Chapter Fourteen
Sybil
Boom, boom, boom!
Sybil stiffened at the insistent knock thundering through Brackenmere Manor. Her hand remained poised over her ledger. An
ominous silence followed.
Anne abruptly stopped dusting the bookshelves and turned to Sybil, her eyes wide.
The entire household had seemed jumpy that day. Earlier, the scullery maid had dropped a pan with a great clatter that upset
the kitchen maid, who knocked over a goblet made of precious Venetian glass.
Anne flashed a nervous look toward the doorway from the library, then in Sybil’s direction. “Are you well, mum?”
Was there a tremble to her voice?
Sybil pulled a fortifying breath and addressed the young woman. “I am.”
She wasn’t.
Her heart was beating too fast. Her lungs working too hard to draw in air as she recalled the storm Jacinda had summoned, and the protective herbs likely swept from every entrance to their home.
Sybil did not need foresight to tell her what the authoritative knock meant. Everything inside her screamed to run, run, run.
But she would never leave Jacinda.
As lady of the manor in her own right, Sybil would perform her role to the bitter end. With the comportment of a Roman wife,
she exited the library and descended the stairs, approaching the entryway, where a servant opened the doors to the magistrate.
Robert Walsingham locked eyes with Sybil, his gaze going dark. “Mrs. Brantham, I require a moment to speak with you.”
“You may do so here, before my servants,” she replied in a manner she hoped appeared unaffected.
“I should think you would like to converse in private,” he pressed. “Such measures would be in your best interest.”
Fear prickled at the back of her neck as she recalled the last time she had been trapped alone in a room with this man.
When she had gone to his home to speak with him about her stable hand, who had found himself in a bit of trouble. When Walsingham
had cornered her in his study.
Though she had not issued the command, her servants now fled the room, leaving her alone. With him.
Walsingham stepped closer. This time, they were not outside where the breeze mercilessly swept away his scent. The noxious
blend of ambergris and musk he wore in excess flooded her senses, filling her mouth with water and her mind with unwanted
memories.
She had once scrubbed that odor from her body until her skin was raw.
Her fingers wandered to her pocket where she’d kept a penknife ever since that day.
“Marry me.” His demand was guttural, insistent.
“No.”
He stepped closer, but she held her ground, refusing to be cowed into the corner again. Where there was no escape.
“You are to be tried as a witch,” he said, his tone velvety, almost cajoling.
In truth, she had expected this.
As Christine de Pizan so eloquently stated, “For even if some men will not tolerate women to be learned, they cannot prevent
them from having intelligence.”
She had always been at risk.
“I’m to be tried as a witch under what grounds?” she demanded.
“This poppet.” He lifted a crude cloth doll, its limbs and head knobby with bits of rags stuffed inside sausage-like casings
and bound with red string.
She scoffed. “Lies.”
“This poppet is enough to warrant a guilty verdict.”
She clenched her teeth, hating that he was right. The poppet was not even truly necessary. Even a word against her would be
grounds for condemnation.
“The Witchfinder General is in Bury St. Edmunds, seeking witches.” Walsingham gave a subtle shrug. “I ought to show him this,
as I am a magistrate…but I don’t have to.”
“Sybil.” His expression softened, reminding her of the boy he’d been. Back when they’d been friends, before teasing twisted
him into someone cruel. “I could protect you.” He’d dropped the authority from his voice, sounding more like the Robert she’d
known so long ago. “No one would ever hurt you again.”
Except he had hurt her.
A rush of anger flooded her cheeks with fire.
Except that protection from him would sentence her to a life of obedience, of silence.
“Never.”
Magistrate Walsingham’s face hardened. “The accusation includes more than just the poppet…”
Sybil lifted her chin with the indignity. “Who has accused me?”
“I cannot say.” Walsingham shifted, putting his weight on the foot nearest her. “Do you want to know the other charge against
you?” His eyes gleamed, a cat enjoying batting around his mouse.
She remained silent, refusing to feed his excitement.
“Your husband,” Walsingham said.
“What of him?” Sybil snapped. Too abrupt. Too harsh.
The show of her emotion was a weakness the magistrate would not miss.
“Being a widow is rather convenient for you, is it not?” He tilted his head. “You have too much power, too much wealth, especially
for a woman with no husband.” He stepped even closer, obviously trying to force her backward against the wall.
Rather than yield to him, her hand slid into her pocket, fingering the cold, sharp steel there. Her salvation.
The magistrate looked down at her. “His death was rather convenient as well, wasn’t it?”
She stepped forward, antagonizing her antagonist. “Was it?” she asked, heady with determination. With terror.
Walsingham narrowed his eyes. “You deny me still?” he breathed.
Disgust slithered over her skin. “I do.”
His stare glided down her body and came to rest at the bulge of her hand in her pocket. “Guards,” he shouted.
Half a dozen men poured into the grand entryway of Sybil’s home, boots scattering dirt upon the gleaming floor, the thunder of their heavy tread reverberating off the walls.
Behind her, more people emerged—her servants, hands twisting in aprons, shoulders tensing with uncertainty at the desire to protect their mistress.
The guards surrounded her, shackles clanking.
“Sybil?” Jacinda’s soft voice sounded behind her, but Sybil refused to turn. To do so would be her undoing. She could not
look upon Jacinda and bear witness to the vulnerable fear and unanswered questions in those large eyes.
This was not a time to crumble, but to remain ever strong.
“Mrs. Henry Brantham, you are hereby arrested on the charges of witchcraft.” Walsingham’s declaration resounded in the entryway.
“A felony that has been raised to petty treason for using witchcraft to cause your husband’s death.”
Sybil’s knees went soft with horror. A felony would result in being hanged. But petty treason meant she would burn alive at
the stake.
“No,” Jacinda cried out. “She would never.”
“I am no witch,” Sybil said fiercely. “And I did not murder my husband.”
The magistrate narrowed his eyes. “I heard of the storm you brewed up when we arrested the witch three days past. How the
clouds crowded the sky with an unnatural ferocity.”
The fight bled out of Sybil at the reminder of the tumultuous weather wrought by Jacinda’s unbridled power. At how Sybil’s
preoccupation with Edith’s capture had caused her to forget to reapply the protective barriers on the home.
Jacinda ran to the magistrate. “That wasn’t her. That—”
“That was the weather being as mercurial as weather so oft is,” Sybil said in a tired voice. “Bess…” Before Sybil could speak
her order, the maid was there, pulling Jacinda back, cajoling the girl in soothing tones.
Sybil did not look at them as the guards closed in around her, jerking her hands roughly in front of her. Iron clapped over the tender skin of her wrists, cold and weighty. All at once, the world around Sybil went still.
The steady hum of the earth’s power, as familiar to her as the throb of her own heartbeat, went quiet, its song abruptly cut
short.
That silence bore the weight of an eternity.
The charge of witchcraft, she could endure. Indeed, had expected. Especially if her arrest might somehow keep Jacinda safe.
But the accusation that she had killed Henry…
Henry, her revered husband who had loved her as a scholar adored his star pupil, whose long, tapered fingers elegantly crawled
over script as he patiently instructed her in the ways of philosophers, theologians. He had so readily accepted Jacinda into
his life as another student, treating her as a daughter rather than a sister-in-law and educating her like a son.
And now Sybil would be tried for his death, this man who had cared for her with unending patience and understanding.
Guilt dragged at her with the weight of a millstone.
Because she knew the truth in her heart. If not for her, Henry would still be alive today.
His death had indeed been her fault.