John Saturnall's Feast (31 page)

At the King's announcement, the woman's hand had found her own under the table and Lucretia had found she could not reply. The kitchen boy had stared at her. Hauled up from the kitchens to caper for the King. Or perhaps to witness her humiliation. Returned to her room she had imagined John Saturnall recounting her fate to the others in his subterranean domain. They mocked her down there, she knew. Pouncey and Pole's embassy had only compounded her fury.

A terrible pleasure had gripped her as she ripped apart the dolls, and a worse one when she tore the pages from the book. Lucretia had thrown open her clothes chest and pulled out the dress. Taking up the silvery-blue silk, she readied herself to tear the fine material . . .

‘The Covenant ties all our hands,’ Mister Pouncey had explained in the nasal mumble he reserved for the imparting of confidences. ‘But Piers may inherit on your behalf, being a cousin but once removed . . .’

She had grown up with the story. The oath sworn by her ancestor. She had never imagined it might bind her so closely.

‘You would need only to wed Lord Piers,’ the steward had assured her. ‘You would not be forced into . . . into intimacy.’

Until he had need of an heir, she thought grimly. Then the Queen's words returned to her.
We only exchange our desires
. . . Was Piers so terrible, she forced herself to ponder, with his lank hair and trembling chin? Could he be worse than Lady Caroline's rumoured lover, the cold-eyed Sir Philemon with his slashed and stitched face? She imagined Piers's limbs entwined with her own, his clammy skin pressed against her, his stale-wine breath in her nostrils . . .

The thought turned her stomach. She watched Gemma gather the pages and take the pottage away. Left alone, Lucretia sat on the chair before her dressing table and looked out of the casement to the little banqueting house. Above its pointed roof, a white cloud was stretching itself across the sky. She remembered these hours from her previous fasts. Whole days of light-headed tedium.

That night a jagged stone seemed to roll in her belly. She slept badly and woke as the chapel bell rang for breakfast. Through the day, the ache in the pit of her stomach sharpened. After supper, Gemma's voice sounded outside the door.

‘Lucy!’ she hissed. ‘It's me again.’

‘What is it?’

There was a rustle of skirts. A second later, a small grey-brown slab slid under the door.

Lucretia recognised it from its annual appearance on the table in the back parlour. On the day of her mother's death. Maslin bread.

The servants ate it all year round. She had always disdained it, of course. Now the dark slab felt invitingly solid. The yeasty tang teased her nostrils. Hot juices joined the churning rock in her belly.

‘I could get no better,’ Gemma continued through the door. ‘Pole was watching me. They were talking about you. Gardiner says if you don't eat then your courses stop. You dry up inside and can't bear children . . . Lucy?’

‘Mmmth.’

Lucretia's teeth mashed the fat grains. The coarse gluey mass rolled around on her tongue. She held a cloth to catch the crumbs and chewed as hard as she could. Lucretia thought it possible she had never tasted anything so delicious as maslin bread.

Gemma smuggled out another block the next day but as she sank her teeth into the second heavy slab, Gemma hissed a warning.

‘Lucy! They're coming!’

Several sets of footsteps were advancing up the staircase. Then they resounded along the passage. Lucretia chewed quickly but the key was scraping in the lock. She wrapped the remaining hunk in the cloth, dropped it to the floor and nudged it under the bed. She wiped her mouth as the door swung open to reveal Mister Pouncey, Mrs Gardiner, Mister Fanshawe and Mrs Pole.

A new smell entered with them too. A rich mixture of braised meat and spices. The aroma curled about the door and wove its way through the stuffy air. Lucretia felt the rock of her hunger stir. Then the source appeared. A youth clad in red livery stepped out from behind Pole. Strange to see a denizen of the Kitchen in the House, thought Lucretia, eyeing the tray and the steaming bowl.

‘Sir William has assigned you a cook,’ Mister Pouncey informed Lucretia, ‘in honour of your new vow. He will describe today's dish for you.’

Her gaze rose to the bearer's face.

John glanced down.

He had dreaded this moment since Scovell and Mrs Gardiner had informed him of the steward's order. He had been cheered out that morning by his fellow cooks, Peter Pears slapping him so hard on the back that he had almost spilt the broth.

‘Go on, John!’ Adam Lockyer had called after him. ‘How could Lady Lucy resist you?’

Her face wore a look of scorn mixed with boredom. Mister Pouncey, Mister Fanshawe and Mrs Pole waited.

‘This is a broth of lamb, your ladyship,’ John began. ‘It is made with fillets taken from the tenderest part of the neck. The joints are simmered on the bone until the marrow can be removed and chopped into the liquor . . .’

If he looked sideways a little, he could see her reflection in the pier glass at the far end of the chamber. Lucretia appeared unmoved as his description lurched on.

‘Thus the juices are reduced. Now, the seasonings . . .’

He tried to imagine that he stood in the kitchen. He was explaining the dish to Simeon or Heskey, or another of the kitchen boys. Not mumbling before a contemptuous Lucretia Fremantle. Gardiner and Pole nodded at his halting performance. Then, to his surprise, Lucretia spoke.

‘How fascinating.’

She did not sound fascinated. But neither did she seem to mock.

‘After the final seasoning, the liquor is strained,’ John continued.

‘Really? How?’

This time, John glanced at her.

‘A colander is too coarse,’ he explained. ‘A horsehair sieve will clog. We use a strainer fashioned from fine wires.’

