John Saturnall's Feast (28 page)

It was as if a windlass tightened a cord within Lucretia. Every passing day gave the rope another turn until on the morning itself, when she stood with her father before the Household, she felt the taut cord must snap or her frame collapse from within. Hair dressed in a fringe, face scrubbed raw then powdered, she fixed her eyes on the gatehouse while behind her the ranks of Buckland's officers, servants and menials filled the inner yard all the way back to the steps before the Great Hall. Long lines of green marked out the men of the Household, then Master Jocelyn's Estate men in their purple livery, then the red of the Kitchen. Their mutterings hummed behind her now as Mister Pouncey and Sir Sacherevell patrolled the ranks.

‘Quiet there!’ the steward ordered, glaring down a long red line.

‘How come the Estate's ahead of us?’ hissed Adam Lockyer beside John when the man moved on.

‘Don't know.’

The cooks had spent the morning brushing stains off their doublets. John's thoughts shuttled between the candy crown and jewels stored in Henry Palewick's driest larder and the biscuit-coins which rested in a barely warm oven in Vanian's room. As the sun rose higher, he rehearsed the tasks awaiting him in the kitchen while the others shuffled and scratched.

‘Look there!’ Jed Scantlebury exclaimed at last.

Blue and gold banners were rising over the ridge. As the first riders trotted down between the great beeches, John saw Mister Pouncey hurry forward. Sir Sacherevell caught his arm.

‘Do not trouble yourself so, Master Steward. Those are merely Sergeants of the Ewery. And behind are Pages of the Chamber. Lesser men.’ The riders approached and began to form up. ‘Here are the holders of the greater offices,’ Sir Sacherevell continued. ‘These are the Grooms of the Privy Chamber. Behind them come the Gentlemen Ushers. The man carrying a stave is the Master of the Horse.’

‘Who is that gentleman beside him?’

Looking up the drive, John saw beside the stave-bearer a man fully a head taller than any around him.

‘That is Sir Kenelm Digby,’ answered Sir Sacherevell. ‘He was a Gentleman of the Bedchamber when His Majesty was Prince. He is one of
the
Digbys.’

The man gave Mister Pouncey a significant look which prompted, however, an expression of blank incomprehension.

‘His father,’ explained Sir Sacherevell, ‘tried to blow up the late King.’

‘Ah.’

Behind Sir Sacherevell, John and Philip stared at Sir Kenelm who wore a breastplate over his doublet. The metal glinted as he rose up and down on the back of a chestnut horse. Behind him rode two men on matching white mounts.

‘Escorts of the Groom of the Stole.’ Sir Sacherevell nudged Mister Pouncey. ‘The royal coach will not be long now. Come. Let us take our places.’

The pair scuttled sideways through the ranks of servants. Below the portico, the horsemen had formed up in a long curving line. The latest arrivals took their places, their robes draped with chains and studded with badges of office. Suddenly, a hush descended on the company. In the silence John heard wheels.

‘All kneel for the King!’

In one motion, the horsemen swept off their hats and bowed their heads. A wave rippled back through the Buckland Household as its members sank to their knees. In the instant before he too knelt, John glimpsed a gilded coach with six white horses. At the front of the Household, beside the black figure of Sir William, he saw a slight figure stand upright a moment longer than everybody else. Then she too sank to her knees.

The gliding horses with their bobbing head-plumes, the gleaming coach, the bright banners and outriders in their livery . . . It seemed to Lucretia that the tight coil within her was released in a rush. They were here, she told herself, hearing the wheels slow and stop. Their Majesties were here.

For a moment there was silence. Then a footman walked forward and the carriage door was opened. Steps were carried and set down. She heard her father offer the greetings of the Household. At those words, Lucretia looked up.

A flurry of bright rustling silks filled her eyes and ears. Dresses whirled about Lucretia. Her Majesty's ladies unfurled their mistress from within their fluttering phalanx. A woman with a long straight nose, a pretty oval face and lively eyes gazed down at her and smiled.

‘Lady Lucretia?’ The Queen addressed her in a light French accent, her voice sounding, to Lucretia's ears, like a silver bell. Lucretia nodded and the Queen smiled.

‘You will attend me this afternoon, yes?’

She gazed up, unable to speak.

‘Say that you will,’ Her Majesty urged.

Lucretia nodded again.

