John Saturnall's Feast

by Lawrence Norfolk

  He clarified sugar and poured it between pans. He mixed pastes and baked them in Vanian's slowest oven. He boiled down calves’ feet to jelly and concocted a glaze. At last he poured a clear mixture over the baubles which rested in the case. A day in Henry Palewick's coldest storeroom and the dish was ready for him to carry down the passage. In Scovell's chamber, the Master Cook held up a candle. Together they looked down.

  Jewel-like candies glinted in the depths. A crown lay on its side amidst a scattering of coins. Scovell tapped a fingernail against the glaze then broke off a fragment of pastry and chewed.

  ‘That is the pool, Master Scovell,’ explained John. ‘It has turned the King's riches into sweets. Now he can eat . . .’

  ‘I understand,’ Scovell interrupted. ‘The water is very clear. This glaze too. How did you achieve that?’

  John pursed his lips. In truth, he did not know how the Madeira sugar and its flavourings had finally dissolved and gelled, except that anything stronger than the slowest heat had clouded the dish, poisoning his pool with darkness. For the glaze he had held a hot iron over the surface, passing it slowly back and forth.

  ‘I kept it high over the chafing dish and the coals very few.’

  Scovell nodded approvingly.

  ‘Patience,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that was the fault of Tantalus. And forgetting the nature of his master. But we will not make such a mistake, John.’

  The riddle again. But who was Scovell's master?

  ‘Carry this back to the cold store,’ the Master Cook ordered him. ‘Ask Mister Palewick to keep it safe. Sir William's guest will taste it. Sir Sacherevell Cornish serves Sir Philemon Armesley, Mister Pouncey tells me. And Sir Philemon serves no one but the King . . .’

  John nodded, still puzzled. What did it matter who broke the glaze he had so carefully made? Or spooned up the jelly? Its perfection lay here in his own hands. His thoughts were already returning to his dish. Hartshorn gave a clearer jelly, he considered that Sunday. On the other hand, the shavings took longer to dissolve . . . Dawdling out into the sun after chapel, he found himself wandering down into the meadows. Suddenly a loud splash roused him.

  On the far side of the ponds stood a familiar figure. Coake was weighing a clod of earth in his hand. Barlow and Stubbs did the same. Across the water stood the Heron Boy. But at the sight of his tormentors, a hopeless confusion seemed to settle over him. He took a hesitant step forward then another one back. His wings trailed on the ground. John shouted across the pond.

  ‘Hey! Leave him be!’

  The three clod-throwers turned to face him. Standing behind the trio, the Heron Boy only looked bewildered. John waved as if to shoo him clear but the Heron Boy echoed John's gesture. Across the pond's muddy brown water, a notion took root in John's mind.

  ‘Back from another prayer tryst with Scovell?’ Coake jibed.

  ‘What do you care?’

  John swept an arm at Coake. Across the pond, the Heron Boy did the same. Slowly, John raised both arms in the air. Behind the trio, the Heron Boy's wings rose too.

  ‘Want to give up, do you, Raghead?’ sneered Coake. ‘You shouldn't have got in our way, should you? You shouldn't have . . .’

  But John never learned what he shouldn't have done. Dropping his arms, he saw the Heron Boy's wings descend, the poles sweeping down to crack against the heads of Barlow and Stubbs. A spin of John's arms and the Heron Boy's wings spun too, fetching Coake a blow on the skull.

  ‘Agh! Damn you!’

  Coake clutched his head and stumbled. Across the pond, John windmilled, sending the Heron Boy into the fray. Wing-poles swinging, the ragged figure marched on his enemies, whacking and thwacking. The three youths cursed and yelped under the barrage of blows, pulling up clods and hurling them back. Then, abruptly, they gave up the fight. Stopping mid-throw, Barlow and Stubbs lumbered back towards the house while Coake scrambled towards the trees opposite. The two comrades stared after them. Hands propped on his knees, John heaved air into his lungs. Across the pond, the Heron Boy bent forward and did the same. Slowly, John raised an arm. The pair saluted each other.

  ‘I know you can talk,’ John panted over the water. ‘You talk in your sleep.’

  His fellow warrior grinned. Then his puzzled expression returned. John realised his fellow warrior was looking at something behind him.

  ‘Congratulations.’

