by Eli Brown
Agonized in my knowledge that stumbling meant spilling not only the food but my life’s blood, I navigated the slick wood, the pitch of the sea, and finally the dark companionway to Mabbot’s cabin.
Rapping on her door with the toe of my boot, I was met by Feng. I flinched, remembering our last encounter at this threshold. This time, he stood aside to let me through the tiger-striped door. I stood, gaping.
Mabbot’s chamber was unlike any I have ever seen: a strange hybrid of a sultan’s pillow room, a duke’s library, and a naturalist’s laboratory. The entire back half of the cabin was windowed with thick glass set in heavy timber mullions. It being well night, the windows held nothing but our own reflections. During the day, though, they would provide a magnificent forty-five-degree view of the world behind. Upon the teak walls, fine oil landscapes and still lifes jostled for space. This bloodthirsty pirate had surrounded herself with scenes of tranquillity: a herd of distant cattle on a shady hill seemed curious about the pile of painted pomegranates just beyond the frame. The floor was thick with overlapping Turkish rugs. I smelled a cache of potpourri somewhere, heavy in cedar.
The cabin was of two levels, like the deck above: the bed, heaped with furs and hung with silk drapes, was on the upper; the saloon below contained a harpsichord and a small dining table. A stuffed pheasant perched atop a great mirror, its iridescent tail feathers unfurling all the way to the ground. Hanging on the mirror post was a grotesque and demonic mask with bugging eyes and scrolled tusks. Beside it a small door, ajar, led to an alcove. On a crowded bookshelf, a leaning stack of maps was braced by a human skull with a gaping hole in the brow, of the type made, I imagined, by a blunderbuss or perhaps a cudgel. This hole was filled by the languorous leaves of an orchid, its stalk reaching for heaven with a pristine burst of ivory flowers. Next to it, I spotted the brass bowl of potpourri that contained, my nose told me, the following precious items: cinnamon bark, bay leaves, rosemary, and cloves.
The captain was apparently a gardener. Rubbery vines crawled up the bedposts and framed the windows; potted ferns and plants with fanlike leaves squatted in the corners while, behind the bed, grew a citrus tree of some kind. With a deep envy, I saw, swelling upon it, the green buds of fruit. As if conjured by my covetousness, there appeared, almost hidden behind the tree, a small enamel bathtub.
Mabbot had been sitting on the plush chair near the bed, feet upon a carved stool, reading a book. When I entered, she removed her spectacles, sat up, and grinned.
“At last!” she said. In her lap rested a glistening ebon rabbit.
The table had been arranged with two settings of fine silver and china, candles alight. I set down the tray and turned to make my exit when Mabbot called in her jeering tone, “Forget something?”
“It’s all there, madam.”
“Sit, then!”
“I cannot,” I said.
“Hemorrhoids?”
“I will not.”
The rabbit leaped to the floor and darted under the bed when Mabbot rose. She approached until she was standing quite close. Lilac and sheepskin.
“Lively conversation and stimulating company can make a meal,” she said. “Without it, the rarest delicacy has no savor. Don’t you agree?”
“This is a depraved game,” I said.
“I’m glad you see the fun in it.”
Mabbot pulled out a chair and I sat, apprehensive and frankly exhausted.
She lifted the lid and gazed at the moon-pale fish on the bed of saffron rice, the figs and shrimp swathed in dark fragrant sauce. My blood beat in my ears.
Slowly, as if to tease, Mabbot took a crisp-cake, disregarding the proper order of things, and bit into it. I could not help but mark her face, which had grown quite placid as she chewed. The muscles of her jaw danced, lifting her ear under a curl of hair lightly, rhythmically.
Then she looked at me, her face lit with pleasure, and said, “Let’s!”
She sat with the eagerness of a child and pulled a piece of the still-steaming cod onto her plate, then she apportioned some to me. She lifted her fork, waiting for me to do the same.
“It’s for you,” I objected.
“Why, have you poisoned it?”
With a sigh, I lifted my fork as well.
When Mabbot took the first bite to her lips, Feng coaxed, by memory and without mistakes, a Mozart minuet, haunting and delicate, from the harpsichord.
