Witch Finder Read online

  ‘Sebastian,’ she said softly, and he turned.

  ‘My darling.’ He came across the room and took her face in his hands, tilting it up so that he could kiss her mouth. Her lips were cold from the street and his mouth felt feverishly hot against hers. She felt his tongue against her teeth and pulled away, and his lips curved in a thin, lazy smile.

  ‘Still playing the nun, Rosa?’

  ‘We’re not yet married. Mama is outside the door.’

  ‘Your mama is so delighted with our engagement that she wouldn’t care if I took you here on this rug.’

  Rosa felt her face flush scarlet. For a minute she couldn’t speak. It was not just the crudity, but the fact that it was so close to being true, that robbed her of the power to reply.

  ‘Oh, Rosa!’ He kissed her again, but paternally this time on the forehead. ‘Your name was perfect – clairvoyant. You flush like a newly opened rose. I adore to shock you just to see the blush on your cheek – but you really shouldn’t make it so easy. Sit down, my darling, you look exhausted. Have you been wedding shopping?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said mechanically. It was almost true, Mama and Clemency had been wedding shopping, after all. Then she remembered her manners. ‘Sebastian, I was so sorry to hear about your father. What happened?’

  ‘An accident.’ Sebastian spoke shortly. ‘He had been working on an experiment, a sort of . . . transfusion.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Nor do I, completely. But it seems that there is a new machine that can extract –’ he glanced at the doorway, checking that they were alone, and lowered his voice ‘– it can extract the magic from one person and inject it into another, giving them strength and power beyond their own abilities. They had refined the process using prisoners, condemned men, you understand. Their success was mixed but at last they came to believe they understood the matching process. It seems that they were wrong.’

  ‘But was he mad?’ Rosa sank on to on the sofa. ‘What was he thinking, a Chair of the Ealdwitan to risk his life in an unproven experiment?’

  ‘Perhaps he was mad, yes.’ Sebastian’s face was hard. ‘The quest for power is a kind of madness of its own. My father was unsparing of others, but also of himself. He was not the only person to die in pursuit of this.’

  ‘But why do it at all?’

  ‘There are others, overseas, who are developing the same techniques. We cannot risk leaving this power in their hands alone.’

  ‘God in Heaven.’ Rosa put her face in her hands. When Clemency had shaken her head and refused to discuss Philip’s work at the Ealdwitan she had thought it was because it must be boring, political. Not this. Not this mad quest for power and domination.

  ‘So . . . what now?’ she managed. ‘Will you be Chair?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid our wedding must be postponed until that is ratified. It means yet more delays, on top of my father’s funeral. Do you mind?’

  Mind? She almost laughed.

  ‘No, I don’t mind. I mean – I understand. This is more important.’

  He took her hands and began pulling off her gloves and kissing her fingers one by one. At last he kissed the great stone that burnt on her left hand.

  ‘I mind,’ he said huskily, his soft, rough voice sending a shiver down her spine. ‘I cannot wait until you are mine, in name and body, in every way imaginable.’

  She did not answer, but only stared into the fire. There was a sound at the door and Mama entered. She laughed at the sight of Rosa’s hand in Sebastian’s, and Rosa snatched it away.

  ‘Forgive me for disturbing you, my dear lovebirds, but I came to ask if you would stay for tea, or perhaps even dinner, Mr Knyvet? Please do not stand on ceremony here; we are all family now, or almost.’

  ‘Alas, I cannot.’ Sebastian stood and bowed. ‘I have to go to Spitalfields, to try to sort matters out at the factory and the soup kitchen. You cannot imagine the mountain of administration my father’s death has caused.’

  Spitalfields. The word gave Rosa a pang, like a sudden stitch in her side. She shut her eyes for a moment, trying not to let Sebastian see.

  ‘Then let me ask James to bring your hat and coat,’ Mama was saying. She rang the bell and James appeared. As Mama gave the order, Rosa turned to Sebastian. She spoke quickly, before she could think better of it.

