Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The knock comes too late in the day, just before the sun disappears behind the lowest part of the trees. It’s a knock that worries me—three hard raps at the wood. Too rigid to be a friend, too brazen for a peddler. Besides, no one comes to Foxglove without cause. Not for many years.
At first, I don’t move. I just sit straight as a stick at the table, my palm wrapped around my mug of tea, steam rising to fill the air in front of my eyes.
I lift my hand and place it on the gem I wear around my neck, rubbing my fingers across the cool stone. Long ago, I learned to wait when the knocks come. Not every visitor who arrives at Foxglove comes in kindness.
The knock comes again, more urgent, and I blink my eyes, looking for signs of a torch or any movement outside the window.
Slowly, as quiet as a mouse, I rise from my seat. My joints scream in protest, and I wonder if I still have willow bark in the cupboard. At the door, I’m slow to open it, but as I do, I find my guest still waiting.
She’s young, no more than five and thirty, and at first glance her face reminds me of my dear Mary. I’m struck by how badly I miss her, how badly I miss our mama. Her dark hair clings damp to her brow, though I can’t recall it raining, and her cloak is far too thin for the season.
Her eyes speak of secrets, her expression of fears. Something is wrong, and I know it without her having to say a word. In the distance, the trees seem to know it, too. I feel them leaning in, listening.
“Are you Anna Wilde?” the woman asks me. Her hands are wrapped tightly around the shoulders of a girl—and a girl she is, barely more than a child.
The girl keeps her eyes down, not meeting mine, and I want to tip her face up, ask her the meaning of this. Ask her why she looks as empty as a mug that’s never been refilled.
Her expression is vacant. Hollow. Haunted. I know that look. I wore it myself after Mama was taken from us. And then again after the cough took my sister from me last winter.
“Please,” she repeats, and my eyes find hers again, looking away from the child. “They said… I asked, and they said if there was anyone who could help, it was you. It was Anna Wilde.” She repeats my name as if it’s an incantation, low and slow. “Please, Mistress.…”
Still, I don’t speak. Not yet. Our family has been tricked by their type before, and I won’t make the same mistakes again.
The woman thrusts her daughter forward, so I can get a better look at her in the firelight from the hearth. “It’s my daughter who needs your help. She’s just a child.”
I survey the girl. She flinches under my gaze as quickly as if I’ve slapped her and, for the first time, I notice the way she’s clutching her cloak tighter over her belly.
My joints ache, but it’s no longer from my own pain. I’m feeling hers. I understand now that I don’t have a choice. I never did.
With a quick nod, I step aside, glancing over the woman’s shoulder toward the village to be sure they haven’t been followed. “Get inside.”
The woman’s breath sounds more like a prayer as she pushes the girl forward and through the door. I latch it behind them, whispering a prayer of my own, asking the earth to shield us, and for it to look away.
Silence fills Foxglove as heavily as rain as I move across the parlor to the kitchen, picking up my candle from the table on the way.
I set the candle upon the wooden counter and take two mugs down from the shelf. As I turn, the hem of my shawl brushes the candle, sending it tumbling to the counter with a sharp crash.
I scoop it up, but not before the wax has spilled a line as white as bone, and the flame has scorched a dark spot the size of my finger.
I scrape away the wax with my fingernail, hands trembling, then pause and draw in a breath.
My finger—wrinkled and swollen at the joints with age—passes over the blackened scorch mark.
I can’t fix it.
This moment and this memory will remain with Foxglove long after I am gone. I close my eyes, grounding myself the way my mother taught me to when my worries get the best of me.
By the fire, I take the copper kettle and fill their mugs with tea.
“Chamomile,” I say, though I’m not sure if the name means anything to them. Not everyone cares to know what works and why, the way I do. I add honey from the fresh comb I collected in the garden, and one would think it were manna straight from God himself, the way they drink it down.
I wonder—but don’t dare ask—how far they must’ve come. How fast they must’ve run. I wonder if anyone is looking for them.
“The man lives in our village,” the woman says when her mug is empty. “He has a wife, Mistress. A family. But it wasn’t my Sophia who caused him to stray, you have my word.”
I don’t need her word, but I don’t say as much. I want to tell her that I would help her regardless, that she is a child and he is a man. That there would be no excuse. But these types of things aren’t said by decent people, I have learned. So, I remain quiet.
“He visited our farm while my husband was away. We thought he was a good man when we invited him inside.” She puts her hand out, taking her daughter’s.
“We were very wrong. I tried to stop him. I begged him to take me instead, to leave her be. She was… She was promised to another man, and now she’s ruined.
We’d already paid her dowry, and we haven’t got anything left.
She’ll be penniless, as will we. Unless…
” She looks at the girl, whose stony eyes remain fixed straight ahead, at nothing and everything all at once.
“I’ve had eight children myself, Mistress. I know the signs.”
Something twists deep inside of me. Ancient pain. Fear that feels even older. I think of my daughters, long since grown and gone.
“Does anyone in town know? You said they sent you to me. Who?”
“No one knows, ma’am. I assure you, I would never tell a soul.
I asked for help with my sleeping. Told the ones I asked that I’ve been waking hot as a flame.
They were friends, not enemies, but I couldn’t take any chances.
” She shakes her head, pinning me with an angry glare.
“They’ll blame her, you know. Say she tempted him, that she tricked him somehow.
Or worse, still—they’ll claim it’s devil’s work.
That she lay with the devil himself. They’ll kill her, Mistress.
There’s still plenty of men who remember the trials, who are just aching to sink their teeth into the witches again.
Like they…” She bows her head. “Forgive me, but just like they did your mother.”
