Page 31 of A Time of Witches

She remained silent, refusing to feed his excitement.

“Your husband,” Walsingham said.

“What of him?” Sybil snapped. Too abrupt. Too harsh.

The show of her emotion was a weakness the magistrate would not miss.

“Being a widow is rather convenient for you, is it not?” He tilted his head. “You have too much power, too much wealth, especially for a woman with no husband.” He stepped even closer, obviously trying to force her backward against the wall.

Rather than yield to him, her hand slid into her pocket, fingering the cold, sharp steel there. Her salvation.

The magistrate looked down at her. “His death was rather convenient as well, wasn’t it?”

She stepped forward, antagonizing her antagonist. “Was it?” she asked, heady with determination. With terror.

Walsingham narrowed his eyes. “You deny me still?” he breathed.

Disgust slithered over her skin. “I do.”

His stare glided down her body and came to rest at the bulge of her hand in her pocket. “Guards,” he shouted.

Half a dozen men poured into the grand entryway of Sybil’s home, boots scattering dirt upon the gleaming floor, the thunder of their heavy tread reverberating off the walls. Behind her, more people emerged—her servants, hands twisting in aprons, shoulders tensing with uncertainty at the desire to protect their mistress.

The guards surrounded her, shackles clanking.

“Sybil?” Jacinda’s soft voice sounded behind her, but Sybil refused to turn. To do so would be her undoing. She could not look upon Jacinda and bear witness to the vulnerable fear and unanswered questions in those large eyes.

This was not a time to crumble, but to remain ever strong.

“Mrs. Henry Brantham, you are hereby arrested on the charges of witchcraft.” Walsingham’s declaration resounded in the entryway. “A felony that has been raised to petty treason for using witchcraft to cause your husband’s death.”

Sybil’s knees went soft with horror. A felony would result in being hanged. But petty treason meant she would burn alive at the stake.

“No,” Jacinda cried out. “She would never.”

“I am no witch,” Sybil said fiercely. “And I did not murder my husband.”

The magistrate narrowed his eyes. “I heard of the storm you brewed up when we arrested the witch three days past. How the clouds crowded the sky with an unnatural ferocity.”

The fight bled out of Sybil at the reminder of the tumultuous weather wrought by Jacinda’s unbridled power. At how Sybil’s preoccupation with Edith’s capture had caused her to forget to reapply the protective barriers on the home.

Jacinda ran to the magistrate. “That wasn’t her. That—”

“That was the weather being as mercurial as weather so oft is,” Sybil said in a tired voice. “Bess…” Before Sybil could speak her order, the maid was there, pulling Jacinda back, cajoling the girl in soothing tones.

Sybil did not look at them as the guards closed in around her, jerking her hands roughly in front of her. Iron clapped over the tender skin of her wrists, cold and weighty. All at once, the world around Sybil went still.

The steady hum of the earth’s power, as familiar to her as the throb of her own heartbeat, went quiet, its song abruptly cut short.

That silence bore the weight of an eternity.

The charge of witchcraft, she could endure. Indeed, had expected. Especially if her arrest might somehow keep Jacinda safe.

But the accusation that she had killed Henry…

Henry, her revered husband who had loved her as a scholar adored his star pupil, whose long, tapered fingers elegantly crawled over script as he patiently instructed her in the ways of philosophers, theologians. He had so readily accepted Jacinda into his life as another student, treating her as a daughter rather than a sister-in-law and educating her like a son.

And now Sybil would be tried for his death, this man who had cared for her with unending patience and understanding.