Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) Page 9

  Rosa didn’t wait to hear any more. She scrambled up and leapt for Brimstone’s back. But she wasn’t even halfway into the saddle when the second man had her, hauling her roughly back to the ground, stamping on her hand so that she screamed and cried out.

  ‘You little bitch!’ The first man was half swearing, half sobbing. ‘You burnt me!’ Then something in his face changed.

  ‘Christ, Chalky.’ He looked from Rosa, to his friend, and then back. There was something calculating in his expression, a cold clarity beneath the pain. ‘She burnt me. D’you know what that means?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ the second man said. He looked down at Rosa, as if frightened that she would engulf him in flames at any moment, and crossed himself fearfully. ‘What do we do? There’s the hundred quid, but the Inquisitor—’

  ‘A witch! A bloody witch.’ The first man stood, wringing his burnt hand and staring at Rosa lying on the ground, a mixture of hate and avarice on his face.

  ‘We can’t take her back to London if she’s a witch,’ the second man said. ‘She’ll send us mad before we get to Hatfield.’

  ‘Let me go.’ Rosa tried to keep the sob out of her voice, tried to sound like the witch she was, the witch she had been, but it was hard to sound fearsome when you were lying on the ground, your hand bleeding into the mud. ‘Let me go, or I’ll burn more than your hands. I’ll burn your heart inside your living body while you stand there.’

  The second man shivered but the first man only stood, watching her, sucking his burnt palm. Then he shook his head, very slow.

  ‘Nah. If you could’ve burnt me alive you’d have done it then. I know women. I know what they’re like when they strike out. They don’t hold back. That was all you had for the moment, I reckon.’ He turned back to his companion. ‘Get a rope. And a gag – that’s important. See if Fletcher’s got any chloroform.’

  ‘Let her go.’

  Rosa jerked her head up. It was Luke. He was standing behind the two men, and his face was pale with fury. She had never felt more glad to see anyone.

  ‘And who the hell are you?’ the first man said over his shoulder. ‘Piss off back where you came from. That’s a hundred quid lying on the ground right there, and I’ve better men than you want a piece of her.’

  ‘Let her go.’ Rosa saw him reach slowly for the pack roll under Brimstone’s saddle, and she held her breath. If only she had repacked it right. If only he could find the knife . . .

  His fingers closed over something and he repeated, very low, very quiet.

  ‘Let. Her. Go.’

  ‘Go screw yourself,’ the first man said with casual contempt. And then in one sudden move, Luke was at his back, the knife in his ribs. The man went very still.

  ‘Let her go,’ Luke whispered, ‘or I will gut you like a pig.’ Rosa didn’t doubt for a second that he would. This was a Luke she had never seen before. A cold, frightening Luke.

  ‘Hey, hey – calm down,’ the man tried for a laugh, but there was fear in his voice. ‘Chalky, take your foot off the girl, all right?’

  Rosa felt the crushing weight on her hand lift, and she scrambled up.

  ‘Rosa, get on to Brimstone’s back,’ Luke said. His voice was very calm, but his face was quite white. She obeyed, her hands shaking as she climbed into the saddle, trying not to get blood on the tack. ‘Now, you,’ he spoke to the first man, ‘you’re going to walk away – right?’

  ‘Damn you, you son of a bitch,’ the man whispered under his breath, but he nodded. ‘All right.’

  Luke let the knife point drop and the man took two steps forward and stood, staring at Luke with hate. Luke put his hand to the bridle and was about to swing himself up alongside Rosa when the man’s mouth fell open, and he pointed to the knife, still in Luke’s other hand.

  ‘Your knife – it’s got the hammer.’

  Luke stopped, very still. He and the man stared at each other.

  ‘Are you a Brother?’ the man demanded.

  Rosa held on to the reins, her knuckles white, willing Luke to get on the horse and get away. But he only stood frozen, his hand on Brimstone’s bridle. She could see from the way his eyes flicked from one man to the other, and then up at her, that he was thinking, calculating, trying to work out what answer to give, what answer would get them out alive.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. Rosa let out a breath she did not know she had been holding. The feeling in the air had changed, but she could not say how.

