An Appetite for Violets (8 page)

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. ‘My prize?’

‘You know what I’m saying. Your greatest treasure – worth nowt once you’ve spent it.’

‘Of course I’ll take care. I’m not daft.’ I might have said I’d kept it safe long enough from Jem all that fevered summer, so I wasn’t going to waste it on some snake-tongued tapster.

‘And lastly, what I ask is this. Write it all down for your old friend, Biddy. Tell me what you see, who you meet, and mostly – what you eat. Write careful descriptions and copy the receipts if you can. If I were but twenty years younger I should fight you for this chance. So do not disappoint me. Watch, learn and taste for me, girl. It’s time the book had new dishes.’

And so my dear Mrs Garland gave me this book,
The Cook’s Jewel,
written in so many hands: Lady Maria’s, her friends’, cooks’ and neighbours’. My guides from the past, who had cooked and perfected and written down their finest inventions. And she had sewn in new white pages to bear the dishes I was yet to discover.

*   *   *

That evening I walked with Jem to Reade Cottage. Or I should say, he took my arm and led me there, for I was faint with misery. When we reached the tumbledown building, just the sight of our ruined hopes set me weeping. Pars Fold was the lushest valley in those parts, near the new turnpike road but sheltered by a copse of birch trees. Some said it had been in Mr Pars’ family since no one could remember, but Sir Geoffrey had bought it from Old Mr Pars and had it parcelled into the Mawton estate. Our steward never spoke of it, but at least had the pleasure of overseeing it as Mawton’s steward. It was our dream to be tenants, to rebuild Reade Cottage as a thriving tavern, and live and prosper there.

‘’Tis only a year, sweetheart,’ Jem said, paying little heed to my sorrow. ‘T’will soon be passed. Think on it, we’re set up for life. I shall have my tavern, yet,’ he said, clenching his fists with joy. I thought of Mrs Garland calling him unworthy, and shook my head. Then he kissed my lips, and his tongue, all wheat and sweet flesh, burrowed inside my mouth. Yet all I felt was pain, I was so afeared of losing him. The spell I held over Jem needed daily attention. I could not feed him from across the water. I could not send him a bowl of kisses.

‘We must run off,’ I begged, grasping his hands. I told him we might get married and go to some large town to find work. ‘I could never be parted from you, Jem. I cannot go.’

But he could barely keep the grin from his lips. He was a man with golden guineas blinding his eyes. And Mr Pars had promised him easy work too, for the long year of my journeying.

*   *   *

They say it is night and its desolate fancies that drags a heart to despair, and once dawn arrives it brings new hopes. So it seemed to me on that last Mawton morning. I woke in the kitchen corner to the racket of the stablemen. Cold water, fresh linen, and a glass of steadying ale set me nearly right. I peered in a shard of mirror and found that my face was not quite so destroyed as when I fell crying to sleep.

Around me shone the kitchen I’d worked in each day: the copper pans hung neatly, the scratched wooden table and neat blue plates set in rows on the dresser. I got up to rake out the cinders and suddenly clutched at the black stone of the hearth. How long was it since as a new girl I’d first spiked a fowl and set it to roast on that fire? What great sides of beef had we roasted on the smoke-jack, while bacon dangled on hooks, and meat juices basted puddings as light as eggy clouds? Never, in all my ten years at Mawton, had I let that fire die out. Every dawn, in winter or summer, I’d riddled the dying embers and set new kindling on the top. I touched the rough stone and let my cheek press on its everlasting warmth, wishing I could take that loyal fire with me. Foolish, I know, but a fire is a cook’s truest friend. It was a good fire at Mawton: blackened with hundreds of years of smoking hot dinners.

I think no heathen ever worshipped fire like a cook. So I kissed the smutty hearth wall and packed instead my little tinderbox, to light new fires I knew not where.

IX

Mawton to Nantwich

Being Martinmas, November 1772
Biddy Leigh, her journal

A Brandy Posset

Take a bowl by the fire and break in nine eggs mingled with half a bottle of brandy, one whole cinnamon, three blades of mace. Now grate in nutmeg for half a minute and place near the fire taking care not to curdle. Heat a quart of cream with a basin of sugar and watch with care till it almost boils and frizzles at the edges. Lift it and pour from a height into the wine and eggs. Let it sit still by the fire till it is settled then strew upon it fine sugar.