  Startled, John turned. A young woman wearing a short-brimmed riding hat sat upright on the back of a large grey horse. A dark green riding-skirt draped over the animal's flank ended in a pair of black boots. A sharp straight nose pointed itself at him. Once again, John looked up into the face of Lucretia Fremantle.

  ‘Your manners have not improved, John Saturnall,’ the young woman said.

  ‘Your ladyship?’

  ‘You are bold to observe me so frankly.’

  He dropped his gaze to the pond's rippling surface. Her voice had deepened a shade, he thought. Her lips were fuller too. He had not set eyes on her since the glimpse outside the chapel. Now her reflection shimmered, dissolving then magically restoring itself But nothing would dissolve the nature of its owner, he reminded himself He recalled her shrill shout in the Solar Gallery. Here! He's in here! No amount of sugar would sweeten Lady Lucy's sourness. Across the water the Heron Boy stared as if Lucretia had landed on the back of a giant bird.

  ‘I see you have risen to the rank of kitchen boy,’ the young woman continued drily. ‘Just as you hoped.’

  Her manner had not changed either, John thought.

  ‘I am a cook, your ladyship,’ he replied.

  ‘Yet more good fortune. I congratulate you, Master Saturnall.’ ‘Mister,’ he corrected her. ‘A cook's title is Mister.’ He waited a fraction of a second. ‘Lady Lucretia.’

  ‘Very well.’ She added her own pause. ’Mister Saturnall. Thank you for that invaluable correction.’

  ‘I am glad to be of service to your ladyship.’ He paused again. ‘Your ladyship.’

  ‘And I am pleased to hear it,’ she replied icily. But in her reflected cheeks, John fancied he saw two points of red growing.

  ‘Then I thank you for that opportunity, your ladyship,’ John answered. Perhaps this was how they spoke to each other up there in the house. Like a game of fives, but with words not balls.

  ‘And I congratulate you on your new-found manners,’ Lucretia replied in a strained voice. ‘Would that I might guide you further into civility. Alas I must complete my ride. Now good day to you, Mister Saturnall.’

  ‘The regret is all mine, your ladyship. Good day to you too.’

  A small part of John felt a twinge of disappointment as he stepped aside. The horse walked past. He watched Lucretia's hips sway in time with the animal's gait. Had they been so full in the Solar Gallery? Abruptly she halted. To turn and deliver another barbed comment, he presumed. But she was looking to the gatehouse where the great timbers were swinging open. A familiar contraption appeared at the top of the drive.

  ‘Oh, by the Cross,’ she muttered.

  On the drive, two mismatched horses looked two different ways. A gaggle of attendants followed. The Callocks’ coach veered to left and right as it trundled down the drive.

  She was courted by Piers Callock, the boys joked in the kitchens. Everyone knew that. But now she seemed anything but pleased. The coach came to an unceremonious halt outside the stables where it disgorged a portly red-faced man then a willowy woman whose face was concealed by a broad-brimmed hat. A youth a little older than John followed. Catching sight of Lucretia, he waved and advanced.

  ‘Lady Lucretia!’ So this was the famous Piers, thought John. A long pale face was topped by a large floppy cap of crimson velvet. Green silk lined the slashed sleeves of his doublet while matching stockings clung to his legs. A pair of shiny buckled shoes picked their way through the damp grass. Beneath the hat, the youth's nose seemed to drip down his face and gather in a knot above his lip. Piers came to a halt and cast a fastidious eye over John's do
ublet, the material faded and spattered with ancient stains.

  ‘You may go.’

  John offered a bow to Lucretia. Across the pond, the Heron Boy did the same. But as John turned to leave, Lucretia spoke sharply.

  ‘I have not concluded my business with my servant, Lord Piers.’

  John looked up once again. Piers's pallor was achieved with a dusting of powder, he saw. Beneath it, Piers's cheeks were sallow while a network of broken veins covered his nose. The youth's eyes narrowed.

  ‘I have ordered him gone,’ Piers said.

  ‘But he is my servant,’ Lucretia retorted. ‘And I have not.’

  John stood between them.

  ‘Your servant?’ Beneath the powder, Piers's cheeks were beginning to take on the ruddy glow of his nose. ‘A kitchen boy?’

  ‘In point of fact, Lord Piers,’ Lucretia's voice had reverted to its icy tone, ‘Mister Saturnall is a cook.’

  ‘A cook?’ Piers's eyebrows rose in mock-surprise as he took in John's dark face and thick black hair. His lips curled. ‘But he appears more apelike than cooklike. Would you not say, my lady?’

