all Philip’s. ‘Please! Whatever you have in the house – enough for a meal and a bed – I have nothing, Clemmie. I haven’t eaten since . . .’ She suddenly realized that she could not remember when. Yesterday, certainly, and she’d had no dinner. Had she had tea? Lunch, even? ‘Please, Clemmie,’ she said again, swallowing against the lump of helpless rage in her throat. ‘
Please
.’

Clemency bit her lip again, and then seemed to decide.

‘You can have whatever I have in the house. Let me go to my room and see what I have in my change purse – Philip may have left some notes in his dressing room. But oh God – Rosa – why did you give the maid your real name? What if Sebastian comes here?’

Rosa shut her eyes, suddenly realizing the truth of what Clemency said. Even if Clemency denied her visit, the maid would not. Did she dare risk a spell to wipe the girl’s memory? But Clemency’s servants were not outwith; the maid would know what she was attempting, would fight.

‘You must tell me that you cannot help, in front of the servants,’ she said slowly. ‘We must have a fight.’

‘Yes . . . yes, that might work. Let me get the money and then . . . then we’ll decide what to do.’

She left the room and Rosa sank back in the armchair, her hands over her face, trying to push away the sense that her world was collapsing around her. Yesterday had held the promise of all this – a house off Piccadilly, servants, tea-trays, comfort, wealth. Today? She had nothing, except a spoilt dress and her magic.

And Luke
, something whispered at the back of her mind.
You have Luke
. But it was not true. He was not hers. He was not her servant, nor her lover. They were just – what? Friends? But that one simple word did not describe what lay between them – the complicated web of hurt and gratitude and betrayal, and beneath all that, a great gulf of class and magic. Luke had tried to kill her, and he had saved her life. He was an outwith, and yet he could see her kind as no other outwith could, as no witch could, even. All these impossibly contradictory truths bound up in one being.

Friend
was too small and too simple a word for what Luke was.

He was something else. Something bigger, more complicated and, perhaps, more dangerous . . .

‘Rosa.’

Her head shot up. Clemency was standing in the doorway. She came inside and closed the door with her elbow. Her hands were full of something.

‘Darling, I found this . . .’ She poured a shower of silvers, coppers and a single gold piece into Rosa’s cupped hands. ‘It’s not a great deal, I’m afraid – not quite a pound. But Philip had these in his dressing room.’ From her sleeve she unfolded two pound notes, thick white sheets the size of Rosa’s pocket handkerchief. Rosa bit her lip. Those notes would keep them for a week, perhaps a month if they were careful. She realized she had no idea what board and lodging cost – but surely not more than a few shillings a night? Her hand stole up to her throat, to where the locket had always hung, comforting – but it closed only on air.