‘Please, Luke.’ She tried to reach him, to heal his mind, pour back the memories she had ripped out of him by the roots. ‘Don’t you remember? You came to my house, you saved my life, you kissed me.’

‘No!’ he cried desperately. He put his hands to his head, as if it might explode, as if something might crack. She was not sure if he was trying to force the memories back in, or keep them away.

‘It’s true. I need your help – I’ve found your friend Minna—’

‘Get out!’ He cut her off.

‘She’s at the match factory, down by the Thames, where I sent her, Luke. It’s horrible – the workers are under some kind of spell, they’re dying, but they won’t listen to me. Please, come and help—’

‘Get out!’ he roared. His face was suffused with blood.

‘Please, just—’

‘Help you?’ he cried. There was something desperate in his eyes, as if he was breaking apart inside. ‘How can I help you? I should kill you.’

‘What?’

‘Have you heard of the Malleus?’ He took a step towards her and for the first time she noticed that he had something in his hand. A hammer.

‘No,’ she whispered.

‘We’re sworn to kill your kind.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. Now, get out.’

Rosa looked at him. This is Luke, she told herself. She tried not to tremble. Luke!

He raised the hammer above his head.

She ran.

Luke watched as the girl disappeared into the fog. He could see the bright red-gold flame of her hair dwindling as she ran and then at last even that was gone, swallowed up in the darkness of the narrow streets.

He let the hammer fall from his hand on to the stone floor of the forge.

The Malleus. How could he have forgotten the Malleus?

Images flickered through his mind like half-forgotten dreams – the feel of the knife in his side, the screaming heat of the brand on his shoulder . . . His hand went to the mark beneath his shirt and now he knew what it meant. The hammer. The hammer of witches.

That girl – Rosa – he had never seen her before and yet he knew every inch of her face, the softness of her skin beneath his touch, the feel of her waist between his hands . . . How did he know her? Why?

And how did she know him?

He thought of her words: I know that you can see witches.

The scar at the back of his head gave a great throbbing pang and he vomited on to the floor, heaving and choking until there was nothing left but bile in his gut and he was cold and sweating, and full of fear.

What had he done?

Rosa ran. She ran without looking where she was going, turning at random in the narrow twisting streets, the fog parting and then closing behind her, enveloping her in its strange, muffled world. She stumbled past taverns disgorging drunks on to the pavement, past beggars crowded round braziers, past girls hawking watercress, their eyes huge in the darkness. At last she stopped in a quiet alleyway, panting, her lungs screaming for air, fighting against the constriction of her choking stays. There were black spots in front of her vision, dancing against the sickly yellow swirl of the fog, and she thought she might faint, but she did not. After a while her breathing began to slow and she tried to consider what to do next.

Luke was a killer?

It didn’t make sense.

And yet, in another horrible way, it did. It explained the way he had come so mysteriously with only Fred Welling’s word and no experience. It explained why he’d been prepared to fill in for no money. It explained – she shut her eyes as the realization washed over her – it explained the broken buckle. The buckle that she had taken responsibility for, when Alexis wanted him sacked.

She put her hands over her face.

He had tried to kill her.

He saved your life.

He had betrayed her.

He told you he loved you.

The voices crowded in her head, screaming at each other for domination.

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?

23

‘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.’