Chapter Six
Sybil
The sweet scent of sun-warmed honeysuckle in the clearing hung incongruously amidst the bitter warning in the air. Sybil rode
Brixton through the curtain of weeping birch trees, into the open clearing where the earth’s energy pulsed with an undeniable
force.
The two women waiting near the honeysuckle ring were the only other ones the birch branches would part for.
“’Ere she is now.” The one with thick flame-red hair spilling from beneath a cap waved at Sybil. A swaddled infant lay in
the crook of her arm, the newest of Kat’s brood. A squirrel chittered on her shoulder, his red fur blending with her brilliant
curls.
Edith, the oldest of the three by a few decades, leaned forward, concern darkening her blue eyes like an approaching tempest.
“Did you sense danger too?”
Sybil sank onto the ground, completing the circle. Brixton stayed at her side where he nipped at the grass. “Three candles blew out this morning with naught a whisper of wind.”
“I was sewing this morning, a lovely brocade I got my hands on,” Kat began. They all nodded encouragingly, knowing she could
go on and on about the creations she stitched. “A knife I dropped landed blade first in the floor, straight as the stick stuck
up the magistrate’s—”
Her daughter fussed and she broke off, jostling the swaddled infant.
“This one’s been following me around all morning.” Edith looked up where a magpie sat on a sagging branch, feathers iridescent
in the sunlight. “Ever since I went out to my garden. Had a fine harvest of beans and parsnips today though.”
That harvest would go far in feeding the poorest souls in the surrounding area, the ones so often forgotten. Those too old
to walk to the town, or too ill. Edith ensured they all had a full belly and a full heart. That they were never forgotten.
In The Book of the City of Ladies, Lady Reason taught that a kind woman is stronger than a roaring man. In that regard, Edith was the strongest soul Sybil
had ever met.
Above them, Edith’s woodlark who had summoned Sybil earlier sat beside the magpie, chest puffed out and chattering bullishly
at its stubborn companion.
They all knew the ditty about the magpies, taught to them since they were babes.
One magpie for sorrow.
Two for joy.
Three for a girl.
Four for a boy.
On and on the rhyme went to thirteen.
“It’s the witch trials…” Kat smoothed a lock of red hair from her daughter’s brow. “There have been other arrests. Three in
Chattisham. Two more in Halesworth.”
“And they mean to do more?” Edith asked, her ruddy face going pale. The woodlark flew down from the branches and hopped anxiously at her feet.
Kat nodded. “They say he’s coming here next.”
“Do you think he’s the cause?” Sybil asked, unable to feel her lips as they moved. “Do you think the threat is…” She hesitated,
hating to even voice the man’s name, as if doing so gave him power. The very man who committed those poor women in Manningtree
to their deaths by accusing them of witchcraft. A man whose bloody hands were not wet enough.
The man who called himself the Witchfinder General.
Sybil swallowed and tried again. “Do you think the threat is Matthew Hopkins?”
All at once, a cloud of magpies erupted from the weeping birch trees, an ominous cast of iridescent wings whipping feverishly
against stark white bodies.
Thirteen.
Eleven magpies for health,
Twelve for wealth,
Thirteen beware, it’s the Devil himself.
Sybil sat transfixed as the odd-numbered cluster of birds soared overhead, then landed in a perfect circle around the women
and their animals. Brixton flicked his tail at the one nearest him and stamped a hoof into the soft earth. The birds did not
move.
“We must prepare, my sisters,” Edith said. “We must protect ourselves.”
For they were indeed sisters, chosen by the earth to share the power from the deepest roots in the ground to the crest of
a watching moon.
Kat lay a blanket on the ground before her and transferred her sleeping daughter to the soft surface. The red squirrel hopped
from Kat’s shoulder and sat before the sleeping infant, tail twitching with alert vigilance.
Each woman then turned to the baskets at their side, all filled with innocuous items for their tasks. Items that could draw the power of nature for any spell required.
From Sybil’s basket of herbal remedies, she withdrew several sprigs of rosemary. Edith produced a small sack of salt while
Kat studied a sprinkling of several polished jet chips that could be easily sewn into a garment. “We could curse him,” she
suggested.
“That is not our way,” Edith reminded her gently. “Work with love, not hate.”
Kat gazed down where her sleeping daughter lay nestled beside the little red squirrel. “Oh, I’ve got love aplenty.” But when
she looked up, her eyes hardened. “But I’ve hate aplenty too, especially for men the likes of Matthew Hopkins and the magistrate.”
Kat was always willing to push a little too far, to go beyond what the earth wanted to give.
But Sybil did not want either of those men in her mind as they worked the charm. “Let us clear our hearts and minds.”
She filled her lungs with fresh air and exhaled away all thoughts of witch trials and wicked men.
“We seek protection.” Edith sifted a pinch of salt into the grass in the form of a circle.
The wind stirred, bowing the grass and ruffling the feathers of the tiding of magpies surrounding them.
