XXVIII
Villa Ombrosa
Being Fig Sunday, Lent, 1773
Biddy Leigh, her journal
* * *
Fig Pie
To make a crisp pastry take one pound of fine flour with one ounce of sifted loaf sugar. Mix with a gill of boiling cream and three ounces of butter; work it well, then roll it thin. Put your figs in a pan with just enough water and stew until tender, mix in sweet spice as you like, a few currants and treacle. When you have made your pie rub over with a feather dipped in white of egg and sift your sugar over. Bake in a moderate oven for a quick oven will catch and burn.
As made by Biddy Leigh to remember Fig Sunday, Lent, 1773
* * *
I started to sicken for home, for that villa was no home to anyone. The kitchen never satisfied me, and even the fire was parlous. I wasted hours tempting it with morsels of kindling – while the others idled upstairs I would be down on my knees feeding it mossy twigs, getting smoke in my hair and soot on my face. My kitchen courtyard was large enough, but a bare, sweltering place, a favourite of flies and midges. As for the rest of the estate, it was a wilderness. The only good things to eat were some lemons ripening down by a ruined old graveyard. The whole place had been empty so long that it had a melancholy mildewed air, however much I scrubbed it.
So I got to thinking that it was Fig Sunday, the time folk at home went visiting their mothers. The pie I was making would have pleased even my crotchety old ma, for the figs from the market were the fragrantest globes, laced with liquorice-bursting aniseeds. I was up and away with the larks that day, scattering flour and crimping pastry, when Mr Loveday stuck his head in the door and told me there was a horseman coming up the drive.
‘Lord, it’s not that wretched count again, is it?’ My claggy fingers went straight to my head to yank off the grubby kerchief covering my hair. Glancing down I decided my blue wincey gown would have to do. It was tatty and travel worn, but clean enough once I’d unpinned my sacking apron.
‘No. It some big fellow riding alone.’
I told him to run up and tell our mistress to beware, and that I would see the visitor in the front parlour. It was a damned nuisance, for I’d just put the first of my pies in to bake, and was in no mood to talk hoity with a stranger.
But before I could make my way to the parlour a loud knock at the kitchen door made me jump out of my skin. Then bless me, none other than Signor Renzo, the count’s bullish cook, strode right inside my kitchen like he owned it. When he saw me standing at the table, he stopped in his tracks and started in surprise.
‘My Lady Carinna.’ He made a stiff bow, and when he lifted his head he stared at me and all around the kitchen, bewildered. ‘I am sorry I surprise you, My Lady. I came to the servants’ door. I think to cook— I— His Excellency offers my services while your cook is ill. I am at your service.’
He was too smartly dressed for that I reckoned, for he was all buffed up in a blue frock coat and white linen. He bowed again very low and then straightened, waiting for my reply, his dark brows gathered in bafflement. He had an odd judging sort of manner; tilting his heavy head backwards a little to look at me through low-lidded eyes.
Honest to God my brainbox ground to a halt. I stared from his questioning face to the pastry cuttings on the table and back again.
‘Tell your master I have no need of your services, signore.’
He tried another small bow. ‘I will do so. If you would permit me a question. It is an English lady’s habit to – bake?’ He waved his hand at the evidence on the table. He spoke mighty good English in a rumbling bass tone, but there was an edge of impudence to the question.
I was right flustered and started to jabber any old nonsense. ‘Yes, signore. The English love to bake. Have you not heard of their eccentric way? Only the best of ladies, mind you, entertain themselves so.’
He lifted his head and sniffed with his broad nose. ‘I fear you burn your pastry, My Lady. I will rescue it.’
And before I could get to the oven he was there, slipping a cloth over his hands and sliding my first Fig Pie out. It had caught the fire a little around the crimped crust, but it smelled like a hot breeze from Jamaica.
‘I find it not usual,’ he said, placing my humble pie on the table as delicately as if it were the crown jewels, ‘especially you are English?’ Then he looked up fast to meet my eye. ‘Why, you bake quite well. This could be sold in a village market for a few coins, certainly.’
