Eat, Drink and Be Buried (19 page)

“I have a meeting of the Women's Institute this afternoon,” she said with an enchanting smile, “but there's plenty of time. Come on.”

“K
NOW MUCH ABOUT BREWING
?” Felicity asked as we entered the squat stone building.

“I've visited a number of breweries in various countries and I'm familiar with their operations. I've probably been in more vineyards, though.”

“You prefer wine to beer?”

“I like beer—real beer—but yes, I prefer wine. Like drinking it better than swimming in it, too.”

Felicity turned her gaze to me. “That's an unusual practice. Why did you want to do that?”

“It wasn't deliberate. I fell into a vat in France a while ago.”

“In the course of business?”

“Yes.”

“Vinous espionage, was it? Seeking the secrets of Semillon?”

“It was red wine.”

“Some people have lived for days on red wine.”

“I wouldn't have on this occasion. I would have been in a bottle before then.”

“That's taking wine snobbery to an extreme.”

“In a way,” I admitted. “Actually, I didn't fall—I was pushed.”

“Ah, the classic alternates.”

“It wasn't funny at the time,” I told her. I probably sounded huffy. “The vats didn't have ladders inside and the walls were slippery.”

“At least you couldn't die of thirst,” Felicity said. She looked the other way as she said it, I suspect it was so that I wouldn't see her smile.

“I was rescued by a gendarme,” I said.

“I'd like to hear the whole story sometime.”

“I'll tell it to you. Sometime.”

We went into the mead area. The air was heavy with sweetish fumes, thick and cloying, with a vaguely beerish aftersmell. A gnarled old fellow with a mahogany complexion met us. His features twisted into a genuinely pleased expression at the sight of Felicity. She introduced us. His name was Jim and he was the castle brewmaster.

“He's familiar with beermaking,” Felicity told him. “More interested in mead. I said you know more about it than anybody else in Britain.”

He cocked his head on one side. “Mead is probably the oldest alcoholic beverage known to man,” he said. “Cave drawings in Valencia, made twenty thousand years ago, show two people collecting honey to make mead. When travelers to China—Marco Polo and others—finally reached the court of Kublai Khan, they were amazed to find magnificent silver fountains in the city squares. Each fountain had four spouts, all dispensing free refreshments to the populace. One spout served kumiss—the fermented mares' milk that the Mongols drank—another spout served wine, a third rice wine, and the fourth served mead.”

I had expected Jim to have a country accent as gnarled as his face, but he spoke with the tones of an educated man.

“That's amazing,” I said. “Do you use an old method of making it?”

“We could use sophisticated methods and modern equipment and turn out a pretty good brand of mead if we wanted,” Jim said. “But people who come here expect to see everything medieval so we make mead the old way.”

“And the old way is…?”

“We use traditional oak casks. This is the size known as the firkin. It holds forty liters, or nine gallons.” He pointed to a row of small wooden barrels stacked against the stone wall. “We make mead in batches of this amount. We have these vessels over here—they're stainless steel, but the finish makes them look like pewter so people think they're old. We put in thirty pounds of honey, a few handfuls of ginger, a few handfuls of dried elderflower, and fill with water. We bring it to a simmer and skim. We cool a little, stir in two kitchen ladles of active yeast, and let it sit overnight. There's your mead.”

“Simple,” I said, “and fast.”

“There are some variations,” Jim said. “We've tried adding egg whites—they make the liquid clear.”

“Is that an advantage?” I asked.

“Most folk like it cloudy. They think it looks more authentic. Then rosemary alters the flavor slightly; so do cloves. We've tried those—and lots more besides—but we find the old recipe the best.”

“You don't bottle any?”

“No,” Jim said. “It's all consumed on the premises, draft only.”

It was a small, compact operation. As Jim said, it could easily be commercialized. The visitors obviously liked it better this way, though—the rough wooden shelves with their canisters and boxes of ingredients, the lack of dials and modern equipment, and the supposedly pewter fermenting pots.

