John Saturnall's Feast

by Lawrence Norfolk

  In the kitchen, dressers were opened and vessels counted. Shredding knives and flesh-axes were sent to Mister Bunce for sharpening. Mortars and querns were inspected for cracks. Bread-graters were cleaned and skillets polished. Mister Stone and his scullions scoured frying pans and pots. John supervised.

  They would serve dishes to signal the union of the two houses, John told Philip. A subtlety should be constructed from sugar depicting Piers's endeavours and achievements.

  ‘Then we should sew a bag from pig's ears,’ snorted Philip. ‘And fill it with a quaking pudding.’

  ‘Water and turnips,’ offered Adam. ‘That's what we ate while he was scoffing in Paris.’

  ‘And Paradise bread,’ added Philip. ‘Don't deny him that.’

  Logs thudded in baskets. Fires roared in the hearths. Under the vaulted ceiling a wave of aromas rolled forward. John slept fitfully, lying on his cot and staring up at the ceiling, thinking only of the feast. A week before the day, there was a knock at his door. One of the new kitchen boys stood holding a rushlight. He looked up nervously.

  ‘There's a lady to see you, Master Saturnall.’

  For a moment his heart leaped. But Lucretia would hardly announce her presence down here.

  ‘Escort her here,’ he told the boy. A few minutes later, a plump figure advanced down the passage. She entered the chamber with a nod to John and settled herself in the best chair by the fire.

  ‘We all keep our dark corners, Master Saturnall,’ said Mrs Gardiner. ‘Wouldn't you say?’

  John nodded, puzzled.

  ‘Thought I should pay Susan Sandall's boy a visit,’ the woman said. ‘Now Master Scovell's gone.’

  He eyed her in the firelight, trying to divine her purpose.

  ‘It wasn't Richard Scovell she loved,’ Mrs Gardiner said abruptly. ‘You guessed that, didn't you?’

  He nodded, his mind whirling, remembering the conversation he had overheard within these walls. No, it was never Scovell.

  ‘Almery,’ he said. ‘Charles Almery.’

  ‘That magpie,’ Mrs Gardiner said. ‘He was a dark one. Even Master Scovell couldn't see into him, any more'n he could know your ma's heart or I could look through that wall.’

  Her gaze drifted to the low door that linked his chamber to the one beyond.

  ‘But you said they fought, she and Almery . . .’

  ‘We all have our dark corners,’ Mrs Gardiner said. ‘Anyone who saw them would have said she hated him. I never guessed otherwise. I never saw into that dark corner. Not till you came.’ She looked at John. ‘To see you now, it's like looking at him.’

  John stared back. ‘My father?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘Almery was well made. And he could speak any tongue under the sun.’

  ‘Couldn't tell the truth in any of them,’ murmured John.

  ‘That's right,’ Mrs Gardiner agreed. ‘Your ma knew it too. But she carried a book with her, took it everywhere. Charles Almery could read it.’

  John remembered his mother reciting the words.

  ‘Each had something the other one wanted and neither could resist. But the night Lady Anne died, she caught him down here. Then Scovell found them both . . .’

  ‘Scovell said Sir William threw her out.’

  ‘Oh no. Sir William would never do that. It was almost like he was wary of her. He'd had her fetched from way up the Vale.’

  John frowned. ‘What would Sir William know of my mother?’

  Mrs Gardiner shrugged. ‘That I don't know. But I understand this. Your ma got gripped by a passion. And someone's passion gripped her back. And none of them ended where they wanted. You see my meaning, John Sandall?’

  She meant Lucretia, he realised. That was why she had come. Mrs Gardiner fixed John with a look.

  ‘I've known her since she was born,’ the housekeeper went on. ‘She'd go with you in a moment. If she could.’

  The housekeeper left her last words hanging. Gripping the arms of the chair she pushed herself upright. ‘Now, Master Saturnall, be good enough to show this stranger out . . .’

  A hundred questions awaited him in the kitchens the next day, and a hundred more the day after. Yet however many tasks whirled in his mind, he found his thoughts drawn back to Mrs Gardiner's words.