A few coins? There he went again, the blaggart. I had forgotten what an over-puffed pumpkin he was.
‘At a common market perhaps, but I could never be such a grand cook such as you, could I, signore? Did you not say the English always burn their food?’
He had at least the manners to look ashamed at that.
‘Perhaps you do not understand? Such talent should – should flourish. It is just so – strange for an English to show such gifts. You must agree they have no notion of eating well. Indeed, I should be honoured if you give me the receipt.’
The sauce-box! I had not forgotten how close he was with his own receipts. I recollected his very words. ‘But signore,’ I mocked, ‘a lady’s best treasure is her secrets.’
This time he did redden quite powerfully, right from the black curls at his brow to where his thick neck disappeared in crisp white linen.
‘My Lady.’ He dropped his head and looked quite caught out. Then I did feel a shred of pity for the fellow, so apparent was it that he visited only at the count’s command.
‘It is only a simple plate pie that we eat at Lent with our mothers,’ I said. ‘But the crust I am pleased with.’ I broke an inch off and put the scorching morsel in my mouth. The singeing had left it as short and crisp as a biscuit. I nodded to him and he took a little too.
‘That is good. The heated sugar it is like – toffee? Is that the word? May I show you an Italian method?’
I nodded. Flinging his blue coat over a chair he began to work the pastry with fingers very graceful for a man of his size. Now what he did was this: taking a square of pastry, he slit it very fast in serried rows so that it opened to twice its size in a lacy lattice. He wrapped that around the figs so that they looked for all the world like fruit wrapped in a diamond window pane of pastry.
‘Caged figs.’ He smiled, and gave them an egg-wash with my feather before sliding them into the oven.
‘You have a true talent,’ I reluctantly admitted.
‘I imagine how such things can be contrived. At home I have the little machine to cut. It is a – do you say roller, a turning barrel? With teeth to cut the openings all in line?’
‘How clever,’ I marvelled. ‘I also often think of all the contrivances that would make cooking so much easier.’
‘Tell me.’
I put my hands on my hips and began to tell only the start of my great list of notions. ‘Well, look at stirring, Signor Renzo. Men use water and wind to turn great millstones, yet cooks must use feeble human arms to beat cakes hour after hour. And potters in England bake pots in furnaces at a particular heat, yet our own kitchen ovens blow hot or cold according to the dampness of our faggots.’
Signor Renzo was leaning back again, watching me keenly with those sleepy eyes. Yet they were not so sleepy at all. He was like a black stocky hound, very quiet but all the time on guard.
‘And do you know why that is? It is because men do not care about what happens in their own kitchens, that is why.’
‘But I care, Lady Carinna.’
Turning towards the oven, he sniffed and said, ‘My caged fruits are cooked.’
The syrupy scent had increased, but he certainly had a most excellent sense of smell. It was indeed the perfect moment to rescue the figs.
‘They look very good,’ I said. Now that was not entirely true, for they looked like marvels – two syrupy oozing figs miraculously trapped in lace-like spheres of pastry.
I tasted them. It is a strange thing, but though the same goods wer
e used to make both our receipts, his tasted rather better.
‘Desserts are my true love,’ he said warmly as he cut his fig into delicate portions.
‘And mine,’ I said. We got to chattering about the wonders of sugar and pastry work and how any shape or subject might be made from such stuff. Signor Renzo talked with such animation that it grew ever harder to disguise my interest in all he said.
‘Yet the count does not care for desserts?’ I asked.
‘No.’ At mention of the count his expression lost its liveliness.
‘And will these caged fruits be on your bill of fare on Saturday?’
He looked away and would not meet my eye.
‘The bill of fare must be my master’s choice,’ he mumbled. Then I had the notion I must cheer this fellow up, so on a whim, I asked him to teach me the trick with the pastry.
‘It would be an honour.’ He came to stand beside me at the table and showed me how to score the rolled pastry. My own attempts were poor stuff beside his. I laughed as I lifted my piece that looked like a beggar’s torn rag.
