The Food Taster

by Peter Elbling

  'Are you not going to make me taste it?' Federico hissed. 'Of course,' I muttered. I looked over the hall. Miranda sat on a bench in her fur jacket looking like a princess. Tommaso stood behind her dressed like a knight. The kitchen boys were sitting on one another's shoulders. I said loudly, 'Where is my taster?'

  'Here I am, My Lord,' said Federico, stepping forward. I could not believe my ears. Federico had called me 'My Lord!' I waved my hand. 'The apple first.'

  Federico nodded. He picked up an apple, rolled it in his hands and sniffed at it. The hall was silent. No one could have been more surprised had Federico grown wings and flown out of the window. He lifted up one finger as if to see which way the wind was blowing. This was something I never did.

  'Quite brilliant,' said Piero.

  'Yes,' said Bernardo, 'The duke is so amusing.'

  'Well?' I said to Federico.

  He took a small bite. Screwing up his nose, he put his hands on his hips and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. Now I understood why Ercole was grinning. He had coached Federico. At first people giggled, but Federico did it for too long and the laughter died away. I had to be careful. If it did not go well for Federico he might blame me so I said, ‘I do not feel like the apple after all.'

  'The polenta,' Bianca whispered to me. She too sensed it was best to forget the apples.

  'I want the polenta,' I said, pushing the bowl toward Federico.

  Federico pulled out a wishbone. He broke it in two and held it up to the light. This brought great laughter once again, for of course everyone knew the story of my bone. He dipped it into the bowl, pulled it out and made a great fuss over it.

  'Just eat it,' a voice shouted.

  'Yes, eat it,' came more voices. 'Eat it.'

  'Well,' I demanded, 'What are you waiting for?'

  Federico dipped a spoon into the polenta and slowly raised it up to his lips. Then he looked out over the crowd. They were staring at him. Slowly he put the spoon down and turned to me. 'You eat it,' he said.

  'Me?' I dropped my lower lip onto my chin. People started to laugh, but then stopped.

  Federico's eyes turned into little black dots. Oi me! He thought the polenta was poisoned! Now I remembered what had nagged me. It all fit like a key in a lock! Bianca had suggested switching places and Alessandro had suggested that Federico change places with me. Miranda had seen them together in Bianca's apartment and they were both from Venezia. Body of Christ! How could I have been so stupid!

  'Go on,' Federico said, tearing off the shift. 'Taste it!'

  'Of course,' I answered. A thousand thoughts crowded my mind. If I said the polenta was poisoned, Federico would want to know why I had not spoken earlier. He would think I was part of the plot and force me to eat it. I raised the yellow steaming mush dotted with raisins to my lips when, just as the polenta touched my tongue, I cried out, 'There are seven raisins, Luigi! How many times do I have to tell you! Not seven!' And I hurled it into the fire, smashing it into a hundred pieces. The flames leaped and hissed like a sleeping cat that had been trodden on.

  No one laughed. No one made a sound. Federico's eyes narrowed and guards appeared from out of nowhere. They grasped my neck and shoulders and slammed my face on the table. Federico picked my head up in one hand, a knife in the other. My life came to a halt. I saw Ercole, his squat little body standing on one of the benches. I do not know if it was my mind playing tricks but there seemed to be a glow about him. At that moment I knew God was everywhere. Not just in what was beautiful and good, but also in what was ugly and crippled. For this had all come about because I had laughed at Ercole all those months ago when Federico had thrown the trencher at him, and since Ercole could never have foreseen something like this, it had to be God's hand.

  At the same time as I was begging God's forgiveness I caught sight of Bianca's eyes. Her face turned white. I knew I was right. 'My Lord—' I gasped.

  'Oh, Federico!' Bianca squealed. 'He did it just like you! Just like you!' She put her hand on Federico's arm, the one that held the dagger, and said, 'Do not upset yourself, my pet. He is just a contadino!' To Luigi she said, 'Bring Duke Federico's garments and another bowl of polenta with lots of raisins. We will be eating in his room.'

