Chapter Forty-one
Used properly, powdered fustic wood produces an evil, yellowish brown that suggests age and illness. No woman in her right mind dyes her hair with fustic if she wants men to look at her with interest; but if she does not want men to look at her at all . . . Well then, Carrie thinks, it’s perfect, particularly when you combine it with a ragged head scarf, a bundle filled with herbs, a dirty face, and a limp.
Thanks to this disguise, she has passed unnoticed through the gates of Beau Rivage, counted Clark’s men, and determined that there are now at least thirty, plus Clark himself who fortunately is nowhere in sight. She has also spotted the four men in dark suits sitting on straight-backed chairs under a tree drinking something out of glass tumblers. Three appear to be carrying sidearms. The fourth has tipped his chair back against the tree trunk and flung his coat open. If he is carrying anything more deadly than a penknife, Carrie can’t see it.
She intended to find out where William and Teddy were being kept, but there were so many of Clark’s men walking around she didn’t dare linger any longer than it took her to walk from the front of the house to the back. Now she is in the kitchen standing beside the cook who is in the process of examining a pack of needles, a partly used bottle of glue, and half a dozen packets of herbs that Carrie has spread out on the table in front of her.
The cook is the same tall, heavyset, dark-skinned woman Carrie saw fetching firewood. She wears a coarse smock under her apron and a pair of old boots out at the toes. If they were in Kansas, she might be free, but here in Missouri she is undoubtedly a slave. Since it costs a great deal to take a woman out of the fields and put her in the kitchen, the owners of Beau Rivage must be prospering.
“What’s this here?” the cook asks, poking at one of the packets.
“That’s for worms.”
The cook frowns and nudges at the packet again. “How fast it work?”
“Fast.”
“Can y’all use it to worm hogs?”
“Nothing better.”
The cook picks up the packet, opens it, and cautiously sniffs the contents. As she does so, Carrie hears a sound that makes her stiffen. Somewhere in the house, Teddy is crying. My boy, my baby! she thinks. Where are you! She grits her teeth. For Teddy’s sake, she can’t afford to betray what she’s feeling.
“Does your mistress have a child?” she asks. She can hear her voice trembling, but the cook must not for she says:
“It ain’t hers. She just takin’ care of it for a spell. Then it going South.”
“South?”
“With the new slaves. They sellin’ ’em all South. Not keepin’ a single one. I was hopin’ they give me a girl for the kitchen. I need help in here, but they sellin’ ’em all at auction this afternoon. The buyers done already arrived. How much you want for this worm medicine?”
“Seven cents.” Carrie nearly chokes on the words.
“You think we made of money here? I go ask Miss Emily for seven cents for wormin’ hogs, and she think I crazy.”
“How about five?”
The cook nods her head. “That be more like it. You stay here. I be right back.” Carrie knows she needs to avoid exciting suspicion, but she can’t stop herself.
“Are they selling the child, too?”
“Now you the crazy one. That’s a white child. You think they gonna sell a white child? No, they gonna give him to some folk who own a big place down in Lus’ana or Georgia or sumwheres.”
“Doesn’t the child have a mother or father?”
“Oh yeah, he got a father, but there a price on his head. Massa Clark gonna hang him for helpin’ slaves escape. That’s the law here in Missouri.”
“When are they going to hang him?”
The cook looks at her warily. “Late afternoon or thereabouts, I reckon. Massa Clark say he want to do it before the guests et their dinner, but Miss Emily say hangin’ put folks off their feed. What you care anyways?”
“Just curious.” Clark plans to hang William in two or three hours! Carrie’s mind begins to move in all directions, making plans, discarding them, making more plans. If she had returned from Osawatomie a day later—even a few hours later—William would be dead; Teddy and the others gone . . .
She can’t think about any of this now. She has to concentrate on playing the role she has created for herself. She forces herself to smile at the cook. “I always enjoy a good hanging.”
The cook frowns and shrugs. “Most white folks do, but I’m the one who got to cook the vittles for the big party my masters throwing. You bake pies and fry chicken in here this time of year and it get so hot you near to smother.” She slips the packet of worm medicine into her apron pocket.
“Now you stay put, and I’ll go see if I can talk Miss Emily into givin’ you five cents for this stuff. Of course if you was to lower the price—”
“Three cents,” Carrie says.
Five minutes later, the cook returns to the kitchen with three pennies only to find that the peddler lady has disappeared. Deciding this is her lucky day, she slips the pennies into her apron pocket and sets about rolling out the crusts for the pies.