‘Night, Papa,’ Melody muttered without looking up.
‘Goodnight, Mr Donovan,’ I said, opening my book to the page where I’d left off: ‘“I saw two farmers’ daughters at church the other day, with bare necks. I protest they shocked me. If wenches will hang out lures for fellows, it is no matter what they suffer.”’
From the corner by the fire, Amy said, ‘It holds up well, doesn’t it, Tom Jones? Although I have to confess, I much prefer the movie.’
‘Bare necks. How shocking!’ Melody laid her embroidery down on her lap. ‘Well, aren’t you going to go on? Read, Hannah, read.’
TEN
‘This is the end of my third week on the job, and it’s back-breaking work. Mopping the hallway floor this afternoon took simply ages, and then along comes Mr Donovan and the little brat with their muddy boots and I had to mop it all over again.’
French Fry, housemaid
Maybe it was too much work, or lack of sleep, or the late September heat wave that had settled like a hot, wet towel over Annapolis that week, but early in the twenty-four hours leading up to George Washington’s visit, I became anxious about the menu. What would the Father of our Country like to eat? Did he have any allergies? What about his dentures? Would the food be soft enough? Out in the garden, helping Karen pick young, tender spinach, I was seized by the irrational thought that I should Google our first president, check out Wikipedia, visit the Mount Vernon website, looking for clues to the great man’s dietary preferences.
A visit to the well and a ladle of cool water later, I had come to my senses. He’s just an actor, you idiot, I told myself. He probably drives a Porsche, has a full set of cavity-free teeth and enjoys eating blooming onions at Outback.
Fortunately Alex Mueller had taken the children off our hands. For most of the afternoon, Melody and her little brother, Gabriel, as well as the four homeschoolers, had been occupied with dancing lessons at Brice House next door, practicing for Saturday’s after-dinner entertainment in honor of Colonel Washington.
Derek and Chad had disappeared, too, accompanying Jack Donovan to Middleton Tavern – directly across from the Market House – where he would be joining a group of socially-prominent Annapolitan men in re-enacting a meeting of the ancient and honorable Hominy Club. The club had actually disbanded in 1773 – possibly due to political differences – but Jud Wilson must have felt it too important a part of the Patriot House story not to be re-enacted, so he’d slipped the date. Since 1750, when Horatio Middleton first opened it as an ‘Inn for Seafaring Men,’ Middleton’s had been a focus of Annapolis social life, and it still was. Jack had been down at Middleton’s since noon, and if the punch flowed as freely that day as it had back in 1773, he would be struggling home long after dark on the steadying arm of Jeffrey Wiley, his trusty valet.
In the meantime, French, our housekeeper, was tasked with scrubbing the floors – upstairs and down – while Amy was sent to the dining room to polish the silver. That left Karen and me to manage things in the kitchen. Most of the baking had already been done, except for a butter cake. Karen put another log on the fire, then set a clean bowl on the table, tossed a generous handful of butter into it and began creaming it with a wooden spoon.
‘While you do that,’ I said from my perch on a kitchen stool, holding a cookbook, ‘let me see if I can find a recipe for roast pig.’ The book had no index, so I began to leaf through the pages. I found instructions for boiling a calf’s head – ‘serve the brains mashed or whole, and the tongue slit down the middle’ – and fricasseeing lambstones, but it took several minutes of browsing, puzzling over unfamiliar ingredients such as sounds, charr and pluck, before I found it. ‘To roast a pig,’ I began.
Karen was using her hands to work flour into a pound of butter. ‘Uh huh.’
‘Spit your pig and lay it to the fire. That seems simple enough. Oh, wait a minute, before you do that, you’re supposed to roll some sage, salt and pepper into a piece of butter the size of a walnut and sew it up inside. Actually, that sounds pretty good.
‘While the pig’s cooking, you keep basting it with flour,’ I continued. ‘Then, it goes on to say… Oh, yuck! You’re supposed to keep flouring it until the eyes drop out.’
‘Excuse me while I barf.’ Karen cracked an egg, used the shells to separate the white from the yolks, then dropped the yolk into the bowl. ‘There! That’s the last of the eggs.’ She picked up a spoon and started stirring the batter vigorously.
I slammed the book shut. ‘When this is over, I swear I’m going to become a vegetarian. If you’re going to eat meat, it should come cut up and wrapped in plastic and not be so…’ I paused, searching for the right word, ‘… so recognizable.’
While Karen was stirring the cake batter, Dex came in from the garden, staggering under an armload of firewood. He dropped the logs next to the fireplace, then began to stack them on top of the few logs that still remained after our marathon baking session.
‘I hate to see a little guy work so hard,’ I said. I lowered my voice so that Dex couldn’t hear me. ‘He should be in school with the other kids, or taking dancing lessons, not doing chores.’
Dex balanced the last log on top of the pile, then turned to me, wiping his hands clean on his breeches. ‘Mama says that my great-great-great-great grandma was a slave.’ He counted the ‘greats’ out on his fingers.
‘I think Dex is gaining an appreciation for the sacrifices his ancestors made for him,’ Karen said with a smile. ‘It’s true. Her name was Nellie Moore, and she was a slave on Walnut Creek Plantation in South Carolina.’ She stopped beating for a moment, stuck a finger in the batter, tasted it. ‘I know that I’m only here today because somebody like Nellie had the will to survive.’
‘I wonder what Nellie would have thought seeing you now, Karen. Actually volunteering to dress the way she did, work your fingers to the bone like she did.’
Karen laughed. ‘She’d probably think I was out of my freaking mind.’
I gathered up the spent eggshells, tossed them in the crock that was designated for compost and sent Dex out into the garden with it. ‘I wonder if Nellie endured because somewhere, deep down, she knew that one day, things would be different?’
Karen fixed me with her amber eyes. ‘If you’ll pardon my saying so, Mrs Ives, that’s just a lot of fancy, liberal white lady talk.’
I felt my face grow red.
‘No,’ Karen continued, ‘I think Nellie survived because her will to survive was so strong.
‘I’ve been thinking about her a lot since I came here, Mrs Ives,’ she continued after a moment. ‘Somewhere between picking peas in the garden, burning myself in the fire, and beating this damn cake – the recipe says I have to do it for an hour! – I feel like I know her, not well, but… I wish I could tell her how grateful I am to be her survivor.’
I slid off the stool and returned the cookbook to the shelf. ‘I think I know all I need to know about roasting a pig,’ I said. ‘Here, let me take a turn at that.’
Karen smiled, shook the kinks out of her right hand, and relinquished the bowl and spoon gratefully. While I assumed responsibility for beating the cake, she busied herself stringing the green beans.
Just about the time I thought my arm would drop off, barely five minutes into my shift, Gabriel came barreling into the kitchen. When he saw me, he screeched to a stop. ‘Where’s Dex?’
‘Out in the garden,’ I told him. ‘Delivering compost to the greenhouse.’
Gabe reached into his waistband and pulled out a leather pouch. ‘I’ve got some marbles, and I need somebody to play with.’