Cinnamon and Gunpowder (7 page)

Today I undertook to establish that most basic of culinary foundations—a simple yeast sponge batter—not because I know yet how I will make bread in the ruins Conrad calls an oven but because I feel out of sorts without one. One may accuse me of superstition, but I feel a kitchen is not a kitchen, indeed a cook is not a cook, without a nice leaven batter rising gently beneath a clean tea towel. Even if I never find a way to bake, I will feel more secure knowing it is there. With a mound of dough warm and waiting on the counter, one becomes a mogul in the kingdom of bread, entitled to its myriad pleasures: the comforting weight of a rosewater manchet swaddled for the night, the coy tenacity of milk rolls, not to mention the smell of baking bread, which can turn the most refined dignitary into a boy begging for a nibble.

Such were my thoughts when I embarked on the task that, in a civilized kitchen, would have taken me two minutes. Instead, it took all morning and may not have worked in any case.

A basic bread sponge is easy enough to make: fine flour, a spoonful of the last sponge, clean water, and warmth. The sponge is stirred every day and fed more flour and within a week will bubble to show its contentedness. Any wife, brewer, or baker can do this while asleep. As an apprentice in Sanghen, France, sheltered in the Jesuit sanctuary from the feral convulsions and purges that had so rent our world, I learned simple civilities, such as how to make a sponge without the benefit of a starter. For this, one need only find a suitably sugary piece of dried fruit and use it in place of the dollop from the previous batch. Whereas a baker may use an ancient line of leavening dough, each batch carrying an enlivening pinch of its parent, the resourceful cook may sire his own line from the hearty particles of yeast that cling as a white rime to a raisin—and raisins I had in plenty. I was feeling capable if not optimistic when I encountered my first obstacle: lack of clean water.

Sponges aren’t demanding, yet without clean water they will never rise. The water we drink here on the ship is cut with spirits for preservation, and the water we ride upon is salty as tears. This struck me as a defeating blow and sent me to my cell muttering in my frustration.

After an hour on my sack, though, I had devised, in my head, a simple distillery, which might, with heaven’s help, clean the water of salt. Seriously doubting that I would find the glass retorts or copper tubes needed to build such a contraption, I headed to the galley but stopped one last time in the pantry to peer around, and thank Mary I did, for there I rediscovered the sack of coconuts. Happy day! The water in a coconut is clean enough to wash a wound, and its sweetness will only make the sponge happier.

I had mixed the ingredients together, ignoring as best I could the coarse and musty quality of the flour, when I realized the second obstacle: lack of warmth. We are headed far south, I am told, following the captain’s mysterious agenda, to round the gruff chin of Africa. But for the time being we haven’t yet passed the Canary Islands, and while the days can be hot, the nights are cold enough to rattle my teeth.

My childhood guardian, Father Sonora, had a saying: “If it’s too cold for you, it’s too cold for the dough.” Normally a bread sponge is left in the kitchen, near the embers of the fire, but I could not leave such a delicate thing in Conrad’s reach, for I was sure he would step in it, spit in it, or eat it as soon as I turned my back. To overcome this impasse, I have decided to nurture my sponge as a wet nurse.

I have borrowed, from a heap of supplies, a kidney-shaped tin box, with a long leather strap. From the scraps inside, I surmised it had been used to carry tobacco, hardtack, and, it appeared, something furry. I cleaned it as well as possible with boiled seawater, dried it with the least-filthy corner of my shirt, placed my sponge within it, closed the lid, and hung it around my neck. It rests against my belly, where my body temperature will keep it in good health. In this way I will be able to monitor its progress and feed, mix, and moisten it as needed. Not since Abel ground the first flour between two river stones has a sponge been so arduously crafted. I will not know if I have succeeded for some days.

I was heartened, this afternoon, to hear the bosun call for “A Bible in every hand!” I should have guessed that, upon this ship, “Bibles” refer to the large white stones they use to scrub the decks. These little disappointments wear at me more than they should.

