Free Now Face to Face by Karleen Koen Page B

town of Europe.
    “We air the stalks a few days before taking them to the barn,” said Smith. “Then comes the drying, Lady Devane, which is most important of all.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Well, if the weather is damp—and it usually rains in September—we have to light fires in the barns to help dry the leaves. You’ll know the tobacco barn when you see it. It has planks missing to better air tobacco. If the leaves aren’t dried just right, they catch the mold, and ruin in the hogsheads. The merchants find rot.”
    “And what do they do then?”
    “They throw the tobacco out, but you’ve still paid freight for it to cross to England. And a duty when it arrived in London.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Smith. I’m going to ride on, explore a little.”
    Every day, she tried to ride out farther and farther, learn the boundaries of the plantation. When she knew every horse path, every tree, every field, then she would know First Curle and be its mistress in the truest sense of the word.
    “If you’ll wait a bit, Lady Devane, I’ll saddle a horse and come with you. I don’t like you to be out alone.”
    “No, thank you. What you do here is far more important to me.”
    “Suit yourself.”
    For some reason, his words made her temper flare. He was rough, unlettered, a man who knew nothing but these woods and creeks—so Colonel Perry had explained. “So I shall suit myself, Mr. Smith, at every opportunity.”
    He’s a good tobacco man, Colonel Perry had said. She could feel Odell’s eyes on her as she rode away. She didn’t like him, good tobacco man or not. Neither did Hyacinthe. Once they were out of the overseer’s sight, she stopped.
    “I have no idea where we are, Hyacinthe. Give me the map.”
    Behind her, he reached into his jacket and pulled it out. She opened up the crude map and looked at it, tracing her route from the house today. She was at some kind of spring. It ran out of the ground and through grass, which became high reeds.
    “Do you see a spring on this map?” she asked Hyacinthe, irritated at being so at the mercy of her ignorance.
    He shook his head.
    She followed along the outermost edge of the reeds, careful not to let her horse stumble in the marshy ground. Eventually the ground cut away to water.
    “Is this the first creek or the second?”
    “I don’t know, madame. Look, madame, there is a path there, through the trees.”
    It was little more than a footpath; with the limbs of trees on each side brushing her shoulders, she followed it until it gave onto a clearing in which stood two crude houses, one large, one small, nothing to them—weathered, unpainted boards, a roof, no porch, no grace or amenity of any kind. The ground around was clear of grass. Looking at the map, she saw that a slave quarter was marked on the other side of the first creek. The two tiny inked rectangles on the map might be these houses. If it’s so, thought Barbara, I must remember to mark the spring on it when I am back at the house.
    She trotted around the smaller house. A garden. A wooden chair propped against the house. Hyacinthe pointed, and she urged the horse toward a whipping post. There was a crude pillory near—two boards fastened to posts, the boards cut to make holes to imprison a person’s head and arms.
    Breaknecks, these were called in England, for if the person inside fainted, his neck might snap against the wood. It was one of the sights of London: someone carted to a pillory, the condemned following a cart to which he was tied, while inside the cart stood a man who whipped him; if he survived the carting, he was then imprisoned in the pillory. She had seen such a thing when she’d first gone to London. She and Jane had seen it, and Jane had cried. How cruel, she had said, weeping.
    “Look, madame,” said Hyacinthe. “What is that?”
    There was a narrow box lying on the ground, the size of a man, hardly larger than a coffin. Crude breathing holes punctured its top.
    Barbara dismounted,