“Yes, chef?”
“Bring me the poaching kettle and the entree silverware.” The porter didn’t reply. Instead, he choked. “The entree silverware?” he finally managed to repeat. The chef turned to glare at him, fury in his eyes. “It’s just that we don’t have it. Entreeier Reinald has already sent the entrees up.” The chef’s look became murderous.
“He gave them oysters in sauce escargot,” the porter stuttered, and started to edge away.
For a moment it seemed that he might have to run, but the chef’s fury found its lightning rod in the person of the entreeier himself. He had just returned from supervising the waiters’ handling of his creations, and had the relieved look of a man who had done a difficult job well.
The expression vanished beneath the chef’s animal howl of outrage. Assuming that his master had been driven to madness by the pressures of his office, Reinald attempted to defend himself from the assault.
Unfortunately, such defiance did little to improve his superior’s mood. As the two men fought their way through the shadows, fists blurring and teeth flashing, the rest of the kitchen worked on. Most remained oblivious to the violence going on around them as, sweating and swearing and struggling, they created perfection.
But on that night, as their chef had known all along, perfection wasn’t enough.
“These oysters are very good, Lafayette,” Count Griston nodded across the dining table towards his host. “And the sauce is just right. It just goes to show that you can prepare quite a decent dish without worrying about any creativity whatsoever.”
Baron Lafayette smiled grimly at the insult. The worse thing about it was that it was true. The oysters escargot were faultless, but apart from that they were the same as oysters escargot anywhere.
“I’m glad you are enjoying them,” he told Griston. “I knew that you would. Many people say that the true gastronomer is a man of simple tastes.”
“I quite agree,” Griston’s wife said. “When we last ate at the castle we had oysters for an entree there, too.”
“Oh, how is the duke?” Lafayette’s wife enquired sweetly. “Have you seen him recently?”
“Two years ago, wasn’t it Griston?” her husband added.
“Yes,” Griston admitted. “I really should take more time for these social engagements. But you know how it is when things are going so well, eh Lafayette?”
Lafayette, who had lost an entire cargo of dates just the month before, nodded. To change the subject he turned to the fifth man at the table. The Harbour Master was working his way through his plate of oysters with the same silent diligence which had taken him to his present rank.
He was hardly the most sparkling of guests, Lafayette thought. But then, he didn’t have to be. Only a merchant who was a fool would risk offending the Harbour Master with a missed invitation, and whatever else they were, the merchants of Bordeleaux were no fools.
“How are you finding the oysters, Harbour Master?” he asked. The man grunted, and nodded. Then he swallowed. “Passable,” he allowed. “Very passable indeed.” Griston tried not to grin too widely.
“A toast,” he called, raising his glass. “To our host, and his passable food.”
“Very passable,” the Harbour Master corrected, but it was too late. Lafayette downed his wine in a single gulp, and scowled as he waited for the waiter to refill his glass.
“What’s for the meat course, my dear?” his wife asked, hoping to lighten his mood.
“Oh. I think that it’s porc au miel provencal.”
“Lovely,” Griston said. “Meat and potatoes. Haven’t had that since I was an esquire.”
“Really? Then I can see that you’re well dressed for it.”
Griston flushed. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“What do you think I mean?”
“Gentlemen,” the Harbour Master sighed. “I wonder if we might talk about something else instead of fashion? I am a simple man, and it makes my head spin.”
“Yes, of course,” Lafayette said. There was a moment of thoughtful silence, which Griston’s wife broke.
“Has anybody seen the latest play about Florin d’Artaud?”
“Oh yes,” Lafayette’s wife replied. “Wasn’t it good? Somebody said that he even went to the opening night. My friend Myrtle actually saw him. She said that he was wearing those new skin-tight Tilean hose.”
The two women sighed in unison. Their husbands frowned.
“D’Artaud.” Lafayette waved his fish knife dismissively. “The man’s a complete fraud.”
