Thursday's Child (Out of Time #5) by Monique Martin Page A

genuine distress in his voice and nodded reassuringly.
    Not reassured, but with little choice, Simon mounted his horse as James and Elijah did. It wasn't until then that Simon noticed Elijah's black mare. It had a broad white blaze down the center of its face. Remarkably like the one on the horse they'd seen the man riding that night in the cemetery. Of course, like the flowers, a white blaze was hardly unique. Simon hadn’t been able to get a close enough look to be sure it was the same one. Separately, each clue was hardly incriminating, but together…
    Simon looked to Elizabeth to see if she'd noticed, but she was distracted by Elijah turning circles around her.
    “This way,” James said and led their little procession from the stable and paddock area. Behind the long buildings was an expansive vegetable garden.
    They passed through a courtyard complex where separate buildings housed the kitchen, which was separated from the main house for fear of fire, the smokehouse, chicken house, store house, dairy, laundry and a large cistern with water reserves. Beyond them were several barns and holding pens.
    “This is our ice house,” James said proudly, nodding toward a single-story brick building with a pitched roof. “All brick, even the pit. Took months to finish, but it provides far better insulation against our Southern summers. Ours is one of the largest in Mississippi, I understand.”
    It was constantly surprising how primitive some things were in this time. It was such a little thing in modern life, but with no refrigeration, Southerners had to import blocks of ice from the North and store them in large underground ice houses. Only the wealthy could afford such a luxury as ice in the summer.
    “Have you ever had a real mint julep?” Eli asked Elizabeth as he rode beside her. “Don't answer that, because you haven't until you've had one of mine. I'll make you one later that'll put tears in your eyes.”
    Elizabeth laughed, delighted. Simon gripped his reins more tightly and reminded himself that they were there to help someone, not to murder someone.
    They left the house yards and passed the cotton gin house where the seeds were pulled out of the cotton lint. It was a corkscrew-like contraption with a shingled roof and a box at the bottom. Two long, wooden beams angled down from the top toward the ground.
    “What's that?” Elizabeth asked.
    “Our cotton press,” James said. “We hitch mules to the buzzard wings and it turns the screw, pressing the cotton down into bales. We hope to have another by next fall.”
    They turned onto a long dirt road. One side was pastureland and the other held a row of small, identical buildings.
    “Our slave quarters,” James said. “We take pride in taking care of our people.”
    Simon hardly considered the hovels he saw before him as anything he would consider taking care of someone. He supposed there were far worse slave quarters to be seen elsewhere though. At least these appeared to be well-maintained, for what they were.
    Each house was roughly fifteen-feet square with thatched roofs and a single chimney. Fences separated small pigpens and gardens between them. A group of thirty or more slaves stood in a line in front of an open tent just ahead. Each slave took off his hat and bowed his head respectfully as their party passed.
    “We provide clothing twice a year and our doctor,” James said nodding toward the end of the tent, “Dr. Walker, comes once a month to make sure they're all fit and healthy. A sick slave can lead to twenty before you know it and half your crop rots in the field.”
    Simon grunted in agreement and swallowed the bile in his throat. It was hard to accept. To look at these men and women, and, God help them, children, and know their fate and be helpless to do anything was more difficult than he ever could have imagined. If he hadn't known better, it would be easy to look at them as poor workers, hardly different in any age, except for one glaring