Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sybil
Sybil finally received her meager ration of bread and ale the following day and was relocated into the cell with Edith.
Despite the desperate gnaw of hunger and risk to herself, Sybil tossed a bit of her bread to the little girl who still remained
in the cell of starving women. Hopkins would likely call for her later that day.
The guards mocked the girl often, laughing at her inability to speak or even nod or shake her head.
How was a child with such limited ability to communicate supposed to confess to witchcraft?
She caught the bread with a quiet look of gratitude.
During the days spent starving together, Sybil had come to learn more of her. Not through speech, but through the nights when
the child slept, tucked into herself like a babe pulled too soon from the womb. In the whimpers she issued forth, the soft
cries for her mother.
A mother who never answered. A mother who never sought her child locked within the prison.
That was all Sybil needed to know.
A commotion of shouts came from the door and the prisoners stirred into action. Some ran to the bars, peering out to see who
had arrived. Others cowered back against the wall, out of the way of a cudgel swing.
The guards staggered forward, dragging a woman between them, flame red hair spilling down her back.
Sybil’s heart snared in her throat.
Kat.
The guard with the scarred eyebrow gave an outraged howl and abruptly struck Kat across the face, the sound solid and meaty.
“For shame to strike a woman thus.” The old vicar pressed against the cage, his feeble body severely deteriorated through
his incarceration. Even when holding himself upright on the bars, his head wobbled as if his neck could scarcely keep it perched
atop his stick-thin body.
“Leave off, old man,” the barrel-chested jailer groused. He glared at the guard with the scar. “Let’s on with it.”
“The trollop bit me,” the scarred man complained.
“I’ve seven children at home needing their mam.” Kat lifted her head defiantly. “Ye’re lucky that was all I did. And I won’t
promise not to do more.” She bared her teeth and nipped at the air over his arm.
The man jerked back, sending them all stumbling. The barrel-chested guard pulled out the key, clattering it in the lock to
Sybil’s cage. Once the door swung open, the jailers threw Kat inside. She landed in a heap of green and black linen before
jumping up like the ground was on fire.
“Ye’ll be hearing from my husband,” she vowed to their turned backs.
With a huff, she wiped her hair back from her face with the flat of her hand and surveyed the room. Her dress was not as filthy as the others who had been walked through the streets of Bury St. Edmunds. Perhaps her husband’s elevated status had spared her such brutality.
“Kat.” Sybil approached with Edith.
Kat caught sight of them and tsked. “Oh, ye both look awful.” She laughed at her own critical greeting, her eyes bright with
tears as she pulled them in for an embrace. “And ye smell like a chamber pot.”
“If you keep up this flattery, we’re going to see you out,” Sybil offered wryly.
“Is that all there is to being free of this place?” Kat winked, and Sybil felt herself smile for the first time in days.
She had forgotten how Kat could make light of the darkest times. Likewise, she hadn’t realized how sorely she had needed that
levity against the oppressive force of her predicament.
Ah, what love could do in a place filled with hate.
“What happened?” Edith asked. “How are you come to be in here?”
“My fool of a neighbor said having seven well-behaved bairns under the age of ten was unnatural.” Kat rolled her eyes. “Quite
rude of her, the jealous old sow. Then they arrested me.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “And here I am in prison. How do they know I’m not with child?”
“Are you?” Sybil glanced at her friend’s flat stomach.
Kat shrugged in her unaffected way. “Probably. Ye ken I can’t hang my nightdress next to Tom’s trousers without coming away
with a babe in my belly.”
Even Edith gave a little smile at the reply.
Kat lowered her voice, “My Tom will have me out of here before that Matthew Hopkins can pat himself on the back for my arrest.”
Likely Kat was correct.
Tom worked at the Guildhall Feoffees, dealing with property ownership.
What weight he did not carry in wealth, he made up for with influence.
Especially after taking on several roles for officials who refused to travel during the war.
And a man on his own with seven children would not be able to apply himself sufficiently at his trade.
“Jacinda.” The name caught in Sybil’s throat. “Pray, tell me news of her.”
The fire cooled from Kat’s gaze. “She is well, Sybil. Yer servants have been loyal, seeing to her and ensuring the estate
is secure. There have been many who circle it, the vultures. Anne and Bess have tried to see ye, to bring food and ale and
fresh clothes, but they’re always turned away.”
Sybil’s tense body relaxed somewhat. Yes, the food, ale, and clothing might have been a wonderful luxury, but the disappointment
at their denial was outweighed by the relief that Jacinda was safe.
“Have there been any rumors about Jacinda?” Sybil asked in an almost imperceptible whisper. “That she might be sent here next?”
Kat shook her head. “I’ve kept my ear keen to the ground for such news and there’s naught a word of it.”
