Caress of a Witch, page 17
part #1 of Darkness Rising - Three Series
‘He was a tailor, like his father before him. They had a shop in Narrow Lane.’ In her nervousness she was speaking quickly and telling him too much, she knew, even as the words tumbled from her lips.
‘What took you to The Hague?’ He looked at her across the rim of his cup, and the depths in the darkness of his eyes unnerved her.
‘Business,’ she managed to say. And though she was aware he was still waiting, watching her and hoping for more, that was all she gave him.
They drank in silence for a while, observing the other drinkers, the whores moving deftly between them with jugs of wine, their shoulders bare and their gowns cut low enough that a single movement might just uncover a breast. Once, she had worn her gowns the same way. Until she met Toby and her life took a new and unexpected road. Because of the book, she thought, her own fate tied to it also.
One of the girls was laughing with a middle-aged man – some kind of shopkeeper, Mary guessed. She had swung out of his reach as he tried to grab her with a meaty hand, and as she made for the stairs she paused just long enough to swing her skirts up over her back and reveal the white cheeks of her arse. The man, who had hesitated until then, got up from his stool so suddenly it tipped over with a crash, and then he was running across the floor towards her, chasing her up the steps. The woman shrieked, laughing, and Rafe turned to Mary with a smile.
‘Why would you stay at the Cardinal’s Cap?’ he asked again, and this time, the question was more direct. ‘When there are so many other inns to choose from? This is a low place and if it were to be raided you would be taken in along with all the doxies. Why would you run such a risk?’
Had he guessed? she wondered. Had she somehow given herself away on the ship? Perhaps good women refused to share a cabin with a stranger. Perhaps only old whores took such risks.
‘You ask a lot of questions, Master Tyndall,’ she replied. ‘My business is my own, as I told you before.’
‘Forgive me,’ he said quickly. ‘I meant not to pry. I’m curious merely.’ He gave her his most charming smile and in spite of herself she felt her defences weakening. ‘I am just trying to piece together the puzzle that is Mary Johnson.’
‘I’m not so much of a puzzle.’ She took a mouthful of her ale, and observed him. ‘I’m sure you have me all worked out already.’
‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘But I’d like to be certain. How about I tell you what I know of you so far, and you can tell me if I’m right.’
‘And if you’re wrong?’
‘I’ll stand you dinner. But if I’m right, I get to take you to my bed …’
Mary let out a startled half-laugh. It was an unexpected bargain.
‘… to finish what we started on the ship.’
Briefly, she recalled the flare of desire that had sparked between them that very first day of the voyage. Colour flooded her face and throat; she could feel its heat across her skin. She turned away, hoping he would not notice, and when she lifted a hand to her neck it was hot to the touch.
He gave her a smile. Charming, courteous, tempting.
She hesitated. Now that she was once more under the roof at the Cardinal’s Cap, her marriage seemed to be no more than a fading memory. With Toby she had been a different woman – loved, honest, respectable. But here on Bankside her old self had begun to simmer to the surface again and she could think of no good reason to refuse him. He was very handsome, after all, and she liked him.
‘I accept,’ she said.
He sat back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest, waiting, a slight smirk on his lips as he appraised her anew. Mary sat up and preened herself in the light of his attention, playful. The boy brought them more ale and she poured for them both. Her head was beginning to grow light, the edges of the world around her softening, and for a moment she recalled her old life, when ale was a salve against the pain and hardships.
‘Mary Johnson is not your real name,’ he began, and she laughed. ‘You aren’t quite sure why you gave me a false name – to protect old secrets, perhaps?’ He sat forward, and as she felt herself undressed by his gaze, body and soul naked before him, she understood the game had changed and she had been a fool to accept the challenge.
‘You came back here,’ he continued, ‘because you once called the Cardinal’s Cap your home. You were a girl like her.’ He gestured with his head towards one of the whores, who was standing with an arm draped across a young man’s shoulders, her breasts in line with his face. ‘You met your husband here in the brothel and you served him as a whore until, united in some strange adventure, your husband took you away across the narrow sea to The Hague.’
Fear threaded through her, coiling upwards from her belly. How could he know such things?
‘You are connected in some way to Tom Wynter and I think the book of magic you spoke of on the ship once belonged to him.’
Instinct urged her to run from this man who knew too much, the secrets of a life she thought she had put behind her laid out bare. But where could she go that he would not find her?
‘What do you want with Tom’s book?’ The words left her mouth before she could stop them, and she clamped a hand to her lips before they could betray any more. She could have denied it and called him a liar, but now she was caught and the lid that had kept the past in place these last eighteen years was starting to come loose.
‘Am I right?’ he asked.
Mary said nothing, panic running in her blood. She reached for her ale and almost spilled it by the trembling of her hand. When she had replaced the cup on the table, Rafe caught her wrist in his fingers. She froze against the urge to yank her arm away from him. What did he want with her?
‘You have no cause to be afraid of me,’ he said, so softly she was barely sure she had heard him aright. ‘I wish you no harm. But I have some part to play in this story,’ he went on, ‘and I am trying to understand what that might be.’
