John Saturnall's Feast (34 page)

John stood in the midst of the whirl, Scovell's final words running through his head.
A cook stands apart .
. . In his mind's eye, the next hours were already arriving, the dishes ascending on the serving men's trays: pies and tarts, birds and fish, loaves, cakes, puddings and pastries. He saw the sea of faces swaying and rolling. At the high table beyond, Lucretia and Piers were seated together.

‘John!’ Philip gripped his shoulder. ‘Did you hear me? The lower tables are seated.’

Across the kitchen, Mister Quiller's serving men jostled at the foot of the stairs. Luke had the first trays ready. Phineas hung in the doorway ready to signal to the bakehouse. In front of the fire, the spiced wine sent its heady fumes through the room. A hundred familiar smells swirled in the kitchen.

But the aromas in John's nostrils were not of spices or roasting meats. They were of apple and rose water. And his thoughts were not of the feast, or even Scovell, whatever had lured the Master Cook from Buckland. Instead John thought of his pool of crystal jelly lying in Henry Palewick's coldest larder, the love tokens suspended in its depths. A ring. An arrow. A red heart. There was the stair where Piers had slurred his taunt.
Raise a cup
. . .
Since you can't raise her skirts
. . . He had no cup, he thought. Only Scovell's ladle. He felt its curve
,
smooth as the bow of her cheek. He saw her lips parting before his own.

‘What is it, John? What's wrong?’ Philip loomed into view.

‘Nothing is wrong,’ he told Philip. ‘Nothing.’

Without another moment's thought, he swung the ladle. The great copper rang out
,
the clang reverberating and rolling under the vaulted roof As the echoes died, the room fell silent. All around the kitchen, faces turned to John.

Stand down!

They were his next words. He had the whole order of service in his head. Without him, there could be no feast. He opened his mouth. But before he could speak, Philip's hand gripped his shoulder.

‘John, look.’

Across the kitchen the cooks, under-cooks, kitchen boys and scullions were murmuring and pointing, turning to look through the arch then pulling off their caps and dropping to their knees. A black-clad man stood at the foot of the stairs. His hawkish nose turned this way and that as his eyes took in the unfamiliar scene. Wearing a heavy cloak and black tunic, Sir William surveyed the vaulted room.

‘John,’ hissed Philip, and nudged him.

‘Strangers in,’ John managed.

Watched by the astonished cooks, the Lord of the Vale of Buckland stepped into the kitchen, his gaze reaching into the furthest corners of the room to take in the men and boys. At the great copper, he halted.

‘Sir Philemon brings grave news,’ the black-clad man declared. ‘The King has raised his standard. There will be no wedding. We are at war.’

From
The Book
of John Saturnall
: A
Dish
for those
Unfortunates
lost among the
Dead
upon
Naseby Field

he Angels in Heaven eat Manna so our Churchmen tell us. The Gods on Olympus quaffed Ambrosia and Nectar. Hades took Kore down to his Palace in Tartarus and set a Feast before her to tempt her but what were its Dishes I do not know. The Dead complain little of their Appetites and so a Cook can only hazard their Hungers.

But a Soldier will eat what he may find. His Kitchen is the Corner of a Field and his safest Bed is a Thicket of Brambles. Gather therefore what you may from the Hedgerows and snare the Same in the Woods, and if Fortune smiles so broadly upon you that you do take a fat Rabbit, then follow these Instructions which an old Man upon the Road vouchsafed me many Years ago.

First skin the Beast and draw it then spit it upon a Hazel Twig that, twisting and turning in the Heat of the Fire according to that Wood's miraculous character, the Rabbit's scant Juices do baste the lean Meat that lies close upon its Frame. Take Sprigs of Rosemary too if you will and stitch these beneath the Flesh to sweeten it with the Oils of the Herb. When a Dagger pressed into the fat Part of the Thigh brings Juices running clear, then the Meat will be cooked . . .

T
HE SMOKE BILLOWED UP
in a thick white trunk, its heavy crown spreading then toppling to engulf those below. Through streaming eyes, John saw ghostly figures stumbling blindly through the acrid cloud, coughing and choking as they breathed in the fumes. The clang of iron on iron beat against his ears. Suddenly a body reared before him. A pole of black iron loomed, its end spiked and hooked. As John scrambled aside, the metal thudded down and a fountain of sparks crackled into the air. An angry voice rose above the noise.

‘Who was it?’ demanded Philip. ‘What pudding-head put green wood on the fire?’

The latest encampment of the Buckland Kitchen was a roofless barn on a rise overlooking the valley below. Spread out over the fields, the troops of the King's army gathered around their fires. The smells of woodsmoke and latrines drifted up the shallow slope. Rubbing his watering eyes, John watched Philip hook the smoking branch with his iron, pull it out of the blaze and drag it crackling over the mud floor. Adam Lockyer held the door open, his face streaked with soot and dirt.

