John Saturnall's Feast (27 page)

‘The King's business?’ she asked. ‘What business is that?’

Her annoyance had vanished. Her eyes searched Piers's face.

‘Sir Sacherevell Cornish is steward to Sir Philemon Armesley,’ Piers announced in a lofty tone. That was Sir William's guest, remembered John. The would-be consumer of his dish. But a note of disappointment entered Lucretia's voice.

‘Only a steward?’

Piers favoured her with a superior smile.

‘Of course, you have not been to Court,’ he told her. ‘Sir Sacherevell is no common steward. Sir Philemon, his master, is not only a Gentleman of the King's Privy Chamber, he is also a Whitestave of the Board of Greencloth.’

‘The Board of Greencloth?’

‘Indeed. I have exchanged greetings with him several times, I may say. Upon Sir Philemon's word whole armies march.’

‘Armies?’ asked Lucretia. ‘What armies?’

Piers's smile broadened. ‘Armies of servants, my dear Lady Lucretia. Sir Philemon's musketeers are grooms. His pikemen are pages. And his trusted scout is Sir Sacherevell. Of course he is here to do a steward's work too. To count the spoons and measure the rooms. To sip from the barrels in the cellars and taste the dishes from the kitchens. Perhaps he will sample the wares of your cook here. Let us hope his skills suffice.’

They both looked down at John.

‘Suffice for what?’ demanded Lucretia.

She stared at John as if the answer were concealed in his person. John looked back coldly. Piers conferred a look of benign condescension upon Lucretia.

‘I garnered certain intelligences when last I attended Court,’ he declared airily. ‘If Sir Sacherevell's report to his master is favourable, and if Sir Philemon's recommendation is wholehearted, then I believe Sir Sacherevell's appearance signals His Majesty's future visitation.’

Lucretia's brow creased. Then understanding dawned. Her mouth unpursed. Her frown disappeared and an artless excitement took its place. Perhaps, John thought, there was after all a kind of sugar that might sweeten Lady Lucy's sourness.

‘The King?’ she asked Piers. ‘The King is coming here?’

In the attics the intelligence set the maids’ tongues whispering. In the back parlours, the Household men talked gravely of points of etiquette. The kitchen hummed with the news.

‘My gramps saw the King once,’ Phineas Campin told the others, reaching for the ale-balm that was kept above the hearth. ‘It was in his carriage in Soughton. He was taking the waters and after that his ague vanished. My gramps's, that is. Just from looking at the King.’

‘Different King though, weren't it?’ said Adam Lockyer, beating collops of mutton with the flat of a cleaver. Simeon Parfitt's head turned this way and that, his hands working busily on the goose before him.

‘Don't make no difference,’ Alf offered from the door. ‘The King's the King, my sis used to say. Don't matter who it is.’

‘Might as well be you then, Alf,’ said Luke Hobhouse, walking in.

‘I heard of a cobbler in Elminster.’ Colin spoke up from the table under the tray rack. ‘A ragged fellow came in his shop one day. No hat. Holes in his soles. So the cobbler patched his boots for love and it turns out the fellow was the King in disguise. That cobbler never had to pick up his awl again.’

‘Who told you that?’ Luke challenged Colin. ‘Calybute Pardew? For every one of them cobblers there's a hundred lords. And every one of ‘em's got his hand in the King's pocket.’

Across the room, John remembered the picture in
Mercurius Bucklandicus
that Ben Martin had bought. The sad-eyed man in his magnificent hat. At that moment, Quiller appeared at the foot of the stairs.

‘They're exchanging toasts,’ the man reported. Across the kitchen, Master Scovell nodded and John looked about for the last dish: his shining transparent tart. As it disappeared upstairs he imagined Sir Sacherevell cracking the sugary glaze to dig within its depths. Lucretia watching, he supposed. And Piers.

‘Fit for a King,’ had been Sir Sacherevell's words, as Scovell told John later. The courtier had risen to signal his approval by dangling a tiny candy crown from the tine of his fork.

