Ruth Warburton - Witch Finder

She would not. She would not die.

But she had to be realistic. Sebastian was stronger than her, stronger physically and magically. She could not break the ropes by force and she could not break them with magic, his spells had ensured that.

Think, Rosa.

But she could not think. The ropes bit into her skin and the fire was coming closer. Closer.

A rope. A flame.

The smoke in the room was almost overpowering now, not woodsmoke, but an acrid chemical smoke, with the same harsh stench she had smelt in the dipping room.

Think!

A rope. A flame.

The fire down beneath was sucking in so much air that the chimney in the little office had started to smoke, the flames no longer dancing upward but gusting out into the room, pulled by the voracious hunger for air of the inferno beneath.

A rope. A flame.

The suddenly it came to her. Fire. If fire could destroy a factory, it could destroy a rope.

She yanked desperately at the chair, bracing with her feet, and it shuffled a few inches towards the fireplace. It wasn’t nearly close enough, even with the flames flaring out into the grate.

She heaved again and the chair shifted another inch. Then another. Then another.

She was closer now, much closer. She pulled again. Nothing.

Rosa wriggled in her bindings, feeling the ropes bite, then she braced her feet more securely on the floor and pushed again. The chair rocked, but did not shift. Craning her head she could see she had hit the edge of the rug, where the braid made a raised hump. It would take an almighty shove to get the chair over that lip.

She took a deep breath, braced her feet on the floor, and then she put all her strength and her magic into one massive kick.

The chair toppled backwards with a crash, landing sideways on the slate hearth, one wing hard against the marble surround and one side almost in the grate itself.

Rosa screamed. The flames were scorching against her arm. She smelt burning silk and did not know if it was the chair, or her sleeve, or both. Her arm felt as if it was roasting. She racked her brains for a spell, but she was unable to think for pain. ‘Stop!’ she wept. ‘Please, oh God, please stop hurting!’

The flames didn’t die away, but the pain went from unendurable to a dull agony. Rosa lay, sobbing, turning her face as far from the blaze as she could. She could smell the wood of the chair beginning to burn now. She pulled against the bindings. They no longer hurt – the small pain of the rope’s bite subsumed into the scorching heat of the flames eating at her skin.

Pictures went through her head: Papa kissing her goodnight, his spells filling her room with stars and fairies. Cherry’s warm neck, the smell of her mane, the heat of her skin in the sun. Matchenham in the evening, with the summer sun setting. Luke. Luke with his hand on her cheek. Luke’s lips, soft against hers. Luke, his eyes filled with hate as he raised the hammer.

Luke.

There was a sudden snap and she fell sideways out of the chair, one wrist free. It was enough. With one hand unbound she made a superhuman stretch and grabbed a paperknife off the desk. It was not very sharp, but it was enough. A minute of frantic, panicked sawing and her other wrist was free, then her ankles, and at last she was free to crawl away to a cool corner of the room and examine her wounds.

They were not as bad as she’d thought. One sleeve was charred and smoking and the skin beneath was hot and tender, swelling in fat white blisters, and there were red weeping welts on her wrists and ankles, but it was nothing that she couldn’t heal, given time. The most important thing was that she could walk.

She climbed painfully to her feet and went to the window. It was shut and barred, and beyond there was nothing but a tiny yard, bordered on four sides by grey concrete walls stretching upwards. Could she scrape together enough magic to force open the window? Then what?

Perhaps the door would be better. She could hear the sound of flames but they didn’t seem to be right outside. She opened it and peered out.

The corridor was dark but she could hear the hiss of the gas-lamps. They must have been turned on without lighting, by someone trying to flood the place with gas. It was only a matter of time before the gas met the flames down below, or the ones in the grate in the office, and the whole place went up. But why? Why? Why would he destroy the factory, rather than set the workers free?

The answer came to her at once: insurance. Undoing the spells was risky and expensive, and it left the central problem still there: the fact that she, Rosa, knew what had happened.

Sebastian didn’t care about the buildings, he didn’t care about the workers, he didn’t care about her. What he cared about was money and his family’s reputation. Burning down the factory solved all his problems. This way, Sebastian could walk away with a suitcase full of insurance money, free to start again in new premises, with no one the wiser.

She had to get out.

But how? Which way? She thought of the design of the factory – the high, windowless outer walls. There was no escape outwards; she had to go inwards, towards the central courtyard. She began to run down the corridor, feeling the heat grow as she came nearer to the source of the fire.

At last she turned a corner – and came to a dead end. The corridor carried on – but there was no floor, only a blazing inferno where it should have been. But something was moving across the gap. A figure – tall and muffled – a dim black shape behind the scarlet blaze. For a moment her heart seemed to stop. Sebastian?

She raised her hand, shaking, ready to strike with what little magic she had left.

Then a hoarse, breaking voice shouted, ‘Rosa? Rosa, where are you? Rosa!’

It was Luke.

‘Rosa!’

Luke was close to giving up. The heat was becoming unbearable and the floor seemed to rock and groan beneath him.

But he could not. If only he had come when she asked him. He thought of all it must have cost her – to betray her kind, betray Sebastian, betray her own family – and he had sent her away with a curse and a raised hammer.

There was no future for him, if she lived. But he could not let her die.