  ‘Show me your mark,’ the man demanded in a growl. ‘Show me, or by God I’ll drag you in front of the Inquisitor for an imposter!’

  Luke unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it down at the neck, baring his shoulder. There it was on his shoulder, the livid red-white mark of a half-healed burn, in the shape of a hammer. The man sucked in his breath and looked from Luke, to Rosa, and back again.

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘She’s mine.’ Luke spat the words. The tension between them had not gone; if anything it was stronger than before. He put his mouth close to the first man’s ear and whispered something, too low for Rosa to hear.

  The man pulled back, his face twisted with anger.

  ‘Screw you then, you tight-fisted bastard.’

  Rosa held tight to the reins and behind her Luke heaved himself into the saddle in one quick move. She felt him give Brimstone a great kick that sent the horse curvetting and stamping. Then they were off, across the frozen mud, and away.

  They rose in silence for a mile or more, Luke too filled with fury and fear to speak. Rosa sat straight-backed in front of him, her hands gripping the reins much too tightly, so that Brimstone pulled anxiously at her grip and tossed his head.

  At last, deep into the countryside, he pulled Brimstone to a halt and slid from his back. They were away from the men and the horse couldn’t keep carrying two of them.

  ‘I can walk,’ Rosa said, but he shook his head silently and tugged at Brimstone’s bridle.

  ‘Luke, I can walk!’ Rosa said again, but he didn’t answer. The tenseness of the muscles in his neck and shoulders told her that he’d rather walk alone, so she let it drop.

  At last, as they passed into a deep wood-shadowed lane, he spoke.

  ‘So now you know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘What kind of a man I am.’

  He looked up and saw her eyes flicker towards the bundle at the back of the saddle, and he knew that the memory of the knife, quicksilver in the sun, must be shivering through her, as it was him; but she shook her head angrily, as if pushing the thought away.

  ‘You’re not like them.’

  ‘I am. I was. Only I’m not. Christ.’ He put his free hand over his face. ‘I should have killed them; the story’ll be halfway back to London by now.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’ she snapped. ‘Why didn’t you kill them?’

  It was the question Luke had been asking himself for the last mile. For a moment he couldn’t answer. But it was easier speaking to the silent trees than to Rosa’s face.

  ‘Because I’m a coward.’

  She pulled Brimstone to a halt and leant down, trying to look at his face in the dim pine-scented shadows.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Fine. I’m ridiculous.’ He tugged at Brimstone’s bridle again and the horse took a step, but Rosa pulled him up.

  ‘No, wait, you don’t get to stop this conversation now you’ve started it. What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m a coward.’ He spat the words as if they were bitter on his tongue. ‘Can we carry on, please?’

  ‘No!’ She was looking at him with a mixture of astonishment and anger. ‘No, we most certainly cannot. You’re not a coward! You’re . . .’ She was almost spluttering, lost for words. ‘Luke, you came for Minna, you faced witches to free those men and women, you walked into a furnace for me.’

  ‘I’ve spent my life walking away from fights. I walked away from those men, I walked away from Knyvet, I hid – I hid . . .’
He couldn’t finish. It was like something physical in his throat, something he had swallowed, stopping him, choking him. The spectre of the dream rose up in front of him, a hand groping, a child cowering under the settle, and for a horrible moment he thought he might cry.

  ‘Can we just bloody carry on?’ he managed.

  ‘Walking away from a fight doesn’t make you a coward, you fool!’ She was as angry as him. ‘It’s not bravery makes a man take on a fight he can’t win, or kill a man he could afford to spare. It’s stupidity!’

  ‘You don’t know nothing about it.’

  ‘Fine.’ She sat up straight, stiff with anger, and he knew that if she’d had any magic left it would have been spitting and crackling like damp coal on a hot fire. But she had none. Instead she slapped Brimstone’s reins down on his neck and the horse trotted on.

  There were no inns. That was what he had failed to realize. They had turned off the Great North Road some five or six hours back, and at first the going had been better, and quieter. He’d felt reassured by the dwindling towns and villages. Fewer people meant fewer posters, fewer spies, less chance of being caught.