  ‘Sebastian, won’t you take me with you?’

  ‘Where, darling?’

  ‘To the East End.’ She could not bring herself to say ‘to Spitalfields’. It was too close to saying ‘to Luke’. She would never see him, she knew it. The East End was teeming, sprawling, filled with London-born and immigrants, sailors and natives, merchants, manufacturers and itinerant labourers. There was no hope of finding one face among the throng – and he would not recognize her if they did meet. But at least it would be something – something more worthy than endlessly shopping with Clemency and Mama – that could be of real value to others. She thought of Luke’s friend, the skinny girl with hungry eyes too large for her face that she had sent to the Knyvets’ soup kitchens. ‘Listen, if I’m to become part of your family, I want to understand your businesses, your family’s philanthropy. Please – take me to the factories, to the soup kitchens. Perhaps I can help in some way.’

  ‘It is no place for a lady!’ Mama exclaimed.

  ‘That’s not true! Think of Lady Burdett-Coutts, Mama! Think of all she has done for the poor.’

  ‘Her interests are fallen women,’ Mama said tartly. ‘Hardly suitable for an unmarried girl of sixteen, Rosa!’

  ‘Please . . .’ Rosa turned to Sebastian, knowing it didn’t matter what Mama thought – if Sebastian agreed, Mama would acquiesce. ‘Please take me. I’m not cut out for a life of idleness and shopping. I want to do something, something to occupy myself. I know I can’t do much now, as an unmarried girl, but if I understand your family’s concerns then perhaps, after we are married . . . ?’

  Sebastian took his coat and hat from James and put them on. He looked as if he were thinking. At last he spoke.

  ‘Very well. Not today. But if your mother agrees, I will take you.’

  ‘Tomorrow then?’

  ‘You are persistent, Rosa,’ he laughed.

  ‘Tomorrow? Mama, do you agree?’

  Her mother shrugged.

  ‘If you are under Sebastian’s protection, I can hardly object, I suppose.’

  ‘Very well.’ Sebastian nodded. ‘Tomorrow. But I warn you, Rosa, you may be shocked at what you see.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she nodded as they walked out to the hall. ‘I will not be shocked, I promise. Thank you, Sebastian.’

  He turned to leave, but then stopped.

  ‘Oh, my cane. James, did I give you my cane?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir.’ James hurried forward with a black ebony cane with a carved silver head. ‘I quite forgot.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sebastian took it in his gloved hand. ‘I would not lose it for the world. It was my father’s.’

  ‘It is beautiful workmanship,’ Mama said. ‘What does the head show? I cannot see.’

  ‘It is a coiled snake.’ Sebastian lifted his hand, showing them the silver. ‘An ouroboros in figure eight form. It symbolizes the circle of life, the beginning and end, destruction and renewal.’

  Rosa shivered. There was something disquieting about the snake’s calm, methodical self-cannibalization. It had achieved the ultimate goal: immortality – and paid the ultimate price.

  Sebastian noticed the shudder and kissed her cheek.

  ‘You are cold. Don’t wait to see me out; go back to the drawing room and the fire.’

  ‘Very well. But you won’t forget, will you? About tomorrow?’

  ‘I will send my carriage for you at ten. Is that too early? But the nights draw in so quickly no
w, and the East End is no place for a woman when it gets dark.’

  ‘Ten is perfect.’

  She stood, watching as he disappeared into the fog, the silver head of his cane glinting in the gas-light.

  ‘Goodnight, Rosa . . .’ His voice floated back through the thick yellow murk. ‘Until tomorrow.’

  Until tomorrow. She closed the door against the chill and the moist darkness and went back inside.

