Witch Finder Read online

  ‘Well. Then you have only yourself to blame,’ he hissed at Rosa. ‘And you . . .’ He pointed his crop at Luke. ‘You’re on your final warning. Consider yourself lucky I’m not sacking you anyway for allowing a woman to fiddle with the tack.’

  He gave Brimstone a crack with his crop that made the horse jump and whinny. And then he was off across the park at a gallop, the riders scattering before him, and Rosa and Sebastian looked at one another.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rosa said. She wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for herself or for Alexis. She let her eyes flick towards Luke, sitting motionless on Castor. His face was blank, unreadable. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Sebastian gave a short laugh. ‘Alexis is a fool and a boor. That’s no fault of yours.’

  ‘Then why are you friends with him?’ she shot back, before she could consider the wisdom of the question. Sebastian only looked at her, his blue eyes pale and cool as the winter sky. For a minute he held her gaze. Then he looked away.

  ‘I leave you to decide that for yourself.’

  In the silence that followed, Rosa groped for a remark but found nothing. She only stood, searching, trying to find the perfect riposte and failing.

  Then Sebastian broke in.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rosa. Why am I leaving you standing around on your bad ankle like a fool? We must get you home. The only question is how. Is your carriage at home ready?’

  He looked at Luke.

  ‘No, sir,’ Luke said. Rosa breathed a sigh of relief. The carriage was in perilous need of repair and hardly used, and Mama would be out in the governess trap.

  ‘Please, Sebastian.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘I can ride, honestly I can.’

  ‘Ride? With a broken buckle?’ Sebastian said shortly. ‘Don’t be foolish, Rosa.’

  ‘Well then, I’ll walk.’

  ‘Nonsense. We’ll send for my phaeton . . . You.’ He spoke to Luke. ‘D’you know where Hanington Square is?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Luke shook his head. His eyes were on the rutted surface of the Row. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ve never been up west before.’

  Sebastian clicked his tongue and Rosa stiffened, almost expecting another flash of cold rage. But when he spoke his voice was calm and even; preoccupied, but no hint of that dangerous icy fury that had consumed him before.

  ‘There’s nothing for it, I’ll have to go for mine. Stay here,’ he said to Rosa. ‘Your man will look after you.’

  ‘Sebastian . . .’ Rosa felt exasperation rise in her. ‘Truly, there’s no need. I can walk, I promise you.’ She thought of all the times she’d fallen or been thrown at Matchenham and limped home, sore and bleeding. No carriage then. She was lucky if she got a bowl of hot water and a healing spell.

  ‘I’m going,’ Sebastian said firmly. He swung himself back up on to his horse, tipped his hat to her and cantered off down the row.

  Rosa sank on to a bench and let out a tremulous breath. In truth her ankle was hurting and the idea of walking home on it was not pleasant. But the idea of being driven in Sebastian Knyvet’s carriage was somehow even more disquieting.

  She watched him galloping across the park, his horse’s shining coat flickering between the trees. And a strange feeling rose up in her – a mixture of excitement and fear. He wanted her – she’d known it from that first moment his eyes met hers in the candlelit drawing room, but now she was sure. Sebastian, who could have had any girl in London or Delhi for the asking and their dowry too, wanted her, Rosa Greenwood, a girl without two shillings to rub together. She was no longer the pursuer – she was the pursued. The thought made her shiver.

  But as she watched him disappear into the throng by the gate, an image came into her mind: it was the image of a fox, a little vixen she’d seen at Matchenham, chased by a hound.

  Luke slid from the horse on to legs that felt like they would give way any second. His limbs felt like they had the time he’d had the influenza – weak and shaky, with joints made of jelly, not bone. His heart was beating in his throat so that he felt almost like throwing up. For a minute there it had been all over – and she’d saved him. Why? Why?

  His guts griped and for a moment he thought he was actually going to be sick – right there, in the Row, amid the glossy horses and shiny boots.

