The General's Cook

by Ramin Ganeshram

  “The General may not show an inclination to correct your ways but I will—mark me,” Fraunces had said in a growl. Hercules knew better than to respond and give Fraunces cause to complain to the General. It was smarter to keep his own counsel because Hercules knew that the value of his cooking was clear enough to the president. Clear enough to garner him favors and freedoms—and keep him safe from any punishment Fraunces might have for him.

  “Well,” said Fraunces, turning away from Hercules now. “I’ll send the boys down for the platters.” There was little he could do. He could hardly complain to the president about such a little matter. Besides, they both knew that it had been a long while since General Washington had ordered any slave whipped or sold off as punishment—not even down at the Virginia farm.

  Hercules continued onto the larder, saying over his shoulder, “There are some Chelsea buns, made fresh today. I’ve done them smaller than usual so the ladies might eat them in two bites.” Emerging, Hercules held out the small cinnamon raisin buns, arranged on a delicate porcelain cake plate, for Fraunces’s review. Submitting something for his approval was the surest way to get back into his good graces.

  “Hmmm,” the steward said approvingly. “Very pretty indeed. I’m sure they will be quite well received. I’ll take them up myself.”

  Hercules nodded and put the plate on the smaller table near the door to the passage into the main house before turning his attention to carving the squab that Mr. Julien had left cooling on the bench.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE LEMONY AROMA OF THYME ALWAYS put Hercules in good spirits. It smelled fresh and clean, like the limewater and bay rum he used to perfume his going-out clothes. He hummed a little as he gathered the delicate stems into a bouquet along with some sprigs of juniper, the powdery blue berries still clinging to the thin branches. He tied the little bundle with a soft sprig of marjoram and arranged it with four others at the head of the platter, where he had butterflied a large poached salmon. He stood back and studied it.

  “Nate!” he called out so suddenly that the scullion jumped from where he was washing down the chopping block with ash and lye.

  “Chef?” he said, stepping forward, the rag dangling from his hand.

  “Get me a bottle of pickled lemons—you’ll find them on the back shelf of the larder. Third shelf from top, four jars in.”

  Nate ran to his task and Hercules turned to a tray of standing pork pies. He opened the pastry lid of one and examined the contents, then closed and opened it again. Walking to his chopping board where minced herbs lay, he placed a pinch upon the meat filling of each pie and then grated some nutmeg on top.

  He took a bottle of cooking brandy from Fraunces’s cupboard as Nate came back with the jar.

  “Ah good,” said Hercules in his rumbling voice without looking at the boy. “Finish with the chopping board, then take out three of those lemons and slice them thinly on the round.”

  Nate sluiced water over the cutting block and patted it dry before slicing the lemons on it. Hercules returned to the pork pies and carefully began adding the merest amount of brandy.

  Nate watched him, glancing up as much as he could from slicing the lemons.

  “Best mind what you’re about rather than minding me,” said Hercules, bent over his pies. Again, the young servant jumped. Soon enough he’d learn that Hercules made it his business to know everything that went on in the kitchen even when he didn’t seem to be looking. Around them the kitchen buzzed with activity.

  Nate put his head down and continued with the lemons. When he finished he brought them in a bowl to Hercules, who was bending down over the fire, holding a long handle attached to a small iron plate. When it was good and hot, he turned back to the pork pies and held the burning hot salamander over their open mouths until the layer of fat began to bubble and fry the herbs, their smell filling the kitchen. The brandy briefly caught flame and released its aroma into the air. When he was done, Hercules hung the salamander on its hook next to the hearth and nestled the pastry lids back on the pies before looking in Nate’s bowl.

  “Did you taste them?” asked the head cook, looking the boy in the eye.

  “Taste them, sir?” Nate looked around nervously to see if anyone had heard. If they had, they gave no sign, but as Hercules followed Nate’s gaze around the room he caught Margaret’s eyes, widened in surprise.

