Ruth Warburton - Witch Finder

Shut up – shut up! I can’t think!

She put her hand up to the locket to feel its reassuring weight in her palm as she tried to think what to do. But it was gone.

It began to rain, a fine mist of drizzle that mingled with the fog, clinging to her skin and hair in fine droplets. Rosa shivered.

The factory. Whatever had happened with Luke, it changed nothing about the factory, about the fact that she had sent an innocent girl there to her death. That was her wrong, not his. It was hers to undo.

Luke would not help her. There was no one left to turn to. It was down to her alone to sort this out. There were only two options: undo the charms herself, or force Sebastian to do it. But how?

‘I wish to see Mr Knyvet.’

The guard at the gate had changed and did not recognize her. He looked her up and down doubtfully and for the first time Rosa looked down at her stained and rain-soaked dress. There was a great patch of soot where she had crouched behind the gas burner in the dipping room, and in retracing her way back to the factory she had stumbled in the fog and fallen into the gutter. She did not look like Sebastian Kynvet’s fiancée.

‘Tell him,’ she groped in her skirt pocket for a card and pressed it into the man’s gloved hand, ‘tell him it’s Miss Greenwood. He will know who I am.’

‘Very well, Miss . . . Oi, Joe.’ He turned to a small boy crouched in the shelter of a brick arch and said a few words. The boy set off at a trot across the courtyard. Rosa waited, the rain trickling down her neck in slow droplets, feeling the guard’s cold eye on her. After a few minutes the boy returned and whispered something into the man’s ear. He stood up straighter.

‘I beg your p-pardon, miss,’ he stammered. ‘I wasn’t, that’s to say—’

‘It’s quite all right.’ She cut him off and turned to the boy. ‘Can you take me now?’

The boy looked up at the guard, as if not trusting his own judgement, and the man nodded, sharply.

‘Of course you can, you young fool. Cut along quick now, and keep a civil tongue in your head.’

‘This way, miss,’ the boy whispered, and she followed him through the brick archway and up the same sets of stairs as before. The clock struck seven as they climbed and Rosa wondered, bewildered, where the hours had gone. Had it really taken so long for her to find Luke? She felt suddenly, enormously tired. It had taken magic for her to find her way back to the factory in the fog, divination spells at every street corner, walking in circles as her powers waned.

As they passed the packing rooms she looked in. In spite of what Sebastian had said about stopping at six, the workers were still there, the conveyor belts still carrying their endless, relentless supply of matches. One girl looked up as Rosa passed and their eyes met: dark holes in a face as thin and white as a skull.

Sebastian was in his office. He looked up as she entered, his face blank with astonishment, and then hurried across the room.

‘That will do, Joe, you can go,’ he said to the boy. Then he turned to Rosa. ‘What in God’s name happened? I looked for you everywhere! I was beside myself. I can’t imagine what your mother is thinking.’

Nothing , Rosa thought wearily.

‘Your clothes! You’re soaked to the bone.’ He led her across to the fire and pushed her down on an armchair, crouching next to her as if she were a child. ‘I’ll ring for tea – and brandy if they have it, or you’ll be ill.’

‘I’m not ill,’ she said huskily.

‘But what were you thinking?’ He took her chin in his fingers, turning her face towards him so that she was forced to meet his eyes. ‘Rosa?’

She looked at him, at his cold, pale eyes, willing herself to find some spark of humanity there, some kind of conscience at least.

‘Sebastian . . .’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Do you love me?’

‘Of course.’ He put his hand to her cheek, where the ache of his blows still dwelled. ‘You cannot imagine how much.’

Rosa swallowed and took his hand in hers. It was cold, and very, very strong. Hands that could curb a horse, beat a dog. Or a woman.

‘Sebastian,’ she said softly, ‘let them go.’

‘What do you mean?’ He did not take his hand out of hers, but instead closed his fingers around her wrist, hard enough to bruise. Rosa tried not to flinch.

‘I saw the dipping room.’

‘God damn it.’ He said it quite low, without the black fury she had feared. But his grip didn’t lessen.

‘I’m not a fool. There is no way men and women would work willingly in those conditions, no way they could work. Sebastian, they’re dying. They are rotting away as they work, eaten up by whatever poison is in those matches. You’ve chained them, haven’t you? It’s magic keeping them at their posts, day in, day out.’

‘You know nothing about it,’ he said. His voice was cold and flat as river ice, as cold as his eyes.

‘What you’re doing is illegal, more than illegal – it’s inhumane, madness. Let them go.’

‘And if I won’t?’

Possibilities raced through her head: she would leave him, she would break off the engagement. Somehow, she thought, none of these would sway him.

‘I will disgrace you,’ she said flatly. ‘I will tell everyone we know. I will denounce you to the Ealdwitan.’

‘You think they will listen to you?’ he sneered. ‘A chit of a girl against the word of a Chair?’

‘A woman,’ she spat, ‘giving evidence against her own fiancé. But in any event, it will not be a case of taking my word for it. If they come here, there will be no question. Their eyes will give them all the evidence they need. They will break you.’

‘You ungrateful little wretch.’

He stood and began pacing the room. When Rosa stood too, he wheeled round and screamed, ‘Sit down, damn you!’

Rosa sat immediately and then a surge of anger shot through her and she jumped back up.

‘No! Why should I?’

‘You are to be my wife, and you will obey me.’

‘I am not your wife and I never will be! I don’t love you, I never loved you. I would rather marry—’ A sob rose in her throat, choking her. ‘I’d rather marry a – a stable-hand.’

‘You are mine,’ he said softly. ‘And I will see you dead before I lose you to the arms of another man.’

Rosa opened her mouth to answer.

‘ Tówierpe! ’ he spat, and instead Rosa flew backwards into the chair, with a force that knocked all the breath from her body. Before she had time to recover he was across the room, crouching beside her with something in his hands. It was cord, the cord they used for tying up the bales of matchboxes.

She felt it bite into her wrists and began to struggle with all her strength.

‘Áhíewe! ’ she screamed, and a blast of flame shot towards him. Sebastian howled, reeling back, clutching at his face. When he lifted his hands away Rosa saw that his lip was bleeding, his cheek slashed to the bone.

‘You’ll pay for that, you bitch.’

He pulled off his cravat and bound it round her mouth, silencing the half-worked spells on her lips. It didn’t stop her kicking, but he soon had her bound hand and foot to the chair. She felt the heat of the fire on the side of her face and looked at him, hoping he could read the hatred in her eyes.

But he only knelt in front of her, staring at her. His blue eyes, just inches away from hers, were bloodshot.

‘Until death do us part, Rosa, my darling,’ he said softly. Then he stood and left the room.

For a moment Rosa did nothing. She breathed through her nose, trying to calm her pounding heart and pull her magic together. The cords were biting painfully into her wrists and she strained at them, yanking uselessly. Nothing happened – only the pain in her wrists and ankles increased. Sebastian had bewitched the knots – these bindings would not break without magic. But she had none left. The long search for the factory and then the fight with Sebastian – it had taken her very last effort. And she could not speak anyway. She remembered Mama saying: It’s not the words on your lips that are important, Rosamund, it is the words in your head – try to grasp that, for heaven’s sakes. But there were no words in her head, just a silent scream of fear.