‘What part?’ she demanded. Though his grip was gentle, his hand on her wrist was warm and strong, and she wished he would let her go. Her eyes flicked across the tavern, searching for aid, but there was no one that would help her, no one that even noticed her.
‘I don’t yet know,’ he answered.
She remembered their bargain, and he had surely won the bet. Mistrust ceded to fear, memories of the sorcerer bobbing to the surface. She recalled her dream of Kate in his company. Then Isabella Last trod across her thoughts. Was it for the book that the fortune teller had brought Kate to London?
‘Do you have it?’ he asked, when she said nothing. ‘Do you have the book?’
She shook her head, and he let go of her arm with a sigh of exasperation. ‘I wish you no harm, Mistress … whatever your name is, and I would help you if you’d only let me. There are others who seek the book who will stop at nothing to get it.’
Isabella, she thought.
‘Your connection to Tom Wynter has put you in grave danger.’
‘I have no connection to Tom Wynter,’ she lied. ‘I know only what others have told me.’
He was silent, still watching her with those eyes that seemed to read her soul, and she kept her gaze lowered away from him. Then she said, ‘Well, Master Tyndall, it appears you have won our bet. Shall we?’ She wanted it over with – the desire she had felt for him before had receded to the same dull resignation she used to bring to her work, and become a duty, nothing more.
Rafe’s eyes flicked across her, appraising, and she got to her feet, impatient now, but he gave a small shake of his head.
‘It was a jest, merely,’ he said, ‘and I’ve no wish to take something that’s not freely given.’
She inclined her head in acknowledgement. ‘Then I thank you, Master Tyndall, and wish you good day.’
It felt good to walk away from him.
Rafe watched her go, enjoying the swing of her hips as she wove between the tables and through to the rooms behind the tavern. He could imagine her here, as she must once have been, with the sweet bow of her lips and the strange six-fingered hand.
One of the girls, still young and fresh, caught his eye across the room and tilted her head with a question in her eyes. Briefly, he considered it, but if he wanted a whore there were girls at the Bull’s Head he could have for free. Across the years since Ellen’s death, he had often taken comfort that way, reluctant to invest anything more of himself in a woman than the quick release of a fuck. Until he had met Kate, whose beauty had unsettled him in a way he thought he had forgotten, dismantling the walls he had erected to protect himself. With her reckless lust for life, she reminded him of the man he used to be long ago, before the war began. Before Ellen and his son were killed.
Gazing into the space that Mary had left behind her, he drained the last of the bitter ale with a grimace, still trying to fit together the pieces of the puzzle. Then he counted out the coins to pay, put them on the table and got to his feet.
On the quay outside, a wherry was docking at the landing stage and a party of gentlemen were preparing to step ashore, seeking Bankside’s illicit pleasures. They carried themselves warily in muted colours, aware of the risk of it. Rafe clutched his cloak around him against the chill that swept off the river, and lowered his gaze away from them. The mirror had told him that the widow had the key and he knew she understood far more than she was telling him: he had seen the flicker of surprise and fear in her eyes that he had guessed so much. But he hadn’t meant to frighten her, for without her trust he was powerless to protect her.
Casting a final glance across the water where the watermen were pulling hard against the turning tide, he wheeled abruptly and strode along the cobbles towards the Bull’s Head.
Towards Kate.
She would have spent the day on the costumes for the play, her skilled hands teasing new beauty from the collection of well-worn garments that made up the company’s wardrobe. She already seemed to have made the Bull’s Head her home, her place at Rafe’s side barely questioned, and in spite of the bitter cold the thought of her lit a welcome warmth inside him. When he shoved open the door and stepped into the brothel, he realised he was smiling.
19
A great perturbation in nature
Mary slept late, adapting to the hours of the tavern as though she’d never had any other life at all – the early mornings of the tailor’s shop seemed to belong to a different person, a different world. The curtains were bright with the morning light behind them when she woke, and she lay on her back staring up at the beams of the ceiling where the ancient wood was blackened with age and smoke, and there were cracks along the grain. Beside her, Rosalind was still deep in sleep, breathing softly, eyelids flickering with her dreams.
Mary’s own dreams had been filled with foreboding, though she could barely recall the details, images flickering half-seen through her mind. A graveyard. A fear of drowning. A growing darkness. The sorcerer’s influence, she knew, coming back to haunt her after all these years. She had always supposed it had ended with his death. She gave herself a wry smile – she should have known better.
She thought of Rafe and the game they had played in the tavern. For all his charm and courtesy, his unexpected knowledge of her past had frightened her: she had not thought he would see beneath her lies so easily. He knew she had the book, that much was certain, but how far he was prepared to go to possess it, she could not say. She shuddered, memories of the Wounded Raven rippling through her blood – it had been so much easier to be brave with Toby at her side. For the length of a breath she found herself longing for the safety of The Hague she had left behind, before she remembered there was nothing for her there any more. No husband. No child. No life at all – only memories.
