Burn Mark (2 page)

He left the grown-ups to it and found Michael with his twin sister, Bea, looking over the edge of the balustrade. In the late July afternoon a dull film of heat lay over the city. Lucas felt all the privilege of being up here, away from the dusty crowds and the traffic fumes. In front of them, Nelson’s Column reared upwards, dizzyingly high. Nelson had used witches to fight the French; they’d learned about it in Witchkind Studies at school, and one of the square’s plinths had a statue commemorating witches in war. The abstract sculpture had only been unveiled last year, but now Lucas saw someone had daubed it with red paint, a bloody spatter across the bronze.

Every inch of steps and paving was covered with people. They were perched on the great lions beneath Nelson’s monument and packed tightly along the edges of the switched-off fountains. The National Gallery, with its ranks of columns and creamy grey dome, made a stately backdrop for the screen in front of its portico. At the northwest corner of the square, close to the vandalised memorial, a little group of Witchkind Rights protesters had assembled. They were within a police cordon and carrying banners and placards:
One Law for All, Burning for None
, and
Ban the Balefires
. Nobody paid them much attention.

For a while, Lucas, Michael and Bea amused themselves by dropping bits of canapé on to the heads of the crowd. Bea tired of this before the boys did. She was a thin, serious-looking girl, and her eyes kept flicking restlessly towards the screen. ‘I’ve got butterflies,’ she said.

Lucas kicked at the wall. ‘I wish they’d get it over with. The wait, I mean.’

At quarter to five, the countdown began. A digital clock appeared on screen to mark the fifteen minutes till burn-time. Several groups broke into the National Anthem and began waving Union Jack flags. Mr Allen’s guests moved to the edge of the terrace, drinks in hand, their faces bright with anticipation. One of the secretaries was clutching a newspaper poster with a picture of the dead schoolgirl.

The singing and talk faded as the seconds blinked away. When the clock reached the final minute, the crowd sent a collective bellow echoing round the square. ‘Ten – Nine – Eight –’ The party on the terrace joined in too, cheering and whistling. But when the countdown stopped, and the screen flashed up with the particulars of the condemned man and the sentence passed, the silence was absolute. Then the name of his victim appeared.

‘Poor wee angel,’ sighed the secretary with the poster. She wasn’t the only person with tears in her eyes. Several people crossed themselves.

It was a solemn moment. But just as the waiting began to be oppressive, the screen returned to black. There was a fizz of static, and the interior of the Burning Court appeared.

The condemned witch was already in place, strapped upright on to the board that rose from the centre of the pyre. By now, Bernard Tynan’s features were intimately familiar: the thinning hair, the fleshy nose, the soft pouches under his eyes.
The Face of Evil
, the tabloid headlines had screamed, but he looked wholly unremarkable really. That was what was so frightening.

Little could be seen of his surroundings. The Burning Court was just a plain white space. Behind a glass panel in the wall facing the balefire, Ashton Stearne would be sitting with his fellow High Inquisitors, the Home Secretary, a medic and a priest. But the camera didn’t show any of this. Its lens was fixed on the witch.

Bernard Tynan stared back impassively, frozen stiff by the anaesthetic they’d given him. Britain was a civilised country after all. In plenty of other nations witches were burned alive in just the same way they’d been for the last thousand years or more.

Fat bundles of wood were neatly stacked around the man’s feet and up to his calves. An electric fuse led from under the pyre back to the room where three prison guards were preparing to press three separate ignition buttons. Only one switch would light the fire, but nobody would know which of the three was responsible.

Michael pointed and giggled. There was a damp patch on the crotch of the witch’s white shift; as they’d slid the needle in for his injection, or perhaps before, when they came for him in his cell, he must have wet himself. Lucas smirked dutifully. But he felt anxious somehow, breathless, and his palms were sweaty; he was worried people might know. The next moment, the unseen switch was flicked, and a spark leapt out from the wood.

The witch waited, inanimate as the poppet he’d made to bind the dead girl to his will. His eyes were wide and unblinking as the fire licked upwards. The burning wood made a muttering, scratching sound. Flames began to writhe through the man’s flesh.

