Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) (10 page)

‘What! I’m not feeble! You’d have been cold if someone poured icy river water down your neck for two hours!’

‘Two hours? Ten minutes. You should’ve grown up washing under the yard pump like I did.’

‘More fool you, if you couldn’t work out how to boil a kettle,’ she said, but there was a smile in her voice.

They lapsed back into silence after that, for a long time. Luke wasn’t sure quite how long, but he knew that the tree trunk at his back had grown hard and uncomfortable, and that his arm around Rosa’s shoulders had gone to sleep. And yet he didn’t want to move – in fact, he thought he might never move again, that he would be quite content to sit here for all time, feeling the warmth of her bare skin against his chest and the weight of her head on his shoulder.

‘Come on,’ he said at last, and she lifted her head so that his shoulder felt cold, suddenly, and empty.

‘What?’

‘We should get going. The sun’s gone in. We need to keep moving, find a place to spend the night. And we need to wash that stuff off Brimstone. Is your hair dry?’

She felt it, pinching it with the tips of her fingers.

‘Dry enough. How do I look?’

She looked . . . different. And yet the same. Her fire was muted, and the dark hair made her face look smaller and paler, the nutmeg freckles standing out against her nose and cheekbones. But she was still beautiful – the most beautiful girl he had ever touched. He felt an almost overwhelming urge to kiss her, as he had in that moment of madness in the stable before Sebastian found them both. Instead he turned away, his heart thudding painfully.

‘You look fine,’ he said brusquely, speaking to the river. ‘Good thing your eyebrows are dark.’

‘Yes.’ She gave a short laugh as she stood. ‘Alexis wouldn’t fool anyone with dark hair. Orange eyebrows are a bit obvious. Ow . . . My foot’s gone to sleep.’

‘My shoulder an’ all.’ He rotated his arm, feeling the joint click and crunch and the blood rush back into the starved muscle. ‘Come on, I’ll fill up that can from the river while you get dressed. Then we’ll try to catch Brimstone.’

‘I’ve ruined your shirt,’ she said as she handed him back the coat. ‘I’m sorry.’

He looked down. There was a brown stain, like tea, where her wet head had rested on his shoulder.

‘Doesn’t matter.’

It took a long time to wash the stuff off Brimstone’s nose. It had dried on, and where he’d been so good about letting Rosa put the dye on, he was skittish and cross as Luke tried patiently to scrub it off.

‘Come on, you bastard!’ Luke said at last, as Brimstone pulled his head free and skittered sideways across the field for the fifth, or maybe sixth time. ‘Will you just stand bloody still?’

‘Don’t swear at him!’ Rosa said crossly. She’d dressed again, the shawl clutched around her shoulders, her dark hair pinned as well as she could without a mirror.

‘I wasn’t swearing.’ He grabbed Brimstone’s bridle and pulled his head round. ‘If you think that’s swearing – Christ, I could really give you something to complain about if you want.’

‘Don’t be such a bully,’ she snapped back. ‘God, are all men bullies? I thought I’d been unlucky with Alexis and Sebastian but—’

‘Sebastian?’ Luke swung round, his face white with anger. There was dye spattered across his face where Brimstone had shaken his head, trying to get the water off his nose. ‘Is that what you—’

‘Oh, don’t be such a . . . Look, I wasn’t comparing you, I was just—’

‘It bloody sounded like you were,’ Luke growled. He went back to scrubbing Brimstone’s nose.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said more quietly. ‘I’m just . . . Look, I’m worried, all right?’

He stopped, his hand on Brimstone’s nose.

‘I’m sorry as well. You’re right, I was being a bully – or a shit anyway. Which maybe comes to the same thing in the end. Anyway . . .’ He took one more swipe at Brimstone and then dropped the handful of dock leaves he’d been using to scrub at the dye. ‘It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.’

Rosa looked doubtfully at the horse. His blaze was no longer white – but it didn’t match the rest of his beautiful mahogany coat either. Instead it was a strange muddy patch on his long nose. No close observer would be fooled, but it might make them harder to spot to the casual passer-by.

‘Come on,’ Luke said. ‘We need to get going.’ He held out his palms, and she put her boot into his locked hands and swung her leg up, trying to forget the impropriety of what she was doing, trying not to think of what Mama would say. But as she pulled herself into the saddle, she caught the flesh of her palm between the stone of the ring and the pommel, and it dug viciously into her palm, so painfully that she couldn’t stop herself crying out.

