An Appetite for Violets (15 page)

Jem is the same, though I should tell you he has spent your five guineas a hundred time on cakey schemes, so you must promise me to keep it safe and spend it wisely as I know you will. Biddy, I will not tell tales on any but he does still hang at the kitchen door, only now it is Teg that feeds him. Being your friend I say to you as gently as I might that you should not be waiting on him, my dear and that’s my penn’orth said—

Taking food from Teg? He might choke on it if he weren’t poisoned first. I saw her game. Oh Jem, had he not the wit to remember me? Mighty vexed, I read on.

We talk of you and my lady most nights by the fire and the letter you sent me from London was much remarked upon as showing the wickedness of the capital and to my mind that Meeks fellow should be flogged raw. Yet it does warm my heart to hear you have written in the book and such fine receipts too. I did try the posset when I had some liquor and it was most warming and was like to having you in the room here cooking up a fancy as you used to in happier days, in this cold season ’tis a Godsend. Biddy dear, I did forget to ask for a lock of your hair so when next you write I beg you send it. I am mighty troubled to think of you crossing the ocean someday soon and do say many prayers for your safety upon the sea.

Please do give my Christmas greeting to Mr Pars and also if he be with you still, to George and here is hoping you will send a letter with him minding it could not be a more safe and sure method. I have told you all for the present so must ask you to remember

Your Dear & Heartfelt Friend

Martha Garland

It was lucky we were hundreds of miles apart for I would have had that Jem’s giblets on hot coals. Cakey schemes indeed! Not for the first time I thought of that five guinea piece shining in the strongbox and how Mr Pars had stitched us up good and proper.

*   *   *

How to tell of Christmas Day – for a cook it’s the most fat-lashing, fire-scorching, hurlying burlying day of all the year. Yet the groundwork was done and so we had only the roast beef, fowls, joints of meats, puddings, and desserts still to make. God’s codlings, that kitchen was as hot as the fiery furnace once the three spits started turning. There were the usual mishaps – a girl caught her skirts in the fire, but escaped with nowt but a smoking hole in the cloth once her workmates had beaten the fire out. Worse was a spill of slippery hot fat across the flags, and a couple of folks cracked their knees before it was sanded.

By eleven we were at the sweating climax of our labours; I had the baron of beef just turning nicely and my other eye fixed on the Yule cakes lined up at the oven door.

A tap at my sleeve brought me back from this happy realm of cooking to face Mr Loveday, his face looking mighty worried. ‘Lady Carinna want see you. At once.’

‘Well she can go whistle,’ I said, thumping my knife down. ‘I am up to my eyes. No, I am up to my skull-top, and even that cannot keep in this heap of cooking.’

I glared at him, but there was no getting out of it. I did not even wipe my face or pull off my flour-stiff apron, for she must take me as I was. Breathless, I burst into Her Ladyship’s chamber.

‘Begging your pardon if you please, Me Lady. I have a whole Christmas to be cooked just now.’

She was lying on her bed with her shoes kicked off, staring about herself in a right dream. Jesmire was sat at a little table twiddling away with her sewing.

I tried again, moving up closer and giving her a low bob.

‘I am sorry, Me Lady. All the dinner will burn to nothing.’

‘Oh, shut up.’ She sat up and eyed me. ‘What on earth do you look like? A chimney sweep.’

I tried to rub the soot from my face, but probably made it worse.

‘Please, Me Lady,’ I started.

‘Now Jesmire here is convinced you are too stupid to learn any foreign language – except for that northern lingo you baffle us with.’

The old shrew muttered into her sewing, ‘You are wasting your time.’

‘What d’you say, Jesmire?’

Raising her head she spat out words like little darts. ‘This country hoyden could never speak a foreign language. She hasn’t had the bringing up for it, My Lady.’

‘Well I believe she can.’ Then she stared at me again as I stood with my arms folded, throwing her a scowl. ‘Oh, do stand up properly Biddy. You look like a scarecrow.’

