John Saturnall's Feast

by Lawrence Norfolk

  Coake's gleeful face found John.

  ‘There he is!’ the boy shouted.

  ‘Hold him!’ called Fanshawe. ‘Take that boy!’

  But none of the kitchen staff moved at the Household man's order. As Fanshawe's green-liveried clerks strode forward, John thrust his way between a startled Henry Palewick and Melichert Roos and ran.

  The flight of steps rose before him. He passed it and fled down the passageway that led into the depths of the kitchen, the shouts of the clerks pursuing him as he wove his way between porters and cooks who toted baskets or trays, searching for a hiding place but finding only more kitchens where fires burned and aproned men worked at tables or storerooms or larders from which a great jumble of tastes and smells gusted down the passage: hanging game, cheeses, yeast, warm bread . . .

  He turned a corner, then another. Heart thudding, feet pounding, John ran as if every soul in Buckland were after him again. Behind him, angry voices called to each other. The kitchens seemed endless but at last the passage began to empty. At a final junction, John ran left and found himself in a dead end. A cobweb-shrouded doorway pierced the wall. He forced the rusted handle down and the heavy door swung back.

  A cellar.

  John gazed around the cavernous space. Light entered through a grate. A hearth broke the far wall, quite as great as the one in the kitchen. He edged along the wall, searching for a hiding place. Suddenly something knocked his elbow. A moment later a deafening clang sounded in his ears. A pan had fallen to the floor.

  As John's eyes adjusted to the light, he saw benches and shelves stacked with pots, glass jars, kettles and pans. He was standing in a kitchen, he realised. But one abandoned with all its equipment. He looked around at the strange place. Then the clerks’ shouts sounded, echoing down the passage outside.

  He would be caught here, he thought. Then he would be thrown out. Why had he allowed himself to believe that he might find a place at Buckland Manor? What use had Sir William Fremantle, Lord of the Vale of Buckland, for the son of Susan Sandall? Fanshawe's clerks would find him and haul him out. He would be put in the Poorhouse in Carrboro. Or sent back to the parish.

  The shouts drew nearer. But now the din from the kitchen rose too as if someone had opened a connecting door or this neglected place had come back to life. And through the faint clatter and roar he heard a different sound. A voice.

  John cast about, his eyes probing the gloom. It came from inside the hearth, he realised. From an opening in the side-wall. A girl's voice.

  Peering in, John saw a narrow staircase rise into darkness. The voice drifted down. Somewhere outside, he heard his pursuers draw closer. Quickly, John began to climb.

  Spider webs brushed his face. Dust clogged his nostrils. He stifled a sneeze and felt his way up, the voice growing louder with every steep step. The girl seemed to be scolding someone. Rounding the last turn, he saw a crack of light. The outline of a door and a latch.

  ‘Now sit up straight, Lady Pimpernel,’ came the voice. ‘A Lady of the Queen's closet should never slouch before Her Majesty, should she, Mama? No. Only the Lady of the Footstool may sit before Her Majesty. I beg your pardon, Mama. Did you speak?’

  Mama made no answer. So the girl's voice continued.

  ‘There now. Are we all in our places? You too, Lady Whitelegs? Good. Now listen.’

  After a short pause, she began to recite in a sing-song voice.

  ‘Come live with me, and be my love,

  And we will all the pleasures prove,

  That ‘Valleys, groves, hills and fields,

  Woods, or sleepy mountain yields . . .’

  At the girl's recital, a strange hilarity gripped John. The shepherd would make his lover a bed of roses, she declared. He would clothe her in a cap of flowers, a mantle embroidered with leaves and a gown of lambswool. She was all but singing now.

  ’A belt of straw and ivy buds,

  With coral clasps and amber studs:

  And if these pleasures may thee move,

  Come live with me and be my love.‘

  Then the voice dropped. John leaned closer, straining after the next words. Suddenly, he lost his balance. Grabbing at the door frame he caught the latch. The door swung open and he pitched forward, sprawling full-length on the floor. Behind him, he heard the door swing back. The latch clicked shut.

  He was lying on the floor of a long high-ceilinged gallery. Sunlight flooded in through a row of tall windows. As his dazzled eyes adjusted to the brightness, he saw a girl of about his own age perched in a window seat and holding a small black book. She pointed a sharp nose at John.