As the men chased my boots about the deck with their scrubbing, I overheard them talking again, with fear in their voices, about the corsair ship
La Colette
.

“She’s fast enough to creep up and burn us to the waterline at dawn.”

It was then that it struck me. “Who is the captain of
La Colette
?” I asked.

“The devil Laroche,” was the answer.

Could it be the same Laroche whose accent made me nostalgic for my younger days in France? It had to be.

“Hah! I know the man!” I blurted, but even as the words left my mouth I knew I should not have uttered them aloud. It was an oafish mistake, but when Mr. Apples came to lock my cell tonight, there was no sign that my slip had raised any alarms.

Years ago I had been excited to have the legendary Laroche in the house, though I suspected that he was the fictional product of unscrupulous writers looking to sell more papers. The moment I saw his overcast eyes, however, and the restless intelligence therein, I thought,
It may all be true.

I had pieced the scandalous story together from various places; parts of it I had read in the papers, parts of it were whispered by maids and footmen. Alexandre Laroche had had some terrible luck. The locket about his neck, they said, carried the cameo of an heiress, his fiancée for a time—could her name have been Colette? This detail I believed, and it endeared me to the man, for I had my own heart’s grief hidden in a locket. But other bits seemed rather incredible: He graduated from the Sorbonne at the age of fourteen and, during his apprenticeship with Lavoisier, had facilitated many of the great scientist’s breakthroughs before becoming one of the youngest officers of Napoleon’s navy. For a time, Laroche was the hope of France. A mint was spent on his plans for a ship that would move under the waves like a fish. When I first heard about it I laughed outright, but he’d built a working prototype, or so the story went; the thing could rise, fire a broadside, then disappear again beneath the surface. With the ports of Europe blockaded, Napoleon needed a marvel, and Laroche was going to give it to him.

These kinds of tales, always delivered in a frightened half whisper, and describing how terrifically close England came to invasion or defeat, are as common as the boasts of the fearless heroics that saved us—inseparable as the soldier and his shadow. In this particular tale, our salvation came in an unlikely form. Laroche was demonstrating his disappearing ship to some officials, an admiral, and a cousin of Napoleon, I believe, when they were attacked by none other than the pirate Mabbot, becoming another casualty of her roving bloodlust. The air bladders, or whatever kept the thing afloat, were ruptured and everyone drowned except Laroche. Some will tell you that this was the decisive battle of the war, and indeed I shudder to think what would have become of us if such a ship had made it to Trafalgar. The loss of the ship ruined Laroche’s career, and he was court-martialed to account for the lives of the officers aboard. His assets were seized and he was imprisoned. Only when Napoleon was exiled did Laroche walk from the jailhouse, his head bursting with new ideas. Colette, needless to say, had not waited for him; she had married a duke.

Despite his genius, Laroche slept under worktables in grimy warehouses, spending outrageous sums on new inventions and signing away his patents to settle his debts. He had fled France and lectured at universities on a variety of subjects but had never taken positions, preferring to spend all of his attention on new inventions. It was when he came to visit Ramsey, at the country manor in Somerset, that I met the man.

His arrival was quite the event. Naturally the staff had been whispering. Some had read transcripts of his lectures, and we had all heard his outlandish theories: that the weather could be controlled with magnets, providing they were large enough; that certain birds could be taught to speak and understand French but not English; that gold could be distilled from urine. I had seen an illustration of his proposal to send people across the channel in cannonball carriages. The carriage would be righted in the air with fins like a shuttlecock’s. One rumor was confirmed shortly after his arrival: that he chewed every bite of his food exactly twenty-four times.

