Burn Mark Page 4

  ‘And good morning to you too.’

  ‘Dear me, Lucas – you are looking rather peaky. Are you feeling all right?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’ He shook his head to clear the faint buzzing in his ears, and went to pat Kip. The dog bared his teeth and backed away, and Lucas looked at him in surprise. ‘Er . . . I just didn’t sleep that well.’

  ‘Well, make sure you don’t overdo it at this party at the Charltons’ tonight.’ Marisa took a delicate sip of green tea. ‘Though I suppose Philly can keep an eye on you.’

  Both Lucas and Philomena stiffened. ‘God, Mummy. I’m not a babysitter. It’s bad enough that Sophie’s parents are forcing her to let Nick’s little friends tag along.’

  ‘Oh, but, darling, I think holding a joint birthday party is a lovely idea. So inclusive. We should think about it for when you and Luc—’

  ‘Is Dad around?’ Lucas interjected hastily.

  ‘He got called into the office half an hour ago. Another crisis with the Goodwin trial, I imagine.’

  Ashton was prosecuting the case of Bradley Goodwin, a witch accused of freelancing for the Wednesday Coven. The Inquisition was pressing for the death penalty on the grounds that one of his banes had resulted in a police officer’s death. They hoped to use the threat of balefire to frighten Goodwin into cutting a deal. If he could be persuaded to inform on his former associates, the coven would be badly hit.

  So far, however, the trial had been beset by problems. Evidence had been tampered with, one of the witnesses had disappeared, and another had retracted their statement. Witch trials didn’t use ordinary juries, but a tribunal of judges drawn from a pool of retired inquisitors and serving military officers, civil servants and magistrates. All of the tribunal members were under inquisitorial guard.

  Marisa sighed. ‘Why these emergencies always seem to happen on the weekends, I really don’t know . . . Anyway, I suppose it’s time I got dressed.’

  As soon as her mother was gone, Philomena looked at Lucas through narrowed eyes. ‘Seriously, you’d better not tag after me tonight. Gid will probably be there, and the last thing he’ll want is to be cornered by some fanboy banging on about the bloody Inquisition.’

  Lucas stretched and yawned. ‘Don’t you think I’ll have better things to do than spend my time cramping your style?’

  ‘It hasn’t stopped you before.’

  Philomena shared her mother’s expertly applied hair colour and expensive tastes, but her sturdy frame and heavy features were her father’s, the banker Rupert Carrington. She was well-groomed and fashionable enough to pass for attractive, well-connected and intimidating enough to pass for popular, but neither came naturally. It was different for Lucas. The fact that he was younger, and a boy, and therefore shouldn’t be any kind of threat, was a thorn in her side she refused to acknowledge.

  At some level, Lucas was aware of this. It made him slightly more tolerant of Philomena than he would otherwise have been.

  However, his tolerance had its limits.

  Eyeing Philomena’s rice cake, Lucas moved towards the fridge. ‘Now, what I really fancy,’ he said gloatingly, ‘is a nice, fat, juicy bacon sandwich. Mmm . . .’

  The real cause of Ashton Stearne’s summons to work became apparent quarter of an hour later, when Marisa called out to Philomena and Lucas to turn on the news. A witchworked storm (or ‘whistle-wind’) had been raised in the office of Helena Howell, MP – smashing windows, toppling furniture, scattering documents. Although the building should have been empty in the early hours of Saturday morning, a cleaner coming off the night shift had been struck on the head by a light fitting and killed. The motive for the attack was clear enough: Howell was introducing a controversial Private Member’s bill to limit the state benefits available to witchkind.

  The three of them watched the latest report on the television in the drawing-room.

  Jack Rawdon, director of WICA, was being interviewed in the studio. Would his agents be assisting the Inquisition in bringing the perpetrator to justice? the journalist asked. Rawdon’s face was solemn as he addressed the camera.

  ‘Crime is crime, whoever commits it. And justice is justice, whoever deals it – whether that’s a witch or an inquisitor. Both WICA and the Inquisition bring unique skills to the fight against witchcrime. The Inquisition’s commitment and expertise are justly celebrated. It is my hope that WICA’s contribution will also come to be recognised. The more work we’re enabled to do, the safer our country will be.’

