‘We Fremantles have heard that tale before.’
The black-clad man drew himself up in his chair. Sir William's gravelly voice was neither loud nor sharp but the rebuke rang out as if he had bellowed it from the chapel tower. Along the table, conversations died. The servants hung back. Sir William's eyes sought out Sir Hector Callock and held him with a cold stare. As silence fell in the Great Hall, Lucretia watched the stony face she had defied so many times and wondered at her own daring. Hector Callock's jaw worked. His red face grew redder as if the Lord of Buckland had forced a choke-pear into his mouth.
‘We all cherish our old stories,’ Sir William pronounced. ‘But
now our stories may become one.’
He eyed Sir Hector who forced himself to nod.
‘Of course, Sir William,’ the man offered in a strained voice. Lucretia's father watched the man then nodded. Lucretia felt a current of relief run around the table as the black-clad man gestured to the empty cups. Sir Hector nodded gratefully as his goblet was filled.
‘We will drink a toast to our unity,’ Sir William ordered. ‘Let us taste this hippocras.’
Lucretia and Piers were served the same liquor with water. Lucretia sipped cautiously. It was love, she recalled, on which her shepherds grew drunk. But she felt her stomach grow warm all the same. She regarded Piers from behind her goblet. His hair had a certain shine, she decided. His chin was not so weak, concealed in shadow. Piers drank quickly and signalled for his cup to be refilled. Then Hector Callock's voice boomed again over the servants’ chatter.
‘It's a prettier devil than Buckingham who has the King's ear,’ the man declared. But now his voice had gained a wary note. He glanced to Sir William. ‘The Bourbon's at his side when he rises. She's with him when he sleeps. She's there when His Majesty takes the air and there at his table. Holds him when he makes water too, I shouldn't doubt. She has him like this.’
Mrs Pole looked alarmed but Sir Hector only raised a hand and tugged the fat red lobe of his ear. Lucretia directed a smile at Piers. But the boy seemed to find his cup more amusing. He gulped and waved again at the nearest serving man. Lucretia felt a twinge in her stomach. Not the usual ache. A sharper pinch. The aromas from the wine twisted up from the silver tureen, curling and coiling about the shadowy rafters. She sipped again.
‘A King has his passions as God has his reasons,’ Sir Hector declared to Sir William. ‘We can change neither. If the King should wed a Turk, I would attend her. But a Papist . . . The Bishops do not trust her. Nor the Lords. The Commons hear Masses sung in Whitehall Palace . . . ‘
With a shock, Lucretia realised that by ‘Papist’ and ‘the Bourbon’, Sir Hector meant the Queen. She leaned closer to hear more but at that moment Lady Caroline murmured something to her son. Piers leaned forward.
‘Lady Lucretia,’ he said in an odd drawl. ‘Let me offer my compliments upon your table.’
She stared back, baffled. ‘My table, Lord Piers?’
‘Yes, your table.’ The youth gestured to the silverware. Lady Caroline murmured again. ‘And upon your person,’ added Piers.
The drawl more resembled a slur. Perhaps he always spoke thus, she wondered. But his eyes appeared to wander. Reaching again for his cup, he fumbled, spilling the dark liquor over the white cloth.
So much for the table, thought Lucretia. Suddenly she felt a bubble of mirth gurgle up from her wine-warmed stomach. Once again she regarded Piers's sloping chin and high domed forehead. His narrow, long-nosed face and close-set eyes. Water parsnip, she thought again and this time the mutinous notion would not be dispelled. A hiccup of laughter escaped her lips. Across the table, Piers frowned.
‘Forgive me, Lord Piers,’ Lucretia managed. ‘I believe I have swallowed too quickly. It is but a passing indisposition.’
But another splutter followed.
‘Do you mock me?’ Piers's voice was thick. His eyes narrowed then drifted around the table. Lucretia watched Lady Caroline place his cup beyond reach.
‘It is myself I mock,’ she managed between eruptions. ‘I assure you.’
How foolish she had been. How silly to imagine that Piers Callock might accompany her into that world she had imagined in her childish games. That he might disguise himself as the shepherds did in her book. He was as he appeared. And the Vale of Buckland the same. Her mother had given her life for a boy. Not her.