She was brought to the Queen's privy chamber. The dull apartments had been transformed with bright swags and canopies. A tapestry showed men and women hunting deer together. The Queen smiled as Lucretia curtsied. Beside her, folds of silvery-blue silk were draped over a stand, the shining fabric spilling and tumbling down. A dress, Lucretia realised. The Queen smiled at her and gestured to the stand.

‘For you.’

The Queen's ladies-in-waiting led her behind a screen. Practised fingers unlaced her and clothed her anew. The cool cloth slipped over her skin, finer than any she had touched before. But when she glanced sideways into the pier glass, her heart sank. The bodice hung like a sack draped over a stick. The silvery-blue silk sagged from her shoulders. She emerged, reluctantly. Her Majesty patted the padded stool at her feet.

‘Come and sit with me.’

As Lucretia sank onto the stool, the Queen bent forward.

‘I will have my seamstresses flogged,’ she whispered. ‘But see how slender you are? You are just the age when I first saw the King. Have your courses arrived?’

Lucretia blushed. The cramping and blood came irregularly, sometimes not for months on end. Her mother had been the same, Mrs Gardiner muttered darkly. But she had not starved herself for attention . . . She gave an embarrassed nod.

‘That is good. You must eat as the apothecaries advise.’ Her Majesty smoothed back an escaped strand of Lucretia's hair. ‘I would like to call you Lucy. Will you permit it? Say that you will.’

Lucretia looked around at the ladies-in-waiting then back to the woman who regarded her with a kind expression.

‘You will wear this dress when you come to Court, Lady Lucy.’

Lucretia looked up, a long-submerged joy rising inside her.

‘They told me you could not be wooed,’ said the Queen to smiles from her ladies. ‘That you were unbiddable. But now that I have seen you I cannot believe them.’

Doubt crept over Lucretia's face like a shadow.

‘Wooed?’

There were scuffles among the lower tables, the serving men reported. Some courtiers hung about by the arched entrance to snatch dishes from the trays. Others dared to venture down the stairs until Mister Underley set up a chopping block at the foot of the staircase where, wrapped in his bloodiest apron and wielding a cleaver, he greeted any hatted and ruffed wanderers who descended from the Great Hall above.

Displaced from their dormitory, John and the others slept in the kitchen with the boys. Scovell's ladle sounded before first light each morning, clanging and ringing against the great copper in the hearth. Then the Master Cook roamed between the tables and benches, tasting, nodding or shaking his head. Henry Palewick complained that such a mass of bodies raised the heat of his cellars. In Firsts, a reluctant Pandar Crockett was put to work by Mister Bunce trimming sallets with the kitchen boys while Mister Stone's scullions kept up a constant din of splashing, clattering and curses.

The kitchen would divide in three, Scovell announced, according to the tables above. The King and Queen, their closest courtiers and Sir William, Lady Lucretia and the Callocks would occupy the High Table. Below them, at the uppermost trestles on the floor of the Great Hall, would sit the other gentlemen of the King's Household with Father Yapp, Miss Pole and the other higher servants. Placed below them, crammed in at boards hammered together by the Estate's carpenters, was everyone else.

John's dish for Tantalus would be served to the King's gentlemen. For the King himself, Scovell and Vanian would concoct a great tiered edifice in which the order of creation rose from dumb animals sculpted from sallets to the King and Queen themselves, fashioned from marchpane and crystallised sugar.

In Scovell's chamber, John, Colin Church, Luke Hobhouse and Tam Yallop worked over chafing dishes while Mister Vanian oversaw the bench behind. From there, elaborate concoctions were carried out to banqueting pavilions set up on the lawns: pastries shaped as swans, a ship made of fruit, a sugar tiara set with icing-paste gemstones.

The frantic days succeeded one another. No sooner did John's head touch the pallet than it seemed to be rising again. He had baked two pastry cases for his dish for Tantalus. The sugar liquor stood in a pipkin in Henry Palewick's cellar. The candies were locked in beside them. The night before the feast, he decided to check the cases and liquor one last time.

Tam Yallop squinted across Vanian's paste room as John walked down the passage. Phineas looked up from sweeping the floor. In the cold cellar, safe on the highest shelf, sat the cases. He would bring them through himself, John thought. He and Philip had been assigned Simeon to fetch and carry, and Simeon did not possess the surest pair of hands . . . He dipped the spoon in the liquor. The sweetness was perfect. Satisfied, he walked down the deserted corridor. He could sleep secure now, he thought. His eyelids drooped. Then he heard voices.

