Witch Hunt Read online

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  Sneak Peek

  Also by Ruth Warburton

  Copyright

  If you liked this you’ll love . . .

  Phoebe Fairbrother groaned as the light filtered through the tattered red brocade curtains. She had a head on fit to burst, and beside her George Wainwright was snoring like a pig, though that wasn’t what had woken her up. Something else had – a noise from the street. But it was George stopping her from falling back to sleep.

  ‘Get out!’ She hit him with one of the stained satin pillows from her bed.

  ‘Wha . . . ?’ He sat up, his hair comically rumpled on one side.

  ‘I said get out! Nobody paid me for no board and lodging.’

  ‘But, Phoebe darlin’—’

  ‘You deaf? Get out!’

  She pulled the pillow over her head as he clumped around the room, pulling on his britches and boots, and then stomped crossly down the stairs to the street door. At last it was quiet and she rolled on to her back, trying to recapture the warm languorous dream she’d been having before she’d been woken – but just as she was slipping into unconsciousness it came again. A crack against the windowpane. This time there was a cry, a voice low and hoarse.

  ‘Phoebe! You awake?’

  ‘Oh shurrup!’ she groaned. But the rattle of stones came again and this time she got up, pulling the eiderdown around her shoulders, and marched angrily across to the window to fling it open. The sky above the rooftops was paling to grey, but in the narrow alley next to the pub she could see nothing but shadows and the small puddle of light beneath the gas lamp.

  ‘You can eff off, whoever you are,’ she called. ‘We ain’t open.’

  ‘Phoebe.’ A tall figure stepped into the light from the lamp post. His face was covered in soot but when he pulled off his cap the lamplight glinted off his straw-coloured hair.

  Phoebe’s mouth fell open.

  ‘Luke Lexton? What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m sorry it’s so early, Phoebes. Please let us in.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Never mind that.’ He shivered into his greatcoat, his breath a cloud of white in the grey dawn light. ‘Let us in before we freeze.’

  She was halfway down the stairs before it occurred to her to wonder who ‘us’ was.

  Luke let the stones fall from his hand on to the pavement and stood, his arms wrapped around himself, trying to keep in the warmth. Something gusted in the light from the lamp and when he looked up he saw dark flecks against the brightness, like specks of ash in the draught from a fire. But it was not ash. It was snow.

  Then there was a sound and he turned back to the door.

  ‘Bleedin’ thing,’ he heard, muffled from behind the wood. ‘Always did stick, the bastard. Give it a shove, Luke.’

  Luke put his boot to the foot of the door and pushed, until it gave suddenly, opening with a rush that tipped him into the narrow vestibule and almost into Phoebe’s arms.

  ‘Oi, mind yourself,’ she said crossly, pushing him back and straightening her clothes. She was in a stained flowered tea gown, her face streaked with last night’s paint and her breath smelling of gin. Luke could have kissed her.

  ‘Thank you, Phoebes, thank you. I—’

  ‘Yes, all right, all right. Shut the door or you’ll let all the warmth out. You can tell me yer bleedin’-’eart story when you’re in front of the fire.’

  She made as if to close the door, but Luke put his hand out, stopping her.

  ‘Wait. I’m . . .’ He took a breath. ‘I’m not alone. Rosa, come here.’

  She stepped forward out of the shadows, her face blue with cold and covered in soot and smuts, her grey silk gown still stinking of smoke and the match-factory chemicals. Her long red hair had come loose from its pins and tumbled down her back, full of ashes.

  ‘What the—’ Phoebe looked amused at first, but then her mouth fell open. ‘What in Gawd’s name are you doing ’ere?’

  ‘You know each other?’ Luke looked from one to the other. They looked so different – Rosa small and pinched with cold, Phoebe warm and golden and bold. But as they stared at each other they both did a strange thing; each let a hand creep to her throat. Luke recognized the gesture in Rosa; it was what she did when she was nervous, putting her hand to the locket her father had given her as a child, as if it could give her strength. But Phoebe?

