She dragged a heavy wooden block to the center of the kitchen. She found a cleaver that was more rust than steel. She spent ten minutes sharpening it on a stone until it had a passable edge. Then she took down the beef.
It was exhausting work. The meat fought her at every turn. She had to throw her entire body weight behind the cleaver, hacking away the outer layer of crystallized salt and gristle until she reached the slightly softer meat underneath. She cut it into small, uniform cubes. Her shoulders burned; her hands cramped. She dumped the meat into a large iron pot, filled it with water from the pump, and set it over the fire.
She let it boil. She dumped the salty water, refilled it, and boiled it again. She did this three times to draw out the brine that would have otherwise turned the meal into poison.
While the meat boiled, she salvaged the vegetables: she carved away the rot from the potatoes, diced the carrots, and sliced the onion. She found her satchel, opening it to reveal her prize: half a head of cabbage, slightly bruised but crisp, stolen from a farmer's cart two days ago. She shredded it meticulously.
Upstairs in his study, Arthur was awake. He had not slept. He had spent the night in a leather wingback chair, staring at the embers in his own fireplace, nursing the dregs of his brandy. He felt hollowed out, an empty shell of a man waiting for the structure to finally collapse.
Then he smelled it.
It was faint at first. It crept up the grand staircase, slipped under the heavy oak door of his study, and wound its way into his senses: onion, browning in fat.
Arthur closed his eyes. His stomach gave a violent, painful twist. He had been surviving on dry biscuits and liquor for weeks. The smell of actual cooking felt like a physical assault; it was intrusive, it demanded a response. He stood up, his joints popping, and walked out into the corridor.
He didn't mean to go down. He told himself he was just going to check if the mad woman had burned the place to the ground. But his feet carried him toward the servant's stairs.
He stopped on the bottom landing, staying in the shadows. He watched her. She was covered in flour and soot. Her face was flushed from the heat of the fire. She was moving with a frantic, focused energy, stirring the massive iron pot hanging over the flames. She wasn't delicate. There was nothing refined about the way she worked: she wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of a dirty wrist; she scraped the cutting board with the side of a rusted knife.
Arthur watched her drop the vegetables into the pot. He listened to the hiss and sizzle as they hit the hot liquid. He hated her in that moment. He hated her because she was trying. Harrow Gate was a monument to his failure, a physical manifestation of his ruined life. And this woman was standing in the middle of it, stubbornly refusing to let it die. She was fighting the decay with potatoes and salt. It was pathetic; it was infuriating.
But the smell—God, the smell. The sharp sting of the onion mellowed into a deep, savory richness as the beef fat rendered down. The earthy scent of root vegetables mingled with the faint hint of a dried thyme sprig she must have scavenged from the overgrown herb garden outside. It smelled like warmth. It smelled like the past, before everything had gone black.
Arthur realized he was gripping the wooden banister so hard his knuckles were white. He turned around silently, walking back up the stairs. He wouldn't eat it. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction.
Down in the kitchen, Beatrice covered the pot with a heavy lid. She stepped back, her back aching, her hands blistered. The fire crackled. The pot bubbled. Now they waited.