Chapter Forty
Sybil
Sybil did not recall when she had finally been thrown back into the cell, nor when the gift of dreamless slumber offered a
reprieve from the horror she’d endured.
When she woke, light spilled from the crude window, revealing a new day. She sat up and a dirty shawl peeled away from her
torso where someone had covered her. A shard of light revealed the familiar Lavenham blue beneath the grime, bringing the
realization that it was the pretty young woman’s shawl.
Sybil looked across the crowded room, finding the woman with her arms folded across her chest, and nodded her thanks. The
young woman inclined her head in return, a silent acceptance of a truly selfless gesture.
Something shifted in the rushes beside Sybil, and she turned to find Edith sitting quietly beside her with the little girl
curled in her lap.
Sybil’s feet were cold as ice. Her woolen stockings and shoes had not been returned. Not that she could have squeezed her battered feet into the latchets regardless. Even now, the tendons of her toes weren’t visible beneath the swelling and mottled bruising of her feet.
“I have your bread ration for you,” Edith whispered, pulling two pieces of bread from her waistband.
Sybil lifted her gaze to the bread. Edith extended a cup of ale, fuller than usual. Likely partly her portion as well as Sybil’s.
Edith pushed both toward Sybil, her actions gentle to keep from waking the girl. “They were generous this time.”
There had been no food or water after Sybil had been walked, nor before she had been so stripped and prodded.
“Liar,” Sybil croaked. “That is yours.”
Edith’s brow pursed. “Your need is greater than mine.”
“You give all your food away,” Sybil accused, hating how desperately she truly did want the bread. And the ale.
Oh God, the ale…
Edith truly looked at her then, studying Sybil from the crown of her roughly shorn head to her battered feet. A sheen of tears
shone in Edith’s eyes. “Please, my friend. Eat.”
Sybil did not protest again but fell upon the gift with zeal. Her desperate, breathless gulps echoed back at her from the
hollow of the mug and never had anything been more delicious than the cool liquid slaking her parched throat. Next, she tore
into the bread, her teeth barely able to chew before her stomach demanded the food be forced down in greedy swallows.
The meal was scarcely satisfying after having gone so long without, and she could have sobbed for want of more. Instead, she
thanked her friend for the great sacrifice and lay back in the rushes, her abused scalp stinging where the bits of hay dug
into fresh cuts.
How she longed to sleep. To forget.
“Sybil Brantham.”
She jerked at the sound of her name, alarm bells clanging through her skull.
Edith placed a comforting hand on Sybil’s shoulder.
“Sybil Brantham,” the young guard called, louder this time. “You have a visitor.”
She lifted her head, suspecting a cruel trick. After all, this was a place without hope. She would do well to remember as
much.
Rising unsteadily to her damaged feet, Sybil made to smooth her hair, fingers skimming her bald pate.
Her heart lurched in horror.
At the memory.
What she had endured assaulted her memory, playing again with details she wished she could forget.
Her fingertips trembled as they ran over the plane of her skull once more, some areas prickled with patches of hair, unevenly
shorn, others scabbed where the blade had cropped too deeply.
And who would come here to see her thus?
Robbed of the only feature she’d been proud of, gaunt, filthy.
Defeated.
A hand curled around Sybil’s. She looked down to find Edith gazing up at her.
“Have hope,” she whispered.
Walking slowly on feet that could scarcely hold her weight, Sybil was led to a square room where manacles hung from rusty
nails, and several buckets lined the side of one wall. All were visible by the narrow cut in the stone that allowed in a scant
amount of light.
A cry wrenched from her throat.
For there truly was someone there to see her.
Jacinda.
Her eyes went wide, the shock of Sybil’s appearance written as plainly on her face, as if in stark black ink upon a page.
“Sybil?” Jacinda approached slowly, cautiously.
Sybil nodded. Tears blazed in her eyes.
She wanted to apologize for her appearance, to tell how they had stripped her bare. How she had been thusly violated as they
picked and preened over every bit of her scraped skin. How she had been so weak, she’d given up.
Instead, she simply nodded. Such horrors were too great to give voice to. Some were best locked inside, where a key could
twist them shut forever.
“You have only a few moments,” a guard called from the corner.
Jacinda blinked, brought round by the reminder.
Sybil shifted her weight from one agonized foot to the other, the manacles around her ankle bones clanking. “Jacinda.” She
choked out the single word, barely a whisper.
The guard stared with bored disinterest, his heart numb or missing.
Jacinda gazed at her shoes. At the wall. Anywhere but at Sybil.
But Sybil was not offended. She understood she was a hard visage to take in, her shorn head nicked and scabbed, her body skeletal
beneath her shift.
“It has only been a fortnight,” Jacinda said brokenly. “How could they have done this to you in so short a time?”