‘So you have lured His Majesty,’ the Master Cook said with a smile.

Carts loaded with beams and planks arrived in the outer yard. Gangs of workmen jostled. A long lizard of backs bristled with picks and spades as it crept down the slope from the spring in the High Meadow. A gurgling water-filled trench filled a newly dug slate-lined cistern. Master Jocelyn's men unloaded beams and planks of oak and ash, set them at angles and nailed them together. The skeleton of a barracks rose then extended along one side of the yard. Men climbed ladders and shinned along beams, hammering down overlapping boards of elm. A similar structure abutted the stables.

‘What're they trying to do?’ Adam marvelled. ‘Build the whole Manor anew?’

‘By the time the King gets here,’ Phineas answered, ‘it'll look more like Carrboro.’

In the gardens, old women from Callock Marwood bent to weed flowerbeds under the direction of Motte while under-gardeners pleached straggly hedges into order. In the house, workmen painted walls, threw up partitions and hung new doors. Only the Solar Gallery, the East Garden and the glass-house were exempt. Mrs Gardiner's maids stitched curtains, aired bedlinen and hung musty blankets on lines. Mister Pouncey strode up and down passageways followed by a string of green-liveried clerks who carried ledgers, pens and a small collapsible table which Mister Pouncey employed as a portable desk. When the first snows fell, the works came to a halt but by the time Josh Palewick paid his annual visit, a barracks was rising beyond the outer yard.

‘So the King's coming to Buckland?’ the man asked.

‘So it appears,’ said John.

‘They're talking of it all down the Vale.’ Behind Josh, the mule stamped a hoof ‘Her Majesty too. That true?’

John nodded. The commotion and excitement swirled about him. But even in the midst of its eddies and whirls he remembered Scovell's words and wondered why Josh Palewick should care. If the feast belonged to its cook, what did it matter who ate it? A King sat and chewed and swallowed like any other mortal, thought John. But Scovell too seemed caught up in the nervous excitement, spending long hours closeted with Vanian, Underley, Roos and Henry Palewick who discussed together the order of service.

Orders for beef were placed with stockmen as far away as Soughton and for barrels of conger and herring from Stollport. When Calybute's latest
Mercurius Bucklandicus
showed the King's household moving in procession out of London, a new urgency seemed to grip the Household. From his command post in the doorway of the Great Hall, Mister Pouncey pondered lists of secretaries and seal-keepers, council clerks and sergeants-at-arms. Was the Clerk of Petty Bag senior to a gentleman groom? he wondered. How important was the Keeper of the Hanaper, or the Chafe Wax? In Mister Pouncey's anxious imaginings, bishops were seated next to mistresses and dukes jammed in with the yeomen. What if the High Table collapsed? the steward wondered. What if the spring in the High Meadow ran dry? What if bed-less courtiers pursued him through the Manor waving their slashed silk sleeves . . .

‘Some do not appear on my lists,’ he complained to Sir Sacherevell, flattening a sheet of paper on the balustrade and peering at the names. In the Great Hall behind them men on ladders were taking down and polishing the swords on the wall. Beneath the dais, disgruntled carpenters were hammering in unnecessary struts. ‘Others appear several times.’

Messengers flew up and down the road from Carrboro. A week before His Majesty was expected, when Mister Pouncey had begun to believe that he had matters under his control, a forest of pennants advanced on the Manor flown from wagons and carts which lumbered through the gatehouse. Their mounted escorts ambled alongside, forcing Buckland's own traffic off the track. The royal baggage train had begun to arrive.

In the field beside the new barracks, marquees rose with the King's colours fluttering above until it seemed a billowing fleet rode at anchor there. With their animals stabled, the horsemen swaggered about the yard while a guard of bored yeomen dawdled around the tents. Almost the last to arrive was a tall man with a tuft of dark hair at the front of his forehead and an elaborate moustache who squabbled with a dozen subordinates. All wore navy-blue doublets worked with silver thread.

