* * *
Back at the inn we retired to our bedchamber. I stripped to my shift and waited, suddenly trembling in the cold bed. Meanwhile Renzo threw off his clothes and washed at a basin. All the while I still thought to myself – what dream have I tumbled into and when will I awake? And then I remembered the crimes of those last days, and I was suddenly as weak as a lamb, so when he came to me with flesh as hairy as a gentle beast, I clung to him all the tighter. What had I left but him? And he was all I needed, truly.
He warmed my cold body and was most tender in his caresses. So when the vital moment came, his face was above mine, watching me closely, his black hair damp and tangled over his brow.
‘My love,’ he whispered, his breath hot against my cheek. He kissed me lightly on my throat, my lips, my eyes. I traced his features, loving all I saw; and then we were man and wife and I was filled with joy to be a maid no more. And what appetites we had – for we had both been simmering all those weeks, and his every touch made my skin melt like gold in a fire. It took many lazy hours to satisfy our hunger, and dawn rose again before we slept.
* * *
Next day it was hard to shift from the heaven of our feather bed, but Renzo said, ‘We must make for the city. Tonight I will sleep at home with my bride beside me.’
By evening a vast city of glittering towers and domes lay before us.
‘Look,’ Renzo urged like a boy. ‘Santa Maria. The Duomo.’ High in the air stood a vast dome, the colour of apricot, with a globe set at its top. ‘See, Bibi. The grandest church in the world.’
Once through the city gateway I gazed on houses bearing marble fronts, and every kind of magnificent carving. As for the churches, I never saw such precious stones bedded into walls, most especially that great Duomo all dressed with redstone, blue lapis and jasper, all of it so vast and lofty it cricked your neck to see the roof.
‘So this is Florence,’ I said, suddenly recognising the name of that place where the arts were so rich that all the world flocked to see them. Everywhere, red and white flowers decorated the wayside, as if news of our wedding had been sent before us. There were banners, too, of crimson silk unfurled from high windows, and in the vast piazza stood tented pavilions embroidered with gold.
‘In Florence there is always a festival,’ my husband told me. ‘We have two carnival seasons, many saints’ days, celebrations. At any excuse the people don a costume and open their purses, which we shall help ourselves to, for our marriage box.’
‘So what do they eat, these festival folk?’ I asked as my husband handed me up the steps of his house. I was very satisfied with it; for it had a neat and respectable appearance.
‘Fritters, cakes, anything indulgent or exotic. They eat all they can.’
We smiled at each other in silent conspiracy. If people wished to eat, we were the pair to feed them.
* * *
Soon Renzo set up his workshop, employing workers to create his pastillage fancies. One night he made a great sugar paste temple for a nobleman’s banquet, as vast as a shepherd’s hut on its plinth. The Bill of Fare was lavish too: three courses of fifty-seven dishes assembled by four cooks, with my husband preparing the grand dessert. To help him decorate it, Renzo taught me to melt sugar and fling it back and forth on a knife tip until it formed a glassy thread. Moulded on upturned bowls it made half-spheres of sugar web as hard as crystal. Combined in pairs they formed globes of gold that we filled with bonbons and coloured flowers.
‘We make the finest dainties in the city,’ I murmured, ‘and the orders are piling high.’ I loved to tally our accounts nearly as much as I loved to make sweetmeats. Renzo was painting a sugar warrior, the tip of his tongue just pushed out as he gave it the face of the lord who commissioned the vast display.
‘Si, but we need more room,’ he grumbled. ‘The sugar work needs to be kept dry so we can hire it out again.’
‘Aye,’ I said, doing a quick calculation, ‘if we did that we could make many times more profits again.’
Then, as I passed into that happy state of contentedness as I worked, I thought, Ah, it would be like spinning gold. My heart began to race so fast I dropped a molten lump of sugar and spoiled it. A grand idea had formed inside my pushing mind. I told Renzo of how most of the travellers lodged at poor inns, or if they had deep pockets, paid rent on a palazzo. We knew why lodgings were few: to set up a hotel was expensive, risky, and a deal of hard work. Yet the benefits were many: we might easily give the best food to our guests, even English food should they wish it. And no one knew better than me the longing of travellers for cleanliness and neatness. In this same hotel we might also have a room for Renzo’s lavish sugar displays. From a single kitchen we might serve both guests and banquets. As for bedchambers, they would be the best in the city.