  ‘Luke . . .’ He heard Rosa’s voice as if from a long way off. ‘Luke. Are you all right?’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that?’ he said hoarsely, and turned to face her, forcing down the weakness. Get it together, he raged at himself. Get it together, you god-damned yellow-belly.

  ‘You had a shock too.’ Her eyes were huge in her pale face. She’d lost half her hairpins with the fall and fiery tendrils had escaped from beneath her hat and twined around her white throat and the stark black collar of her habit.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ he demanded suddenly. He knew he should have been grateful and that his voice was full of an anger he couldn’t suppress and didn’t understand. ‘Why? It was my fault! Why did you tell them it was you?’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said softly.

  He wanted her to rage, damn him for being impertinent and ungrateful and irresponsible – and instead she was watching him with those wide dark eyes, her face unguarded and full of concern for him.

  ‘It was my fault.’ The words tore out of him like they were edged with thorns. Good God – not his fault? If she only knew . . . For a crazy second the truth hovered on the tip of his tongue and the urge to blurt it all out was overwhelming – he imagined spitting it out, like a gobbet of poison on the clean sawdust of the Row. She stood and her magic swirled and shimmered around them both. He felt it reach out, insinuating itself into him, trying to soothe and comfort and calm.

  No! he wanted to bellow. He raised his hands to press them against his forehead, pressing back the confused desperation that was boiling up inside him. The dressing on his shoulder gave a great throb, as if infected, and for a second he thought he might fall – it was only his grip on Cherry’s reins that kept him upright.

  Then Castor nuzzled his shoulder as if to steady him and somehow – somehow – he got it together enough to mutter, ‘It was my fault. I should have checked the buckle. But you still haven’t said why – why did you save me?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t bear to see you sacked over a stupid buckle!’ she burst out. ‘And Alexis would have done it, you know – he would have sent you packing back to Spitalfields tomorrow without any notice and without a character – and then where would it be, your dream of being a groom?’

  He almost laughed. The cover story seemed so thin and transparently stupid, like a tale a child might have dreamt up.

  ‘I never wanted to be a groom,’ he found himself saying bitterly.

  ‘What?’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Then what are you doing here?’

  Don’t tell her! The urge to spit out the truth was almost overpowering. Had she bewitched him? Was this crazy urge to tell her everything part of some truth-telling charm? But he didn’t feel as if it was he could feel no spells coming from her other than that first soothing, gentling warmth that he’d shaken off without effort.

  ‘It was my uncle’s idea,’ he said. It was the truth – and the words slipped out without him even thinking about them. ‘Not mine. I wanted – I want – to be a farrier like him, a blacksmith. I always have.’

  ‘It’s a good trade,’ she said quietly. ‘There’ll always be horses needing to be shod.’

  ‘My uncle says it’s a fool’s game. He says you end up scarred from your mistakes, and deaf from the hammering, and that no one wants to pay for proper smithing any more, they want cheap factory-made metal that any fool can break and bend.’

  That was true too. The relief of speaking the truth for once – of not dissembling and deceiving – was so great he felt like weeping. Wh
y was it so hard to lie to this girl? No – not a girl. A witch. She was a witch and an abomination in the sight of man and God. So why was it so hard to pay her in her own coin, with deceit and trickery and betrayal?

  ‘And what about you?’ she asked. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think . . .’ He stopped. What could he say? I’ve never wanted anything else but a forge of my own, and a couple of horses, and a woman to come home to of a night and maybe make a child with, one day.

  But that was not the truth. Or not all the truth. Because there was something else he wanted more. Revenge. Justice for his father and mother. To be able to close his eyes at night and know that he was not a coward, that he had avenged his parents’ memory at last.

  ‘I think sometimes we can’t get what we want,’ he said slowly, picking his way between the truth and the lies, like he walked the streets of Spitalfields of an evening, picking his way between the putrid fruit and the thin-running streams of shit and rubbish. ‘Leastways, not all of it. Not at the same time.’

  She looked away at that, as if the words hit very near to home, but said nothing.

  ‘And I think that my uncle wants to see me succeed. And so do I.’