The candlelight thickened, the glossy flames burning a deeper yellow. Across the table, Piers's water-parsnip face sagged and drooped. She was drunk, she realised. Down the table, Mrs Pole glared. A new fusillade of giggles escaped her mouth. But they were mirthless now. As Piers eyed her suspiciously, a commotion stirred at the far end of the hall. In the arched doorway at the end, the serving men were mustering.
They had been working like slaves in the kitchen, Gemma had complained. She had hardly set eyes on her kitchen boy. Now Mister Quiller led in a green-liveried line bearing heavy trays, each one loaded with platters of food.
The bank of heat advanced from the hearth and pushed out into the kitchen. Philip and John ran back and forth from the courtyard carrying armfuls of logs. Shouldering aside the leather curtain, they edged their way between benches and tables where plucked birds rose in heaps, joints of meat hung from hooks and jacks, pots and bowls stood filled with fine-ground sugar, chopped pot-herbs, lemons, curdled cream . . . A swollen river of smells swirled about John: roasting meat, bubbling soups and sauces, the tangs of vinegar and verjuice. The boys manoeuvred their loads around the chafing dishes and stacked them next to the firedogs. In the hearth's cavernous mouth rose the wheels, handles and poles of the spit. There Colin Church and Luke Hob-house were securing the plucked carcasses of capons, pheasants, geese, ducks and smaller birds that John could not identify.
‘You two'll be turnin,’ Underley told them, gripping the two-handled metal wheel. ‘Reckon you can do that?’
From the counters and benches behind rose a thudding, chopping, clattering and clanging that rolled beneath the vaulted ceiling until the air throbbed with the noise. To this din, the spit added its creak.
They counted rounds of twenty then paused in their labours for Colin or Luke to dress the sides of crackling flesh. The fat dripped onto skewers of smaller birds beneath then down into the bubbling juice pans below. Colin poured in half a jack of water then began to baste.
John and Philip strained at the wheel while Quiller and his green-liveried men jostled and elbowed on the stairs. On the other side of the hearth, Scovell stirred his cauldron, pulling out ladles of dark red liquor and pouring it back in long thin streams. So far, he had not glanced in their direction. Hands clamped to the crank of the spit, John smelt cloves, mace and honey under the wine. Pepper too. A familiar sensation tickled the back of John's throat; he knew this smell.
‘Pour it through the hippocras,’ commanded Scovell. The Master Cook beckoned to three men who manoeuvred a pot crane. Beneath it hung an enormous tureen. The cauldron was manhandled onto a bench and the gleaming pot set below it.
A large muslin bag was set within the tureen. The cauldron was tipped. The spiced wine gushed out in a steaming torrent, the rich fumes quelling every other scent in the room.
‘Strangers in!’ called Scovell.
The green-tunicked men rushed forward, grasped the tureen and staggered up the steps. The feast of Saint Joseph was under way. Master Scovell stood in the archway, pointing with the handle of his
ladle or dipping its bowl into the passing pots and pans. John and Philip began to sweat. Soon their palms grew sore. Beside them, Luke Hobhouse and Colin Church reached over and around each other for knives or whisks or spatulas. Roasted by the fire on one side and chilled by the draught on the other, the two boys worked the wheel. Philip grimaced. John grinned.
‘Here we are. Just like I promised.’
As the heat rose, the boys stripped to the waist and strained at the wheel, their hands slippery with sweat. John felt the blisters rise on his palms. Maste
r Roos and Mister Underley barked flustered orders at the cooks and boys while Vanian harangued the men in Pastes, goading them on with his sharp tongue.
Only Scovell kept his cool. The Master Cook took up position by the archway, tasting dishes and calling out orders with a faint smile on his face as if the kitchen's frenzy were only an elaborate drama, a performance put on by actors. But out of the smoke and noise emerged platters of meat surrounded by jellies and garnishes, pies with glazed crusts, great silver fish decorated with slices of fruit. The birds from the spit were taken away for carving and returned arranged in an elaborate pyramid. The serving men swung the platters about and bore them away, glistening and steamin& up the winding stairs to the Great Hall above.
