Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(202)

Rodrigo shrugged and said something to Azeel, who answered.

“He didn’t understand the word ‘consul’—we don’t, either,” she added apologetically. “So Rodrigo said you have come to visit your mother, who is sick.”

Rodrigo had been following her words with great concentration and here added something else, which she translated in turn.

“He says everybody has a mother, sir.”

The address General Stanley had given was the Casa Hechevarria, in Calle Yoenis. When Grey and his fellow travelers were eventually delivered to the casa by a wagon driver whose normal cargo appeared to be untanned hides, the place proved to be a large, pleasant, yellow-plastered house with a walled garden and a beehive-like air of peaceful busyness about it. Grey could hear the murmur of voices and occasional laughter within, but none of the bees seemed inclined to answer the door.

After a wait of some five minutes had failed to produce anyone—let alone his mother or something comestible—Grey left his small, queasy party on the portico and ventured round the house. Splashing noises, sharp cries, and the reek of lye soap seemed to indicate that laundry was being done at no great distance. This impression was confirmed as he came round the corner of the house into a rear courtyard and was struck in the face by a thick cloud of hot, wet air, scented with dirty linen, woodsmoke, and fried plantains.

A number of women and children were working in the vicinity of a huge cauldron, this mounted on a sort of brick hearth with a fire beneath—this in turn being fed by two or three small, mostly naked children who were poking sticks into it. Two women were stirring the mess in the cauldron with huge wooden forks, one of them bawling at the children in Spanish with what he assumed were dire warnings against being underfoot, not getting splashed with boiling water, and keeping well clear of the soap bucket.

The courtyard itself looked like Dante’s Fifth Circle of Hell, with sullen gurglings from the cauldron and drifting wisps of steam and smoke giving the scene a sinister Stygian cast. More women were pinning up wet clothes on lines strung round the pillars supporting a sort of loggia, and still others were tending braziers and griddles in a corner, from which drifted the fragrant smells of food. Everyone was talking, all at once, in a Spanish punctuated by parrot-like shrieks of laughter. Knowing that his mother was much less likely to be interested in laundry than in food, he edged round the courtyard—totally ignored by everyone—toward the cooks.

He saw her at once; her back was turned to him, hair hanging casually down her back in a long, thick plait, and she was talking, waving her hands, to a coal-black woman who was squatting, barefooted, on the tiles of the courtyard, patting out some sort of dough onto a hot greased stone.

“That smells good,” he said, walking up beside her. “What is it?”

“Cassava bread,” she said, turning to him and raising an eyebrow. “And platanos and ropa vieja. That means ‘old clothes,’ and while the name is quite descriptive, it’s actually very good. Are you hungry? Why do I bother asking?” she added before he could answer. “Naturally you are.”

“Naturally,” he said, and was, the last vestiges of seasickness vanishing in the scents of garlic and spice. “I didn’t know you could speak Spanish, Mother.”

“Well, I don’t know about speaking, so much,” she said, thumbing a straggle of graying blond hair out of her left eye, “but I gesture fluently. What are you doing here, John?”

He glanced round the courtyard; everyone was still at their work, but every eye was fixed on him, interested.

“Do any of your…um…associates here speak English? In a non-gestural sort of way?”

“A few of them speak a little, yes, and Jacinto, the butler, is pretty fluent. They won’t understand you if you talk fast, though.”

“I can do that,” he said, lowering his voice a little. “In short, your husband sent me, and…but before I acquaint you with the situation,—I brought several people with me, servants, and—”

“Oh, did you bring Tom Byrd?” Her face blossomed into what could only be called a grin.

“Certainly. He, along with two…er…Well, I left them on the portico; I couldn’t make anyone hear me at the door.”

His mother said something in Spanish that he thought must be an indelicate expletive, as it made the black woman blink and then grin herself.

“We have a porter, but he’s rather given to drink,” his mother said apologetically, and beckoned to one of the older girls hanging laundry. “Juanita! Aquí, if you please.”

Juanita instantly abandoned her wet laundry and hastened over, dropping a perfunctory curtsy and staring at Grey in fascination.

“Se?ora.”

“Es mi hijo,” his mother said, pointing at him. “Amigos de el…” She twirled a forefinger, indicating circumnavigation, and pointed toward the front of the house, then jerked a thumb at a brazier over which an earthenware pot was bubbling. “Agua. Comida. Por favor?”

“I’m deeply impressed,” John said, as Juanita nodded, said something fast and indecipherable, and vanished, presumably to rescue Tom and the Sanchezes. “Is comida food, by any chance?”

“Very perceptive of you, my dear.” His mother gestured to the black lady, pointed in turn to John and herself, stabbed a finger at various pots and skewers, then nodded at a door on the far side of the courtyard and took John by the arm. “Gracias, Maricela.”