“Protection for ourselves.” Kat laid the black stone chips among the dots of salt in the grass.
The honeysuckle perfume in the air intensified.
“And protection for our loved ones.” Sybil scattered the needlelike rosemary leaves across the sacred circle.
The hum of the earth vibrated as power gathered around them.
Each woman grasped the hand of the woman next to her—palm to palm, fingers entwined. A current of energy ran through them, cold and hot and charged with a unified strength.
All at once, the magpies burst skyward in a wild disarray, as if the ground burned them.
“We seek protection, for ourselves and for our loved ones.” They spoke in unison, bound together through age and love and
the magic of the earth.
The small pile of salt and rosemary and jet emitted a subtle glow, the way light catches a reflective surface.
Together they closed their eyes, yielding to the earth, giving the whole of their focus to the charm.
Sybil’s pulse quickened and they spoke the final line, “We seek protection, for ourselves and for our loved ones.”
A cyclone whipped around their circle. An answer to their collective plea.
Sybil’s hair lashed against her face and her skirts billowed and flapped at her legs. Despite the chaos of the charm working,
a sense of peace washed over her.
All at once, the world went quiet.
They opened their eyes to find the circle of protection gone, absorbed into the earth. Their words had been heeded.
A hushed moment fell over the women. No matter how many spells they performed, they were always awed with wonder and gratitude
after.
They rose in silence, each collecting their baskets, Kat gathering her daughter into her arms. Then they bid farewell and
departed amid a favorable wind.
As Sybil ducked back under the birch branches, she continued to focus on the protection spell. Not for herself, but for Jacinda.
The girl could not control her gifts, and power in a woman—especially one as extraordinary as Jacinda—was the swiftest path
to ruin.
Sybil could take whatever persecution came her way, but she would sacrifice anything to protect Jacinda.
Even her own life.
The remainder of the day whirled by in a frenzy of preparation, of whispered charms and focused intentions to ensure a protective
seal on the house. They wouldn’t be as powerful as the rite performed with her sisters and could be easily blown away by a
strong gust, but still better than nothing.
The harvested herbs that morning were needed to replace the dried stock those charms required.
She climbed the stairs to the topmost floor of Brackenmere Manor, the area set aside for drying herbs. The capacious room
remained dark enough to protect the herbs from having their powers leeched away in the sun. Meanwhile, slats beneath the eaves
could be opened to allow wind to circulate, preventing mold and rot.
A breeze sifted through, setting the carefully bundled herbs swinging on their strings.
The shush of dried leaves whispered against one another overhead as she gathered what she required into a basket made of twisted
weeping birch branches from the clearing.
Laurel leaves to safeguard against evil influences.
Angelica to ward off what was undesirable.
Nettle to create a boundary to keep unwanted intruders at bay.
Rosemary for protection.
As she lifted the bundles of rosemary, the sharp scent washed over her, dredging up memories from seven years ago of the great
plague. She’d been able to push away those thoughts earlier in the clearing, when her focus had been on Jacinda’s safety.
Now they assaulted her.
The recollections of the pest houses, the floors littered with the weak and dying so thickly that she had to pick her way over them with care. Bodies burning with fever, blackened with sores, the air thick with their wet coughing and the odor of impending death.
Sybil’s thoughts flinched away from such memories. Her wits were needed for the tasks ahead.
Once the herbs were gathered, Sybil carried them down to her bedchamber and secreted them in her coffer. Later that night,
while the household slept, she would sneak into the hidden room within the library.
When Sybil first wed Henry and came to Brackenmere Manor, the library had been her refuge—a place of knowledge, illumination,
empowerment. All things women were never supposed to want. All things that terrified men. At least all men, except Henry.
He indulged her curiosity, introducing her to Plutarch’s Lives where Rome’s women taught her courage, then later Heroides, which laid bare the hearts of mythic heroines and the wrongs wrought upon them.
His first anniversary gift, The Book of the City of Ladies was one she especially cherished. In those pages, she found validation and appreciation for a woman’s strength, where a woman’s
virtues were built prioritizing kindness, intellect, and courage.
In later years, the library offered a place of sanctum as well.
A hollow space was set deep beneath the hearth, unseen to ignorant eyes. What had been built to save priests from the flames
of persecution became Henry’s ultimate gift to Sybil. Once he understood her knowledge of the earth, that she had been given
gifts she could manipulate to help others, he had fortified the room, ensuring its presence would be never be unearthed by
others.
He had always been good to her. First saving her and Jacinda from a life of poverty by wedding Sybil after Mother died, a woman whose understanding of the earth’s healing properties he had so greatly respected.
Within the safety of that secret room, Sybil hid her mother’s grimoire, the one that imparted the knowledge Sybil had been
too green and foolish to appreciate in her youth. Her mother had foretold such information would be needed.
Sybil hadn’t listened, but her mother had been right.
Mothers so often were.
Sybil understood that now. She only hoped she was not too late.