Bright red from the heat, arms aching, palms stinging John and Philip laboured before the fire. The feasters upstairs would eat for ever, John thought. Until Creation itself was exhausted. The trumpets would sound and he and Philip would still be here, roasted on one side and blasted by draughts on the other. But at last the final platter of sweets passed through the archway. Then Scovell's ladle rang out over the din and the Master Cook's voice reached out to the men and boys slumped at their stations who wiped the sweat from their eyes and blew on their hot hands, who pulled off their headscarves and mopped their faces, some already sinking to the muck-spattered floor.
‘Stand down!’
They slept like dead men. Rising bleary-eyed the next morning, John and Philip sat down to bowls of porridge in Firsts. Their blistered hands had hardly touched their spoons before Mister Bunce beckoned.
‘This way.’
John and Philip exchanged glances as they followed the Head of Firsts through the kitchen. John had not ventured deeper into the kitchens since his first day's flight. Now the doorways that had flashed past disclosed salting troughs or larders, smokeries or cellars. Through a haze of flour in the bakehouse, John glimpsed men slapping balls of pale dough and labouring over the kneading troughs. The mouths of the bread ovens pocked the far wall. In the paste room, men wielded rolling pins, jiggers and cutters. A complex wave of smells drifted from Master Roos's spice room. Reaching the final junction, John looked down the passage to the deserted kitchen. Planks had been nailed over the door of his refuge. But Mister Bunce turned the other way. At the far end of the passage, a doorway broke the wall. Mister Bunce knocked. After a long pause, the Master Cook's voice sounded.
‘Who is there?’
‘Mister Bunce, Master Scovell. I've brought the boys you wanted.’
Another pause followed in which John and Philip exchanged looks.
‘Send in Mister Elsterstreet.’
Mister Bunce beckoned to Philip. John waited with Mister Bunce in the gloomy passageway. After a short while the door opened again. Philip emerged and flashed John a look. Then Scovell's voice called once more.
‘Enter, Mister Saturnall.’
A long vaulted chamber reached back to a hearth where a low fire burned. To either side, pots and pans hung from hooks. The Master Cook's quarters smelt of spices and woodsmoke. From the end of a workbench cluttered with little dishes, plates and bowls dangled a horsehair sieve, some long spoons and a stirring lathe. A chafing dish still filled with ashes stood beside it. On one side of the room, tall shelves were crowded with bottles, corked gallipots and papers. Tied in rolls, stacked in piles, bound up in bundles or thrown in heaps and weighted down with pots, the papers threatened to spill down onto the books shelved below. A row of small windows set high in the far wall looked up into a courtyard. A candle flickered above an open book. Standing over the table, Richard Scovell looked up.
‘Come closer.’
John did as he was ordered.
‘I asked myself if you would flag, scraping pots at the trough. Mister Stone tells me no. I wondered if you would wilt before the heat of the fire. Yet it seems not. But you have a gift beyond such qualities. You are not like the others, are you, John Saturnall?’
Scovell eyed him, his face half in shadow. John stared back. ‘They work as hard as I,’ he answered. ‘And as well.’
Scovell smiled. ‘Of course they do. But they are not guided as you are. Tell me, what do you call him? Imp?’
John looked across, baffled. ‘Forgive me, Master Scovell . . .’
‘Sprite? Sayer? The creature that lives on the back of your tongue. That steered your palate through the broth in my copper, naming its parts. There are not a dozen cooks alive who could perform such a feat. Your guide. How do you name him?’
‘My demon, Master Scovell.’
The man nodded approvingly. ‘A cook needs his familiar.’ Scovell glanced at the shelves and compartments stuffed with papers and books. ‘The earth's fruits are without number. No cook could master them alone.’ The man turned back to John. ‘Even Susan Sandall's son.’
John felt his heart quicken. He had been waiting for this moment, he realised. All through the monotony of their toil in the scullery, it had hung at the back of his thoughts. Ever since the Master Cook had looked up from Father Hole's tattered pages.
‘You knew my mother, Master Scovell?’
‘How could I not when she worked but ten paces from here?’
‘My mother was a cook?’
Scovell shook his head.
‘Had she been so minded, no doubt she would have gained that place. But no.’ The man glanced across at the shadowy wall which divided the chamber from the deserted kitchen. Set within the stones, a dark alcove framed a low door.
