The General's Cook

by Ramin Ganeshram

  “Is it a meal you’re wanting, sir?” she said. “I can have a nice table set up before the fire. I’ll just scoot those young men along a bit …”

  “Er. No,” Hercules said with measured finality.

  He was gratified to see Mrs. Smallwood blush. Surely, she couldn’t believe that General Washington’s chef wouldn’t be taking a meal in a middling tavern.

  “Of course,” she began and stopped. If she considered it odd for a slave to be in a tavern so early in the morning, she dared not voice it. Naturally she’d know that his time was not his own nor were his hours as oddly kept as the men she served, fresh from their ships or on their way to sea again.

  “I meet a friend, here, madam,” he said pleasantly, sensing her question. “He has informed me that your establishment is clean and decent, and I see that he is right.” He smiled at her. It did not hurt him any to give the woman a compliment.

  “Oh, well then,” she said, tittering at the kind words. “Come, do sit down.” She gestured at one of the boys collecting used cups from the tables and told him to bring two chairs and a small bench to the fire.

  “Follow me, sir,” she said, sweeping forward as if she were entering a grand ballroom. Hercules followed her through the crowd. Pipe smoke mingled with sooty black wisps of smoke from the fire. Even though it was early morning, voices were raised over a game of cards in the opposite corner of the room.

  Hercules sat in one of the chairs and settled back with both hands upon his cane as the proprietress herself went to fetch him a cider. She returned carrying a tankard and set it down in front of him with a large wooden spoon and a small bowl of what looked like a blancmange.

  “The cook just made that there, sir,” she said. “I’m sure you are used to much finer—that is, can do much finer—but we’d be honored to have you taste it.” She stood there and watched him expectantly. “That is to say, gratis of course, Mr. Hercules.”

  Hercules looked at the pudding jiggling in the plate, but before he could comment, a figure appeared behind Mistress Smallwood.

  “There you are, Hercules,” said James Hemings, his tall form towering over the short squat lady.

  Hercules rose to shake his old friend’s hand. “Indeed, here I am,” he said, smiling. “Mistress Smallwood has just offered a taste of this new pudding, James. Perhaps another spoon for my friend? He is Mr. Jefferson’s own cook.” Mistress Smallwood was fairly jumping with excitement. “Imagine—two such well-known cooks in my humble little tavern!” she simpered and snapped her fingers at one of the serving wenches. “Quickly! Another spoon and tankard of cider if you please!”

  The girl returned and set down the cider, but Mrs. Smallwood snatched the spoon from her and held it up to examine it before rubbing it furiously with the lace apron covering her gown. She handed it over to James with a curtsy. He took the spoon with a slight bow before giving Hercules a curious and amused look. Hercules suppressed a laugh.

  Mistress Smallwood stood expectantly looking at the two men until they were forced to turn their attention upon her again.

  “Madam—” Hercules began, “Perhaps you might … er …” He paused, at a loss for just how to tell the woman to be about her business without seeming rude.

  “Mistress,” James cut in smoothly. “We would much like to savor this treat, and even discuss its fine preparation between ourselves. Could we beg your indulgence of a little time? We shall be sure to seek you out before we depart.”

  “Oh!” said the taverner with the good grace to blush. “Yes, of course. I shall be at the bar should you need me.” She curtsied again. “Gentlemen,” she said, nodding first at James and then Hercules. They nodded politely back before contemplating the blancmange before them.

  “Well, we may as well get it over with,” said James, taking up his spoon. “She is watching us.” He took a bit of the pudding and raised his spoon in a toast.

  “Yes,” said Hercules, lifting his and taking some as well. “Hmmm, it’s very light. Though not much real taste to speak of.”

  “True,” said Hemings, swallowing. “The cook has too light a hand with the spice, to be sure.”

  “I detect no gaminess of gelatin about it, though,” said Hercules thoughtfully. “How do you think he managed it?”

  James Hemings thought about this a moment, and then he motioned the proprietress over.

  “Madam, please ask your cook if he has thickened this with carrageen?” he said.