Suddenly, I was ravenous. Not having touched food to my tongue all day except to sample, I allowed myself to enjoy the first real meal since my capture. I had removed the fillet from the pan while it was still glassy in the middle and it had continued to cook by its own heat to a gentle flake. Between the opaque striations, wisps of fat clung to the crisp potato breading and resolved upon the tongue like the echo of a choir surrendering to silence. The saffron warmed all together as sunlight through stained glass blesses a congregation, while the shrimp sauce waved its harlot’s kerchief from the periphery.
Mabbot, too, lingered on each bite, her face lovely with hunger. The captain knows how to eat, I grant her that.
“You’re an alchemist, Wedgwood! What do you call this?”
“Call it? White fish with red sauce.”
“Nonsense. That isn’t a proper name.”
“I’ll call it … Hope of Rescue.”
Mabbot laughed and was obliged to cover her mouth, which was still full.
“These plants—you must have fresh water,” I said.
“Oh, just a little cask of rainwater, only enough to get them from port to port. I drink panch like everyone else. That and wine.”
Feng finished the piece and left the room discreetly.
“By the way, everyone knows—you should too,” Mabbot said, pausing here to regard me with such scrutiny that I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, “that Joshua, the cabin boy, is my personal responsibility. If I learn he has been mishandled in any way, I’ll cut you into pieces so small even the fish won’t find you.”
“Mishandled? I’m teaching him letters! A thing that should have been done long ago!”
Her eyebrows rose at my outburst and she sat back and crossed her arms. “I see. Well, then, how does it go?”
“He has eyes. I don’t see why he shouldn’t read. It’s slow going, but even a dog may learn many things if the teacher is patient.”
“It’s true,” Mabbot said, appraising me with an unkind expression. “Even a dog.” After several bites in silence, she said, “Tell me about yourself.”
I took a moment to consider my situation. There was, at my core, a glow of gratitude for being alive while those near me had fallen. The murder of Jeroboam, which had so sickened and enraged me, also stoked this glow. This becoming woman sitting across from me was as grisly a villain as ever walked the earth, and yet I was more at home in the quiet of her parlor and the comfort of a good meal than I had been since my ordeal began. Taste and talk—these were the privileges of the living. I could refuse to make conversation and bring out the monster in her, or I could pacify and live long enough to escape. I obliged.
“My father was a cobbler,” I said. “Or so they tell me. I was raised in the orphanage kitchen—”
“Where you learned that the cure for the dullest routine lay in a certain liberality of spices. Saveur sans culotte!”
“You may say that, yes. A duchess—she was a patron of the orphanage—came to view the grounds when I was twelve and already doing much of the cooking. She was a secret Jesuit, this kind woman, and a feast was prepared for her. She became a fan of my sauces and sent me to apprentice with a friend of hers at the Jesuit campus in Sanghen.”
Joshua interrupted us with a bottle of wine and glasses. He couldn’t help making fun of our scene; his lips were pursed in the dour pout of a sentry who had just eaten an entire lemon. He poured with the florid overarticulated gestures he imagined befitting a proper steward. Mabbot chuckled as he took a clownishly deep bow out the door. Another secret cache, this was an altogether di
fferent wine than had gone into the sauce. It came to my lips whispering a song of bees sipping on overripe fruit, of aging in an oak tub overhung with rosemary, of sleeping for a century in some sunken ship until the color of the waves themselves had soaked into the bottles.
“Sanghen?” Mabbot asked.
“Not far from Calais,” I said. “Right across the channel. Jesuits from all around Europe, all living on a valley farm. The land there was protected by our benefactors, and, as long as we stayed within the gates, we were safe from persecution.”
“But that must have taken quite a lot of influence—one doesn’t just wander between France and England in these days of strife, and as a Catholic, no less.”
“I was fairly smuggled. But the monks have learned to look after one another; Jesuits fled the cities in droves to take refuge in our hidden monastery. We cooked for them all. My teacher had himself been chased from Bordeaux by a mob. As he said, ‘Wars come and go, but people always eat.’ When I was considering seminary, he said, ‘Which do you like better, Pentecost Mass or the feast afterward? You’d make a terrible priest, but you make acceptable lamb galantine. God knows you love Him. Focus on the food.’ This was a man who had made pies for the pope.”