  ‘Those stairs go to the kitchens,’ she declared. ‘But you are not dressed like a kitchen boy. You are dressed more in the manner of a rogue. Or a thief.’

  The girl wore a dark green dress with a bright red hem. A fine silver chain looped about her neck disappeared into her bodice. Her hair was plaited in elaborate coils but her feet were stockinged, dangling above the dusty floor. A pair of black boots with silver-tipped laces lay beside her. ‘Which are you?’ she demanded.

  John looked around the gallery. ‘I'm not a thief:’ he said. ‘Or a rogue.’

  She smelt faintly of rose water. A smile hovered behind her features as if wary of showing itself. Her dark eyes examined him.

  ‘You should kneel, you know,’ the girl said. ‘Or stand in my presence and avert your eyes. You do not recognise me, do you?’

  Josh's instructions had not included what to do if faced with a girl. John got to his feet.

  ‘I am Lady Lucretia Fremantle, daughter of Sir William and Lady Anne of the Vale of Buckland,’ the girl announced. When John said nothing, she added, ‘I have other titles as well.’

  He stood before her in his blue damp-smelling coat, his stained shirt and mud-streaked breeches. Itchy tufts of hair stuck out of his scalp.

  ‘Do you have a name?’ she asked.

  ‘John Saturnall.’

  ‘John Saturnall, your ladyship,’ the girl corrected him. ‘What brings you here, Master Saturnall?’

  ‘I came to join the Household.’

  ‘But now you have run away.’

  ‘They won't have me.’

  She regarded him pertly from the window seat. He shifted from one foot to the other. In the alcove behind the girl, he saw a cloak laid out like a blanket. Some clothes had been rolled up to form a pillow. Four dolls watched him from the makeshift bed. Lady Pimpernel, he thought. Lady Whitelegs. Mama. He remembered the maids’ chatter in the servants’ yard.

  ‘You've run away too,’ he said.

  ‘That is hardly possible, John Saturnall,’ the girl said archly. ‘I live here. What brings you to Buckland?’

  She glanced about the dusty gallery. One of her plaits had come loose at the back, he noticed. And her hands were grimy.

  ‘I heard you singing.’

  ‘Singing? I think not.’

  ‘Yes, you were.’ John cleared his throat then attempted an imitation of the girl's sing-song voice. ‘ “Come live with me, and be my love . . . ‘”

  There was more, about steep valleys and clothes. But he trailed off as Lucretia gave an unamused shake of her head.

  ‘What place did you hope for?’ she asked.

  John thought of the great vaulted room below, the flood of tastes and smells that washed through it. ‘In the kitchen,’ he said.

  ‘Cooking?’ She spoke as if the notion repelled her.

  ‘Can't eat otherwise,’ John said. ‘Your ladyship.’

  ‘Eat?’ She wrinkled her nose.

  Her face looked like fine white china, he thought. Cold and perfect like one of her dolls. She regarded him in silence across the corridor. But then the silence was broken.

  A gurgle sounded in the long gallery, a low liquid rumble that reverberated off the bare boards and rolled around the walls. The stertorous groan brought a frown of surprise to John's brow, a frown that soon turned to a grin. For a blush reddened the cheek of Lucretia Fremantle. T
he rumbling emanated from her stomach.

  ‘Sounds like you ought to eat more,’ John told her, still grinning. But the girl did not smile.

  ‘Be quiet!’ she hissed.

  ‘Isn't me making a racket.’

  ‘How dare you!’

  He saw her whole face redden. Her eyes narrowed. She glared at him furiously. He stared back, puzzled.

  ‘It's only your belly,’ he said to mollify her. ‘Calling for dinner.’

  ‘How dare you!’ she spat. Her loose plait swung as she got to her feet.

  Before John could utter another word, voices sounded outside. He saw his own alarm mirrored in the girl's face. For an instant they stared at each other, united in the fear of discovery. Then Lucretia's eyes narrowed. Her mouth opened.

  ‘Here!’ she shouted down the gallery. ‘He's in here!’

  They dragged him down to the kitchens. Mister Fanshawe was waiting.

  ‘Send word to the Constable,’ the Clerk of the Household instructed two of his clerks. ‘Then take him to the gate.’

  ‘One moment, Mister Fanshawe, begging your pardon,’ John heard Josh say. ‘Let me explain it to him first . . . ‘ Josh's face appeared in front of John. ‘See, Sir William hasn't got a place here after all. You'll be going back Carrboro way . . . ‘

  ‘To the Poorhouse,’ clarified Coake. His flat face carried a broad smile.