Beside him, Lucas could hear Bea crying softly. He didn’t turn to her, he didn’t look away. He stared at the screen as stiffly as Bernard Tynan stared out. The witch’s anaesthetised death would be more merciful than that of his victim, he told himself. Yet though the man might feel no pain, his living mind knew his body was cracking and blistering; he would be able to smell the stench of charred meat and oily black smoke. He would hear the fatty hiss and spit of fire as his flesh melted from his bones.

In the old days of burning, it could take two or more hours for a condemned witch to die. In these enlightened times, a prisoner’s clothes were treated with flammable chemicals so that they would be overwhelmed by fire in minutes. Already, billows of smoke obscured the blazing body. At six minutes past five, the show was almost over.

People began to clear their throats and fidget. For the moment, there was an embarrassed sense of relief; celebration would come later. As the screen went blank for the final time, the bells of the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields began to ring, along with all the other church bells in London.

Lucas was not the squeamish sort. He put the images of the burning man away, and if he chose to remember them, he did so slowly and carefully, like somebody examining broken glass. Afterwards, he and Michael never directly talked about the balefire. At school, they were as they’d always been: casually friendly, no more. Sometimes, at sports matches or speech days, or while waiting to be picked up from a party, Lucas would see Mr Allen. He always greeted Lucas as if they were long-lost friends. ‘Aha! It’s my young witch-burner!’

And Lucas would smile obediently. He couldn’t account for why his stomach always clenched at the greeting. Or why the world should seem to slip, just for a second, out of joint.

Chapter 3

Clearmont’s school colours were green with a gold trim. When they saw Lucas and Tom get off the bus, the girls at the stop across the road hooted and catcalled. ‘Ooh,’ one of them shouted, ‘it’s the Frog Princes!’

Lucas and Tom ignored them loftily. Now they were in Year Ten, they were supposed to be above responding to this sort of thing. They set off at a brisk pace; the Senior School was having a careers talk from one of the Inquisition’s Recruitment Officers that morning, and their bus had been late.

‘Hop along now!’ cried the loudest of the girls, the one with big hooped earrings and bare legs mottled with cold. The others made croaking sounds.

‘Chavvy little hags,’ muttered Tom.

Lucas glanced back and accidentally caught the earring-girl’s eye. She blew him a kiss, to more screeches of laughter. ‘Hideous,’ he agreed, as they went through the school gates.

It was gone nine and most people were already inside the building. On their way to the hall, however, they passed Ollie Wilks standing outside the senior common room. He was enjoying a leisurely smoke.

‘Aren’t you coming to the presentation?’ Tom asked.

‘Not eligible, am I? My first cousin’s a witch.’

Tom and Lucas exchanged looks. Ollie had said it quite naturally, but it was still embarrassing.

‘I didn’t know that,’ Lucas said at last.

‘Yeah. Sarah used to do fae-healing for the NHS. She’s non-practising now; she got herself bridled once she was married.’

Fae was the common term for a witch’s abilities, the so-called Seventh Sense. It was reckoned that one in a thousand people would develop it, and since the fae was practically always hereditary, anyone who’d had a witch-relative within the last three generations of their immediate family was barred from working in the Inquisition. ‘Fae runs thicker than blood, quicker than water’, the saying went. And the strict background checks worked: in the last twenty years, only two inquisitors had turned witchkind after joining the service.

Ollie, however, didn’t seem bothered by his exclusion. ‘You should bunk off and join me,’ he told Lucas. ‘It’s not like you’re going to hear anything you don’t already know.’

‘Ah, he just wants to chat up the lovely lady inquisitress,’ said Tom.

Lucas grinned, and swung ahead to the hall. ‘Try and stop me. You know how those uniforms turn me on.’

