Page 24 of As Many Souls as Stars
Martingale made to push him aside.
‘Please, sir,’ Oswyn whimpered. ‘I’ve been bewitched.’
Martingale snarled, ‘As has half of Ipswich, boy. Now move along.’
‘But—’
‘Move.’
‘’Twas Cybil Harding,’ Oswyn blurted. ‘She’s a witch. I know it to be true, sir. I had heard the rumours that she was cursed, but I was a fool, blinded by lust. And I met with her here today, but then… I had no control of myself, I was her puppet. Others saw it—I was possessed. I cannot remember it clearly, but when I woke up, she was gone, and—and—I hadthis.’
He pointed to his right eye. Its pupil was swollen wide, double the size of his left, shadows drowning out the blue.
Martingale paused. ‘Cybil Harding,’ he said, and his lips thinned. ‘I know of her. I have heard much of her family.’
Miriam searched his mind, and she found embarrassment, resentment: a flicker of Cybil’s face, her supercilious expression as she ridiculed him on All Hallows’ Eve.
Miriam had not experienced enough of this place to know what they did to witches, but she could guess. Rope or fire, water or blood: it did not matter. Either way, it was a fate any woman would be desperate to escape. Desperate enough, in fact, to trade anything for their liberty.
Grinning, Miriam returned to the shadows.
Cybil could not sleep.
Six days had passed since Ipswich, since she had seen Richter in the orchard. Since then, each time she closed her eyes, she smelt rotting apples and heard the thrum of the rain. An incomprehensible panic seized her without trigger, and her dreams were shockingly vivid. The previous evening, she had even taken a drop of her mother’s mandrake tincture to try to find some respite—but her sleep that night had been so deep and consuming that when she woke up, she felt curiously convinced that, for a moment, she had been dead.
But without the tincture, it now seemed she could not sleep at all. Over the course of the week, winter had continued its slow invasion of Suffolk: at night, the windows rattled with frozen wind; the rooms remained cold despite Cybil lighting every fire and wrapping herself in furs. On Sunday, the chill was such that she gave up on rest entirely, and so she wandered the Hall, attempting to busy herself by taking note of any minute flaw she could find: here, a hairline crack in a windowpane, illuminated like a scar by her candle; here, some paint upon a hunting mural, flecked and faded; and here, a mysterious stain on a rug mayhap left by one of her father’s more adventurous rituals, rust-coloured and shaped like a Hebrew letter. Cybil noted all of these on a list in her meticulous hand, taking comfort in the procession of words and predicted costs for resolution. The better the records she kept now, the easier it would be for her to hand the reins of the Hall to her mother and leave for Court.
In one room, long enough shut up that the door shrieked like a hawk when it opened, Cybil found—differentiated by the moonlight—a trio of person-shaped shadows sitting about a dust-covered table, gesticulating to one another as if playing cards. As she entered, one of them motioned for her to sit with them.
She was too exhausted even to fear them. Eyes stinging, the flame of her candle blurred, she said, ‘Shoo,’ and flapped her hand about.
They did not move.
‘Shoo,’ she repeated. ‘This is my home, and you are not welcome here. You must leave. If you do not, I shall…’ She recalled something she had read in her father’s grimoire. ‘Salt. I shall salt you like slugs, quite happily.’
The shadows shifted nervously in their chairs. Then, slowly—reluctantly—they faded away, leaving only the thin grey moonlight behind.
Triumphant, Cybil returned smiling to her rooms. But once she was in bed, the pleasure of this victory soon passed. Sleep continued to elude her, and she was left with familiar frustration.
After hours of restlessness, her thoughts turned, inevitably, to the orchard: Cybil recalled Richter’s gaze on her throat, on her face, the manner in which she had called her lovely and bared her teeth as if she would bite her. And despite the lingering fear, the anxiety, Cybil found herself overcome with an almost painful rush of arousal.
Attraction of this intensity was alien to her. Cybil felt ashamed of herself, disgusted, even—but for a moment, she allowed herself to imagine that Richterhadkissed her, after all. She pictured her biting her lip hard enough to make it bleed, pulling her hair until Cybil was gasping, pushing her against the trunk of the tree. Cybil felt as if her blood had gone molten, and her hand drifted between her legs. She pressed her fingers against herself, trembling, imagining Richter’s hand instead of her own. The fantasy was so clear in her mind she could almost hear that dark voice saying,My dear, ifthiswas what you wanted, you need only have asked—
Cybil pulled her hand away and sat up, horrified. There was movement on the windowsill outside; as she turned to look, a bird took off and flew away.
Admonishing herself, Cybil got up from the bed and pulled on a robe. There was little use in trying to sleep now. She went to relight her candle, and then she cradled it in her palms, leaning her face towards the flame, feeling the heat dance across her cheeks.
Someone knocked three times on her bedroom door. Her fingers tightened around the candle.
‘Hello?’ she called. The only response was another threefold knock. It was slow, almost teasing, with the same precise rhythm of a ticking clock.
Aggravated, Cybil crossed to the door, pulling it violently open.
But there was no one there. The hallway was empty. She turned back to her room, stretching out her candle to illuminate the space. There was something scarlet on her pillow: a red carnation, petals unfurled.
‘Absolutelynot,’ Cybil said. ‘Go away.’
The knocking came again, this time more distant. Cybil returned to the corridor, and she followed the sound towards the far staircase, the one that led up to the roof. Her candle gilded her face with light. As she ascended the steps, the flame dimmed and brightened with her movements like a heartbeat.