How it was given at the Star Inn, Nantwich, served in a posset pot of blue stuff and was as good as was ever made, Biddy Leigh, 1772

We should have left at nine on the bell that morning. Mr Pars fumed like a boiling kettle, fretting over the horses that stamped and jangled in their harness. I stood with my bundle tied up at my side, jittering like I’d swallowed a flock of live birds. It was miserable weather too, for it never got properly light at all and the clouds were as heavy as grey, lumpy porridge.

Three dreary hours later Jesmire approached, flapping along behind Mr Loveday, who carried her box. She bustled inside the carriage, then when she stepped down I heard her say to Mr Pars, ‘You are not suggesting that my lady would share the carriage with a – cook maid!’

My cheeks burned as hot as grill-irons. But there was nowt I could do. Just you wait, Miss Toady, I repeated silently, until the day I dress your dinner.

Then I heard a swish of silk and there was Her Ladyship, quite splendid in a grey cloak trimmed with swansdown, watching from the doorway.

‘What is going on?’

Mr Pars stood forward like a bull.

‘Miss Jesmire informs me it is not genteel for Biddy Leigh to travel inside. So we must make room for her with the driver.’

My mistress turned to stare at me and I bobbed low.

‘No. Biddy must travel inside. Pars, you are directing this expedition. Don’t you comprehend the hour? Get my bags on, and for heaven’s sake let’s be off. Jesmire, hold your tongue.’

I shot a skewering glance at Jesmire, who made a face like she’d just drunk bitter aloes. So, my mistress did care for me, I crowed, and that old shrew must like it or lump it. At last I climbed into the soft nest of the carriage and rested my feet. It was gloomy and stuffy inside, but perfectly dry. Then the wheels lurched and we were away. Once the horses got trotting it was a thousand times more comfortable than an open cart.

That parting from Mawton was a terrible heartache for me. I sat facing backwards, and had to watch the road dwindle to a ribbon behind us. As we passed through the park I saw a gang clearing hedges across the fields, and a fair head amongst them. I sprang up from my seat and murmured ‘Jem!’ at the rain-blistered window before I could stop myself.

‘For pity’s sake, shut up,’ my mistress barked. ‘It is bad enough that I bear this rocking motion. Sit down.’

‘When I was a girl,’ Jesmire said airily, ‘a creature like that would not have dared make a sound in my presence.’

I remembered my promise to Mrs Garland then, that I should mind my tongue and have nothing to do with either of them. Thank my stars, within the hour they had both dozed off, so I alone marked our way. We passed a long train of packmen halted on a hill, and I saw the rain-sleek horses resting in their harnesses like solemn statues. Later, we jolted past two hunched travellers dragging bundles through the mud of a vast forsaken moor. Those two travellers might have been me and Jem, lugging our worldly goods to a parlous future together. If only Jem and I had run off to marry, I wailed silently. I pulled down my cap and wept, like a bag of whey that drips without end.

*   *   *

When I woke the copper glow of sunset filled the carriage. Jesmire was still asleep, her chin hanging slack towards her bony chest. But my lady was awake all right. I could just see her in the reddish gloom, watching me with her eyes shining.

‘So, Biddy,’ she said, ‘where is it you are from?’

‘Me, miss? I mean, Me Ladyship.’ I was fair startled at her talking to me. ‘Nowhere special.’

Her face was just a creamy oval, but those glassy eyes stayed bright.

‘You must be from somewhere, I should think.’

‘A place called Scarth, Me Lady. There ain’t nowt there.’

She huffed very loudly. ‘There is nothing of note, is how you might say it.’

‘There ain’t nothin’ of nowt, as you might say it.’

She laughed at me then, but I wasn’t sure it was a nice laugh.

‘You must have a family? Tell me about them.’

This time I did more than rack my brain, I positively scoured it.

‘Well, there ain’t much to tell, miss – Me Lady. Jus’ me old ma, that’s me mother, and me sister Charity.’

‘Charity is a very peculiar name.’

‘Aye, Me Lady. Me father had strange notions when it come to names.’

‘Biddy. That is Bridget?’

Oh Lord, here we go, I thought. ‘Obedience,’ I mumbled too soft for her to hear.

‘What’s that?’

‘Obedience, Me Lady.’ And she laughed that husky laugh and said, ‘Very apt, I am sure. Obedience, you have a very small family. What of your father?’

