Free Brookland by Emily Barton Page A

song. The balladeers were often disreputable-looking characters, with scruffy hair or gaps in their teeth; but they arrived almost as frequently as the New York papers and sang about the war and news in other towns, providing a good evening’s entertainment. This singer wore a patch over one eye, which caused Pearl to hide her face in fear of him; but to Prue’s delight, he sang not of battle, murder, or the ordinary perfidies, but of the freezing of the North and East Rivers, which he claimed was all the news, from Massachusetts to the Carolinas.

Three
THE DISTILLERY

    T hat very week, despite her father’s lingering doubts, Prue’s training at the distillery began.
    Her mother’s chief fear was that her hair would catch in a drive belt, so instead of dressing it, as she had always done, in two fuzzy auburn braids, she wound it onto the back of Prue’s head and fixed it with a comb. Prue was pleased when she saw herself in the looking glass. The coiffure wasn’t more flattering than the former one, but it made her look eleven or twelve, which she counted as progress. Roxana was also concerned lest some article of Prue’s attire snag in the machinery, so she bought some sturdy gray linen from Mrs. Tilley and had Johanna make Prue a pair of close-fitting knee britches, such as boys wore. Johanna had to feel every stitch with her fingers, but her sewing was still expert, and the britches came out well enough. They fastened beneath the knee with tortoiseshell buttons, for whose fanciness Ben teased Prue, though he did not seem to mind the britches themselves. Between these and the new hairstyle, Prue no longer fully resembled a girl, and she knew this would be even more pronounced when the cobbler finished her long work boots. But she told herself she had never been popular with the Livingstons, the most feminine girls in the neighborhood. It was impossible to risk losing the regard of those who’d never held her in any; and Ben would no doubt value her more highly now that her clothes allowed her to run more quickly and fight like a boy.
    Prue’s father didn’t worry about her hair or her clothing, having, as he did, at least some native faith in her common sense. Prue intuited, however,his concern about her aptness for the task she was undertaking. She was quick at writing and arithmetic, but she knew the prospect of teaching her the art and science of distilling daunted him, not only because of her sex. Even before she began her training, she understood the business was complex: There were raw materials to acquire and wastes to dispose of, machines to be kept in good order and on strict schedules of time and temperature, a few score men, of varying abilities, to be fed and clothed if they were slaves, and properly directed, kept off the bottle, and paid their wages if free; and there was the product itself, which sold only because it was of the finest quality. “But I’ll tell you what the real trouble is,” he told her the day they began. He sat down on his chair in the countinghouse, so their eyes might be on a level. “The process is sufficiently arcane, even now I sometimes find myself surprised it transmutes grain into alcohol and not into gold.”
    â€œI won’t be dismayed,” Prue said, though when he spoke in terms of alchemy, she was.
    He smiled at her with his lips pressed tight. “That’s my girl,” he said.
    She nodded. She wasn’t certain he meant this as a compliment.
    â€œGood. If it suits you, I’d like to begin with the process itself, of distilling and rectifying spirits. Although it’s the more complicated aspect of what you’ll have to learn, I assume if you understand it, you’ll apprehend the business side of things more easily. If not, we can always train up that little Izzy Horsfield. He’ll make a good manager, mark me.”
    â€œHe always seems worried about something,” Prue