‘You did not tell them.’
Her voice was so unexpected he jumped. Lucretia looked up from her needlework, her pale face visible in the mirror. She glanced down at the bed beneath which the hunk of maslin bread had lain.
‘You might have told Mister Pouncey. You might have claimed your reward.’
John glanced over his shoulder and down the passage.
‘They cannot hear,’ Lucretia said.
‘I was promised no reward,’ said John.
She snorted. ‘You are their creature.’
‘I am a cook,’ he answered. ‘Your ladyship.’
‘Are you?’ Her voice was scornful.
‘I am your cook.’
‘I do not believe you.’
John felt himself flush. ‘Then I will prove it,’ he said, annoyed. ‘Your ladyship.’
Lucretia gave a little snort then turned back to her sampler, stabbing the needle into the cloth.
The next day, Pole uncovered the tray and frowned.
‘Is this dish not too plain for her ladyship?’
John adopted a puzzled look. ‘I imagined her ladyship's appetite might be provoked by its plainness.’
‘Or too coarse?’ continued Pole.
‘Its very robustness commends it, Mrs Pole. We have always found it most toothsome, down in the kitchen.’
A loaf of maslin bread sat on the tray. Mrs Pole looked doubtfully at the dark brown block. ‘Very well.’ The key grated. John, Pole and Fanshawe walked in. Lucretia sat at her table, ignoring them. This time the governess and the clerk delayed barely a minute before Mister Fanshawe made his request for ‘a word’. John listened until they were out of earshot.
‘Maslin bread, your ladyship.’ He waited. ‘And a stew.’
Lucretia looked up. ‘A stew?’ She eyed the loaf.
‘stew of beef,’ said John. ‘With sweet herbs and dumplings.’
A flicker of curiosity disturbed Lucretia's lofty air.
‘What . . . stew?’
Setting the tray on the table, John carefully broke open the crust to disclose a case of rye paste beneath. This he lifted out and cracked with the spoon. From the crack, a puff of fragrant steam rose up. Hot dark juices flooded out and swirled around crumbling hunks of dark red meat. The rich smell drifted in the room. Lucretia eyed the glossy gravy. Then she looked to John.
‘What trick is this?’
Closing the coarse rye paste around the cold stew had been the most difficult task. Then crimping the edges and punching an airhole lest the parcel burst. In the oven, John had turned his creation every few minutes. Slowly the paste had baked. John had plugged the airhole then set to work on the loaf, cutting a disc from the base and digging out the insides. Simeon, at John's invitation, had quickly disposed of the evidence. Now John watched Lucretia's nostrils twitch. From the stairs, Pole and Fanshawe's voices sounded. Her suspicion gave way to puzzlement.
‘They will know you brought it.’
He shrugged.
‘That you tried to deceive them.’
He shrugged again.
‘You will lose your place. They will dismiss you.’
He looked down at her.
‘Not if you eat it.’
Lucretia looked down at the melting meat in its glistening sauce then eyed the dark-haired youth.
‘Why?’
Instead of an answer, John held out a spoon.
Peter Pears, Adam, Alf and Jed Scantlebury laughed and clapped him on the back. Simeon shouted so loudly he had to be told to pipe down. The others crowded around and banged on the bench, setting the spatulas and pastry-jiggers rattling.
‘She gulped it down!’ John repeated.
Peter nodded admiringly. ‘So when will you tell Pouncey?’
‘Oh, soon enough,’ he offered casually. ‘I'll give her a few dinners before that.’
The others nodded. But Philip frowned.
‘Unless they catch you first.’
John grinned. ‘Not much chance of that.’
The next day, Mrs Pole looked down on a pie crust. After that came a bulging tart. Then John offered a topping of baked parsnips and on the next day a bread pudding. Lucretia's governess returned to find the crust unbroken, the tart untouched, the bread pudding's brown surface as pristine as when it had arrived.
‘Perhaps this plainness may be alleviated,’ Pole suggested in the corridor. John nodded solemnly.