  But now dusk was falling and they had been going for hours. Brimstone was tired, and Luke and Rosa were both faint with hunger. They’d drunk from a stream by the roadside, Luke trying not to think of dead sheep and leaking dung heaps upstream. But there had been no food, not since breakfast.

  It was cold too and, as the sun slipped beneath the horizon, it began to snow, very gently, then harder, in soft white smothering flakes that got into their hair and eyelashes, and made everything wet.

  They needed to stop. They needed to sleep. But there were no inns.

  Another corner was coming up and Luke told himself that this would be it, round this corner there would be a village, or even a farm, a cottage. But there was nothing. Brimstone was going slower and slower in spite of Rosa’s encouraging clicks, and now he stumbled in the slush as they came round the corner. Rosa pulled him up with shivering hands and they stopped.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m g-going to walk. He’s t-too tired to keep on like this. And b-besides, it’s n-not fair that I k-keep riding while you walk. I’m n-not a wilting f-f-flower.’

  ‘I rode.’

  ‘Only a m-mile or two.’ She slid from Brimstone’s back. Close by, he could see how cold she was, her dress wet with the falling snow.

  ‘We make better time like this,’ he said brusquely. ‘If you had proper boots instead of those stupid button-up things . . .’

  But, more than the boots, they had to find her a proper coat. That silly shawl of Phoebe’s was meant for scurrying from one pub to another, not walking miles in the frozen countryside where there was nothing to break the wind but the trees and the odd barn. For a minute he thought about offering her his greatcoat, but he knew she’d turn it down. Instead he moved around so that she was squashed between his body and Brimstone.

  ‘W-what are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s more comfortable like this.’ It wasn’t, but she would freeze, stuck on the outside. At least like this she could get some shelter from Brimstone’s body. After a few yards he put his arm around her, trying to share the warmth of his thick coat. He half expected her to protest, but she didn’t.

  They needed to stop. Neither he, nor Rosa, nor Brimstone were fit to go on much longer without rest, and something hot inside them. God, if only they were in London; there you were never far from something, a pub – or a doss house even – but something with a roof and a fire. And even if you couldn’t get a roof, there were pie-sellers and hot chestnut vendors, or a tramp with a brazier to let you warm your hands. But out here, in this great frozen waste of fields . . . He thought again how pitiless the countryside was compared to London. There were none of the piles of refuse and filthy beggars. But death lay just as close beneath the surface. Even a pile of rubbish might hold a meal or the wood for a fire. What could you eat in these desolate, frost-frozen fields and woods? Grass? Twigs?

  ‘Look.’ Rosa’s voice broke into his thoughts and he glanced up, following the line of her finger into the swirling snow. She was pointing further up the bend, but all he could see was trees, the woods clustering thick against the road.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you see it? Smoke!’ She quickened her pace, until she was half running in the muddy slush and Luke had to jog to keep up, pulling the tired Brimstone in his wake.

  ‘Rosa,’ he panted angrily. ‘Rosa, wait!’

  But the protests died on his lips as they rounded the bend and there it was – a tiny cottage tucked almost into the woods, and a thin coil of smoke coming from the chimney. The windows were dark – but there was no denying that wisp of smoke disappearing into the forest.

  Rosa was through the garden gate and banging on the door before Luke had a chance to catch his breath. He stood by the gatepost holding Brimstone’s bridle, his heart thumping with the effort of the run and his breath coming white in the night air, but the blood cooled in his cheeks as they waited for an answer. None came.

  ‘Open up!’ Rosa banged again on the door. ‘We’re freezing out here. We’ll d-die on the road. Open up!’

  They stood silent, Luke holding his breath and listening for a step, watching the windows for a candle’s flicker.

  Nothing. There were people there – a fire could not light itself. But they were not opening the door after dark, that much was plain.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Rosa turned to face him. Her voice cracked on the last word. ‘Damn them! They must be home.’

  ‘Knock again?’

  ‘I’m going to try the door.’

