Liar, whispered a familiar voice.
My skin prickled as if a thousand witches were looking at me. But it was only one creature who watched me now: the goddess.
I stole a glance around the room, but there was no sign of her. If Matthew were to detect the goddess’s presence, he’d start asking questions I didn’t want to answer. And he might uncover one secret I was still hiding. “Thank goodness,” I said under my breath.
“Did you say something?” Matthew asked. “No,” I lied again, and crept closer to Matthew. “You must be hearing things.”
10
I stumbled downstairs the next morning, exhausted from my encounter with witchwater and the vivid dreams that had followed.
“The house was awfully quiet last night.” Sarah stood behind the old pulpit with her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, red hair wild around her face, and the Bishop grimoire open in front of her. The sight would have given Emily’s Puritan ancestor, Cotton Mather, fits.
“Really? I didn’t notice.” I yawned, trailing my fingers through the old wooden dough trough that held fresh-picked lavender. Soon the herbs would be hanging upside down to dry from the twine running between the rafters. A spider was adding to that serviceable web with a silken version of her own.
“You’ve certainly been busy this morning,” I said, changing the subject. The milk-thistle heads were in the sieve, ready to be shaken to free the seeds from their downy surround. Bunches of yellow flowered rue and button-centered feverfew were tied with string and ready for hanging. Sarah had dragged out her heavy flower press, and there was a tray of long, aromatic leaves waiting to go into it.
Bouquets of newly harvested flowers and herbs sat on the counter, their purpose not yet clear.
“There’s lots of work to do,” Sarah said. “Someone’s been tending to the garden while we were gone, but they have their own plots to take care of, and the winter and spring seeds never got into the ground.”
Several anonymous “someones” must have been involved, given the size of the witch’s garden at the Bishop house. Thinking to help, I reached for a bunch of rue. The scent of it would always remind me of Satu and the horrors that I’d experienced after she took me from the garden at Sept-Tours to La Pierre. Sarah’s hand shot out and intercepted mine.
“Pregnant women don’t touch rue, Diana. If you want to help me, go to the garden and cut some moonwort. Use that.” She pointed to her white-handled knife. The last time I’d held it, I’d used it to open my own vein and save Matthew. Neither of us had forgotten it. Neither of us mentioned it either.
“Moonwort’s that plant with the pods on it, right?”
“Purple flowers. Long stalks. Papery-looking flat disks,” Sarah instructed with more patience than usual. “Cut the stems down to the base of the plant. We’ll separate the flowers from the rest before we hang them up to dry.”
Sarah’s garden was tucked into a far corner of the orchard where the apple trees thinned out and the cypresses and oaks of the forest didn’t yet overshadow the soil. It was surrounded by palisades of fencing made from metal posts, wire mesh, pickets, retooled pallets—if it could be used to keep out rabbits, voles, and skunks, Sarah had used it. For extra security the whole perimeter was smudged twice a year and warded with protection spells.
Inside the enclosure Sarah had re-created a bit of paradise. Some of the garden’s wide paths led to shady glens where ferns and other tender plants found shelter in the shadows of the taller trees. Others bisected the raised vegetable beds that were closest to the house, with their trellises and beanpoles.
Normally these would be covered with vegetation—sweet peas and snap peas and beans of every description—but they were skeletal this year.
I skirted Sarah’s small teaching garden where she instructed the coven’s children—and sometimes their parents—on the elemental associations of various flowers, plants, and herbs. Her young charges had put up their own fence, using paint stirrers, willow twigs, and Popsicle sticks to demarcate their sacred space from that of the larger garden. Easy-to-grow plants like elfwort and yarrow helped the children understand the seasonal cycle of birth, growth, decay, and fallowness that guided any witch’s work in the craft. A hollow stump served as a container for mint and other invasive plants.