Gunpowder and Tea Cakes: My Journey with Felicity

I tell Felicity I’d like to see as much as I can. So we ride out over the sprawling plantation. Felicity shows me the kitchen building, where I see an elderly black woman stirring something like cake batter, a little boy shucking oysters, and a girl about my age arranging cookies on a plate. An enormous piece of meat is roasting on a thin iron rod in an enormous fireplace. The room is hot and smells like juicy pork. I feel sorry for all the workers there. Their clothes are blotchy with sweat.

Then, we move onto a building called “the dairy.” It’s nice and cool after the blazing kitchen. Pans of milk are cooling on long shelves and wooden buckets and butter churns wait along the back wall. Felicity proudly tells me that Grandfather’s cows produce enough milk to make all the butter and cheese he needs.

We visit the spinning house where I see women making thread, and the dovecote which is filled with cooing birds. Felicity tells me the pigeons and their eggs are food. Droppings are saved for the garden.

Felicity wants to show me the fields, but I remember that my teacher told us that field hands had the hardest jobs of all the enslaved people. If they didn’t work fast enough, they may be whipped. I feel sick just thinking about it. I quickly tell her I’d rather not go to the fields. So instead, Felicity takes me through some woods on a narrow lane. The trees make the path dim, and birds flit about. The shade is welcome in the afternoon’s damp heat.

Suddenly, Midnight stumbles. I tell Felicity that something is wrong, and she agrees my mare is favoring one leg. She slides to the ground and comes back to help me down. I hold the reins as Felicity inspects Midnight’s right front leg. Then, she squints and says there’s a stone stuck in her hoof.

I look around. It’s getting dark fast. Felicity says it’ll be difficult to remove the stone without a hoof pick. She struggles to pick the stone free with her fingers. Then, she tries to scrape the stone out with a sturdy stick. Finally, she lowers the foot and shakes her head. She can’t get it.

Felicity sighs. We’ll have to walk back, very slowly. She has me swing up behind her on her horse while she holds Midnight by the reins. Poor Midnight limps. I hope Mrs. Merriman isn’t getting too worried about us, but we can’t rush Midnight.

An owl hoots, and I hear a tiny rustle. I feel a nervous shiver down my backbone. And suddenly I hear a sharp crack, like a big stick snapping in two. My heart begins to pound. What was that?