  ‘So you’re an ambitious man, Luke Welling?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said shortly. Then, in an effort to change the subject on to less dangerous ground, ‘But you should be sitting, miss. Mr Knyvet won’t thank me if he comes back to find you standing around on the leg we’re supposed to be sparing. Please. Sit down. Save me a ticking off.’

  ‘All right.’ She looked at the bench and then nodded. ‘But only if you sit too.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ he said automatically, his fingers tightening on the reins. ‘Castor – Cherry . . .’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said, and smiled. ‘The horses are tired. They’ll stand. Loop their reins over the post if you’re worried.’

  She was right. He looped the reins over the end of the bench and sat, stiff as a post, and as far away from her as he possibly could. For a moment she looked at him, puzzled, and then she seemed to shake her head and sit back, enjoying the rare winter sun.

  Luke sat back too, feeling the thin sunshine soak into his limbs, through his thin, worn jacket and into his exhausted muscles and aching bones, into his shoulders where the brand-mark still ached and throbbed.

  He felt tired, so tired he could have lain down his head right there on the hard bench. He had failed. The girl was alive. And the thought of starting all over again made him want to weep.

  Rosa couldn’t help wincing as Sebastian lifted her into the phaeton. It was high and built for racing, not for transporting ladies.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, seeing the look on her face, and the way she gritted her teeth against the pain. ‘I wanted the carriage, but my father had taken it. This was the only thing available.’

  ‘Truly, don’t apologize,’ Rosa said. ‘It doesn’t hurt now.’ It wasn’t true. During the long wait on the bench her foot had swelled painfully and now it throbbed every time the carriage lurched on its springs. She couldn’t wait to get home where she could heal it, behind closed doors, where the servants couldn’t see. She would just have to remember to fake a limp a little, at breakfast, until she could plausibly be better.

  Sebastian seated himself beside her and arranged a rug over her knees, then clicked to the horses.

  ‘You look pale,’ he said as they began to pick up speed. ‘I don’t believe it doesn’t hurt.’

  ‘Distract me,’ Rosa said with a forced smile. ‘Tell me about India.’

  ‘India? It’s a strange place, of great wealth and great poverty. The maharajahs have almost unimaginable wealth – you can’t conceive of their fortunes, their diamonds and rubies and the servants they have. On the other hand the beggars are beyond anything we have in London. The heat. The stench. The flies and the sickness . . .’

  He trailed off.

  ‘Though we have plenty of sickness and poverty in London,’ Rosa ventured. Sebastian nodded.

  ‘Yes. That’s true. Have you ever been to Limehouse and Spitalfields and the like?’

  ‘No, never. What’s it like?’

  ‘Stinking. A different stink from India, but worse in a way. The river has picked up all the foul, foetid material all the way along its journey through London, and in Spitalfields and Wapping and Limehouse it dumps all this filth on the banks of the Thames. There are children who go through the mud, scavenging for coins and objects they can sell. And the streets themselves are no better, strewn with beggars huddling round their fires and women touting their wares.’

  Rosa thought of Luke. He didn’t seem to fit with the picture Sebastian was painting. But she had seen enough of London to know that prosperity and great poverty could live side by side, cheek by jowl, sometimes even in the same street.

  ‘You know it well?’ she asked. ‘East London?’

  ‘My father has factories there, just off Brick Lane. Some criticize him for basing his operations there. They claim that it’s the cheap labour that draws him. But I think, why not operate in a way that helps both the rich man and the poor? For it’s the poverty which breeds misery – men and women without work or hope of finding it. At least with honest employment men and women can hope to better themselves and keep their families fed and clothed. For those who don’t work, of course, there’s little hope.’

  ‘But surely there are those who cannot work?’

  ‘Some, yes. And for those my father has a soup kitchen attached to one of his factories. The truly deserving get a hot meal, at least, and perhaps a job if they are fit enough. But there are many more who will not work, through idleness or by making themselves unfit for work through their own folly.’