  The hall applauded. Federico let go of my neck and I quietly slipped out of his reach. My God! I thought, as they left the hall, she is a master.

  After Federico and Bianca left, everyone crowded around telling me how lucky I was that Bianca had saved my life. Even Miranda said so. They kept on and on till I fled and walked up the hill to Agnese 's resting place to be alone. It was not till that afternoon that I was able to return to the hall and search for the remains of the polenta which I had thrown in the fire.

  Alas, it had vanished and all traces of the broken bowl had disappeared. I asked each of the boys if they had swept it away, but they denied it, thinking it might lead to trouble. When I said I would give ten ducats to whomever it was, they all claimed to have done it.

  That evening, a kitchen boy a year or two younger than Miranda complained of a terrible bellyache. I hurried to his bedside. He was sweating and in such pain that his voice had become hoarse from screaming.

  'He is pretending,' Luigi said. 'They all do it to get out of work.'

  The boy was holding his stomach. His eyes were sunken and peered fearfully out of their sockets. 'Death waits for me by the door,' he whispered. 'Tell him to go away.'

  I gave him olive oil to drink, but it was too late. The poison was in his blood and the vomiting took away what little strength he had left. 'Did you throw away the pieces of the bowl?' I asked.

  He nodded.

  'And the porridge? Did you taste it?'

  He was about to answer when a wave of pain surged through him, shooting its claws into every part of his body, erasing his memory forever.

  I waited for Bianca inside the doorway to the Duomo and as she entered I thanked her for turning Federico's anger away from me.

  'Do not thank me. Thank God for your good fortune.'

  'As you are going to thank Him for yours?'

  'I always do,' she smiled.

  Strangely, I no longer feared her or Alessandro. Soon after, Alessandro left for Germany where he was killed in a brawl. I could not blame Federico for his actions for he was right although he did not know it. Nor could I tell him without endangering myself or Bianca. As for me, it was neither the conspiracy nor my own cleverness that lingered in my memory, but the terrible face of the dying boy that appeared every time I closed my eyes.

  After Carnevale, Bianca no longer entertained Miranda, saying that she had taught her everything she knew. Now, when Miranda practiced her lyre, I had to pretend to be a duke and clap and shout, 'Brava!' when she finished.

  She practiced the way Alessandro had taught her to walk and to dance. She practiced the art of kissing on her doll, Felicita. She wrote poems in writing as neat as Cecchi's.

  'You try,' she said, placing the quill in my hand. It is the same quill I am using now.

  'But these are farmer's hands,' I smiled. 'So were mine.'

  I did it to please her and, by the end of the week, I could write the letters A and B as well as any scribe. Then I learned the other letters and as soon as I could I wrote my name. I had heard it so often, I wanted to see what it looked like and when I started writing it I could not stop. 'That is good, babbo,' Miranda said. 'Now you will be a scribe as well as a taster.'

  If she had said that to me earlier the words might have stung, but not anymore. I had almost lost my life twice as a taster and as Miranda was becoming more beautiful every day, she deserved to have a real suitor and a dowry. Sometimes when I looked at her, thoughts came to me that I had to banish from my mind. Tommaso shared them, too.

  Not long after, we were pissing when we saw Miranda walking in the courtyard below us, her pigtail bobbing gently on her behind. 'In two years she will be fourteen and . . .' Tommaso grinned, and waved his fallo in the air.

  'Perhaps,' I said.
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  'What do you mean?'

  'What I said.'

  'Those who break their word get their heads broken.'

  'Then watch your head. I was almost poisoned.'

  Someone was shouting to us from the courtyard. 'Poisoned!' Tommaso exclaimed. 'No one was trying to poison anyone. That was Federico! You know how he is.'

  'And what about the kitchen boy? You were supposed to be my eyes and ears in the kitchen.'

  'I was, and anyone who says I was not is a liar.'