  “Yes,” said Hercules, his voice beginning to rise. “Taste them.” He spoke as if Nate were a dullard. The boy had promise of being an excellent cook if only he learned to use all his wits. “If you don’t taste them first, how do we know they’ve not gone off?” he continued, knowing that, as a slave, it would never occur to Nate to eat the General’s food. “Would you serve spoilt food to the General?”

  “N-no, sir,” stammered Nate. He gingerly reached into the bowl and pinched out a thin slice of lemon. Just as he was about to place it in his mouth, Hercules grasped his wrist.

  “No.”

  Nate looked at him, his mouth halfway open, his eyes nervous.

  “Sir?”

  “Look at it first. Hold it to the light. Do you see blemishes? Marks?”

  Nate did as he was told. The lemon slice was the palest yellow and translucent. He shook his head.

  “Good, now try it.”

  Nate cautiously took a bite.

  “It seems fine, sir.”

  “Fine or good?” said Hercules, swallowing an agitated sigh.

  Nate thought about this for a minute.

  “It’s good. It’s salty and sour, pickled through, as it should be. It will be good to cut the grease of a fish like that one with so much fat to it.”

  “Now watch me,” Hercules said, placing a lemon slice next to the fish. He placed another and another, overlapping them in a perfect fan before he stopped a quarter of the way down the plate. “Now, you continue,” he said, wiping his hands on his apron. “And mind, hold up every one of those slices to the light before setting it down.”

  Nate, fingers shaking, attempted to copy what he had done. Hercules stood next to him, watching.

  “Slower, boy, go slower. Do it right, not fast.”

  Nate slowed down, bending closer to the fish, arranging the slices just so.

  “Good,” said Hercules and went to attend to another task. The boy was a quick study. Given enough time, he could command a kitchen himself. Once, Nate glanced over his shoulder at Margaret, who had stopped polishing the copper pots and stood absorbed in his progress with the lemon slices. Margaret was biting her lower lip. Hercules still wasn’t sure about her—she was obedient enough but, he feared, something of a half-wit.

  Just then, the steward came in with his usual rush and scurry. He was wearing the General’s livery and his wig had been freshly powdered.

  “How are the preparations proceeding, cook?” he asked.

  “As always, Sam,” said Hercules, without looking up. He was working with Mr. Julien to lay mutton chops on a large charger while the Frenchman ladled sauce over each, then sprinkling them with currants and fresh herbs.

  Samuel Fraunces sighed in exasperation. “And what might that mean, Uncle Harkless?”

  The kitchen became quiet. The Washington family often called Hercules “Uncle Harkless.” It was a term of endearment for them, and of course he had to smile and bear it, but the name was too demeaning for him to tolerate from anyone else. The kitchen servants had started to call him Chef following the lead of Mr. Julien, and the day servants knew enough to call him Mr. Hercules or sir, at least, even though many of them resented giving that particular kind of courtesy to a Negro.

  And, of course, Fraunces knew—especially Fraunces knew. Just a week ago a footman told Hercules that the General had coldly chided a latecomer to one of his receptions, “Sir, we are too punctual for you. I have a cook who never asks whether the company has come, but whether the hour has come.”

  Hercules finished the chops, wiped the rim of the platter, and nodded to Mr. Julien.

 
“Never to worry, Mr. Fraunces,” he said smoothly, deliberately smiling so his white teeth flashed. His kept his eyes hard and he imagined himself as a fox moving in for a chicken’s throat. “Uncle knows what he’s about and the General knows what Uncle’s about too.”

  Fraunces narrowed his eyes as if he were weighing how to respond to the challenge.

  “And so it would seem that you do,” Fraunces finally answered, even-toned. “Thank you for apprising me of your progress. Carry on.”

  Fraunces headed for the cellars, snapping his fingers at Nate and Richmond and gesturing for them to help bring up some casks of wine and Madeira, his face worried and drawn.

  No one looked up during this exchange—not so as they could be caught at it anyway—but they knew who had won the battle. The steward’s words fooled no one, but it was a neat turn at saving face.