The Lord of the Vale of Buckland had marched out of the Manor bearing the Fremantle standard, the torch and axe fluttering over his head.

‘Supper back here in Buckland,’ Mister Bunce had told John and Philip sternly before they left. ‘Remember you're cooks. You follow your nose. That'll bring you back safe.’

At each village, the women and children hung out of windows or cheered from doorways. At each stop, the men had mustered, waving scythes and sticks. Now they wielded pikes and shot muskets.

They had all learned new skills, John reflected. Even the cooks. Scavenging meals from hedgerows, snaring rabbits, finding firewood and shelter in the midst of downpours. From one of Prince Maurice's dragoons, John and Philip had even learned to ride, bouncing around a field on the back of the man's cob. And the same dragoon had let them spy through a crack in a barn wall one night when a swaggering woman with a mane of black hair took a coin each from the group of men. Faces pressed to the wall, John and Philip had each heard the other gasp as she pulled off her smock and stood before the soldiers, naked but for her boots.

‘Look at that,’ murmured a breathless Philip, staring at the thick ruff of dark hair springing up between her legs. ‘That's a sin, that is.’

‘It surely is,’ John murmured back, his eye glued to the hole.

But the next night found them in the same barn with the same woman whose breath smelt of onions as they took their turns, John unmanned by nerves until she took his hesitant hands and clamped them one on each buttock. Then a fierce pleasure took hold of him and at length she too began to pant, her heels drumming on his buttocks as she urged him on.

‘That cooked your collops?’ she demanded of them afterwards, her sharp teeth tearing at a chicken leg from the basket they had brought her. ‘My oven hot enough for you two?’

Philip and John looked sheepishly at each other and grinned.

The first winter had been worse than any fighting. Mister Underley had caught a chill and John had boiled up meadowsweet and elder. But the chill turned to a fever and carried the man off. They had buried him on the side of a hill. The next day they had marched on.

How many camps had followed, John wondered now as Philip dragged his smoking bundle of hazel rods down the slope and dropped it in the wet grass where it hissed and steamed. To one side of this camp, a great herd of horses bent their heads. On the other, a troop of men formed into lines under the commands of a sergeant. From the roofless barn Phineas emerged bearing a tray with a cover.

‘Dinner for the Lord of the Vale of Buckland and his esteemed staff,’ announced Phineas. ‘Freshly snared rabbit. Who's taking it down?’

‘Your turn,’ Philip told John.

He pulled John's collar into place and brushed at some dirt on his coat. ‘Tell Master Palewick we have firewood for two more days and provisions for three. And no one is accepting our notes.’

John tramped down the hillside, his stomach growling at the smell of roasted meat. Around the camp, Sir William was said to eat better than anyone except His Majesty. But the King was at Oxford, not here where the stench of latrines grew stronger as John approached the dragoons enlisted with Prince Maurice then weaved his way between shelters and improvised huts before crossing to Sir William's camp. The familiar accents of the Vale greeted him.

‘That mine, Master Cook!’

‘What you got for us, John? Hedgehog again?’

‘I'm still chewing the last lot of quills . . .’

John passed through the village militias, the men lying on lengths of blanchet or sacking or stretched out on their buff coats. Helmets and breastplates lay tossed in heaps. Pikes were stabbed point first into the ground. But the men reclined untroubled by sergeants.

‘Course they stand their ground,’ the same dragoon had confided to John. ‘Most of ‘em are too drunk to walk.’

Kept back with the baggage train, the Buckland Kitchen had seen no fighting. The closest John had come to the enemy was across the bare flat grassland of Elminster Plain where a dark line had smudged the eastern horizon. Word was passed down the column that it was Parliament's army. Fairfax was its commander and Waller and Cromwell were his generals. More names, thought John, watching the rippling smudge, the odd glint of sunlight flaring off a breastplate, and wondering whether, somewhere along its length, a cook looked back at himself.

The gateway to the farmhouse rose. Two pikemen wearing helmets, corselets, tassets and gorgets moved aside as John approached. In the yard, a group of young men gathered around one of their number who sported two pistols in holsters, a heavy carbine and a sword. Breastplate polished to a high shine, Piers Callock struck a pose for the benefit of his fellows.

‘So I rode in at full gallop and I swear if it wasn't that traitor Waller himself then it was his brother. I reached for my pistol but the damned flint cracked. So I reached for the other and the damned powder was wet. I'd got the carbine off on the charge so that was gone. That left this.’

The others watched intently as Piers gripped the hilt of his sword. He had been mentioned in a dispatch to the King, John had heard, for the capture of seven dragoons and their mounts. He had gained a name for reckless courage, charging at the front of the line. John hurried across the yard. He had almost reached the doorway when Piers noticed him.

‘Ah ha! The kitchen boy! Where's Pandar?’

‘Back at the kitchen, Lord Piers,’ John replied and hurried inside.

A group of officers turned from the hearth. Seeing a cook, they turned back again. From the back room, Hector Callock's voice sounded.