  Opportunistic git, thought Lucas. He didn’t even answer the question.

  The interview was followed with a recap of the story so far, and reaction from the father-in-law of the dead cleaner, who left behind two small children. ‘That poor family . . .’ Marisa murmured, pressing her hand to her heart. With her other hand, she reached for Lucas’s.

  Philomena’s eyes darted to the pen and ink portrait of Camilla Stearne above the mantelpiece. It had been done the year before Lucas’s mother was killed by the witch-terrorist group Endor.

  As soon as he could, Lucas politely extricated his hand from Marisa’s. He was careful not to look towards the mantelpiece either. Lucas had never especially liked the drawing; he knew his mother had been a pretty woman, but the artist had given her a dreamy wistfulness that was at odds with other accounts of someone both lively and determined. Though Lucas had only been a baby when Camilla died, he resented the portrait’s power to create a memory that was pure romance, and fateful melancholy. It was something he tried to resist, following his father’s example.

  By the time Lucas arrived at the party, celebrations were well under way. He had always liked the Charltons – a loud, jolly gang – and he liked their house too. Large and rambling, the grandeur of its scale was mostly obscured by a tide of family clutter. All of the ground floor rooms were already spilling over with guests and music from competing sound systems.

  He found the noise level hard to take. As the day wore on, the tension in his head had returned; a hot, heavy pulse in his skull. Though it didn’t hurt, exactly, he struggled to exchange the usual banter with his usual crowd. He wondered if Bea was here yet and how long it would take to find her in the crush. Tom was trying to tell him something, but the thrumming in his head meant he missed most of it. ‘– downstairs in the den,’ Tom repeated, beckoning. ‘Come and see.’

  It was much quieter in the basement. Fairy lights twinkled cosily around the room, illuminating a sagging sofa and widescreen TV, and the layer of film posters and concert flyers that obscured the walls. Gideon was there, holding court in the centre of a group of five or six people. They were admiring something he had on display. A helmet or muzzle of some kind. It was a witch’s bridle.

  As Lucas drew closer, Gideon looked up and met his eye. He smiled. ‘Come and have a look at this, Stearne. You’ll find it quite an education.’

  And Lucas knew that Gideon had not forgotten the incident with the balefire film any more than he had.

  As a matter of fact, Lucas had seen such contraptions before. The bridle was a kind of iron cage for the head, with a metal curb fitted to project into the mouth and hold down the tongue. On this example the curb was plain and flat, but some came studded with spikes, so as to draw blood if the wearer attempted to speak. For many years, people thought witchwork was primarily accomplished through the spelling out of words. They knew better now, but the real point of the bridle was its material. Iron constrained fae. Nowadays, iron cuffs were worn by witches who chose to renounce their fae and live ordinary lives. But in times past, the bridles were used as ready-to-wear, portable prisons.

  ‘This one’s an early nineteenth-century model,’ Gideon was saying, ‘and what’s unusual is the way wrist restraints have been incorporated into the design.’ He held up a chain attached to the back, which ended in a pair of handcuffs. Although the bridle was opened and shut by a simple clasp, the imprisoned witch would not be able to reach up to use it. ‘It would have been state of the art in its day. And just
look at the decorative work.’ He gestured to the iron bands, which bore a patterning of birds and flowers. ‘Must’ve been made by a true craftsman.’

  ‘A higher class of torturer,’ Lucas agreed.

  Gideon’s pale eyes were almost colourless in the dim light. ‘People did what they had to do. It was a harsher world back then.’

  ‘And not much has changed since,’ said one of the girls, to murmurs of agreement. ‘Look what happened today with that MP’s office.’

  ‘We might face the same threat,’ Lucas replied, ‘but at least we’ve got better tools.’

  ‘“We’ve got better tools?”’ Gideon drawled. ‘Funny – I didn’t know you were already an inquisitor, Stearne. Unless there’s an alternative fast-track scheme I don’t know about. Something Daddy’s running, perhaps.’

