‘Please. I only want a moment. Come outside.’

He bit his lip and then gave a curt nod.

‘Only for a moment.’

He took her wrist and they hurried out into the yard and round the corner of the stable block, where a row of disused pigsties sheltered them from view and cast a thick black shadow in the moonlight. They huddled against the wall at the back of the stables and Luke said, ‘What? What is it? You know it’d be more than my place is worth if I were found here.’

‘Your place?’ Rosa found herself snapping. ‘My reputation, you mean. You’re not the only one risking disgrace here.’ Then she bit her lip. This was not how she had meant it to be. She had planned the conversation in her room – her whispered thanks, his manly protestations, the drink, the whispered words of the spell. Instead – acrimony and anger. She clenched the damp rosemary twigs in her left hand, the bottle in the other.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I . . . You saved my life. I couldn’t just let you . . .’

‘You couldn’t let me be?’ he said. His face in the moonlight was hard as stone. Why was he so angry?

‘I couldn’t let you walk away. What you did . . .’ She swallowed. Why was this going so wrong? He stood silent, his arms crossed across his body, refusing to help her.

‘I bought you this, to say thank you,’ she said at last. She held out the bottle.

‘What is it?’ He took it, his face suspicious.

‘Just wine. Wine and herbs. It’s meant to stave off a cold.’ The lies felt miserable and dark on her tongue. He had saved her life and she was repaying him with deception and spells. ‘All that time in the river – I didn’t want you to become ill on my account.’

He took it. Something in his expression softened slightly.

‘Please,’ she said. The deceit twisted inside her, like cramp. ‘Please, won’t you try it? I made it for you.’

He put his lips to the bottle. She held her breath. Then she saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, and she began to speak, the words tumbling over themselves.

‘Luke, what you saw – Sebastian’s mother, the way she healed me. You should never have seen that. I’m sorry – you were never meant to know. Please, forget it. Just forget it. I . . .’

She stopped. He had pulled the bottle away from his lips, his eyes aghast. He looked down at the bottle and then back up at her.

‘This is a spell, isn’t it?’

‘I—’

‘You bitch.’ He looked from the bottle in his shaking hand, up to her face.

‘I – Luke—’

‘Please.’ He let the bottle fall to the ground with a smash and grabbed her with both hands, his fingers hard on the soft muscles of her upper arm. There was something desperate in his face. ‘Please, I’m begging you, don’t do this.’

‘Luke—’

‘Rosa, please, if you’ve any gratitude at all, if you really meant one word of those thanks, please don’t cast that spell. Don’t take away my memories – you don’t understand, you’ll be condemning me to death.’

His grip on her was fierce, frantic. Rosa opened her mouth, but no words came. The smell of wine and rosemary on his breath and on the cobbles rose up, making her head swim. His grip was so tight it hurt. It came to her that they were alone, that no one would hear if she screamed. That she was weak from her near-death in the river, her magic a thin, poor thing against his strength. That men had killed for far, far less than this . . .

‘Rosa?’

‘All right,’ she gasped. He let her go and she stumbled back against the wall, her breath coming fast.

‘Thank you,’ he said. He closed his eyes. His face in the moonlight was all shadows – unreadable in the darkness – but there was no mistaking the heartfelt gasping relief in his voice. ‘Thank you, thank you.’

‘But you must promise never to tell anyone, do you understand? It would mean my disgrace and perhaps your life, if they found out that you still knew.’

‘I promise,’ he said hoarsely. He slid down against the wall until he sat on the cobbled floor of the yard, his back against the soft crumbling brick of the stable wall. She sat down next to him in the deep shadow, feeling the warmth of his arm and shoulder close to hers and the chill of the night air on her other side. In the darkness she could hear his breathing above the quiet sounds of the night. It was fast and shaky, still recovering from his intense fear and panic. Then something struck her.

‘Luke, how did you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘Know that the bottle was a spell.’

There was a long silence. Rosa began to wonder if he would answer her at all and whether she had been very stupid. Her fingers clenched around the rosemary twigs. It was not too late. If she burnt them now, spoke the incantation, she could still complete the spell. She could still take those memories . . .