  ‘No!’ he cried, but she was already rattling the handle. ‘Are you crazy? We’ll be shot for trespassers!’

  ‘We won’t be shot. But it’s locked anyway.’ Her shoulders slumped, defeated. She put her hand up to where the locket had hung, forgetting, and then let it drop with a choking sound. For a moment Luke thought she was going to cry, but she pressed her lips together, choking down whatever noise she would have made. Then she tossed her head, that funny proud gesture he had come to know as so completely Rosa.

  ‘It is they who should be shot, for letting travellers die on the road rather than open their doors. Do you hear me?’ she shouted up at the silent windows. But there was no answer.

  ‘Hell and damnation.’ Luke clenched his fists inside his jacket pockets as she turned and walked up the path, back towards the road.

  ‘If only I had my magic! I could get us through that door in a second. But I can’t even make a witchlight!’

  She was nearly crying with frustration, and Luke was torn between wanting to put his arm around Rosa and wanting to punch something. The desire to turn tail back to London and the warmth of the forge was almost overpowering. But he could not. He could never go back.

  ‘What shall we do?’ he said, very low.

  ‘We can’t keep walking.’ She was shivering again, the borrowed warmth from the run fading as fast as it had come. ‘We’ll have to sleep in the woods.’

  ‘We’ll freeze!’

  ‘The tramps used to do it. We’ll make a shelter. Build a fire.’

  ‘How?’ He would not show himself for a coward and a weakling. But he was very close to despair. ‘We’ve got no matches, no tinderbox. How?’ He shut his eyes, pushing back the bleak thought of the match factory and the row after row after row of drying matches, the thousands upon thousands of boxes. Damn Knyvet. Damn him to hell and beyond, for what he’d driven them to.

  ‘C-come on.’ He felt Rosa’s hand in his, cold as ice, and they began to walk into the woods.

  ‘Here will do.’ Rosa looked around them. They had not found the barn or field-workers’ shelter she had been hoping for, but at least in this small copse the trees were dense-packed and the ground thick with leaves. The snow still fell, but not so thick, between the close-set branches. She set about unbuckling Brimstone’s saddle.

  ‘Make
yourself useful,’ she said over her shoulder to Luke, standing helplessly, his hands by his side.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Get some sticks, some kindling.’

  ‘But we’ve got no—’

  She gave him a look, and he turned and began searching on the forest floor for dry twigs and leaves. Rosa turned back Brimstone. Her fingers were too cold to work the buckles easily, but at last she had them loose and pulled first the blanket roll, and then the heavy, shiny saddle free. Brimstone gave a little snort as it came loose and made all the skin on his back twitch and shiver in the moonlight.

  ‘There you go.’ She spread his saddle blanket over him and stroked his warm mud-coloured nose. ‘Don’t freeze, darling Brimstone. You’re all we’ve got.’

  She shivered as she said the words and Luke looked down at the pile of twigs.

  ‘What now?’ he asked. ‘I’ve heard tell that tramps can light a fire by just rubbing a stick, but I don’t think this wood’s dry enough for that. Why didn’t I pack my damn tinderbox?’

  Rosa swallowed.

  ‘Let’s see what I’ve got left.’

  ‘What you’ve . . .?’ For a minute he didn’t understand, then he said, ‘Oh,’ and fell silent.

  He said nothing as she crouched over the little pile, a piece of birch bark between her fingers, remembering, thinking of all the fires they had set as children in the woods and fields around Matchenham, roasting fish from the lake and eggs stolen from the hen coop, potatoes pulled from the kitchen garden when the gardener was at his own lunch, wild garlic from the stream bed. Alex had always sworn by dry grass, she by birch bark. But she had never had to do it without magic.

  She knelt, feeling the cold strike though her clothes.

  Come on, just a spark, just the smallest, smallest spark . . .

  Nothing.

  She pushed harder, her lips forming the different spells, the words to call heat, the words to call fire, the words to bring forth light from the darkness.

  Nothing at all.

  ‘God!’ It burst out of her like a sob. ‘I never knew how much I relied on it!’

  She turned, looking at Luke’s face, white in the darkness.