‘What happened?’ Luke put out a hand to Brimstone’s bridle, steadying him as he shifted uneasily at Rosa’s cry. ‘Are you all right?’

‘My finger,’ she managed. She held up her left hand and heard his sucked-in breath as he saw the blood oozing from her palm.

‘We’ve got to get it off.’

‘But how?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Eleven shillings,’ Luke said.

‘What?’ Rosa looked up from where she was sitting on the far side of the bed. The inn they had found in Baldock was nicer than the one in Barnet; the room was larger with a good fire, the landlady kinder. They had eaten roast pork and crackling and then made their tired way upstairs, but not to sleep.

‘Eleven shillings. That’s what I’ve got left. Plus the pound note.’

‘Eleven shillings!’ Rosa went pale. ‘Is that all? That means we’ve spent, what – nine shillings in two days? How did we manage that?’

‘Two shillings at the first inn, plus a shilling for bread and beer. A shilling on the dye. Another shilling on food at that village we stopped in. Three at this place for bed and dinner for us both . . .’

‘And the last?’

‘I don’t know – pennies here and there, I suppose.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘Two pounds felt like a fortune when you got it. In Spitalfields that could’ve lasted us weeks. What’re we going to do when it runs out?’

‘I don’t know.’ Rosa looked down at her hands where she was holding a boot button. Her heart felt like lead. She had spent the last half-hour trying and failing to turn the button to gold. Not for real – just a simple little illusion charm that should have taken a few moments, and yet there it sat, still black as coal, glinting in the palm of her hand in the firelight, as if winking malevolently. What was
wrong
with her?

Once when she was twelve and had the influenza, she had nearly died. She remembered Papa crying outside her chamber. And when she recovered, her magic had lagged behind. Long after she was sitting up in bed, sipping soup and asking for her storybooks to read, her magic had sulked and refused to come back.

But that had been different. She had felt it, stiff and halt, like a cramped muscle that refused to flex and twinged sulkily when pushed.

Now – there was simply nothing. She could feel nothing wrong. And yet the magic was not there. It was as if it was being siphoned off at the source, before she could use it. But that was impossible. It didn’t help that she could not concentrate – when she shut her eyes and searched inside for that well of power that
should
have been there, that had never failed her yet, all she could think of was Sebastian, like a hound on her tail, and the ring that bit into her finger.

As if to remind her, her finger gave a painful throb and she looked down. There was blood in the groove around the ring and her finger was swollen and pink. The ring was tighter than ever.

‘Are you all right?’ Luke asked from the other side of the bed. He stood and put the change in his pocket and came around to her side. ‘You’ve been very quiet.’

‘Just thinking . . . Luke, we need to make a plan.’

‘I know.’ He rubbed his face. ‘We can’t keep spending at this rate, or we’ll be broke.’

‘But not just that – what are we doing?’ She felt a desperation rise up inside her. ‘Where are we going? We’re heading north, but
where
?’

‘I don’t know!’ He stood and walked to the window, his face unhappy. ‘How far do we have to go before Sebastian can’t find us?’

To the ends of the earth
, she thought, but she didn’t say it. Instead she took a breath. It was not just Luke’s job to decide what they did; she should not be pushing the burden of decision-making on to his shoulders.

‘We should try to make some money,’ she said, more firmly than she felt. ‘You should look for work – they take on jobbing smiths, don’t they?’

‘Yes . . .’ he said slowly. ‘Though it depends. I could ask at the forge tomorrow. But can we afford to stop here longer?’

‘Yes, if it gets us more money. Money will give us more options, more possibilities. We push on north – it’s as good a direction as any, after all, and you’ll keep looking for work.’

‘And when do we stop?’

‘When the posters stop.’ She felt her courage returning with her words. Forming the plan was helping. ‘When people stop looking. They’ll have to give up eventually. And
somehow
my magic will return, I know it.’

She did not know it. But she had to believe it – for her own sanity. The other possibility was too awful – that her magic was gone for good. But it
couldn’t
be.

‘Now,’ she said with a briskness that didn’t quite conceal the awkwardness in her voice, ‘do we have enough for you to have a pint in the bar?’

