CHAPTER FOUR — THE PEOPLE ABOVE THE KITCHEN

The service stair was so narrow Evelyn had to climb sideways around its turn.
At the top, the air was thick with damp insulation and the sour smell of old wood.
Samuel had brought a lamp from the pantry, and its light found strips of canvas nailed over gaps in the roof.
“This was once a storage loft,” he said.
“They made it into a passage when the guest rooms were added.”
Evelyn heard voices through the wall.
Ruth was calling Josie’s name.
A child answered from lower down.
Samuel knelt beside a small hatch and pulled at its swollen handle.


The hatch would not move.
“We need a saw,” he said.
Evelyn handed him a knife from a sewing basket abandoned on the landing.
“Will this help?”
“It might free the latch.”
He worked the blade under the wood while Evelyn held the lamp.
An enormous bang shook the attic.
One of the shutters had blown off the gallery and struck the house.
Wind poured through a widening opening near the rafters.
Evelyn leaned against a post to keep the lamp steady.
“Please hurry,” she said.
“I am,” Samuel answered.
The words were sharper than anything he had said to her before.


She lowered her eyes and stopped speaking.
The hatch opened suddenly.
Samuel crawled through and disappeared into the adjoining room.
Evelyn followed until the edge of the opening pressed against her shoulder.
She could see Ruth bent over a sewing table, holding her daughter against her chest.
A second woman, May, stood with a swollen ankle beside a broken chair.
A wardrobe had slid across the main door, and part of the ceiling hung above it.
“Ruth, bring Josie,” Samuel called.
Ruth moved toward the hatch.
Josie stared at Evelyn with frightened, unblinking eyes.
“I cannot climb,” May said.
Samuel looked at the opening and then at the floor beneath her.


“We can bring the table over.”
The women pushed it across the room.
The legs scraped and caught on uneven boards.
Evelyn crouched on the landing and reached for Josie.
The child drew back.
“You can give her to me,” Evelyn said.
Ruth did not move until Samuel nodded.
Josie crawled through the hatch and into Evelyn’s arms.
Her small hands were cold.
“Stay with me,” Evelyn whispered.
The child’s face pressed against her shoulder.
Ruth followed, dragging a basket of clothing that Samuel told her to leave.
Then May tried to stand on the table, but her injured ankle buckled.


Samuel climbed back through the hatch to help her.
A crack opened in the ceiling above them.
May covered her head.
Evelyn watched splinters drop around Samuel’s shoulders.
He caught May beneath the arms and raised her toward the opening.
Ruth seized the woman’s wrists.
Together, they pulled her onto the landing.
Samuel was about to follow when the wardrobe shifted across the room.
A piece of the exterior wall fell outward into darkness.
The storm tore at the exposed interior like an animal pulling stuffing from a cushion.
Samuel threw himself through the hatch.
The table fell where he had stood.


For a moment nobody moved.
Then Josie began to cry.
Samuel shut the hatch as far as the bent frame allowed.
“The roof is going,” he said.
“We need to get below the brick walls.”

CHAPTER FIVE — MR. VOSS’S ORDERS

They descended the service stairs with Samuel carrying May on his back.
Ruth held Josie’s hand while Evelyn went ahead with the lamp.
In the kitchen, a dozen people had gathered around the long worktable.
Cookfires hissed as rain entered through the chimney.
A child lay beneath a blanket beside the flour barrels.
The head cook, Ada, was binding a cut on a man’s forehead with a strip of clean cloth.


“How many are still upstairs?” she asked.
“Nobody in the sewing room,” Samuel answered.
“There are two boys sleeping in the washhouse loft,” Ruth said.
Ada closed her eyes.
“They were told to stay there until the wagons passed.”
Evelyn stared at her.
“What wagons?”
“The ones Mr. Voss wants loaded before the tobacco gets wet.”
A door slammed at the far end of the kitchen.
Overseer Silas Voss entered in a raincoat, muddy water flowing off its hem.
He was broad, clean-shaven, and red-faced even when he was not angry.
“Why are all these people standing here?” he demanded.


“The gallery is collapsing,” Evelyn told him.
“You need to stop moving wagons and bring the workers out.”
Voss gave Samuel a cold look.
“I sent you to shore up the north shed.”
“I was sent upstairs,” Samuel said.
“Nobody gave you permission to leave the shed.”
“He saved three people and a child,” Evelyn replied.
Voss’s expression barely changed.
“That doesn’t repair the shed.”
Another crash came from outside.
The kitchen windows flashed with lightning.
“The tobacco will be ruined if the wagons are not covered,” Voss said.
“And the men carrying it?” Evelyn asked.
“They know their work.