My husband slapped his knee. ‘We must hire a man at the city gates to guide them straight to our hotel, with a notice recommending our lodgings.’
‘And write an Advertisement in those books of Grand Tours they read,’ I cried. Our notions jumped as high and hot as nuts in a brazier.
Then it came to me, like a vision of heaven. ‘Oh, Renzo,’ I said, clutching his sleeve. ‘We must have a restaurant.’
‘Restaurant? What is that?’
‘Remember, I told you of the superior dining rooms where the weak and moping go for a pick-me-up? The bouillon, the creams, all those over-priced healthful foods?’
‘Si, and they will pay for it. As we say here, “If your mouth is full you cannot say no.”’
‘Yes, yes, they will pay even more for that – dandified way of dining. If we can do it, the business will succeed.’
* * *
We did it. Nothing venture, nothing have, they say, and there were never two people more hungry for success. With the coin from my strongbox and Renzo’s capital, we bought a five-storey house overlooking the Arno river. We paced the high musty rooms, ignoring the coats of arms and moth-eaten velvets. Rather, we peered up the chimneys and measured the kitchen. We called it La Regina dell’Inghilterra, or the good old Queen of England. So I was then that elegant Restauratrice I had so admired in Paris. Gone were my servant’s drabs; I was all busked up in French fashions to greet my guests like Lady Bountiful herself. ‘Good evening, Your Excellency,’ I mouthed like a perfect magnifico. By my stars, those at Mawton would never have known me. My hair was each morning piled high by my dresser, and pinned with flowers and jewels. My feet that never were the finest, were lifted on satin-heeled slippers. Even my poor fire-scorched arms were healed. Well, near to healed, for with fingerless mitts and a jangle of cameo bracelets, my maid said no one would ever see the scars.
The night we opened the restaurant the building near floated with light from crystal, mirrors and shimmering lamps: it was the Maison de Santé of all my dreams. We dazzled them with luxuries: a golden striking clock from Switzerland, and a wine cistern filled with snow in the shape of a galleon. At the room’s centre stood my husband’s tour de force, a sugar paste Temple of Circe decorated with sugar globes. In a city that looks always to fashion we were at its head.
As for food, the wonder was that so many of our guests had no appetite at all. The beau monde rose late in the afternoon, taking only a cup of chocolate, and fretting that they could not lace their dainty clothes if they had eaten but one morsel of food. But from us they might take a thimbleful of bouillon for their health, or a dish of aspic to restore their complexion. So our guests did not fill their bellies but their noses, eyes and minds; and if they had to, they sampled the scantest peck of exquisite food.
Our English guests, those stocky, red-faced travellers, still demanded meat and pudding, beer and tea. Yet even our stout Britons had seen many wonders since first they boarded the Dover packet, so why should they not let their tongues follow?
‘Honeysuckle iced petals,’ scoffed one John Bull, spying my menu. ‘I should as soon eat a bouquet of flowers. You must serve me solid belly timber, madame, nothing else.’ Yet in one
week I had tempted the old duffer with a restoring quintessence of veal. Then at dessert I caught him licking his spoon like a schoolboy as he scooped up a flower of my own exquisite honeysuckle ice.
* * *
After the hotel’s first hey-go-mad season I fell to breeding and all slowed down. I had to loose my satin stays, and Renzo treated me like I was made of crystal. The first task of my empty hours was to write to my mother and Charity, enclosing a handful of gold coins. No reply has ever come back, but I send the money every year and pray it reaches them safely. The writing of that letter started up a right restless hankering to also write to Mrs Garland, for wouldn’t she just burst to know of my being married and the hotel and all? So upstairs in our apartment, with all the racketing of our business carrying on below, I got to writing at last. I rooted about and found my old receipts stuffed into the pages of The Cook’s Jewel. And I found Mrs Garland’s best receipt for taffety tart, the very one I’d copied from her box, saucy article that I had been once. It was all in tatters, with butter blots and scabs of ancient pastry ground into the paper.