  John saw indecision furrow Lucretia's brow. Should she defend John or agree with Piers? Her frown deepened but before she could make either of the disagreeable choices, the men on the gate shouted out. Six liveried horsemen had entered and were trotting down the drive, the foremost rider carrying a blue pennant on which yellow lions had been embroidered. John saw Lucretia's eyes widen.

  ‘Those colours,’ she said. ‘Are they the King's colours?’

  ‘They are indeed, Lady Lucretia,’ Piers declared.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘They are carried by Sir Sacherevell Cornish who is engaged upon the King's business,’ Piers continued. ‘Their arrival was my purpose in addressing you. In private.’ He glared at John.

  Lucretia did not take kindly to being corrected, John knew. He waited for the girl's retort. But instead her voice sounded a new eager note.

  ‘The King's business?’ she asked. ‘What business is that?’

  Her annoyance had vanished. Her eyes searched Piers's face.

  ‘Sir Sacherevell Cornish is steward to Sir Philemon Armesley,’ Piers announced in a lofty tone. That was Sir William's guest, remembered John. The would-be consumer of his dish. But a note of disappointment entered Lucretia's voice.

  ‘Only a steward?’

  Piers favoured her with a superior smile.

  ‘Of course, you have not been to Court,’ he told her. ‘Sir Sacherevell is no common steward. Sir Philemon, his master, is not only a Gentleman of the King's Privy Chamber, he is also a Whitestave of the Board of Greencloth.’

  ‘The Board of Greencloth?’

  ‘Indeed. I have exchanged greetings with him several times, I may say. Upon Sir Philemon's word whole armies march.’

  ‘Armies?’ asked Lucretia. ‘What armies?’

  Piers's smile broadened. ‘Armies of servants, my dear Lady Lucretia. Sir Philemon's musketeers are grooms. His pikemen are pages. And his trusted scout is Sir Sacherevell. Of course he is here to do a steward's work too. To count the spoons and measure the rooms. To sip from the barrels in the cellars and taste the dishes from the kitchens. Perhaps he will sample the wares of your cook here. Let us hope his skills suffice.’

  They both looked down at John.

  ‘Suffice for what?’ demanded Lucretia.

  She stared at John as if the answer were concealed in his person. John looked back coldly. Piers conferred a look of benign condescension upon Lucretia.

  ‘I garnered certain intelligences when last I attended Court,’ he declared airily. ‘If Sir Sacherevell's report to his master is favourable, and if Sir Philemon's recommendation is wholehearted, then I believe Sir Sacherevell's appearance signals His Majesty's future visitation.’

  Lucretia's brow creased. Then understanding dawned. Her mouth unpursed. Her frown disappeared and an artless excitement took its place. Perhaps, John thought, there was after all a kind of sugar that might sweeten Lady Lucy's sourness.

  ‘The King?’ she asked Piers. ‘The King is coming here?’

  In the attics the intelligence set the maids’ tongues whispering. In the back parlours, the Household men talked gravely of points of etiquette. The kitchen hummed with the news.

  ‘My gramps saw the King once,’ Phineas Campin told the others, reaching for the ale-balm that was kept above the hearth. ‘It was in his carriage in Soughton. He was taking the waters and after that his ague vanished. My gramps's, that is. Just from looking at the King.’

  ‘Different King though, weren't it?’ said Adam Lockyer, beating collops of mutton with the flat of a cleaver. Simeon Parfitt's head turned this way and that, his hands working busily on the goose before him.

  ‘Don't make no difference,’ Alf offered from the door. ‘The King's the King, my sis used to say. Don't matter who it is.’

  ‘Might as well be you then, Alf,’ said Luke Hobhouse, walking in.

  ‘I heard of a cobbler in Elminster.’ Colin spoke up from the table under the tray rack. ‘A ragged fellow came in his shop one day. No hat. Holes in his soles. So the cobbler patched his boots for love and it turns out the fellow was the King in disguise. That cobbler never had to pick up his awl again.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Luke challenged Colin. ‘Calybute Pardew? For every one of them cobblers there's a hundred lords. And every one of ‘em's got his hand in the King's pocket.’