My eyes go sharp. I feel them and refuse to soften them.
Does she think I’ve forgotten the trials that took my mother away from me?
All on the accusations of a man who meant to harm me?
Does she suspect I’ve forgotten how they tried to burn down Foxglove with us inside, how my mother let them take her to save me?
I will never forget that day, nor will I forget that evil man, though I heard he died before the rope went around Mama’s neck.
She quiets, looking ashamed.
They left her body hanging in a dirty shift while Mary and I watched from the tree line.
We were just girls then, despite the baby growing in my sister’s womb, hidden beneath layers of cloth.
We were too young to run—and had nowhere to go should we have tried—but too old to forget the way her face looked as she went still.
After, we buried her alone next to the oak tree, next to our gran. Next to the others. And with her death, I vowed to never use the knowledge she’d given me, to never help this town that took her from me ever again.
Whether or not she meant it, this woman has just reminded me of why. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. That work died right along with my mother.”
“They will kill her,” the woman reminds me, angry.
“Perhaps.” My voice sounds cold to my own ears. “Perhaps not.” I stand, moving away from the fire. “There are others who—”
“No.” The woman slices through my words with her own, dripping with venom. “There aren’t. Not anymore. The ones who survived moved away. Or they married or joined the church. Do you know how far we had to travel to see you? Do you have any idea what we’ve done? They said you—”
“They misspoke.”
She bites her lip, and I can see that she’s fighting back a rage as hot as the fire itself. The room is still, silent. The only sound comes from the fire crackling in the hearth, reminding us it’s there. Alive. Right here with us.
“You should leave,” I tell them. “The woods aren’t safe after dark.” The world isn’t either, but I don’t say as much.
The mother doesn’t move except to look at her daughter, and when she does, the girl finally looks up. But it’s not her mother’s face she looks into, it’s mine. Her eyes are so dull and deep, like the river stones I used to skip with Mary. She looks lost in there. Drowning.
“Where can I go?” she asks me, her voice small. “Where can I go that he’ll never find me again?”
That does it. Her words, the innocence in them, crack something open inside my chest that I’ve kept bound up with rope and silence for as long as I can remember. I feel it unwinding, unfolding. In her eyes, I see myself. Alone. Afraid. Marked by Mama’s death. Condemned for surviving.
Slowly, I turn away from her. I don’t speak, just act. I find the cupboard and open the false back. Inside, I take down the old bundles and vials no one has touched in what feels like a lifetime.
I open cloths Mama wrapped in twine. Inside, I find some of her favorites. Sage, pennyroyal, and ginger in one. Rosemary, turmeric, mint, and tansy in another. In a third, valerian and thyme.
All forbidden.
All remembered.
The linens are stiff with age, and the herbs crumble beneath my touch as I slowly run my fingers over each of her ingredients, thinking of my mother. These items were her life’s work. It meant so much to her to learn and to help, and in the end, it cost her everything.
I close my eyes, tracing the edge of one of the cloths with my fingers. When I turn back around, the woman is watching me. She doesn’t want to look afraid, but I see the fear in her eyes.
The girl still doesn’t look afraid. She doesn’t look as if she feels much of anything, and deep inside my chest I understand why. If I can help her, I must.
Yesterday, I was merely an old woman, prepared to take our secrets to my grave. Now, I’m no longer certain these secrets should be forgotten.
My daughters should know the truth. Of Foxglove and of my mother. Of the secrets that run in their blood and what it has cost us.
But first…
“This is not without risk. And pain. There will be fever. You will think you are dying.” I wait for the girl to nod, and when she does, I look at her mother. “She’ll need to rest. And she’ll need to stay here, so I can help her through it.”
Her mother’s voice is soft and raspy. “Will she survive?”
I nod once. There is no other option. This house cannot withstand another death in my lifetime. I refuse to see it happen, and I tell Foxglove as much.
The old house hears me, even if nothing changes in the air. “I’ll start the broth and get clean linens. Settle in. It’s going to be a long few days.”
The woman lunges for me, and I lurch back. She takes my hand, gripping it tight. “Bless you, Mistress.”
My smile is stiff, and I can’t thank her. I don’t say a word, in fact. I take the girl’s hand and direct her to the chair nearer to the fire. Her skin is cold as ice.
She and her mother sit together, whispering softly to each other as her mother strokes her hair and kisses her temple.
I wonder if she’s thinking of when the girl was very young, of when she told her stories of sunshine and happiness and promised her the world would bring her nothing but.
It’s all I can think of, the days when I told those same tales to my own girls.
Why do we lie to our daughters?
Perhaps because the truth is too brutal to bear.
I stoke the fire all night, keeping it going as I boil the water and grind the herbs. My hands are tired and unpracticed, but I remember everything Mama and Mary taught me, and I work in a way I hope would have made them both proud.
I remember watching Mama work, sitting at her feet as she stirred, ground, and boiled this or that. It’s strange how long it’s been since I’ve thought of those days, and how easily they slipped back into my memory.
I thought I’d buried this part of myself along with my mother. I thought it was gone and that I’d never miss it, but Foxglove hasn’t forgotten.
She doesn’t forget.
My hands may grow old, and my body may give out, but the knowledge passed between mother and daughter within these walls lives on. It will never leave, and I must make sure of it.
When it is time, I pour the tincture into a small glass and whisper my mother’s name softly into the night. Wherever she is—within these walls or somewhere far away—I want her to know she’s with me. That her wisdom will live on.
Nothing changes as I pass the drink to the girl. The flames don’t flicker or hiss. The windows don’t rattle. The walls stay just as they’ve always been. As they will always be.
Even so, somehow, the room is warmer.