Witch Finder Read online

  Luke sighed and then sank on to the bed and put his head in his hands. He couldn’t afford to get off on the wrong foot with everyone. There was every chance he’d need the help of the other servants, albeit unknowingly, if he were going to do what needed to be done. And Becky would have been a good place to start. He wasn’t a fool; he’d seen the interest in her eyes as she took him in. And now he’d have to work twice as hard to bring her round.

  So this was Fred Welling’s domain. He looked around the little room, taking in the small windows, the low-beamed ceiling. He’d have to be careful not to bump his head going to bed. There was a stub of a candle on the saucer by the bed, so at least he was one candle in credit with Mrs Ramsbottom. A Bible on the washstand – it didn’t look like it had been read very much. A rag rug on the floor and a metal bedstead with a chipped chamberpot beneath. And that was it, except for a few pieces of rickety furniture that looked like cast-offs from the house. Not exactly the lap of luxury, but not bad. It was a room of his own, which was better than many servants had, and bigger than his room at home.

  Home. He thought of William and Minna and the sights and smells of Spitalfields and for a moment his heart ached and he wished he could put his head down on the flat limp pillow, close his eyes and rest. His whole body cried out for it.

  Then he clenched his jaw and stood, wiping the last of the rain off his face with his sleeve.

  He was here to do a job, and he’d do it, and get back home to where he belonged. That was all. And then – then – he’d tackle the Black Witch. Time enough for rest after that.

  He began to unpack his bag. It was heavier than it looked, certainly too heavy for the meagre clothes he took out first. It was the other stuff, what John Leadingham called the tools of the trade that had made the bag so heavy to carry across London, all shoved down beneath his clothes and covered in a piece of newspaper. The long knife. The iron gag. The garotte, the blindfold and the syringe. The bottle, wrapped tight in a dirty rag.

  ‘For God’s sakes, don’t breathe the fumes,’ Leadingham had said. ‘And don’t, whatever you do, break the bottle or the witch won’t be the only one in trouble.’

  Now Luke cast about for a hiding space. A loose board beneath the bed caught his eye, but when he prised it up the space was already occupied by a bottle and a stash of postcards. Luke pulled them out. The bottle was whisky, by the smell of it. And the postcards were photographs of women, everything from buxom matrons to slim young girls, all without a stitch on them. So . . . Fred Welling had had more than his Bible to pass the time up here of an evening. They’d be a good camouflage at least, if anyone did remove the board.

  He put his tools into the space beneath the floor, then fitted the bottle and the cards back into the opening, masking the bundle of newspaper behind them. Then he replaced the loose board and began to unbutton his wet shirt.

  The clock over the stable was striking quarter to as he hurried down into the yard, tucking his clean shirt in as he went. Fifteen minutes before dinner. He had just enough time to put his head round the stable door.

  He paused for a moment with his hand on the latch, smelling the good smells of clean hay and warm horse, and then he lifted it and entered the warmth of the stable.

  Inside the horses lifted their heads from their hay. Closest to the door were two big bays with large gentle eyes, presumably the two ‘hacks’ Fred Welling had mentioned. Furthest away was a beautiful Arab who tossed his head and snorted down his nose as Luke entered.

  In between was a little strawberry roan who whickered gently as Luke came level with her stall.

  ‘You must be Cherry.’ He leant over her rail and patted her shoulder, and she nuzzled him with the side of her head. ‘Ain’t you a beauty?’

  He wished Minna were here. If Bess had a place like this to feed and sleep and rest . . . But there was no point in sighing over might-have-beens. ‘If wishes were horses, then beggars’d ride,’ as Minna would say. Bess was safe from the knacker’s and the glue factory, for today at least. That was more than could be said for many horses. And if her belly wasn’t always full, well, the same could be said for Minna’s brother and sister. She was no worse off than them.

  Luke pulled a wisp of hay from the bale for Cherry and she took it fastidiously between her teeth.

  ‘Time to go in and face the others,’ he said. ‘Wish they was all as friendly as you.’

  ‘Who’re you?’

  He jumped and swung round, his heart pounding.