‘She was hidden away down here. Few knew of her presence. Fewer yet learned her name. No doubt her arts alarmed some pious souls up there. But Sir William would deny nothing to Lady Anne.’
‘Lady Anne?’ John looked at Scovell, puzzled.
‘Of course. Who else would bring your mother here? Her ladyship had never brought a child to term. When she fell pregnant, your mother was summoned here by Sir William. Your mother attended her in her confinement. All was well until the birth. Then Lady Anne began to weaken. Your mother applied every art she knew. To no avail. Lady Anne died. The child alone was saved.’
A moment passed before John understood.
‘Lady Lucretia?’ he exclaimed. ‘My mother delivered her?’
‘She did. But beside the death of Lady Anne, the child's life meant nothing to Sir William. His grief knew no bounds. His gentleman-servants were driven out that night and all those who attended Lady Anne. Even your mother . . .’
A troubled expression clouded Scovell's features. The man glanced up at a high shelf where, half-hidden in the shadows, John recognised a row of galliot pots.
‘I saved what I could from her kitchen; the rarest among her decoctions. Then Sir William nailed shut the gates. The Manor closed.’
So she had been driven out, thought John. But why had his mother refused to return? Why was her resolve so adamant?
‘She disappeared into the Vale,’ the Master Cook continued. ‘She had never mentioned the village of her birth. For a time I believed she might return. But she did not.’ The man looked up. ‘Then you came.’
‘She sent me here,’ John said simply.
‘You have a great gift,’ Scovell said. ‘Your mother was too wise not to recognise it. But your talent is untutored. Now you must bend your gift to its purpose.’
‘What purpose, Master Scovell?’
‘A kitchen demands many talents,’ the Master Cook said. ‘Some are common enough. Mister Elsterstreet and his fellows could master them. Others are rare beyond imagination. A true cook learns them all.’
The man held his gaze a moment longer, his eyes probing as before. There was more, John felt with sudden conviction. More that Scovell might tell. Or more that he might ask. But instead of any revelation, the Master Cook plucked a knife from the cluttered table. The blade was a slender crescent of steel, the wooden handle worn to a shine.
‘Let the kitchen guide you,’ Scovell said. He pressed the handle into John's hand. ‘You will begin in Firsts.’
&nbs
p; ‘Is it true he's got a woman's hand in a jar?’ Wendell Turpin demanded that evening.
‘I heard it was snakes,’ Phineas Campin offered from across the darkened kitchen.
‘I didn't see any snakes,’ John answered truthfully.
‘What about lizards?’
‘None of those either.’
The questions petered out slowly. John lay back on the pallet, waiting, listening to the straw crunch as Philip shifted restlessly. At last, when all the kitchen boys slept, he whispered the substance of the encounter to Philip.
‘Your mother delivered our Lucy?’ Philip sounded incredulous.
‘Shush,’ John hissed. ‘Or everyone'll hear.’
‘And she worked next door to Scovell,’ Philip said in a curious tone of voice. ‘You don't think, him and your ma . . .?’
‘No,’ John said flatly. The thought had flashed across his mind but something in the Master Cook's bearing told him it was not so. ‘He said Sir William had summoned her. But how would Sir William know my ma?’
Philip thought. ‘Maybe it was Pouncey. There ain't much in the Vale he doesn't know. What else?’
‘He said I had a purpose.’
‘What purpose?’
‘I don't know,’ John told Philip. ‘He said the kitchen would guide me.’ He remembered Scovell's disparaging words about the other boys. ‘Guide both of us,’ he amended hastily.
‘Us?’ Philip's face assumed a hopeful look.
‘I promised you, didn't I?’ John grinned back. ‘We start tomorrow. In Firsts.’
‘It ain't only sallets as get trimmed into shape in here,’ Mister Bunce told John and Philip the next morning, hoisting a basket onto the bench. ‘It's the likes of you too. Understand?’
They nodded.
‘Good. Get to work.’
They washed and peeled and scraped and sliced. They cut stalks and pared roots. John's knife skidded on slippery-skinned onions and hacked at beets, their dull leathery hides toughened by months in the root lofts. Leeks followed turnips. Alf scooped the results of their labours into baskets and hauled them through to the kitchen.
John Saturnall's Feast Page 16
