All my love,
Kit
P.S. Don't worry about Eire's Shame. Mrs. Temple ton lied.
It was the end of August before Kit could bring herself to visit the spinning mill, and then only because she knew Cain wouldn't be there. It was harvest time, and he was in the fields with Magnus from dawn until long after dark, leaving Jim Childs in charge at the mill.
Even though Kit hadn't been near the mill since the awful night she'd tried to burn it down, it was never far from her thoughts. The mill threatened her. She couldn't imagine Cain being content to keep it small, but any expansion would be at the expense of the plantation. At the same time, she was fascinated by it. She was a Southerner born to cotton. Could the spinning mill perform the same miracle as the cotton gin? Or had it been a curse instead?
Like every other child of the South, she knew the story as well as she knew the lines in her own palms. The story had no boundaries of creed or color. It had been told by rich and poor alike, by free men and slaves. How the South was saved in ten short days. As she rode toward the mill, she remembered…
It was the end of the eighteenth century, and the devil seeds were killing the South. Oh, you could talk all you wanted about Sea Island cotton with its long, silky fibers and smooth seeds that slipped out as easily as the pit of a ripe cherry. But if you didn't own sandy soil along the coast, you might as well forget that Sea Island cotton, because it wouldn't grow anyplace else.
There was tobacco, but it sucked the life out of the soil after a few years, leaving you with land that wouldn't grow anything.
Rice? Indigo? Corn? Good crops, but they wouldn't make a man rich. They wouldn't make a country rich. And that was what the South needed. A money crop. A crop that would make the whole world come banging on her door.
It was those devil seeds. The South could grow green seed cotton anywhere. It wasn't temperamental. It didn't need sandy soil or sea air. Green seed cotton grew like a weed. And it was worth about as much because those devil seeds clung to the short, tough fibers like burrs, they clung like glue, they clung like they'd been nailed in, they clung like the devil had put them there just so he could laugh at any man foolish enough to try to get them out.
A man had to work ten hours to separate one pound of cotton lint from three pounds of those devil seeds. Three pounds of seeds for one small pound of cotton lint. Ten hours' work. The devil was having a fine time in hell laughing at them all.
Where was the money crop going to come from? Where was the money crop that would save the South?
They stopped buying slaves and promised manumission to the slaves they owned. Too many mouths to feed. No money crop. The devil seeds.
And then a schoolteacher came to Savannah. A Massachusetts boy with a mind that worked differently from other men's. He dreamed machines. They told him about the devil seeds and those short, tough fibers. He went to the cleaning shed and watched how hard they fought to pull out the seeds.
Three pounds of seed for one pound of cotton lint. Ten hours.
The schoolteacher set to work. It took him ten days. Ten days to save the South. When he was done, he'd made a wooden box with some rollers and wire hooks. There was a metal plate with slots, and a crank on the side that turned like magic. The teeth hooked the cotton and pulled it through the rollers The devil seeds fell into the box. One man. One day. Ten pounds of cotton lint.
The miracle was made. A money crop. The South was Queen, and King Cotton was on the throne. The planters bought more slaves. They were greedy for them now. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land had to be planted with green seed cotton, and they needed strong backs for that. Promises of manumission were forgotten. Eli Whitney, the schoolteacher from Massachusetts, had given them the cotton gin. The miracle was made.
The miracle and the curse.
As Kit tied Temptation to the rail and walked toward the brick building, she thought how the gin that had saved the South had also destroyed it. Without the gin, slavery would have disappeared because it wouldn't have been economical, and there wouldn't have been a war. Would the spinning mill have the same disastrous effect?
Cain wasn't the only man who understood what it meant for the South to have its own mills instead of shipping the raw cotton to the Northeast or to England. And before long, there'd be more men. Then the South would control its cotton from beginning to end-grow it, gin it, spin it,, and eventually weave it. The mills could bring back the prosperity the war had stripped away. Bui like the gin, the mills would bring changes, too, especially to plantations like Risen Glory.
Jim Childs showed her through the mill, and if he was curious about why the wife of his employer should suddenly reappear after a two-month absence, he gave no sign. As far as Kit knew, Cain hadn't told anyone that she was the person who'd tried to burn it down. Only Magnus and Sophronia seemed to have guessed the truth. When Kit left, she realized one part of her was anxious to see the huge machines at work when the mill finally opened in October.
On her way homo, she caught sight of Cain standing beside a wagon filled with cotton. He was stripped to the waist, and his chest glistened with sweat. As she watched, he grabbed a full burlap sack from the shoulders of one of the workers and emptied it into the wagon. Then he took off his hat and ran his forearm over his brow.
The taut, sinewy tendons rippled across the sheath of his skin like wind over water. He'd always been lean and hard-muscled, but the backbreaking work of plantation and mall had defined every muscle and tendon. Kit felt a sudden, piercing weakening inside her as she had a vision of that naked strength pressed over her. She shook her head to clear away the image.
After she returned to Risen Glory, she indulged in a frenzy of cooking, despite the fact that the weather during these final days of August was oppressive and the kitchen heavy with heat. By the end of the day, she'd produced a terrapin stew, corn rolls, and a jelly cake, but she still hadn't managed to shake her restlessness.
She decided to ride to the pond for a swim before dinner. As she left the stable on Temptation, she remembered that Cain was working in a field she'd have to cross to get there. He'd know exactly where she was going. Instead of upsetting her, the thought excited her. She tapped her heels into Temptation's flanks and set off.
Cain saw her coming. He even lifted his hand in a small, mocking salute. But he didn't go near the pond. She swam in the cool waters, naked and alone.
She awakened the next morning to her monthly courses. By afternoon, her relief that she wasn't pregnant had been displaced by racking pain. She was seldom sick with her monthlies, and never this badly.
At first she tried to ease the pain by walking, but before long, she gave it up, stripped off her dress and petticoats, and went to bed. Sophronia dosed her with medicine, Miss Dolly read to her from The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, but the pain didn't ease. She finally ordered them both out of the room so she could suffer in peace.
But she wasn't left alone for long. Near dinnertime, her door banged open and Cain strode in, still dressed from the fields.
"What's the matter with you? Miss Dolly told me you were sick, but when I asked her what was wrong, she began twitching like a rabbit and ran to her room."
Kit lay on her side, her knees clutched to her chest. "Go away."
"Not until you tell me what's wrong."
"It's nothing," she groaned. "I'll be all right tomorrow. Just go away."
"Like hell I will. The house is quiet as a funeral parlor, my wife is locked away in her bedroom, and nobody will tell me anything."
"It's my monthly time," Kit muttered, too sick to be embarrassed. "It's never this bad."
Cain turned and left the room.