  She pressed her hands against her apron.

  “It is very good, Mistress Smallwood,” Hercules hastened to say. “We are just curious about the method.”

  The lady, visibly relieved, rushed off to the kitchen.

  “I would wager it is carrageen,” said James thoughtfully.

  “Carrageen?” asked Hercules.

  “A type of seaweed,” said James. “I encountered it in Europe. The Irish make good use of it. It has a gelatin in it—just as a cow or pig foot would.”

  Hercules contemplated this for a bit. He would have to remember this interesting fact and see if he could put hands on some of the stuff himself.

  Mrs. Smallwood returned breathlessly and James asked her if it was indeed the Irish seaweed.

  “Yes, sir. How did you know?”

  “From my travels in Europe,” he said, smiling. To this she raised her eyebrows slightly.

  “James has been to Paris with Mr. Jefferson, Mistress,” said Hercules, relishing the surprise that registered upon her face.

  “Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Smallwood, recovering. “She—the cook that is—is newly arrived from Ireland. An indenture.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Hemings, his smile moderating slightly. Although their time was limited, while bonded an indentured servant was enslaved. Hercules watched as his friend composed himself and gazed at the now even more abhorrent Mistress Smallwood.

  Once again, Mrs. Smallwood stood there for an unnecessarily long time. This time it was Hercules who spoke up.

  “We shan’t detain you, madam,” he said using the low, resonant voice that so charmed Mrs. Washington. “Clearly, your other customers long for your attentions.” He paused to smile while saying a silent apology to his fellow tavern-goers who would be forced to endure the woman’s courtesies.

  “Well, then, I suppose you are right,” she sighed and sashayed back to the bar.

  Hercules and James suppressed bemused smiles before leaning closer so their discussion might remain private.

  “We’ll be leaving for Virginia in a few days’ time,” James said.

  Hercules studied his friend’s face. James had told him that after the freedom of Paris and Philadelphia, he couldn’t bear the thought of going back to that multilayered hell where little boys were whipped like mules in Jefferson’s blasted nailery and overseers were studded on Negro women to ensure Jefferson’s “increase.” He felt James’s revulsion in his own gullet and didn’t understand how he could stand it, having tasted proper freedom in France. Why, he asked, hadn’t James stayed there, where slavery was illegal?

  “Because of my sister Sally,” James answered bitterly. Sally wouldn’t remain in Paris with him, and James knew that Jefferson would punish her viciously for her brother’s treachery if they returned to Virginia without him.

  When his own day came to go home, Hercules couldn’t see himself back in Virginia either—even though Mount Vernon was less harsh than other plantations. In Virginia he wouldn’t be able to take a step without Washington’s leave and the boundaries of the plantation would be as far as he could ever go. The General had been saying for the last year or so that he longed to be home, but every time he tried to give up on the presidency, the others—Adams, Hamilton—pressed him to stay. Hercules owed the men a debt of gratitude for that, but he knew the General. There would come the day that he would refuse to be detained any longer, and then even God Himself would not stop him, much less Mr. Adams or Mr. Hamilton.

  The knowledge of it weighed heavy on him, but for now H
ercules focused again on his friend.

  “So the scoundrel did not make good on his promise—” said Hercules.

  “He did—eventually,” said James. “After much badgering on my part.” He reached into the breast pocket of his waistcoat and drew out a paper, which he handed to Hercules.

  “Go on, read it,” said James, taking up the tankard gain.

  Shame rose up in Hercules’s throat as he looked at the paper. He could make out a few letters here and there followed by a scribble larger than the rest and near the wax seal, so he knew it must be a signature.

  Hercules glanced up quickly at James, then down at the letter a little more, letting his eyes rove over it as if he were studying the words carefully.

  “I see,” he said, handing it back and hoping his friend didn’t notice his failure.

  James eyed him as he took the letter back.

  “It says I can have my freedom after I’ve taught my brother to cook in the French way,” James said carefully.

  Hercules considered this a moment. “How long will that take?” he asked.