“Damn right,” Griston said. “I knew his father once. A decent enough fellow for a commoner. Hard working. Always paid the agreed price. Manann alone knows what he’d think of his son’s gallivanting.”
“Gallivanting indeed,” Griston’s wife scolded him. “You’re just jealous. Monsieur d’Artaud is the hero of Lustria. Everybody knows that.”
“Sounds more like a pirate than a hero to me,” Griston said, and Lafayette nodded his agreement.
“Got it in one, Griston,” he said. “Turns up in a ship full of Tileans and gold and tells everybody some story about cities in the jungle. Man’s a rogue, simple as that.”
“I heard that he challenged somebody to a duel for insulting him last week,” Lafayette’s wife said.
As Lafayette coughed on a slip of oyster, Griston came to his aid.
“What we mean, mademoiselle, is that nobody can be sure of the exact provenance of d’Artaud’s wealth.”
Lafayette looked at him gratefully.
The Harbour Master relaxed. Now that he had navigated the conversation back to safer waters he could turn his attention back to the food. And just in time, too. As the merchants argued with their wives about Florin d’Artaud, the smell of honeyed pork filled the dining chamber. This perfume was closely followed by a huge silver platter of the fragrant meat itself.
These dinners were hard work, the Harbour Master thought as he tucked in, but well worth it.
Later that night, Lafayette’s chef sat alone in his kitchen. Although the stoves had burned low the furnace heat of these depths remained constant, the masonry ever warm with the memory of fire. The chef remained oblivious to the temperature as he poked about in the embers of the roasting pit. He had spent his whole life in such infernos, and anyway he had other things on his mind.
Although he had left the entreeier battered and bruised, it had been no victory. Not really. Tonight he had had the chance to prove his superiority over every other chef in Bordeleaux. Yet all it had taken had been the stupidity of one man and the chance to present the perfect entree had been lost. Despite his promise to bring another batch the strigany who had sold them to him had disappeared. As far as the chef knew that meant that the eggs were unique, irreplaceable. Now he would have to pickle them. What a waste.
A fat tear rolled down the chef’s florid face and he poured himself another goblet of wine. For a while he toyed with the idea of having the entreeier murdered, but eventually he decided against the plan. He was too depressed.
He sighed miserably, drained his cup, and staggered off to the wine cellar to fetch another bottle. When he returned he opened it, enjoying the greasy squeak of the reluctant cork, and was about to pour himself another goblet when a sudden, sharp report echoed around the deserted kitchen.
He stood still for a moment, his eyes glittering in the darkness as he listened. He was rewarded with more noise, a series of sudden cracks that sounded like breaking twigs.
The chef put down the bottle and picked up his rolling pin. This wouldn’t be the first time that urchins or thieves had slipped in to steal a meal from this dark labyrinth.
The chef squared his jaw as another volley of impacts rang out, and he realised that they were actually coming from his own workbench. This time they sounded more like breaking porcelain, and he was seized with a horrible suspicion.
It was the eggs. Somebody was breaking those cursed eggs. And who could be responsible for su
ch vandalism but the entreeier, bent on revenge?
Pale with outrage the chef put down his rolling pin and picked up a cleaver instead. The razored rectangle of steel had been sharpened that very evening and shone with a murderous intent. He examined the edge approvingly then moved stealthily forward towards his workbench.
In the gloom he couldn’t see the perpetrator, but he could already see the crime. The wooden crate that the eggs had been in had been smashed open and fragments of precious cargo lay all about, lustrous with colour even in the gloom.
The chef hissed, eyes flitting around as he stepped forward. He peered into the remains of the box and saw that every single egg had been broken. Every single one.
His self-control snapped.
“Entreeier!” he roared, waving the cleaver in challenge. “Where are you, you scoundrel? Where are you?”
But there was no reply. The chef, his breath ragged with the passion of his wine-fuelled rage, peered into the darkness. For a moment he was afraid that the entreeier had escaped, somehow slipping past him in the darkness. Then he saw a flicker of movement in the cold store that lay ahead, and a predatory grin split his face.