  Lucas could tell from the ripples of amusement that this was one occasion when he didn’t have the room on his side. Even Tom kept quiet.

  ‘Now,’ Gideon continued, briskly marking the end of the exchange, ‘who’d like a go in the bridle? Any budding witches want to be my victim?’

  People looked round at each other, a little uncertainly. Several girls giggled.

  ‘I’ll try it,’ Nell Dawson announced. She was normally a rather quiet person, but she had just downed a glass of wine, and was tossing her hair about in what was no doubt intended to be a reckless manner. When Gideon looked her way, she blushed violently.

  ‘Good girl.’ He touched her cheek, and Nell blushed again. Slowly, she lowered her head in submission.

  The room was very still as Gideon put the bridle on.

  ‘Open wide,’ he said.

  Nell opened her mouth and Gideon slid the metal curb on to her tongue. Then, less gently, he pulled her arms behind her back, clamping her wrists into the manacles. She made a small muffled sound.

  ‘How’s it feel, Nell?’ various people asked, and she managed a lopsided shrug.

  ‘Haunted, I expect,’ Gideon remarked. ‘Think of all the witches it’s silenced.’

  ‘Careful, Nell,’ said someone. ‘You wouldn’t want to catch anything nasty.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said someone else. ‘Maybe she’ll come down with the fae.’

  ‘Oooh – any harpies in the Dawson bloodline we should know about?’

  ‘Is that a freckle on her arm, or the Devil’s Kiss?’

  ‘I always thought Nell had something spooky about her . . .’

  ‘’Ware the witch!’

  Laughing, they began to pelt her with screwed-up napkins and beer bottle tops.

  Lucas watched and waited. Anger had intensified the hot throb in his head.

  Perhaps Gideon had been right to challenge his remark about torturers. It wasn’t always fair to judge the past according to modern sensibilities. The witch’s bridle was a defensive weapon as well as an instrument of oppression; a relic of a war that hadn’t yet been won. But the Inquisition had worked hard to become an institution that could be respected and trusted as well as feared. And for all the care of its construction, the bridle was a crude, ugly thing, which belonged to more primitive times. To make such an artefact part of a drunken party game . . . It was like ogling a pirated balefire film. It was like those men sipping gin and tonic as Bernard Tynan burned.

  Meanwhile, Nell sat alone on the sofa, as the merriment and missiles rained down. Her head was bowed awkwardly under the weight of iron. Lucas saw her eyes darting about inside. She made another muffled sound, and her shoulders twitched.

  ‘I think she wants to get it off,’ he said, abruptly cutting into the fun.

  ‘I’m sure she does. But that’s not the way it works, I’m afraid,’ Gideon replied. Taking hold of the chain behind Nell’s back, he pulled her off the sofa. Caught off balance, she fell on to her knees. Gideon pushed a hank of fair hair off his forehead and moistened his lips, staring down at the muzzled girl. He gave the chain another tug. ‘First she has to learn her lesson.’

  He’s turned on, thought Lucas, with a shock of disgust. ‘And what lesson is that?’

  Gideon smiled blandly. ‘That witchcrime doesn’t pay.’

  Lucas hardened his face. He walked swiftly over to Nell and felt for the catch at the back of the bridle, releasing the cage. After a bit of fiddling, he managed to open the manacles too. Nell gulped and coughed, moisture filming her eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  The next cough was more like a retch. Nell’s hands fluttered to her throat. There were red marks around her wrists. Then, ‘Sure,’ she said, over-brightly. Her voice was hoarse. ‘I’m fine.’

  Nobody even looked at her. They were all watching Gideon watch Lucas.

  Lucas found the bridle heavier than he’d expected. It felt colder than metal should, the iron bands biting icily into his skin. The heat in his skull flickered and faltered. He felt extraordinarily tired.

  ‘You look a little green, Stearne,’ Gideon observed. ‘Maybe it’s time to lighten up, hmm? Life shouldn’t be all work, no play.’

  Lucas put the bridle into the other boy’s hands. ‘Trouble is, I don’t much like your games.’

