‘I didn’t think she’d be kind,’ he said. He heard his own voice crack and despised himself for his weakness. ‘She looks so . . . so innocent.’

‘She’s not kind,’ William said. His voice was steady but his eyes were troubled. ‘And she’s not innocent. You know the truth of it, Luke. She’s a witch – and she’s learnt to dissemble and twist and deceive from her cradle. This is all part of the test. But you must hold fast to your faith, just as you held fast to the hilt of the knife when you drove it into your own side. You didn’t flinch then, did you? Though you knew yourself to be innocent and you knew it would be your own death to push the knife home. Well then – don’t flinch now. Drive the knife home. Don’t worry about guilt or innocence; let God and the Malleus deal with the consequences.’

‘I’m not a killer,’ he found himself saying. ‘I wish I could be – but—’

‘You are not a killer,’ his uncle said firmly. ‘Listen to me, Luke. You are not the hand here, you are the hammer. Remember that. You’re just an instrument. It’s for God and the Malleus to guide you, show you where to strike. You’re no more guilty of murder than the hammer itself.’

Be the hammer.

Luke swallowed. And then he found himself asking the question, the unthinkable, the unaskable.

‘Who was your first, Uncle?’

William didn’t need to ask ‘First what?’ He just sighed.

‘You know I can’t tell you that, not outside the meeting house. Not until you’re a Brother.’

If I’m a Brother, Luke thought. I must make it. I must.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said aloud. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

There was a long silence while the fire crackled and shifted in the grate. Luke stared at it until his eyes hurt. At its heart it was pure white gold, the colour of iron when you’d overheated it, almost to the point of melting. Above it flickered little orange flames, the same colour as metal when it was forging heat and ripe for working. And at the outside, a smoky, guttering, deep red that flickered and shimmered in the draught from the window. It was so exactly the colour of Rosa’s hair that he closed his eyes, trying to shut it out, shut out the memory of the first time he’d seen her, standing in the stable like an avenging angel, a halo of fire around her head.

It was into this darkness that William spoke unexpectedly, his voice quiet but quite clear above the crackles of the fire.

‘It was an old woman. She’d been selling potions to young girls, spells to rid them of their babies. Sometimes they worked, killed the child. Sometimes they killed the girl. What she didn’t say was that even if the girl lived, her womb was poison. Nothing could live there. The old witch-woman didn’t just take the unwanted babe, she took them all, all the children those girls might have had and loved. I asked her to stop and she laughed at me. Said she’d see me dead along with all the others and my loins as dried up as those girls’ wombs.’

‘She didn’t kill you though,’ Luke said. William shook his head, staring into the flames of the fire.

‘No. I killed her. With a rag over her face, full of that chemical stuff that John brews. She didn’t get more than two words of the spell out her mouth before she fell in a heap like a pile of rags.’ Then he sighed. ‘But I never did father a child.’

Something inside Luke went cold and still, and the hairs on his arms and neck shivered in spite of the warmth of the fire.

‘When did it happen?’ he asked, very low.

‘Near fifteen years ago, I suppose it must be. I joined the Malleus right after your parents were killed.’

‘Is that why . . .’ Luke stopped and swallowed, and started again. ‘Is that why you took me in then? Because you couldn’t have a son of your own?’

‘No.’ William put his big, heavy hand on Luke’s shoulder and turned him around, forcing Luke to look him in the face. ‘No, Luke. Never think that. I took you in because you were my brother’s son, and I loved him, and I kept you because as you grew I loved you too, and you were mine. The thing with the witch – it’s completely separate. And who knows,’ he gave a laugh, one without real mirth, ‘maybe I never had it in me anyway. There’s many a man never fathers a child, and witchcraft nothing to do with it.’

‘But you never married?’

‘No.’ William let his hand drop and took up his pipe from the mantelpiece. He knocked it out, packed the bowl very carefully with tobacco, then struck a match on his boot and lit the pipe with a hand that was almost steady. Then he threw the match into the fire and watched it dwindle to nothing. ‘No. There was a girl I might have married. But I didn’t think it was fair to the lass. All girls want a baby of their own, don’t they?’

‘You could have given her the choice . . .’ Luke began. But William was shaking his head.

