John Saturnall's Feast

by Lawrence Norfolk

  Buckland must reopen its gates, Mister Pouncey resolved. Resting on the piles of papers, his brass weights were almost in order. Almost in perfect alignment. A good evening . . . Only the Master Cook's petty defiance still niggled at the back of his mind. The vagabond youth. His name hummed in the steward's thoughts as if a fly had found its way into his quarters and now buzzed about the room unable to find a way out.

  John Sandall.

  Low fires bathed the ceiling in red. The pillars cast shadows over the floor.

  ‘Where're you from, John Saturnall?’ asked a voice.

  ‘That's Adam Lockyer,’ whispered Philip on the pallet beside John. ‘Alfs cousin.’

  ‘Up the Vale,’ John answered. ‘Flitwick way.’

  ‘I'm from round there,’ said a slow-sounding voice. ‘Don't remember any Saturnalls.’

  ‘You don't remember much past yesterday, Peter Pears,’ someone else replied. John saw a bird-like face framed by curly hair. ‘Jed Scantlebury,’ he introduced himself. ‘Is it true you found our Lady Lucy kipping down in the Solar Gallery?’

  ‘She wasn't kipping,’ said John. He remembered the girl's haughty face with its pointed nose. ‘Worse luck.’

  Jed laughed.

  ‘Shut up there!’ called Coake from the other side of the room.

  ‘So you were riding with Josh Palewick?’ Adam Lockyer ventured in a low voice. ‘Must've seen a few things, up and down the Vale.’

  ‘One or two,’ John admitted cautiously.

  ‘What about that parcel?’ Jed said. ‘Scovell couldn't hardly wait to open it. And how'd you know all what was in that broth?’

  John heard the boys shift. One or two sat up.

  ‘Just guessed,’ he said carefully.

  ‘You guessed right,’ said Adam. ‘Underley was saying to Roos. Colin Church heard ‘em. He was in the still room. He told that squint-eyed fellow in Pastes, the one who used to be on the salting troughs . . .’

  ‘Tam Yallop,’ said a smaller boy.

  ‘You sure, Phineas? Anyroad, he said he'd never seen the like of you, John Saturnall . . .’

  He listened to the low murmurs of the kitchen boys. Josh had taken him aside before he slipped away. ‘This lot's your family now,’ the driver had told him gruffly. ‘I'll be round next spring. Henry'll see you all right.’

  The voices of the kitchen boys merged in a jumble of whispers. On the pallet next to him he felt Philip shift. This was where his mother wanted him, John told himself. This was his world. With Scovell and the cooks and the kitchen boys . . . But they had fallen silent, he realised. He looked up.

  Three figures stood at the foot of the pallet. Coake was flanked by two boys with jowly faces. They folded their arms, looking down at him. He had been waiting for this, John realised. He felt the glowing coal lodged inside him.

  ‘This him?’ asked the bulkier of Coake's escorts.

  ‘That's right,’ Coake said. He paused for effect. ‘See, it's his mother. She . . . she died!’

  As Coake's smile became a sneer, the boy's thick features shifted in the firelight and it seemed to John that Ephraim Clough's heavy-brewed face was staring down at him. A burning rose inside him. As his anger flared, John launched himself at Coake.

  His first punch landed above the boy's eye. Coake clutched his face and John brought his knee up hard. A high squeal escaped his opponent's lips. Behind him, John felt knuckles rap the back of his head. Barlow or Stubbs, he supposed. But the blow only goaded John on. Behind Coake's face cowered all the others. Ephraim Clough and Timothy Marpot. All the jeering faces. Coake was all the ones who had chased out his mother, who had driven her out to die in the wood. However many times he punched, it could never be enough . . .

  Suddenly he was grasped from behind. Philip and Adam gripped his arms. As they pulled John back, he struggled to free himself and resume the assault. Then, from the doorway, a nasal voice sounded.

  ‘What devilment is raised in here!,

  ‘Stop,’ hissed Philip in his ear. ‘What's wrong with you, John? Fighting in the kitchen'll get you booted out.’

  ‘New boy was disturbing us, Mister Vanian, sir,’ Barlow called across the kitchen. ‘Thought we'd quieten him down, sir.’

  Stubbs was helping Coake to his feet. John heard a contemptuous snort as Vanian walked across with a candle. The man pointed his nose at John.

