“Well, I’m not as young as you?I’d like to meet a queen,” Gus said. “Especially if she was a pretty queen.”
“No, the Queen is fat,” the little boy said. “My mother was beautiful, though, until she became a leper. She was even painted by Mr. Gainsborough, and he’s a very famous painter.”
Just then a door opened, and the tall Negress stepped out.
“Now, Willy, I hope you haven’t been pointing that gun at these gentlemen,” the woman said. “It’s very impolite to point guns at people?particularly people who might become your friends.”
“Well, I did point it, but it was just in fun,” the boy said. “I couldn’t really shoot them because I have no bullets.”
“That doesn’t make it less impolite,” the woman said.
Then she looked at the group.“Of course I’ve been impolite, too,” she said. “I failed to introduce myself. I’m Emerald.”
“She’s from Africa and her father was a king,” the boy said. “She’s been with us ever so long, though. She’s been with us even longer than Mrs. Chubb.”
“Now, Willy, don’t bore the gentlemen,” Emerald said. “Tea is almost ready. You may want to come in and wash your hands.”
“We washed once, when they barbered us,” Gus pointed out. “It’s been quite a few months since we washed twice in one day.”
“Yes, but you are now under the protection of Lady Carey,” Emerald said. “You may wash as often as you want.”
“Ma’am, if there’s grub, I’m for eating first and washing later,” Wesley Buttons said. “I’ve not had a beefsteak for awhile?I feel like I could eat most of a cow.”
“Goodness, you don’t serve beefsteak at tea,” Emerald said. “Beefsteak belongs with dinner, never with tea. Lady Carey is quite unconventional, but not that unconventional, I’m afraid.”
The Texans were led into a room where there were five washbasins; the water in the basins was so hot that five columns of steam rose into the room. There were also five towels, and more extraordinary still, five hairbrushes and five combs. The brushes were edged in silver, and the combs seemed to be ivory. At a slight remove was another table, with another washbasin, a towel, and another silver-edged brush and ivory comb.
“That’s the hottest water I’ve seen since we left San Antonio,” Gus remarked. “We’ll all scald ourselves, if we ain’t careful.”
The sixth washbasin was for Willy, the young viscount. The Texans were left to scrub themselves after their own inclinations, but while they were watching the water steam in the washbasins, a short, fat woman in grey clothes burst through a door and grabbed Willy before he could elude her.
“No, no, Mrs. Chubb,” Willy said, trying to squirm out of her grip; but his squirming was in vain. In a second, Mrs. Chubb had Willy bent over his own washbasin; she gave his face a vigorous scrubbing, ignoring his protests about the scalding water.
“Now, Willy, try not to howl, you’ll upset our guests,” Mrs. Chubb said. She didn’t take her eye, or her hands, off her young charge until she considered him sufficiently washed; once her task was done to her satisfaction, the young boy’s face was red from scrubbing and his hair shining from a skillful application of comb and brush. Then the plump woman surveyed the Texans with a lively blue eye.
“Here, gentlemen, your water’s cooling?plunge in,” she said. “Lady Carey has a glorious appetite, and your Miss Roberts is eating as if she’s been starved for a month.”
“Two months,” Long Bill said. “Matty ain’t had a good meal since we crossed the Brazos.”
“Well, she’s having a splendid high tea, right now,” Mrs. Chubb said. “If you gentlemen want anything to eat between now and dinner, I suggest you wash up quickly. Otherwise there won’t be a scone left, or a sandwich, either.”
Willy rushed through the door Mrs. Chubb had just emerged from.
“Mamma, I must have a scone,” he said. “Do wait?I’m coming.”
The Texans, under the urging of Mrs. Chubb, hastily splashed themselves with the hot water and rubbed themselves with the towels. Though they had shaved and washed just that morning, the towels were brown with dust when they finished their rubbing. Gus took a swipe or two at his hair with the silver brush?the rest of the Texans felt awkward even picking up such unfamiliar instruments, and left themselves uncombed.