Rosalind sighed in her sleep and shifted position, one hand tucked neatly under the pillow. Turning back the covers gently so as not to disturb her friend, Mary slid from the bed and, as she began to dress, she caught her reflection in the looking glass on the wall. She stopped before it, angling her shoulders this way and that to see herself better, running her hands over the lines of her bodice. Skilfully sewn dove-grey silk with delicate lace and a modest neckline, it was a gown for the person she used to be across the narrow sea, a well-to-do tailor’s wife, respectable and demure. She should alter it, she thought, lower the neckline, get rid of the lace. She was a worthy tailor’s wife of The Hague no more, but a denizen of Bankside. And though God knew the place was full of all sorts from everywhere, she felt an urge to reclaim her beginnings, proud to belong. Rosalind would have laughed to hear her and Mary allowed herself a smile at her own recollection of how desperate she had once been to leave it. But in those days she had been a bawd, earning her bread on her back each night, and she had come to understand that it was not the place she had hated so much as the life she had been forced to lead. She finished dressing, moving in silence so as not to awaken the still-sleeping Rosalind, and stepped into the passage that led out into the tavern.
It was not yet mid-morning and the place was deserted, though the servant girl had already swept the place clean and laid out the fire in readiness. From the hidden kitchens at the back of the place Mary could hear the clatter of the cook at work, the thud of the cleaver on the board. The scent of broth drifted through, meat and sage and rosemary, competing with the stench of stale ale and sweat that never left the place, no matter how long the doors and windows stood open, nor how much incense they burned.
A light knock at the door startled her from her thoughts, and she wove between the tables and chairs to open it. A young boy in a tattered set of drawers and a cap that was too big for him stood on the step.
‘I got a message,’ he said, ‘for …’ He looked her up and down, ‘… for the lady that came to the Wounded Raven.’
‘That was me.’
He nodded, then closed his eyes briefly to remember the words he’d been told to say. ‘She’s not been back,’ he said, ‘but a gentleman came to visit early this morning.’
Mary drew in a slow breath to calm her quickened heart. Rafe? Perhaps, though she dared not imagine what his purpose might have been.
‘Thank you,’ she managed to whisper, but the boy just stared.
‘She said you’d give us a sixpence.’
Swallowing, Mary struggled to focus her thoughts on the boy. Her mind was churning with uncertainty, and he had to say it twice before she heard him.
Perhaps it meant nothing. Perhaps it was only some poor fool seeking to have his fortune told. But she would go there, nonetheless, and discover what it meant for herself.
‘Here,’ she said, reaching to her belt for her pouch. She gave him a coin, and he looked up at her expectantly.
‘And the other one?’
‘Can I trust you to see it safely home?’
‘It’s for me grandam. She’ll box me ears if I don’t give it her.’
Mary smiled and placed the other coin in his grubby hand. Then she said, ‘Wait here,’ and, turning, she stepped back inside to walk swiftly to the kitchen. The cook looked up in surprise but she ignored him and cut off a hunk from the bread that had come from the baker that morning. It was still warm, and the crust broke easily in her fingers. When she returned to the door, the boy’s face brightened at the sight of the gift.
‘Make sure you save some for your grandam,’ Mary said, and he nodded gravely, holding the bread as though it were a long-lost treasure. Then she sent him on his way, and as she watched his small back get lost along the quayside, her heart turned in pity for the want in his young, poor life. She doubted he had ever known a belly that was full.
Mary fetched her cloak and went out into the morning. A weak sun lit the edges of the clouds but the day was grey, and she had to walk with care not to slide on the greasy cobbles underfoot. Shivering, she hunched her shoulders inside her cloak and was grateful for the extra warmth of the modest neckline – perhaps she would keep it after all. At the water’s edge she stopped, looking down at the shingle as a wherry approached the steps, rocking with the turn of the tide. The oarsman strained to bring the boat alongside and the gentleman passenger stood up inelegantly, waiting for the best moment to step ashore. Mary turned away to gaze upriver, watching the river traffic as she pondered the possibilities, undecided.
Then, making a decision at last, she ducked back inside the tavern and made for Rosalind’s room, searching for paper, quill and ink. Her friend was still peaceful in sleep, and Mary crept around her until she found what she was looking for. Taking it through to the tavern, she sat at a table close to the window where the light was best and where, she remembered again, Toby had once sat to watch her. She shook her head to clear it of the memory – she needed to think. Words had never come easily and there was so much she needed to say. In the end, she scrawled a brief few lines that wished Kate well and gave her the address at the Cardinal’s Cap.
She would leave the letter with the woman at the brazier, she decided, and trust in fate. Folding the paper, she returned to Rosalind’s room in search of wax to seal it, and this time Rosalind stirred at the sound of the latch on the door. Mary halted, sorry to have woken her, but her friend smiled as she sat up and stretched, a glimpse of the girl she had once been lighting eyes that were mostly sad now, and full of cares.
‘You’re up early,’ she said.
‘Not so early,’ Mary laughed. Then, ‘A messenger came. I must go again to the Wounded Raven.’
‘Kate is there?’