“Come here, Jacques,” he said, trying to keep the hatred out of his voice. “Let’s have some wine and talk about this.”
There was a rustle of further movement, and the shatter of a pot knocked off a shelf.
“Come out into the light,” the chef said. “I know that you’re in there. Let’s be mature about this.”
He edged further forward, cleaver raised. There was a moment of silence, and then the patter of approaching footsteps, rapidly approaching footsteps.
“Got you, you… oh.”
The chef’s mouth fell open in a perfect circle of surprise at the things which had emerged from amongst the butter vats and cured hams.
For a split second he took them for cats. They were about the right size, and they moved with the same sinuous grace. But even through the fog of wine and rage, the chef could see that there was nothing feline about these things. They were more like the house lizards that hunted through the kitchen in the summer. Or maybe, he thought vaguely, the swamp frogs that graced so many of his dishes.
At the thought of such delicacies he hefted the cleaver. It was a mistake. Moving with a blur of speed the strange intruders flitted about him, leaping onto shelves or scuttling under tables to encircle his lumbering form.
“Get out of my kitchen!” the chef shouted at them, and waved his cleaver menacingly. The creatures watched the makeshift weapon, heads cocked and eyes aglitter. Gradually, with the slow assurance of a crossbowman winching back his string, the crests on their heads rose and their tails twitched excitedly.
But it wasn’t until the chef tried to strike one of them that they attacked.
Although they were still sticky with the yolk of their birth, the creatures moved with an instinctive viciousness. The chef screamed as he felt his tendons torn out from the back of his legs, and even as he collapsed needle teeth were ripping open the arteries in his arms. Blood spurted as he dropped his weapon, and he raised his hands to defend himself.
It was already too late. The things were already sinking their teeth into his throat, puncturing through the flab to bite into the arteries beneath. Blood sprayed as the dying man thrashed around, too shocked to realise that he had become offal in his own kitchen.
With his throat torn open it didn’t take the chef long to die. Seconds, perhaps. But his assailants lacked even that amount of patience, and even as the chef’s heart pattered its last they were feasting upon his still living flesh, relishing the taste of their very first meal.
It was to be the first of many that night.
Three Months Later
“By Manann’s codpiece, I’m bored.”
Florin d’Artaud, hero of Lustria and proprietor of the Lizard’s Head, gazed miserably around his domain. It was mid afternoon and the tavern was almost deserted. There were a handful of drovers nursing their beers, a group of hooded men talking intensely but softly in a corner, and a pair of silently drinking longshoremen.
There were also two serving girls who were passing the time by braiding each other’s hair. Florin watched them for a while. Then he sighed.
Lorenzo, who was busily gutting mackerel into a wooden bucket, looked up at him.
“If you’re bored, then you can give me a hand.”
Florin glanced over to see his friend slice open a fish’s belly and hook the innards out with a practiced thumb.
“Why don’t you let the girls do that?” he asked.
Lorenzo shrugged.
“I like to keep in practice. Anyway, it’s quite relaxing.”
Florin frowned and looked back towards the barmaids. Now they had changed places, and the brunette had started working on the blonde’s hair. It looked as smooth as mead in the dusty light of the tavern, and as he watched the locks being teased out she looked up and caught his eye. He smiled at her and she flushed and looked away.
Florin’s smile grew wider.
“Think I’ll just go and see how the staff are getting on,” he told Lorenzo as he got to his feet.
But before Lorenzo could reply, the doors of the tavern banged open and a squad of men marched into the room. Their boot steps echoed off the wooden walls with a flawless rhythm, and their steel harnesses gleamed with the polish of professional soldiers. Florin looked from the blank slates of their faces to the weapons that were scabbarded at their belts, then looked back to their faces.
Whatever these men wanted, he decided, it wasn’t wine.
The room fell silent as the rest of the clientele came to the same conclusion. Several of the customers were already scurrying out of the back entrance. The squad of mercenaries watched them go and turned their attention to Florin.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Florin said, nodding to them. They said nothing. Instead they fanned out to form a crescent around him.