  'You are the liar,' I said calmly. 'Because you were not there. You were in your room putting on your costume. Luigi said everyone was wearing costumes so anyone could have slipped into the kitchen and put poison in the porridge.'

  There was more shouting now. In the town below us people were running to and fro. One of the kitchen boys was running toward us.

  'You just want to break our agreement,' Tommaso said, pulling out his knife.

  I pulled my knife out. 'You already broke it. I am tired of your lying and boasting.'

  The boy ran up to us, panting. 'The plague. The plague is coming.'

  CHAPTER 18

  The plague had already visited Genoa, Milano, Parma, and Bologna. The week before, the first cases had been discovered in Arezzo. The gates of Corsoli were closed, but what is a gate to the plague? A few days after my argument with Tommaso, a merchant sent his servant to the hospital with swellings in his groin and armpits. He died the next day. Three more people had died by the end of the week. At first, each death was given a burial, but then the gravedigger died and there was no one to do the burying so the corpses piled up in the streets. There was no wind to chase away the smell of death and it rose slowly until it reached the palace. Two kitchen boys fell ill. Giulio, Federico's youngest son, died, but his other, Raffaello, did not. Bernardo's wife perished. He did not shed a tear for her. Piero did what he could, running from one family to another, but after his eldest child died, he was so overcome with grief he could not go on.

  Giulia, Miranda's friend and Cecchi's youngest daughter, died. Miranda wept, but the sight of Giulia's mother running through the halls screaming terrified her even more. A tall, thin woman, who until then hardly spoke to anyone, now could not stop talking to her dead daughter. Her hair turned white overnight and she shrieked when anyone, even Cecchi, came near her. She died of grief a week later.

  We were helpless. This was not an enemy we could fight or even see to run away from. Besides, where was there to go? Corsoli was the highest point in the valley.

  'I am afraid,' Miranda whispered, as she pulled the covers over her. She awoke in the night, tearing her clothes off, looking for boils. Fear overtook her modesty. She made me look under her arms, on her back, and on her buttocks. She imagined she saw marks and spots between her thighs and I had to comb away the soft hair and show her there was nothing there. Then she hunched into a ball and wept. I promised her she did not have to worry, but in truth I was as scared as she and when she slept I pulled down my hose and examined myself as closely as I had inspected her.

  If a boil appeared on anyone in the city, they were driven out of doors, left to fend for themselves, and often starved to death. Houses which had been visited by the plague were boarded up and the tenants forced to stay inside, even those who were not sick. The markets were canceled, and so was the feast of San Giovanni. The archbishop and a few boys waved a burning torch over the fields to bless them, but they were afraid to carry the saint's head through the streets as was the custom. The same boys believed the cats and dogs were to blame so they hunted them down and burned them. Husbands deserted their wives, and wives their children. The screams of abandoned babies rose into the night air and hovered about the palace to remind us of their suffering.

  In the third week, two boys in Miranda's class died. The archbishop said our wickedness was to blame and that we could only purge ourselves by fasting. Then he issued a proclamation forbidding blasphemy, games, sodomy, and prostitution. All the things that Federico liked best. Federico said nothing because he, too, was afraid. One night when the moon hovered above us, all of Corsoli's children paraded through the streets carrying pictures of the Holy Mother and San Sebastian. Even little ones who were too small and too sick to walk begged to join in. Some died even as they marched. Every day we flocked to the Duomo crying, ''Misericordia, misericordia!' and begged God's forgiveness.

  Women flogged themselves till the blood ran down their backs. It made no difference. The dying went on. The stench of death lodged in my nose even as the screams of the living rang in my ears.

  Two weeks after his first sermon, the archbishop died. Now the fear of the plague was as bad as the plague itself. A servant whose master swore he was perfectly well was so afraid that he threw himself down a well. Miranda sat in the corner of our room wringing her hands. Her fingernails had been bitten to the quick and she had scratched the skin off her thighs and the underside of her arms. I feared she would lose her mind; and even though my mother had died of the plague in the country, I believed Miranda would be safer there.

