Chapter Seventeen
Sybil
Sybil was marched down the streets of Bury St. Edmunds as Edith had been. Mud streaked her ruined silk gown, one sleeve torn
where she’d been roughly grabbed and thrown to the ground.
They spat in her face and hurled accusations, citing her as the source of all their pain. She stirred the civil unrest that
led the country to war. She summoned the pestilence and robbed Bury St. Edmunds of so many lives. She killed the babes who
had not been born strong enough to endure this life.
These men and women whose children she had helped through fevers and whose agues she’d soothed with salves and poultices,
they called her Jezebel, a liar, a murderer. A witch.
She did not care what they called her. The only power they had was in their cruelty. She cared for nothing so long as they
did not mention Jacinda.
Beleaguered, wet with filth, and thoroughly abused, Sybil staggered toward the old jail.
The exterior of the centuries-old building rose before her, crumbling and chipped, a place meant to be uninviting. A damp chill greeted her inside as she was led down a set of pitted stone stairs, worn smooth with a dip in each center.
Darkness pressed in as she descended into the depths of the prison. Her pulse quickened with the realization—they meant to
keep her there. To try her. To kill her.
To burn her alive at the stake.
And who would protect Jacinda if Sybil was dead?
Sybil found strength in her connection to the earth, the ever-present hum and the beauty of nature around her. But the silence
of the iron manacles was deafening. She was alone and would need to lean into her own strength.
A wall of odors hit her. Unwashed bodies, damp hay, refuse, all catching in the back of her throat.
Her heart pattered around in her ribcage like a frantic moth.
Great cages lined either side of the large room, like massive pens for holding chickens at market. But instead of hens, scores
of people were locked within. Mostly women, with one cell containing a few men.
Narrow rectangles were cut into the stone near the top of the wall—too high to reach, and too small to climb through. But
enough to allow a weak stream of sunlight to filter in, revealing the turn of curious faces in her direction, eyes wide and
haunted.
The jailer, a short man with a chest like a barrel, unlocked a gate unceremoniously and waved the prisoners back with his
cudgel, despite the women already cowering.
With a hard shove at Sybil’s back, she stumbled forward, her legs too weak to bear her weight as she pitched to the floor.
The rushes were wet and foul smelling, and she wrenched her face aside. The clang of metal on metal rang out as the door was
latched, followed by the click of a lock.
And just like that, she was a prisoner.
“Oh, Sybil.” The voice was familiar.
Gentle hands curled around Sybil’s shoulders and helped her sit.
She looked up into Edith’s bruised face.
“Edith.” Sybil caught her friend’s hand, chains clinking where they draped from their wrists. She squeezed her friend’s fingers.
To give and to receive comfort. To rein in her growing terror.
“I’m sorry to see you here,” Edith said mournfully. “The magistrate was responsible for this, I presume?”
Sybil nodded.
Edith sighed. “I regret I stopped Kat—”
“No.” Sybil would not let her say she regretted discouraging Kat from cursing the magistrate after learning what he’d done
to Sybil.
What he’d likely done to many of the women in Bury St. Edmunds. Including Sybil’s own neighbor, leaving a babe who was spirited
away in the middle of the night to a childless couple three towns over.
“Never apologize for not wishing ill on others,” Sybil said weakly as she allowed Edith to help her to her feet and guide
her toward the rear of the cell. They both gratefully sank to the floor where they had a wall at their back.
The rushes beneath them had not been changed in some time. Dark flecks moved about on the hay, and something large and unseen
shuffled beneath.
“More women will be accused.” Edith lowered her voice. “They encourage us to speak against one another, name new victims for
them to arrest.”
A wail broke through the prisoners’ shuffles and murmurs, a low, defeated keening that made Sybil’s chest ache.
“I did not denounce you,” Edith said quickly. “But they will take you to be questioned.”
