Langley's Choice

by Kate Dolan

  “You make me do everything. You don’t do anything.”

  Caroline looked at the pile of peeled apples before her and thought about how she had spent the last several days—no, weeks. She stepped toward her youngest sister with every intention of throttling her so the whiny words would be choked back inside forever. By the second or third step, she had reduced her goal to merely giving her sister a thorough shake. With the last step, she mustered the control to keep her hands at her sides, though she nearly shook with the effort. She even managed to contain the angry words she wanted to rain down on Johanna, focusing her energy instead into a look of white-hot anger.

  Johanna ceased whimpering and stared at her oldest sister in fearful silence. Georgiana knelt on the floor and began to pick up apples. Edwina soon followed.

  “I’m going to see if Leda needs any help with the straw.” Caroline flung the words out quickly before turning and bolting out the door. Cold whipped through her garments as if she were wearing nothing. She knew Leda would not need any help gathering straw, for she had said they needed only a little. But Caroline did not want the other girls to see her cry, and she had been so afraid she might. Even just thinking about it made the tears gather in the corners of her eyes.

  She had just gone around the corner of the house when she saw Leda returning from the barn with an armful of straw. “Do you need any help carrying the straw? Do we need any more?”

  “No, Miss Caroline.” Leda looked her up and down, no doubt noticing her tearful eyes and shivering frame, but she said nothing more, only inclined her head slightly as if to indicate they should both head back toward the house.

  Caroline wiped her eyes with her hands and took a deep breath before stepping back inside.

  She did not known what the straw would be used for and, as usual, kept her curiosity to herself so as not to risk a look of disdain from her more knowledgeable slave. When Leda began putting handfuls of straw inside all of the pots and kettles they had gathered for making applesauce, however, Caroline at last felt compelled to speak up.

  “Do you mean to mix that in with the apples, Leda?”

  “It will keep the ones on the bottom from burning, miss,” Leda answered without looking up from her task. When she finished, she looked at the apples left to be peeled then out the window. “The day’s getting on. If we’re going to get it started today, we’d best get finished with the peelin’.”

  Without another word, she reached out for Johanna to hand over her knife. Johanna looked at Caroline for approval, and Caroline nodded. The young girl gratefully surrendered her knife and tripped out the kitchen door toward the stairs.

  “Which apples are the sour ones, Miss Caroline?”

  Caroline could not answer; she had never thought about whether an apple was sour unless she accidentally bit into one. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “The sour ones need more heat. They go on the bottom of the pot.”

  Caroline looked at her sisters and at the piles of identical-looking peeled apples surrounding them. Unless they took a bite out of each one, she could have no idea of their sweetness.

  “Edwina? Georgiana? Have you any idea which are sour?”

  Edwina bit into the one she was holding. “This one isn’t. And it looks just like…all these others.” She giggled and took another bite.

  Georgiana started to giggle, too. “Shall we taste them all?”

  Caroline looked at the nondescript hills of apples and found that she, too, had to smile. “We could, I suppose.” As she picked up the nearest sample, it slipped from her fingers and hit the floor, bouncing once before rolling under the kitchen cupboard. “Or we could try dropping them. I’m guessing that the sour ones bounce higher.”

  Leda looked at her as if she had suggested asking the pigs to make applesauce.

  “I don’t know which are sour, Leda, and unless you have some means of telling, I suggest we simply place the apples in the pots at random and trust providence they get cooked sufficiently. If not, well,” Caroline said, grinning, “I don’t believe any of us are hoping to win any prizes for our cooking. At least not this year.”

  Leda nodded, perhaps a little too readily, at this last remark.

  Caroline attempted once again to calculate the amount of molasses they could spare for the applesauce. She was trying to conserve on their use of imported goods such as sugar and molasses but locally-made substitutes were of such inferior taste her mother had never even ordered the servants to make any of the tart apple-molasses, dried pumpkin or maple sugar that was used to sweeten dishes in more economical households. Leda had explained they could make these things, but it would take time. She then offered a supply of apple-molasses she had made for her own use, and Caroline was struck by her generosity.