  ‘Yes, we know each other,’ Phoebe said shortly. She let her hand drop and pulled the tea gown tightly around herself, up to her throat. ‘She’s a lady. She can’t come in ’ere.’

  ‘I have no choice.’ Rosa spoke for the first time, her voice hoarse with smoke and tiredness. ‘P-please. Look at m-me.’

  ‘Darlin’,’ Phoebe’s face was hard, ‘let me spell it out for you: there’s only one kind of woman comes in ’ere, and it ain’t your kind. Understand? If you’re seen leavin’ here your reputation won’t be worth a bent farthing.’

  ‘I know what you’re saying.’ Rosa stepped forward and her face was as hard as Phoebe’s. Luke saw her fist was clenched. ‘But we’re all f-f-fallen in one way or another. I don’t c-c-care about my reputation. Please, let me in before I f-freeze.’

  For a moment Phoebe hesitated. There was something behind her careless expression, something wary. Then she shrugged.

  ‘Your funeral, love.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Rosa pushed past her, into the dusty little parlour of the pub. The embers of a banked-up fire smouldered in the small grate, and Phoebe knelt in front of it for a moment, raking it apart and piling on more coal. Then she brushed her hands on the hearthrug and sat back on her heels.

  ‘All right then. What’s going on? You two runnin’ away together?’ She didn’t laugh; the idea was too preposterous to need spelling out as a joke.

  Luke looked at Rosa and, for a moment, her gold-brown eyes held his. Then she looked away. He bit his lip.

  ‘We’re in trouble.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Phoebe said tartly. Her sharp eyes caught something, a flash in the dimness. ‘What’s that on your finger, love?’ She was across the room in a moment, her eyes wide. ‘Strewth, don’t tell me that’s real?’

  ‘It’s real,’ Rosa said dully. She let Phoebe pick up her hand, turning it this way and that in the light of the fire, her face a mixture of grudging respect and plain envy.

  ‘Good job you ‘ad gloves on when I met you last, love. If you’da walked through Spitalfields with that in plain view, you’d of lost more than your locket.’

  ‘It won’t come off.’ Rosa pulled at the ring and for the first time Luke saw that the skin around it was red and swollen and beaded with blood. ‘See? They’d have had to cut off my finger to steal it.’

  ‘There’s plenty wouldn’t let that stop ’em,’ Phoebe said shortly. ‘I’ll get the kettle from the bar and we can all have a brew.’

  As soon as she had gone through to the next room, Luke turned to Rosa.

  ‘What did she mean about losing the locket?’

  ‘Oh.’ Rosa’s hand went up to her throat again, and when she let it fall he saw that there was nothing there. The locket was gone.

  ‘What happened?’ His voice came out harder than he’d meant it to, but she shook h
er head.

  ‘Nothing, Luke. Please leave it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Phoebe?’ He moved to block the girl’s path as she came back into the room, the full kettle in one hand, tea caddy in the other.

  ‘What?’ she asked, but Luke knew she must have heard his conversation with Rosa, and the expression on her face told him what he already knew. Reaching out, he pulled open the neck of Phoebe’s tea gown.

  There it was, hanging just below the hollow of her throat: Rosa’s locket.

  ‘Gerroff!’ Phoebe shoved past him, banged the kettle down on the grate and pulled the tea gown closed. ‘I didn’t invite you in to paw at me, Luke Lexton.’

  ‘Did you take her locket?’

  ‘No, she give it me!’

  ‘You liar!’

  ‘It’s true!’

  ‘I sold it to her.’ Rosa’s voice cut through their argument. ‘That’s quite true. It was fair exchange, Luke.’

  ‘Exchange for what?’

  She bit her lip, looking at the floor, and he turned back to Phoebe.

  ‘Exchange for what?’

  ‘If you must know,’ Phoebe said huffily, ‘I told her where to find you. Took her there, in fact. And so what if I asked payment for my time? I’m a working girl, ain’t I? And she’s no friend of mine. If you wanted to see her so bad, you should’ve given her your address. You got a funny way of showing a girl you care, Luke Lexton.’