‘He calls himself a cow leech. Mends cattle. But he rambles off as he likes, Me Lady.’

She was quiet for a minute and I was glad, because I never liked to tell of my old da. It was him who named me after his Bible-bawling mother. He fancied himself a roaring dissenter, but all I ever saw him dissent from was a hard day’s work. He’d come home and sponge off my ma, leave another baby on the way, and then get back on the road. A lady like Carinna woudn’t have a notion of such a tosspot.

‘And brothers?’ she asked suddenly.

‘I did have once. They’re all gone now.’ I counted on my fingers to check the number. ‘Brothers and sisters. Seven gone to God.’

‘Death casts a long shadow, does it not?’ she said. ‘I have a brother. On my mother’s deathbed I promised her I’d love and provide for him all my life.’ She fell silent then, and all I could see was the blurry bobbing of her face in the twilight.

‘So you can count,’ she said suddenly. ‘And can you read at all?’

How could I make a dinner for thirty if I couldn’t count? Or read, come to that. Where to begin? I told her of the Widow Trotter, who had lived in the fine end cottage at Scarth. From a young scrap of a child I’d carried her bundle the four miles to market each week in return for a few hot mouthfuls. The first time I tasted her herb-stewed rabbit I near swooned away with pleasure. After that, I traipsed to her cottage every day to help her scrub and cook and brew. My ma said I plotted to steal the widow’s hidden money, but her son would chase me off.

‘And did you not make eyes at the son?’ my mistress suddenly interrupted.

‘Why, I was nowt but a clod of a child,’ I said. And why should I want to betray the good widow? I nearly added. For a husband was not what I was after at all. Most afternoons, once the pewter was shining and the son’s dinner simmered on the fire, Widow Trotter would draw out her book of letters.

‘What wage could better that? The chance to read,’ I said, and my mistress was quiet again.

‘And what was it you read?’ my mistress asked.

‘I read
Goody Two Shoes.
’

‘Oh, that ghastly morality. What was your opinion?’

‘Well, I thought Margery Meanwell a right crafty minx.’ Then I stole a quick glance at my mistress but couldn’t see her expression.

‘Indeed. She certainly had the good sense to find a rich husband to raise her up from the gutter. And what other treasures did this noble widow possess?’

‘Well I read
Robinson Crusoe
– now that is a tale. And
Pamela,
too.’

‘And your favourite?’

‘Well, Mrs Haywood is my favourite lady writer.
Fantomina,
’ I said in a low voice.

Her Ladyship chuckled. ‘Is she not the lady who pursues Mr Beauplaisir in a variety of intrigues?’

‘It is, Me Lady.’ We shared a sudden smile of knowingness, for it is a right saucy tale. ‘But best of all I like Mrs Haywood’s
Present for a Servant-Maid.
It has some excellent advice on all the ways of dressing foodstuffs. It is a marvel what that lady knows.’

Then my mistress laughed, but it was not so cruel-sounding as before. ‘You are well formed for your rank in life, Obedience. But why did you leave the estimable widow?’

I told her how Widow Trotter’s son had married and how she wanted to move to the town and let him have her cottage – and how I grew downcast, for at twelve years old I had dodged joining my ma and Charity picking coal for a living for long enough. It was like the answer to a fairy wish when Widow Trotter said they needed a girl at Mawton Hall.

‘So I got away from the coal fields and my family,’ I said at the end, coming finally to my senses and remembering how I had meant to keep my tongue still.

‘To find yourself at that rotting old pile?’ she snorted.

I made no answer to that, for I didn’t agree, not one whit. When first I saw that jumble of towers and mullioned windows it looked to me like the happy end of a storybook. Only now, as I spoke out loud of all my learning and pushing myself forward, what I’d done with my life so far seemed a trifling thing. My mistress was much the same age as me, yet she had all those gowns and London manners besides. And, like
Goody Two Shoes,
she’d trapped a rich old man. The nub of it was, I was nowt beside her. But
Goody Two Shoes
she was not. Of that I was already very sure.

*   *   *

Voices woke us. Lamps glimmered at the windows, ostlers saw to the horses, and servants gathered to carry our trunks. ‘Come along inside, good people,’ harried the innkeeper, and all in a bustle we were led to the roaring fire where tankards of hot ale steamed for all but me and the other low servants.