Page 49 of The Witch

I try to ignore the man staring at me as I take inventory of my small cell by the light of a single torch mounted on the wall.

It does not require much time. The cell itself is hardly spacious enough to accommodate a full-grown man lying down. A mound of straw lies on the floor, with a threadbare woolen coverlet atop. This must be where I am expected to sleep. In one corner stands a small washbasin, along with a chamber pot. The idea of using it while Reeve is watching is distasteful, but a time will come when there is no other recourse.

I want to go home. I do not want to sleep in a pile of straw. I long for the soft bed in my home. But I remind myself I will not be here long. Even if I must proceed with the trial, they cannot possibly find me guilty of practicing witchcraft when I have done nothing wrong.

Or can they? After what they did to Hitty, I cannot be sure.

“Caroline Eldridge.”

My own name spoken by an unfamiliar voice startles me. Jonas Reeve is standing across from me, his hands wrapped around the bars of his cell. He is so close to me, if he reached out with one of his long arms, he almost might be able to touch the bars of my own cell.

“Do not speak my given name,” I rasp out. I do not want to look at him, but somehow, I cannot look away. “How do you even know of it? Are you indeed the devil?”

I have never heard a laugh as devoid of joy as the one that comes from Reeve’s lips. “I am no more a devil than you are a witch.”

I cock my head. “I very much doubt that.”

“Perhaps you are indeed a witch then?”

I did not plan to engage with this man, but I will not tolerate his blasphemy. “I am not a witch.”

“And I am not the devil.”

“Yet you know my name even though I have not spoken it.”

Reeve is silent for a moment. When we still had the extra light of Strickland’s torch, I could make out the whites of his eyes, but now I can discern only the faintest outline of his features. The unkempt locks. The nose that appears to have once been broken. The untamed beard. The torch flickers for a moment, and I catch but a glimpse of his teeth, which are surprisingly white and sharp as a blade.

“Hitty said it to me,” he finally says.

My face burns at the words of my friend, who dangled yesterday from the noose in Town Square. “Hitty spoke to you?”

“She spoke quite a lot.”

He does not elaborate. I do not understand why Hitty would have said two words to a man who killed four women. She herself warned me of him.

Perhaps Hitty was not as innocent as I believed.

“She told me you would be here next,” he says.

“Because I am a witch?”

“Nay,” he says. “Because you are a fool.”

I flinch at his words, although it is hard not to find truth in them. Was it not the work of a fool to rush forward during a hanging that I had no chance of stopping? I had to try, but now I am here. Perhaps Hitty was right. I am a fool.

“She said that about me?”

“She did not use that word, but I understood her meaning. And here you are.” He pauses meaningfully. “She said other things about you as well.”

I wonder if this is true or simply a game he is playing to taunt me while we are down here together. Despite my flicker of curiosity, I do not wish to engage him further, and I intend to tell him so.

“Mr. Reeve,” I begin.

“Jonas,” he corrects me. “As we will be living here together, you should address me by my given name.”

“And you,” I say, “may address me as Mistress Eldridge.”

“As you wish,” he says simply. “Whatever I call you, you will be hanged either way.”