“I never assumed you would.” Sybil leaned her head against the wall. Dampness from the old stone bled into the cloth of her dress. The wet chill crept into her bones and left her skin pebbled with gooseflesh. Exhaustion weighted her limbs, a demand for sleep after what she had endured.
Her mind, though, was a hive of activity, a constant buzz of worry.
Jacinda.
Jacinda.
Jacinda.
If Sybil had been arrested, would she be next? Would Magistrate Walsingham use her to get to Sybil? Could the girl manage
without Sybil there to protect her?
She had been left vulnerable and Sybil was helpless to offer any aid.
Tears burned in Sybil’s eyes. Not fear, but fury. The indignation that she could not be with Jacinda to ensure her safety.
Sybil blinked until her vision cleared.
She had to be strong.
“What can I expect when they examine me?” Sybil asked.
“The inquirers are insistent, spinning such stories when they bid our confessions, encouraging us to admit their preposterous
tales are true.” Edith patted Sybil’s arm. “You have always been strong, my friend. You have naught to fear.”
Sybil nodded and a silence settled over them, each lost in the horror of their own thoughts. Finally, Sybil had a chance to
catch her breath, to truly take in her surroundings. Her gaze drifted toward the men’s cage and caught sight of a familiar
face: Edward Morris.
He was a shadow of the youth he had been the year before, back when he was a staunch Parliamentarian. Then, he’d been vociferous in his protestations to the king’s rule. Especially the preposterous taxes, like Ship Money dues when they did not even live near the coast.
He’d gone to the battle of Marston Moor charged with a need for vengeance. While he returned a hero, the light in his eyes
had been snuffed by the violent slaughter of so many Royalists. In the month following his return, his wife died in childbirth
along with his firstborn, a little girl.
His fragile soul had perished along with them, leaving him a husk of a person, hollowed out by loss. Now he sat in the prison,
gaze fixed on nothing, face slack, as if already dead.
“Poor Edward Morris,” Edith tutted. “They say men plagued by melancholy are as subject to the Devil’s influence as are women
with our weak minds.”
“Weak minds indeed,” Sybil scoffed.
“And that man, the vicar.” Edith nodded to a frail old man. “He escaped the noose when he spoke up for a woman accused of
witchcraft some thirty summers ago, but there’s no one to help him this time round. He’s already confessed.”
“A vicar confessed?” Sybil studied the elderly man in surprise.
Age had leached all color from his hair, as well as from his grizzled beard. Still, even as he wavered on his feet, he held
the hands of two men, his head bowed, lips moving in silent prayer.
“They swam him,” Edith whispered. “The water trial broke him, that dear man. He confessed.” She drew in a shaky breath. “They
mean to break us all.”
“Then we must be strong.”
Sybil looked at those in the cage with them. Most were as old as Edith, their faces creased with age, their hair wispy shades
of gray and white. Women who society felt no longer offered value to the community. Women whose presence would never be missed.
Such women were so easily discarded.
But there was also a child, a little girl tucked in a dark corner, as if trying to wish herself unseen. She shrank back from Sybil’s observation, the poor chit.
The iron door grated open with a shrill cry, and the barrel-chested guard shoved the women back with his cudgel before depositing
a young woman inside.
Her unbound hair spread about her shoulders like a thick golden cloak, and even in the dark, dismal light, her beauty was
unmistakable. She wore a shawl dyed in Lavenham blue from the nearby town, which obtained the distinct color from their use
of woad.
“My husband,” the young woman whispered. “Please send him word. Oh, my husband, my husband…” She buried her face in her hands
and wept. One of the older women approached and patted her shoulder. A woman who had naught to give but comfort and offered
it readily.
“Sybil Brantham,” the guard’s voice rang out through the sound of the woman’s quiet sobs.
Edith tensed beside her.
“Sybil Brantham,” the guard called again. “Come forward.”
“Be cautious.” Edith locked eyes with Sybil. “He is cruel.”
And as brave as Sybil wished to be in that moment, she was terrified.
Not so much for herself, but for what her incarceration might mean for Jacinda.