His footsteps draw nearer as his figure comes into view, and I watch her pause her play, her face turning away from me and toward the stairs. A wicked smile grows across his terrible face.
No.
“Mama?”
My heart becomes a wild boar, ramming and fighting against the cage of ribs under my skin. My temples pound and my hands shake.
I wait to see what he’ll do. One breath. Then another.
“Your mama is not here to help ya now, child.” His voice is low and thick, dripping with malice and likely the foulest of breath. “I’m here to bring ya a message.”
She stands for the man, trembling but respectful of her elder. I curse the day I ever taught her manners as my darling girl shakes before him in a way I feel deep in my womb, her first home and safest place. How I wish I could tuck her back there, safe and sound and with me always.
“The Lord has seen your evil ways, Anna Wilde.” He wags a dirty, beefy finger at her, and I want to tear it off with nothing but my teeth. “Your father was killed riding horseback, and your mother has taken up with the devil. Taken you with her.”
“S-s-sir?” Her voice is so small.Sheis so small. Just shy of thirteen and still a baby in every way that matters. She hasn’tgrown like her sister did, like I myself did. She doesn’t yet know the dangers of the world.
I’m trapped with very few options. If I reveal myself, I will have to kill him. My mother’s warning rings in my head, and I know Foxglove will accept nothing less.
“Don’t play dumb with me, girl. I watched you in the meadow just last week, with your tokens and devil’s weeds.”
At once, the blood drains from my limbs, though it’s not his words I’m afraid of. His kind is familiar to me. He’s but an image in a looking glass that reminds me of so many others. Men who fear what they do not understand. Godless, terrible men who only care for power and how they can wield it. Men who name themselves as righteous in church each week, though their hearts are black as night. No, I do not fear his tongue or the vile words he uses. I fear his hands only and what they might do to my daughter.
My sweet girl trembles, her voice as feeble as a candle in the strongest wind. “Sir, I wouldn’t. I-I’m afraid you are mistaken. In the meadow, I only gathered herbs like my mother taught me?—”
“Herbs?” He looks at her through hardened eyes, as if he’s never heard the word. He does not wish to know the truth, only to punish. “It was only herbs, was it? And was it only herbs your mother gave to my daughter, then? I expect you’ll want me to believe that just as well. Lies spill easily from the lips of witches.”
My jaw tightens as I realize who this man is, and just how I helped his daughter. How I tried. But by the time she came to me, she was too sick. The bloodletting he’d subjected her to had weakened her body too much.
But Anna knows nothing of that. I have taught Mary the things I know. How to pull fever from the blood and how to quiet the womb when she aches. I showed her valerian root and whereto find it in the woods, showed her its uses. I have taught her to heal, never to harm, but dear Anna knows neither yet.
Her only tasks have been to fetch the plants and herbs I need for my tinctures and salves. She knows that I use them, but she does not yet know what for.
This man cares not what she knows. I see it in his eyes. For nothing, for picking flowers and playing in the meadow, they will string her from the gallows tree, should they have their way.
I hear my mother’s voice in my ear, and I am but a child again, needing her so desperately in this moment. From the second William passed, I have known a day like this might come. I know what the men in the village must think of me, out here alone and happy to be. I know how they must hate me for it.
He takes a step nearer to Anna, and I hear his weight shift, the leather of his boots straining. Something in my chest ignites like the flame of her candle. I can smell him now, that’s how close he is to me.
I can smell the sweat and smoke and horse that clings to his skin.
“I do not know what you mean, sir. Mama and I are not witches.” Her little voice is so strong, so brave, and I can’t stand here another moment. I bend down, my fingers grazing the cool, damp earth until I find a stone large enough to do what I need. I toss it with all my might, down the passage and into the darkness. The stone clangs against the walls, this way and that, and the man turns. His head lifts as he hears it.
With his back to me, I see my chance. I push against the secret door, and it releases with a sound that feels like a breath, as if Foxglove is breathing with me in this moment.
When he turns back to Anna, he does not see me. Not right away. I am hidden in the shadows of the cellar, in the darkness. I step forward slowly, my body moving with the shadows cast by the candle on the ground.
He lurches back as if I’m a snake, and he is but a horse. I rather like that comparison, though I suspect most horses are much smarter than he.
“What the devil is this? You rise from the shadows like the witch that you are.”
I step forward, unafraid. “I come to my daughter’s rescue, like themotherI am. Standing between my blood and the wolf.”
Anna moves to stand next to me, and I take her hand, holding her close against my side. His dark eyes flick down to her and back up to me, and his lips curl with something dark and dangerous. Something that has been carried in the expressions of men since the beginning of time. Something women have always known to fear.
“And what’s to stop that wolf from killing you both in the name of God?” he asks, his rank breath on my face. “Ridding this village of the witches you are.”
“You know nothing of which you speak.”
