Chapter 25 #2
Her cell suddenly seemed lighter and Sybilla looked up from the dark floor that she had been staring at.
The corner of her cell to the right of the door seemed to have been taken over by a small, iridescent blob of white mold.
Sybilla stared at it as the edges seemed to ripple, the blob to elongate, form.
Her ears popped and she opened her mouth to relieve the uncomfortable sensation.
Sybilla, her mother’s voice called.
She stared at the transparent mist for a moment, unsure as to whether she was actually seeing what she thought she was, or if it was only a trick of her fatigued mind, her frayed conscience.
Regardless, she turned her head away and looked through the bars of the door.
She had no desire to entertain her mother’s ghost, or even what her befuddled mind might imagine was her mother’s ghost.
Don’t confess, the voice said. Wait.
Sybilla stared hard through the bars, feeling her jaw set, her eyes water. It did sound remarkably like her mother, only it was the sound of Amicia before she had been stricken, her words refined, unslurred, melodic.
There is no need for it. You must continue to trust me. It’ s why I begged you and begged you to keep the secrets I shared with you.
Sybilla’s head whipped around without hesitation. “You wanted me to keep your secrets to save your own reputation,” she accused her in a whisper. “Even as you swore to me that the truth would come out.”
And it will come out. But it need not be through your own admission.
“I don’t trust you. I was a fool to have ever trusted you. I was nothing to you but your automaton. Your sacrificial lamb. Your illegitimate and expendable, if very capable, offspring. You used me.”
You will be saved.
“You named me after a woman you hated!” Sybilla said on a wretched breath.
No. You don’t know everything.
“I know that your entire life was a lie. My entire life was a lie! And now it will be I who pays the price for your deceit. Are you happy now, Mother? Are you? Does it please you to know that you have lied to everyone you ever claimed to love? Who ever loved you?”
The white mist was silent.
“Just go away,” Sybilla sniffed, wiping roughly at her nose with the heel of her hand. “Leave me alone to do what I must do. You were always so good about that.”
You were never alone. And you are not alone now.
Sybilla felt her breath catch in her chest as a sob threatened to break free from her throat.
The mist disappeared even more quickly than it had coalesced, leaving Sybilla in a cell more pitch-black than before. She crossed one arm over her bosom and then brought her other hand to cover her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to halt her tears.
She sensed the room brightening behind her eyelids once more, only this time the light was more substantial, yellow, and Sybilla opened her eyes to see the dark, shadowed figure holding a torch beyond her bars.
It was only one of the guards. He waved the torch back and forth, seeming to search the corners of her cell, for what Sybilla could only guess, and then his head turned to address someone just out of her sight beyond the rock walls of her cell.
“Are you certain you wish to enter, Father? I could pass your things right through the bars. I’ve explicit orders that this one is dangerous, no matter her fragile appearance.”
“It’s quite all right,” a man’s voice answered. “I have no fear, and I would do what I can for this poor creature.”
Sybilla’s breath caught in her chest and she quickly swiped at her eyes before struggling to shove up the wall behind her to stand.
The guard was not amused. “Sit down!” he roared, pointing the torch through the bars at her.
Sybilla inched back down on the stones.
“I see you so much as twitch while I’m openin’ this door, you’re dead. Understand?”
Sybilla nodded. “I understand.”
The guard fished a ring of keys from his side and fit the one he sought into the square plate on the corridor side of her door. The hinges squealed as he pushed the door inward. A lithe shadow moved around the man’s back.
“Go ahead, Father,” the guard said, never taking his eyes from Sybilla. “I shall remain right here until you’re ready to take your leave.”
“Thank you.”
The light from the guard’s torch was behind him as he entered the cell and made his way toward where Sybilla still crouched, but Sybilla knew the set of his shoulders, the swing of his hair, the sureness of his footsteps.
He sank into a crouch before her, and then moved a bundle to under his left arm before laying his right hand atop Sybilla’s head. His blessing was clearly for the benefit of the guard, Sybilla was certain.
After his “amen” she reached up with both hands, grasped John Grey’s wrist and brought his palm to the side of her face.
“John,” she choked.
“How has it come to this so quickly, Sybilla?” John Grey asked in an urgent whisper.
She shook her head, so glad to feel his warmth against her skin. To have someone in the cell who knew her, who had loved her family, had loved Fallstowe, even if he had never loved her.
“You’re to have your trial today—in only an hour,” John said, keeping his voice barely above a breath and his back turned to the door. “If you’re found guilty on all counts . . . Sybilla, the king will put you to death.”
“I know,” she said on a watery sigh and then raised her eyes to try to make out his features in the gloom. “Are you here to give me my last rites?”
She heard his faint huff of laughter. “You know I can’t do that. It’s only—”
“A courtesy title,” they both finished, and it felt so good to Sybilla’s mouth to smile, even if it was only melancholic.
“But the guard doesn’t know that, does he?” Sybilla guessed.
“No. I’m here supposedly to hear your confession before God, to give you religious instruction before you make your oath to the king, and to bring you these.” He withdrew the bundle from under his arm and placed it in the narrow V made from her chest and drawn-up knees.
