Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) (26 page)

Then, angry with his own soft-heartedness, he slammed the door, hard this time, and locked it, his hands shaking with haste.

Rosa was standing in the corridor where he’d left her, her hands by her side, her face white in the dim light. Her hair was in ragged streams around her shoulders.

‘Is he dead?’

‘No. He’ll have a bloody sore nose for a few weeks, but he’s not dead. Now, come on, let’s get out of here.’

Hand in hand, they ran up the stairs. The door at the top was not locked and Luke could hear music coming from outside. He flung it open – and they staggered out into the parlour of the Cock Tavern.

For a moment everyone stopped. The pianist at the bar stopped banging out his Cockney crowd-pleasers. The lady hanging on his shoulder and warbling out the words stopped in the middle of a verse, her mouth hanging open.

And at the bar Phoebe Fairbrother stopped too, the glasses on the tray she held sliding to the floor one after another: crash, crash, crash.

‘Luke?’ she gasped. Luke winced, hearing the crashes, as loud as pistol shots in the silent bar. If they’d had any hope of slipping out quietly, that hope was gone now.

Then, behind his shoulder, he heard an echoing strangled gulp.

‘
Luke!
’

He turned. It was Minna. Her face was white, her hands pressed to her mouth.

‘Jesus wept, Luke!’

He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t find the words.

Then she dropped her hands and he saw that her face was swollen, her legacy from Knyvet’s match factory.

‘Minna . . .’ He put his hand out, towards her cheek, but she jerked back.

‘Don’t you touch me, Luke Lexton.’

‘I wasn’t going to.’ He felt anger flare. ‘Why d’you do it, Minna? Why d’you sell me out for two shillings?’

‘I dunno what you’re talking about,’ she said nervously – but she did. He could see it in her eyes and the way she refused to meet his gaze, looking shiftily over his shoulder towards the lighted street.

‘You want to know why Leadingham wanted that address?’ he said brutally.

‘Not really.’

She tried to push past him, but he grabbed her wrist, pulling her back.

‘Because he reckons I betrayed him. And he’s planning to kill me for it.’

‘
Kill
you!’ She gave a derisive laugh. ‘Don’t flatter yerself, Luke.’

‘Look at me,’ he snarled. ‘Look at me, Minna. Do I look like a man who’s been hit and starved and locked in a cellar in irons for three days? Because that’s what he did.’

‘Luke.’ He felt Rosa’s pull on his arm and heard her voice, low and urgent in his ear. ‘We need to go. They could be back any moment.’

He clenched his fist, aching to throw a punch – not at Minna, she wasn’t worth it. And he would not hit a woman, not even one who’d sold their long friendship up the river so brutally. But he was desperate to hit
something
.

He took a breath.

‘All right.’

‘Luke . . .’ Minna put a hand on his arm and spoke, her voice low. ‘I’m sorry. Look – I needed medicine, yeah? I can’t get by no more without something to take the edge off. My jaw aches something cruel. I don’t take much . . .’

‘Laudanum,’ he said flatly. She said nothing, but the fact that she didn’t deny it told him all he needed to know. He could have wept. But really, what difference did it make? If she did have the phossy jaw, she’d likely die anyway. ‘Minna, the kids—’

‘Screw the kids,’ she snarled. ‘I never asked to be saddled with a pack of brats! I worked myself to the bone for them kids, Luke, and what do I get? “I’m hungry, Minna.” “I want a dolly, Minna.” “I peed my drawers, Minna.”’

She imitated a child’s whine with uncanny accuracy and Luke flinched.

‘So what if I have a drink every now and again, and something to help me sleep? I don’t get no help from nowhere else. Now, if you ain’t gonna buy me a drink you can piss off with your sanctimonious talk, Luke Lexton. You always was a self-righteous shit.’

For a minute Luke drew a breath – and then he stopped himself. Rosa was right. They had to get out. Leadingham could be back any moment and, though Rosa was still and silent next to him, he could feel anxiety emanating from her like an electrical current. He turned to go.

‘Go,’ Minna shouted as he pulled open the pub door with a hand that shook. ‘Go on, piss off and take Lady Muck with you! Where was you when I needed you? Where was you when I was selling Bess’s bones to the knackers? Playing kiss-me-hand to another man’s fiancée, that’s what. Bet she don’t look so tasty now you’ve dragged her down into the gutter with you, eh!’