  ‘Give it back to her,’ Luke said, through gritted teeth.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Give it back.’

  ‘No.’ It was Rosa who spoke this time, quietly, but firmly. She put her burnt hand on Luke’s arm. He winced at the sight of it, swollen red from the fire. ‘No, it was fair exchange just as I said, Luke. I didn’t have to pay the price she asked.’

  ‘There you go.’ Phoebe gave the fire a vicious poke and then walked to the door. ‘You heard her. I’m going up to change. You can sort your own tea out.’

  There was a silence after she’d gone. Rosa moved to huddle in the corner of the settle with her knees up, wrapping her skirts around her legs like a child. Luke stood, facing the fire, leaning against the mantelpiece and looking bitterly down into the flames. He was angry at them both – Phoebe for cheating Rosa out of her locket, Rosa for letting her. Most of all he was angry at himself for being the unwitting cause.

  ‘Luke.’ Rosa’s voice cut through his thoughts. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he managed. He turned back to face her. She looked very small and pale sitting in the corner of the settle, her magic just a thin wisp of red-gold in the darkness. The firelight caught her hair and the ruby on her hand, sending back echoes of the flames. ‘We’ve got to get away. So we need horses. Or a horse at the least. And money.’

  Where could they find either? William had money – Luke thought of the iron box beneath the floorboard of his uncle’s room – but his heart failed at the thought of creeping in there while William was asleep and stealing his savings. And William had no horse. Could Rosa magick them up some money?

  No: he pushed the thought away. He refused to ask. It felt like stealing, and he would not ask a woman to do his dirty work for him.

  ‘We could sell this.’ Rosa held out her hand, the ring glinting up at them. ‘If only I could get it off.’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea . . .’ Luke said slowly. ‘It’s too conspicuous as it is. I could get it off at the forge. William has all the tools I’d need. But we’d have to be quick. He was out drinking last night so with luck he’ll be sleeping in today, but not for long.’

  The kettle gave an ear-splitting shriek and they both jumped. Luke moved to the grate, pulled off the kettle, spooned leaves into two cups and poured on the water. He passed a cup to Rosa and then drained his own.

  ‘I’m sorry about the locket,’ he said gruffly, as he set his cup on the edge of the mantelpiece. The lees had made a strange flickery swirl in the bottom of the cup. They reminded him of flames.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Rosa said. She put her hand to her pocket of her dress, feeling for something. ‘I’ve still got the portrait, that’s the main thing. The locket didn’t really matter. It was the memories.’

  ‘Portrait?’

  She pulled it out, a little dirty scrap of paper, slightly sooty, cut oval to fit the shape of the locket. He took it in the palm of his hand, cradling it carefully as he turned it to the light of the fire, trying to see what it was. It was a child’s drawing of a man with large dark eyes and a full beard, the perspective a little skewed and the proportions wrong. But she had caught something in the expression, something kindly and perhaps a little sad.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked, but he knew, or thought he did, even before she answered.

  ‘My papa. It doesn’t look much like him really. In fact, Alexis—’ She stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alexis said . . .’ She gave a short laugh, a little bitter. ‘He said that it reminded him of Charles Dickens crossed with a potato. But Papa liked it.’

  Luke said nothing as he looked down at the scrap. He had no portrait of his own father and mother, not even any memories, save that one earliest blur: of himself, a small boy crouched beneath the settle as their blood ran red down the walls and a hand crept towards him, feeling for the snake’s-head cane that had rolled across the floor through their pooling blood. The cane that he had last seen in Sebastian Knyvet’s hand as he leapt from the factory window to freedom . . .

  He could have followed. He could have followed and found out the truth about his parents and why they’d had to die. But instead he had turned back, for Rosa. He had chosen friendship over vengeance. And now it was too late.

  He handed the scrap back to Rosa and she took it and tucked it into her pocket.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  ‘Ready,’ she said, and stood, looking as if she were steeling herself for something.