  The receipt called for a pound of molasses, and they were using far more apples than specified in the receipt, so she would certainly have to increase the sweetening. But she could scarcely spare a whole pound of molasses, let alone more. So, how much apple-molasses would they need? By what degree was it less in sweetening power? And then how many more apples were they using than were called for by the receipt? Caroline felt a pain start to grow behind her eyes.

  “It’s time to add the molasses now, Miss Caroline.”

  Once again, the calculations flew out of her head like a flock of disgruntled birds. “Very well. I can spare about half a pound of West Indies molasses.” She sighed and looked up at Leda. “I have no idea how much of your apple-molasses we will need to make up the difference.”

  “Do you want me to fetch it now, Miss Caroline?”

  “Yes, please.”

  When Leda closed the door behind her, Caroline decided to take advantage of a rare opportunity to sit still and do absolutely nothing. Her neck felt sore, and she tilted her head from side to side, trying to loosen the stiffness. She looked at the door. She got up, looked at the receipt and tried again to figure out how much molasses to add to each of the five pots of apples. They weren’t even close to being the same size.

  The pain behind her eyes grew, so she moved away from the cookery book and tried to put aside all thoughts of molasses. She picked up some stray bits of peel and core from the floor then looked at the door again.

  “Mmm, this is delicious.” Georgiana smiled at her breakfast plate and took another bite of cornbread and applesauce.

  “It is exquisitific,” Johanna raved between mouthfuls.

  Edwina said nothing but did look up and nod in agreement.

  “Well, it took three days, but you finally managed to cook something decent,” Georgiana remarked as she helped herself to another serving from the bowl on the table.

  “We managed to finally cook something decent,” Caroline corrected. “We all did this together. With Leda’s help. It was she who provided most of the sweetener.” And peeled the majority of the apples, and told us how to cook the sauce, she added to herself. Without Leda’s help, they would be starving, no doubt about it. But this was the first cooked item where they had all worked together successfully, and she hoped each of her sisters would feel some pride in their accomplishment.

  Pride in making applesauce? She could see taking pride in completing an intricate needlework design or mastering a difficult passage in music or language translation, but taking pride in making an ordinary household commodity? Well, it was there, whether it made sense or not.

  In fact, Caroline felt a sudden urge to invite someone over to enjoy the applesauce with them. But when she thought of their friends and acquaintances and even relatives, she could think of no one whom she could invite in their humbled circumstances.

  She began to poke listlessly at her cornbread, letting the applesauce seep through to create a soggy mess on the plate. No visits to Aunt Bennett, no visits to neighbors after church, no dinners or dances. The mess on her plate began to remind her of a receipt for a fancy dish she had seen in the cookery book, “A Pupton of Apples.” Caroline pushed aside her plate and reached fo
r the book. Yes, the breadcrumbs were not of wheat as called for and would be mixed in a little earlier than described in the receipt, but if she added butter and dusted it with sugar, she might be able to turn their simple breakfast into a true English dessert. Johanna would love that.

  Reaching for her plate again, she was struck by another happy thought. She had not yet paid a call on the new tenant’s wife, so this would be a perfect opportunity to share some of the excellent fruits of their labor with someone who must certainly be in need of decent food.

  “Edwina, will you accompany me on a walk?” Caroline waited for a response.

  “Yes, certainly, Caroline.”

  “To call on the new tenant’s wife?”

  “Oh, must we? Why can we not simply go for a walk?”

  “Have we a tenant, Caroline?” Georgiana put down her fork.

  “What’s a tenant?” Johanna asked through a mouthful of food.

  “A tenant is someone who pays us to use our land,” Georgiana explained to her youngest sister, “so we will have more money coming in. Does this mean we can buy back some of the servants now?” she asked Caroline.