For a second he stopped, his hand on the door frame, his head bowed between his shoulders, trying to master his anger.

Then he felt Rosa’s urgent pull on his sleeve and he followed her into the night.

Outside in the narrow alleyway down the side of the pub, Rosa pulled her shawl around her face. It was drizzling – a fine mist of rain that drifted in the night air, making blurry rainbow auras around the gas lamps. She tried to cast her mind back to the night they had left the Cock at dawn in the drifting snow, but she could not remember which way they had turned. Her head felt thick and stupid from the poisoned bottle.

‘Luke, where now?’

He looked dazed and almost punch-drunk.

She tried to imagine standing in his shoes, seeing all his kindness turned to poison and thrown back at him. She wanted to put her arms around him and tell him that it was not his fault, that Minna had to fight her own demons, and Luke could not have fought them for her, even if he had been there to do it.

But now was not the time for this. Now was the time to run.

‘
Luke
,’ she said more urgently. ‘Come on.’

He seemed to pull himself together and nodded.

‘All right.’ He took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘We . . . we need to get out of Spitalfields. Fast. The markets are full of Brothers and it won’t take them long to get word out. Let’s go down to the Thames; maybe we can get aboard a barge or something.’

‘So which way to the Thames?’

‘That way.’ Luke pointed up the alley and they began to walk towards the road.

They’d only gone a few yards when a carriage drew across the opening ahead of them. Rosa’s first thought was that it was oddly grand for Spitalfields. It was high and polished, with a beautiful matched pair of horses and a liveried coachman on the high driver’s seat.

Then it swung to a halt and she saw the side door. And the crest emblazoned on it. Sebastian’s crest.

She heard Luke’s strangled gasp and she knew that he’d seen it too.

For a minute she stood, frozen by the awful impossibility of it.
How?
Had he tracked them down?

Luke grabbed her arm and they turned as one to run down the alley in the opposite direction.

‘Are you sure it’s not a dead end?’ Rosa gasped. The high brick walls seemed to disappear into drizzling darkness.

Luke shook his head and panted, ‘No, keep going; leads into Commercial Street.’

As they got closer, a long rectangle of gas-lit street emerged out of the gloom.

Knyvet’s carriage door slammed shut and they quickened their pace.

Then a man turned into the alleyway.

Rosa carried on running, ready to barge past, but Luke stopped dead. She skidded to a halt.

‘Luke!’ she implored. ‘What the hell are you doing? Come
on
!’

‘Hello, Luke,’ said the man at the far end of the alley. His voice was a pleasant croak. He began to walk up the narrow gap between the buildings, and Rosa could see that he was a small, wiry man with a muffler round his chin and a packet in his hand. ‘Din’t expect to see you here.’

Rosa ran back to Luke and grabbed his hand.

‘Come
on
!’

Whoever this man was, he was just an outwith. Their chances with him had to be better than facing Sebastian.

‘It’s Leadingham,’ Luke whispered dully. He didn’t move. ‘He’s one of the Malleus. He knows.’

Rosa stopped. She looked down the alley at the man walking towards them. Then she looked back to the other end, where Sebastian’s coach still stood beneath the gas lamp, the rain glittering on its polished sides.

‘Is it possible Sebastian doesn’t know we’re here?’ she asked desperately.

‘Oh, he knows,’ Leadingham said. He spoke in a conversational tone, but the alley funnelled and shaped his voice, bringing it to them as clearly as if he spoke in their ear. ‘Oh yes, he knows.’

‘What?’ Luke swung round, facing Leadingham. He put Rosa behind him, as if his body could protect her. She wanted to laugh at the futility of it. She wanted to kiss him for trying. ‘How the hell d’you know Knyvet?’

‘Leadingham and I came to a temporary arrangement some weeks ago.’ A low drawl came from the other end of the passage and a familiar top-hatted figure stepped out at the end of the alley, silhouetted against the shifting lamplight. Rosa’s fingers closed on the back of Luke’s coat. That soft, rough voice, like velvet rubbed against the grain. Pictures rose in her head: Sebastian’s fist against her face; his teeth grazing her lip; the sound of a whip against flesh and a puppy’s screams.

Her head reeled and for a moment she thought she might pass out, but the sickness passed and she stood, panting with fear and anger, ready to fight.