  ‘I believe you were brawling.’

  John eyed the man, struggling to control his breathing. He shook his head. Vanian looked about the room.

  ‘Who was brawling here?’

  No one spoke. The man's face twisted in a thin-lipped smile. Then he leaned closer to John.

  ‘Save your performances for Master Scovell, boy. He appears to value them.’

  Coake and his companions had shuffled back across the room. Vanian turned and stalked out. Adam and Philip looked at John with wary expressions.

  ‘Thought you were going to kill him,’ said Adam. Philip nodded. John looked between them. His anger had subsided. The hot coal had darkened. Now his head was throbbing and his knuckles stung.

  ‘Lost my temper,’ he mumbled. The other two were quiet.

  ‘It's all Providence, my sis used to say,’ Alf remarked. ‘It's like ladders in an orchard. All you got to do is climb the right one . . . ‘

  The quiet talk started up again. The boys lay on the pallets while John stared up at the vaulted ceiling. A lump on his brow began to rise. He listened to the boys’ murmuring voices as they spoke of the still room, of Vanian in Pastes and Mister Bunce in Firsts, of Diggory's dovecote and the salting troughs . . . His new world.

  One by one, the voices hushed. At last John's eyes closed.

  He was back in the wood. He was shaking his mother's shoulder. She would wake up this time. If he only shook long enough she would rise from her place by the fire. She would chide him for running off. Welcome him back. But he shook until the church bell rang in the village below, until its noise roused the dead from their graves. Still his mother did not stir. Instead Peggy Rawley walked towards him, her white face caked with churchyard dirt, a doll dangling from her hand. Behind her came the Riverett girls, blue-lipped and waxen-faced. Then a boy wearing a shapeless hat. Abel pulled off his headgear.

  ‘It was the well,’ the dead boy said. ‘When it flooded. The old one poisoned our Mary. Poisoned our Cassie's head too. But you knew all that, didn't you, John?’

  ‘What do you want, Abe?’ John asked.

  ‘My coat.’

  The dead boy gripped John by the shoulder and pulled. The bell rang on and on . . .

  John woke with a start. Philip Elsterstreet was shaking him awake. The clanging was Scovell's ladle on the cauldron. John reached to pull the blue coat around him and his hands closed on his red doublet and shirt.

  All around John, yawning kitchen boys were rising from their beds on the floor, stretching and rubbing their eyes. Rubbing his own, John winced.

  Across the room Coake was rising, one eye purplish and almost closed. John saw Phineas look over and smirk. Then the doors swung open and through them hurried clerks, jointers, trussers, pastrymen, bakers, stokers and porters. Cooks and under-cooks jostled around Scovell who stood at his hearth, the ladle swinging from his hand. A final booming clang rang around the vaulted ceiling.

  ‘Blow up the fires!’

  In the hearth the cover was lifted. Bellows were pumped and embers flickered into flame.

  ‘Stations!’

  The men flew apart in a whirl of livery and aprons. John, standing next to Philip, looked about in bewilderment. Suddenly he felt a hard jab under his ribs.

  ‘You caught me cold last night,’ Coake hissed behind him. His bruised face scowled at John. ‘But you wait. I'll be looking out for you, Raghead.’

  Philip shrugged. ‘Ignore him,’ he said as Coake scuttled off towards the archway. All around John, men were readying themselves for the day's work.

  ‘Where do I go?’ he asked, looking around the bustl
ing kitchen.

  ‘Wherever you're put,’ Philip answered. ‘Maybe with Underley in the jointing room. That'd be all right. Or the cellars with Master Palewick. Or the spice room with Roos. I'm in with Mister Bunce . . .’

  ‘Not now you ain't.’

  Mister Stone loomed over the boys. The Head Scullion's lower half was wrapped in a leather scullery apron. His face looked down, blank as a pillar.

  ‘You're in with me.’

  ‘But I'm in Firsts,’ Philip protested.

  Mister Stone shook his head. ‘Shouldn't've let this one in, should you?’ The big man pointed up at the smoke-blackened board nailed above the door where words were cut in tiny dark letters. ‘You know the rules. Go on.’

  ‘"No blows will be struck,"’ Philip read out reluctantly.’ “No vile oath will be heard. None shall bring in dung upon their boots” . . .’