  ‘Beautiful day, miss,’ the groom called down to Rosa from his seat. ‘Nothing like a breeze to blow away the fog, eh?’ She nodded, forgetting that he could not hear her, but she was too absorbed in looking out of the carriage windows. At first the streets had been familiar – Belgravia Square, Hyde Park Corner, Piccadilly. But as they made their way past Regent Street into the narrow maze of streets around Leicester Square and Covent Garden, she began to realize what a different London this was from the one she knew. Gone were the tall, grand vistas with their long, clean lines. In their place were crooked tumbledown houses backing on to cobbled alleys, little sooty squares where grubby children played, turning their faces in wonder as they saw the carriage pass.

  ‘Best lock your door, miss,’ the driver called down, and Rosa slid the bolt across, though she found it hard to believe anyone would attack them in full daylight. And in any case, these people looked poor but that did not make them thieves. She knew, now, that the poor could be more honourable than the rich.

  As they drew near the East End, even the air changed. She caught glimpses of the Thames between buildings, running thick and yellow, foam and filth on its surface. The streets grew so narrow that only one carriage could pass and they stopped frequently, waiting for beggars and children to get out of the road, or for carts and draymen to move out of the way. There was a smell of decay – sweet and sharp with filth at the same time. Above the stink of the river and of a thousand night-soil buckets she could smell coal smoke and a rich, heavy odour like rotten beer.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ she called up to the groom.

  ‘Which one, miss?’ he called back with a laugh. His voice was muffled and she saw that he had drawn his scarf across his face. ‘But I think you mean the brewery, if you’re not talking about the stink of Old Father Thames here. Strong, ain’t it? But not unpleasant, like, and it helps to drown out the rest. Nearly there now.’

  They passed a ragged queue of people – men, women and children – strung along the wall of one narrow street in a line that snaked away down a side alley so that she could not see the end of it. There were perhaps a hundred of them, all hollow-cheeked, even the quiet, listless babies. Many of them had scarfs and rags wound around their faces, but she was not surprised; it was very cold and a cruel wind came off the river.

  At last the carriage turned a corner and drew to a halt outside a tall, forbidding building made of grey stone, with windows high in its walls. At street level there was only a huge double door and the groom leant down and banged on it smartly with a stick.

  ‘Open up! Miss Rosa Greenwood, for Mr Knyvet.’

  A small window opened in the top half of the door and a face peered out, then Rosa heard bolts being withdrawn and the door swung wide. The coach and horse rattled through and she peered out to see they were in a grey courtyard lined with windows and opening on to the river, where a boat was unloading huge pallets on to a wharf. There was almost silence from the buildings, no sound of voices or laughter, apart from the great rattling of some kind of machinery. Above their heads a tall chimney rose against the sky, adding a plume of smoke to the rest of the pollution.

  The few men unloading the pallets carried on their business without taking any notice of the carriage, or of Rosa herself, and she was just wondering what to do when a voice came from the other side of the courtyard.

  ‘Rosa!’

  ‘Sebastian.’

  He helped her from the carriage, his tanned face still bearing its Indian colour, incongruous against the smoke-stained grey of the building and the pale, drawn faces of the workmen unloading the barge.

  ‘What are they doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Unloading the shipment of matchsticks. We don’t split them here, that’s done at another site. Here they are only dipped and packed for sale. Now, where shall we begin?’

  He looked up and Rosa saw a giant clock fixed in the middle of the longest side of the courtyard. It read half past eleven.

  ‘Perhaps with the soup kitchens, for they will be quiet at this time of day since they do not open until noon. If we wait until later the stench and crush will be unbearable. This way. Watch your step. The cobbles are rough, I’m afraid.’

  He took her arm and led her carefully across the yard, skirting round the puddles in the cobbles and the drains. They were about to pass under an archway, through a door, when there was the sound of an altercation at the gate.

  ‘You know the rules, Fishwick.’ A man’s voice raised in anger. ‘Now, out, before I summon the guvnor.’

  ‘Pleash, Mr Wyndham, shur.’ The other’s voice was thin and hopeless, and slurred as if he were missing teeth. ‘My wife, she’s very bad . . .’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Sebastian strode across and the gatekeeper immediately pulled off his cap and knocked his stick against the other man’s arm, who hastily pulled off his own. He too had a scarf around his face and jaw and Rosa noticed that his hand was missing three fingers and the last was cut short at the knuckle.