  'You can stay with my father. You are his grandchild. He will look after you.'

  'You are not coming with me?'

  'No, Federico will not allow it.' Cecchi had told me Federico asked every day if I was still well and would not eat otherwise. A surge of pride had rushed through me. Duke Federico Basillione DiVincelli needed me. He could not eat without me. He could not live without me!

  'But I am your daughter,' Miranda cried.

  I asked a few courtiers, but they had their own lives to attend to and I knew their answers before the question left my mouth. It pained me more than having nails driven into my eyes, but I had to ask Tommaso.

  Tommaso was making a cherry torte. Although he had not been in the kitchen very long, his hands already bore the nicks and burns of his new profession. His fingers were not thin and well formed like Miranda's, but they were quite skillful and it was a pleasure to witness them darting over the pots and pans like a bird weaving its nest.

  He blended a bowl of ground-up cherries with crushed rose petals, added some finely grated cheese, a dash of pepper, a little ginger, some sugar, four beaten eggs and mixed them all together. Then he carefully poured the mixture into a crust and placed the pan over a small flame. I remembered that when he had made the snow wolf he said he wanted to be a sculptor and I said aloud, 'You already are.'

  'Are what?' He whirled about. His cheeks were thinner and his eyes pained and sad.

  'A sculptor. You said you wanted to be a sculptor. Now you are. Except you use food instead of marble.'

  He turned away to attend to the pan. 'What do you want? I am busy.'

  'Miranda is not well.' He looked up sharply. 'She does not have the plague,' I added quickly, 'but she will go mad if she stays here. I want to send her to my father's house in Fonte.'

  'Why are you telling me?'

  'She cannot go by herself and Federico will not let me go with her.' I took a breath. 'I want you to take her. I do not trust anyone else. I know we have had our differences, but I beg you to put them aside -if not for my sake, then for Miranda's. If you love her, you will do this.'

  He snorted. He snorted often now, thinking perhaps it made him more manly. A rat scurried past and he threw a pot at it which hit it on the head, stunning it.

  'This means our agreement is on again?' He beat the rat to death and threw it into the courtyard.

  'Yes.'

  'I want it in writing.'

  'You will have it so.'

  'Before we leave.'

  'Before you leave.' He took off his apron. 'Will you get into trouble with Federico?' I asked.

  'Federico? Why?'

  'Because you are his spy. I saw you in the doorway after the killings of Pia and Emilia.'

  'I do not do that anymore. Now I have this,' he said, indicating the kitchen.

  Septivus wrote the agreement, signed Tommaso's name for him, and then I signed mine. I packed a small bundle
of Miranda's clothing, Tommaso brought some food, and we met by the stable at dawn.

  'Tommaso will take care of you,' I told Miranda as she mounted the horse I had bribed from the stable boys.

  'With my life,' Tommaso said, and swung himself up behind her. He unbound his sword and took the reins.

  For a moment I felt jealous that I was not going. To be away from Corsoli, away from the plague. 'Godspeed,' I said. Miranda did not look at me. Tommaso jerked the reins and the horse moved toward the entranceway. I ran alongside, clutching at Miranda's foot. 'May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and grant you peace.'

  She still did not look at me. 'Miranda,' I cried, 'say something to me. We may never see one another again.'

  She looked down at me. 'Take good care of Federico,' she spat. Then she dug in her heels and the horse trotted through the entranceway to the palazzo, down the Weeping Steps, and disappeared into Corsoli.

  I watched them ride through the streets, past the bodies of men and women, the piles of babies and children, until they reached the gate and passed through it. It came to me that my brother Vittore might be at my father's house and my heart froze. I wanted to ride after them and bring them back, but then I heard wailing from inside the palazzo and I was glad they had left.

  That night I dreamed Tommaso had raped Miranda and I rose from my bed, shouting, 'I will kill you,' so loudly someone knocked on my door but did not come in for fear I had been stricken.