“Do you want me to tell you, or do you want to be surprised?”
She thought about it. “I want to be surprised.”
“In that case, let’s mix the lye.”
I put on the stonecutter spectacles, which were large, ridiculously heavy, and attached to a leather band that went around my head, put on the work mittens, and set about mixing the lye. Five drems ought to do it for the test batch. I measured the powder and mixed it into water.
The simplest recipe I knew called for olive oil, coconut oil, and lye at thirty-three percent each by weight.
“I need five drems of bulko oil and pan oil, each.”
Clover reached for the scales. “See, I didn’t forget anything when we went to the market.”
“Me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You forgot me. I wanted to go to the Dog Market. You knew I wanted to go but you left without me.”
“You were tired and resting,” Clover said carefully. “Are you unhappy with how much money I spent?”
“No, and that’s not the point.”
I took the cauldron off the heat and set it on the stone block. Should be hot enough to melt the oils. I added the bulko oil to it and watched it liquefy.
“I had a friend who worked for a merchant.”
Me. I was the friend. In college I’d switched to political science aiming at law school. In my senior year, I interned at four different law firms and found out that I hated law with the passion of a thousand suns.
A series of random jobs followed. I got hired by an insurance agent, and six months into it the agency went bankrupt. I tried to be a journalist and couldn’t keep myself fed. I tried civil service and watched my supervisor stress-cry in a closet on my first day while my coworker assured me that I would get used to it.
I ended up at a storage place run by an elderly couple. It gave me plenty of time to read and figure out what I wanted to do with my life, while putting a roof over my head. Sort of. The job market was lousy across the board. Last year my roommate finally threw in the towel and moved back with her parents, so now I spent my days off delivering food to make up for her portion of the rent.
I realized that Clover was waiting on me.
“As I said, I had a friend who worked for a merchant. The merchant was elderly, and she would get confused when managing the accounts. The previous servant warned my friend not to correct her because she would get flustered and upset. He told her to smile, nod, and say, ‘Yes, tress,’ and then do things the way they were supposed to be done once she left.”
My elderly employers knew just enough about QuickBooks to complicate both their life and mine.
The oils were melted, and the mix had sufficiently cooled. I carefully poured the premeasured lye into the cauldron and set about stirring it.
What I wouldn’t give for a stick blender right now.
I met Clover’s eyes. “The point is, I don’t want to be that merchant. I don’t want to be placated. If you find fault with something I want to do, I would rather know about it.”
The yellow mass in the cauldron got a little lighter. Maybe this could work after all.
Stir-stir-stir.
Stir.
Clover raised her chin. “I didn’t wake you up because you didn’t have an appropriate dress. The Dog Market is the best one in this part of the city and the one we will frequent. If you are to pose as a lady, you must look like one when you are going out, otherwise someone might remember seeing you in a shoddy dress and old shoes and wonder why a lady of noble birth would dress like that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you would want to go anyway.”
“Fair point. Anything else?”