The next day, Pearmain slices raised little sails of fruit from within a lattice of pastry, each one dabbed with a pennant of cinnamon and sugar. Pole surveyed the gaudy fleet approvingly. Behind her back, John saw Lucretia purse her lips.
She kept her wariness at first, accepting his offerings with a suspicious look. But as the days succeeded one another, she ate more readily. He waited in silence as before. But now the tray no longer weighed on his arms. The silence did not oppress as it had. The minutes no longer dragged. More than once John was surprised by the bell that signalled the end of dinner.
‘Not a crumb,’ John murmured to himself as Lucretia's lips parted to admit the last of the tiny pastries that he had concealed that day. The young woman looked up.
‘Do you find my hunger comical, John Saturn all?’
‘No one's hunger is comical, your ladyship.’
Down the passage, Pole's faint giggles mingled with Fanshawe's deeper tones. Lucretia rolled a last flake of pastry into her mouth then contemplated him curiously.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why do you serve me so?’
‘I told you. I am a cook, your ladyship. Your cook, according to Mister Pouncey.’
‘You have a fellowship down there in the kitchens, do you not? Gemma speaks of it.’
‘We do, Lady Lucretia.’
‘You could be among your fellows again. You would only have to tell Mister Pouncey. You would not have to attend me.’
John shrugged as if the question were of no importance. But Lucretia eyed him steadily.
‘Would you?’ she persisted.
‘No,’ John conceded. ‘I would not.’
‘Yet you do.’
She looked up at John, the question written on her face. The dishes were proof of his art, Scovell would say. That was reason enough to cook them. They were for all, his mother would add. Even for the daughter of the Lord of the Vale of Buckland. The different answers contended inside John, and among them one other that he sensed like a scent drowned beneath a welter of coarser smells. An uncomfortable silence ballooned in the room.
‘It is my choice,’ he said at last.
‘Just like the old days,’ Mister Bunce told John when the Head of Firsts found him preparing the deceptive dishes. ‘They used to dye fish eggs green and serve ‘em as peas. Or chop raw liver into strings and throw it on a hot steak. Looked like worms wriggling out of the meat. Those old cooks could make anything look like anything.’
‘Could they make themselves look like servants dismissed for deceit?’ Philip asked, looking over at John. ‘They'll kick you out just like they did Coake.’
‘Coake ran,’ replied John.
‘You think Lady Lucy'll speak up for you?’
John shrugged. It was a game, he had told himself: walking back from her chamber the last time. It was a test of his art. The feast belonged to its cook after all ... He reached for the fat trout he had poached. He had promised Lucretia fish.
‘I fear the heat was too high,’ he explained regretfully to Mrs Pole the next day. ‘The jelly clouded. But I think today, Mrs Pole, her ladyship may be tempted. This, after all, was the dish enjoyed by the King himself’
She and Fanshawe glanced at the dull mass. Their customary retreat followed. Alone with Lucretia a minute later, John peeled back the quivering slab of clouded jelly to reveal the trout, its sides rescaled in shaved almonds and tiny slices of lemon. Lucretia looked up at John.
‘There is no need for you to stand in such a fashion,’ she said.
‘Then how should I stand, Lady Lucretia?’
/>
She hesitated. ‘If it pleased you, Master Saturnall, you might . . . sit.’
‘Sit?’
‘You might regard me more readily.’
‘Regard you?’
‘You might look at me. When we converse. You might sit here.’ She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to sit with her. She glanced down at the seat beside her own. ‘After all, you have sat beside the King. So surely you might sit with me. That is, if you wished.’
‘But what if Mrs Pole were to return, your ladyship?’ asked John.
‘Then she would learn that Lady Lucretia Fremantle has a greater appetite than she believed.’ She touched the place next to her. ‘Come. Then you will not loom over me.’
John felt his usual sure movements desert him as he reached down to lift the tray from her lap. As he gripped the smooth wooden handles, his hand brushed Lucretia's. The touch jolted him. His arm jerked back. The wooden board tipped. John grasped for the edge but it fell to the floor with a clatter, scattering fishbones and flakes of pale pink flesh. For a moment there was silence. Then Pole's voice called out.
