A baked Apple is no Kickshaw or any dainty Dish. Set this Quodling as best you may upon a Plate and pour on the Cream. Break the Two together so that the hot Temper of the Quodling meets the Cold. As the Poet wrote:
Let me feed thee such Honey-sugared Creams
As cool the Quodling's ’scaping Steam
This is a hearty Dish and is most fit for One whose Sourness wants Sweetness or One whose hot Humour wants Coolness. Or both.
THE COOKS, UNDER-COOKS AND kitchen boys crowded about him, laughing, cheering and slapping him on the back. Mister Bunce presented John with a mug of ale.
‘Cook the wedding feast, John! We'll have to ask Master Palewick to lay in more salt!’
‘As much salt as you want,’ Henry pledged from the other side of the kitchen.
John glugged his ale in a blur of congratulations. Even Mister Vanian conceded that John had served the Kitchen well. Then Scovell made his way through the crush and called for silence.
‘Well done, John Saturnall!’ the man announced. ‘The champion of our kitchen!’ Then he turned to John. ‘I doubted him when I should not. A true cook knows no doubt. So he has taught us tonight. And he has reaped the reward!’
As the cheers echoed in the vaulted roof, Scovell offered his hand. John hesitated for a moment but then he gripped and shook.
‘To the Kitchen!’ he called out. ‘To Master Scovell! To all of us!’
Everyone drank. Colin and Luke rolled a second barrel forward. The cooks crowded around.
‘Where's Coake?’ John asked Philip in the midst of the crush.
‘Gone,’ Philip said. ‘Scovell found the salt in a pocket-bag tied around his waist. The look on his face . . .’
The marquees deflated and sank to the ground. Ambling horses were harnessed and saddled. The royal exit was as piecemeal as the entrance had been grand. When the last squadron of royal servants had trotted up the drive and disappeared through the gatehouse, John was summoned by Scovell. Entering the chamber, he saw a stout woman who carried at her waist a heavy ring of keys. She turned with a jangle.
‘Is that Susan Sandall's boy?’
John recognised Mrs Gardiner the housekeeper. He nodded.
‘She sent him here, Mrs Gardiner,’ Scovell said from the hearth.
John shifted awkwardly as the housekeeper's eyes swept over him.
‘I can see her face in yours,’ Mrs Gardiner said approvingly. ‘A good woman. And now her boy will cook for her ladyship's wedding.’
‘So we hope,’ said Scovell. The woman looked around the chamber.
‘I haven't set foot down here since that night. Do you recall it, Master Scovell, how we drove that thieving magpie out? How long has it been?’
Magpie. John's ears twitched.
‘Eighteen years,’ Scovell answered shortly. He turned to a pan dangling over the hearth.
‘What a commotion!’ Mrs Gardiner continued. ‘The villain.’ She eyed the connecting door as if she expected the villain, whoever he was, to burst through it. She seemed about to launch into another volley of exclamations when her gaze returned to John. Her shrewd eyes narrowed. ‘Susan Sandall's son,’ she said in a curious tone, examining John's face. ‘Now you're almost grown.’
‘I am seventeen years of age,’ John said as the silence lengthened.
‘And now you'll be cooking the feast for the one your ma delivered.’ Mrs Gardiner paused and considered. ‘Just as soon as her ladyship returns to her senses.’
John looked between the Master Cook and the housekeeper.
‘Mrs Gardiner has a task for you,’ said Scovell.
‘No!’ shouted Lucretia.
‘My lady, the Fremantle Covenant is no old wives’ tale,’ Mister Pouncey explained patiently. ‘It was an oath sworn to God. Your own ancestor made the pact . . .’
‘I know the story well enough.’
‘Then your ladyship will appreciate the great peril into which she places Buckland by her current, uh, reluctance.’
‘To join myself to Piers Callock? That is not reluctance. It is disgust!’
‘Your union is His Majesty's wish.’
‘It is my father's tyranny!’
‘He wishes only that the succession continue.’
Sitting on the top step with a bowl of pottage beside her, Gemma listened through the closed door as Mister Pouncey's voice rose and fell. The patient mumble had continued for an hour now. Pole's voice followed, more strident. That was a mistake, thought Gemma. Sure enough, a loud thud interrupted the woman's voice. A moment later the door was flung open.
