Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I’ve always loved night best of all. I love the way the cabin glows amber from the fire’s light. I love the fuzzy feeling over a warm, full belly, and the quiet peace of a good day ending.
Tonight, the smoke curls up from the hearth and the scent of rosemary fills the air from the kitchen where my aunt Rose works at the table.
I love watching her work, love helping even more. On this night, the table is covered in herbs—some I recognize, a few I don’t.
Behind the herbs, she has lined up a row of vials, each one decorated with a scrap of paper and a description, so we’ll remember their uses.
For a full night’s sleep
To ease the belly
To calm a cough
For pain
To extract venom
For the nerves
For rash
To stop the bleeding
To bring down a fever
To heal wounds
I’ve always found the labels to be strange. Mama and Aunt Rose know most of the tinctures by scent, but they say it may not be either of them who needs each one in the end.
Desperately, I hope they don’t mean they think I’ll never learn their tricks and secrets. I want to know how to tell a poisonous plant from a safe one on sight, even when the blooms look just the same, as they can. And how to make the perfect remedy for every ailment.
My fingers wrap around my chipped mug as I rock back and forth in my chair. My mother sits in her chair across the room, peeling potatoes for our next meal.
“Have you let him kiss you yet?” Her voice surprises me, interrupting my thoughts, and when I look over, her eyes are on the fire, not me.
My cheeks flush as I look back at my aunt, who is pretending not to have heard the question.
I don’t answer right away.
My sister, Elizabeth, and cousins, Rachel and Serena, are already grown. They’re married and happy. I am the baby, and therefore, the one left behind. The final daughter to be married off.
“That means yes,” she mutters. Her tone is not unkind, but it is pointed. I worry I’ll find disappointment as I meet her sharp eyes. She brushes a bit of her silver-threaded hair back from her face. “And the two of you have been to the meadow.”
“He wanted to see the orchard,” I admit. “It was only a walk. Aunt Rose stayed with us, of course.”
“Of course,” Mama says. When she says my name, it sounds heavier than it ever has. “Josephine, I want you to be careful with that boy.”
I sit taller in my seat. “Yes, ma’am.”
She digs in the basket for a new potato. “You love him?”
Heat hits my stomach, pulling somewhere deep. “I don’t know. I think I might.”
Her smile is tired, and it worries me. “That’s how it starts, you know.”
“Why do you look so sad? I should think you would want me to marry. Mr. Langley is from a decent family. He is kind to me.”
Mama stops her search for a potato, focusing her attention on me. “Oh, he’s quite all right, my darling. But this means it’s time we had a conversation that comes with age.”
I watch her carefully. Beth has hinted at such things, but I’ve been kept the baby. Kept in the dark. I wish to know everything that comes with being a woman. A wife.
“This will be the most important thing I ever say to you, my love. Do you understand?”
“I’m listening.”
“Wilde women have more responsibilities than most, and if you’re going to start courting, it’s time you learned about them. When it is time to marry, I hope that you’ll find a man who loves you and is good to you. Some men aren’t.”
“Most men aren’t,” Aunt Rose chimes in under her breath.
Mama doesn’t flinch. “Even the best men have bad moments. Even the best men keep secrets and break promises.”
“That’s terrible.” I lower my hands to my lap, thinking of Elliot and how I’d feel if he ever broke a promise. I want to think he’s different.
“You, too, will have secrets, my dear. And yours will mean much more than his.” She adjusts in her seat. “I’m speaking of Foxglove.”
I blink. “The cellar.”
“Among other things, yes. The hidden doors. The hollow walls. The tunnels beneath the floor. The set of stairs hidden behind the broom cupboard.” She eyes me like she always has when I’ve been caught doing something wrong.
“Don’t think I don’t know you’ve found most of her secrets by now.
” There’s a deep breath before she adds, “The dark places we go when we need to vanish are just for us to know. The places they built for us.”
“They?”
Her gaze falls toward the hearth, then travels up to the word carved into the stone: WILDE.
Our name. Our home.