I did lift my shoulders and let my fingers dangle all useless like those ladies do.

‘Now repeat after me. “
Bonjour monsieur
”.’

‘What’s that then?’

I heard Jesmire scoff, and shot her a look fit to cut her to shreds.

‘It means “Hello Sir”.’

‘Very well. “Bonjaw miss-ewer”.’

‘Yes, but try to speak a little more delicately.’

I ran through the ‘bonswahs’ and the ‘madams’ and ‘madmwasells’ as quick as a squirrel catching nuts. There weren’t that much to it, truly.

‘A complete waste of time,’ said Jesmire, all snappy. She was sewing like she was stabbing pins at whelks, glancing up after every prick with her beaky face. My lady yawned and thought for a moment. ‘We must remember she must go marketing if we don’t want to eat French stuff. Repeat after me, “
Petit déjeuner
”.’

That was breakfast. ‘And what sort of articles is that then?’

More bloody tittering. As if a body wouldn’t want to know what was to eat?

‘Well, there would be “pan”.’

‘What? I’ve got to eat an iron pan?’

Her lips twitched at that.

‘Spelled p-a-i-n. Bread.’ I could see I’d made her laugh. And it was driving Jesmire wild that I was tickling her. The truth was, me and Carinna were of an age to make free and jest together.

‘What else?’

We went through ‘caffay’ and ‘tay’ and ‘burr’ and all that. If I hadn’t had a Christmas dinner about to burn to cinders it would have been quite interesting. Thankfully my mistress started to fidget.

‘That’s enough, girl. I’ve proved my point.’ She smirked unpleasantly at Jesmire.

‘A prating parrot. That’s what she is. I doubt she can remember any of it now.’

I was halfway to the door when my lady waved me away in dismissal. But I couldn’t resist a little snap at Jesmire as I opened the door to leave.

‘Arevwah madams,’ I said, pulling a saucy grin as I curtseyed. My lady laughed out loud. But Jesmire crowed after me, ‘I’m
mademoiselle
to you, you monkey mimic!’

*   *   *

By Christmas dinner time, I had the boar’s head steaming on a plate and it had roasted a treat. All morning a stream of folk had passed the kitchen window: young families with babes swaddled up like bundles, and naughty boys who rapped at the window and drew saucy shapes in their hazy breath. Sick folk, old folk, all were lifted from carts or hefted up the lane on the backs of strong sons and grandsons. The whole roaring crowd was gathered in the long room to give my boar’s head fulsome applause when it was carried aloft on a platter. And my goodness, those old folk’s eyes were as round as marbles when they saw the tables piled as high as Balthazar’s Feast. Plum pottage, minced pies, roast beef, turkey with sage and red wine sauce – and that were just the first course. I was mostly pleased with the second course, for alongside the tongues, brawn, collared eels, ducks and mutton I’d put some pretty snowballs made of apples iced in white sugar, all taken from a dish in Lady Maria’s hand in
The Cook’s Jewel.

Afterwards, the benches were pushed back to the walls and the musicians called in from their ale-bibbing. There was dancing, and such a swinging and bumping and banging that you had to laugh as you tried to save your toes from great thundering boys’ boots.

I was taking a rest with a bumper of brandy when another servant prodded me on the shoulder.

‘What is it now?’ I yawned. I was sick to death of sorting things out.

He told me a message had just come from the Packet Company. The wind had changed and we sailed at four o’clock. Soon enough I had my bundle tied and was taking leave of my quarters. Bless the man, Mr Harbird called me to him before I left and gave me a Christmas Box with a whole two guineas inside. Why, it were more than my own mistress, for both she and Mr Pars had not even given me a farthing, the tight-fists. I swore not to tell Jem about my two guineas neither, for that lummocks had never risen at cock-crow to slave over the fire like I had. Jem Burdett could go to the devil. The others must clean up the soot-smeared, grease-spattered kitchen. I was setting sail for France, the truest paradise for cooks.

