Chapter Forty-Three
Sybil
Sybil hobbled back to the prison, trying to push the sounds of Jacinda’s weeping from her ears. The bag of food strapped to
her knee made Sybil’s gait off-kilter, but the stiffness of her abused body masked the awkwardness.
By the time she returned to the cell, Edith was gone.
“They took her not long after you were called away,” the pretty young woman said.
Sybil thanked her and the woman’s nostrils flared. “Did you confess?” she hissed. “I smell ale upon your breath.”
Sybil shook her head. “My sister came to me.” She beckoned the young woman to follow her to the corner, where the little girl
sat in the shadows. “She brought me food.” Sybil spoke in an almost silent whisper. “Sit before me.”
The young woman complied, blocking Sybil from the view of others.
Sybil opened the bag and handed a bit of chicken and bread first to the girl, then to the young woman, sharing before she could yield to the temptation to keep the food and drink for herself.
Hopkins and his mercenaries could do what they wanted to her body, but she refused to allow prison to change the woman she was inside.
“Keep your food for yourself.” The young woman shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “You know nothing of me.”
Sybil pulled from her memory, recalling the guards as they spoke. “Your name is Margery, is it not?” Sybil nudged a hunk of
meat toward her. “Eat.”
Margery pursed her lips. “I confessed. My soul is damned.”
The little girl’s eyes widened as she shoved chicken into her mouth.
“I know you confessed,” Sybil replied. “I smelled the ale on you the same as you did me just now.”
“I didn’t do it for food.” The young woman sagged back. “They threatened my husband’s commission if I did not confess. All
he has ever wanted in this world is to be a soldier. I couldn’t take that from him. I love him too greatly.”
Her voice choked off, and she cleared her throat before continuing. “It was my steadfast love for him which condemned me to
be here from the first.”
Chill bumps crawled over Sybil’s skin. If they exploited love for confessions, how soon might Jacinda’s name be brought up
again. Especially after she had been inside the prison, using her gifts.
“Jacob Neech denounced me.” Bitterness hardened Margery’s lovely features. “He waited until my Bran had left with the other
Parliamentarians and he set upon me, bade me take him as my lover. I told him I would take no lover. Day after day, he came
to me, until he refused to hear my reply.”
Sybil’s fists tightened at her side at the familiarity of the woman’s pain, of the helplessness from the brutish nature of
some men.
“I would never lie with another man,” the young woman said vehemently. “I am no cavalier.”
Everyone knew the cavaliers, the women whose husbands were at war and so they assumed a masculine role. Not only at home,
but in pubs, consuming strong ale, speaking like sailors, and taking men to bed.
No one would ever mistake Margery for one of those women.
“I knew he would be by again,” she continued. “I…I had hidden a knife in my basket, you see.”
“You killed him?” Sybil asked.
“I wish I had.” Her eyes flashed with hatred. “But I injured him well enough for his thigh to be stitched closed. Then he
accused me of witchcraft, saying I was a lewd woman. I finally agreed to have conspired with the Devil to keep my Bran safe.”
She pressed her hand over her heart. “I have given my soul so that Bran might keep his commission. May God forgive me.”
She wept then, in breaking gasps that caught at Sybil’s heart. She embraced the young woman, cradling the bony body in her
own thin arms.
Such was the cost of love in their world.
When Margery’s tears had finally dried, Sybil encouraged the young woman to take some meat and bread. “We must all keep up
our strength.”
No sooner had she uttered the words than the door to the cage was opened and a figure was thrown within. Edith lay upon the
rushes as Sybil had, her head bald and bleeding, patched with tufts of gray hair. The warts that plagued Edith’s face dotted
her scalp as well.
The little girl’s eyes locked on Edith, and she crept closer, holding out a hunk of chicken.
Edith’s eyes filled with tears as she shook her head. “Keep it for yourself, dear.”
Sybil helped Edith up to sitting and carefully blotted away the blood.
“They say I have no witch’s mark, and I refuse their entreaties to confess.” There was a wooden quality to Edith’s voice.
As if she were outside of herself.
Sybil understood. Letting one’s thoughts drift away was the only escape from such pain and humiliation.
“I have some meat and bread,” Sybil whispered to her dear friend. “Come fortify yourself.”
But Edith did not move from where she sat, her poor feet still blistered and bleeding from when they had walked her. “Save
it for yourself and for others. I have no future.”
Sybil shook her head, not understanding. “Please, Edith, you cannot give up—”
“I am to be put to the swimming test.”
Whatever low conversations hummed in the prison went silent, as if every ear heard Edith.
“No.” Sybil continued to shake her head, refusing to believe the words. “They cannot.”
“They can,” Edith said. “And they will. I will be swum in two days’ time.”
“God save your soul,” a frail voice called from the other cage. The old vicar stood by the bars and folded his long, skeletal
fingers around them. He alone understood how terrible the water test could truly be.
Sybil embraced Edith, knowing her fate was a death sentence. Either she would float and be denounced a witch and hanged. Or
she would die by drowning and be declared innocent.
Sybil tightened her hold on Edith, as if doing so might protect her friend from the inevitable. For either way, Edith would
die.
And soon.
The unfairness of what they endured wound tight in Sybil.
The way women were overwhelmed by men, their words of protest ignored.
Twist.
The confessions forced through torture and extreme deprivation.
Twist.
The innocent lives condemned by unjust means.
Twist.
Tighter and tighter, until Sybil knew, at some point, she would snap.