Page 105 of Dawnlands

The cook looked up. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“Where can I wash?”

She pointed to the bathhouse on one side of the yard. “In there.”

“And clothes?”

“I get them for you.” She poured a ladle of fat over the crispy skin and spoke quickly and fiercely to the exhausted child who nodded and turned the spit. She went in the back door of the house and came out with a pair of baggy sailor’s trousers and a clean linen shirt. “Here.”

“Whose are these?” Rowan asked, taking them.

“The last one. He dead.”

Rowan nodded and crossed the yard, relieved to find the little bathhouse had a door that latched shut, a tap, and even some lye soap and a rough towel. She felt safe to undress, wash her body and her hair, forcing herself not to scratch the itch of lice on the nape of her neck. She checked her feet for chigger worms, toweled herself dry, and pulled on the clean clothes. She had never thought that she would enjoy dressing as a white man, but the smell of sun-dried linen made her think longingly of laundering for Ned, and sleeping in clean sheets. She wrapped her baggy linen shirt closely around her skinny body and buttoned it up to the neck. She rolled up the trousers at the waistband and tied the cord tight so that it sat on her hips. She stepped into ill-fitting shoes.

Back at the kitchen Cook was hurrying to prepare an extraordinary array of dishes for just two people: the Master and Mrs. Peabody. There was stewed saltfish arranged on a trencher with fruit, there were thick slices of the roast pork and crackling with roasted potatoes and boiled carrots, there was a chicken pie, and as Rowan watched, she drew a dish of creamed eggs from the oven. “Go! Go!” she said, waving Rowan towards the door. “Take it while it’s hot!”

Rowan seized the roast pork tray and stepped into the blinding sunlight and went quickly across the yard and into the big house. The dining room was down a short corridor to her left—at the front of the house—and as she put the dish on the table, the front door opened and Mr. Peabody came in the house and took his seat at the head of the table, mopping his sweating face.

“More punch,” he ordered, putting his glass down at his place.

A black woman slave who had been laying the table ladled the drink from the cooler on the sideboard, and turned back to the sideboard to open a bottle of ratafia and one of Madeira.

“Pour it! Pour it!” Mr. Peabody snapped.

Rowan went quickly out of the room to fetch more dishes as Mr. Peabody flicked out a napkin of the finest damask and tucked it in his neckcloth, under his chin. In the kitchen Rowan picked up the pie and the vegetables on solid silver salvers and hurried back to the dining room.

A lady was coming slowly down the stairs, in a white gown of heavy silk with a silk stole thrown over her bare shoulders, diamond earrings in her ears, and thick diamond bracelets on her arms. She completely ignored Rowan, who fell back from the doorway and drew back her chair. She sat without a word of thanks, but she widened her eyes at her husband.

“He’s new,” she said and gestured, without speaking, for a glass of ratafia.

“Trying him out.”

She nodded and they sat in silence while the black woman slave passed dishes one to another.

“It’s hot,” she remarked to her husband.

His face was buried in his wineglass and he did not reply.

Rowan fetched more dishes, found space for them on the overladen table, and then handed them to Mrs. Peabody and her red-faced husband. They served themselves from the dishes that Rowan held out. The slave poured the wine and water in a constant supply, and when one of the serving platters was empty, she nodded at Rowan to take it out to the kitchen.

“They ready for the next course?” Cook asked.

“They’ve not finished everything.”

“You take these and put them on the sideboard. Corree knows when to put them out.”

Rowan took another array of plates, baked cheese, sugared apple, a dish of pears, meat pie, and a syllabub. She loaded them on thesideboard and received empty platters from Corree. There was no sound in the room but the loud screeching of the birds in the tree outside, the insistent cooing of the doves, the loud clink and scrape of knives on plates, and the noise of Mr. Peabody chewing and greedily gulping wine.

“Excellent dinner, my dear,” he said as Corree and Rowan replaced the dishes with the second course.

“Cook does it,” Mrs. Peabody said disdainfully, reaching for the meat pie. “Did you see Mr. Hendon in Bridgetown?”

Samuel Peabody nodded. “Can’t help me,” he said. “He’s got the same problem as everyone. When the cane’s ready for harvesting, he’s got no spare time in the boiling house. He’s harvesting next week, same as us.”

“So what’ll you do?” She hardly seemed interested.

“I’ll have to send to England for the rollers and everything and extend our mill as soon as harvest is over. God knows how much it will cost, and how I will get anyone who knows what he’s doing.”