‘Control,’ said he. With a gentle touch to my wrist, he lifted my hand. ‘Picture what you want. Be free.’ I coloured then, as his work-roughened fingertips guided my awkward jabs. Though we touched hand to hand and stood very close it was innocent enough, that little lesson. And I scolded myself for noticing him, for he wasn’t a handsome man at all, and it was not my place to get carried away with any fond notions. Indeed, he was a broad fellow with great square shoulders, and those lazy dark eyes always masked in shadow.
Before he left, he neatly wiped the table and pulled on his fine blue coat. Then he waited and looked uneasily about himself as I wished him good day. Finally, he told me what was bothering him.
‘Lady Carinna, I must thank you,’ he said soberly, ‘for not exposing my deception. You knew I had not put vipers in that dish.’
‘It took no gourmet to detect that. But why did you disobey him?’
‘Because I cannot use such disgusting stuff,’ he said, with an expression of such distaste that I laughed out loud in sympathy. Then seeing me laugh, he smiled too, as if we both conspired together.
‘But My Lady, why did you not tell the count?’
Now I longed to tell him that we servants must protect each other, but I could not. I was all brain-knotted, so the silence seemed to grow to a full minute as Signor Renzo’s low-lidded stare fixed upon me. Then the most unexpected words fizzed up from my brain, like bubbles rising from ale.
‘Because I like your cooking.’ That did not seem to satisfy him either, only intrigue him more, for he stared hard at the floor and rubbed the bristles on his chin. Finally, taking his leave with a bow, he said with great solemnity, ‘Lady Carinna, I am honoured that you notice me. And I like your cooking also. Good day.’
* * *
I had meant to bake some more goods that day, for the oven was bright and hot, but Signor Renzo’s visit set me in a jangle. I did not enjoy lying to a fellow cook at all. I felt him amiable enough towards me, but that was no doubt because he thought me rich and a rank far above him. No wonder he stared at me like an object of curiosity. The truth was, I was sick to my bones of pretending to be Lady Carinna. It grieved me that Signor Renzo might never know me, plain Biddy Leigh, at all.
* * *
Once Saturday arrived, Jesmire again dressed and laced me, taking every chance to tug my hair and stab me with pins. Then I was led to my mistress’s room to show the results.
‘Ah, the gold brocade with violet spangles,’ my mistress said between yawns. I lifted my rustling skirts and tried to mask the thrill of wearing such a Paris picture of a gown. We are all Adam’s children, goes the saying, but silk makes the difference, and so it did to me. In the looking glass I looked the very Queen of Fashion, my waist pinched tight and my skirts trailing in frills and flounces. My mistress had never even worn it; it had been hanging all the time on the wooden-faced dressing stand that stood in the centre of her chamber.
‘It must be very entertaining to be forever junketing about,’ she said. Junketing? Who did she reckon scrubbed the floors and cooked the meals and washed the linen she lay on? I reminded her that the count, begging her pardon, was a groping ninny and I would spend the greater part of the evening slapping him off my person. That at least raised a smile to her cracked lips.
Gathering courage, I told her the count had asked that I wear the Mawton Rose.
‘The Rose? How the devil does he know of it? I suppose my uncle must boast of it.’ She frowned, but could think of no objection. ‘Very well. It is in my flowered box. There’s not much left now Pars has taken most of my jewels for safekeeping.’
I shook my head at that. ‘Can that be right, My Lady? They are yours.’
‘Surely you can’t suspect pettifogging Pars of getting a taste for jewels?’
‘He has grown mighty strange, that is all,’ I said. I found the box. There was little in it save the ruby.
‘When was he not strange?’ she scoffed as I lifted the jewel on its chain for her to see. At the sight of its flashing fire she looked away. With a heavy heart I clasped it around my neck where it hung as heavy as a Newgate fetter.
‘Yes but My Lady, he made to beat Mr Loveday with his stick yesterday for no reason.’
‘Perhaps Loveday deserves a beating,’ she said. ‘He often creeps off when he should be at my door.’ When she spoke next I understood she had other worries.
‘I believe you have been most obliging to the count. It is time you asked him a favour in return.’
Here we go, I thought. ‘Like what, My Lady?’
