In private she would be at Sebastian’s mercy. She had to tell him now, in public, at the factory.

Outside the office she stood for a moment looking up and down the long, grey corridor. There was no one in sight, so she set off back the way they had come earlier, hoping to luck. As she turned a corner she bumped into a listless girl hurrying in the opposite direction.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. The girl didn’t stop and Rosa put out a hand, grabbing her wrist and forcing her to halt. ‘Excuse me!’

‘Don’t stop me, miss.’ The girl’s face was grey with fear. ‘I daren’t be late. I’ll lose my post.’

‘Then tell me quick, which way to the dipping room?’

‘Visitors ain’t allowed,’ the girl said automatically. She tugged at her wrist, but Rosa held fast.

‘Tell me and I’ll let you go! No one will know it was you, but if you’re late—’

‘Straight ahead,’ the girl said with a look of fear and fury. ‘Take the third passage on the left and keep going past the packing room. It’s the last door on your right, marked “no entry”. Now, let me go!’

‘Thank you,’ Rosa said as the girl tugged herself free. She watched her hurry away and then turned, her heart beating hard, the girl’s directions ringing in her ears.

Straight ahead . . . third passage on the left . . . She passed one opening to her left, a dark room stacked with the packed-up matches. Someone had left a coat on the topmost pile. To Rosa’s horror, it glowed in the dimness. She hurried on.

At last she came to the last door on her right and, sure enough, it was marked ‘no entry’. She raised her hand, about to knock, and then something told her this would not be a good idea. Instead she grabbed the handle. It was locked and she whispered a charm, looking over her shoulder as she did.

The door gave way suddenly and she stumbled into the room.

The fumes hit her first, as physical and painful as a slap in the face. They were eye-watering, stinging not just her eyes, but her skin and the inside of her nose as she struggled for breath.

In the centre of the room were great boiling vats filled with chemicals, men and girls bending over them, working the dipping machines to coat the tips of the matches just so. The floor was covered with powdery residue and Rosa could see that it glowed in the dark corners.

But none of this was what made her stand in the doorway, gasping and struggling not to flee. It was the faces of the men and women.

Almost all were horribly swollen and deformed – with missing teeth, missing jaws even. Their skin was mottled from yellow, to red, to greenish black. She had never seen anything like it – it was as close to Hell as she could imagine, these walking, working zombies of death.

‘Please . . .’ she managed. She put her hand to the sleeve of the girl closest to her. ‘What in God’s name is wrong with your faces?’

The girl did not answer, she just continued to work, like a golem. Her eyes were dead and blank.

‘What is wrong with you all?’ Rosa shouted. ‘Why won’t you answer me? Why don’t you stop work?’

They did not respond – and suddenly she understood. They were under an enchantment, all of them – like the men, women and children in the rest of the factory. Why else would they keep going, keep returning to this living Hell for the few shillings a week, while their faces and bodies slowly rotted away?

If she had stopped to look she would have seen it earlier; the air was thick with magic, putrid with it. But it was not directed at her and so she had not noticed. She had never looked.

‘Ætberstan!’ she sobbed, trying to feel her way through the thick web of spells wound around the machinery and the silent men and women. But it was far too strong. She did not have the strength to snap the enchantments. ‘Ætberstan!’

Who had created such an enormous machine of evil? Who would have had the strength? She remembered the Ealdwitan edicts that she had recited as a small child on her father’s knee: I shall let the outwith be, and so no harm will come to me, I shall not seek to bend his mind, but keep my spells to my own kind.

Who would dare to go against that, the very first law that their kind were taught?

She knew. Even before she raised her eyes to the portrait of Aloysius Knyvet, Sebastian’s father, hanging high above the doorway. He was seated in a carved mahogany chair and in his hand was his cane with the ebony shaft and the snake’s head. The cane that was now Sebastian’s.

Rosa dropped her eyes unseeingly to the vat in front of her, racing through possibilities. She could not free these men and women. She was not strong enough. Could she persuade Sebastian to do so? If only the outwith would trust her – if she could rouse them from their stupor long enough to fight against the enchantment, she might have a chance. But to them she would be just another witch.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor and she jumped. If Sebastian found her here . . .