‘I suppose so – why?’

‘Because you need to put the word out about work, and I . . .’ She stopped, swallowed, feeling a stupid flush rising up her throat. ‘I need to wash.’

‘Oh!’ He flushed as well, his cheeks red beneath the stubble. His embarrassment should have added to hers, but somehow it did not. Instead his sudden awkwardness was strangely endearing. ‘I – I see. All right. I’ll go down; I’ll get the landlady to send up a jug of hot water.’

Rosa watched him go, and then she began to unhook her dress.

Later, much later, Luke climbed the stairs of the inn, holding fast to the banister as he came up the second, narrow flight. The beer had gone down well, a little too well perhaps, and he’d had more than one pint. At the door he steadied himself and then knocked.

‘Come in.’ Rosa’s voice came small and faint through the thick black oak, and he pushed at the door clumsily and then shut it too hard, with a bang that made him jump. It was almost dark inside, a single candle burning on the bedside table. For a long, long moment he fumbled with the bolt, and then finally it shot home, and he half walked, half felt his way to the bed, where Rosa lay with the covers pulled up to her chin. As his eyes adjusted to the candlelight he saw her, looking up at him out of the unfamiliar mass of black-brown hair that tangled on the pillow, her eyes huge and dark.

‘Sorry I took so long.’ He pulled off his boots, one by one, trying not to let them thump too loud on the floor and wake the sleepers below. ‘There was a man in the bar, was telling me about some work might be had at a smithy out of town.’

He pulled back the covers, with some difficulty, for Rosa hung grimly on to her side, keeping them fast to her chin, and swung his legs into bed. And then he noticed, with a kind of lurch, that Rosa’s dress and corset were hanging on the chair by the washstand. He went very still, feeling the beer-clumsiness in his hands and limbs, and suddenly understanding her death-like grip on the sheets.

‘Luke,’ she said in a small voice, ‘I . . . I took my dress off. I’m only wearing my chemise. Do you mind?’

Mind? He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry, unable to think of a single thing to say.

‘Only,’ her words were suddenly tumbling over themselves, unsure, ‘it was so uncomfortable sleeping in my stays. I know it’s what fashionable ladies do, but I can’t think how they bear it; you can’t imagine the relief of taking them off at night. And I can’t fit into the dress without the stays so . . .’

She trailed off, and he lay, listening to his heart beating in his ears, wondering what he would have said a few months ago if someone had told him it would come to this, that he would be lying in bed next to a half-dressed girl – a lady – a
witch
– listening to her talk about her corsets. What part would he have laughed at the most?

He didn’t feel like laughing now. Anything but.

‘Luke?’ she said again. He shut his eyes, not trusting himself to speak, but knowing that he had to.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No, I don’t mind.’

‘Good,’ she whispered. Then she blew out the candle and turned on her side.

They lay in the darkness, Luke staring wide-eyed into the blackness above, and listening to Rosa’s breathing and the scratch of the starched sheets as she huddled them closer around herself.

He was drunk, but not very drunk. Not drunk enough to reach across the narrow gap between them and touch her hand.

But drunk enough to think about it. Drunk enough to lie there stiff and shaking with the thought of it.

He clenched his hands into fists and turned his back on her, screwing his eyes shut in the darkness, trying to shut out the picture of her warm soft body beneath the sheets, just inches away.

She’s not yours. Not yours to touch, not yours to kiss. Remember that, you fool
.

‘Are you asleep?’ Rosa’s whisper cut through the silence.

‘No,’ he whispered back, though there was no need to keep their voices down.

‘I can’t sleep.’ He heard the rustle of the sheets as she turned.

He rolled on to his back again, and turned his head to face her in the darkness. The curve of her hip was silhouetted against the embers in the grate, but he could see nothing of her face in the shadows that lay between them.

‘What’re you thinking about?’ he asked.

‘About . . .’ She stopped and swallowed; he heard the movement of her throat in the silent night. ‘About my magic. Luke, I’m frightened.’

He sighed and rubbed his face, feeling the rough three-day beard that had started to shadow his cheeks and chin. He wished there was something he could say to make it all right, something to chase away her fears. But he had no answers – how could he? He knew nothing of what she was.