An Appetite for Violets (2 page)

Behind him a twig snapped loudly. Crying out in anguish, Kitt swivelled as he ran, half stumbling but fearing to halt and investigate. Deep shadows loomed about him now; the undergrowth on each side of the track rose like the walls of a labyrinth, far taller than he remembered. Footsteps rustled behind him. Had they seen him? God damn that he had lingered! He ran faster, his fingers clutching at sharp briars, his boots stumbling. Why had he come here? It was almost dark; he would be hunted through the night.

Then the jingle of a silver bell unmasked his pursuer. It was only that squashed-snout lapdog Bengo, fearful of being left behind.

‘Be off, damn you,’ he shouted at the pale smudge of conscience that followed him. Yet still it trailed behind him over each wearisome furlong. Every few minutes he believed he had outrun the dog, only to hear, once again, its patter and jingle. Then at last he saw the huddled rooftops of a village and heard the tolling of an evening bell. Finally, a wagon crossed his path drawn by a plodding donkey. In desperate tones Kitt hailed the driver. ‘
Taverna.
Presto,
’ he urged, shoving a coin at the startled man. Inside the tented cart a gaggle of dark faces peered at him in inquisitive silence.

He ached for the hot sting of spirits against his throat. Cards, a fine bottle, the baize table; that was his realm. Fingering the Rose inside his pocket he traced its cold angles and wondered how quickly he might turn it into cash. He needed to find a town where a bed and brandy were cheap, and questions were few. Rocked by the wagon, he felt suddenly as vacant as air, as if the uncertain attempt at manhood that was Kitt Tyrone had vanished from the earth along with his sister. Until that day he had smouldered with fury at his life’s injustices, but now only fitful ashes of fear fluttered at his core.

He dropped his eyes into his grimy fists. He could not rub from his inner eye that final image of the dog. It haunted him again – indeed, it continued to patter at his heels all his life. Especially when fatigued, when alone, or most horribly, when passing from waking to sleep, he heard that whimpering and those scurrying short steps. Even when he had finally given up hope of finding her and wanted only the oblivion of an empty bottle, it still followed him. Long after all the
lire
from pawning the Rose had disappeared into quick Italian fingers, that pale shadow hobbled after him through the darkness. To his desperate end he could not stop himself from picturing that dog’s jingling journey, backwards down the white road, once again to face the gaping gates and that mouldering feast.

A half year earlier

II

The Kitchen, Mawton Hall

Being the day before Souling Night, 1772
Biddy Leigh, her journal

My Best Receipt for Taffety Tart

Lay down a peck of flour and work it up with six pound of butter and four eggs and salt and cold water. Roll and fill with pippins and quinces and sweet spice and lemon peel as much as delights. Sweet spice is cloves, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar & salt. Close the pie and strew with sugar. Bake till well enough.

Martha Garland her best receipt writ on a scrap of parcel paper, 1751

Every cook knows it’s a rare day when you have all the parts of the perfect dish. But that day back at Mawton I had everything I needed: white fleshed pippins, pink quince, and a cinnamon stick that smelled like a breeze from the Indies. My flour was clean, my butter as yellow as a buttercup. It’s not enough, mind you, to have only the makings of a dish. There’s the receipt honed through the ages, written down in precious ink. And beyond that is the cook, for only she can judge how much stirring is enough, or have the light fingers to rub a pastry well. It’s no common event, that gathering of all the parts that make the perfect dish.

It makes me think that’s how it is for us servants. No one pays you much heed; mostly you’re invisible as furniture. Yet you overhear a conversation here, and add a little gossip there. A writing desk lies open and you cannot help but read a paper. Then you find something, something you should not have found. It’s not so very often, with your servants’ broken view, that you can draw all the ingredients together. And it’s a rare day when all the parts combine in one story, and the chief of those parts is you.

So that is where I’ll start this tale, on that October baking day. I was making taffety tarts that afternoon in the kitchen at Mawton, as the sunlight flittered across the whitewashed walls and the last roses nodded at the window. I’ll begin with a confession, mind. I’d crept into Mrs Garland’s room when she wasn’t there and secretly copied out her best receipt. It’s no wonder our old cook used to say I was as crafty as a jackdaw. ‘Your quick eyes miss nothing, Biddy Leigh,’ she always said, shaking her head, but laughing. I’d kept my scrap of paper secret all year long and often pondered how to better it. That baking day was the third day Mrs G had shut herself away in the stillroom, dosing herself with medicinal waters. As I rolled the pastry I lived out a fancy I had nourished since the first apple blossom pinked in May – the making of the perfect dish.