  ‘Drink, do you mean?’ Rosa thought of Alexis, pouring brandy down his throat until he lay slumped and snoring on the chaise longue in front of the fire. Once he had drunk until he wet his drawers and James had had to carry him to bed and strip him down.

  ‘Drink, yes. Or worse.’

  ‘Worse?’

  ‘Opium,’ Sebastian said shortly. Then he laughed, a short mirthless laugh. ‘But we should not be talking like this, Miss Greenwood. Your mother would be shocked to hear me speaking of such things to her innocent daughter. So would mine.’

  ‘Ignorance is not innocence,’ Rosa said slowly. ‘I wish there was something I could do.’

  ‘If you wish, and your mother permits, I will take you to visit the factories one of these days.’ Sebastian looked at her very seriously. ‘But I warn you, the East End is not for shrinking violets.’

  ‘I know. And I’m no shrinking violet.’

  ‘No.’ His hands on the reins were steady and he looked at her, his eyes shadowed by the top hat. ‘No. I can see that. You are very far from that, Miss Greenwood.’

  ‘Rosa,’ she said suddenly, impulsively.

  Sebastian smiled and he flicked his whip at the horse so that their pace quickened to a jolly, rollicking trot.

  ‘Rosa.’

  ‘Whew.’ Becky put her head around the stable door as Luke finished brushing down Cherry. ‘What happened out in the Row then?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Luke said curtly. He couldn’t bear to relive it all again – the sickening crack of the girth, Rosa’s body dragged along in the dirt like a rag doll . . .

  ‘Nothing!’ Becky put her hands on her hips, her apron strings fluttering in the breeze. ‘Nothing, he says, when you come home with two horses and a face like thunder, and Miss Rosa gets brought home in state in Mr Knyvet’s carriage? If that’s your idea of nothing, Luke Welling, I’d like to see what you’d call “something”.’

  ‘I meant all’s well that ends well,’ he said. ‘She’s all right, in’t she? So nothing happened.’

  ‘From the look on Mr Knyvet’s face I’d say something happened
all right. And maybe that something will end in a proposal if our miss plays her cards right.’

  ‘Don’t be so common, Becky.’ Ellen’s voice rang out across the courtyard and Becky jumped and swung round, her face a mix of annoyance and guilt.

  ‘What? It’s a free country, ain’t it?’

  ‘Not while you’re in employment under Mrs Ramsbottom. If she heard you talking like that . . . not to mention flirting with the stable-hands.’ She shot a look at Luke.

  ‘You’re one to talk.’ Becky tossed her head. ‘Anyhow, it’s Wednesday. I’m on me afternoon off. So’s Luke.’ She turned back to Luke. ‘What about it then, Luke? When I’ve changed my apron, d’you fancy a stroll across the park? Show the swells we can enjoy a sunny afternoon as good as them?’

  Afternoon off. The relief washed over him like a wave. The chance to get away from all this. Away from it all.

  ‘I can’t,’ he found himself saying. ‘I’ve to get back to my uncle’s. Family business.’

  ‘All the way to Spitalfields?’ Becky’s lips made a pout. ‘Are you sure? You don’t want to waste your afternoon traipsing across London and back.’

  ‘I have to. What time have I got to be back?’

  ‘The curfew’s nine o’clock.’ Ellen gave a marked glance up at the stable clock, which showed three already. ‘And Mr James locks up the kitchen door at ten past, sharp, so woe betide any maids who’re late. But the stable’s got its own entrance.’

  ‘So what does that mean?’ Luke asked impatiently.

  ‘It means, don’t get caught.’ Ellen raised one eyebrow.

  Luke was already shrugging into his coat.

  ‘Ain’t you going to scrape your boots and brush the straw off yerself?’ Becky asked, shocked. Luke shook his head. Time enough for that when he got to the forge – and William wouldn’t care anyway.

  ‘No. I’m off. Tell Mrs Ramsbottom I’ll not be back for supper.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Becky said, her face a little doleful as Luke walked out of the stable yard and into the Knightsbridge throng without a backward glance.