‘Rosa!’ he called again, turning a corner. ‘Where are you?’

But there was nothing there – no corridor – no floor – just a mass of burning flames. The floor beneath his feet shuddered and he could feel the heat striking through his boots. He thanked God for the guard’s greatcoat – the thick densely woven wool keeping off the sparks and the heat of the flames.

‘Rosa!’ he yelled again, his voice cracking and breaking. He was hoarse from shouting, hoarse from the smoke. There was no answer, just the endless crackling roar of the flames, and he turned to go back, try another passage.

As he did there was a screaming roar and another section of floor suddenly gave way behind him, flames and sparks shooting into the air like fireworks. Luke looked down. He was standing on maybe three joists, each being eaten away by the flames. He was going to die. The realization came quite suddenly, quite calmly. There was no way out. There was no point in fighting any more.

He wished he had said goodbye to William.

He shut his eyes.

Then he heard a voice.

‘Luke!’

She was standing on the other side of the burning chasm in the floor. Her white face was smudged with soot and ashes, but her eyes were bright, and her hair blazed like a crown of flames in the dark, firelit corridor.

‘Rosa?’ He was so hoarse it came out as a croaking whisper.

‘Luke! I’m so sorry! You shouldn’t have come. Sebastian, he’s flooded the place with gas; the workers are all going to die . . .’

‘They’re out,’ he shouted back hoarsely. ‘Most of them, anyway. The ones who could walk.’

‘Then why are you still here?’

‘For you,’ he said, his voice so low he didn’t know if she would hear, across the roar of the flames. She did. He could see it in the stricken look of – almost grief, on her face. She didn’t speak. Just put her hands to her face. She was shaking her head.

‘No, no!’ He could hear her low moan across the gulf between them. ‘Luke, no! If you die because of me—’

‘I don’t deserve to live.’

‘What? No!’

‘I tried to kill you, Rosa. That’s why I came to your house. I was sent there, to kill you.’

‘Luke—’ she began, but whatever she might have said was drowned in the sudden scream of breaking wood, the roar of the fire, and Luke felt the floor beneath his feet shiver and begin to tip. For a second he stood frozen, and then he gave a great, hopeless leap, scrambling for the far side of the divide, where Rosa stood.

She leant out, across the flames, her slim arm bare to the blaze, but he knew, even as he reached for her hand, that she could never hold him. His fingers brushed hers, wet with sweat – she screamed something unintelligible – and then, like a miracle, she was holding him.

It was not possible. He hung above the furnace below, feeling the agonizing heat of the fire on his legs. Rosa lay on the floor, her bare arm hanging down into the burning chasm. Luke could only stare up at her, at her white face, at her wrist and hand holding his – impossibly small. There was no way she should have had the strength to even hold him, let alone catch him as he fell.

She had her eyes closed and her face was sheened with sweat.

‘Rosa!’ he gasped.

‘Shut. Up.’

He felt her nails digging into him. He could see her lips moving in some inaudible exhortation.

Slowly, slowly, she was dragging him back from the edge, pulling herself backwards along the floor, her lips constantly moving with a low litany. Her magic blazed around her, a fierce flaming gold, and suddenly he understood. Witchcraft. She was holding him by witchcraft.

He knew he should struggle. He knew what William and John and all the Brothers would say – that this was devil’s work. That it would be better to burn in life than be saved by such unholy means and burn in death. But he no longer cared. He no longer cared about anything except the unbearable heat of the fire on his smouldering boots, the stench of burning wool from his great coat, the flames eating away at the joists below Rosa, minute by minute.

He was almost there. He was almost to the edge. In another moment he would be able to swing his leg up, pull himself to safety . . .

But just as Rosa gave one last superhuman effort, the veins in her forehead standing out in desperation, her hair wet with sweat – there was a massive earth-shaking BOOM!

A roar, like a river bursting its banks.

An explosion that rocked the building to its foundation.

Concrete and bricks and burning beams tumbling around him – and he was falling. He felt Rosa’s magic wrap around him in a fierce embrace.

And then nothing.

When Luke opened his eyes he could see sky. It was not quite dawn, but there was a thin yellow light at the horizon, as if the sun could barely penetrate the river fog. He was lying on the cold ground with a beam digging into his spine and there were bricks and masonry scattered all around. His leg felt as if it might be broken. He couldn’t feel his arm at all and, when he tried to lift it, it wouldn’t move.

With difficulty he turned his head to see what was pinning it and his heart gave a great leap of hope and despair.

It was Rosa. She was lying on his arm. Her head was flung back, her white throat bare to the sky. Her hair was loose and straggled all around.

Her face, beneath the soot and blood and muck, was white – and her hand, when he touched it, was cold. There was not a single spark of magic around her.

A great sob forced its way up from his gut.

‘Rosa.’ He pulled her up, pulling her against him. ‘Rosa, what have you done? What did you do?’

He began to cry there, crouched in the deserted ruins of the factory. Her death solved everything. He was free. And he would have given anything to undo it.

‘I’m so sorry . . .’ He put his cheek against hers. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t care what the Brotherhood says, I will burn for what I did to you.’

‘We nearly did burn.’ Her voice was soft by his ear – and then she coughed and pulled back.