  “It’s hard to say, but Peter is a quick learner,” said James. “I hope no more than a year or two.”

  Hercules drew his brows together. “How can you be sure he’ll keep his word? What if he never agrees that Peter is good enough?”

  James sat back and shrugged. “I can’t,” he said. “But it’s better than nothing.” The two took up their drinks and had a few sips while they stared at the fire, each lost in his own thoughts.

  “Read it,” Hercules said suddenly, sitting up and squaring his shoulders as if ready to take a blow.

  “How’s that?” said James, eyebrows raised.

  “I, I can’t—” Hercules paused and swallowed, then began again, this time looking straight ahead over his friend’s head, unable to meet his eyes. “Will you read it to me?”

  “I guess so. If you like,” said James putting down the tankard and drawing out the paper again.

  Having been at great expense in having James Hemings taught the art of cookery, desiring to befriend him, and to require from him as little in return as possible, I hereby do promise & declare, that if the said James should go with me to Monticello in the course of the ensuing winter, when I go to reside there myself, and shall there continue until he shall have taught such person as I shall place under him for that purpose to be a good cook, this previous condition being performed, he shall thereupon be made free …

  Hercules held up his hand and Hemings paused.

  “Do not say more,” he said. “It’s so like Mr. Jefferson to be so … grudging, is it not?”

  At this James smirked. “Your words are kinder than he deserves, my friend.”

  An idea flashed into Hercules’s mind, stunning him with its quickness like a rush of rum into his throat. But acting on it seemed, suddenly, a very urgent thing to do.

  “James,” Hercules said, abruptly leaning forward so that his friend looked at him in some surprise. Hercules edged forward in his chair, leaning heavily on his cane so he was inches from Hemings’s face and the younger man could hear his words, now spoken barely above a whisper. “I want to learn to read.”

  James’s eyebrows shot up and then a smile broke across his handsome face, his green eyes avid and eager.

  “Do you now?” he whispered. “Well, that’s a fine thing! But how—”

  “I met a woman in the company of Reverend Allen. She says she is a teacher,” said Hercules. He didn’t mention that since he had overheard Nate’s conversation with Margaret in the cellar, the idea had been troubling him. Even his young assistant, ignorant to the ways of the world, wanted to read badly enough that he was taking risks to do so. And risky it was. The pair didn’t think he noticed them, heads together at every chance, but he did. And the others did too. It wouldn’t do.

  “This teacher,” Hercules said, “she has a school in Cherry Street for colored people.”

  “Slave as well as free?” said James critically.

  “Yes, she said so,” said Hercules. “Although not in so many direct words.”

  “But how can you go to school?”

  “That far, I have not planned,” said Hercules, his whisper becoming hoarse and his eyebrows drawing together. “But I’ll think of something.”

  CHAPTER 6

  FROM ACROSS THE TABLE, HERCULES WATCHED Samuel Fraunces take a sip from the pewter goblet and grimace. The president insisted there be no wine at the second table because of the presence of Hercules and the other slaves. He didn’t want to indulge them with strong drink, so even on this, the president’s birthday, when all the city was celebrating, so they sipped weak cider or water. Hercules knew this rankled the steward particularly.

  He watched, bored, as Fraunces smiled at Mrs. Emerson, the housekeeper, who sat on his right with Oney, Lady Washington’s maid, beside her. Mr. Julien sat next to Hercules. The two cooks usually ate on their own, chatting companionably, and Hercules felt sure that Oney and her brother Austin would be happy to do the same rather than sit at a table with Fraunces and the housekeeper in some bizarre imitation of white staff at the other great houses, whose behavior Fraunces pompously tried to imitate in the president’s mansion.

  On special days—Christmas, Easter, the Day of Independence, and today, the General’s birthday—Fraunces insisted that the house of the president of the United States would function no less correctly even if the peculiar institution of slavery, in this most peculiar city of Philadelphia, made their second table a singularly strange affair. And so it was they came to sit here mostly in silence, politely answering the questions Fraunces put to them but without elaboration. Here and there Mr. Julien told an amusing story about the grand kitchens in France where he had worked, while Oney made faces or rolled her eyes at her brother when she was sure neither Fraunces or Mrs. Emerson were looking. Austin just smiled and shook his head.