  ‘It's not so bad as I let on,’ mumbled Josh.

  ‘Not if you like picking rags,’ Coake scoffed.

  ‘That's enough, Coake,’ Mister Fanshawe said. ‘Take him out.’

  John felt the hand on his neck force him forward. But he had not taken three steps when a deeper voice sounded.

  ‘Let him up.’

  John felt himself released. He straightened slowly. A tall grey-haired man with a close-cropped beard and grey-blue eyes stood beside the hearth. He wore the kitchen's red livery and a long white apron. A copper ladle swung from the cord tied about his waist. Mister Fanshawe, looking uncomfortable, offered a full bow.

  ‘Master Scovell,’ the Clerk of the Household addressed the man.

  ‘Welcome, stranger,’ Scovell replied and the red-liveried men smiled among themselves. ‘Has the Household resolved to pay the Kitchen a visit?’

  Fanshawe shifted uneasily. ‘Your boy Coake led us here, Master Scovell. We were in pursuit.’ The man sounded flustered.

  ‘He was troubling Lady Lucretia,’ Coake added.

  ‘This boy's petition has been refused. Here it is.’ Fanshawe opened his ledger and handed over the grimy pages. Scovell took them, glanced at the words then peered down. ‘John Sandall?’

  John hesitated.

  ‘He says he's called John Saturnall,’ Josh offered.

  At that the Master Cook raised his eyebrows. As he peered over the priest's creased letter, John felt the man's gaze burrow under his skin. What had Josh said about looking people in the eye?

  ‘Your mother is mentioned here,’ the Master Cook said.

  ‘Yes, Master Scovell.’

  ‘She does not accompany you?’

  ‘She . . . she died, Master Scovell.’

  He had not said the words before. He saw the Master Cook's gaze slide away. For a moment he seemed lost in some private contemplation. Then he eyed John again.

  ‘You wish to join the Kitchen, John Saturnall?’

  ‘Master Scovell!’ remonstrated Mister Fanshawe.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mister Pouncey has given his answer! This boy is not of a character to join the Household. See here? His mother was accused of witchcraft.’

  ‘Not by any here,’ answered Scovell. ‘Unless she was of your acquaintance, Mister Fanshawe?’

  The men of the kitchen hid their smiles. The clerks with Fanshawe looked about uncomfortably.

  ‘The boy absconded, Master Scovell!’ Mister Fanshawe protested. ‘He was found in the Solar Gallery . . .’

  ‘Ah yes, those who stray where they should not.’ Scovell turned on the man. ‘Your own presence here, Mister Fanshawe, might be mistaken for trespass by uncharitable opinion. Unbidden strangers in the kitchen . . . But of course it is mere unfamiliarity. Wilful boys will run amok. We have our own penalties down here for such miscreant spirits. And those,’ Scovell directed a stern look at Philip Elsterstreet, ‘who admit such miscreants among us.’

  The Master Cook turned again to John. Now his grey-blue eyes danced lightly.

  ‘Do you wish to serve among us, John Saturnall?’

  John stared back, silenced by this reversal in his fortunes. At last, he found his tongue.

  ‘Yes,’ he managed. ‘Yes, Master Scovell.’

  Scovell raised his ladle and swung and for one instant John thought the Master Cook intended to dash out his brains. But the heavy implement whistled over his head to strike the side of the cauldron. The deep clang drew a startled look from Fanshawe and his clerks, a scowl from Coake and a broad smile from Philip Elsterstreet. Josh nodded his satisfaction while Ben Martin looked almost pleased. All around the great room, every cook, under-cook and kitchen boy turned his gaze to John. Scovell held up his ladle for silence.

  ‘John Saturnall,’ the Master Cook announced. ‘Welcome to the kitchens.’

  ‘Etienne de Fremantle married Eleanor of the Catermole family, died without issue,’ Mister Pouncey murmured to himself. ‘Married again, Joan, Lady Apleby, two daughters and three sons, Rupert, Edward and Henry. Edward inherited. Married Lady Morsboro . . .’

  Hunched over the table in his chamber, he lifted brass weights from his piles of papers, traced faded names beneath then replaced the discs of dull metal.

  Find another way . . .