  Hercules moved over to the table lined with dishes for the footmen to serve course by course. It was important not to let Fraunces or the others see his fury. Keep your cards close was his motto. He didn’t mean to be baited into showing his hand.

  The soup tureens sat ready to be filled, followed by the mutton and another platter of partridges wrapped in lard and roasted. Plates of fish were next: the salmon that Nate had finished decorating with lemon slices, some boiled salt cod with potatoes, dressed sturgeon, and three platters of fat oysters—the General’s favorite. Several fruit pies, a pumpkin pudding, and fruit jellies rounded out the dessert.

  Entertaining days had everyone in a state of high anxiety. The entire household was well aware of how much the General disliked social events. Washington was not a man for small talk and he rarely made or allowed toasts. They’d all heard that it wasn’t uncommon, by the end of a meal, to find him tapping his fork against the table to some drumbeat in his own head.

  While the household ran to and fro, as if movement and purpose could smother the president’s agitation like a blanket over a fire, only Hercules remained calm, attending his dishes in measured paces that hardly seemed fast enough to produce the sheer volume of food that overfilled the table by midafternoon.

  Footsteps echoed in the passageway from the house and then the footmen appeared in the kitchen. Fraunces took his place by the table. Each footman stepped up and held out his white-gloved hands for the dishes that the steward placed carefully into them. Here in Philadelphia where folks did not hold with slavery, the servers were most always white, or light-skinned enough to pass for white. Each of the tall men, outfitted smartly in the white and red Washington livery, towered over Hercules, but they knew to keep their decorum in his kitchen. Down to a man, none smiled or looked anywhere but straight ahead, turning quickly with their platters to follow Fraunces’s barked orders.

  When Fraunces had followed the footmen out with the first courses, Hercules unbuttoned his apron and pulled the kerchief off his head. His time was his own now, and he meant to make best use of it. Walking over to the bench by the kitchen door, he took his waistcoat from the peg, along with the cockade hat and cane that sat on the low shelf nearby. Lifting a basket he had prepared earlier and covered with a clean cloth, he turned smartly back to the kitchen staff and raised his hat to them before placing it carefully on his head.

  “Ladies, gentlemen,” he said, without any hint of irony. “I bid you good evening.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE FEDERAL CITY INTO WHICH HERCULES emerged that midafternoon was noise-filled and laden with aromas that tickled and tormented the nose—just as at any hour of day. Philadelphia didn’t mark time like other towns. What was dinner for some was breakfast for others, and the city buzzed with a low and constant hum like a hive. Hercules no longer jumped as he once had at the bursts of sudden sound as carriages, dray carts, and teamsters clogged the streets, their drivers shouting greetings or, more often, curses at one another.

  Closer to the docks, barrels rumbled down wooden planks to crash into waiting carts. The noise of public minstrels mixed with hogs snorting and squealing as they rooted freely in the gutters, and the blacksmiths’ constant striking of metal on metal rose above it all like a steady backbeat to the insane melody of the city. Hercules tapped his cane regularly to the noise as he walked east toward Front Street, the rough-and-tumble music of the place filling his head and his lungs.

  When he had first arrived here three years ago, he had longed for the quiet Virginia countryside and the tamer, more predictable movements of Alexandria. Now the longing inched into his chest less and less in this place where it was hard to find men and women permanently hunched from a life in the fields. He loved this city where a man couldn’t be whipped and chained like a horse and he could stand up and stretch in the sun with no one to say a word about it.

  Philadelphia lured him like a high-class lady of pleasure inching down her bodice for him to get a better peek at the edges of a pink nipple, or raising her skirt just enough for a flash of ankle. Whenever he thought he had become accustomed to its delights, the way you could get used to the same woman, Philadelphia had a new parlor trick sewn into the stays of its encircling corset, waiting to be revealed at the right moment, lest he lose his ardor. Philadelphia wasn’t going to let Hercules go—even when the General meant to return home for good—of that he was sure. And he didn’t want her to.