  She'd go with you in a moment. Was that encouragement or a warning? If she could . . .

  ‘The feast is three days away,’ Philip told John the next day. ‘You might at least pay attention.’

  ‘The forcemeats,’ John said crisply. ‘Tell me again.’

  Philip shook his head. ‘What do you intend, John?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I am her cook,’ John said. ‘I promised her a wedding feast.’

  But that night, Gemma asked for him.

  ‘She has sent me,’ the young woman said quietly. ‘She would speak with you.’

  From the house a muffled hubbub sounded, drifting up on the still evening air. Gemma's boots clopped softly on the path that led past the East Garden wall. John heard a burst of laughter erupt. Piers's companions, he thought. Or merely the end of supper. Ahead the chestnut trees rose. Out of them emerged the chapel, the tower rising like a great stone finger pointing to the sky. Suddenly John was reminded of a different wood.

  ‘She is waiting there,’ Gemma said. ‘She would not tell me why. She has barely spoken all week.’ The young woman hesitated. ‘She is not herself, John.’

  The chapel door was unlocked. John's footsteps echoed over the floor. Across the nave, the door to the tower stood ajar.

  Plaster littered the steps. Marpot's hammer, he remembered. The man had dragged Lucretia up here. Then his mysterious retreat. Above he saw a flickering light.

  She'd go with you in a moment . . .

  Shattered plaster crunched underfoot. The thought of her waiting swelled in his mind. She could not accept Piers. Not the Lucretia he knew. At last his head rose into the cool night air.

  Marpot had not stinted. Even here plaster littered the floor. The tomb resembled a throne. An ancient stone figure sat with its worn face looking out over the Vale. But John's gaze was drawn to the walls, lit by lamps placed on the floor. Mosaics had been set in panels. John glanced at the first in which woods and orchards rose. A familiar river wound its way among them.

  It was the Vale. But seen from inside Bellicca's palace. John crouched, his finger tracing the slopes where he had learned his letters. But how was this image here? Who had looked out of the windows of Bellicca's palace? He looked around and caught sight of the worn stone face.

  ‘You know him too, John. You have always known him.’

  Lucretia's voice startled him. The young woman stepped forward out of the shadows. Even in the dim light her face looked strange. She had powdered her cheeks, John realised. Her lips were darkened with rouge. A heady perfume wafted from her as she looked at the vista picked out on the wall. Then she spoke in a cold voice.

  ‘He was called Coldcloak. He came here when the Romans went home. He kept the Feast with Bellicca. With all of them. But he betrayed her.’

  John stared at her, his mind working furiously. The tomb. The images on the walls. The first of the Fremantles looking out over the Vale.

  ‘Him?’ John managed, looking between the young woman and the ancient stone figure. ‘Your ancestor was Coldcloak?’

  Instead of answering, Lucretia pointed to the next panel in which great terraces climbed in steps to neatly arranged orchards. Bellicca's gardens, realised John. In their midst rose a palace with a great hearth and high arched windows. Men and women thronged about the tables. But a fearsome figure towered over them. He carried an axe in one hand and a torch in the other. He was breaking the tables.

  ‘He swore an oath to God,’ Lucretia said. ‘Swore it before Jehovah's priests like you told me, John. He would take back the Vale for Christ. So he pulled up her garden and drove out her people. He broke her tables and stole the fires from her hearths.’

  In the last panel, Coldcloak fled the sc
ene of destruction. John saw the bitter tears pouring from his eyes. But under his arms he carried trees and bushes. And his hands still held the blazing torch and axe.

  ‘He brought them here,’ said Lucretia. ‘He stole them. There was no miraculous fire here at Buckland. Or spiced wine . . .’

  The ancient stone figure sat before his table. So this was Coldcloak, thought John, staring into the sightless eyes. Then Callock. Then Fremantle. Just as Piers had claimed. As Lucretia stood silently beside her ancestor, he remembered telling her Bellicca's story, how the remote look had come over her.