  “Hardly. We will receive rent from the tenants for the land they use, but we will no longer get to sell the tobacco from that land, the newest fields. I think we will probably end up with less money.”

  “Then why have we taken a tenant?”

  “Father explained that now that we have sold some of our slaves, we do not have nearly enough hands to work the available fields. Rent from the tenants is better than nothing. Unless you want to work in the new fields?”

  Georgiana shuddered. “No, certainly not. Imagine, a lady working in the fields.”

  Leda worked in the fields, Caroline wanted to say, but she kept her thought to herself. She had a pretty good idea how Georgiana would respond.

  It was dark inside, and Caroline’s eyes seemed to take a great deal of time to adjust to the lack of light. The house had no glass in the windows, and the shutters were closed nearly all the way in an effort to keep out the wind. She felt, rather than saw, that she and her sister were being urged to move closer to the fire, and she took a few small steps in that direction.

  Gradually, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she could make out the rough outlines of the room. A cask stood on its end seemed to serve as a worktable near the fire. A thin straw mattress was propped against the opposite wall, and a smaller one lay on the floor with a baby in the middle. Against another wall, two crates placed end-to-end formed a bench. Two young boys rolled back and forth across them, poking at each other with sticks, announcing, “I have mortally wounded thee” and giggling fiercely.

  The tenant’s wife, who had introduced herself at the door as Molly Johnson, shushed the boys and turned to her guests. “I thank you kind ladies for visiting; it is an honor to be called upon by such fine people.”

  “Indeed, the honor is all ours. We are most pleased to welcome you to Hill Crest.” Caroline proudly held out a large crock of applesauce.

  “I do thank you, Miss Carter.”

  “It’s applesauce. We have just made ours for the winter.”

  “Again, I do thank you. I have not been able to make any this fall, and my supply from last year will not last much longer.”

  She had applesauce left from last year? How much had she made?

  “Would you be so good as to join us for our dinner? We were just about to sit down, and I would be so very honored to have guests.”

  Caroline and Edwina looked at each other somewhat dubiously. Where would they sit? What could there possibly be to eat in such a house? But their refusal to accept the invitation might insult the new tenant.

  “Yes, of course,” Caroline answered. “Will Mr. Johnson be joining us?” Where on earth would he sit if he did?

  “Oh, no. He will be out until it grows too dark to see.” While she said this, Mrs. Johnson pulled out a handful of napkins and a stack of wooden bowls from inside the crates on which the boys had been playing. She set them on the cask then pulled out two trestles that had been stored folded in a corner. On top of those she quickly wrestled into place a section of wood that appeared to be several planks crudely fastened together, as if to make a sign or box lid. She pulled one of the crates around so that each one formed a bench seat on the side of this makeshift table, bent over to give the baby a kiss and a tickle then stood and distributed trenchers and napkins about the table with a speed Caroline found dizzying.

  “Please, ladies, do take a seat. I know it is none too comfortable. You must excuse us.”

  As Caroline sat down on one end of a crate, she felt the other end tip up slightly into the air. The result was a large whump when Edwina took a seat next to her. Caroline giggled, despite her determination to retain her demeanor as the elegant lady of the plantation.

  Her hostess seemed not to have noticed. She bent over the fire, flipped several somethings cooking in a three-legged skillet then straightened and tasted a spoonful of a mixture from a pot hanging further back.

  “James, will you fetch some cider for the ladies, please?” she called without looking away from the fire.

  The larger of the two boys trotted obediently outside and soon returned with a jug that seemed far too large for him to carry. He pulled a tankard off the makeshift table and carefully tipped the jug into it, spilling surprisingly little. Only when he was finished did Caroline consider she might have offered to help him.

  “Here, Miss Lady,” he announced, proudly holding the tankard out to her.