‘No. What kind of choice is that? Give me up, or give up the babe you’ll never have? That’s no choice. That’s asking for one sacrifice over another, and neither of them fair for a woman who’d done nothing wrong herself. Why should she suffer for my sins? No. This way the sacrifice was mine, as it should be. I gave her up.’

Silence fell in the little room and Luke watched the fire and listened to the suck and pull of William’s pipe. Blue smoke wreathed in the rafters.

‘Can you stay the night?’ William asked, as the church clock tolled ten. He rose and put his pipe on the mantelpiece.

‘I’m supposed to be back tonight. But I sleep over the stables, so there’s no one to see me come and go. If I start before four, I can be back before the rest of the house wakes.’

‘Good.’ William put his hand on Luke’s shoulder as they turned to the stairs. ‘It’ll be good to have you under your own roof, even if it’s just for the one night. It’ll give you heart for the task, heart for what you need to do.’

What I need to do . . .

‘It was a good plan, lad. Don’t blame yourself. And maybe it didn’t work, but you walked away in one piece, didn’t you? There’ll be another chance. Providence will give you a chance.’

‘Maybe,’ Luke said. He tried to smile.

‘Goodnight, lad. Sleep well.’

As Luke shut the door to his room behind him, he knew that he should feel full of zeal and determination, galvanized by William’s words. He was a fighter, a member of an elite band of warriors, fighting against the devil’s work. But he didn’t feel any of that. He felt only weariness and dread and a kind of sickness at the thought of going back to his task.

He sat on his own familiar bed and unbuttoned his shirt. As he pulled it off it chafed at the bandage over his shoulder and, in a fit of impatience, he tore at it, ripping off the dressing. There was a sharp jolt of pain as it stuck and then it peeled off, crusted and bloody, and he spat on his fingers and rubbed at the dried blood beneath. The mark was smaller than he’d thought, not much bigger than a sovereign, but it flamed like an angry sore and the skin around the burn was raised and red.

Still, there was no pus on the bandage, no infection to be seen. He threw the bloody dressing in the grate and lay down between the cold sheets, feeling weary to the bone.

He would go back.

He would go back and he would kill the witch. Because there was no way out of this, save one: death. Hers . . .or his.

11

‘Where have you been?’ Becky hissed as Luke ran through the open back door, smoothing his rumpled hair and trying to stifle his panting breath.

‘I overslept. Had to run all the way from Spitalfields. Did anyone notice?’ Luke gasped. The clock chimed seven as he slid into the chair. He was sweating in spite of the cold, frosty morning and he needed a shave.

‘Mrs Ramsbottom was asking where you was at breakfast, but I said you were held up in the stables. Lucky for you, we’re all at sixes and sevens. An invitation arrived last night, if you please, and sent the whole house into a spin.’

‘An invitation?’ Luke poured himself tea from the enormous pot on the table and bit into a piece of Mrs Ramsbottom’s soda bread. The tea was lukewarm, but the bread was hot and very good.

‘It seems that Mr Knyvet enjoyed playing the gallant knight on horseback to our Miss’s damsel in distress.’ Becky was enjoying the moment of power, spinning out the information as long as she could. ‘He’s only invited Miss Rosa and Mr Alexis to his house in the country for a hunting party.’

‘Miss Rosa?’ Luke said, startled. ‘But how can she ride?’

‘Seems her ankle’s made a miraculous recovery overnight. Must be love. Or magic.’

Luke said nothing.

‘They’ll want the horses, of course. I don’t know whether they’ll go down by the same train or an earlier one.’

‘Horses? By train?’ Luke put his cup down.

‘Yes, ninny.’ Ellen came sweeping into the kitchen, her skirts rustling. ‘How else did you think they’d get there? You can hardly ride two horses all the way to Sussex, can you?’

‘Me?’

‘Well, you’re the stable-hand, or so they say.’ She banged down the tea tray she was carrying. ‘The horses won’t look after themselves on the journey.’

‘When are we leaving?’

‘Tomorrow. So you’d best look sharp and see that everything’s in order. Now, I can’t be standing here gabbing, I’ve got trunks to pack and dresses to mend and stockings to darn. Becky, I’ll need you to give me a hand with things when you’ve finished the beds, so no shilly-shallying, please.’ She swept out.

‘Hark at her!’ Becky said crossly. ‘Who’s died and made her queen? As if I spend my days shilly-shallying. I’d like to see her do twelve grates in . . .’