“You must make me a pie!”
“Cold butter and fresh flour is needed for crust. And real meat.”
“We have lard … and Mary Sweet—”
“I’ll try,” I said.
“But go on. Orphans do tend to find their way aboard pirate ships.”
“Captain … perhaps we can discuss less personal matters.”
“Such as?”
“You don’t speak like a pirate,” I ventured.
“Do you know many?”
“I mean to say … you speak properly—”
“I am educated, properly, with great doses of impropriety. As an adolescent I was taken in by a wealthy man, a judge, who shared his knowledge and his fine things with me.” Mabbot rolled a fork between her fingers languidly as she spoke. “It was there that I first acquired a taste for what he called ‘the essentials’: comestibles, wine, and conversation. They were subjects I excelled at. I was something of a project for him, a trained pet. He held parties at which I was the entertainment, the whore who could recite Ovid while hoisting her sails—”
I must have blushed, for she gave me a rather humane smile and said, “My, but you are a delicate flower, aren’t you?” She patted my hand. I was so startled by this gentle touch that I yanked my hand away. Her smile didn’t waver. “Don’t fret, this judge didn’t keep me long. When he tired of me, he sent me out. And I have been a wife of whim ever since.”
“Ahem … Is the meal to your satisfaction?” I asked.
“Oh, delicious! Truly, you’ve earned next week’s rent.”
We finished our plates and Joshua reappeared to clear them. He brought more wine and poured; his little finger, hovering far from the rest of his hand, painted florets in the air. As a rule I never drink to inebriation, but now I allowed myself another glass. I was flooded with emotions, powerful and conflicting. The comfort of food and wine was a great relief, but it only highlighted the stark reality of my condition. “A week’s rent,” she had said. It will go on this way, week after week, unless my plan of escape proves good.
Mabbot’s rabbit leaped onto her lap. Normally I am fond of pets but I couldn’t bear its uncanny stare. I am beyond shame; whatever you may think of a grown man afraid of a bunny, you must take my word that this particular beast was misbegotten.
Mabbot seemed to be waiting for more conversation.
The rabbit peered at me as well. The thing … perhaps the stupefying swaying of the ship lent a certain unreasonableness to my perceptions. Nevertheless, I would prefer to be left alone in a room with a lion than with that lightless creature, who, I had convinced myself, could swallow my soul as one swallows a bean.
“This is Kerfuffle.” Mabbot pulled on the beast’s ears as if milking a goat, and the thing practically swooned with pleasure. “She’s the softest,” Mabbot said. “Give her a pet.” I balked, but she pressed on. “Pet the rabbit, Wedgwood.”
I had to lean to reach Mabbot’s lap, and I could feel her breath on my cheek. The rabbit was indeed soft—the whole moment was much too soft, and I brought my hand back quickly, thinking: This woman is a killer.
Here we were interrupted by Feng, who rapped lightly on the anteroom door, then stuck his head in. Mabbot said to him, “The food is good, Feng, we’ll keep him. Set it up.” With that, Feng left again. “Tell me”—Mabbot leaned in—“if you were going to teach me to cook like this, what is the first lesson I would have to master?”
The wine in my veins mingled with the thrill of my life extended by seven days. “One mustn’t confuse the nose with the mouth,” I began.
“Certainly not.”
“As with the harpsichord, to make a pleasing sound, one must hit several keys in harmony. Thus, flavor.” I blushed here, feeling I had exposed my passion too much. But she didn’t laugh. “The nose has infinite sensations, but the mouth has only six.”
“This is fine.” Mabbot beamed. “I miss refined conversation. Even in your sourness, you’re a relief. My crew are good men, but they aren’t dinner companions. Do go on.”
“The flavors of the mouth have their analogues in life: Salt is the spirit of blood and tears, victory and defeat. Its color is red. Sour is a call to attention, a slap on the rump, the prick of a thorn admonishing you to attend. Its color is the yellow flash under a finch’s wing.”
“So you are a philosopher as well!”