  ‘Not that.’

  ‘"No fowl will be admitted uncaged” . . .’

  ‘Not that either.’

  ‘ “No stranger shall enter the kitchens except by the order of an officer of the kitchens,” ‘ Philip recited at last.

  ‘That's right.’ The man looked down severely at Philip and John. ‘See Quiller and his serving men lining up there. Down here, they're strangers. That don't mean we don't know ‘em. It means they ain't part of the kitchens. The King himself, if he came down them stairs. Stranger. Even Sir William. If you ain't part of the kitchens, you've no place down here. And an officer of the kitchens means Master Scovell or one of his heads or a full-made cook. It don't mean a kitchen boy who ain't been here barely a year.’ The Head of the Scullery turned to John. ‘Or one who ain't been here a full day. Understand? Now get in there.’

  The scullery smelt of damp food. A row of small high windows admitted light. A long counter, a wooden bin and a series of troughs stretched down one wall. From the far end a lead pipe dripped into an ancient stone trough. A long wooden gutter was suspended from ropes. From Firsts came a clatter of knives as Mister Bunce and theothers got to work.

  ‘This here's the ash-bin,’ Stone told them in his flat voice. ‘Ash breaks up the grease. Counter's for the pile. Troughs are for cleaning. Sand-box for polishing. Down there's the water-pipe. That's for water.’ Stone turned his rounded head to the windows which looked out at ground level into a garden. ‘There's some as think they can take our water. A gardener up there. Called Motte.’ A hint of expression had entered Mister Stone's voice. ‘He's wrong.’ The Head Scullion slapped the nearest trough and handed each boy a spatula.

  ‘That's for scraping.’

  ‘How long are we in for, Mister Stone?’ asked Philip.

  ‘That's down to Master Scovell.’

  The trough was as deep as John or Philip could reach, built of jointed elm planks and lined with thick yellow grease. Ribs of hard fat ran down the sides. Gobbets of food bobbled the bottom, embedded in the yellow-brown crust.

  They had scooped out half a bucket of grease when the scullions filed in, grim-faced men in stained livery, each one as silent as Mister Stone. From Bunce's kitchen came shouts and bangs, the clatter of pots and pans. In the scullery, the wooden pipe swung over and water poured out. The scullions half filled the empty troughs and tipped a spade of ash into each. Then they stood at their posts as if gathering their energies. John looked out into Firsts and saw Alf heaving up a kettle of water. Behind him, Mister Bunce diced turnips, his knife whirling over the chopping block. A serving man holding a large wooden tray entered by the archway. Three wobbling towers of dull grey bowls approached.

  ‘Right,’ muttered Philip behind John. ‘Here we go.’

  They took up their spatulas.

  ‘Come on!’ yelled one of the scullions at the trough. ‘Get on or we'll fall behind!’

  Quiller's servers came in a stream, each one with his tray, each tray with its bowls, each bowl smeared with part-dried porridge. The men tipped their trays onto the counter where Philip and John fell upon them with their spatulas, scooping and scraping the gluey strands until the gobbet-free bowls could be shunted along to the scullions at the first trough. Alf staggered in with kettles of hot water but after the first salute neither Philip nor John had either the time to turn around or the breath to do more than grunt. The scullions plunged their arms into the troughs, scrubbing and splashing, only pausing to yell ‘Washing out!’ before pulling the plugs. Then ash and grease-thickened water poured onto the floor, washing about the boys’ ankles before swirling down the drain in the corner. The big wooden pipe swung over and clean water filled the trough in a torrent. Then Philip and John shook the sour-smelling cold grey water from their feet and threw themselves upon the soiled bowls again, beating down the piles with their spatulas and shunting them down to the troughs.

  But the faster they laboured the faster the porridge-slimed bowls arrived. For all their scraping, sweating and shoving, the pile only rose higher. Soon it teetered above them, a looming overhang of smeared pewter and tin which seemed to swell and rise no matter how fast they worked. At last only a narrow ledge remained where both boys snatched, scraped and toppled the bowls into the grey scum-flecked water. Every moment, the teetering heap threatened to crash down on top of them. So long as they toiled, John told himself, they could keep the porridge-slimed pewter at bay . . . Then the first pots arrived.