“What is it?” Sybilla asked, feeling the bundle of cloth wrapped around something slightly more substantial.
“Clean garments for your trial,” John Grey said. “A simple gown and some linen slippers—they’re made by the novices at the local house for the prisoners who come to their fate in less than suitable clothing. There is a comb in there as well.”
“Thank you,” Sybilla whispered.
“Here,” John said, fumbling inside his robes for an instant before drawing out a fine piece of what felt like silk as he pressed it into her hand. “My kerchief. Perhaps you can make some use of it if you can find some clean water. I’m sorry. It’s the best I can do, I’m afraid.”
“Why are you being so kind to me, John?” Sybilla asked. “After all that has happened, how could you?”
His right hand covered both of hers and squeezed.
“Because I realize who you are now, Sybilla. The weeks away from . . . from Fallstowe, that whole terrible, nightmarish mess. It’s made me realize that everything you do, you do for love.
And although you may not want to accept it as true, you are loved in return by many, many people.
Fallstowe’s citizens; your family; me, at last, although not in a way that one might expect after our shared history.
Even those who claim to hate you admire you, against their will perhaps.
You are a remarkable woman. A woman formed by God’s own hand. ”
Sybilla laid her forehead on John Grey’s knuckles, unable to speak.
“But now you must tell me,” John insisted gently, “why you are doing what you are. Why you will not save yourself.”
Sybilla raised her head. “How do you—”
“I’ve seen Cecily,” John interrupted her.
“Cee is here? In London?”
“Yes. Along with Lord Bellecote, and Lord and Lady Mallory.”
Sybilla was speechless. How had they gotten here so quickly? She didn’t want them to see the end of her this way.
“Sybilla?” John prompted.
She tried to find John Grey’s eyes within the deep shadows of his face. “I love him, John. I love Julian Griffin. I love him how a woman is meant to love a man. A lord, a husband, a master of the hold. In a way that I have never and never intended to love a man in all my life.”
“But, Sybilla, tender feelings aren’t—”
“Listen, please,” Sybilla whispered. “Julian was sent to the king to apprehend me, and his reward was to be Fallstowe. He didn’t have to love me.
He didn’t have to believe me. But he did.
He does. He knew the facts of my family through his own investigation.
He was willing to give up everything he had earned—his honored place among Edward’s court, unimaginable wealth for him and his daughter, the ultimate prize of Fallstowe itself—that the three of us might have some sort of a life together.
He has loved me, as I am, for who I am. The only one who ever has, I suppose. ”
“And you would reward him with your death?” John asked incredulously.
Sybilla shook her head in the darkness. “If I do not tell the king what he wants to hear, Julian will be implicated along with me. Stripped of his rank. Possibly imprisoned. Lucy will go to noble strangers at the king’s whim, separated from her father for who knows how long.
Perhaps forever. Fallstowe and its people will fall to the Crown.
I am damned either way. But I would go knowing that those whom I have loved most in this world are safe. ” Her voice cracked on the last word.
“I don’t know, Sybilla,” John said. “What if Lord Griffin refutes you? Denies your acceptance of guilt even as he thinks he is saving you?”
“He is not a foolish man, John. I can only hope that he will not, if he but thinks of his daughter.”
John Grey said nothing to counter her this time. Only squeezed her hands.
“Father,” the guard called from beyond the bars.
John looked over his shoulder. “Only a moment longer.” Then he turned back to Sybilla. “I will try my best to be present at the trial, if it is allowed. Perhaps I can vouch for you in some way that neither of us can yet know.”
“John,” Sybilla breathed.
“Yes?”
“Do you think I will go to hell?” To her own ears, her voice sounded like that of a very young child.
As if he heard it, too, John Grey cupped the back of Sybilla’s head and pulled her face toward his to place his lips on her forehead.
“No,” he whispered against her skin. He drew away slightly but kept his face near hers.
“But I think there is a chance that you may go to heaven. I’m so sorry.
Be steadfast. Stand before your king and speak with the power of your love behind your words in the face of the law.
Love is the law, above all else, and God will not fault you for that.
” He drew his hand from behind her head to cup her cheek gently and then stood.
“I will wait outside the door while you change. God bless you, Sybilla Foxe.”
“God bless you, John Grey.”
Sybilla waited until the barred door creaked shut, the lock jangled, and she saw John’s slender back silhouetted by the guard’s torchlight before she rose to her feet on shaking legs.
She fished out the thin, floppy sandals and rough, wooden comb wrapped inside the light linen garment and laid them on the stones at her feet, placing John Grey’s fine silk kerchief atop one of the shoes.
Then she draped the simple gown over one shoulder as she worked to free the bodice of her gown, slipping her arms from it carefully so as not to drop the linen dress on the stones and soil it.
She worked the ruined red velvet to her waist and then slipped the scratchy gown over her head.
Then she pushed the red gown over her hips to puddle on the floor before stepping both feet on it as if it were a rug.
She bent at the waist to retrieve the kerchief and then turned to the wall behind her, feeling the stones with her fingertips for a trickle of wetness, dabbing the silk there, and then slowly, solemnly wiping her face.
She stared at the nothingness of black before her, her eyes dry now, her mind already away beyond the cell.