  ‘You knew,’ John said slowly. ‘You always knew.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you kept silent.’

  He waited for her to speak. To explain. There would be a reason for her silence. Some compulsion that had sealed her lips as they lay together in the chamber. He could forgive her, he told himself. But she stood in the shadows, as silent as her ancestor. Deep inside him John felt an old ember stir.

  ‘Why?’ he demanded.

  She watched him through the mask of powder. In the face of her silence, he felt his anger flare.

  ‘You lied to me,’ John accused her. ‘You lied with your silence. All of you. You stole the Feast from us. You took the whole Vale . . .’

  He stared at Lucretia's powdered face and rouged lips. He smelt the heavy sweet scent she wore. This was her true face, he thought bitterly. This powdered mask. But she would answer him, he decided. He would make her answer him. As he reached for her, Lucretia raised her hands. To ward him off, he supposed. But instead she grasped him, her hands cupping his face.

  ‘This is your answer,’ she hissed. ‘This is what you wanted, isn't it? Take it.’

  The whorish scent filled his nostrils. He felt her heat through the thin dress. Her legs splayed. Before he could ask more or protest, her lips silenced him.

  “Those Tarts and Pies that followed, of the Roasted Meats and Poached Fishes . . .”

  From The Book of John Saturnall: A Feast for the Union of Two Houses once sundered and at last rejoined, being the Fremantles and Callocks, served in the Year of Our Kingdom's Restoration

  nly those with long Memories will now recall the Union of Piers Callock, Lord of Forham and Artois, to Lady Lucretia Fremantle, in the first Year of the Reign of our second King Charles. Fewer still recall the last Lord of Forham himself. Yet he is daily commemorated in our Speech. When we adjudge a Matter as a heaped-up Extravagance, or a useless Complication over which much Energy is expended to little Purpose or Pleasure, we term it a ‘Callock's Subtlety’, for that was the Device I caused to be made for that Gentleman's Wedding Feast.

  Composed of Paste and glued with Tragacanth, the Theme of this Device was an heroic Feat known as ‘Callock's Leap’. A Goat did play the Part of the Lord of Forham's Horse and quaking Puddings and quivering Jellies signalled the Terror that the late Lord of the Vale of Buckland instilled in his Foes. A marchpane Flintlock fired a Forcemeat Ball. A capacious Purse sewn together from the Ears of Pigs and stuffed with Spiced Cabbage resembled, as some remarked at the Time, a great Buttock. It was punctured by a Dagger carved from a Parsnip. Around it was the Lord of Forham's famous War Cry inscribed: ‘For God and Queen Mary’.

  Of those Tarts and Pies that followed, of the Roasted Meats and Poached Fishes, the Forcemeats piled high and the Kickshaws in the Form of Jewels and Trinkets to catch a Lady's Eye, of these I may say Nothing. At their Service I was already far away . . .

  HE WAS RUNNING, HEART thudding, feet pounding over the East Garden's frosty lawn, past the old glass-house and the back of the dairy, jumping over the low hedges and pushing through the high ones. Approaching the new side-gate, he kept an eye out for old Motte. But it was too early for the ancient gardener. It was too early for anyone except Will Callock.

  The sun had yet to climb above the horizon. Frost rimed the grass. Will breathed and felt the crisp cold air sting his nostrils. No one was up except him. No one in the whole wide world. He looked along the East Garden wall and up the path to the chapel. The tower rose before him. Suddenly Will shivered.

  He had descended to the crypt that summer, following the coffin that held the body of his father. The corpse had smelt like the man but stronger, the stink of stale liquor seeping out between the cedar-wood planks. Even on this bright winter day, the memory clawed at him. One day, he had thought, he too would have to lie among the cobwebs and tombs. For weeks afterwards he had woken in the night, soaked in sweat and beset by terrors. Then his mother had stroked his thick black hair.

  ‘You miss him, William. Of course you do . . .’