‘What was that?’
John and Lucretia stared at one another. Quickly John knelt. He was in the kitchen, he told himself Master Scovell was calling. This was a simple task. The bones first. His hands worked precisely. Next the jelly. How to lift it whole? In the kitchen he had a dozen spatulas from which to choose. Here he had only his hands. And hers.
‘Help me,’ he hissed as Pole's footsteps reached the top of the stairs. Lucretia slid down to join him. ‘Put your hand under here. Now, ready . . . ‘
Together they flipped the jelly back to cover the bones. Where was the spoon? John spied it behind a leg of the bed beside a scrap of paper. He grasped both. Spoon on the tray. Paper under the dish. A moment later, Pole entered the room.
‘What was that noise?’ the woman demanded.
‘I . . . ‘began John and Lucretia together.
‘Tell me.’
‘I regret to say, Mrs Pole,’ John said, ‘that I slipped.’
Pole's eyes narrowed, scanning the tray. They came to rest on the spoon. Two bony fingers plucked it from the tray. The woman's narrow nostrils flared.
‘This spoon smells of fish.’
‘Does it?’ Lucretia said innocently. But John saw her cheeks redden. He snatched the spoon from Mrs Pole's hand.
‘You are right, Mrs Pole!’ John exclaimed. ‘It has been licked too! No wonder her ladyship will not eat!’ Staring at the offending article, he mustered a tone of outrage which Mister Vanian would have envied. ‘Have no fear, I will convey your displeasure to the scullery. Master Scovell himself will hear of this!’
Let me feed thee such Honey-sugared Creams
As cool the Luodling's ’scaping Steam
That thy hottest Tempers doth oft-times bake
Then let my cool words thy thirst to slake . . .
‘What's that?’ asked Philip, squinting at the words over John's shoulder. ‘She writing you verses now?’
John shook his head. If Pole had only lifted the dish she would have discovered the scrap of paper. Instead Philip had done so, which was proving almost as uncomfortable.
‘Pole nearly caught you, didn't she?’
‘Pole couldn't catch a dead trout.’
He turned away but Philip gripped his shoulder. ‘Listen. If you won't tell them she's eating then tell them she won't. Say she won't touch anything you serve.’
John busied himself rearranging the knives on the bench. Longest on the left. Paring knife on the right.
‘What's wrong with you?’ Philip demanded.
‘Me?’ John bridled. ‘Nothing.’
The next day he handed back the paper.
‘These are verses,’ Lucretia told him as if he had never seen writing before. ‘They were written for my mother.’
He watched her eyes flick over the words. Then her gaze turned to the chest under the window. The smells of lavender and old wool wafted up as she lifted out a mass of silver-blue silk. The dress from the feast, John realised. Beneath it lay a book, its pages taped and gummed. Lucretia carefully sheaved the torn leaf between the others then looked across the bed.
‘I thought Pole had caught you.’
John grinned. ‘Not me.’
But the young woman did not smile.
‘You must not come again.’
John felt his stomach give a strange lurch. ‘Not come?’
‘It is as wrong to order a servant to err as to ask an equal to go against their conscience.’
‘No one ordered me, your ladyship,’ said John.
‘Then I fear you have gone against your conscience.’
‘What if my conscience led me?’
Lucretia shook her head. ‘I will tell Mister Pouncey that your presence hardens my resolve. That your labours work against their purpose. I know how to treat with him. He will dismiss you without fault.’
‘Then what will you eat, your ladyship? Gemma cannot . . . ‘
‘I will eat that feast which the King commanded you to serve.’
She wore the same expression that he had seen in the Great Hall, remote and unreachable.
‘That is your wedding feast,’ John said.
‘Yes.’
‘You will marry Piers?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you do not care for him.’
‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Nor he for me.’
A vein beat at the side of her neck. A tiny tremor, measuring her heart. A wisp of black hair lay across the pulsing ridge.