Jim was reaching for a mug and turning the spigot on a barrel. “Try one,” he urged. “This is a bit fresh, needs a few more hours fermenting, but it gives you the idea.”

It was sweetish but not objectionably so. It had a faintly beery taste.

“Reminds me of homemade ginger beer,” I said.

“That can be made the same way. You just use more ginger, replacing the honey.”

“How about cider?” I asked.

“We make that. We tried perry, too. That's the same as cider but made from pears instead of apples. It wasn't that popular, and besides, the pears we grow here are the eating kind and not really suited to perry.”

“Jim knows better than to offer me mead,” Felicity said.

“You don't like it?” I asked her.

“Never have. Give me a good Bordeaux any time.”

“Like to see the beer-producing rooms?” Jim asked.

I had toured some microbreweries which are much more popular in the United States because the standard brews produced by the beer giants there are insipid, weak, and uninteresting. Fritz Maytag, the heir to the American washing machine empire, was a lover of good beer and resented the need to import it. He was the first to light the fire of revolution. Dissatisfied with the sameness and blandness of the routine beers, he bought the Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco and started to make what came to be called “real beer.”

This became the first of many. Today, supermarkets and liquor stores in the United States have a vast array of ales, beers, and stouts made by the microbreweries, plus an extraordinary number of imported beers.

I had been more interested in seeing mead produced, as that is a rare operation, but I wasn't going to turn down an opportunity to see a castle brewery making beer.

This one stopped me in midstride. It wasn't a medieval brewery but neither was it a slick modern microbrewery, either. “This is clever,” I said to Felicity and Jim. “You've used copper throughout. Pipes, valves, pans, reaction vessels—everything. They give the place the look of the past but it clearly has the design and functionality of the present.”

“That's what we aimed for,” Jim said, pleased as Punch.

We walked on through. Even the dials and gauges were mounted inconspicuously in wooden cases, so they did not hit an incongruous note. Here and there, a wooden paddle, scoop, or crate added a further reminder of the past.

“We brew only two beers, a light and a dark,” Jim told me.

“The dark is quite close to a real medieval brew, while the lighter one is closer to the modern taste. Both are top-fermented, moderate in alcohol content. We don't sell a lot but the operation is self-supporting.”

“I heard some of the fellows in the cafeteria making remarks about your cider,” I said.

“The cider is made over here.” He led the way to a smaller room, a miniature version of the beer operation. “We don't make much any more. Our apple crop has been having some problems and we don't want to have to buy in apples.”

“It's non-alcoholic, I believe,” I said.

I glanced at Felicity. She rolled her eyes at the ceiling. The gesture of innocence was a sure sign of guilty knowledge.

“I suppose it's difficult to prevent an employee occasionally producing a few barrels of the alcoholic version,” I said.

“I wouldn't be surprised,” said Jim, keeping a straight face that gave it all away.

Outside, the air was light and fresh after the rich, heady atmosphere inside the brewing areas. We both breathed deeply.

“You may have to shower and change before joining the institute ladies,” I told Felicity, “otherwise, they'll think you've been spending your time in questionable surroundings.”

She shrugged. “That's all right. More than once, I've shown up at meetings with cow manure thick on my shoes.”

“An excellent way to keep meetings short, I would think.”

We were about to part when I said to her, “Is Richard taking part in the Battle of Moreston Marsh?”

“Yes.”

“Do I detect an undertone of frustration in that word? Have you tried to dissuade him from taking part? Without success?”

She stopped walking. “I've tried and Daddy's tried. It's no good. He won't listen.”

“Doesn't he consider himself in any danger?” I asked her.

“Oh, he trots out all the conventional replies, all the standard chauvinistic male statements. You know, life is full of dangers, he has his responsibilities to participate in these events, he's not going to be frightened off by an accident or two…”

“Is that what he considers these events to be? Accidents?”

“He refuses to think that anyone is trying to kill him and insists that Kenny could hardly have any enemies.”