Next day was All Hallows Eve, or Souling Night as we called it, and all our neighbours would gather for Old Ned’s cider and Mrs Garland’s Soul Cakes. After the stablemen acted out the Souling play, the unmarried maids would have a lark, guessing their husband’s name from apple parings thrown over their shoulders. So what better night, I thought, for Jem to announce our wedding? At the ripe age of twenty-two years, the uncertainties of maidenhood were soon to pass me by. Crimping my tarts, I passed into that forgetfulness that is a most delightful way of being. My fingers scattered flour and my elbows spun the rolling pin along the slab. Unrolling before my eyes were scenes of triumph: of me and Jem leading a cheery procession to the chapel, posies of flowers in my hand and pinned to Jem’s blue jacket. In my head I turned over the makings of my Bride Cake that sat in secret in the larder – ah, wouldn’t that be the richest, most hotly spiced delight?

And all the bitter maidens who put it underneath their pillows would be sorrowing to think that Jem was finally taken, bound and married off to me.

The only sour note that struck was the sudden bang-slapping of a bird against the windowpane. It was a robin redbreast pecking at the glass, his wings beating in a frenzy.

‘Scarper,’ I shouted, flapping my hands about. What was it he warned me of, that he stared so hard and tapped all in a frenzy?

‘Is it a robin?’ Teg had crept in from the scullery and the fear I felt was echoed in her gawping tones. ‘He be a messenger. ’Tis a famous omen. Death be coming here.’

‘That’s enough of your claptrap,’ I snapped back. Risking breaking the glass, I lifted a ladle and knocked it against the pane so hard that the bird flew off on the instant.

‘You see. He were only a fledgling tricked by the glass. If you’ve finished the apples there are fowls to pluck.’

Teg cast me a poisonous glance and swore she had not finished half her chores. I’m not daft, I knew our scullery maid would be off to tell her gossips what a Miss Toity that Biddy Leigh was and how this omen must herald my bad end. She wishes it true, I thought, as I checked the oven’s heat with a sizzle of spit. She is jealous and rankles under every command I give her. But it was only a gormless fledgling. No person who knew their ABC would give a farthing for such a sign.

*   *   *

The tarts were scarcely in the oven when the noise startled me. A right how-row it was: hollering grooms, clattering gates, dogs yelping and barking. Then a fancy hired carriage rolled right inside our yard, the team of horses snorting, the heavy harnesses creaking and jingling. My first thought was, what on earth was I to feed any company with? We had a good stock of provender for the servants, but nowt for the likes of Sir Geoffrey if he’d come up all the way from London.

Off I scarpered to the back door to see who it was. What with the stable boys jostling and a stray pig upsetting the cider pots, at first I could barely glimpse her. Then I pushed my way through and saw a young woman climb down, no more than my own age, only she was as pale as a flour bag, with rosebud lips pressed tight together, and two spots of rouge high on her cheeks. She stared at the rabble, her eyes narrowing. She weren’t afeared of us, no not one whit. She lifted her chin and said in a throaty London drawl, ‘Mr Pars. Fetch him at once.’ Like magic the scene changed: three or four fellows legged it indoors and those staying behind hung back a bit, fidgeting before this girl that might have dropped from the moon for all we’d ever seen such a being in our yard. What drew my eye was her apricot-coloured gown that shone like a diamond. I drank in all her marks of fashion: the peachy ribbon holding the little dog she clutched to her bosom, her powdered curls, but most of all it was her shoes I fixed on. They were made of shiny silver stuff, and in spite of the prettiest heels you ever saw, were already squelched in Mawton mud. It were a crime to ruin those shoes, but there were no denying it, she’d landed in a right old pigsty.

I knew she had to be Sir Geoffrey’s new wife, this so-called Lady Carinna we had jawed about since they got married some three weeks ago down in London. One of the grooms had told us she was near to forty years younger than Sir Geoffrey, and hadn’t that set our tongues wagging? While the men made lewd jests, we women asked, what was she thinking, to let herself be married to our master?

