Page 57 of The Witch

I grasp for the plate of bread, but he holds it just out of my reach. He is still smiling.

“Next time,” he continues, “you will behave exactly as I ask without complaint, will you not?”

“Yes,” I choke out.

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

“Say it, Mistress Eldridge. Grant me your word.”

“I promise.” I am desperately holding back the tears that threaten to fall. “I promise I will behave.”

The way Strickland is looking at me is almost hungry. I met Strickland’s wife once, a painfully thin waif of a woman who startled every time I tried to speak to her. I think about Mistress Strickland as the deputy finally offers me the plate. I tear into the bread as if I were a wild animal.

“It will be a shame to see you hang,” he says.

I pause with a mouthful of rye in my mouth. Strickland is still ogling me, and while his words were meant to torment me, it was not his only motivation.

Strickland truly believes that I will be found guilty on Monday. Whether he believes I am a witch or not is not clear to me though, and I am not at all sure he will be sorry to see me hang.

41

’Tis a miracle that I manage to drift off to sleep that eve. Between my rumbling stomach and the draft and the uncomfortable bed of straw, I thought I would spend another eve tossing and turning. But exhaustion wins out, and within a few minutes of lying down, I am deep in slumber.

I am awakened by the sound of crumbling stone.

I do not know the hour. In Pemberton, we have a lovely grandfather clock passed down from Archie’s father, and Archie himself owns two silver timepieces. But in this jail, I only have the vaguest sense of whether it is even day or night. There is no light coming into the cellar from the cracks near the ceiling, so that means it must be night.

The single torch is flickering on the wall. I creep over to the bars of my cell, squinting in Jonas’s direction. Any sounds must have come from him, because there is nobody else here at this hour. I peer into the darkness, and I can only barely make out the silhouette of Jonas lifting something over his head, then bringing it down hard on the ground to the sound of stone splintering.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

He does not answer me. There is another resounding thud, hard enough for the floor to tremble. I cannot imagine what Jonas is trying to do. Unless…

“Are you trying to escape?” I ask him.

Jonas pauses and lifts his eyes. There is not enough light to even make out the whites. Once again, they are pools of blackness—two dark holes in his face.

“You would be wise to do the same, Mistress Eldridge,” he says.

I observe him for a moment. He lifts his arm again, and now I realize that the object clutched in his right hand is the heavy metal buckle of his boot. He is using it as a tool to break through the stone floor.

“I will tell,” I say.

He ignores me and strikes yet again.

“I will tell Deputy Strickland you are trying to escape,” I say, more forcefully this time. “I will not allow harm to come to any more maidens at your hands.”

Jonas lowers the buckle in his right hand. He pauses for a moment, as if deep in thought. He heard me. I have no doubt in my head that he understands what I mean to do.

With a loud grunt, he rises to his feet, stepping forth to wrap his fingers around the bars. He stares across the distance between us. I don’t think he is quite close enough that he could touch me, but I am not certain of this. If Jonas Reeve wanted to wrap his fingers around my neck, I believe he could do it. I am suddenly very sorry I ever said a word to the man.

“Even if you tell Strickland,” he says quietly, “I will still get free.”

His voice is low, as if he does not want anyone to hear, even though we are the only two in the jailhouse. I take a step back, my legs wobbling beneath me.

“But if you tell,” he continues in that same low, rumbling voice, “the first life I take when I get free will be yours.”