  ‘Ready for what?’ Phoebe stood in the doorway. She had put fresh paint on her face and the locket hung defiantly between her breasts, above her knotted woollen shawl.

  ‘Thank you for the tea,’ Rosa said. ‘We have to leave.’

  ‘Ain’t you gonna tell me what all this is about?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Luke took her hand. ‘I can’t explain. But thank you, Phoebes. You don’t know what you did for us. You might’ve saved our lives.’

  ‘What is all this about, Luke?’ For the first time she looked alarmed. ‘You’re not joking, are you? Are you in some kind of trouble?’

  ‘Yes. Bad trouble. Phoebe, if anyone comes asking for us – doesn’t matter if it’s Leadingham, even my uncle – you never saw us, right?’

  ‘All right.’ She looked at him for a moment, her eyes worried, and then she leant forward and kissed him on the cheek, softly. ‘I dunno what you’ve got yourself mixed up in, but you take care of yourself, Luke.’

  ‘Goodbye, Phoebes.’

  At the door she watched them go, biting her lip. They were halfway down the street when she called out, ‘Wait!’

  Luke turned as she came running down the alleyway towards them.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Here.’ She pulled at the shawl, yanking it off over her head, and pushed it towards Rosa. ‘Take this. Part-exchange for the locket, yeah?’

  For a minute Luke thought Rosa was going to refuse. Then she nodded and wrapped the shawl around her shoulders.

  ‘All right. Thank you, Phoebe.’

  ‘G’bye.’

  She watched them go, until the shadows closed around them all.

  Luke probably didn’t mean to walk so fast, but his legs were longer than Rosa’s and he wasn’t hampered by skirts and petticoats. She found herself half running to keep up, a painful stitch in her side where her corsets pinched. She told herself she could keep up, that she wouldn’t beg, but at last, as he turned yet another corner in the dark and narrow maze of streets, she burst out, �
�For God’s sake, slow down!’

  He turned to look at her, his mouth open in surprise.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .’ He stopped, looking around. The quarter wasn’t yet busy, but there were people about. ‘I just . . .’

  He swallowed and then said almost under his breath. ‘The Malleus. The Brothers work these markets. We can’t afford to meet ’em. Any of them.’

  ‘Will they recognize me?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He looked at her appraisingly, as if trying to see her with a stranger’s eyes. Rosa hung her head. She could guess what she looked like, walking through the streets at dawn, with her head bare and her hair loose and her gown ripped and filthy.

  ‘I must look like a tramp,’ she said bitterly. To her surprise, Luke’s worried face broke into a reluctant smile.

  ‘You ain’t seen many then. Or not many East End ones. No, you don’t look like a tramp. But you don’t look quite like a lady either. No, no, that’s good,’ he added hastily at the sight of her expression. ‘They’ll be looking for a lady, for Sebastian Knyvet’s fiancée. Hang on a minute.’ He pulled her into a quiet doorway, away from passers-by, and then took hold of the shawl, pulling it up around her face, covering her bright hair. ‘Your gown’s ripped and sooty from the fire, but the cut’s too good, and these flounces are too fancy. We can’t do much about the cut but . . .’ Rosa felt a tug, there was a ripping sound and Luke let some torn silk and lace flutter to the ground. ‘If only we could do something about that bloody ring. Phoebe’s right. If anyone sees it and thinks it’s real . . .’

  ‘I’ll hold the shawl like this.’ Rosa twined her left hand in the wool, hiding her fingers. ‘Is that better?’

  ‘It’ll have to do. Just don’t let the shawl slip.’ He turned up the collar of his coat and huddled into his muffler. ‘Listen, is it all right . . . ?’ He stopped.

  ‘What?’

  He stepped towards her. It was hard to see his expression above the scarf, but she could have sworn there was a flush on his cheek.

  ‘It’d look better if . . . if we looked like . . . sweethearts. Like a married couple off somewhere.’ He was definitely blushing now; even in the thin winter dawn she could see his cheeks were scarlet. ‘I don’t want to be familiar, but . . . can I take your arm?’