  A girl was standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips, staring at him with angry, dark eyes. Her cheeks were flushed and the low evening light shone on the dark-red hair gathered into heavy loops at the back of her head, making her seem to glow like an ember in the warm dark of the stables. She could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen, and she was a witch, Luke could see it in her every bone, in the magic that crackled and spat around her like a halo of fire.

  For a minute he couldn’t speak; it was as if she’d robbed him of his tongue. All he could think was that this must be her, the girl he’d come to kill. It must be. And she was standing in front of him, defenceless, her slim white throat bare to his knife – if only he’d had it. He’d never been so close to a witch, close enough to strike . . . He thought of the knife under the floorboards upstairs, of the quiet sound it would make as it plunged into the soft white skin, where the vein beat so close beneath – and his fingers closed on the rail of Cherry’s stall, clutching the wood so hard that splinters dug into his fingers. His heart was beating so hard and fast that he felt sick.

  ‘Who are you?’ she repeated angrily. She took a step forward into the stable, her skirts swishing on the flags, and he saw that her small white hands were clenched into fists. ‘Who are you and what are you doing with my horse?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m Luke, miss. Luke Le—’ He caught himself, snarling inwardly at his stupidity. For Christ’s sakes, if he couldn’t get even the simplest thing right, what hope was there of his ever meeting or besting the Black Witch? ‘Luke Welling. I’m Fred’s cousin.’

  ‘Oh.’ She flushed, and bit her lip. A lock of dark-red hair had escaped its coils and she tucked it behind her ear. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were arriving today. That was very kind of you to fill in so quickly. How is he?’

  Much you care, bitch, Luke thought. Aloud he said, ‘He’s doing all right, miss. The doctor says his arm’ll heal.’ Although not if he turned up at the forge again, looking for more money.

  ‘Oh good, I’m glad to hear it.’ There was a little frown line between her narrow dark brows, and her brown eyes looked . . . well – worried, or a bloody good impression of it. ‘I was so sorry to hear about the attack. It sounds terrifying. Please tell him we all wish him a quick recovery.’

  ‘I will, miss.’ He licked his lips again, and then said, ‘I – if I might ask, are you Miss Greenwood? Miss Rosamund Greenwood?’

  ‘That’s right. You’ve met my brother Alexis, I suppose?’

  ‘Not yet, miss.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was something in her face; he couldn’t put his finger on it – some reserve in her dark eyes. ‘Well, you’ve that pleasure still to come then.’

  ‘Um . . .’ He twisted the hay between his fingers, unsure how to answer. Then he remembered what William had said: When in doubt, just agree with them. Yes, sir. No, sir. You can’t go far wrong with that. ‘Yes, miss.’

  She gave him a look, that same odd look, and then tossed her head in a gesture so like the little mare that he might have laughed if she’d been just an ordinary girl and he an ordinary lad.

  ‘You’d better go in,’ she said. ‘The clock struck the hour a few minutes ago. Mrs Ramsbottom’s very strict about meal times.’

  Then she turned and was gone, leaving him holding the rail of the stall for support, trying to catch his breath.

 
So this was her. The witch he was to kill.

  Rosa hurried back into the house, her cheeks hot with embarrassment as she relived the scene in the stable – the door opening, the strange man standing there, with his arm slung across Cherry’s back, her horse, and Cherry nuzzling his hand as if she’d known him for ever.

  What a fool she’d been. Of course she should have realized who he was – Ellen had only told her the night before. But Ellen had spoken as if his arrival was days, weeks away. And she’d screamed at him like a fishwife – no wonder the poor man had been struck dumb. He probably wasn’t used to the daughter of the house shrieking at him on his first day.

  He looked nothing like Fred, that was all she could think as she ran up the back stairs, hoping to avoid Mama. Fred was small and fair and pink, with thin little bones like a jockey. This cousin was tall and dark, with hazel eyes and hair the colour of wet straw. He looked more like – like a navvy than anything else. When Ellen had said stableboy she’d imagined a little skinny thing, with raw red knees and homesick eyes. The man she’d met in the stable had to be eighteen if he was a day, and looked as if he rode at least twelve or fourteen stone, and his dark eyes showed not homesickness, but a tense wariness she couldn’t account for.

