while, Comte de La Roque unbars the door. His wig is low upon his forehead, his eyes a sore red. He doesn’t know who I am, at first.
I don’t open my mouth, though. Learnt that lesson yesterday. I show him the porridge, bacon, and coffee. He shakes his head and says something in French. Perhaps he means for me to come later. I raise the pole, with my pots, and turn to leave.
“Non!” he says. “Entrez–vous!” He curves his arms and motions. “Entrez, entrez!”
Inside is a regular Hurra’s nest. Dirty plates and fancy glass upon the fine white cloth that covers the table. Well, ’tis my fault, that. Clothing everywhere about, and some of it still wet. The fire mere ashes.
I step ’round the young lady sleeping on a makeshift bed on the floor near the hearth. Her little dog sits up to watch me. Sweet thing! Ears like mittens. Would that I could touch one.
Thou musn’t, Hannah!
Now a bit of tinder to the ashes, and a few bits of kindling, and there it is, the fire cracklin’ nicely. I make a tepee of logs, and it’s soon full blazes.
Porridge pot gets set on a trivet amid some warm ashes. Coffee pot on another. The plate of bread and bacon goes on the warm hearthstone.
Ah, she’s a pretty lass, the young one. Yellow hair all a’fluff. Her face not so sickly white as yesterday. And a lot younger than I thought. More Grace’s age, or even my own. And here I was thinking she was a lady. Mayhap the meanness made her look older.
Quiet, I gather up the plates, each thin as a flower petal and blue as a summer’s sky rimmed with white cloud. I wish Mother could see them. She’d like the pictures of flowers inside the white, roses and something yellow linked by little leaves. Last night I paid them no heed. ’Tis a wonder I didn’t smash one with my ladle, scared as I was.
Well, my hands are still trembly. Careful, Hannah! The water has gone cold, so I carry the plates back to our cabin. Don’t know but we’d best get the La Roque family some sturdy pewter plates and porrigers. These mightn’t last the week.
One thing at a time! Don’t let thoughts race on so, for they’ll surely outrun you. Now get these nobles their breakfast, and they might cheer, some.
It cheers me, at least, to see them all up and dressed when I return with the washed plates. So that much they can do for themselves, anyway.
No mugs for coffee?
Back I go. The wind has come up now, out of the northwest. Mr. Talon does not understand wind in the least. First he had all the big trees cut and the stumps burnt out. Then he made the wide avenues and had a few cabins built along them. Playthings for the wind is all. And those avenues a place for it to rampage. I lower my chin and push against it. Our cabin is tucked away in the trees on the north side of the clearing. Other workers built their cabins at the fringe of woods, too. The trees behind us stop the wind from its games, but the sun can still find us when the leaves are down.
From our cupboard I take three mugs from a set made by my uncle Gearson at his pottery in Wilkes-Barre. In shape they are quite simple, with wide bases and narrower tops and pleasantly curved handles. The color is a warm oaken brown. I consider them handsome and hope they will not offend.
The La Roques find naught to complain about while they eat their breakfast. I step back from their table to await further orders and soon find myself staring at two objects I failed to notice last night, in my fear. A golden harp, reaching the ceiling, nearly. And next to it, another instrument I know only from pictures in books—a harpsichord.
Oh, Hannah, to think you may soon hear music from these instruments!
I am fair shivery with the thought.
The Aversille cabin is across the main avenue, but it takes a hundred paces to get there. Imagine—a road one hundred paces wide! The cabin was supposed to be the priest’s, but he gave it up to the elderly Aversilles. Father had much to say in praise of this.
Comte d’Aversille opens his door and says a string of French words that scorch my face. I try to read his expression, but he is an old man, and the wrinkles are all settled into a frown. There is a hump to his back. He’s wearing a white wig with three rows of curls on each side and a little tail in back tied with a black ribbon. His frock coat holds a pattern of crimson roses on a black background. He looks like a judge. Madame d’Aversille sits at the table with a fan in her right hand. She has on a fur-trimmed cloak over her gown. She also wears a white wig with curls like piled-up logs.
While I build up their fire, I wonder if the French people know how to smile or whether ’tis not customary. Madame d’Aversille’s wrinkles all droop down into a frown, too. Maybe after so much frowning, the skin just hardens in those ridges, like the clay we play with in Uncle’s pottery.
But look, Hannah, someone here has washed up their dishes!
These are fetching, too. White with a rose border. The French people must like flowers, so maybe they are not so mean as they act. But pretty or no, these plates are none deep enough.
After serving the Aversilles, I ask in my poor French if there be anything else they need.
More frowning.
I leave, not knowing if there is or isn’t. Still, ’tis something that one of them washed those dishes.
I wish I had been assigned to Abbé La Barre. Abbé, I have just learned, is a French word for priest. But little Rachel Stalk is to be his servant. He seems a good man, the way he gave up the cabin he won in the lottery and asked for a chapel to be built before any house for himself. There he is now, sprinkling water over wickets and cabins alike. Huffing, he walks as if his legs pain him and there isn’t enough breath within the whole of him to get him where he needs go. So he stops often and leans on his stick, his great chest heaving. Black fur lines his black cloak, but his hat is such as rivermen wear—wide-brimmed leather. He is using a sprig of white pine and dipping it into a bucket he himself carries. All the while he says words in a strange language, not French but something different. Perhaps ’tis a prayer.
It seems so unjust for the cross-grained slave owner to have a cabin but not the priest.
At one of the wickets, the youngest slave comes out and kneels at his feet. She bows her head, and the priest sprinkles her with water, too. She wears neither jacket nor cloak. ’Tis a most troubling sight. I am a few steps beyond them when the slave owner shouts, and the girl gets quickly to her feet. The owner points to the woods, and then returns to his cabin. The slave girl walks toward the woods just as she is, in her cotton gown, while the priest leaves to sprinkle other places. I fear that she will lose her way in the woods, and so I follow. A few paces into the forest, she stops and merely stands there. Then she raises both hands to her eyes and covers them.
“Pardonnez-moi, mademoiselle,” I say, and she swings around, scared as anything. But I can only say, in French, How may I help you? Without relaxing, she leans down and picks up a long dry branch and begins pulling it toward the clearing.
Firewood.
I find another and pull it to the clearing, too. Soon we have a pile. She begins breaking one up, using her feet. But at the branch’s thick end, she cannot. Nor can I. She wears no shoes, just wet muddy cloth wrapped around each foot. She gathers an armful of the small pieces, and I gather one, too. But her master appears and shouts