  They had given up, John conceded afterwards. He and Philip still scraped but the battle was lost. The pots had overwhelmed them. Then Mister Stone had joined the fray.

  ‘Falling behind,’ he had muttered disapprovingly, taking John's spatula from his hand. ‘You straighten up that pile.’

  Mister Stone went to work. His large stiff body swivelled from pile to trough. He scraped and flicked in a steady fashion. He did not seem to move quickly. But the pile began to descend. At last, when only a token stack of plates remained along with a ten-gallon saucepot with a light ring of grime, Mister Stone stood aside. Philip and John finished up then staggered out into Firsts to eat their own breakfasts.

  ‘We've got to get out,’ Philip said, spooning cold porridge into his mouth.

  ‘It'll get better,’ said John.

  It got worse.

  Supper was a steamy chaos in which the piles of plates, dishes and bowls mounted ever higher. This time Mister Stone did not step in. The other scullions washed and scrubbed in silence, saying nothing to the boys. ‘They know we won't be here long,’ Philip explained hopefully as they tramped back into the kitchen that night.

  ‘That's right. You'll be in the Carrboro Poorhouse.’

  Coake stood with Barlow and Stubbs. The boy sneered as John and Philip trudged past the trio but they were too weary to answer. They pulled their pallet out from under a table. But it seemed their heads had barely touched the coarse calico before Scovell's ladle rang out again.

  The days passed in flurries of crashing plates, gouts of water and scraping. Philip reorganised the pair. ‘We're spending half our time dodging around each other. You scrape here, I'll shift the plates around like this . . .’

  To John's surprise, the arrangement worked. They still bolted down their food in Firsts then collapsed on the floor of the scullery but they waited for the next onslaught in simple exhaustion rather than dread. Nothing happened in the scullery but dirty water and scrubbing. No words were spoken but the cry of ‘Washing out!’ and, when the pipe dried up, a loud shout from Mister Stone of ‘Motte!’ Then with the pots and plates piling up in the troughs, the Head Scullion strode out in pursuit of the gardener. Through the window, John and Philip saw his boots stamp over the gravel and grass of the Rose Garden. Words were exchanged and the flow resumed.

  At midday, the tolling of the chapel bell called the boys to dinner. Another in the late afternoon heralded supper. John drank small beer from the butt, swilling down the thin, bitter liquor. He tore his bread into pieces and crammed them into his mouth, chewing furiously. Looking up he saw the other boys stare.

  ‘It's how you eat,’ Philip told him later.
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  ‘How's that?’

  ‘Like a starving wolf.’

  He chewed more slowly. The work grew no easier but when Philip complained of the filthy water that soaked them or the bowls and plates that threatened to engulf them, John remembered how the cold in Buccla's Wood had pinched his bones in its fingers, how his belly had ached and his scalp crawled with lice. How his mother's voice had pursued him through the dark trees.

  We keep the Feast. We keep it for all of them . . .

  By day, the clatter of bowls drowned out her words but every night, after he settled himself on the pallet with Philip, he returned to the silent trees. There his mother awaited him.

  She had sent him to the Manor, he told himself. Why did she draw him back nightly to Buccla's Wood? Still he heard her voice calling after him. What more had she meant to tell him that night? Waking, the question goaded him, turning his thoughts to Scovell. How the man's gaze had slid away when he had told of her death.

  But Scovell was another enigma. He had not addressed a word to John since his first day in the kitchen. Sometimes the Master Cook seemed to fill the room with his presence. At others he drifted through like a ghost. His chambers stretched under the whole house, the other boys said. He cooked strange-smelling dishes down there. He spoke languages that no one understood.

  ‘Like Roos then,’ offered Phineas Campin one night.

  ‘That's Flemish,’ said Adam Lockyer dismissively. ‘Scovell's not Flemish . . .’

  ‘What is he then?’ asked John.

  But none of the kitchen boys knew quite what the Master Cook was.

  ‘I saw him watching you,’ Phineas confided later to John. ‘The first day you came here. When you told Vanian what was in that broth. I came in from Firsts and he was watching you. Just hanging back in the shadows.’

  John's hair grew, black and curly as before. His ribs gained flesh. The bruises from his encounter with Coake faded. He no longer shivered his way through the nights or woke to the old gnawing hunger. He no longer gulped his food like a wolf. The work in the scullery settled into a routine.