  But he did not. His father had spent most of his time at Court. He had returned only to drink and shout. And once to hit Will's mother. Now the man was dead and his mother spent her days looking through papers with Mister Martin and Master Elsterstreet. The thought of the one-handed steward reminded Will of his partner in this morning's escapade.

  ‘Meet me in the yard at dawn,’ Bonnie Elsterstreet had told him last night. Now he looked down towards the deserted space, wondering if her mother had caught her. Bonnie's mother was famed throughout the Manor for knowing everything that took place within its walls, from old Mrs Pole breaking wind to Will himself breaking Master Parfitt's best china mould or throwing stones at the ancient grave beside the carp ponds with Bonnie . . .

  There she was. Skirts pulled up above her knees, hair streaming out behind her like a knight's standard, a girl of ten sped past the stables and across the inner yard. Disdaining the gate, she wriggled through a crack in the wall.

  A minute later they were face to face. Bonnie weighed a stone in her hand and glanced across at the old well. It had been dug for the King, old Motte had told him once. The King before this one. Now, like the coach house and stables and most of the rest of the Manor according to Mister Martin, it was falling to pieces.

  ‘Reckon you can hit that?’ Bonnie challenged him.

  They were the same age almost to the day. Conceived on the same night, Bonnie had confided to Will. She had heard their mothers talking. Now she pulled back her arm and let fly, her stone speeding in a fast flat arc to clatter into the well's tumbledown walls. She turned in triumph.

  ‘Ha!’

  Will threw and missed. Then missed again. He could wrestle her, he thought. His arms had thickened over the past year. But if he won she would sulk. And if he lost . . . The taunts of his friends among the kitchen boys did not bear thinking about. They both took aim again. Once again, Bonnie hit. Once again, Will missed. Perhaps he was throwing the wrong stones? He scoured the ground for better ones. Then a man's voice sounded.

  ‘You have to keep your elbow high.’

  He stood behind Will, looking down at him. A curiously dressed man, thought Will. For although he wore a fine blue coat and long leather riding boots, in keeping with the fine roan horse that stood patiently by the gate, his headgear was an ancient and battered slouch hat. From beneath its confines, a mass of curly black hair flecked with grey tried to escape.

  ‘You have to throw flat,’ the man said. ‘Give your wrist a flick at the end.’

  With that, the man picked up a stone, eyed the well and threw. The pebble hit with a satisfying crack. The man nodded to him.

  ‘Now you.’

  Will raised his elbow and let fly. An instant later he heard the same crack. The man took off his hat and offered a bow.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Will Callock,’ said Will.

  The man nodded gravely.

  ‘And I'm Bonnie Elsterstreet,’ said Bonnie, nudging Will.

  ‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Bonnie.’ He gave a little bow.

  ‘Why are you here then?’ asked Bonnie.

  The man raised his eyebrows as if the girl's question only now occurred to him. ‘I had hoped for a meal,’ he answered at last.

  Will watched him glance about. But not to the house. The man's gaze seemed drawn to the chapel and the tower th
at rose above it. His eyes scanned the high arched openings at the top. Then all three turned at the sound of a strident voice.

  ‘Bonnie! Master Callock! Come away! What are you doing out at this hour?’ A bustling woman advanced, an untied bonnet hanging from her hand. Will looked apprehensively at Bonnie. Mrs Elsterstreet's scoldings were not to be taken lightly. But as the woman drew nearer, the man turned to face her. To Will's surprise, Bonnie's mother stopped dead in her tracks. At first it seemed that she might have had a seizure so sudden was her halt. But then an incredulous expression crept over her face.

  ‘John?’

  The man offered an apologetic smile.

  ‘Gemma, forgive me. I would have sent word . . .’

  But the woman waved his explanation away. Walking up to the man, she gripped him by the arms. Then, to Bonnie and Will's disgust, they embraced.

  ‘Come,’ she said, releasing him. ‘Philip is up at the house.’

  Bonnie's mother seemed to have tears in her eyes.

  ‘Will he see me?’ the man called John asked.

  ‘Will he see you? How foolish to ask!’