“The arrow that came between us? The gunshot that only just missed Angela and myself? What does he think about those?”

“Those can happen any time, he says.”

“They can but they don't.”

She sighed. “Well, I'll keep trying to get him to listen to reason. Meanwhile, I have to go.”

“Tell the Women's Institute ladies to keep up the good work.”

She smiled, then stood on tiptoe and gave me a kiss.

I
T WAS LATE AFTERNOON
and the kitchen would be starting preparations for the evening meals. I went to see how they were doing.

Madeleine was in charge. Victor Gontier, she said, was in the dining room and involved in a discussion relating to the wait staff. She was slicing strip steaks and told me they would be grilled medium rare in ridged pans and served with a relish of oregano, onions, and olives.

Sous-chefs and helpers were deep into various tedious but essential tasks. The inevitable chopping of potatoes, the trimming of asparagus, the julienne preparation of matchstick-thin carrots, and the cubing of pork loin for kabobs were underway. A tall, strong girl came in with a huge bowl of mussels and banged it down on a wooden bench.

Jars were being filled from central containers—chopped lemon zest, sprigs of mint, slivered almonds, shards of bittersweet chocolate, bayleaves, cheeseballs, dried cherries. They would not spoil or desiccate in the jars, for these were of a size to supply one evening's cooking only. It was highly likely also that many of these ingredients would never get their names on a menu, though their subtle influence on a flavor might well cause guests to frown, puzzled.

Madeleine gave a string of instructions to two of the sous-chefs, washed her hands, and came over to me as she wiped them dry.

“Victor and I have been doing some research on eels,” she told me enthusiastically. “Stewing in red wine was one of the earliest ways of cooking them.”

“I believe so. A bit insipid though, don't you think?”

“I suppose they were. Then there were the eel pies you mentioned that they used to sell at fairs and at street markets. I looked up a few recipes for those—they might go well here.”

I agreed. “They were cooked menagère style, weren't they?”

“Yes. Marinated in wine and spices, then fried in butter and put back into the marinade. They were put into the pie crust, layered with forcemeat with lots of chopped shallots and parsley, and baked. It's a good way of subduing the oily flavor—which is going to be the problem of matching it to modern taste.”

“Exactly,” I told her. “You've hit it on the head. That's why smoked eel is so good—the smoking removes the oily taste. But that limits its use. By the way, always make sure the eel is no longer moving.”

She looked at me doubtfully as if she was not sure whether I was joking.

“They have a very slow nervous system,” I said. “They will go on slithering around long after death. They have terrified many an old lady—not to mention nervous first-year student chefs.”

“Like a turkey with its head chopped off.”

“Right. Cutting them into short lengths will deprive them of their active tendencies. Personally, I think the Hungarian style of cooking eel is one of the best. You fry the pieces with butter and onion, then sprinkle with lots of paprika. You cover with white wine and cook a while. You remove the eel pieces, boil down the pan juices, and stir in cream. You pour this over the eel.”

She nodded appreciatively. “That could be popular. Not too eel-like. Victor found some recipes for deep-frying in a light batter. That conceals their eely nature, too.”

“Also any good thick and spicy sauce can be poured over them. Victor probably knows plenty of those.”

“Oh, he does,” she said confidently. “He's very good on sauces.”

“Yet another way that used to be popular—and is tasty as well as authentically medieval—is to dip them in beaten egg and breadcrumbs and cook them on a skewer.”

“That sounds old,” she said. “We could cook them that way in the fireplace. Guests could watch.”

We continued to discuss ways of making eel palatable and then went on to talk about frogs. Madeleine said that Victor knew a number of ways of preparing those, too. She was a bright girl and was growing more and more spirited over the challenge of presenting really medieval food. She admitted that the castle menus had been tailored too much in favor of easy modification.

I left the kitchen feeling more optimistic now that the level of cooperation was rising. As I came out, a servant in uniform was approaching, an elderly but spry castle retainer.