Sybil put her hand over her heart where a knot of tension loosened for the first time in days. “I never told Jacinda,” she
admitted, face hot with shame. “I never told her…well, anything. I should have, but I worried about the danger.”
Kat nodded. “I figured as much when I saw that bracelet on her.”
“If you’re freed…” Sybil didn’t want to put any damning words to voice where too many ears could listen.
“I’ll see to her,” Kat promised, understanding the unspoken request.
Because Jacinda did need to be told what she could do. That using her gifts in such uncertain times might be seen by the wrong person. Only one denouncement could result in an arrest.
“There are ways to get ye out,” Kat said with that look in her eyes—the one that gleamed with the opportunity to bend and
break the rules.
“No.” Sybil shook her head. “Please just see to Jacinda.”
Kat nodded in understanding. Her thumb worked under the manacle with a frown. “It’s so silent.”
Sybil knew she didn’t mean the prison, which was filled with the shuffles and moans and murmurs of scores of people.
Even in the din, the silence of the earth’s hum was stifling. A pang radiated through Sybil, mourning and longing all at once.
A clatter rattled over the bars and Sybil’s stomach tightened in anticipation. They were to be fed. Sybil and Edith snapped
to attention along with the rest of the prison, like animals alert at the notion of food.
There was a shift in Kat’s expression, dulling the playful part of her as she truly took in the surroundings.
Sybil saw everything freshly through her friend’s eyes—near-skeletal bodies, the misery, the soiled rushes that contained
more life beneath than above.
“Oh, Edith… Sybil…how…?” Kat pressed a hand to her chest, emblazoned with a decorative filigree she’d likely hand stitched.
“Don’t.” Sybil handed Kat a piece of bread. “We need your fire more than your empathy.”
“The fare is hardly edible,” Edith said, almost apologetically. “But when you’re hungry enough…”
Even as she spoke of hunger, she tore her bread in half and gave the larger portion to a woman who had been ill the night
before.
“It’s not about hunger.” Kat smirked. “It’s about letting your fancy take over.” She lifted the crust. “This is not, in fact, a piece of stale rock-hard bread.”
The little girl watched, large eyes fixed on Kat and the bit of bread pinched in her fingertips.
So, too, did the beautiful young woman who kept mostly to herself. Matthew Hopkins had seen her three times already, and each
time, she returned weeping. The last time, her breath had smelled of ale and roasted meat.
“Imagine the greatest cook ye know,” Kat instructed. “And they’ve created yer favorite meal. Hold that in yer head and eat.”
She studied the gray lump in her hand. “This is my mam’s apple pastries.” Her eyes scrunched shut. “The best pastry to ever
grace England.”
She popped the morsel into her mouth, and everyone watched as she chewed. Finally, she swallowed and opened her eyes. Sybil
practically leaned forward at the display, eager to see if one’s thoughts truly had the power to create a feast where there
was simply moldy bread.
Perhaps that was true sorcery.
“Well?” the pretty young woman asked.
Kat pursed her lips. “I think the apples turned. It tasted like moldy bread.”
Regardless, every woman considered their bread a moment longer than usual.
If Sybil could consume any one thing again, it wouldn’t be a meal, but tea.
She ate her bread and saved her small ale, letting the memory wash her away.
Those nights she returned from the pesthouse in St. Peter’s, weary in body and wearier still in soul.
As she splashed vinegar upon her hands at the plague stone and Bess boiled her clothing to kill any plague seeds, Henry would come to her with a tea of his own making.
The recipe was one derived from the knowledge he’d acquired from Sybil’s mother.
Chamomile and lavender for relaxation after a long day, valerian root to calm her mind of the horrors she’d witnessed in the
plague house, and nettles to keep her body healthy. All this with a bit of honey to sweeten the bitterness of life that she
witnessed day after day.
Though she’d begged him to stay on the outskirts of town at Brackenmere Manor, he had come with her to their townhouse in
Bury St. Edmunds, at her side in her darkest hours despite the great risk to himself. For by then, he was nigh on five and
fifty and his body was frail from the passing of time.
She thought of how he lovingly passed the mug into her hands, leaving the air awash with the pungent fragrance of steeping
herbs. In her mind, she savored how his hands moved over hers, the heat of his palms chasing away the chill from the vinegar
wash.
For in that moment, she was cared for. Cherished.
Safe.
Then she closed her eyes and drank the cup of rancid ale and swore she caught the sweetness of honey.
A guard’s voice broke through the memory. “Kat Calver.”
Sybil’s eyes flew open, fear for her friend flaring like a stoked flame.
Kat stomped toward the prison door. “I’ll have ye know that I’m with child…”
In an instant, she was gone, but in her wake, she had left something Sybil hadn’t possessed in far too long. A trailing glimmer
of hope. For herself, but also for Jacinda.