So it happened that instead of writing a letter, I scribed that receipt in my best hand and started up this journal. Receipt by receipt I conjured those dishes again. And I got to understanding that a Cook Book feeds the fancy like a dish of dreams. As I thought all this stuff, I scribbled my journal, for a letter could never contain all the news I had to tell. So I wrote of all my discoverings and adventures, and how it had all turned out in the end just like the perfect dish.
Then my time of danger came and I was delivered of a strong baby boy, named Giacomo after Renzo’s father. He has Renzo’s dark curls and stubborn cherry mouth, comically mixed with the mulishness of his mother. It is a delight too, to see Evelina dandle her little brother on her knee, for she is the fondest of creatures. Fond and simple, I should say, for though it pains me to write it, her wits are of the dullest. She is a lovely and a happy child, but forever slow and will never master her letters. But I would never change her, for she calls little Jack her own darling brother, and Renzo calls her his own daughter, too.
* * *
Yet each time I thought my journal near finished, some other surprise would arrive. One day as I dandled little Jack in one arm and read the Leghorn newspaper with the other, I started at a familiar name:
At the court of sessions at Leghorn on 2nd July 1776 Mr William Dodsley was indicted for a Felony in taking to Wife Amelia Jane Jesmire on the first of September 1773, his first Wife Dorcas Bertram being then alive and living in London, England. Reverent Emanuel Trouvaine deposed that upon visiting the Mission in Leghorn he did recognise the prisoner drinking punch at the Regatta …
I ran down to the kitchen and cried to Renzo, ‘Goodness, listen to this for a tale.’
And I told him all the import, that this braggart Dodsley had pretended to be a retired sea captain of 400 guineas a year, and claimed to Jesmire that his hired lodgings were his rightful property worth £2,000.
‘Ah, here is word of Jesmire’s situation now,’ I said:
… soon after their marriage he came to Amelia in want of money, which he demanded in Gold, for his Pockets disdained both Silver and Copper. Amelia, who is a lady of more than fifty years, told the court that she had lost a most genteel position to take up with Dodsley, and losing her most excellent connections in Italy had now no other way forward but to seek a domestic position; such of Dodsley’s creditors having already claimed his goods against his debts. His first Marriage being fully proved by papers sent from London, the Jury found him Guilty and he was burnt in the hand with the brand of Bigamy and imprisoned for five years.
‘So that woman who scorned you has had her just reward,’ Renzo said, snatching it from me and smearing it at once with veal stock. ‘The world is just.’
‘I am sorry for her,’ I said. ‘No, truly I am,’ I protested, for he rolled his eyes. ‘For she was one of us that left England five years past. And here am I, married to you and the happiest woman in the world,’ and at that he looked as proud as punch, ‘while she, the silly old trot – has been taught a sorry lesson.’
Yet always there was one of that band from whom I would never have news. How could I not remember him, when the cargoes from Batavia were unloaded at the market, drenching the air with the scent of cloves?
When I first came here I enquired which boats came from the islands, and did any come from Lamahona? None could help me, though one jug-eared old sailor told me the Eastern Indies were made of five thousand islands and no map or chart could ever name them all. Five thousand. It is like searching for a grain of sugar in a pail of salt. Each nutmeg I grate reminds me of Keraf’s island of plenty, heavy with fruits to be lifted and eaten from the branch. As I mix sweet spices I wonder where my friend is now, and whether reunited with Bulan and his son. I fancy he perches on his prahu boat out on the ocean, bathed in sunshine, hunting whales and rays and flying fish. I pray so, with all my heart.
* * *
Then I set down my journal and forgot it for one whole year. I was blessed with the safe delivery of a second son whom we named Renzo. He has a mop of hair with a copper glow, and was born with his first tooth cut.