‘It is disgrace!’ he exclaimed in a strong French accent while looking around the yard. ‘It is dishonour! We are entitled to beds. And linen. Clean linen!’ He looked across at the stables then shouted at a passing stable hand. ‘Clean linen!’

Mister Pouncey watched in consternation.

‘Those,’ Sir Sacherevell informed him, ‘are the Gentlemen of the Queen's Kitchen.’

‘But we have a kitchen. We have cooks. Many cooks . . .’

‘No, no, no.’ Sir Sacherevell waved the suggestion away. ‘These are not actual
cooks.
These are the gentlemen grooms of Her Majesty's kitchen. The one with the moustache is the Page of the Scalding Room. The fat one behind is the Gentleman Sayer. Not that he assays, any more than the other one scalds, or the rest of them cook.’

‘Then what do they do?’

‘They attend.’

Everyone attended, reflected Mister Pouncey. Their Majesties had left Elminster, the posts from Carrboro informed the steward. They had decided to take the waters in Soughton, he learned the next day. They were on the road to Toue, one messenger informed Mister Pouncey. Another brought news that they were a day away. Then three. Standing at his post, the steward found his eyes drawn to the gatehouse as if watching it might draw Their Majesties through its turrets.

‘It is our fate to wait.’ A deep voice spoke over Mister Pouncey's shoulder. ‘Even if only for God.’

A man wearing a rich cloak of blue-grey fur directed a strange crooked smile at Mister Pouncey. But his unblinking eyes stared coldly, making the steward feel uncomfortable. Sir Sacherevell bowed quickly.

‘I present my master,’ he told Mister Pouncey. ‘Sir Philemon Armesley.’

The smile was a scar, the steward saw, looking closer. A puckered red line tugged at the corner of the man's mouth, running almost to his ear.

‘Got it at Rochelle,’ said Sir Philemon, touching the ragged mark. ‘One of the Cardinal's chevaliers judged my mouth too narrow. Stitched it up myself Never was much with a needle.’ He looked around as a new volley of hammering broke out. ‘The King is in Carrboro tonight. The vanguard will set out after Matins. He will be here by midday tomorrow if the roads hold up. Everything in hand?’

The servants’ barracks needed bedding, Mister Pouncey remembered. And he still had to settle who sat where at the High Table . . . He looked out over the chaotic yard to the tents. But Sir Philemon appeared content.

‘No doubt all will be ready,’ he said briskly. ‘Only Their Majesties matter, you understand? Only ensure that they are content. All they see. All they hear. All they touch. Everything they taste and smell. All perfect. Do you understand me?’

Sir Philemon's scarred smile looked more like a grimace. Mister Pouncey nodded quickly.

‘No one knows an estate like its steward. Isn't that true, Sack?’

Sir Sacherevell nodded. Sir Philemon pulled back the lapels of his coat to reveal a chain much like Mister Pouncey's own. Pinned to the doublet was a badge which looked like two white sticks.

‘We are all stewards of a kind. Except His Majesty.’ Sir Philemon's affability had vanished. Looking into the man's cold eyes, Mister Pouncey felt glad the negotiations were over. ‘In these times, His Majesty needs men he can trust,’ Sir Philemon continued. ‘Their very presence will dispel the mutterings of his enemies.’

He gave Mister Pouncey a look that the steward recognised from the conferences that Sir William held behind the closed doors of his receiving room. Only the steward had been permitted to enter as he discussed the iniquities and insolences of Parliament with Lord Fell or Lord Firbrough or the Marquis of Hertford.

‘But the King will give his blessing?’ the steward ventured.

‘As we agreed.’

Mister Pouncey felt a surge of relief course through him. In his mind's eye, the brass weights on his papers made their final hops, the lightest to the left, the heaviest to the right. But as he turned to leave Sir Philemon's voice sounded again.

‘There is one other matter. Her Majesty has expressed a wish.’

‘What wish, Sir Philemon?’

‘She wants to see the girl.’