Woldsgard also had a bathtub, not unlike the ones in the abbey, built by the duke for Princess Xu-i-lok, who had refused to behave as barbarians did by either sponging with a cupful of hot water or staying dirty all winter. Xulai and Precious Wind had used it frequently, and Xulai got herself into the tub almost as quickly as Precious Wind had done. Two smooth wooden benches were fastened to the walls of the tub, one higher than the other, and the two of them sat with water up to their necks while Precious Wind hummed and splashed. Nettie, however, was still undressing, garment by garment, finally lowering herself slowly into the tub and simply sitting there, wide-eyed.
“They do this in Tingawa?” she asked Precious Wind.
“Oh, yes,” she replied. “We certainly do. Daily, or more often. Of course, it’s not such labor as it is here. It’s warm there. The water tanks are heated by the sun . . .” She hummed a bit more before climbing out of the tub, applying soft soap to a gourd sponge, and scrubbing herself all over before filling a bucket from the tub and rinsing the soap away. The water ran away into a gutter around the edge of the room and out through the wall.
Precious Wind sighed with pleasure as she climbed back into the tub. “That’s the way we do it in Tingawa, so we don’t ever sit in dirty water. This one is built so well that I wager the Elder Brothers had a Tingawan guest who suggested it and drew the plans.”
Nettie followed her example, then Xulai, who was having a hard time staying awake. Finally, and not without a regretful look at the still steaming water, they wrapped themselves in large towels and returned to find Oldwife unpacking their clothing and distributing it onto shelves or into the carved chests under the windows of each bedroom.
“Each of these rooms has two beds. I’ve put Xulai’s things in that room with mine.” She pointed to the smaller room. “Nettie, you and Precious Wind can share the other. Everything we brought is in the chests or piled on the shelves. You can rearrange it to suit yourselves.” And with that she disappeared to take care of her “bit of wash.”
Xulai’s clothing had been laid ready on the bed: a white linen, knee-length, short-sleeved undershift and drawers with a drawstring top; clean stockings that were held up by being laced through the eyelets in the bottom of the drawers; and an ankle-length, long-sleeved gown with tiny ruffles at the wrists and neck. Aside from being badly wrinkled, the clothing was decent enough to be seen in public, Xulai thought. Folded on the lowest shelf was the striped, sleeveless coat she had worn when they left Woldsgard. She had others, but this one reminded her of her cousin saying it became her, and she was busy doing up its thirty buttons when Oldwife came in.
“Put on your better shoes,” said Oldwife as she dried her face on the ends of the towel draped around her shoulders. “They’re beside your bed. Those others look like you’ve been slopping pigs in them.” She rummaged in her own chest, finding a clean cap and long apron, as symbolic of her status as any of the veils and stoles worn by the abbey people were of theirs.
When all four of them returned to the sitting room, Sister Tomea was waiting for them. She smiled at them, put her finger to her lips, and turned to face the door. Somewhere a bell rang. Sister Tomea bowed her head. It rang again and again, seven deep, reverberant sounds with silences in between. After the seventh, she opened the door, remarking, “During the ringing of the supper bell it’s customary to recite our thanks. The noise and hurry in the dining hall give us no time for reverence once we’re there.”
They went back the way they had come, alone as far as the locked gate, which was again locked behind them, then as part of a stream of people that broadened as they moved along the cloister and broadened yet more in the shorter hall beyond. Upon the terrace they became part of a slowly moving swarm, people thronging in from every direction and thrusting themselves through the enormous quadruple doors of the dining hall. Some wore leather; some were cloaked in black, others in gray or brown, many in white with stoles and veils of various colors. The children, who wore no particular dress, darted in and out of the crowd, some of them glancing curiously at Xulai.
Xulai’s group found Bear, Bartelmy, and the other four men waiting for them at a table at the far back corner of the room, quite near an enormous open hatch with an even more enormous kitchen behind it. Xulai sat down and stared into a vast space full of sweat- shined faces and running legs. “Cart!” yelled someone in a deep bass voice. “Coming,” cried someone else, and the cart plunged across the vast kitchen impelled by three tall boys. Within moments the same cart was at the open hatch, and the boys were unloading its contents: stacks of dishes, arranged in ranks and files. Behind them, other carts went to and fro, and in the background blades glittered as something or other was carved up by a whole phalanx of cooks. “Eggs,” shrieked a high voice. “Coming,” cried another, and a cart darted by loaded high with baskets.
Xulai turned to look behind her. Across the room, in the opposite corner, another such hatch fronted another such kitchen. A bell rang. Sister Tomea rose and went to the hatch, where the towers of dishes were lined up, returning swiftly with a stack of ten. Xulai counted the people from other tables who were rapidly picking up stacks of plates. About one hundred people.