Next, another woman tottered from the carriage, a scrannil-looking creature with a chinless, turtle head. She was waving a big lace handkerchief before her nose as if she might waft us all away like a bad smell. Her mistress never even gave her a glance, only lifted the little dog and made daft kisses at it, like we weren’t even there at all. It were quite a performance, I can tell you.

Thank the stars our steward Mr Pars came bustling out just then and yelled at the boys like a sergeant to get back to work.

‘Lady Carinna,’ he said, bowing stiffly. ‘What brings you here, My Lady?’

She never even gave him an answer, so I wondered at first if she knew he was our steward, trusted with the charge of everything while the master was away. He seemed suddenly shrunk beside her, with his greasy riding coat and tousled hair.

‘My quarters,’ she said at last, avoiding his eye.

He made a half bow; his face were liver-purple. Then she followed him down the back corridor. The show were over, and I scurried back into the kitchen.

‘Get them fowls spitted,’ I yelled to my cook maid Sukey. ‘And a barrel of cabbage chopped right this minute,’ I said to scowling Teg. Then I stood awhile, hands on hips, and pondered what on earth a woman like that would ever eat.

*   *   *

We were nearly shipshape when Jem’s knock shook the door. Even with hands still claggy with flour I couldn’t get to him fast enough, my heart fluttering like a pigeon in a basket. Then there was Jem leaning on the door frame with the afternoon sun gilding him; I am tall for a woman, but his golden hair near touched the lintel.

‘Did you see ’er?’ His hazel-gold eyes glinted. ‘Under all them frills she ain’t nowt but a girl. Dirty old goat, he is, to take such a bantling to his bed.’

‘She may be fine-looking but she don’t look frisky to me.’ I’d seen her youth, sure enough, but also something tight-knotted in that pretty face. ‘Not like some,’ I said with a prod at his chest.

He made a grab for my hand, grinning all the while. ‘Yer got flour on yer face,’ he laughed and smeared it so I must have looked worse. ‘Are them pies I can smell?’ He craned forward, stretching the thick tendons of his neck. ‘Give us a taste then,’ he said, so low and slow my belly fizzed. That boy could make me melt like butter.

‘You rogue, you’ll have me out the door with no wages,’ I protested, pulling back away from him behind the threshold. We could never forget the rules all we female servants lived under: no husband, no followers, not even a wink. Even Mrs Garland only held her title from tradition, for every cook was Missus, though almost all were spinsters. ‘No callers’ was the rule set by every respectable master. It was the curse of my life, to choose to cook or to choose to marry.

‘Now you won’t forget about tomorrow night’s Souling?’ I chided. ‘You will tell Mr Pars we’re to wed?’

‘I’ll do it, love. Then we can start up our alehouse and you can get cooking. I don’t half fancy being a landlord.’

‘Aye, but we need the means to start it up first. We need the capital, Jem.’

It was the grand future we dreamed of. If ever we won a bonus or were remembered by a generous master, we would turn the old ruin at Pars Fold into a tavern. It was in a most fortunate place, right by the new highway. With all the new money rattling around from turnpikes and trade, I’d heard travellers would rather eat beefsteak for a shilling than bread and cheese for tuppence. But sometimes I wished I’d never told Jem my notion, for now he talked of little else.

‘The time will come, my love,’ I added, then reached to touch his cheek.

‘One kiss,’ he croaked. ‘Look, I fetched some Fat Hen for you.’ Jem offered me a bunch of wilting greens.

I reached for the plants, rubbed the leaves with a snap of my finger and thumb and sniffed. They were as fresh as spinach but not so peppery and warm. And wasn’t that a faint whiff of cat’s piss? Mrs G always said I could sniff a drop of honey in a pail of milk. I used my nose then and saved us all from a night of gripes.

‘That’s not Fat Hen, you noddle. That’s Dog’s Mercury. Once I knew a band of tinkers that made a soup of it and near died. If I serve that up to the new mistress I could be hanged for murder.’

‘God help us. Give it back here. It’s ill-omened.’ He hurled the plants towards the hogs’ trough. ‘I’ll fetch you whatever you want from the glasshouse.’

‘I have fruit by the barrel-load,’ I laughed. ‘Get along now. I’ve Her Ladyship’s supper to see to.’