  It was only then he realised that Bea was there. She must have come down the stairs behind him. He wondered how much she had seen and what she had thought, but went past her regardless. He needed some air.

  Lucas was immediately regretting his intervention. He’d come across as a pompous, humourless bore. And Nell was a silly little bimbo anyway, trying to suck up to Gideon like that. She didn’t need rescuing. What’s wrong with me? he thought, as he sloped moodily through the conservatory and into the garden beyond. But the question was unsettling. Of course there’s nothing wrong, he told himself quickly. It’s just one of those days. I’m getting ill and it’s making me cranky. God – if only my head would just keep quiet . . .

  Several people, mostly Sophie’s friends, were smoking on the patio among a scattering of tea-lights. One of the boys was tunelessly strumming a guitar. Even so, the night air and relative peacefulness were a relief. The garden’s growth was luxuriant, blurry with spring. Lucas walked across the lawn to the pond and frowned down at his reflection.

  Someone said his name. ‘Hello,’ Bea said, a little breathlessly.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘I liked what you did back there,’ she told him. ‘You were right to intervene; it was getting out of hand. Though Nell should have known better. She’s got this ridiculous crush on Gideon, you see.’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘Oh-ho – that sounded a touch bitter.’

  Bea’s smile had a mischievous slant. He liked that. Lucas approved of girls who were confident without being too assertive about it. He also liked her thin gold top, and the way the droplets of her earrings had got tangled in her hair.

  He tousled up his own hair and grinned back. They sat down together on the raised stone rim of the pond.

  ‘I think people are generally on edge today,’ Bea remarked. ‘About witchwork, I mean. It’s because of the attack. Dad was saying that coven witches keep clear of capital offences, and so only fanatics like Endor could be responsible. He said normal witch-criminals wouldn’t risk the Burning Court. Is that right?’

  ‘Well, it’s true that covens keep their witches behind the scenes. They tend to do the groundwork rather than committing the actual crimes. But the . . .’ Lucas paused. Though his reflection looked as pale as ever, waves of heat had begun throbbing through his body. The sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant but he plunged a hand into the water, hoping the coolness would steady him.

  ‘Yes?’ Bea prompted.

  ‘Uh . . . the death of that cleaner was clearly a mistake. Creating a whistle-wind is one thing, controlling it quite another. That storm was meant to scare people, not kill them. That’s not Endor’s style. And Endor hasn’t been active in the UK for over twelve years.’

  ‘Do you ever wonder . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I know about the Oath of Service, and how inquisitors are legally bound to
respect witchkind rights. But do you ever wonder how you could . . . what you would do . . . if some atrocity happened, and you found yourself face to face with the witch responsible?’

  ‘Like the one who killed my mother, for instance?’

  Her cheeks went pink. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.’

  ‘It’s OK. It’s something I’ve thought about. I’m sure Dad has too. I hope I’d do the right thing. One has to bear in mind that witches . . . well, they’re subject to impulses that normal people can’t understand. There’s something primitive – unnatural – inside them.’

  ‘You’re saying we should make allowances?’

  ‘No. I’m saying we have to remember they’re not like the rest of us. If I found the witch who killed my mother, I’d want to do the right thing because it would prove I was better than him or her. Better than them.’

  ‘More humane?’

  ‘Or more human . . .’

  A motorbike revved noisily in the road. In the glinting wrinkles of the pond, the imagined scene of his mother’s murder swam up at him. The swerve, the jump, the downwards fall – the crumpling of metal and crushing of glass. The sheet of flame.

  It might have been written off as just another road accident, if it wasn’t for a witness who had seen his mother struggling at the wheel, her face frozen with horror and her movements stiff and jerky, as if not her own. Since a witch had to be in view of his or her target to hex a bane, a second onlooker would also have been present on that bend. There they would have watched and waited for the car, holding a poppet of Camilla Stearne in their hands. Somewhere in the background, this witch would have wound the shadow-strands of fae through the manikin and into its human counterpart; spooling their darkness through his mother’s blood and brain, binding her limbs to their will.