Mrs. Chubb, unfazed, shooed them toward the door, much as a hen might shoo her chickens.
When the Texans entered Lady Carey’s room they were shocked to see Matilda Roberts, pink-faced, and with wet hair, in a clean white smock, sitting on a stool eating biscuits.
Beside her, in a chair, was the lady in black, the one who had sung so movingly over their fallen friends. Gus had hoped to get a glimpse of her face, but he was disappointed: Lady Carey was triply veiled, and the veils were black. Nothing showed at all, not her hair, not her face, not her feet, which were in sharp-toed black boots. Call supposed the woman’s face must be badly eaten up, else why would she cover herself so completely? He could get no hint even of the color of her eyes. Yet she was eating when they came in, eating a small thing that seemed to be mostly bread. When Lady Carey wanted to eat, she tilted her head forward slightly, and slipped the little bite of bread under the three veils?just for a second he saw a flash of white teeth, and a bit of chin, which seemed unblemished.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Lady Carey said, in a low, friendly voice. “When I’m hungry I have no manners?and I always seem to be hungry, in San Lazaro. I expect it’s the wind. When I’m eating, I don’t mind it quite so much.”
“It blows, don’t it?” Long Bill said?he was surprised that he had been able to utter a word, to such a great lady. They were in a large room whose walls had been hung with patterned cloth. The two windows were tightly shuttered. In one corner was a large, four-poster bed with a little dog sitting on it; beside it was a smaller bed where Willy slept.
“Certainly does?it blows,” Lady Carey said. “Eat, gentlemen. Don’t be shy. I expect it’s been awhile since you’ve sat down to a tea such as this.”
Lady Carey’s hands, too, were gloved in black?she reached down with two gloved fingers, took another small piece of the bread, and popped it under the veils and into her mouth.
Gus felt that it was his turn to speak?he had been about to address Lady Carey when Long Bill rudely jumped in ahead of him, and only to make a pointless comment about the wind. Before them on the table was an array of food, and all of it was rather small food, it seemed to him: there were little pieces of bread, cut quite square, with what seemed like slices of cucumber stuck between the squares of bread. Then there were biscuits and muffins, and larger, harder muffins with raisins stuck in them: he thought those might be the things called scones that Willy had referred to. Besides the various muffins and biscuits there were little ears of corn, with a saucer of butter and salt to dip them in; there were tomatoes and apricots and figs, and a plate of tiny fish that proved very salty to the taste. Gus had every intention of saying something complimentary about the food, but something about Lady Carey intimidated him, preventing him from getting even a word out of his mouth. He looked at her and opened his mouth, but then instead of speaking, put a bit of biscuit in his mouth and ate it.
The Texans were shy in the beginning?most of the foods they were being offered were foods they had never tasted. They stuck, at first, to what was safest, which were the biscuits?but, in part because they stuck to them so strictly, the biscuits were soon gone. Then the muffins went, then the scones, then the corn, and, finally, the various fruits. All the Texans, though, avoided the cucumber sandwiches, even preferring the salty fish. All the while, Mrs. Chubb supplied them with large cups of hot, sweet tea; the tea was sweet because Mrs. Chubb dropped square lumps of sugar into it with a pair of silver tongs.
“Lord, that’s sweet,” Gus said. None of the Texans had ever tasted pure sugar before. They were amazed by the sweetness it imparted to the tea.
“Oh well … that’s the nature of sugar,” Lady Carey said. She, too, was having tea, but instead of drinking it from a cup, she was sipping it through a hollow reed of some kind, which she delicately inserted under her veils.
“This was refined by my chemist, the learned Doctor Gilley,” Lady Carey said. “It came from sugarcane grown on my plantation, in the islands. I do think it’s very good sugar.”
“That’s where Mamma caught leprosy,” Willy said. “On our plantation. I didn’t catch it and neither did Emerald and neither did Mrs. Chubb.”