“Our mothers. And theirs. The women who bore our name and who knew what it meant to be hunted, to be silenced, to be owned. Long before you or I existed, they carved this house into the land with their bare hands, their tears, and their blood. And from that moment, she has protected us. All she asks is that we keep her secrets. The daughters—not the sons—keep her secrets.”
Slowly she stands, and I know by the look on her face that her joints are hurting tonight. Willow bark. The remedy for her pain comes to me at once, a whisper of a lesson I learned long ago.
She crosses the room and pulls open a drawer near the cupboard. Carefully, she sifts through the contents before pulling something out.
When she returns to me, she reveals a piece of old linen. Her eyes lock on mine, and I feel fear like I’ve never felt.
“You will think you are the exception. That you can outsmart Foxglove, that you can share her secrets, and there will not be consequences. You will be like many others before you, and you will be wrong.” She unwraps the linen, and I gasp at the lock of dark hair.
There’s also a brass ring and a rusted metal brooch.
“What is this?” I ask, my voice catching in my throat. Whatever it is, it feels like I’m at the bottom of a river, like I can’t reach the surface.
“These belonged to the men they loved. The ones they tried to break the rules for.” She places it in my hand.
“Your grandmother gave it to Rose when she came of age. It’s a reminder—a warning—passed down from mother to daughter.
Women before you broke the rules for the men they loved, and they paid the consequences. ”
I stare at the items, afraid to touch them.
“What happened to them?” I can’t bear to think of my family being killers.
“Different things,” Mama says. Her voice is flat.
Not cruel, but not sad. “Now, don’t go looking at me like that.
” She knows what I’m thinking even if I can’t bring the words to my lips.
Heat blooms in my cheeks. “It’s not always us.
The stories I’ve heard…there was a grandfather who got trampled by a horse, another who fell in the creek and never returned.
By that same token, a man who threatened a Wilde woman many years ago, who learned her secrets by accident, grew very ill and died in his sleep just weeks later.
It is a blessing and a curse, you see, but what matters is that it is.
You must treat the rule as law, as sovereign.
Foxglove does not wish to be known by men.
That is the pact she made with the Wilde women who love her.
That is what she demands in exchange for all she gives us. ”
I can’t hide my disappointment, and I don’t care to try. “But what will I tell my husband? What did you tell Papa?”
“You can tell him you love him. That’s all they need. You can share your bed, your life, your table with him. But Foxglove and her secrets belong to you and you alone.” She puts a hand over my heart.
“I don’t want to lie to the man I love.” I feel like a child as cool tears spring to my eyes.
When Mama looks at me, I see no judgment, just calm. She is solemn and steady as she takes the cloth back and returns it to the drawer. Slowly, she pads across the floor and back to her chair. We sit in heavy silence as she sets to work on the potatoes again.
“You are not alone in your feelings, my darling. Generations of Wilde women have shared your sentiments, many of whom fought it and handled it in their own ways. But the result is the same. If you keep her secrets, this cabin will love you. She will keep your daughters safe from the weather and from the wolves. She will give you something to return to whenever you feel lost, and warmth for your tired bones when the world is too cold. She demands very little from us, but loyalty is not optional. Neither is secrecy. I don’t tell you this to be cruel, but to prepare you. ”
Again, the silence stretches long before she adds, softer than before, “One day, you will understand the need for secrets. Even the men we love can become men we don’t recognize. Our ancestors understood what you have not learned.”
I nod, but she’s wrong. She has to be. I will prove it. Elliot and I will be different. Mama gives me a smile that looks wary to the bone, one filled with grief and worry, but she need not worry.
Elliot isn’t like the others. The men of whom she speaks. He will keep our secrets.
Later, in bed, it takes me a long while to fall asleep, but when I do, I dream of the women who walked these floors before me.
My mother and grandmothers, the ones I know of and the ones I never will.
The women who moved through the shadows of Foxglove, hidden and safe, who led their daughters through tunnels, carried them in silence from unnamed danger.
The women who trusted the wrong people.
They were secret keepers. All of them.
Tonight, the secrets rest with me, and I vow—to myself and to Foxglove—to learn from their mistakes.