Witch Finder by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page A

people, walking and talking like ordinary people but with their witchcraft shimmering and crackling around them, marking them out as clear as night from day.
    Sometimes it was nothing but a faint gleam, soft as a dying ember. Other times it was bright; bright as a gas-lamp, bright as a flame. When they cast a spell the magic flared and waxed, as the candlelight guttered and waxed in the draught from the door. Then it waned, fading back, leaving them dimmer than before.
    It had taken him a long while to understand that others did not see witches as he did. It had taken the Malleus even longer to believe what they had found – a child who could see witchcraft – no need to test and prod and accuse. His word alone was enough.
    ‘We’ll have to get you inside the household somehow. A servant or summat. John Leadingham’s looking into it.’
    ‘I can’t be a servant!’ Luke said, horrified.
    ‘What! Too proud to sweep a floor?’
    ‘No! I don’t mean that. I mean, I wouldn’t know how! How could I be a footman in some great house? I wouldn’t know the first thing about what to do – I’d get the sack before my feet had touched the ground.’
    ‘A footman no, but there might be something else. You’re too old for a boot-boy, but a garden hand maybe. I don’t know about London, but John says they’ve got a great rambling place in the country with a hundred acres and more. There must be work for a man there.’
    ‘What if they’re not in the country? Don’t the gentry come up to town in the autumn?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ William shook his head. ‘You’re asking the wrong bloke, Luke. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. If there’s a chink in their armour, John Leadingham’s the man to find it. By fair means or foul, we’ll get you into that house. And after that . . .’
    After that, it would be up to Luke.
    ‘I’ve got a plan.’ John Leadingham tapped the side of his nose as they walked down the narrow alleys, tall warehouses towering either side of them, their top storeys disappearing into the shrouding murk. Luke could hear the lap of the Thames on the mudflats and the bellow of a horn as a ship made its way downriver in the thick yellow fog.
    ‘What is it?’ Luke asked, but John shook his head.
    ‘Ask me no questions, young Luke. You’ll know soon enough, but for the moment I’m still working out some of the finer details. Now . . .’ He stopped at one of the furthest warehouses – a tumbledown wooden structure that looked as if it might just slide into the Thames mud at any moment – and drew a key from his pocket. ‘You’re not squeamish of a little blood, are you?’
    ‘No,’ Luke said, but his stomach twisted, wondering what awaited him inside the warehouse. He thought of the nights when William came home with blood on his hands and shook his head, pale-faced, when Luke asked him questions about what he’d done. Would it be a witch, captive, awaiting trial?
    The door swung wide and the stench of blood that flooded out made him take an involuntary step back, but John Leadingham strode inside as if he hadn’t noticed.
    Luke found himself standing tense, his muscles ready to fight or fly, as the gas-lights flared out across the warehouse. But then he laughed, the noise sounding strange and light with relief in his own ears.
    ‘Pigs!’
    Carcasses swung from hooks in the beams and there were bones stacked by the door out to the wharf. And not just pigs, he saw. There were sides of beef over the far side, and sheep too, stripped of their wool and skinned, with sharp grinning teeth and staring, round eyes.
    ‘Well, what else did you expect? I’m a butcher, ain’t I?’ John swung the door shut with a dull thud of rotten wood and took off his coat. ‘It’s an abattoir.’
    ‘Why’ve you brought me here?’
    ‘Because I’m not sending a sheep to the slaughter – pardon the pun.’ He pulled on a bloodstained apron and picked up a knife. ‘You can fight, Luke,