Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) (6 page)

‘Won’t he notice?’

‘He might,’ Clemency said. ‘I truly don’t know. He’s not very careful with his belongings, but two pound notes . . . There was a five-pound note too but I didn’t dare to take it. He would certainly remember that.’

‘I think I should only take one.’ Rosa made up her mind. ‘Fold it back as if there were two – he’ll think that he misremembered.’

‘Very well.’ Clemency handed Rosa one note and slipped the other back into her sleeve and then, as Rosa stood, she cried, ‘But wait – you’re not going? Won’t you have something to eat at least?’

‘I can’t.’ Rosa picked up the shawl from where it lay on Clemency’s canary silk armchair and wrapped it around her head and throat. She gave one longing look at the warmth of the fire, but Luke was outside, without any fire in the December cold. ‘I must go, before Philip gets back. Now, remember – you must throw me out.’

‘But where will you go?’

‘I’m not sure – but even if I was, I couldn’t tell you. I’m sorry, Clemmie.’

‘Don’t you trust me?’

‘Of course I do.’ Rosa put one hand against Clemency’s cheek, feeling its smooth warmth, and as Clemency closed her eyes a single tear traced down over Rosa’s fingers. ‘I wouldn’t be here otherwise. But I don’t want to make this more difficult for you than it is already. Now, come – throw me out.’ She took a breath. ‘Please, Clemmie!’ she shouted. ‘How could you be so heartless?’

Clemency gave her a last despairing look and squeezed her hand until the ruby bit into Rosa’s flesh. Then she took a breath herself.

‘I said, get out! How dare you come here with these absurd tales.’

‘I thought you were my friend.’ Rosa found her voice was shaking, and there were real tears in her eyes. Clemency’s grip on her hand was painfully hard, the stone of the ring biting into her skin until it felt like it would bleed.

‘Go home!’ Clemency cried. Her voice cracked despairingly. ‘Go home and let us forget this whole painful episode, Rosa!’

There was a knock at the door and Clemency dropped Rosa’s hand.

‘Come in,’ she said, with a voice that was convincingly shaken and upset. Millie’s frightened face appeared around the gap.

‘Mr Wilkins asks if everything’s quite all right, ma’am?’

‘Quite all right, thank you, Millie. Miss Greenwood was just leaving.’ She turned a stony, expressionless face towards Rosa. ‘Please show her out.’

‘Clemency,’ Rosa said. It was all she could say. She had not thanked Clemency for this terrible, daring thing she had done – this act of friendship in defiance of her husband and their kind. And now she could never thank her – not in front of the maid. She could only repeat, hopelessly, ‘Clemency’ and hope that her voice and her eyes said everything she could not.

‘This way, miss,’ said the maid firmly. There was a hint of triumph in her voice, and Rosa realized that she was pleased, in some odd way, that her initial suspicions had been justified. ‘Or should I ask the footmen to show you out?’

‘No,’ Rosa said. She made her voice bitter, and she stood and walked to the door, her back very straight, her right hand folded tight around the coins and the note Clemency had pressed into her fist. ‘No, I’m going. You don’t need to get the hired thugs to throw me out. Goodbye, Clemency. My
friend
.’

Goodbye . . .

L
uke said nothing as they walked quickly across the park to Knightsbridge, and the last stretch towards Osborne Crescent. Rosa had been crying, he could see it in her red eyes and the clean tracks on her dusty, sooty face. But he didn’t know what he could say that would comfort her, so he took refuge in silence.

Still, the best part of two pounds – forty shillings, as near as made no odds. That was a king’s ransom in Spitalfields. The coins jingled in his pocket, the pound note was tucked inside Rosa’s dress. How much for a room in an inn – a shilling perhaps? They would have to share, but he closed his mind to that difficulty. Time enough to worry about that when they’d found a horse.

It was growing dark as they rounded the corner into the mews behind Osborne Crescent, and the fog was starting to draw in, as it always did on cold evenings around this time, but that was all to the better. Less chance of anyone noticing. The clock above the stable struck six as Luke put his hand to the latch of the stableyard gate. It was good timing. Mrs Ramsbottom would be in the thick of cooking, Mr James would be counting the wines for dinner, the servants would be preparing to sit down to their own meal. And the family – would they be out still?

