Ruth Warburton - Witch Hunt

‘I can manage horses. We just need money, Clemmie. Only a little!’ she added pleadingly, as she saw Clemency about to protest that she had none, that it was all Philip’s. ‘Please! Whatever you have in the house – enough for a meal and a bed – I have nothing, Clemmie. I haven’t eaten since . . .’ She suddenly realized that she could not remember when. Yesterday, certainly, and she’d had no dinner. Had she had tea? Lunch, even? ‘Please, Clemmie,’ she said again, swallowing against the lump of helpless rage in her throat. ‘ Please .’

Clemency bit her lip again, and then seemed to decide.

‘You can have whatever I have in the house. Let me go to my room and see what I have in my change purse – Philip may have left some notes in his dressing room. But oh God – Rosa – why did you give the maid your real name? What if Sebastian comes here?’

Rosa shut her eyes, suddenly realizing the truth of what Clemency said. Even if Clemency denied her visit, the maid would not. Did she dare risk a spell to wipe the girl’s memory? But Clemency’s servants were not outwith; the maid would know what she was attempting, would fight.

‘You must tell me that you cannot help, in front of the servants,’ she said slowly. ‘We must have a fight.’

‘Yes . . . yes, that might work. Let me get the money and then . . . then we’ll decide what to do.’

She left the room and Rosa sank back in the armchair, her hands over her face, trying to push away the sense that her world was collapsing around her. Yesterday had held the promise of all this – a house off Piccadilly, servants, tea-trays, comfort, wealth. Today? She had nothing, except a spoilt dress and her magic.

And Luke , something whispered at the back of her mind. You have Luke . But it was not true. He was not hers. He was not her servant, nor her lover. They were just – what? Friends? But that one simple word did not describe what lay between them – the complicated web of hurt and gratitude and betrayal, and beneath all that, a great gulf of class and magic. Luke had tried to kill her, and he had saved her life. He was an outwith, and yet he could see her kind as no other outwith could, as no witch could, even. All these impossibly contradictory truths bound up in one being.

Friend was too small and too simple a word for what Luke was.

He was something else. Something bigger, more complicated and, perhaps, more dangerous . . .

‘Rosa.’

Her head shot up. Clemency was standing in the doorway. She came inside and closed the door with her elbow. Her hands were full of something.

‘Darling, I found this . . .’ She poured a shower of silvers, coppers and a single gold piece into Rosa’s cupped hands. ‘It’s not a great deal, I’m afraid – not quite a pound. But Philip had these in his dressing room.’ From her sleeve she unfolded two pound notes, thick white sheets the size of Rosa’s pocket handkerchief. Rosa bit her lip. Those notes would keep them for a week, perhaps a month if they were careful. She realized she had no idea what board and lodging cost – but surely not more than a few shillings a night? Her hand stole up to her throat, to where the locket had always hung, comforting – but it closed only on air.

‘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 . . .

Luke 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?