Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sybil
The “searchers” were two women, both of whom Sybil had tended in the past with her mother’s remedies.
Mrs. Jones, with wide, bright blue eyes, who had anxiously approached Sybil three years before seeking a posset to help the
child in her womb who had ceased to move. And then later, after Sybil confessed there was naught to be done, she’d stemmed
the blood from the loss of the woman’s babe.
The second, Mrs. Williams, wore the somber dress of a Puritan, her hair pulled back in a braid as severe as the look in her
steely gray eyes.
Sybil recalled how exuberantly she had protested The Book of Sports, a government-issued book of games allowed on Sundays some ten years prior, going so far as to snap the sticks children used
in Morris dancing.
Mrs. Williams had also been the one to plead for Sybil’s help when her youngest son fell ill with the plague, and how she’d wept with gratitude when his fever broke after Sybil’s teas took effect.
There was no gratitude in her level gaze now.
A shiver skittered down Sybil’s spine.
Hopkins pushed up from his desk. “I leave you with these women.” He bowed low as a courtier, a mockery of respect.
The guards followed him from the room, leaving her alone with Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Williams. The latter thinned her lips as
she regarded Sybil. “Remove your gown.”
Shock drew Sybil instinctively back. “I will not.”
Mrs. Jones appeared less certain. “Perhaps we can check without—”
“No.” Mrs. Williams tossed down a heavy leather bag which clinked inside upon landing. “We will find a witch’s mark on her
no matter where it has been hidden.” She nodded to Sybil. “Remove your clothes or we will seek help to do so.”
Sybil took another step back.
Surely they were not serious.
“The magistrate is near.” The hardness in Mrs. Williams’s eyes told Sybil she knew exactly the type of man he was.
Tendrils of fear closed around Sybil’s throat.
How could a woman be so cruel to another?
Sybil pulled at the ties of her bodice, hands shaking. A stubborn knot refused to pull free and Mrs. Williams hissed in impatience.
She stalked toward Sybil, steps biting loud and hard into the wood floor. A pair of shears screeched open and sliced through
the once-fine bodice before Sybil could protest.
The gown sagged open and dragged down her body, stopping only when the sleeves caught at her arms.
An astonished cry escaped Sybil, and she tried to back away, shackles clanking and catching, preventing her steps. Mrs. Williams
caught her with a merciless grip, the shears working in rusty squeals.
Sybil twisted and wrenched, but was no match for Mrs. Williams’s vice-like grip. Starvation had weakened Sybil’s body, and the last of her resistance bled away.
Too weak with hunger to fight back.
The grinding snick of the shears filled the room as her stays were cut away, then her petticoat, so she stood in only her
shift. Her nipples pebbled beneath the thin fabric and she crossed her arms over her chest, cheeks burning with mortification.
“Take it off.” Mrs. Williams puffed from exertion. “Or I’ll cut it away and leave you in prison without a stitch on you.”
Sybil looked to Mrs. Jones, but the other woman averted her wide blue eyes, turning away her shame.
“How can you do this to a fellow woman?” Sybil’s voice cracked.
“You’re no woman.” Mrs. Williams spat on the ground, a globule of white foam landing near Sybil’s feet. “You’re a witch.”
She held up her shears like the weapon they were. “The shift.”
Choking back a sob, Sybil drew the hem of her shift over her head and released it quickly to cross her arms over herself.
The white fabric floated to the ground like a flag of surrender.
Mrs. Jones now stared intently at the floor. Not Mrs. Williams. Her gaze descended over Sybil’s nakedness, consuming her skeletal
legs and arms, the flatness of her breasts, which had deflated as she starved, the concave scallop of jutting hipbones, where
even her womb seemed to have been carved away.
Perhaps Mrs. Williams was correct.
Sybil was not a woman.
Not any longer.
With her oily, tangled hair and emaciated body, she was barely even human.
She had not only been stripped of her clothing, but also her dignity. Her identity. She was bared, vulnerable down to her
very soul.
Mrs. Williams stepped closer and Sybil drew back again. The wall hit the back of her heel.
What more could they want?
Mrs. Williams charged at her with cold, grasping hands, ruthless as her icy fingers crawled over every inch of Sybil’s naked
body. Lifting, parting, probing…
There would be nothing found. Sybil knew this. She had been born with no marks upon her body.
When Mrs. Williams finally backed away, violent shudders wracked Sybil’s body, from the damp chill in the room, from the intensity
of such violation.
“There’s a witch’s mark to be sure.” Mrs. Williams crossed her arms over her chest. “We just need to find it.”
Sybil remained where she stood, knees bent together to brace herself upright, arms folded over her withered breasts, shoulders
curled forward over her torso, so her hair draped like an onyx curtain over her nakedness.
“We can look harder,” Mrs. Jones said in a quiet voice from where she stood. She hadn’t joined Mrs. Williams in the search
but had slowly edged toward the door as if she meant to flee.
“We knew this might happen.” Mrs. Williams cast a disparaging look at the other woman. “You said you could do this.”
Mrs. Jones nodded. “I’ll get the pricker.”
Sybil shrank against the wall. “What do you mean to do to me?”
Her poor exhausted body trembled, muscles quivering with the threat of failure. Even as her spirit rallied to keep fighting,
everything else begged to give up.
Mrs. Williams rummaged in that awful bag once more and produced a pair of sheep shearers, the two wicked blades catching in
the candlelight. “We must rid her of all that hair.”
Sybil shook her head. “No. Please.”
This time, when Mrs. Williams approached, Sybil did not possess the energy to fight. She sagged back in utter defeat as the blades nipped over her skin, as hair sifted around her in a detached black cloud.
Her scalp chilled against the air, save the parts that burned where the blades cut too close. Next, Mrs. Williams set to Sybil’s
under arms. And after that, Sybil’s most private area until all of her was shorn and pink and vulnerably exposed as a baby
bird.
Sybil stared at the floor, imagining the worn wooden slats were gone, replaced by packed earth. Like the cottage she’d lived
in with her mother.
In her mind, Mother brushed Sybil’s hair, sweetly humming that lullaby she used when the sounds of the forest made Sybil afraid
at night. Later, that cadence was a tune echoed by nature when Sybil came into her gifts as a daughter of the earth.
She wrapped herself in that tune as it played out in her head, oblivious to the voices that floated nearby.
“Prick her.”
A cold point pressed into Sybil’s skin, sharp enough to pull her attention. Her gaze shifted, slow and lethargic, but not
so delayed as to miss how the needle disappeared into the shaft. Poking, but not wounding; a trick meant to give the appearance
of sinking deeply into her flesh.
Mrs. Williams pulled the needle back so the shaft pushed out from the hollow handle, appearing whole once more, absent blood.
A sure sign of witchcraft to be pricked with a bodkin and not bleed.
Privy to the trick or no, Mrs. Williams gave a victorious cry. “There. You see? She is a witch. Something truly evil.”
Sybil closed her eyes, knowing herself condemned.
Of one thing, the old Puritan had indeed been correct. There was evil in the room that day.
And it was Mrs. Williams.