His composure was upright and solemn, like a candle flame in a still cell. I did not expect the celebrated scientist to dress like a funeral mourner, but black was his everyday color. Indeed he would have passed for a shadow in the hall save for the one piece of light he allowed himself: the faded cravat that needed starching and made him look as if his head had been served on a bed of wilted escarole. Even his suede gloves were jet and delicate as a woman’s. He wore them, the waitstaff reported, throughout breakfast, and when Ramsey remarked upon it, the Frenchman’s reply was this: “Some of my instruments require the utmost finesse. I cannot squander my sensitivity on the mundane abrasions of the world.”

I had hoped to impress him that evening with my coq au vin (my secret was a sauce inspirited with ground andouille sausage), but, as it turned out, my time near Laroche would be less than pleasant for both of us.

The grounds to the east of the manor were little more than a green and gently sloping lawn, bounded by hedges. Its farthest edge was the boundary of Jessop’s Wood, where the hounds were released in the spring. The hunting parties, sounding their bugles like the angels of the apocalypse, turned the green into a battlefield of ankle-twisting divots and slick mud, which the gardeners spent months trying to repair. In early fall, though, it was an almost meditative place, overlooking the ember hues of the forest.

As the manor was far from a good butcher shop, I had insisted on replacing the tough Tamworth hogs in the pens with spotted Saddleback shoats that I knew would provide tender ham and bacon positively tatted with fat. I wouldn’t have bothered if I had known what was to become of them.

There was to be a demonstration of some kind that afternoon, and our distinguished guest had given me occasion to open some aged Gloucester cheese that had a wonderful caramel spirit lurking behind its peppery surface. My plan was to serve it at tea with currant jelly and manchets hot from the oven. But I never got the chance; the butler informed me that Ramsey wished me to help “provide our Laroche with an authentic target.”

There is something about the power of an order. I was no soldier, and yet, though it seemed for a moment that my employer planned to shoot at me for fun, still I washed my hands and went out—such is the urge to be a sport, a good and willing man. When I presented myself, however, Ramsey sent me and another to wrangle the pigs from their pen out onto the green. We tugged and prodded them to the far end, just fifty yards from the edge of the forest. They were frightened, and we had to hammer a steel post deeply into the ground to keep them from yanking it free with their head-wagging. I had been feeding them apples and figs all week to sweeten their meat, and we struggled not to slip on their excrement.

Laroche, meanwhile, was overseeing the placement of a cannon upon a platform not far from the windows of the guest rooms.

Between the pigs and the cannon, most of the staff had muddied themselves in one way or another and stood in clusters near the house, whispering and giggling at the strange events of the day. After changing into clean pants, I stood with them, though I could not share their festive mood.

“Is it target enough,” teased Ramsey, “or shall we put the geese out there as well?”

“It is sufficient,” muttered Laroche, as he peered at his target through a glass and made adjustments to a sextant.

The learned Frenchman was indulging in what I thought was a theatrical display of fastidiousness. But I would come to learn that his precision was born of acute economy; he had but two of his peculiar cannonballs and could not afford to waste them on imprecise shots. As it turned out, one shot was sufficient.

The wait only heightened the staff’s anticipation. The women clucked and covered their faces, while the men placed bets and offered their guesses at the nature of the missile. I took the opportunity to express my dismay to Ramsey. “I see we won’t be having pork cassoulet next month,” I said.

Ramsey was watching Laroche closely and muttered, “Rather we’ll be having it tomorrow, I should say.”

With that I was dismissed and considered retiring to my cheese but, like the rest of the crowd, I was too fascinated by the spectacle, especially when I considered this: Ramsey never missed an opportunity to invite friends and investors to his manor for an afternoon of fun. Except for Laroche, though, no one of import was there. We were witnessing something of a secret.

Laroche proceeded to tamp and prime the cannon with swift, clean strokes. Then, with a magician’s timing, he opened a box to reveal an iron sphere couched in coarse felt. The cannonball was riddled with boreholes, perhaps two dozen of them, set at regular intervals across its surface. He inserted a key into one of the holes, and the ball began to tick like a clock. He poured a glass of water over the sphere, then delivered it into the cannon as solemnly as a sleeping baby into a cradle.