Chapter Thirty-Four
Sybil
The wood-paneled room still reeked of temptation for Sybil, the savory aroma of roasted goose and the stale tang of ale. How
many times a day did Hopkins torment his prisoners with the allure of a full meal?
How many prisoners just below their feet had stomachs gnarled with hunger and throats burning with thirst?
She was forced to stand before the desk once more.
Hopkins steepled his long fingers in front of his face. “You have been difficult, Mrs. Brantham.”
Last time she had been weakened by starvation and thirst. Now she kept her back straight, her stance proud despite her deplorable
appearance. “You mean, I am innocent.”
“No.” His lips thinned with apparent disapproval. “That is not what I mean. I have a signed declaration from someone in your
household saying you whisper with the Devil at night. That you made a poppet for tormenting your neighbors.”
The accusation struck like a slap.
Her household?
“Who denounced me?” she asked, despite herself.
Who?
Who would send her to a place such as this?
Who would endanger Jacinda?
Did they not understand how vulnerable the girl would be without Sybil?
Hopkins grinned and Sybil realized that she’d played into his trap. “You know I cannot say who spoke against you.” There was
a condescending note to his words. “But today, I will have your confession.”
The words chilled Sybil. The memory of Edith’s raw, bleeding feet rose in her mind.
Hopkins nodded to the guards in the room. Two stood by chairs on either side with two more men in the middle between them.
Dread swirled low in Sybil’s gut. The room was silent, but the anticipation of what was to come vibrated in the air, like
the frenetic moment before lightning strikes the earth.
“Go to that chair.” Matthew Hopkins indicated the one across the room.
Sybil stiffened. “I would prefer not to.”
Hopkins curled his fingertips in a beckoning motion and two guards in the middle ran like dogs to comply.
The tall one slapped a cudgel against his palm. “The chair. Now,” he barked. He jumped toward her, as though meaning to strike.
Sybil lunged toward the chair.
The guard there spun her round and shoved her back, sending her sprawling in the direction of the other chair.
“Back the other way,” the larger guard said, trotting beside her. “Quickly.”
She ran back to where she’d started.
It was a foolish game, something children would play. For the first hour—maybe more—Sybil dashed about back and forth, running
out her rage, stretching her legs after being too long locked inside a crowded cage.
Any time she slowed, one of the men shouted in her ear, face close enough to fleck her skin with spittle. Once, she stumbled
and fell, and the men were there, bellowing for her to stand and slamming their cudgels so near her head, her ears rang.
All the while, Hopkins continued the barrage of questions, ridiculous and relentless.
Was the Devil her lover?
Did she attend the Sabbath with him?
Did he give her familiars?
Did she curse the cows to yield sour milk?
Did she blight the crops?
To each, she answered no. And for the moments she had to pause to first catch her breath, there was a red face in hers, demanding
an expedient response.
After the first hour, her energy waned, and her pace slowed. The yelling only increased.
Eventually, time lost all meaning. There was not a single window in the long, narrow room by which to gauge the hours or note
when day turned to night. Perhaps if there had been a window, she might have thrown herself from it.
An eternity dragged on as she trod between the chairs. Although now, all the shouting in England could not quicken her steps.
Her feet throbbed in her shoes, the wooden heel of one latchet had broken and left her lurching unevenly back and forth, and
back and forth, and back and forth.
Air rasped from her dry throat, making it stick together. “Water,” she begged.
“Not until you confess,” Hopkins replied in a bored drawl.
She hated groveling, but she could think of nothing but slaking her burning thirst. “Please.”
“Run,” a guard barked from behind her back. She jolted forward, hobbling as quickly as she could.
She did not know how much more time passed then. But she could not help recalling how Edith had been gone three days before
she was finally returned.
Had it been a day yet?
Was it night now?
How much longer must she endure this torment?
Her head was light, her body heavy, and her exhaustion so great, she closed her eyes into blackness each time she reached
one of the chairs.
A cudgel slapped against her arm in a pop of pain. “Move!”
Her eyes snapped open, and she limped to the other chair.