  ‘Bill Fishwick, shir,’ said the second man in a dull voice. ‘Which I arsht pardon, milordship, sir, but it wan’t idlenesh, truly. My wife took ill, I couldn’t leave her . . .’

  ‘Fishwick’s late for work, Mr Knyvet, sir,’ said the gatekeeper gruffly. ‘For the second time this month. Which I told him, the first time was the warning, the second time the sacking.’

  Sebastian looked at Fishwick, at his pinched face. There was no hope in the man’s eyes – they looked dead and lifeless already.

  He shook his head.

  ‘You know the rules, Fishwick.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘See him out, Wyndham.’

  ‘Please!’ Rosa heard the man’s desperate shouts from behind her, as Sebastian walked her away, still holding her arm. ‘Please!’

  ‘I know what you’ll say, Rosa,’ Sebastian said calmly, as they passed under the arch and through a doorway. ‘But they all have a sob story. And if I made an exception for him it would be grossly unfair to all the other workers – men, women and children – who struggle in with circumstances just as bad, or worse. There are a hundred workers for every vacancy, a hundred waiting in line for the soup kitchen. How is it fair to keep a worthless man in a job while conscientious workers wait in line for charity?’

  She nodded numbly, trying not to let her feelings show in her face. He had said she would be shocked. She was determined not to be.

  ‘Here is the soup kitchen.’ Sebastian opened a door and Rosa went inside an echoing hall, filled with close-packed trestles and benches. Three women were laying out cups and bowls at one end and just next door, through a serving hatch, Rosa could see a sweating cook stirring a huge steaming vat over a range. It smelt strongly of cabbage and something bitter that she did not recognize.

  As Sebastian came in the women looked up and their eyes widened in shock, then one by one they dropped into stiff curtseys.

  ‘Please don’t worry.’ Sebastian raised a hand. ‘There is no need to stop work. My fiancée here,’ he patted Rosa’s arm, ‘wanted a tour of the works. We shall not detain you.’ He turned back to Rosa and explained, ‘The facilities here are quite separate from the factory. Those two doors lead to the street; one is the entrance and the men and women queue there to be allowed entry.’

  Rosa nodded. The ragged queue she had seen around the corner of the factory made sudden sense.

  ‘If they are decent and not drunk
, they are fed and then go out through the second door to the street. On the other hand, if we have work – and we try to provide as much employment as we can – they are taken out the way we came, through the third door, to sign on for a trial day. If they are any good, they are told to come back the next day to the factory gate for paid work, like all the others.’

  ‘I see,’ Rosa said. The smell from the range was beginning to make her feel ill, but she was determined not to let Sebastian see it. She put up her chin. ‘Where now?’

  ‘Now I will show you the factory.’

  Rosa’s head was spinning as he led her along a passageway, up some stairs and opened the door to a huge, long hall, painted dull workhouse grey. The windows were high; they let in a little light, but there was no view except grey clouds. Beneath, a great clattering conveyor belt transported a river of matches along in front of a row of bent women and girls, who scrabbled the matches into bundles and then packed them into boxes. There were dozens of them, perhaps a hundred, Rosa thought. Sebastian let her watch for a while, his eyes on her face as she took in the scene.

  ‘Ready to move on?’ he shouted over the roar of the machinery. ‘Next the matches are bound into parcels.’

  Rosa followed him into the next room. Again, the same ceaseless clatter, the conveyor belt with its load of boxes going round and round. Boys and girls, some of them barely ten or twelve, bound the boxes into parcels of twelve and stacked them on pallets. They worked in complete silence like automatons, their faces grey and expressionless. Many of them too had rags and scarves around their faces and Rosa wondered why – surely it was risky with the machinery so fast and near?

  They are poor, Rosa told herself, trying not to give way to the horror she felt at the sight of their blank eyes and lifeless movements. This is what the poor are like – isn’t it?