  The waves of music and laughter rolled out of the house and landed dully against the plaster walls of the servants’ hall. Occasionally, a burst of cannon fire could be heard from the harbor along with yells of both well-wishers and hecklers just outside the garden walls.

  Mrs. Emerson cleared her throat. “Mr. Julien,” she said, leaning forward slightly to look down the table at the Frenchman, “I wonder, perhaps, if you have had word from France? One hears frightful things about the situation there.”

  Hercules raised his eyebrows, interested in how the other cook might answer. For a moment the Frenchman’s usually pleasant face clouded.

  “I have not, madam,” he said politely. “For once in my life, I find myself happy that I am without relations for, as you say, the situation there is dire.”

  “Miss Nelly says that the newspapers report the pavements in Paris are always blood colored now,” said Oney, who was always full of the latest gossip from Mrs. Washington’s granddaughter, to whom she had been a companion from the time she was nine and the younger girl just two. “And that they’ve gone mad dragging folks to the guillotine.”

  Hercules sipped his cider to hide his smile. Fraunces would not like that, and as if on cue, Fraunces looked meaningfully at Mrs. Emerson, whose duty it was to manage the housemaids.

  “Oney!” she said sharply, causing the girl to snap her mouth shut from whatever further she meant to say. “Let us be more sensitive to Mr. Julien’s feelings,” she continued.

  “And to the decorum of this table,” said Fraunces, pointedly looking around. Julien looked at his plate. Hercules laid his napkin on the table and began to stand. He’d had more than enough of Fraunces’s little charade.

  Fraunces snapped his attention to Hercules. Before he was fully out of his chair, Fraunces scraped his own chair backward and stood to his feet, raising his glass.

  “To the president on the occasion of this Birth Day,” he announced. Around him chairs scraped back and fabric rustled as all made to follow suit.

  “The president!”

  “The General!”

&nb
sp; “His Excellency!”

  “The father of us all,” said Hercules with a smirk, one beat behind the rest of them. He raised his glass to the others, who had already sipped from their own glasses.

  Fraunces looked around the table, only glancing at Hercules from the corner of his eye. “Well,” he said loudly. “I’ll grant you all leave if we are finished here. I imagine you will want to contemplate this great day in your own ways.” He bowed slightly to Mrs. Emerson, then faced the table again. “I will bid you all goodnight.” Suppressing a laugh, Hercules headed out the door as soon as the steward had left the room and strode across the garden to the gate in the wall. Before he went through, he glanced back at the house. Every room was lit up and every window presented a tableau. In the dining room, a press of people mingled. Women with tall feathers in their hair brushed up against men in silk frock coats. Music tinkled out of the windows cracked to let in the cool air. Hercules could easily make out the General through the bay window at the back of the dining room, his head rising well above the crush of merrymakers.

  In the scullery windows he could see Nate scrubbing out the large three-legged fry. Margaret approached, took up a copper boiler, and began to wipe it dry. As she worked, she talked to Nate and Hercules saw him answer, his lips moving slowly. Margaret nodded occasionally and spoke once more. Again, Nate’s lips moved slowly in response. Hercules frowned, wondering what they were discussing so intently, and then watched curiously as they both stopped talking and looked out the window to the other corner of the yard.

  Following their gaze, he saw Fraunces emerge from the other side of the house. Hercules stepped farther into the shadows beyond the garden gate and watched as the steward scanned the yard, then glanced back at the house as Hercules had done. He seemed to be deciding something and again turned to scan the yard, his gaze resting on the gate Hercules had just passed through.

  Hercules stood a moment longer, waiting to see if the steward would move farther toward him. When he did not, Hercules let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and moved farther down the alley toward the street. He’d have to be more mindful of the old fox from now on.