She ran to the far end of the room and crouched down, close to where the great stove bubbled away, heating the chemicals to make the dipping mixture. Back here, in the shadows, she would be hidden . . .

The door opened and she saw Sebastian’s face look in sharply. He glanced up and down the row of dippers and Rosa held her breath. The heat from the stove was almost unendurable and she longed to cast a spell to shield herself from the worst of it, but did not dare in case Sebastian caught the flare of magic. She felt the heat of the gas against her cheek and the stench of chemicals made her eyes water. She put her face in her skirts and prayed . . .

Then the door swung shut and she let out a great breath and stood up. The sudden movement made her head spin and she stumbled and almost fell, clutching at the girl next to her to save herself.

‘Oi, watch yourself,’ the girl said dully, but didn’t break from the work. Something about her voice was familiar.

‘Minna?’ Rosa touched the girl’s shoulder. ‘Minna? Is that you?’

She would hardly have recognized her. In just a few short weeks she had become thin almost to the point of being skeletal and beneath her cap Rosa could see her hair was thinning.

‘What of it?’ the girl said huskily. With a shudder, Rosa saw that two of her teeth were missing.

‘Minna, it’s me – Rosa, Miss Greenwood. I gave you my card.’

‘What of it?’ Minna repeated dully. Her face looked almost stupefied, but her hands never faltered, moving swiftly, automatically, as unchangeable as the machinery of the factory itself.

‘Please, come away with me,’ Rosa begged. ‘I was wrong to send you here.’ She strained to snap the spells – if she could not save all the workers, perhaps she could at least save Minna. If only Minna would help her, trust her . . .

‘I’m Luke’s friend,’ she said desperately. ‘He sent me, with a message. He wants you to come away.’

‘Luke Lexton?’ Minna said, and something in her eyes seemed to flicker, a moment of recognition, like the moon breaking through the clouds. Then the haze closed over again and she shook her head. ‘No, I can’t stop. I must keep going.’

‘Please, trust me!’ Rosa begged, but Minna didn’t even reply.

Frustration rose within her like a great sob. What had she done? What had she condemned Minna to?

Luke. It came to her like a breath of air in the foulness of the room. If Minna would not trust her, she would trust Luke.

‘Minna, where can I find Luke?’ she demanded, but Minna seemed to have sunk back into that terrible torpor and she did not answer, but only shook her head.

22

‘I’ve to go and see a man about a set of gates,’ William said, wiping his chin and putting down his fork. ‘Can you manage?’

‘Yes,’ Luke said with a touch of irritation. He was growing weary of his uncle’s anxiety. There might be a hole in his memories, but he wasn’t ill and he was sick of being treated like an invalid.

‘There shouldn’t be anything too much, couple a horseshoes maybe, and there’s that fireguard Mr Maddocks wants mending, if you have time. I shouldn’t be more than an hour.’

‘I’ll manage,’ Luke said shortly. Then he felt bad. ‘I’ll be all right, Uncle. Go. We need the work.’

It was true. In the weeks Luke had been missing, and since his return, William had let the forge slip and the work had dried up. No one wanted to bring a limping horse to the forge only to find the farrier busy or gone. Now with Luke up and about they desperately needed new work and William was taking on anything he could find – blacksmith work and tinkers’ stuff that he would usually have refused.

‘All right.’ William pulled on his cap and coat and went to the door. ‘Remember, if you’re feeling tired, there’s no shame in stopping—’

‘Go!’ Luke said, more roughly than he meant. William sighed and shut the door behind him. Luke sighed too and put his head in his hands wishing, wishing that he could remember what lay in that great gulf in his mind. Once he had dreamt and there had been the smell of burning rosemary and a gold-red swirl, like forge-flames in the darkness. He had woken with a word on his lips, rose – but whatever it meant sank far away as he rose to consciousness and the memory, whatever it had been, had gone. The more he scrabbled for it, the further it retreated.

Now he got up slowly from the table and went out to the forge to blow the fire into life again.

‘Luke Welling?’ Rosa said again, desperately. There was a catch in her throat. The evening was drawing in and the streets of Spitalfields felt very dark and narrow. In her new silk dress, part of Mama’s trousseau shopping, she stuck out like candle flame in a darkened room, all eyes turning to her as she picked her way through the filth-strewn streets.