  Well, it was no crime to be unlike your cousin. She had little enough in common with Alexis and he was her brother.

  Suddenly, as if she’d conjured him from thin air just by thinking of him, she heard his voice.

  ‘So, sister. How goes the hunt?’

  ‘What?’ She swung round, and there he was, standing in the dark at the top of the back stairs, for all the world as if he’d been waiting for her.

  ‘You heard me,’ he said. His face was shadowed, but there was something ugly in his stance. ‘Sebastian. What are you doing to get yourself blooded?’

  ‘Ugh.’ She turned her face away from him. ‘Must you be so vulgar?’

  ‘Must you be such a prude?’

  She tried to push past, but he grabbed her wrist, painfully hard.

  ‘Don’t you walk away from me when I’m speaking to you. I am the master of this house, Rosa, and you will listen and obey when I speak, do you understand?’

  ‘I will listen,’ she hissed between her teeth, trying not to let the pain in her wrist show on her face. ‘But as to whether I will obey or not, that lies with my own conscience. I won’t be whored out to your friends for your profit.’

  Alexis lifted his free hand and struck her, brutally, across the face. Rosa staggered and would have fallen if he hadn’t hauled her back to her feet by the wrist he was still holding.

  ‘You brute.’ She put her free hand to her cheek. It was throbbing and swelling, and would be green and blue by tomorrow. ‘You – you bastard.’

  ‘Never speak to me that way again, do you understand?’ he snarled. ‘And wash your filthy mouth out with soap. Tomorrow, Sebastian rides out in the Row. You will meet him, and you will charm him, and God help you if there’s the least trace of a bruise on your prim little face. Understood?’

  Rosa stood for a moment, gasping. Alexis’ grip on her wrist throbbed in time with the pain in her cheek. Then she closed her eyes, feeling her hatred well and boil inside her like molten lead, twining with her power into a hot, explosive bitterness.

  ‘Fýrgnást!’ she hissed.

  Alexis stumbled back with a cry of agony, wringing his hand as if he’d had an electrical shock. He stared down at his palm. In the centre was a charred and blackened spot, still smoking a little.

  ‘You little bitch!’

  ‘Touch me again,’ Rosa said, her voice very low and shaking, ‘and you’ll get the same thing somewhere even more painful.’

  ‘Go to your room.’ Alexis’ face was like thunder and he wrung his hand as if he could wipe her smouldering curse off it, but it was burnt deep into his flesh. Rosa smiled, in spite of the pain in her face, and Alexis roared, ‘Get to your room, you hell-cat! If I see you again before breakfast you’ll regret it, understood?’

  ‘Quite.’

  Rosa kept her head high and her spine straight as she walked along the corridor to her room, though her face throbbed and her wrist was red from Alexis’ grip.

  She held it together until the door closed behind her, but the sound of it clicking shut was like the lifting of a spell. She had not wept since Papa died, but she felt very close to it now – closer than when she had fallen from her horse and limped home on a twisted ankle, closer than when Mama had slapped her for riding astride in Alexis’ cast-off trousers.

  ‘Bastard.’ She leant against the door, her forehead against the wood, as if he were only just the other side. The words were mangled and torn by her shaking, sobbing breath. Her face felt hot, her forehead burning against the cool wood. ‘I hate you. I hate you.’

  Only silence answered her. Alexis had gone – back to the library, back to his brandy. Or out to his club.

  At last she made her way across to the mirror, to look at her swollen face. Her right cheek was twice the size of the left, her right eye pink and swelling shut. It would serve Alexis right if she did turn up in the Row with her face like this. See what Sebastian thought of her then, and see what Alexis’ friends thought of him.

  But the thought came to her, as she stared at her battered face, that whatever marriage to Sebastian would be like, it couldn’t be much worse than life here. Once she was married, she would be out from under Alexis’ thumb. In fact, if she married Sebastian, the tables would be turned. Alexis would be in her power.

