Chapter 1
The water in the scullery trough had been hot four hours ago. Now it was the color of weak tea and the temperature of a corpse, and Mab's hands were in it up to the elbows, working a pewter charger with a fistful of sand.
She had been at this since before the kitchen yard turned gray. The under-cook had woken her with a kick to the pallet and a list. Two hundred chargers. The lord was hosting. She had not been told who, but the kitchen had been laying in venison and river-pike for three days and the new head cook had not slept, which meant somebody important.
Mab worked the sand around the charger's rim. The trick was the rim. You worked the rim first because the rim was what showed when the platter went up the table, and if the rim was bright the rest could be dull and nobody at the high table would notice.
She set the charger on the rack to drain. Picked up the next.
"Mab." It was Tibbs. He was thirteen and had a mother in the laundry who had taught him to be kind to the kitchen women before she passed.
Mab nodded toward the rack without lifting her head and he understood. He took the dripping charger off the top and put it on the boards to finish drying.
"Wood's wet," he said in a low voice. "Cook's furious."
"Well, it rained Tuesday."
"That's what I said."
"You didn't say it where he could hear you?"
"No, miss."
She'd told him a hundred times not to call her miss. He did it anyway.
"Bring me the next bucket when you come back," she said. "This water's done."
He went. She finished the charger she was holding. Started the next.
The kitchen was a long stone room with the hearths at the far end, the prep-tables along the spine, and the scullery at the cold end near the yard door. In winter it bit. In summer it stank of the midden. Today it was somewhere between. The air on the back of her neck under the kerchief was damp. Her clogs were damp. Her apron was damp. Most of her was damp.
At the hearths, the new head cook—Garrad, six months in, hated by everyone including the dogs—was shouting at a spit-boy about the fire. Above the shouting, Annie was crying. Annie, who was twelve, cried at everything. Garrad shouted at Annie because Annie cried, and Annie cried because Garrad shouted, and the spiral had been running since harvest but nobody had stepped in because nobody could.
Hester would have stepped in. Hester would have rapped Garrad on the shin with a wooden spoon and put Annie on astool with an onion and a paring knife. The crying would have stopped within the hour.
But Hester had been dead nineteen months. Mab counted in her head sometimes without meaning to. Nineteen months and four days.
Tibbs came back with the water. He poured it into the trough and she put her hands back in. The heat went up her arms and into her shoulders, and for a breath, she closed her eyes.
"Mab." Different voice. Higher. Not Tibbs.
She opened her eyes but did not turn. Took the next charger from the stack and reached for the sand.
"Mab, I'm speaking to you."
"I hear you, Iris."
Mab could feel her at the yard door, half-in, half-out, holding her skirts up off the wet stones as she always did.
"You missed a spot on the last one." Iris pitched her voice sweet for anyone within earshot. "The rim. I could see it from the yard."
Mab did not look at the rack. She knew the rim was clean. "I'll check it again," she said.
"You do that." Iris stepped into the scullery properly now, her pattens clicking on the stone. "Cook wants the chargers done by midday. The delegation's arriving early."
"I heard him." Mab kept her voice flat. Iris was a lady's maid. She had no business in the scullery and no authority over anyone in it, and they both knew it.
But knowing had never stopped Iris.