  “It’s Miss Carter, James. You must call her ‘Miss Carter,’” the boy’s mother said from in front of the fire. “And her sister is Miss Edwina Carter.”

  The boy smiled bashfully and ran to give his mother a hug. His younger brother soon followed.

  “Shush, now, get back to the table. Don’t leave our guests alone.” As she ushered the boys back to their places, she balanced a number of pieces of fried pork rind on a spatula. These she deposited in a trencher on the table before she spun around and began making gravy in the skillet.

  Caroline watched closely. Leda had shown her how to make gravy at least three times, and yet she had not managed to create more than a mess of watery sauce filled with mysterious blackened bits and lumps of uncooked flour. To her mortification, she realized as she watched that this tenant woman could tend to the gravy with only one hand, as she had taken up a pair of tongs in the other to remove the lid from a large pot standing in the coals. She quickly shook off the additional coals that had been heaped on the lid, set the lid aside and used the tongs to remove biscuits from the pot to a basket at her side. After giving the gravy perhaps no more than a minute of her full attention, she took up a wad of rags and moved the skillet out of the coals.

  “I thank you ladies for your patience,” she said, coming toward the table with the basket of biscuits. She picked up two trenchers from the table, spun back to the fire and quickly served up a mound of turnips from a hanging pot and a dollop of thick gravy. “Please, help yourselves to pork and biscuits,” she urged as she placed one trencher in front of Caroline and Edwina and the other in front of the boys.

  Edwina looked at the scarred wooden substitute for a plate then dubiously at her sister. Caroline realized she, too, had been staring dumbly at her meal and smiled quickly. “This certainly smells delicious.”

  Everyone watched her expectantly, and she looked around in vain for a knife or fork. Then she looked for molasses or jam for her biscuit but saw none. How would she eat her gravy? What could she put on her biscuit? Why was everybody watching her so intently?

  Caroline picked up the tankard of cider and took a drink.

  “Mama, Mama!” the younger boy chortled excitedly. “Miss Lady drinked out of my place!”

  His place?

  “Yes, we must consider it her place on the cup now. You may drink from a place next to the handle.”

  “But that’s Papa’s place!” the other boy protested.


  “He won’t mind sharing. Eat your turnips, Will.” This last remark was directed to the younger boy, who had piled his turnips into a mound that threatened to run over the edge of his side of the trencher he shared with his brother.

  Caroline looked at the tankard in her hand and quickly set it down in the middle of the table. They would apparently all have to share it. She looked at the food set before her; apparently, that, too, was to be shared, but only with her sister. She took up a small piece of salt pork, grateful for at least one item of food that did not require an absent utensil or condiment.

  Edwina quickly copied her move.

  The pork was crunchy and surprisingly tasty, but the salt left Caroline very thirsty. She looked at the tankard in the center of the table. Did she really want to drink from the same cup as this family of strangers? Of course, she had shared a tankard with some truly foul men aboard the Osprey, so this certainly couldn’t be any worse.

  Then she looked at the boys and saw that the younger one was slowly letting a mixture of turnips and gravy dribble out his mouth and down his chin. Perhaps she could wait until she returned to Hill Crest to slake her thirst.

  Her hostess took a biscuit and scooped up a sizeable quantity of gravy from her sons’ trencher before popping it into her mouth. Caroline looked at her sister a little sheepishly before doing the same. The wonderful taste more than made up for any qualms about the lack of eating utensils. Edwina scooped up a handle of mashed turnips with her fingers, grinned at Caroline and slid the whole mess into her mouth. Caroline decided she would at least use a biscuit to eat her turnips.

  She looked up just in time to see the younger boy splashing his fingers joyfully in the remaining small pool of gravy on his trencher. Mrs. Johnson wiped her mouth, snatched the trencher away from her sons and began stacking up the remaining items from the table. Dinner was apparently at an end.

  “Thank you for a delicious meal and very gracious hospitality, Mrs. Johnson.” Caroline stood and looked at the door.