”
“Two boys are trapped in the washhouse loft.”
“They can wait until morning.”
Samuel took a step toward the door.
Voss caught his arm.
“You will not abandon your assigned station again.”
Evelyn saw Samuel’s face stiffen.
The hand around his arm tightened.
“Let him go,” she said.
Voss looked surprised.
“Ma’am, I am responsible for discipline in your husband’s absence.”
“And I am responsible for the people in this house.”
“With respect, you don’t understand what a wet tobacco crop costs.”
“I understand what a roof weighs when it falls on a person.”
She stepped between Voss and Samuel.


Voss released his grip slowly.
Ada spoke from beside the stove.
“The washhouse has no brick walls.”
Samuel nodded.
“It won’t stay upright if the oak comes down.”
A huge tree stood just beyond the washhouse, its roots lifting the yard stones for years.
Voss stared toward the window and considered the cost of losing more labor.
“Take two men,” he told Samuel.
“Bring the boys out and return to the shed.”
“We need to close the yard entirely,” Samuel said.
“You have your order.”
Evelyn could see another argument forming.
She laid her hand on the kitchen table.
“I will go with them,

” she said.
Voss laughed once.
“You cannot mean that.”
“I do.”
“Mr. Harrow will hear that you went into the yard with field hands during a storm.”
“Then he will hear it from me.”
The overseer stopped smiling.
Evelyn discovered that defying Voss was easy while everyone watched, but she understood Samuel could never afford the same confidence.
She took a second lamp and followed the men into the rain.

CHAPTER SIX — THE OAK AND THE WASHHOUSE

The yard had become a maze of mud, overturned buckets, and broken branches.
Wind struck Evelyn so hard that she grabbed the railing beside the kitchen door.


Samuel and two field workers, Peter and Amos, ran toward the washhouse with a coil of rope.
A lantern swung from a pole near the packing shed.
Its light showed men pulling canvas over a wagon while Voss shouted for them to work faster.
Evelyn followed the rescuers as far as the stone path.
The washhouse roof lifted at one edge with every gust.
An enormous oak leaned toward it.
“Moses!” Samuel shouted.
A frightened boy appeared at the loft window.
He could not have been older than fourteen.
“Where is Ben?” Samuel called.
“He’s under the cot.”
“Come to the front stairs.

”
“The stairs broke.”
Samuel looked at the side ladder, which had fallen beneath a woodpile.
Peter and Amos dragged it free.
One rung was cracked and another missing.
“It will hold one,” Peter said.
“Not both at once.”
Samuel tested the ladder against the washhouse wall.
Lightning threw their shadows across the wet boards.
“I’ll go,” Peter offered.
“The top window opens outward,” Samuel said.
“I know where the bed stands.”
He began climbing without waiting for Voss.
Evelyn held the ladder with Amos as the wind pressed against it.
Samuel reached the window and pulled himself inside.
She heard him speaking to the boys in a low, steady voice.
The oak gave a deep cracking sound.
Evelyn looked up.
A large branch had separated from the trunk and hung by a strip of wood.
“Samuel!” she shouted.
“Get out now!”
He reappeared with Moses in front of him.
“Take him first.”
Peter climbed halfway and lifted the boy onto his back.
The ladder bowed.
Amos tightened his grip while Evelyn pressed its base into the mud with both feet.
Moses reached the ground shaking violently.
Samuel turned back for Ben.
The damaged branch tore away and crashed across the far side of the roof.
Tiles shattered, and the whole building lurched toward the yard.
“Leave it!” Amos shouted.
Samuel emerged holding Ben under one arm.
The boy’s left leg hung at an odd angle.
Samuel lowered him toward Peter.
Peter took the boy but slipped on the broken rung.
He caught the ladder with one elbow and nearly fell.
Evelyn felt the wood surge beneath her hands.
“Hold!” Amos cried.
They kept the ladder upright as Peter descended with Ben.
Samuel jumped the last few feet just as the washhouse wall buckled inward.
The oak branch crashed through the roof behind him.
Every person in the yard ducked.
A shower of splinters struck the mud around their shoes.
When Evelyn opened her eyes, Samuel was on his knees beside Ben.
He checked the boy’s breathing and looked at Peter.
“We need a board for his leg.”
Evelyn tore a strip from the hem of her dress without asking whether it was appropriate.
She knelt in the mud and handed the cloth to Samuel.
The boy looked at her as if she were a stranger.
“Will they send me back to work tomorrow?” he whispered.
Evelyn did not know how to answer honestly.
“Not tonight,” she said.
It was the smallest promise she could make and keep.