Page 74 of The Women of Wild Hill
“Your mother was given no say in things?”
“She had a say,” Brigid admitted reluctantly. “She told us she killed herself so that my sister and I would find this particular path. She died for the two of us.”
Harriett winced. “Blessings and sacrifice go hand in hand, you know. Grieve your mother, but know that everything that has happened has brought you to this moment, just as your mother knew it would.”
“What if my path ends the same way hers did?” Everything about her relationship with Liam made her think it might.
“Then you will be given a choice as well. May I offer you another piece of advice?”
“Of course,” Brigid told her.
“Don’t be afraid. Trust your mother, who loved you so dearlythat she sacrificed her life for you. And trust yourself to know what will have to be done. You have great power and you are wise enough to meet this moment.”
“Thank you,” Brigid said.
“You’re welcome.” Harriett rose to her feet. “But please—no more fucking feuds with your sister. You two need each other. The rest of us are depending on you.”
The Woman’s Weapon
The mansion was my home for over one hundred years. Never in all my days had I seen anything like it. The house I grew up in could have fit in the parlor with room to spare. In the land of my youth, only the richest families ever knew such luxury. Most were granted their lands and castles in return for an ancestor’s prowess at war. Killing with swords was noble then. Real men hacked their enemies into bloody bits. Only cowards, witches, and women turned to poison.
When I roamed the rooms of the mansion, its beautiful beds were no use to me. The dead have little need for sleep. I never grew hungry, so I had no need of a kitchen. I could not feel the cold, so the fireplaces remained unlit. During the hours that the Duncan family was active, I watched and listened. There was so much to learn from them. New words, new ideas, new developments beyond Wild Hill’s walls. In my time, change came slowly. Their world never seemed to pause. I was able pick out patterns they were too close to, to see. The disasters taking place with increasing frequency. The wars that spanned the entire globe. The blighting of the Old One’s lands.
And I saw the concentration of the wealthy men responsible for so much of it right here on this Island—or on that other island just a bit to the west. Ivy found my mushrooms, but Lilith was the first to catch a glimpse of what I saw. She began to pick out the men, one by one, from the newspaper. By then I knew how to help her.
DURING THE DARK, QUIET HOURSof the night, the library here was my refuge. When I first entered, I could read only a few words. I taughtmyself over the years that followed and cracked open many a book. One thing immediately struck me as strange. If you had judged by the history books, you might have come to believe that women were the rarest of species. Even tomes with accounts of the very times I had lived through treated us as though we barely existed. It seemed the only way for a woman to work her way into history was to be born with a crown on her head—or to lose her head for some form of treachery. You either gave birth to kings or attempted to kill them.
It was the witches and poisoners who kept me reading. To be honest, I quite liked the company. They certainly made for a thrilling story. But any woman could have guessed the true tales behind them. Anne Boleyn, beheaded for witchcraft, was just a clever young woman who outsmarted herself. Lucrezia Borgia, the poisonous femme fatale, was a convenient scapegoat who likely never murdered a soul.
Then I happened upon Giulia Tofana, a woman born in Sicily shortly before I made my way across the Atlantic. Her trade, the history books would tell you, was poison. Sicily’s most notorious murderess, Giulia happily killed men whose wives wanted them dead. Her weapon of choice was a clear liquid known as Aqua Tofana. Just a few drops were more than enough. It killed slowly, mimicking the symptoms of other disorders. Even the most skilled physicians were unable to detect the substance in the bodies of its victims. It reminded me, as you might have guessed, of my mushrooms.
Of course, none of the histories asked why so many women in Sicily wanted poison—or questioned whether the men deserved the fates they were dealt. It never occurred to the authors that Giulia might not have been villainous but rather a hero. And none of them ever wondered why she chose poison over the sword.
Women choose poison because swords are heavy and we are not taught to use them. We choose it because we have children who need us, and we cannot be careless with our limbs and lives. We choosepoison because we have been denied all other forms of redress. It is for these reasons and more that the Old One gave us this gift. It is a testament to women’s essential goodness that we haven’t turned to poison more often, for it is all around us.
Or perhaps we’ve just been biding our time.
The Club
When Brigid returned home from the Geddes house, she found Phoebe waiting for her on the front porch with a wicker basket resting on her lap, its contents covered by a kitchen towel.
“How was it?” Phoebe wanted to know.
“Illuminating,” Brigid told her.
“Really? That good?”
“I wasn’t referring to sex, but since you asked, yes. The sex was amazing.”
Phoebe gestured toward a neighboring chair and Brigid took a seat beside her. “So how did you mean it?”
“Liam gave me his dad’s diary.” Brigid showed her sister the leather-bound notebook. “By the way, Liam’s friends with all the evil motherfuckers who’ve been pulling the strings. As a matter of fact, he’s having a party for them and the three of us are invited.”
“Well, I guess that solves one mystery,” Phoebe said. “Now we know what to do with these.” She passed Brigid the basket and pulled the towel off the top. Inside were dozens of small black mushrooms.
“What are they?” Brigid picked one up and twirled it between her fingers.
“The secret ingredient in Lilith’s poison.”