‘He knows of your having a servant in – a scrape. Well, Biddy, the truth is I need someone to take in the child till I can return for it. Someone kindly and discreet. You do understand I can’t take it home? So if you were to talk of your fond feelings for – Biddy – you could ask his advice.’
She looked wretched as she waited for my answer. The damp strands sticking to her brow left me wondering when Jesmire had last bothered dressing her hair. The truth was, I would have done anything for her.
‘I’ll do it, My Lady.’
‘The closer my time comes,’ she confided, ‘the harder I think it will be to leave the baby behind. Sometimes I dream of staying here, to watch the child grow. Then I wonder if a fast departure would be better. I’m in such torment.’
When she beseeched me like that I didn’t know what to say.
‘And then I feel too sick to face my difficulties.’
I had to get on my way, though it was hard to leave her so sad, staring into the air, chewing her red-bitten nails.
What with my lady’s request and Mr Pars’ odd ways, and all my other hundred chores to see to, when Mr Loveday thrust a letter in my hand, it seemed only another trouble heaped on my addled head. I ripped it open in the hall and read it in an ill temper.
Devereaux Court,
London
14th March 1773
Biddy Dear,
How goes it in Italy? I think of you all quite often and am idly tempted whenever the English wind blows to take a boat and follow you to the sun. Now Biddy, you did promise truly you would tell me of my sister, so where is your letter? I wish only for trifling information. Is she well? Who does she see? When does she return? I believe she is in a pet with me, my foolish Sis, and deliberately brief in her correspondence.
And as for you, my pretty sweetheart, are you happy? God knows I am not. My uncle plagues me with his plans. Take pity, sweet girl, and give me news.
Your friend,
Kitt
I barely read it before I flung it in the fire. Then believing I had one less matter to fret over, I let Mr Loveday hand me up into the carriage.
To ignore the letter was the action of a damned fool, I know that now. If only I had answered him, if I had sent him an honest account of affairs at Villa Ombrosa, might not so much have turned out better?
XXIX
Villa Mon
techino
Being Lent, March 1773
Biddy Leigh, her journal
* * *
To Make Flesh of Marzipan
Take blanched almonds, beat them in a mortar with a little rose water, make them into stiff paste, then beat in the yolks of twelve eggs leaving five of the whites. Put to it a pint of cream, sweeten it with sugar, put in half a pound of sweet butter melted, set it on a slow fire and keep it stirring till it is stiff enough to mould into whatever figure you desire.
For the natural effect of skin, coat with a layer of isinglass jelly which imparts a yielding softness to the touch. To tint, take a fine brush dipped in cochineal and saffron. Then dust with starch to counterfeit the bloom of a youthful complexion.
The best way as made by Signor Renzo Cellini and eaten by Biddy Leigh, Villa Montechino, Tuscany, 1773
* * *
The count’s brother, Francesco, took one look at me and scowled like a bitten bear.
‘He convinced himself you were a figment of my fancy,’ Carlo whispered, as I ducked my head to let him kiss me with his mouldy lips. When I offered the brother my hand he pretended not to see it, and shouldered me aside – I think he would as soon have spit on it as kissed it. As for me, I didn’t care a jot about the count’s flaunting me before his brother. I merely thanked the stars that he believed I was Lady Carinna.
‘And you are wearing the jewel,’ said Carlo with a grotesque lift of his newly blacked eyebrows. He had painted his face and looked for all the world like a small monkey masquerading as a fresh daubed whore. He caressed the ruby that hung around my neck, then trailed his withered fingers across my breasts.
‘So your husband truly is a rich man. Surely there must be tidings of widowhood soon?’ I wondered if Carlo had told his brother I was to be a wealthy heiress.
‘No, I am still the happy bride,’ I parried.
‘That is not what Quentin writes.’
I ignored him. He did talk such hogwash. I was seated between them at a table in an oval room that was draped from ceiling to floor with purple silks. I felt like a prize pig at a fair, with the two brothers both eyeing me, the one as if he worshipped me and the other as if he would do me any violence.
An Appetite for Violets Page 20