We both drank. The rabbit was gone, then back again. It seemed to have the ability to dash in and out of darkness as one uses a door. “Go on, that’s but two,” she said.
“Sweet is the welcoming hand, the mother’s milk, the kiss, the warm bed. Its color is the orange of dusk. Bitterness is the love behind a stern word, it is hard-earned fortitude. Its color is green. Astringency is a strong wind; it tightens and cleans, it invokes self-reliance. It is the blue of cold water.”
These ideas had been brewing within me for years, but I had never spoken them aloud to anyone. The wine was stronger than I was used to.
She had closed her eyes and now leaned back until her head rested on the chair.
“The Pearl Gate is the last flavor,” I said. “Rarely spoken of. It lives in the dark slope of the soft palate. Only found in very particular broths, it is the taste that lingered after God breathed life into Adam. It is the flavor that animates the clay. It is violet.”
When I suspected Mabbot had fallen asleep, I made to leave. At this, though, she protested. “Oh, a few minutes more! Poetry and passion, these are fine qualities. Just sit a bit longer.”
“It is your turn, then, Captain. I’ve spoken.”
“Fair enough. Ask me something.”
“You said Ramsey had sent a corsair after you, that he fired red-hot cannonballs? He must be a considerable adversary.”
“Relentless. He’d chase me to the moon to get his revenge.” Mabbot was unhappy to be thinking of the man. “Laroche has a menagerie of infernal weapons. His gun rooms are lit, I’m told, with fireflies and fox fire, which give light but cannot ignite the powder. But I don’t need to tell you, you have some familiarity with the man, don’t you?”
So my slip of the tongue had reached her after all. “I saw him only at a distance,” I said. “He spoke not a word to me.”
She saw through my lie. A scowl from Mabbot is like the sleet-needled wind off of a frozen lake. It was the way one looks at an earwig that has just crept from the pages of a book the moment before pinching it in two with a thumbnail.
So I told her of the demonstration I had witnessed, about the pigs and the interview. The whole morbid scene improved her mood. I could have been describing an evening at the circus. “A rare spectacle to see a man sell his soul to Lucifer,” she said.
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I realized suddenly that I could har
dly count on a rescue by Laroche. “Now that Ramsey is … gone, Laroche won’t be after you, will he?”
“We do not get the daily papers out here, Mr. Wedgwood. It will be some time before he learns about his financier’s fate. But it’ll only make him the more dangerous. Now those debts will be open to the Pendleton accountants, and they’ll come after him to recover the expense. Once the company sees how much his strange ship costs, he’ll be lucky to avoid a charge of treason. He’ll have to bring my head smiling on a platter to keep his own, and soon! Poor Laroche!” The captain chuckled. “He’s a victim of history, like the rest of us. He has the purity of a child—believes that what goes wrong can be made right. You have to admire his passion. He’d rather use his last penny on a bullet than on bread. I have nothing against him personally except that he’s trying so hard to kill me. I suppose one does not get to choose one’s nemesis.”
“But you must have many.”
She did not deny this. After a spell her gaze softened, and she resumed her habitual posture of threading her hands behind her head, leaning far back in her chair.
“The newspapers say you attack only Pendleton Trading Company vessels,” I said.
“In my days as a privateer, I had no qualms and would sink any ship that dared to wet its hips. But now I dine exclusively on Pendleton meat.” The captain rubbed her face. She was weary and, I saw now, older than I had first thought, with faint wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and a few grey hairs twined at her temples.
“But why?”
“We are surrounded by monsters,” she said. “We can cower before them or we can pick one and sink our teeth in with the aim to give it hell. I have investments in the Pendleton Trading Company. I have invested all of my daggers into it. The unkind things in this world are countless. But my choice was made easier by certain personal offenses. In a way, Pendleton chose me.”
“You speak as if the company is the villain. As if Ramsey was the rogue.”
“I should,” she said.
“But I watched you shoot him, helpless and unarmed on the ground.” The memory inflamed me. “Is it a crime to be a gentleman—chairman of the most successful company in history? Shall a lord as lofty as this, who has dined with the king himself, be libeled? You murdered him without mercy, unprovoked, and unrepentant.”