Rosa was close behind him as he pulled the gate cautiously open, and he turned as he was about to step into the yard.

‘You don’t have to do this.’

‘I must. If they catch you, you will need my protection.’

‘They won’t catch me,’ he said gently, but she shook her head, and together they slipped through the narrow crack of gate and into the cobbled yard. The windows above the stable were dark – evidently the new stable-hand was not at home.

Luke unlatched the door to the stable and they moved quietly inside and shut the door behind themselves, waiting for their eyes to get used to the darkness. They could not light a candle or risk a witchlight. Anyone glancing out who saw a light in the window would be instantly suspicious.

As Luke’s eyes adjusted his heart fell. One empty stall . . . two . . . three . . . Where were all the horses? Cherry was gone, of course, but Castor and Pollux – had they come all this way for nothing? He swore quietly beneath his breath. There was an answering whicker from the furthest stall, and his heart leapt.

‘Brimstone?’

In the darkness he was almost impossible to see, but Luke caught sight of the white blaze on his nose as he shook his mane.

‘Brimstone! You beauty.’

He moved forward, moving more surely in the darkness now, and felt for the saddle on the peg between the stalls. There it was.

‘How can we manage with only one horse?’ Rosa whispered. ‘Mama must have taken the carriage out.’

‘It’s better,’ Luke whispered back. ‘Horses cost money to stable and feed – this way we can travel cheaper.’

‘Can he carry us both?’

‘He can if we nurse him. And I can walk. Anyway, we have no choice. We can’t wait for the carriage to come back, can we?’

‘No.’ Rosa’s shape was a dim ember in the darkness, but he thought he saw her shiver. ‘Luke, it’s gone six. They’ll be back soon for dinner. We must hurry.’

‘I know.’

He opened the stall door and saddled Brimstone up, petting his nose and whispering to him, praying that the horse wouldn’t whinny and give them away.

‘It’s a man’s saddle,’ he whispered to Rosa as he did up the girths. ‘Cherry’s isn’t here, and anyway, we wouldn’t both of us fit side-saddle. Can you manage?’

He felt, rather than saw, the look of scorn she gave him.

‘I can manage,’ she whispered back fiercely.

‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on. I was just asking,’ Luke said. ‘Now, are you ready? We’ll have to be quick. There’s nothing we can do about Brimstone’s hooves on the cobbles and if they hear those . . .’

‘I’m ready,’ Rosa said.

Luke nodded and was just about to lead Brimstone outside when he stopped, his hand on the latch.

‘What?’ Rosa whispered. ‘Can you hear something?’

‘My knife. And the bottle.’

‘
What?
’

‘I left them upstairs in the stable block. I should get them.’

It was the witch-hunting kit John Leadingham had given him when he first set out. The thought of the implements made him feel sick now, the long knife with the wicked point, the iron gag. The garotte. The syringe. The bottle, wrapped in rags, that could slay a witch – or a man. They had been meant for Rosa, and that thought made him curl with self-hatred. But they would be useful, undeniably, if Sebastian or Alexis came after them . . .

‘No,’ Rosa said. ‘No, we get out of here now. You can buy another knife.’

Luke made up his mind.

‘Wait here. Hold Brimstone.’

‘
No!
’ Rosa hissed after him, her voice a furious whisper. But she was too late. He was already out of the door and padding quietly up the stone steps to the room above the stables. The
empty
room – or so he hoped.

His heart was thudding in his throat as he pushed gently at the door and slipped inside. The room was empty – but not unoccupied. There was a case by the windowsill and a pile of dirty linen on the floor. They’d lost no time in engaging a new groom.

The loose board was still loose, and he prised it up, his fingers shaking as they dug into the splintered board and pulled it back. Inside the hollow he pulled away the bottle of whisky and erotic cards left by the previous occupant, and behind them was the bundle with the familiar sharp-sour smell leaking from the bottle. The smell made his head swim and his eyes water, even through the tightly stoppered cork and wrapping of rags.

