“Yes.”Maybe if she kept her mind occupied with devising an easier way to get water from Point A to Point B in this place, it would help her maintain a firm grasp on reality.The first thing she noticed as she stepped down the three stone steps to the dirt floor of the windowless room was the temperature change.Not only was it a great deal cooler than the kitchen, an earthy dampness hung in the air.Iron-caged sconces lined the walls, their sputtering candles making shadows dance throughout the cavelike space.The well was at the center of the room, its stone block walls approximately three feet high.A heavy wooden rack with a handle to turn the beam straddled it.Two heavy ropes attached to the beam descended into the well’s unfathomable darkness.
Jessa rested her hands on the ledge of the well, leaned over, and peered down into it.That turned out to be futile.Without a better source of light, all she saw after a foot or two was total darkness.She squinted up at the low ceiling and discovered it was stone.“So the well house isn’t part of the original structure?”
“No.”Grant eyed her with an unreadable expression.“The well has always been here, but it was not connected to the kitchen until several years ago.This fortification was built around it at that time to keep our water source safe from attack.How did ye know that?”
She pointed upward.“The stone ceiling.The kitchen and the main meeting hall both had wood ceilings with beams running across them for support.”She slowly turned in a circle, eyeing the room’s every angle.“That makes things more complicated, since the pulley system can’t come directly from the well.It would have to be built in another area so that it could be brought up through the wooden floors.”
She envisioned what she had in mind, placing herself in the position of the poor servant charged with hauling water up those steps.She’d always been able toseethings and then create them.Usually, they worked, and whenever they didn’t, she kept at it until they did.It was fun.Kind of like solving a puzzle.“You could install a waterproof tank or barrel of some sort on each floor.Fix it in a closet or somewhere out of the way.Then a series of buckets attached to a pulley system could draw the water up to them without it having to be carried up those steps.”
“And ye’d not heat it until it got to where it was going?Seems like that would take longer due to the size of the hearths.”
She groaned.No water heaters, and she didn’t have a clue how to build one.She’d studied a lot of things in college and also via the University of the Internet, but building an efficient water heater was not one of the things she’d taught herself to keep that creepy building superintendent out of her apartment whenever something broke.“Does the kitchen heat the water now?”
“The laundress.”
“Is the place where they boil the water part of the original structure?”
“Nay.Outside in the lean-to.The fires for the boiling cauldrons keep that bit of cover warm enough in the winter to dry the clothes and keep the laundress and the lasses who help her warm.”
She blew out a frustrated huff.This was more complicated than she’d thought it would be.“So, they haul the water from the well to the laundress’s pots, and she stokes the fires under them until the water boils?”
“Aye.The lads are charged with filling the cauldrons, however often Griselda wishes.”
“Can I see the lean-to?”If there were windows from each floor above it, maybe they could work some sort of pulley system up from the laundress’s area.Although whenever the weather was cold, the hot water would cool a great deal faster going up a pulley system attached to the outer wall than being carried up the inside stairs.
Grant made an odd grumbling sound, as if not really wanting to, but he offered his arm again.“Ye can, but I must warn ye, Griselda gets along with no one.”
“She has a hard job,” Jessa said, envisioning the poor woman toiling over boiling cauldrons.“Passing heavy, wet clothes from a top load washer into the dryer always made me grouchy because I’m so short.”She threw up a hand and turned away from him.“Don’t say it.I know you don’t know what a top load washer and dryer are.”She ignored the offer of his arm and led the way back up the kitchen steps, a heavy sigh escaping her.“I know I’m going to have to start self-editing before I open my mouth, or someone’s going to burn me at the stake.It’s just going to take me some time to adjust.”
A powerful hand closed around her arm and pulled her to a stop.A great rumbling sound filled the small space, a rumbling that could pass for the low, irritated growl of a caged lion.He spun her to face him.“No one will ever harm ye.Not whilst I live and breathe.Know that, woman, and know it well.I protect my own.”
The flash of lightning and something much more in those silvery gray eyes of his made her forget to breathe.She couldn’t look away.Couldn’t argue.All she could do was wet her lips and hope he would kiss her again.When she realized she had reached up and touched his strong jawline, she blinked several times and pulled her hand away, curling it to her chest.This was utter madness.She needed to maintain control at all costs.After all, as soon as she straightened Mairwen out, she’d be returning to her time.“Uhm…on to the laundress?”
He blinked as though dragging himself from a daze.“What say ye?”he asked gruffly, yet in the softest voice.
“You were going to take me to the laundress’s lean-to?”
He barely jerked his head, clearly battling his own inner demons.“Aye.To the laundress.So ye can spoil the servants.”
She hesitated to loop her arm through his, but the broodiness of his glare convinced her to just go with it.This century was exhausting.“It is not spoiling them.It’s making their task more efficient.If they’re not having to haul water, they can do something else.And it will also decrease the risk of injury.”
“Injury?”
“Has anyone ever slipped while carrying water up those steps?”
“Aye, we had a poor maid break her arm once.”
“There you go.”Jessa allowed herself a victorious little skip that made her skirts bounce.“A pulley system would lessen the risk of another such accident.”She sashayed outside with a smile.
“Be gone with ye afore I clout ye again!”a woman shouted in the distance.“Be gone I say.Leave her be!She be mine, and ye know it.”
“What the devil?”Grant took off like a shot.
Not about to be left behind, Jessa gathered up her skirts and ran after him.She skidded to a halt in front of a three-sided shed tucked into the corner between the keep and the tall outer wall that enclosed the courtyard.Steam, or maybe smoke, roiled out its front and curled out around the boards of the lean-to’s sides.
An angry man, grubby with something that smelled a great deal worse than plain dirt, stood in front of the place, with his hand raised to strike an old woman who was threatening him with a wooden paddle that was the size of an oar for a large boat.
“That be my bitch and pups, Griselda!Everything is mine, and ye know it.If I wish to kill the useless mongrels, ’tis my right!”