‘Out!’ shouted Lucretia. ‘Out, both of you!’
A red-faced Mister Pouncey hurried down the passage followed by an affronted Pole. Gemma looked up hopefully. But the door slammed shut again.
She had helped her mistress scrub off the powder and rouge. She had peeled off the beauty spot on her cheek. As she had lifted off the heavy silk of the dress, her mistress had begun to cry, bitter sobs that came from deep inside her.
‘I will not!’ the young woman had burst out. ‘Never!’
Gemma could not remember the last time she had seen Lucretia cry. Now, contemplating the lukewarm bowl, she heard a rending noise sound behind the closed door. Sheets? Visions of a knotted rope dangling down into the garden passed before Gemma's eyes. When the noise stopped, she rose and knocked softly.
‘Lucy?’
‘Go away.’
‘Lucy, it's me. It's Gemma.’
She heard the scrape of a chair. The door opened.
A headless torso lay draped over the chest. A pair of legs hung beside it. Another ripped body was slumped against the chest. Lady Whitelegs had been torn in two. Half of Lady Pimpernel flopped below her. Of Lady Silken-hair there remained only tatters and of Lady Pipkin not even that. But worse lay scattered over the floor. Through a haze of sawdust Gemma looked down on torn and crumpled pages, each one covered with familiar handwriting.
‘Oh, Lucy!’
Gemma put down the bowl and picked up a fragment.
Let me feed thee such Honey-sugared Creams
As cool the Duodling's ’scaping Steam . . .
She knelt and began to gather up the pages. Glancing at the opened clothes chest she saw the folds of silvery-blue silk. At least the dress was unscathed.
‘Mrs Gardiner bade me bring pottage,’ Gemma said when she was finished.
‘Pour it in the chamber pot.’
‘But, Lucy . . .’
‘Tell them I have resumed my fast.’
‘We only exchange our freedoms, Lady Lucy,’ the Queen had murmured in her ear at the feast. ‘We only exchange our desires.’
At the King's announcement, the woman's hand had found her own under the table and Lucretia had found she could not reply. The kitchen boy had stared at her. Hauled up from the kitchens to caper for the King. Or perhaps to witness her humiliation. Returned to her room she had imagined John Saturnall recounting her fate to the others in his subterranean domain. They mocked her down there, she knew. Pouncey and Pole's embassy had only compounded her fury.
A terrible pleasure had gripped her as she ripped apart the dolls, and a worse one when she tore the pages from the book. Lucretia had thrown open her clothes chest and pulled out the dress. Taking up the silvery-blue silk, she readied herself to tear the fine material . . .
‘The Covenant ties all our hands,’ Mister Pouncey had explained in the nasal mumble he reserved for the imparting of confidences. ‘But Piers may inherit on your behalf, being a cousin but once removed . . .’
She had grown up with the story. The oath sworn by her ancestor. She had never imagined it might bind her so closely.
‘You would need only to wed Lord Piers,’ the steward had assured her. ‘You would not be forced into . . . into intimacy.’
Until he had need of an heir, she thought grimly. Then the Queen's words returned to her. We only exchange our desires . . . Was Piers so terrible, she forced herself to ponder, with his lank hair
and trembling chin? Could he be worse than Lady Caroline's rumoured lover, the cold-eyed Sir Philemon with his slashed and stitched face? She imagined Piers's limbs entwined with her own, his clammy skin pressed against her, his stale-wine breath in her nostrils . . .
The thought turned her stomach. She watched Gemma gather the pages and take the pottage away. Left alone, Lucretia sat on the chair before her dressing table and looked out of the casement to the little banqueting house. Above its pointed roof, a white cloud was stretching itself across the sky. She remembered these hours from her previous fasts. Whole days of light-headed tedium.
That night a jagged stone seemed to roll in her belly. She slept badly and woke as the chapel bell rang for breakfast. Through the day, the ache in the pit of her stomach sharpened. After supper, Gemma's voice sounded outside the door.
‘Lucy!’ she hissed. ‘It's me again.’
‘What is it?’
There was a rustle of skirts. A second later, a small grey-brown slab slid under the door.
Lucretia recognised it from its annual appearance on the table in the back parlour. On the day of her mother's death. Maslin bread.