He yanked them out and looked around for something to put them in. The new stable-hand had a suitcase but that was far too unwieldy to carry on horseback. Instead he yanked a thin moth-eaten blanket off the bed and made a hurried pack roll. There were plenty of spare girths in the stable; he could rig something up.

He was just about to leave when the sound of hooves turning into the mews caught his ear, and he leant against the window, trying to see sideways down the long dark mews, through the gathering dusk and the fog. A carriage had just turned into the right-hand side of the mews, with two horses hitched at the front. It was difficult to tell in the dimness, but he was almost certain the horses were Castor and Pollux.

For a minute he stood frozen, the pack roll in one hand. Then, all thought of caution gone, he flung open the door and ran down the steps, his boots thumping on the stone.

Rosa looked round, horrified, as he burst into the stable.

‘Hush! Have you lost your mind?’

‘They’re back,’ he gasped. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out
now
. Two horses, coming up the mews from the right. If we get out now we can turn left and maybe miss them.’

He saw her eyes, huge and black in the darkness, dilated with fear. Then she gave a single sharp nod and opened the stable door. Luke strapped his bundle to the back of the saddle with shaking, hasty fingers, then grabbed Brimstone’s reins and led him out into the courtyard, trying not to communicate his fear to the horse.

‘Up,’ he said to Rosa. ‘I’ll open the gate.’

For a minute he thought she would argue, but then he held out his cupped hands and she vaulted up on to Brimstone’s high back with a single movement and picked up the reins, and he ran across the cobbles to pull open the gate to the yard. He could hear the hooves, terrifyingly close now, coming along the mews. Thank God the horses were tired and pulling slowly – but it would not be enough, he realized with a sudden lurch of horror. They were only a couple of doors away. At this rate they would meet in the mews, directly outside the house.

He stopped with his hand on the gate.

Rosa’s face was white in the darkness and he could see she’d realized how close they were too, and was filled with the same indecision. She closed her eyes, her hands tight on the reins, and for a moment he thought she was about to be sick. Her lips were moving in some kind of silent prayer. But it was not a prayer: both she and Brimstone suddenly disappeared from view. It was a spell.

‘Go!’ her voice hissed from an invisible mouth. ‘I can’t hold this for long, not for all three of us.’

Three? He looked down at himself and saw – with the strangest sense of sickening disorientation – that he was no longer there. He could see the impression on the mossy stones where his boots stood – but no boots. No legs. No hand when he held it in front of his face.

‘
Go!
’ she whispered again, with quiet desperation.

Luke gasped and then yanked open the gate, just wide enough to let them out. They slipped through – the sound of Brimstone’s hooves on the stones horrifyingly loud – but the carriage just a few houses away did not falter; perhaps they could not hear the sound above the rattle of the wheels and the horses huffing. Luke turned to look. It was definitely them. They were too close to be mistaken, and he would have known Castor anywhere.

He yanked the gate shut behind them – no time to latch it – and scrabbled for the invisible Brimstone. For a moment he couldn’t find him – and then, just as he was about to panic, he felt Rosa’s hand grab his.

‘I’m here,’ she whispered. ‘Reach down, feel for the stirrup.’

It was there, and somehow he managed to get his foot into it, grab for the reins and swing himself up. For a moment there was a confused scramble as he almost toppled across the saddle, and he felt Rosa’s hair in his face and a great flurry of skirts as he scrabbled for a hold. Then, somehow in the middle of the confusion, his hand met skin: smooth, soft, hot skin. Her knee? Her thigh? He heard Rosa’s gasp, jerked back and felt his face flood with blood – only the knowledge that they were invisible, and that she could not hold the spell much longer, kept him from letting go and stumbling to the floor.

Then he was up behind Rosa, his arms around her waist, his thighs gripping Brimstone for dear life. He felt her arms move as she tugged on the reins, and they were off, clearing the gate just in time for the horses and carriage to take their place.