  The thought hung there, cold and heavy in the silence. At last Rosa risked turning the door knob and peering out. The corridor was empty and she made her way cautiously down to the study, where the grimoire was kept. Inside it was cold and dark, and she lit a lamp with hands that shook, the match flame trembling as she touched it to the wick.

  The grimoire lay on the desk, its brass lock shut tight, and she whispered the word her mother had taught her as a little girl.

  ‘Ætýne!’

  The lock sprang open with a chink and Rosa opened the pages, feeling the magic swirl and shimmer beneath her fingers as she leafed through the pages, stopping here and there to check for possibilities. At last she came to a page marked with a ribbon, for easier reference.

  A charme to heal a Bruise, Swellyng or Bloe: Binde in a clene Kerchief a frefh Kydny or a pece of Lamb’s Liver. If Nonne can be found, let the Kerchief be wette with clene fpring Wattere, or Teares. Presse itte to the Swellynge and speke these words: Gelácne ábláwunge, geháliged be, May the Bloode of the Lamb take my Payne from me.

  Someone had written in pencil beneath: This charm never fails, though I have kidney only rarely to hand, and lamb’s liver never, and generally use nothing more than a wetted handkerchief. It has been of great service in my marriage, alas.

  Rosa felt rage at the violence of men bubble up in her as she read the words. Rage at Alexis, with his cold words and hot fury. Rage at that unknown ancestor of hers, who had caused his wife to mark the spell for all her descendants’ use. Rage at her father for dying and leaving her here at Alexis’ mercy. Rage at them all – even the blameless ones: Sebastian, Philip Catesby, even at that poor outwith stable-hand.

  She had no clean spring water and she would not waste her tears on Alexis.

  Instead she looked out at the iron-grey clouds scattered across the sky, drawing them towards her in her mind, gathering them into a dark, sodden mass of unshed tears in the sky. The first drops of rain began to spatter against the window pane. She opened the casement and leant out, letting it fall on her clean white handkerchief. Even the rain was grey and filled with soot and smog. She thought of Matchenham, of the clear soft rain that fell on the woods and pastures, and washed everything clean and new. London rain did not clean – it only soiled.

  I want to go home.

  Luke
knocked at the kitchen door, waited, and then came awkwardly into the room, wiping his boots on the mat.

  For a long moment he just stood, watching as they bustled around him. Hot tureens were steaming on the table, Becky was laying out spoons and knives, a big red-faced woman at the range was ladling potatoes from one dish into another. Luke stood, dazed at the thought that all this was for the service of just three people: a girl, a boy, and a woman. It didn’t seem possible. He and his uncle ate well – but there was more food here than they would eat in a week, and more meat than Minna’s family saw in a month, perhaps in a year.

  Then a boy sitting in the corner with a pile of dirty shoes looked up.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  Every head in the room turned to look at him and Luke felt the flush rise up his neck.

  ‘He is Luke Welling,’ Becky said pertly. ‘Fred’s cousin. And you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head, young Jack, and get those boots cleaned before supper or I’ll tell Mr James to take a penny off your wages.’

  ‘I only arst,’ the boy said mildly, and went back to scraping the boots on to a newspaper.

  ‘Luke, this is Mrs Ramsbottom, the cook,’ Becky continued. ‘And this is Ellen; she’s maid to Mrs Greenwood and Miss Rosa.’

  ‘Please to meet you, I’m sure,’ Ellen said, looking Luke up and down as if she wasn’t sure what the cat had dragged in. ‘You don’t look much like Fred, I must say.’

  ‘No,’ Luke agreed. It seemed safer not to offer explanations.

  ‘How’re you related again?’ Ellen asked.

  ‘Cousins,’ Luke said. He was beginning to dislike this tall, haughty girl with her blonde hair swept under a lace cap.

  ‘Through his mother’s side, I suppose? Is it his aunt Mary or Mabel?’

  ‘Through Mabel,’ Luke said at random. The kitchen was warm after the cold of the yard, and he felt sweat pool in the small of his back. ‘But we’re not first cousins. It’s complicated.’