Hopkins’s smooth voice followed her. “Did you take the Devil as your lover?”
No.
Her steps faltered and her lids drifted closed even as she continued to propel herself forward.
“…the Devil with dark hair and a pointed beard…”
An image swam in her mind of a handsome man with dark hair and a pointed beard.
“Did you attend the Sabbath with the Devil?”
No.
Her head nodded forward in a snatch of sleep despite the ongoing plod of her steps.
“Did you dance around the fire with Edith with ribbons streaming from your hair? Red and gold and black.”
She could see the scene in her mind, a great fire as she and Edith danced with ease around the flames, the red, gold, and
black ribbons twirling, tangling.
No.
“Do you have familiars?”
Brixton leaped into her mind, his wide, trusting brown eyes. Oh, what men would do to an animal they presumed guilty. She
flitted back to awareness with horror.
No!
On and on the inquiries went.
No and no and no and no.
She replied only with no. No matter how many times she was asked. No matter how often her mind went dark with exhaustion as
she continued to run while Hopkins planted pictures in her mind.
“Are you telling me the truth?”
The “no” froze on Sybil’s tongue and her brain whirled around the question, one that had changed shape, one meant to make
her falter.
The bones of her feet felt as if they were broken, her stomach snarled its outrage, and her throat was so dry, she could scarce
speak her single word replies.
But this question was different.
“Answer, you slattern.” Someone shoved her shoulder, sending her sprawling. “Answer now.”
She fell to the floor, weighed down by the manacles at her wrists, too weak to even catch herself. Her skull cracked upon
the floor sending stars dancing in her vision.
Darkness washed over her, and she welcomed it, desperate for the velvety embrace of nothing.
“Are you telling the truth?” a voice barked in her ear.
She startled awake, an automatic “no” sluggishly flipping to accommodate the question. “Yes. Yes, I am telling the truth.”
Rough hands hauled her upright, her knees buckling under her weight several times before straightening to fully support her.
“And did you love your husband?” Hopkins’s question transcended time, blurring with that of the magistrate as he asked the same question again and again.
Emotion knotted in Sybil’s throat, bone dry, but stubborn just the same. A sob creaked in her chest.
“Did you kill him?”
Then she saw it in her mind—Henry’s death.
Because it had been her fault.
A painful grip pinched her shoulders and shook her. “Did you kill your husband?”
The weight of her fatigue had her eyes slipping closed even as her teeth clacked with the force of her shaking.
Her thoughts faded to a memory, as visceral as the day when Henry’s eyes had shone bright with fever and his skin blazed.
Immediately Sybil knew he was infected with plague seeds, the same as those many dying souls she’d tended in St. Peter’s Church.
But while she could avoid the pestilence after her mother survived with Sybil in her womb, Henry had no such resistance. In
fact, he had been feeble, vulnerable.
He was no laborer with a body firm with muscle and vitality, but a scholar with elegantly tapered fingers and a brilliant
mind.
If she had insisted Henry not come to the townhouse in Bury St. Edmunds with her, he would have lived.
If she had not put the deaths of many over the lives of her loved ones, he would have lived.
She had not cursed him with the Devil’s powers, nor plunged a knife into his aged chest. But she had killed him all the same.
“Is this your confession?” Hopkins’s triumphant voice made Sybil’s eyes snap open.
“No,” she said, now fully awake once more. “I did not kill my husband. I did not say that I did.”
Had she?
Oh God—had she?
Hopkins simply smirked and went to his desk, lifting his quill.
“I did not say I killed my husband,” Sybil protested.
“That will be all.” Hopkins waved his hand dismissively, lowering his head to his work.
“I did not kill my husband.” Sybil’s eyes stung with tears her body was too depleted to produce. “I would never say that I
did.”
But had she?
Her pleas fell on deaf ears, first with Hopkins, then with the guards who pushed and prodded at her, forcing her to walk on
feet that ground brokenly against the floor with every step.
Had she, in her state of delirium, given up the source of her greatest guilt?
If so, they would see her burn.
Soon.
She was running out of time.