Florin balanced on the balls of his feet, let his hand brush against the hilt of his dagger and glanced back towards Lorenzo. The older man had already risen to his feet, his fish-slimed gutting knife now held underhanded.
“I said,” Florin said, his fingers itching to draw his weapon. “Good afternoon.”
This time there was a reply. It came from behind the broad shoulders of the mercenaries, and the man stepped forward as he spoke.
“Good afternoon, Monsieur d’Artaud,” the figure said. To the uninitiated he would have appeared to be no more than a prosperous craftsman. A minor merchant, at most. There was no adornment on his simple leather tunic, or on the canvas clothes he wore beneath it. He wore a cutlass on one side of his belt, wooden handled like most others, and his head was shaved, as was the fashion in the messier professions.
Inconspicuous as he was, Florin recognised him immediately.
“Harbour Master,” he said, trying not to sound too surprised. It wasn’t every day that the Harbour Master visited a tavern such as the Lizard’s Head. In fact, it wasn’t ever. “How can we be of service?”
“I’m not sure yet,” the Harbour Master replied. He took a seat and pulled it up to the table. “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. You don’t mind clearing your establishment for a few moments do you? Just while we talk?”
Florin looked at Lorenzo, who waved a hand towards the room. Somehow, beneath the shadow of the Harbour Master’s enforcers, it had already cleared itself. Even the serving girls were gone.
“I’ll lock the door,” Lorenzo said. The Harbour Master waited until Lorenzo had bolted both front and back doors. Then, with a curt call, he ordered one of his men forward. The man carried a stained hessian sack over one shoulder, and Florin wondered what was in it.
He didn’t have to wonder long. At another command from his master the man hoisted the sack off his shoulder and upended it over the table. There was a soggy thump as a severed head fell out and bounced on the woodwork.
“So tell me, monsieurs,” the
Harbour Master asked, watching their expressions with a hungry intensity. “What do you make of that?”
The two men leant forward to examine the grisly trophy. When Florin realised what it was a jolt of adrenaline shot through him. The last time he had seen one of these cursed things it had almost been the death of him. Of all of them.
Feeling the Harbour Master’s eyes on him he bit down on his excitement and arranged his features into a careful nonchalance. Then he made a show of examining the head.
Although it was almost the same size as a human’s, there could be no doubt that it was from a much more exotic victim. Even in the dim light of the tavern the scales that covered it gleamed, and the flat iron shape of the skull beneath suggested something serpentine or aquatic.
“I never thought I’d see one of these bastards again,” Lorenzo swore suddenly.
Florin nudged him, but it was too late. The Harbour Master was looking at them with the expression of a weasel who has found a pair of snared rabbits.
He licked his lips. “So you do know what this thing is.”
It was more statement than question, and Florin had no choice but to nod.
“Yes,” he said and, ignoring the queasiness in his stomach, he peeled one of the scaly eyelids open. The orb within stared back at him. The deep yellow of the alien eye was already starting to cloud, which was some relief. Florin squared his jaw and prised open the thing’s mouth. Its needle teeth were just as sharp as he remembered.
“Well?” demanded the Harbour Master, who was not used to being kept waiting. “What is it?”
Florin dragged the back of his hand across his brow and shrugged.
“I don’t know if they have a name. But we did come across something like them in Lustria. Vicious things they were. Vicious and damned near invisible.”
“So the stories about you are true,” the Harbour Master said.
“Not all of them,” Florin and Lorenzo said in perfect, paranoid harmony.
The Harbour Master smiled.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he said with a conspiratorial wink. “I’m not an outraged father. I’m here purely in my official capacity. The thing is, these things have infested the area around the warehouses by the main harbour. We first started noticing them a couple of months ago, and since then they’ve been nothing but trouble. They’ve been destroying stock, ruining thatch, killing porters. I lost two myself, which wouldn’t be so bad if the rest hadn’t used it as an excuse to demand more wages.”
Tales of the Old World Page 18
