Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Iwas finishing the cloak when the knock came. Good wool, dyed with madder root, boiled batch after batch until the red came out deep and rich. I’d been working on it for weeks, stitching by candlelight after the day’s healing was done.
The needle slipped. Pricked my finger. A bead of blood welled up, bright red against my skin, and the knock hit the door at the same moment, hard enough to rattle the latch.
A knock after sunset was never good news, the village must have gathered around supper tables hours ago, and the streets were empty except for stray dogs and the occasional drunk stumbling home from the tavern.
I stuck my finger in my mouth and tasted copper. Set the fabric aside and crossed to the door. Lifted the latch. The hinges screamed in the silence. I kept meaning to oil them but never did. Some part of me liked the warning they gave.
Outside, Anna Müller stood on my doorstep, her face hidden beneath a hood pulled so low I couldn’t even see her eyes properly.
Her shoulders hunched forward like she was trying to disappear inside her own body.
The girl was young, plain-faced, with work-roughened hands and tired eyes, the deep-down tiredness that came from living in a house with no softness in it.
Her father was the cooper. Made barrels for the tavern and not much else, drank most of what he earned and took out the rest on his wife and daughter. Everyone knew. No one did anything. That was how things worked — a man’s home was his kingdom.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late.” She forced the words out with her focus fixed on the ground between us. “I’ve been having headaches. Terrible ones. I heard you have remedies.”
I studied her face. She wouldn’t look at me, her hands clasped in front of her with the knuckles white and the fingers twisting together. “Come in.” I stepped back and held the door wider. “Quickly. Before someone sees you.”
She slipped through and I closed the door behind her. Anna stood in the middle of my cottage with her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes darting from the herbs hanging from the rafters to the jars on my work table to the bundles and pouches and bottles lining the shelves.
“Sit.” I pointed to the chair by the hearth. “Tell me about these headaches.”
She perched on the edge of the seat, her spine rigid and her leg bouncing against the floor.
“They come and go.” She picked at a thread on her sleeve, still not meeting my eyes. “Behind my eyes. Sometimes it’s so bad I can’t see straight.”
I watched her while she talked. Something was off — the way she kept glancing at the herb table, the way she answered my questions too quickly, like she’d rehearsed them.
But I’d seen enough nervous people in my time, people who were ashamed to ask for help, people who were terrified their families would find out they’d come to me.
Anna was probably just scared of her father, scared of what he’d do if he found out she’d left the house after dark.
I went to my work table and mixed a simple remedy. Willow bark for the pain, chamomile for the tension, lavender to help her sleep.
“Steep this in hot water.” I pressed the pouch into her hands and felt how ice-cold her fingers were. “Drink it before bed. If the headaches don’t ease in a few days, come back.”
“How much?” She was already reaching into her pocket, her movements jerky and too fast.
“Two pennies.” I held out my palm.
She pressed the coins into it, her hand trembling against mine. Then she stood so quickly the chair scraped against the floor, already pulling her hood back up. “I should go. Before my father notices I’m not at home.”
“Be careful going home.” I walked her to the door.
She nodded. Her hood had slipped back and I could see her face properly now, pale and drawn, with dark circles under her eyes like she hadn’t slept in days. “Thank you.” She broke on the second word, yanked the door open and hurried into the night.
The hinges screamed behind her. Her dark shape disappeared into the darkness, and I stood by the door watching until I couldn’t see her anymore. A wrongness nagged at me that I couldn’t name. The way she’d looked around the cottage. The way her eyes had lingered on certain things.
I turned back to my work table. Everything looked the same — the jars in their places, the bundles hanging where they should, the pouches lined up the way I always kept them. But something felt wrong.
I started checking. Chamomile. Comfrey. Calendula. Ginger. Everything where it should be.
Then I reached for the pennyroyal.
The jar was gone.
I searched the table, the shelf above it, the floor in case it had fallen. But I knew, even as I searched, that I wouldn’t find it. The jar hadn’t fallen. Hadn’t been misplaced. Anna had taken it.
I sank into the chair by the hearth and pressed my palms flat against my thighs to stop the trembling. Pennyroyal. I knew what it was for, what women used it for when they were desperate and had no other choice.
Anna was pregnant. Had to be. Why else would she steal pennyroyal? Why else risk coming to my cottage after dark, lying about headaches, taking something she knew she couldn’t ask for?
I thought about her face, the fear in it, the desperation. Thought about her father with his heavy hands and quick temper and what he would do if he found out his daughter was carrying a child she couldn’t explain.
I’d seen Anna at the market last month, seen the way Jakob Brauer watched her from across the square, the way she looked back when she thought nobody was paying attention.
Jakob — one of Klaus’s boys. Broad shoulders, easy smile, not a thought in his head past the next ale and the next girl.
A boy who took what he wanted and let someone else deal with what came after.
I understood why Anna had taken it. Fear like that drove a woman to do desperate things. But understanding didn’t change what would happen if something went wrong.
If Anna took too much, she would bleed. She could bleed out on her father’s floor before anyone could help her, and when they found her, when they started asking questions, someone would know.
Someone would trace the herbs back to the woman the village already suspected.
And Klaus, the man who’d been waiting for an excuse, would finally have his reason.
But there was nothing I could do. Anna had the pennyroyal now. I could only hope she was mindful enough.
The cloak lay on the table where I’d left it, the needle still trailing thread.
I picked it up and ran my fingers over the wool.
Half-finished. Sophia would have helped me with the stitching, her hands were always steadier than mine, her seams always straighter.
She’d have sat across from me at this table and we’d have worked by candlelight and talked about nothing and everything and the hours would have passed without either of us noticing.
But she was dead. I’d known it for years, even before I stopped pretending otherwise.
After she vanished, Grandmother held on for two years, waiting, watching the door, keeping Sophia’s bed made.
Then she stopped. Went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with patience.
Grandmother had seen her ghost. After that she hardly spoke, didn’t even eat properly, and within the year she was gone too.
I set the cloak down. Couldn’t work on it anymore — my hands were too unsteady, my mind too full of Anna and Sophia and all the women who made desperate choices and paid for them.
My fingers found the ribbon at my wrist. Faded. Fraying. Still red. I’d buried my parents. Lost Sophia. Buried Grandmother. Lost William. And I was still here. Still breathing in this cold, dark cottage with embers dying in the hearth and trouble gathering outside my door.
I would survive this too. Whatever came next, Klaus, the visions, the village turning against me, I would find a way. I had to. There was no one left to do it for me.