The servants ate it all year round. She had always disdained it, of course. Now the dark slab felt invitingly solid. The yeasty tang teased her nostrils. Hot juices joined the churning rock in her belly.
‘I could get no better,’ Gemma continued through the door. ‘Pole was watching me. They were talking about you. Gardiner says if you don't eat then your courses stop. You dry up inside and can't bear children . . . Lucy?’
‘Mmmth.’
Lucretia's teeth mashed the fat grains. The coarse gluey mass rolled around on her tongue. She held a cloth to catch the crumbs and chewed as hard as she could. Lucretia thought it possible she had never tasted anything so delicious as maslin bread.
Gemma smuggled out another block the next day but as she sank her teeth into the second heavy slab, Gemma hissed a warning.
‘Lucy! They're coming!’
Several sets of footsteps were advancing up the staircase. Then they resounded along the passage. Lucretia chewed quickly but the key was scraping in the lock. She wrapped the remaining hunk in the cloth, dropped it to the floor and nudged it under the bed. She wiped her mouth as the door swung open to reveal Mister Pouncey, Mrs Gardiner, Mister Fanshawe and Mrs Pole.
A new smell entered with them too. A rich mixture of braised meat and spices. The aroma curled about the door and wove its way through the stuffy air. Lucretia felt the rock of her hunger stir. Then the source appeared. A youth clad in red livery stepped out from behind Pole. Strange to see a denizen of the Kitchen in the House, thought Lucretia, eyeing the tray and the steaming bowl.
‘Sir William has assigned you a cook,’ Mister Pouncey informed Lucretia, ‘in honour of your new vow. He will describe today's dish for you.’
Her gaze rose to the bearer's face.
John glanced down.
He had dreaded this moment since Scovell and Mrs Gardiner had informed him of the steward's order. He had been cheered out that morning by his fellow cooks, Peter Pears slapping him so hard on the back that he had almost spilt the broth.
‘Go on, John!’ Adam Lockyer had called after him. ‘How could Lady Lucy resist you?’
Her face wore a look of scorn mixed with boredom. Mister Pouncey, Mister Fanshawe and Mrs Pole waited.
‘This is a broth of lamb, your ladyship,’ John began. ‘It is made with fillets taken from the tenderest part of the neck. The joints are simmered on the bone until the marrow can be removed and chopped into the liquor . . .’
If he looked sideways a little, he could see her reflection in the pier glass at the far end of the chamber. Lucretia appeared unmoved as his description lurched on.
‘Thus the juices are reduced. Now, the seasonings . . .’
He tried to imagine that he stood in the kitchen. He was explaining the dish to Simeon or Heskey, or another of the kitchen boys. Not mumbling before a contemptuous Lucretia Fremantle. Gardiner and Pole nodded at his halting performance. Then, to his surprise, Lucretia spoke.
‘How fascinating.’
She did not sound fascinated. But neither did she seem to mock.
‘After the final seasoning, the liquor is strained,’ John continued.
‘Really? How?’
This time, John glanced at her.
‘A colander is too coarse,’ he explained. ‘A horsehair sieve will clog. We use a strainer fashioned from fine wires.’
Lucretia stood and peered into the bowl.
‘You have spent the day making this broth?’ she said.
‘Yes, your ladyship.’
The young woman leaned into the rising steam and took an appreciative sniff. Then, to John's amazement, she took the bowl in her hands. She was going to drink, John realised, struggling to keep the exultation from his face. His task accomplished in a single day! He watched Lucretia turn then hook out something with her foot from under her bed, something that scraped the boards of the floor. A bowl.
A chamber pot.
In the next moment, John realised Lucretia's intention. He took a step forward but she was too quick. With a single fluid gesture, the young woman upended the bowl, sending the broth falling in a dark brown arc. A dismayed John watched the steaming stream crash into the pot and splash the floor about. A moment's silence followed.
‘Filthy girl!’ exclaimed Pole.
‘Miss Lucretia!’ Mister Fanshawe spluttered. ‘How could you!’
A shocked John regarded his creation. Lucretia's triumphant face turned to Mister Pouncey.
‘Did you think I would change my mind for a bowl of soup? Not a drop will pass my lips. Tell my father that. Not a crumb.’
