Now that she had the time to really look, it was evident that the dwarves had made some very important changes to the little kitchen. There was yet another iron stove, and a bread oven. There was a big copper boiler for heating water, and a real stone sink with a pump and drain, and the wooden bathtub had been given a drain in the bottom that let out into a grating in the floor. Giselle stared at that, and the drain from the sink. “They added plumbing?” she gasped.
Rosa laughed. “Yes, they did. They dug a proper cesspit for each building, including one for the stable, and built very nice conveniences for each building that don’t stink at all! They aren’t water-flushing, like the ones that the Graf has had put in, but just pour a pitcher of water down when you finish and it all goes . . . somewhere. I didn’t ask for the details. I am just happy we are not having to use latrines or garderobes.” She nodded at a little door off the kitchen that hadn’t been there before. “It’s in there, if you need it.”
“Not now. What I need is a bath. I haven’t had one since Freiburg. And I’m cutting my hair back, too. It’s not as if it isn’t going to grow again.”
The bath was an old-fashioned one that allowed you to have hot water right up to your chin, and that was exactly what Giselle got, soaking away the bruises of the last day’s travel and the grime of not having had a proper bath for two weeks. Once she had cut her hair to chest length, she washed it, setting the braids aside, since now she wouldn’t have to worry about it falling into the wrong hands. Meanwhile, Rosa filled her in on all the details of what had been done to the abbey. “Elfrida will tell the cooks about their quarters, which are in the second floor next to the storage, so it’s convenient for them,” Rosa concluded. “I told Cody and Kellermann everything yesterday. Kellermann is taking care of informing the fellows who’ll be living in the common quarters in the east wing, and Cody is giving the couples and families and the Pawnee the tour of their spaces. I hope the Pawnee like theirs . . . I told the dwarves to give them a stone-walled room with stone floors, so that it was as like to one of their earth-houses as we could get. It seems strange to me that people who live on the open plains would choose to make underground houses.”
“Well, their homeland is not the plains, at least not for the winter,” Giselle explained. “Their real home is forested hills. They’ve been driven out, and forced to relocate in a dry prairie area that none of them like in the least. That’s why Fox wants to get a lot of money, so they can buy farm lots back where they used to live.”
“Oh.” Rosa shook her head. “Well, in that case, I think they will be able to make it comfortable for the winter.”
“Fox, at least, is used to living with the Army in one of their forts,” Giselle pointed out. “And I do not think any of them would care to sleep in a hide teepee in the snow!”
It was wonderful to be able to turn the spigot at the bottom of the tub and let it all run out, rather than having to bail the thing out a pail at a time until it was empty enough to turn on its side. It was wonderful to be able to change into one of her clean, warm, flannel nightgowns, bundle her damp hair under a nightcap, and climb into her own bed. Flitter had already found her way into the room, and was sitting up on a beam, dozing in the heat from the stove.
It was also oddly wonderful to hear Rosa puttering about on the floor beneath her. In fact, it was the sound of Rosa turning pages in a book that was the last thing she heard as she drifted off to sleep.
The next day was devoted to everyone getting everything they wanted for the winter out of the wagons, and then moving the wagons into the positions they’d hold until Spring, chained together. Moving her things was her problem; moving the wagons was the problem of the men, and she had been told so