‘Because I see witches,’ he said at last, his voice as low as if he were confessing a murder. ‘I’ve always known. I can see magic, feel it, hear it.’

Shock rippled through her, hot and then cold. It was not possible. It was not possible.

‘What do you mean?’ She turned to face him in the darkness and conjured a frail witchlight on her palm to read his face. It took almost all her remaining magic, but she had to see him, to read his face. ‘You mean you knew? You knew when you came to work for us that you were walking into a houseful of . . .’ She paused, the word like a curse on her tongue.

‘Witches? Yes.’ His face in the witchlight was pale and tired, but his hazel eyes were dark. She stared at him. His eyes met hers and she finally understood. Understood his strange reticence, his wariness, his sense of holding himself apart. He was apart – he was neither witch nor outwith, but something in between.

‘How?’ she said at last. ‘How did you know?’

‘I can see,’ he said simply. ‘I can see the magic coming out of you.’ He put his hand out, towards her face, and she thought for a moment that he would touch her but his fingers stopped, just inches from her skin, as if he was afraid she would burn him. ‘They’re all different. Every witch. Your brother’s is green like his eyes, yellow when he’s afraid. Knyvet’s is black, like smoke.’

‘And . . . and mine?’

‘It’s like a flame.’ He let his hand drop and she fought the urge to reach out, run her fingers down the bridge of his nose, the curve of his cheekbone, touch the soft roughness of his beard. ‘It’s red-gold, like your hair. Like a halo. It’s more beautiful than I could ever describe.’

Rosa swallowed. She tried to think straight.

‘You know – you know there are those of my kind who’d kill you if they knew this.’

‘I know.’

‘So you have my secret . . . and I have yours.’

‘Yes,’ he said softly. His deep voice was low. ‘We’re equal.’

The clock struck with shocking suddenness in the still night air – nine loud chimes. Rosa stood up, her heart thudding hard.

‘I must go. They will be coming out from dinner. I’m supposed to be in bed, convalescing from the fall.’

‘Rosa . . .’ He caught her wrist. ‘Thank you.’

‘No, thank you,’ she whispered.

For a moment she stood, feeling his fingers on her wrist. His skin was as rough and hard as his grip was gentle. Then she tugged her wrist free and ran, pulling the cloak over her head. Two grooms were coming out of the stable block as she passed but neither cast a glance at the fleeing girl in the shabby cloak. She could have been a maid, or an errand girl, or a ghost.

16

Luke shivered in the shadows long after she was gone. The smell of the spilt wine filled the air, the stench of magic mingling with the fumes of alcohol and rosemary. He felt hot and cold with fear at the thought of all that she could have taken. Not just the memory of the river – but more, perhaps. The memory of why he was here. The memory of his task. And he would have known nothing until the Malleus came for him one night, with a knife between his ribs.

The thought was like a cold hand round his heart.

He could not kill Rosa. He knew that now. He was a coward, through and through.

One of them must die – but he could not kill her. It was as simple and as wretched as that. Which left – only him.

And so – what now? Back to Spitalfields?

It was unthinkable. What could he say when they asked him about his mission? I’ve decided not to do it. The girl was young and pretty. I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t have the guts.

How would they kill him? Would it be quick and kind or long and slow? Would it be a knife in a dark alley, like a thief in the night, or face to face in the meeting house, like an execution?

Without warning a picture came to him – of John Leadingham’s abattoir, the bloodstained hooks and the hissing lamps. And himself, swinging from a hook, naked and gutted like a pig. He closed his eyes.

He had nowhere to go. He could not go home. He could not stay here. His first mission, and he had failed. He had betrayed the Brotherhood and failed in his oath. It was all her fault. He should hate her for it. And he could not.

Back in her room Rosa ripped off the cloak and stuffed it into the carved mahogany wardrobe. The hem of her nightgown was spattered with mud. She could not leave it like that for the maid to notice in the morning.

‘Áþierre!’ she whispered, rubbing her finger across the mud. Nothing happened. Her heart was too full of turmoil over what she had done, what she had not done. ‘Áþierre!’ she hissed again, more forcefully. If only she had the grimoire, a proper spell instead of these half-remembered charms from her childhood. ‘Áþierre! Bescréade!’