It was left to John to pick up the pot. As he knelt amidst the pools of broth, a scattering of crumbs led his gaze under the bed. There, among the shadows, he made out a shape. A small slab lay on the floor. A slab part-wrapped in a cloth. As John's eyes adjusted to the gloom, he smiled to himself A half-eaten hunk of maslin bread. So Lady Lucy's fast had already ended. Had probably never begun. He rose to his feet.
‘Not a crumb?’ he murmured.
Lucretia stiffened. Two dots of colour grew in her cheeks.
‘What's that?’ asked Mister Pouncey's nasal voice.
He had only to announce his discovery. He had only to call out as she had done . . . But as he drew breath to speak, Lucretia's expression changed. Her haughty gaze faltered. A look John knew flashed across her face. For an instant he was back with her in the Solar Gallery, the two of them united in the fear of discovery.
‘Well?’ the steward demanded.
‘Nothing, Mister Pouncey, sir,’ John heard himself say. His exultant mood had evaporated, replaced by a baffling inhibition.
‘Nothing?’
‘I was thinking of another dish, sir. One more to her ladyship's taste.’
‘Why?’ demanded Philip. ‘If she's eating, she's not fasting, is she?
Why didn't you tell them?’
‘Nothing in that for me,’ John answered airily. ‘Finding a bit of bread under a bed. Besides, they'd have known your Gemma brought it.’
He clapped Philip on the back in jocular fashion.
‘If Lady Lucy's filling her belly,’ Phineas said, ‘she won't touch what you're cooking.’
‘That depends what I cook,’ John answered with a smile. ‘Doesn't it?’
But Lucretia did not eat the comfits flavoured with sugared cream which he presented the next day, nor the lemon possets with strawberries which he took after that. Each day at the door, Pole inspected the tray. Each day John stood before her in the room, his eyes averted, the silence growing more oppressive between himself, the governess, the clerk and Lucretia while, on the tray he held before him, that day's creation cooled or collapsed or congealed.
Lucretia herself gazed out of the window, or busied herself at her dressing table, or pretended enthusiasm for her sampler, working a jagged row of st
itches. After an hour that felt like three, his arms aching and his stomach rumbling, the bell for the end of dinner released John to return to the kitchen.
‘Gruels and pottages,’ suggested Henry Palewick. ‘Master Scovell used to prepare them for her when she was a child. Not that she ate a spoonful.’
‘Frumenty,’ Alf pronounced authoritatively. ‘Or a sucket. Or broth. That's what my sis used to make.’
Poached collops of venison came and went untouched. A hash of fishes and a quaking pudding with raisins, honey and saffron were spurned. The days succeeded one another. When Mrs Gardiner escorted John, he remembered her scrutiny in Scovell's chamber, the talk of a ‘magpie’. But the quiet of the unfamiliar passages silenced his questions and more often now it was Fanshawe and Pole who marched him through the Great Hall and up the stairs to Lucretia's chamber.
The governess and the clerk seemed fascinated by each other. While their greetings remained as formal as ever, John caught glances passing behind his back. He glimpsed little smiles out of the corner of his eye. He heard their asides grow more elaborate. On the day Mrs Pole allowed a diminutive fringe to escape the severe scrape of her hair, Mister Fanshawe cleared his throat.
‘Mrs Pole. A word in private, if I may?’
The governess and the Clerk of the Household retreated a little way down the passage. There they conducted a whispered exchange. When it was over they returned and again took up their places to either side of John.
They retreated the next day too, venturing further out of earshot. Soon their assignations carried them all the way along the passage and halfway down the stairs. At last only flutters of half-stifled laughter reached into the room.
John was left to stand like a sentry in the chamber. His arms ached. His every breath seemed to amplify. He took up position with the tray at the door, counting the seconds to his release, while Lucretia sat before her pier glass, pretending to sew.
He should have told Pouncey just as Philip counselled, John berated himself as the days passed. He should have held up the bread like a trophy. Now the chance was gone. Why should he scruple to betray her when she had so willingly shouted out his presence? He had been a fool, or something even worse than a fool. Then, as he stood before her with his tray holding a dish of forcemeats and sallets, the greens cooling and drooping beneath his gaze, the sauce growing a thick dull skin, Lucretia broke the silence.
John Saturnall's Feast Page 22