‘My mother died for Buckland,’ she said. ‘She died to give my father an heir. That the Vale might be kept safe. She died and I lived. This was her wish. That the succession be assured. That the Vale be secured.’
She looked up at him. What else had he expected? John wondered. That she spend the rest of her life in here? That he grow old concocting dishes to slip past Mrs Pole?
‘If you are to give up your fast,’ he said at last. ‘Let it end with a worthy dish. There is one more I would serve you, Lady Lucretia.’
She gathered herself ‘What dish is that?’
‘Let it be a mystery,’ John answered. ‘Let it tell you something you have not guessed. Something of myself’
Mister Pouncey was climbing the stairs from the kitchen as John descended that afternoon. Usually, the steward would offer a curt nod as John removed his cap. But today, to John's surprise, Mister Pouncey gave John a searching look then nodded and smiled, as though some intelligence had passed between them. John continued down into the kitchen then through the doorway to Firsts.
‘Mister Bunce?’ he asked. ‘Do you know of an apple called a quodling?’
Pole gave John a hard look the next day. But she nodded approvingly at the oversized dumplings which he presented for her inspection. Lucretia had plaited her hair, he saw as he entered. And an unfamiliar scent drifted in the room.
‘Are there flowers here, your ladyship?’ he asked when Pole had gone.
‘Flowers?’ Lucretia touched a hand to her cheek. ‘Surely you have smelt rose water before?’
In the Solar Gallery, remembered John. The scent teased his nostrils as he bent to prise open the first dumpling. The soft dough parted and a puff of steam carried a second sweet smell into the chamber. Lucretia peered at the glistening mass then looked up curiously. ‘What dish is this?’
‘"Let me feed thee Honey-sugared Creams,"’ John recited.’ “As cool the Quodling's ‘scaping Steam.”’
She stared at him, amazed. ‘The verses? You can read?’
‘Is it so strange in a cook?’
‘I . . . no.’ Lucretia gathered herself ‘Of course you must read your receipts.’
‘They are our verses, your ladyship. We give each other recitals down there in our kitchens.’
John brought a corked flask from inside his doublet and poured sweetened cream over the apple. He watched her dig into the apple's ooz
ing flesh, swirl the thick cream then slip the marbled mixture into her mouth.
‘Your honey-sugared cream is as sweet as the verses claim,’ Lucretia told him, swallowing. ‘It all but conquers the sourness of the quodling.’
‘I am pleased that it is to your ladyship's taste.’
He watched her lick the last of the cream off her lips. Then the distant look was back. Lucretia rose.
‘The Queen gave me a dress. A beautiful dress. I was to wear it at Court.’ She opened the lid of the chest and reached within. The folds of silk unfurled with a rustle. Lucretia smoothed the shimmering cloth over herself ‘Do you think I shall?’
John stared at her body wrapped in silver-blue silk.
‘I know,’ Lucretia said when he made no answer. ‘It does not fit me.’ She reached behind herself to pull the fabric tighter. ‘Is that better?’
‘Yes,’ John managed. ‘That is better, Lady Lucretia.’
‘Desires can be exchanged, so Her Majesty told me,’ Lucretia said. ‘Why not antipathies too?’
She meant Piers, John realised. She had made her decision. He gestured to the tray.
‘Eat, your ladyship.’
‘I shall, John Saturnall.’ She tapped the second dumpling. ‘Just as soon as you arrange the dish fittingly.’
The smells of apple and rose water mingled in his nostrils as John bent down. Leaning across her to prise the soft dough apart, he caught the faint warm scent of her skin. He felt something trail against his face. A loose strand of her hair had brushed against his cheek. Without thinking, he swept it back over her ear. As his fingers touched her cheek, he let them rest against the smooth curve of her skin. She looked up, her eyes wide.
‘Is that your mystery, John Saturnall?’
The sweet smell of apples mixed with Lucretia's own scent. He could feel the warmth of her breath. Yes, he thought. A mystery, until now.
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