Page 65 of A Time of Witches

Asher’s gaze was soft as he considered the cat. “Sometimes it’s best to rename animals when they haven’t lived in a good home.” He looked up at her and his knee brushed hers. “Care to do the honors?”

Heat rushed up her neck and she lowered her head, the flush likely creeping over her face. She continued stroking the cat’s silky fur, dark as obsidian. Like dragon’s glass. “I think…Dragon.”

The cat cast a side glance up at her, the expression sly, as if sharing their own little secret.

At least this secret was one she understood, especially when there were still so many to unearth.

Chapter Thirty-One

Sybil

“I’m leaving today.”

A moment passed before Sybil registered Kat’s whisper.

“Are you certain?” Sybil asked, wishing Edith was with them to hear the wonderful news of Kat’s freedom. But she’d been pulled away that morning to see Matthew Hopkins.

“As certain as a Puritan loves Sunday,” Kat muttered.

Sybil leveled a look at her friend, a silent caution to watch her tongue. But Kat was never one to safeguard her words.

“With the war on, there are too few men who can sort out the property issues,” she said. “Tom is the only one to see to it, and after bringing the bairns to Guildhall Feoffees for half a sennight, the Commission banded together and petitioned Matthew Hopkins to acknowledge my innocence.”

Few could rally such support. Fewer still kept that kind of powerful demand for a release quiet. Most of the men who protested the arrests of their wives ended up imprisoned as well, like Mr. and Mrs. Everard.

Sybil glanced at the white-haired woman standing on the side of the cage closest to where the men were kept. Where her husband was imprisoned after fighting to help her.

Mrs. Everard had been accused of entering a covenant with the Devil to kill their grandchildren. Mr. Everard, a popular cooper in Halesworth had sworn that his wife was no more in league with the Devil than he was, which they took as a statement of guilt. The pair had been brought in together.

If rumors could be believed, her hair had been brown when she arrived.

Meanwhile, Mary Bacon wept daily over her own husband, a former soldier, the kind who didn’t back down from a fight. He continued to publicly lash out at Hopkins for the arrests.

Her fear that her husband might soon join her was not unfounded.

But then Henry would have fought as passionately for Sybil. In her heart, she knew he would. It almost made her glad he was gone, to spare him such pain.

She yanked her thoughts from Henry.

“Before I go,” Kat said softly. “I need some of yer hair.”

One never knew when strands of hair were necessary for a charm.

Sybil plucked a few strands, embarrassed at her own filth. Not having a mirror was likely a small mercy. Worry over the state of her appearance seemed a waste of her limited energy, but her hair had always been her one vanity.

“I must beg another favor,” Sybil said apologetically as she offered the strands to her friend.

Kat tucked them into her sleeve and nodded.

“Do you remember John Griffin?” The name came easy on Sybil’s tongue despite having not spoken it in over a decade.

Kat’s brows flinched. “I could never forget him, what he was to ye.”

Despite the damp chill of the prison, Sybil’s cheeks warmed.

She had never stopped loving him. Four years ago, she saw him on the street once and thought she would perish then and there at the pain of seeing him.

He’d worn the dark slim-fitting cassock of a vicar. She could not bring herself to ask around to see if he had a wife. Her heart could not stand the idea of him being with a woman who was not her, a woman his father would deem worthy.