  Across the room, John remembered the picture in Mercurius Bucklandicus that Ben Martin had bought. The sad-eyed man in his magnificent hat. At that moment, Quiller appeared at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘They're exchanging toasts,’ the man reported. Across the kitchen, Master Scovell nodded and John looked about for the last dish: his shining transparent tart. As it disappeared upstairs he imagined Sir Sacherevell cracking the sugary glaze to dig within its depths. Lucretia watching, he supposed. And Piers.

  ‘Fit for a King,’ had been Sir Sacherevell's words, as Scovell told John later. The courtier had risen to signal his approval by dangling a tiny candy crown from the tine of his fork.

  ‘So you have lured His Majesty,’ the Master Cook said with a smile.

  Carts loaded with beams and planks arrived in the outer yard. Gangs of workmen jostled. A long lizard of backs bristled with picks and spades as it crept down the slope from the spring in the High Meadow. A gurgling water-filled trench filled a newly dug slate-lined cistern. Master Jocelyn's men unloaded beams and planks of oak and ash, set them at angles and nailed them together. The skeleton of a barracks rose then extended along one side of the yard. Men climbed ladders and shinned along beams, hammering down overlapping boards of elm. A similar structure abutted the stables.

  ‘What're they trying to do?’ Adam marvelled. ‘Build the whole Manor anew?’

  ‘By the time the King gets here,’ Phineas answered, ‘it'll look more like Carrboro.’

  In the gardens, old women from Callock Marwood bent to weed flowerbeds under the direction of Motte while under-gardeners pleached straggly hedges into order. In the house, workmen painted walls, threw up partitions and hung new doors. Only the Solar Gallery, the East Garden and the glass-house were exempt. Mrs Gardiner's maids stitched curtains, aired bedlinen and hung musty blankets on lines. Mister Pouncey strode up and down passageways followed by a string of green-liveried clerks who carried ledgers, pens and a small collapsible table which Mister Pouncey employed as a portable desk. When the first snows fell, the works came to a halt but by the time Josh Palewick paid his annual visit, a barracks was rising beyond the outer yard.

  ‘So the King's coming to Buckland?’ the man asked.

  ‘So it appears,’ said John.

  ‘They're talking of it all down the Vale.’ Behind Josh, the mule stamped a hoof ‘Her Majesty too. That true?’

  John nodded. The commotion and excitement swirled about him. But even in the midst of its eddies and whirls he remembered Scovell's words and
wondered why Josh Palewick should care. If the feast belonged to its cook, what did it matter who ate it? A King sat and chewed and swallowed like any other mortal, thought John. But Scovell too seemed caught up in the nervous excitement, spending long hours closeted with Vanian, Underley, Roos and Henry Palewick who discussed together the order of service.

  Orders for beef were placed with stockmen as far away as Soughton and for barrels of conger and herring from Stollport. When Calybute's latest Mercurius Bucklandicus showed the King's household moving in procession out of London, a new urgency seemed to grip the Household. From his command post in the doorway of the Great Hall, Mister Pouncey pondered lists of secretaries and seal-keepers, council clerks and sergeants-at-arms. Was the Clerk of Petty Bag senior to a gentleman groom? he wondered. How important was the Keeper of the Hanaper, or the Chafe Wax? In Mister Pouncey's anxious imaginings, bishops were seated next to mistresses and dukes jammed in with the yeomen. What if the High Table collapsed? the steward wondered. What if the spring in the High Meadow ran dry? What if bed-less courtiers pursued him through the Manor waving their slashed silk sleeves . . .

  ‘Some do not appear on my lists,’ he complained to Sir Sacherevell, flattening a sheet of paper on the balustrade and peering at the names. In the Great Hall behind them men on ladders were taking down and polishing the swords on the wall. Beneath the dais, disgruntled carpenters were hammering in unnecessary struts. ‘Others appear several times.’

  Messengers flew up and down the road from Carrboro. A week before His Majesty was expected, when Mister Pouncey had begun to believe that he had matters under his control, a forest of pennants advanced on the Manor flown from wagons and carts which lumbered through the gatehouse. Their mounted escorts ambled alongside, forcing Buckland's own traffic off the track. The royal baggage train had begun to arrive.

  In the field beside the new barracks, marquees rose with the King's colours fluttering above until it seemed a billowing fleet rode at anchor there. With their animals stabled, the horsemen swaggered about the yard while a guard of bored yeomen dawdled around the tents. Almost the last to arrive was a tall man with a tuft of dark hair at the front of his forehead and an elaborate moustache who squabbled with a dozen subordinates. All wore navy-blue doublets worked with silver thread.