‘
What
?’ Luke turned from Leadingham, to Sebastian, and then back again. Rain dripped from his hair and ran down the bridge of his nose. There was a kind of incredulous disbelief on his face, as if someone had just struck a huge blow at the foundation of everything he thought was true. ‘Leadingham, tell me this isn’t true?’

But Leadingham only shrugged.

‘No.’ Luke was shaking his head. ‘No. How can you condemn me when you – you—’

‘Don’t start on that with me,’ Leadingham sounded weary. ‘I never betrayed my oaths, Luke. I did my best to protect my people and my patch, that’s all. Sometimes that means compromises.’

‘But – but . . .’ Luke’s hands were in his hair, tearing at his face as if he could pull out his eyes and not have to see or hear this any more. ‘Why?
How?
’

He stopped, gasping, unable to find the words.

‘We stumbled over each other looking for you,’ Leadingham said dryly. ‘And, well – I knew who he was, of course, but there was no sense in fighting a war on two fronts. We had a . . . discussion, let’s call it, and agreed to drop arms against each other for the time being, concentrate on our joint aim. I’ve been able to do Knyvet the service of returning his fiancée. And him – well, let’s just say he made it worth my while.’

‘Very,’ Knyvet said, and he smiled, a smile that thinned his lips to a bloodless white line.

‘Sebastian . . .’ Rosa’s hand crept to her throat and then she dropped it. She would not show him her fear. She would not show him her revulsion.

If there was a way out of this, it did not lie in running.

She stepped away from Luke, up the alley, towards the top-hatted figure.

‘Sebastian, let me go.’

He said nothing and she moved closer to him, her hand outstretched.

‘You could have any wife you wanted. You could have beauty, riches . . . anything. Find another wife. One who loves you for who you are.’

‘One who loves me . . .’ There was a silence and then he began to laugh, a long, rolling, bitter laugh. ‘One who loves me for who I am. And what is that, Rosa darling? What am I? A madman?’ He stepped into the light at the end of the alley and Rosa saw the thin white line that traced his cheek from lip to ear, where she had slashed him in the factory: a dueller’s scar. ‘A killer?’ He came closer, his hand outstretched. ‘You’ve made a monster of me, Rose.’ He reached out and traced a finger down her skin from cheek to jaw, his fingers imitating the raindrops that caressed the line of her throat and soaked into her shawl. ‘Your disloyalty, your perfidy, your
beauty
. You’ve turned me into this, Rosa. I burnt innocent men and women, children, because of you. I will have to live with my actions until I die. And so will you. A kind of justice, is it not?’

‘No . . .’ She was not sure if she was telling him, or begging him. ‘Sebastian, no—’

‘How dare you blame her.’ Luke’s voice behind her was hard and cold. ‘
You
owned that factory,
you
chose to lock us in and leave us to die. You did that – not her,
you
.’

Sebastian thrust out a gloved hand, palm first, and Luke slammed back and upwards into the wall of the alley, his feet dangling, his head smacking against the brick. He gasped and a thin line of fresh blood trickled from the wound on the back of his head, mingling with the rain that ran down his throat.

‘Sebastian!’ she gasped. Sebastian only smiled and closed his fingers into a fist. Luke’s groan strangled and then died in his throat. There was silence in the alley now, so quiet she could hear the pub songs floating in the night air and the patter of the rain that dripped from the eaves and puddled on the floor.

‘Sebastian!’ she begged again. Luke’s chest rose and fell, heaving for air. His eyes were screwed shut, as if he were fighting something . . . as if he were losing.

‘Sebastian!’ she screamed. ‘Let go of him!’

‘Come with me,’ Sebastian said, low and soft, his voice caressing. ‘Your life for his – wasn’t that what it was always about?’

For a moment Rosa stood in the passage, looking from Sebastian’s tall silhouette to Luke’s agonized, crucified form, splayed unnaturally against the brickwork. Luke’s face had darkened from red, to a kind of purple.

‘Please . . . You’re
killing
him.’ She turned to Leadingham in despair. ‘How can you stand by and watch this? Isn’t it your mission, to protect your kind from ours? Do something!’

‘Luke forfeited our protection.’ Leadingham’s voice was as implacable as his face, hard and cold. ‘When he chose you over his Brothers, he forfeited any right to our blood spilt in his defence.’

She would have screamed if she thought it would do any good. She could have sobbed and pounded them with her fists. But she knew that none of this would move either of the two men standing sentinel at each end of the narrow alley.