  There was nothing that couldn’t be bought or had or tasted or borrowed in Philadelphia, and Hercules knew just where the best wares were found. There was no pressing himself against walls to let white gentlemen pass, there was no averting his eyes from the white ladies in their finery. He took up as much room as he cared to on the brick walks that bisected the city, tapping his cane in pace with his step and tipping his hat to whomever he chose, leaving it squarely on his head just as often too.

  As Hercules moved down Lombard Street toward the byways nearest the docks, the press of people seemed to double. In Philadelphia, free people of color far outnumbered slaves, and at every turn of his head, Hercules saw more and more of those who looked like him but lived in a different world. Black children played in the roadways, often just missing a cart’s wheels as they darted in and around the press of people and beasts. The washing lines were strung three deep in the small yards behind homes that bulged with many times their intended number as black families crowded together, generation upon generation, sometimes with no blood between them. Here and there women squatted in their kitchen gardens, now meager as the ground properly froze, pulling from it what they could for the evening meal as the stench of the privies used by a score of dwellers washed over them and into the street.

  He knew their type, huddled together in the shelter of each other’s company. The sea of public sentiment was always against them. A simple veering off-course, a misstep or misinterpreted look, might mean arrest and twenty-eight years of indenture for their bond.

  As a man bound to the president, Hercules was untouchable by any other white man in the city—or in the nation, come to that. Oddly, it made him feel freer. The General gave him rein to roam unhindered, taken up as he was with his own daily affairs. As long as a better-than-fine meal was on the dining board, as long as Hercules was at his worktable in the day and under his roof at night, behind lock and key, Washington did not keep track of his whereabouts.

  Moving about as he did gave him access to a world filled with any number of people, white, African, free, and enslaved, who eagerly shared bits of gossip. Of course, those who reported to him could report on him too. A well-placed gift to seal the bonds of loyalty was never amiss. A sweet-cake here or a choice joint of meat there went far among those who had too little or only just enough. These little tidbits of information were beyond value in keeping him aware of what went on outside the house—and sometimes inside as well—like the fact that Fraunces was looking to open a tavern like the one he’d had in New York.

  Hercules stood fast in the roadway and tapped his cane thoughtfully on the ground. Black Sam didn’t know that Hercules was aware of his plans. The General himself probably didn�
�t know, and if Sam Fraunces had his way it would stay that way. The General didn’t do well with changes to the household, and while he couldn’t stop Fraunces from leaving he’d surely put upon every persuasion to entice him to stay if plans were not already well laid and underway. Washington was not one to try to reverse the course of a thing already done.

  How, then, to ensure that Fraunces’s plans went along smoothly so Hercules could be free of the interfering steward? He pondered this, blocking the pathway. A cordwainer cursed as he shoved his way past, his dye-stained hands grasping a roll of raw leather on his shoulder, leaving the raw stink of tanning in his wake.

  Untroubled, Hercules took up his pace. In the distance, the State House bell burbled its tinny toll for the half hour. He needed to press on.

  His destination was more than ten blocks yonder at Stampers Alley where it met Third Street. Witcher’s boardinghouse, one of the few remaining clapboard buildings in the district.

  Clearly it had once belonged to a prosperous man, but Mrs. Witcher divided the front rooms into guest bedrooms, leaving only one common room to the front and the wide kitchen in the back. Hercules knew the cook there—a freedwoman called Sally—and she obligingly turned a blind eye whenever he came in and made for the back stairs that led up to the small rear bedroom where French Thelma lodged.

  Leaning over the half-opened Dutch door, he saw Sally at the opposite end of the kitchen skimming the cream from a milk pan. He tapped delicately on the doorjamb with the tip of his walking stick and she looked in his direction. With a swift rise of her eyes, she indicated that Thelma was in her room upstairs, and then her eyes darted toward the front of the house to let him know that Mrs. Witcher was at home as well. He would have to be fast. Even the president wouldn’t be able to protect him—or want to—if he were caught in a boardinghouse seeing a “white” woman in her private chamber.