Lucretia stood and peered into the bowl.

‘You have spent the day making this broth?’ she said.

‘Yes, your ladyship.’

The young woman leaned into the rising steam and took an appreciative sniff. Then, to John's amazement, she took the bowl in her hands. She was going to drink, John realised, struggling to keep the exultation from his face. His task accomplished in a single day! He watched Lucretia turn then hook out something with her foot from under her bed, something that scraped the boards of the floor. A bowl.

A chamber pot.

In the next moment, John realised Lucretia's intention. He took a step forward but she was too quick. With a single fluid gesture, the young woman upended the bowl, sending the broth falling in a dark brown arc. A dismayed John watched the steaming stream crash into the pot and splash the floor about. A moment's silence followed.

‘Filthy girl!’ exclaimed Pole.

‘Miss Lucretia!’ Mister Fanshawe spluttered. ‘How could you!’

A shocked John regarded his creation. Lucretia's triumphant face turned to Mister Pouncey.

‘Did you think I would change my mind for a bowl of soup? Not a drop will pass my lips. Tell my father that. Not a crumb.’

It was left to John to pick up the pot. As he knelt amidst the pools of broth, a scattering of crumbs led his gaze under the bed. There, among the shadows, he made out a shape. A small slab lay on the floor. A slab part-wrapped in a cloth. As John's eyes adjusted to the gloom, he smiled to himself A half-eaten hunk of maslin bread. So Lady Lucy's fast had already ended. Had probably never begun. He rose to his feet.

‘Not a crumb?’ he murmured.

Lucretia stiffened. Two dots of colour grew in her cheeks.

‘What's that?’ asked Mister Pouncey's nasal voice.

He had only to announce his discovery. He had only to call out as she had done . . . But as he drew breath to speak, Lucretia's expression changed. Her haughty gaze faltered. A look John knew flashed across her face. For an instant he was back with her in the Solar Gallery, the two of them united in the fear of discovery.

‘Well?’ the steward demanded.

‘Nothing, Mister Pouncey, sir,’ John heard himself say. His exultant mood had evaporated, replaced by a baffling inhibition.

‘Nothing?’

‘I was thinking of another dish, sir. One more to her ladyship's taste.’

‘Why?’ demanded Philip. ‘If she's eating, she's not fasting, is she?

Why didn't you tell them?’

‘Nothing in that for me,’ John answered airily. ‘Finding a bit of bread under a bed. Besides, they'd have known your Gemma brought it.’

He clapped Philip on the back in jocular fashion.

‘If Lady Lucy's filling her belly,’ Phineas said, ‘she won't touch what you're cooking.’

‘That depends what I cook,’ John answered with a smile. ‘Doesn't it?’

But Lucretia did not eat the comfits flavoured with sugared cream which he presented the next day, nor the lemon possets with strawberries which he took after that. Each day at the door, Pole inspected the tray. Each day John stood before her in the room, his eyes averted, the silence growing more oppressive between himself, the governess, the clerk and Lucretia while, on the tray he held before him, that day's creation cooled or collapsed or congealed.

Lucretia herself gazed out of the window, or busied herself at her dressing table, or pretended enthusiasm for her sampler, working a jagged row of stitches. After an hour that felt like three, his arms aching and his stomach rumbling, the bell for the end of dinner released John to return to the kitchen.

‘Gruels and pottages,’ suggested Henry Palewick. ‘Master Scovell used to prepare them for her when she was a child. Not that she ate a spoonful.’

‘Frumenty,’ Alf pronounced authoritatively. ‘Or a sucket. Or broth. That's what my sis used to make.’

Poached collops of venison came and went untouched.
A
hash of fishes and a quaking pudding with raisins, honey and saffron were spurned. The days succeeded one another. When Mrs Gardiner escorted John, he remembered her scrutiny in Scovell's chamber, the talk of a ‘magpie’. But the quiet of the unfamiliar passages silenced his questions and more often now it was Fanshawe and Pole who marched him through the Great Hall and up the stairs to Lucretia's chamber.

The governess and the clerk seemed fascinated by each other. While their greetings remained as formal as ever, John caught glances passing behind his back. He glimpsed little smiles out of the corner of his eye. He heard their asides grow more elaborate. On the day Mrs Pole allowed a diminutive fringe to escape the severe scrape of her hair, Mister Fanshawe cleared his throat.

‘Mrs Pole. A word in private, if I may?’

The governess and the Clerk of the Household retreated a little way down the passage. There they conducted a whispered exchange. When it was over they returned and again took up their places to either side of John.

They retreated the next day too, venturing further out of earshot. Soon their assignations carried them all the way along the passage and halfway down the stairs. At last only flutters of half-stifled laughter reached into the room.

John was left to stand like a sentry in the chamber. His arms ached. His every breath seemed to amplify. He took up position with the tray at the door, counting the seconds to his release, while Lucretia sat before her pier glass, pretending to sew.

He should have told Pouncey just as Philip counselled, John berated himself as the days passed. He should have held up the bread like a trophy. Now the chance was gone. Why should he scruple to betray her when she had so willingly shouted out his presence? He had been a fool, or something even worse than a fool. Then, as he stood before her with his tray holding a dish of forcemeats and sallets, the greens cooling and drooping beneath his gaze, the sauce growing a thick dull skin, Lucretia broke the silence.

‘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.