Then an acquaintance arrived in Florence, and I found that my tale was not quite ended. I had pieced together my story from all the broken accounts and receipts, but like a squeeze of lemon in a rich sauce, one last sour note was missing.
XXXVIII
The Queen of England, Florence
Being Advent to Christmastide, 1777
Signora Bibiana Cellini, her journal
It began last year when the Earl of Mulreay and his mistress came back to lodge with us. The old fellow had just arrived in the city from the waters at Spa, his wrinkles powdered to the colour of decay, the outmoded patch stuck to his rouged cheeks.
‘My dearest Mrs Cellini.’ His touch was as dry as old hair papers as he lifted my hand to his puckered lips. At times he reminds me of old Count Carlo, but the earl would no more eat a viper than an oyster out of season. I had heard Count Carlo had snared some other heiress, poor creature.
‘My Lord, have you seen our new menu?’
As we discussed each new dish I noticed the pretty aventuressa at his side appraising my costume. That was also new from Paris, a Polonaise gown in broad blue stripes, the skirts hitched up in milkmaid fashion.
‘We have a Tiber sturgeon just fresh from the boat. Or a white Tuscan peacock. Or of course, if you care for something more homely, I have a taffety tart of quince and apples just baked.’
His grin showed the toffee-coloured stumps of the dedicated epicure. ‘A taffety tart?’ Clapping the silk-breeched spindle of his leg he smiled like an orphan promised a sugarplum. ‘Bring us what you surmise your best, Mrs Cellini. And the taffety tart with – custard if you have it.’
I was standing half-hid behind a marble pillar watching my serving maid clear the earl’s plates, when I heard him speak a name that knocked the breath from me like a cudgel. Without waiting to consider, I bustled over to the earl’s table.
‘Pray forgive me My Lord,’ I said with my sweetest smile, ‘but the name Tyrone just floated across the air to me. I know the man. Indeed, I owe him a debt of favour. I wonder, perhaps, if it is the same fellow?’
I donned a mask of simplicity as the earl told his tale. The English Braggadocio had arrived in Florence and reckoned himself a first-rate calculator at the gaming tables – but the local nobles had bled him dry. All I heard confirmed that this dupe was Kitt Tyrone.
‘Yet to think of what I owe that gentleman,’ I said, as plaintively as if I trod the boards of Drury Lane. ‘Do you know how I might find him?’
A liver-spotted hand patted my arm. ‘He lodges near the Coco Theatre. God will allow you to perform your good deed, only let the gambling fever abate, Mrs Cellini. He is a sick man. A little ready cash now would only agitate his brain.’
* * *
I retreated to my dressing chamber, but could n
ot sit still. Kitt himself, and here in Florence. Unhappily, I recounted that he had followed his sister to Italy, and even more remorsefully, that his failure to discover her fate was my own doing. Yet why did the fool linger here? Oh Kitt, I beseeched out loud, catching sight of my vexed face in the looking glass. Damn him, I knew he was foolish and weak. God alone knew why, but I had to see him.
I gave myself no time to alter my course, only fretted that such an errand would enrage my husband. He might try to prevent me, might even suspect I was meeting a lover. So I will go in secret, I decided, for silence is best. Next I set on the idea of wearing an ugly black veil such as the local donne wear. The very next day while Renzo was out in the city I crept quickly out of a small gate at the back of the Hotel. In a black gown that matched my veil and plain leather slippers, I flattered myself I would pass for any modest Florentine lady.
The alley by the theatre was a dripping tunnel, stinking of ordure. I had to ask the whereabouts of the Inglese gentleman, of course. Finally, an old woman pointed a bony finger up a set of stone stairs. I knocked at the door, got no answer, and slowly pushed it open.
Even through the lace mist of my veil I could see the room was of the poorest sort: a stained pallet flung on the cold floor, a window patched with paper. Then I saw empty bottles of raw spirit. And in their midst, as drunk as a tinker, lay the twisted body of Kitt Tyrone.
Pressing my veil to my nose I sank down on a crooked stool beside him and touched his arm. ‘Signore,’ I murmured. ‘Wake up, Signor Tyrone.’
An Appetite for Violets Page 29