Chapter Twenty-Four
Sybil
A moldy piece of bread landed in the rushes. Sybil snatched up the chunk before a lump of brown fur could fall upon it.
Man and beast alike starved in this prison.
The women in the next cell had been given their daily ration of stale bread.
Sybil had not appreciated that meager allowance until she was deprived.
The women had been separated into several cages. Hers was specifically for those who had not confessed, an attempt to lure
them into admission through starvation.
This was Sybil’s fourth day with no food, and Edith’s fifth. The only sustenance allowed was a small cup of ale once a day,
sour and teetering on rancid. Still, they gulped greedily with a thirst they feared would never be quenched.
They had not yet received their cup that day, and the burn in Sybil’s throat was more visceral than even the gnawing ache in her stomach.
The crust trembled in her hand. A gift from a stranger in another cell, a fraction of an already pitiful ration, tossed behind
a guard’s turned back.
Sybil faced the rear of the cell and shoved the food into her mouth.
The bread was stale and sharp against her gums as she tried valiantly to chew. Her teeth gnashed in vain while the bread absorbed
the scant moisture in her body, turning into a wad of thick paste that stuck to the roof of her mouth.
Bit by bit, she managed to swallow the lump where it lodged midway down in her chest.
“Oy,” a guard shouted.
Another crust of bread landed in Sybil’s cage, tossed by one of the imprisoned men.
“Who did this?” The guard reached for the bread, but a rat seized it out from under his hand. The guard screamed with a shrillness
that set a few of the men chuffing with mirth.
He glowered at them, assuming himself mocked, face purpling with humiliation beneath his gray hair. A scar bisected his right
eyebrow from some long-ago fight likely fueled by his short temper.
“Do you find me amusing?” He unlocked the cell and whipped his cudgel about, catching an old man on the back of the head.
The man cried out and held the injury as he scuttled into the shadows.
The other prisoners lurched away, too. All but Edward Morris, who sat against the wall, his stare fixed in a different time.
“Was it you?” the guard bellowed.
Edward Morris did not so much as lift his gaze.
The guard kicked Edward’s leg, but managed to slip in refuse on the floor, hitting the ground with an undignified oof.
This time, no one laughed.
Silence descended over the prison, heavy with fear.
The guard leaped up like a beast and set upon the young man, the war hero who had been rumored to have slain at least twenty
at the Battle of Marston Moor.
With grunting effort, the guard kicked and punched and pummeled.
The soldier did not fight back.
When, at last, the guard straightened and came away, short of breath from his efforts, Edward Morris lay on the floor in a
growing pool of blood. His stare was vacant still, only this time, his eyes saw nothing.
Edward Morris’s body remained on the floor for two days before he was removed at the behest of the guard who beat him to death
and now complained of the smell.
There was no further generosity among the prisoners in sharing food.
The little girl was now in the cell with those being starved and Sybil sat beside her. If Sybil had to guess, she would assume
the child was perhaps ten. Still mute, the girl pressed her back to the wall, legs tucked to her chest, arms folded protectively
around her knees.
Edith had finally been relocated to the other cage, not for confessing, but to keep her alive—building her strength, so they
might starve her again. Or enact some new form of torture under the guise of encouraging an admission of guilt.
At night, those who had confessed to spare themselves cried out for God to forgive them, wailing their innocence to anyone
who would listen.
And confessed or not, they all wondered when they might die.
It was a question no one could answer. Not when the court remained on hold while both sides of England fought on the battlefield of their own country. Certainly, the assizes were not traveling to see to legal matters in small towns amid a landscape of such danger.
But what was to become of the prisoners? Left to starve to death in jail, or be beaten like Edward Morris.
Though Sybil knew the earth could not hear her with the iron manacles severing her connection from her gifts, she whispered
for the soil to receive Edward Morris with love, that he might find peace with his deceased wife and daughter.
A pang resonated in Sybil’s chest with a hurt she could scarcely stand.
Her soul longed for the hum of the earth’s energy, for the energy that once coursed through her body with love and light.
She tried to turn her thoughts from such yearning for the idea of never feeling that connection again was far too bleak.
Thoughts of her gifts always led to those of Jacinda. That is when the true agony began. Raw and sharp and insistent.
What might become of Jacinda with no one to warn her away from her powers? Would she be discovered if she used them without
care? How long until she, too, was dragged into the prison?
Sybil had thought herself helpless as a woman her entire life, bound to silence for being born the weaker sex, limited in
her learning and aspirations. In her marriage to Henry, she’d had a modicum of power, a thread of a voice. That had weakened
with his death and was now nonexistent.
Once more, she was rendered mute, powerless. Helpless even to protect Jacinda.
The cage beside Sybil’s opened and a new woman was shoved into the pen, her eyes wild, hair streaked with mud. A new prisoner.
One Sybil did not know.
This time, at least.
Still, the danger felt too near. Too real.
A wild rage tore through her, a revival of spirit in her determination to do something—anything—to keep Jacinda safe.
Sybil’s fingers wandered over the crumbling stone behind her as she sat by the girl, seeking out weakness in the seams between
the rocks, where a stone might be loosened to create a gap wide enough for someone to squeeze through.
The iron was impenetrable. But perhaps stone…
“Sybil Brantham,” the barrel-chested guard bellowed.
Her hands dropped from the damp wall, her insides shrinking against themselves.
There was only one reason her name would be called.
The time had come for her to speak with Matthew Hopkins once more.