“They are persuasive in their efforts to encourage a confession of witchcraft.” Sybil tried to give a wry smile, but her lips
had split from lack of moisture.
Jacinda shook her head, incredulous. “Why?”
“They sought a witch mark,” Sybil replied. “When one could not be found, they insisted there must be one beneath my hair.
There was not.”
Jacinda covered her mouth with her hand, suppressing the emotion welling in her eyes. “They arrested you for Henry’s murder.”
Jacinda had loved Henry. For a girl who had never known her father, he had easily stepped into the role, guiding her, educating her, marveling at her cleverness and making her feel worthy of praise and affection.
Sybil nodded. “I know.”
“But he died of the plague,” Jacinda cried.
“He did. But a woman tried as a witch is merely hanged, and a woman who has killed her husband is burned alive.”
Jacinda shrank back. “No.”
“It is what they want. To make an example of me.”
It is what he wanted for her repeated rejection.
Robert Walsingham. The magistrate.
He had not been by to see his handiwork. Not yet. Sybil knew it was only a matter of time.
“One of the servants denounced you,” Jacinda said, her words inflamed with a wrath that could make the entire town burn. “I
will find who did it.”
Sybil shook her head. “It matters naught now.”
“It matters,” Jacinda said between clenched teeth. “There has to be a reason why. A way to stop this.”
Sybil continued to shake her head. “Please…keep to yourself, stay to the manor, wear your bracelet. See Kat.”
“She has been by,” Jacinda said softly.
The tension drawing Sybil’s shoulders to her ears relaxed some. Kat had made good on her promise. Of course she had. “Kat
has been given instruction to see to your care.”
Jacinda put her hand to the iron bracelet on her wrist and nodded again.
Sybil glanced to the guard, wishing she could say more. How she longed to tell Jacinda she would remain strong in prison to
keep suspicion from turning to her, how Jacinda must refrain from using her gifts.
A knot swelled in the back of Sybil’s throat.
There was so, so much to say that she had put off for too long.
“Mind Kat,” was all she could manage.
If anyone could corral the enormity of Jacinda’s power, it was Kat—a woman used to navigating life around the tantrums and
chaos of seven children, all while trying desperately to establish herself as a seamstress in the village. Kat hadn’t the
time for impatience or hesitation.
Jacinda nodded and surreptitiously looked to her right, where the guard watched them with bored disinterest. With shaking
fingers, she pulled the iron bracelet from her wrist.
The scent of the earth’s power teased at Sybil’s nostrils despite the heavy iron manacles at her feet—a wet, pungent fragrance,
like the moments before a rainstorm in a garden thick with fragrant blossoms.
Though she wanted to tilt her head back and revel in the aroma, to strain her ears for its hum, doing so was far too dangerous.
She reached for Jacinda’s wrist when the image of the guard wavered, like heat rising from flame. A blocking charm.
Alarm prickled through Sybil’s entire body, stinging every nerve ending. “Don’t. Not here.”
“Quick.” Jacinda passed a bladder of ale to Sybil from her basket. There was authority to her tone, an understanding of caution.
A note of maturity.
In Sybil’s absence, the girl was finally starting to become a woman.
And though Sybil wanted to decline the offer, the slosh of liquid was more than she could resist. She put the mouthpiece to
her lips and drank and drank.
Sweet and bright and gloriously wet, she gulped until her thirst was slaked. Jacinda then brought a sack of food from the
basket.
The guard wore a strange dreamlike expression on his face, as if he could not keep his eyes open.
Sybil looked at the food and hesitated. “You can’t do this. If you’re caught with what you’re doing to him…”
“It is already done.” Jacinda pushed the basket forward. “Now hurry.”
There was cold chicken, tender and still juicy and crusty bread with a soft center. She had almost forgotten how fine manchet
bread could be and regretted every moment she’d taken it for granted in the past.
The remainder of the food, Jacinda hurriedly helped tie to the inside of Sybil’s knee, hidden from view beneath her chemise.
The wall separating their movements trembled and Jacinda hastily slipped her bracelet back on. The guard blinked as though
his vision had blurred.
“Jacinda, know that…” Sybil hesitated, uncertain of what Kat might have said, uncertain of what she could safely share. “Know
that I love you. But that you cannot come back.”
Doing so was far too risky.
“I will be back,” Jacinda vowed, stubbornly defiant as ever. “And I will find out who denounced you.”
“Do not,” Sybil cautioned. “Please. What’s done is done. Just stay in the manor and obey Kat.”
Jacinda shook her head, eyes bright with unshed tears. “I will do anything to save you.” She touched her bracelet. “Anything.”
A chill raked over Sybil’s skin. For there were enchantments that might be begged of the earth, powers great enough to save
those who were condemned.
But they scraped against the grain of nature, an abomination.
And there were grave consequences indeed for engaging in the forbidden.