  Sire a son, Mister Pouncey retorted gloomily to himself. The weights comprised a simple game, its only goal their alignment heaviest to lightest along the table. The two-pounder elicited a soft grunt from the steward. The single ounce he plucked up like a coin. Everything had its place. He weighed the two-ouncer in his hand, the little weight growing warm in his palm.

  The order was not going to come out tonight, he suspected, rubbing his eyes before the neat piles in which the genealogies of cousins and kinsmen wove chaotic webs. As he lifted the next stack of papers onto the table, a tentative knock sounded at his door. Mister Fanshawe's cautious footsteps approached.

  ‘A most unfortunate occurrence has occurred, Mister Pouncey. Among the kitchen boys . . .’

  The clerk stood in Mister Pouncey's presence, looking agitated as he related the events in the kitchen. The boy in the priest's petition, Mister Pouncey remembered. The boy whose mother was called a witch.

  ‘We were about to expel him when Master Scovell involved himself . . .’

  Mister Pouncey frowned. The Charter of the Kitchen gave the cooks more rights than a king, he had once half joked with Sir William. And the Master Cooks of Buckland guarded their empire as fiercely as any Caesar. The privileges of Scovell's domain wove a web quite as fantastical as the liaisons of the ancient Fremantles, Mister Pouncey reflected. But why should the Master Cook meddle in this particular decision? Scovell did nothing without purpose, he knew. What was his purpose with this boy?

  Another unanswerable question, he suspected. Unless it was intended as a slight against himself? It was hard to see it otherwise. Mister Pouncey sighed. It seemed that the ancient war between Kitchen and Household had resumed.

  ‘Master Scovell is within his rights,’ Mister Pouncey told his clerk. ‘He may appoint whom he pleases down there.’

  Bidding the man a curt goodnight, the steward considered his narrow bed. But now Scovell's affront revolved in his thoughts. He would not sleep, Mister Pouncey knew now. With an irritable shake of the head, he returned to his search.

  Let no Woman take Fire to the Hearth, nor tend the Vale's Fires, nor give Nourishment save she be bid . . .

  The Covenant was their curse, Sir William had told him once.

  Only his Lady Anne had lifted it. And now she was dead.

  Mister Po
uncey returned to the faded names under his line of brass weights. From Lady Morsboro's children, Guy Boviliers Fremantle had succeeded Edward. The younger siblings’ lineages snaked away into the country, joining with the Rowles of Brodenham, the Charleses and the Suffords of Mere and the ill-fated Friels of Old Toue. And the ever-troublesome Callocks. It was the latter pedigree Mister Pouncey traced now. A Callock in the next generation had married one of the Sufford daughters. Their son had married into the Rowles . . . Mister Pouncey rubbed the bridge of his nose. He thought of Sir William's daughter, confined to her chamber again. Scovell's new kitchen boy had been discovered with her. Was that his significance? He rearranged the sheets before him, aligning the Callocks’ pedigree with that of the Fremantles. Idly, he began to trace the accidental unions, the removes between cousins, how they branched to become the two separate clans, matching names. Two lines converged, he saw, one from the Callocks, another from the Fremantles.

  An underground river, Mister Pouncey thought idly. The germ of an idea took hold in his mind. Could a line of succession run invisibly through the generations? Pulling out the Callock pedigrees, he cast a new eye over the old sheets.

  The candle burned low. Mister Pouncey called for another. By the time that one began to gutter, the dawn light was streaming over Elminster Plain and poking in at Mister Pouncey's window. The steward rubbed his eyes. The Callocks were as ancient in the Vale as the Fremantles. Even more venerable, Sir Hector's father had contended. They, not the Fremantles, held the true right to the Vale . . . The steward eyed the two lines of succession. Might they, once again, be united? Might that satisfy the demands of the Covenant?

  He would have to negotiate with Hector Callock, he realised. But the penniless Earl would leap at such an alliance. Then there was Lady Lucretia's part. The girl was as strong-willed as her father. She could be relied upon to resist. But the greatest obstacle lay far from Buckland. Any union would require the blessing of the Crown . . .

  For that, Mister Pouncey knew, the gates of Buckland Manor would have to open again.

  He sat back, remembering the night they had closed. The night of Lady Anne's death. A madness had seemed to descend upon Sir William as he drove out his gentleman servants then all those who had attended his wife. Mister Pouncey remembered the frenzied banging as his lordship hammered the nails into the Solar Gallery door. The next day the Manor had closed.