XVIII

Loveday stood at the prow of the boat and felt the icy rain slap him awake like an eager hunting companion. The others were all below deck, retching and groaning in the stench of the wooden cabin, but he was free, his tight boots discarded and his bare toes gripping the deck like barnacles. How long had it been since he felt this delicious vibration of a boat’s wild spirit in the soles of his feet? Watching grey-green waves heave and roll around him, he felt like a bird riding the stormy heavens. And this was the right direction, he was sure of it. At last he was making his way home.

Back in Dover he had met an ancient sailor who asked where he had sailed from.

‘Batavia.’ He used the word the Hollanders used for the fortress of white men. ‘Where that place?’

The old sailor grew excited, springing to his feet to collect something from a bundle. But when he returned, Loveday was disappointed to see it was only a paper. And when he spread it on the table there was not even proper writing on it, only jagged lines like a crazy person would draw.

‘Here it is, me lad.’ With a crooked finger the sailor pointed to a word in a mass of madcap patterns. And there it was, in little script:
Batavia.
It took Loveday a long time to comprehend what the old man told him; that the knobbed fish shape on which
Batavia
was written was a tiny, tiny picture of the big island he had once walked upon.

‘There are the mountains,’ said the old man, pointing to some inky humps dotted about the island. Was it possible? Snatching up the paper Loveday lifted it close to his eye, squinting to find the people he remembered living there. But there were no people or trees or villages, it was only a paper drawing. He still didn’t understand.

‘How this Batavia?’ he asked, the heartache sour in his breast.

The old man’s watery eyes held his. ‘It’s what the captain of a ship reads to find his way around the world. So look, here’s England. And this is the sea.’

England was on the far other side of the paper, but slowly Loveday began to comprehend. Back in Lamahona the huntsmen had sometimes scratched patterns in the wet sand to show a reef or a fast tide.

‘So how go Batavia?’ He couldn’t keep a tremor from his voice.

It took him all afternoon to understand how very far from home he had sailed, after kindly Father Cornelius had died from the sickness and he had been sold at the market at Batavia. For many moons he had sailed towards this cold kingdom, and now he saw how terribly far his return journey must be. With the old man’s help he found
Paris,
his mistress’s next destination. Frustratingly, it was not very far at all on his great journey.

‘And Italy?’ he asked.

‘Lookee here, son.
Italy.
It’s on the right road at least.’

It was. If he stayed with his mistress he would have an easy passage part of the way back home. Finally, he asked the man, ‘Where Lamahona?’ But all they could find were a thousand dots and dashes in the ocean. If only it were real magic, he groaned to himself. If only he could put a spyglass to the paper and find the village and the miniature living presences of Bulan and Barut themselves. But it was not magic, and he would have to trail across those inky lands and scribbled oceans to hold them in his arms again.

*   *   *

Loveday clung to the rail a while longer, postponing his return down below. Peering through the spray a darker strip of land wavered before his eyes. So this was France, the first name he must cross. He mused on the letter Mr Pars had written from Dover, trying to understand what this new place would be like:

My Dear Ozias

I write in haste from Dover, having this very hour received your warning and just now packing for the early boat to France. Brother, I pray do not exhibit any visible alarm before John Strutt, for such behaviour may wrongly mark you as a guilty man. There is no need to be troubled brother, you must appear easy, I do command it. The impertinent fellow is entirely dependent on myself for his position as proxy steward and I am damned surprised that he quizzed you in such an ungentlemanly fashion. Brother, you did right to say you know nothing of the matter. The bonds he seeks are no business of his and be assured they are no business of any but Her damned Ladyship. As for the jewel, it was Sir Geoffrey’s wife that took it, as you well know. You do not say whether Sir Geoffrey himself or his Irish agent has prompted Strutt to make this inquiry. Tell me in your next letter what you have learned. I understood Sir Geoffrey was utterly felled by an apoplexy – so who is it gives these orders to poke about my private affairs?