An air of ritualised boredom hung over the assembly hall whose stained glass and odour of wilting flowers gave everyone who entered it the feeling of being at church. A projector screen had been set up in front of the stage curtains, and a woman in the scarlet and grey inquisitorial dress was waiting to one side. The school’s career advisor and Year Heads were seated on the other, together with a slim fair-haired boy. He was the real focus of interest in the room. Gideon Hale had left Clearmont last summer, and was taking a year out before university to join the Inquisition’s Accelerated Development Programme.

Tom and Lucas slipped into their seats just as the Recruitment Officer got up from hers. Her face was sunny and dimpled, her smile determined, as she began her introduction. The screen next to her displayed the image of an eye, drawn in black, with the iris quartered by a red cross. It was the emblem of the British Inquisition.

‘Now then,’ she said, ‘I’m sure you’re all familiar with the work we inquisitors do. However, it’s still important to challenge the mythical image of our organisation being full of mean old men in black robes, getting their kicks out of persecuting innocent witches.’

The inquisitor gave a cheery laugh. Her audience stared back with blank politeness. Clearmont always had a strong showing at the Inquisition; the school had a proud tradition of preparing its students for public service.

‘Over the years,’ the inquisitor continued cosily, ‘the Inquisition has made great progress in developing good relations between ourselves and the witchkind community. We have a duty of care to the witches under our surveillance and we take a lot of pride in finding fulfilling work for them within the State. Public safety is our priority, but the personal welfare of law-abiding, registered witches is an important aspect of our service.’

‘Yeah, right,’ whispered Tom. ‘Next she’ll say, “Some of my best friends are witches.”’

‘. . . In fact, I myself am proud to have made several good friends within the witchkind community . . .’

The boys’ shoulders shook with silent laughter.

‘However, as I’m sure you know, national security is our principal responsibility.’ The inquisitor’s face grew grave. ‘The main challenges faced by the Inquisition are the use of witchwork in organised crime – the gangster societies known as covens – and witch-terrorism practised by extremist groups such as Endor. Thankfully, Endor hasn’t been active in Britain since the late 1990s, but this does not give reason for complacency. Witchcrime prevention, detection and punishment is what the Inquisition was created for.’

There was a solemn pause. Then the dimples and twinkles returned.

‘That doesn’t mean we only recruit people interested in law enforcement, of course! We also offer exciting opportunities in sectors as diverse as technology and research, education and PR. And it’s
my
job to tell you all about them . . .’

The rest of the presentation lasted about forty minutes. By the end, her listeners were shifting restlessly. It was Gideon Hale they had come for, and the Accelerated Development Programme.

This involved recruiting students into the Inquisition while they were in their final year at school. They would spend a year before university on an intensive training scheme, which they would continue part-time while studying for their degrees. In return, trainees got their tuition fees paid, and would join the inquisitorial officer class once they graduated. The programme had only been running a few years and was somewhat controversial. It had been established partly because witches usually developed the fae in their early twenties, and it was therefore thought useful to have inquisitors within the student body. It was a deterrent too, to the Witchkind Rights campaigners and protesters who targeted university campuses. However, since the student inquisitors were not undercover – in accordance with the agency’s new policy of ‘outreach and transparency’ – there were grumblings that the surveillance benefits were limited.

Gideon Hale would be putting this to the test once he took up his place to read Law at Oxford next year. As he came forward to talk about his experience of the programme so far – the parts that weren’t classified, that is – the audience visibly revived. Gideon was tall and tanned with dusty fair hair and an easy smile; his speech was focused yet relaxed, calculated to charm.

Lucas watched Clara and Daisy, two girls in his class, smirk and flick their hair about in an effort to catch Gideon’s eye. They weren’t the only ones. As Head Boy, Gideon had always had girls sigh over him and younger boys hold themselves straighter in his presence. Now he’d left, even the crabbiest teachers spoke of him with pride. Lucas’s own feelings were mixed. In time, he would be following in the older boy’s footsteps, and although the Inquisition was a vast organisation, once inside, it was a surprisingly small world. No doubt they’d run into each other on a fairly regular basis. In light of their previous encounters, however, Lucas wasn’t entirely sure this was a good thing.