Chapter Fifty-Five
Sybil
The prison was silent the following morning, heavy with threat of the impending trial.
In the place of the traveling assizes, oyer and terminer had been granted—a court approved to hear special criminal cases
with a group of men gathered with the intention of condemning the witches to death.
With so many imprisoned, only two dozen could be seen in the one day. Sybil was among them, as the guard had claimed. As was
Margery.
The courthouse had been stuffy, overcrowded, filled with the men and women she’d cared for in past years. Women whose children
she had assisted in delivering when a midwife was not available, men whose farming injuries she helped heal, parents to children
she saw through the pestilence and the starvation that followed.
These townsfolk who had once been grateful for Sybil’s aid now watched her trial, eyes gleaming with bloodlust as the accusations were hurtled at her feet: curdling the neighbor’s milk, spreading sickness and war, and killing Henry.
This abomination had been signed by a member of her staff. As yet still unnamed.
Sybil stood in the box of the accused, damned by their judgment, as she was charged first with witchcraft—a crime punishable
by hanging—and was found guilty.
The blow had left her staggering under the weight of the conviction.
Then came the charge of having used witchcraft to kill Henry, drawing the plague seeds to him, resulting in suffering and
death, leaving her a wealthy widow. The punishment for this crime of petty treason was being burned alive.
She was found guilty.
Her world swam around her, fading in and out in the moist heat of the courtroom, the air rank with judgment and stained bloodred
with malice. With hate.
She would die in the most horrible fashion, lashed to a stake amid a pyre and set alight like a bit of kindling. And like
kindling, she would peel and split in the flames.
The horror of her future curled around her shoulders. Her death would be slow. Awful. Witnessed by those she had so freely
given her time, her coin, and her love.
A metallic taste rose in the back of her throat, polluting each word, each swallow, with the tinny taste of fear.
Her lashes fluttered and the world dimmed. There was not enough strength in her to think of such horrors.
Thoughts of Dido from Heroides filled her mind. How the independent widow had given herself to a lover who had cruelly betrayed her. Sybil’s love had been
the townspeople, and they too betrayed her.
Through the course of that mockery of a trial, judgment was meted out with an unfair hand. The punishment would be exacted with haste. The lot of them would die the following day.
The remaining six score prisoners would be tried within a sennight.
Sybil and the others condemned to die were broken off from the rest, stuffed into a smaller cell, mixing the seventeen women
with the two men. This was a kindness to the Everard couple who had been separated into cages opposite one another these last
several difficult weeks. They fell into one another’s arms and held tight. The rest of the prisoners turned their gazes away,
as much for privacy as for the inability to bear the envy of such comfort in those final hours.
For the rest were a miserable lot indeed.
Destined for death, devoid of all hope. Alone.
Some wailed their misery, some begged the guards to let them out, bargaining with all their world possessions. Some, like
Margery, wept for what they would lose in death, for her inability to ever see her beloved husband again.
Mary Bacon’s husband had continued to fight for her release and had been arrested that day, now contained in the men’s cell.
So close and still so far. She wept with pity for him and hope that their son might make his way to the New World, to be free
of such unfair persecution.
The old vicar bore the weight of everyone’s pain on his frail shoulders. He prayed until he was hoarse, and then he kept on
until his voice was thready and breaking.
And some, like Sybil, sat in quiet regret.
Regret that she had not told Jacinda the truth when she was younger, that she missed so many moments of her life, observed
as a sister rather than relished as a mother.
Regret that she would not walk upon the cool moonlit grass once more, that the powerful energy of the earth would remain forever
silent, muted by heavy iron shackles.
Regret that she would never again feel the sun’s glory warm upon her face, its radiance reflected in her soul.
Sybil had read once that the last moments of life were brilliant and vivid and meant to be savored.
Except in the prison, they were surrounded by starvation and the promise of death.
Sybil remained awake through the night. Nearly all of them did, save for the few who were so exhausted, they could not stop
their eyes from closing. Silver moonlight crested and she wished she could stretch high enough to reach the window, to breathe
in the freshness of the night air.
Eventually, sunlight peered into the cell, spilling golden light on the righteous. The wrongfully accused.
The other prisoners had received their rations that morning, but the barrel-chested guard approached them empty-handed. “No
use in feeding the dead. But if you have kin and they’ve come, you’ll be called to see them.”
Though they would die with hunger rasping in their bellies, the small mercy to see their loved ones was an expected and precious
gift.
And it meant that Sybil would be allowed to speak with Jacinda one final time. To finally confess the words that had been
building in her heart for the entirety of Jacinda’s life:
I am your mother.