The sound drifted from Melichert Roos's spice room but no one should be down there now, John knew.

‘. . . with lampreys it is another matter,’ one voice was saying. ‘The trouble is skinning them. Use a clean napkin, that's my advice. And pull slowly. Poach slower yet. The time it takes to say a slow Hail Mary . . .’

‘You h-heretic,’ chuckled a second voice.

‘The broth is everything,’ continued the first, unperturbed, ‘and everything should go into the broth . . .’

John pushed open the door.

At the far end of the room, two men stood before the high shelves of Master Roos's spice rack. One, dressed in a rich silk doublet and holding a candle, stood almost two heads higher than the other who was dressed in the livery of the Household. John recognised Sir Kenelm Digby.

‘What are you doing here?’ John demanded.

‘Doing?’ queried Sir Kenelm in an affronted tone. ‘Know whom you address before you speak so boldly.’

‘I know very well,’ John retorted. ‘You are Sir Kenelm Digby whose father tried to blow up the King.’

To John's annoyance, the man in livery began to chuckle. His melancholy features and neatly trimmed beard appeared vaguely familiar. From the chapel, John supposed.

‘You have b-been found out, Sir Kenelm,’ the man stammered. He walked across the room to John. ‘But who has done the finding?’

‘John Saturnall,’ John replied, increasingly annoyed by the Household man's assurance. This was his domain. His and Scovell's and all the other cooks’. ‘Cook to Master Scovell.’

‘Scovell, eh?’ Sir Kenelm queried.

‘Master Scovell,’ John corrected him. ‘And these kitchens are forbidden to strangers.’

But the serving man remained unperturbed. ‘Are you a good cook, Master Saturnall?’

‘Good enough to cook for the King,’ John answered shortly.

‘What if you should err? What if your acts should d-displease His Majesty?’

‘We do not err,’ John retorted. ‘Sir William himself praises our efforts.’

‘Ah yes, praise. B-beware praise. D-dip your spoon d-deeper,’ the serving man stammered, indicating the spoon in John's hand. ‘You will find that sourness lies beneath the sweet crust of praise.’

‘Ha! Very good!’ Sir Kenelm exclaimed. ‘That is true perspicacity.’

John scowled. What did the man mean?
Dip your spoon deeper.
He gestured to the passage. ‘You are not permitted here,’ he said curtly.

Sir Kenelm opened his mouth to argue. But the serving man spoke first.

‘We shall leave you to your p-pots and pans, Master Saturnall. God forbid His Majesty should go hungry tomorrow.’

Breakfast the next morning was a bowl of pottage eaten standing. Boys ran through the kitchen carrying billets from the yard and stacking them beside the hearth. A great tray of pastries wobbled past carried by Coake. Moved from the yard back to the kitchen, he had grown strangely affable. Even helpful, John was forced to concede, when he lent his strength to Simeon struggling under a maund of apples. Now the kitchen boy plucked the last pin-feathers from a basket of ducks. Behind the three of them, Colin and Luke spitted pheasants. John loaded charcoal into a chafing dish, fetched his sugar-liquor and began to stir. Soon his face was red from the heat. The syrup began to thicken. The cases waited on the bench, the candied jewels, crown and coins arranged inside. He poured in the liquid then he and Philip carried the cases to the cold larder.

‘Will it set in time?’ Philip asked.

‘Has to.’

The kitchen's pace quickened. Adam beat a bucket of cream with a birchwood whisk, trying to make it stand in the heat while watching a pan for Vanian. Philip shook a bag of hot almond paste, waiting to pipe the mixture into the cases of a tray of tiny darioles. Across the room, Adam whisked on to no avail while at the bench beyond him, Coake rubbed powdered bay salt into tiny birds arranged in a roasting dish. Vanian and Underley were inserting roasted and larded quails into the breast of a swan, wrapping each in a nest of woven spinach stems. Scovell, juggling two pans at the hearth, issued orders over his shoulder. Then, to John and Philip's astonishment, Coake turned to Adam.

‘Need a hand there, Lockyer?’

Adam stared.

‘Too hot in here for that,’ Coake said, nodding to the sloppy cream. ‘Let me.’

An astonished Adam handed over the whisk and Coake carried the bucket down the passage towards the cold store. As Adam, John and Philip swapped looks, a serving man appeared at the foot of the stairs.

‘They're in the Hall!’

‘Stations!’ Scovell called from the hearth. From around the kitchen, the Master Cook received nods or raised hands.