The Fire (31 page)

Maurice watched with the others as Carême began his assembly by melting the tips of each section against hot coals from the brazier, so it would stick to the other parts with its own sugary glue. But each time he bent over the coals and breathed the smoke, he could hardly suppress his coughing, the curse of his profession: black lung from constant enclosure with charcoal fumes. Kimberly poured some champagne, which Carême sipped as he worked. And as he assembled his myriad pieces, and little by little a complex and fascinating structure began to emerge, the chef at last cleared his throat to speak to the prince and his staff.

‘You have all heard the tale of my life,’ Carême began, ‘how, like the story of Cendrillon, my journey went from the ashes of obscurity to the palaces of Europe. How, as a ragged child who’d been abandoned by my father at the gates of Paris, I was first discovered and put into the service of the noted pâtissier, Bailly. And how I eventually came to serve beneath Prince Talleyrand’s chef, the great Boucher, formerly of the house of Condé.’

The very mention of the name Boucher had always struck
awe throughout the kitchens of Europe. For all knew that Boucher was once the renowned maître d’hôtel to the Prince de Condé, scion of one of the most powerful families in France.

Following in a long line of Condé chefs – beginning with the almost legendary Vâtel, who’d committed suicide by falling on his sword when the seafood failed to arrive in time for a banquet – Boucher himself had for years trained apprenticed scullions and sous-chefs in the Condé kitchens at both Paris and Chantilly. These men later went on to become master chefs in the great houses of Europe and America – including Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved chef, James Hemings, who’d studied under Boucher’s tutelage during the American diplomat’s five-year tenure in France.

Then, when Louis-Joseph, the reigning Prince de Condé, had fled the country to lead an Austrian army against revolutionary France, it was Talleyrand who’d rescued his chef, Boucher, from the depredations of the mob and given him employment.

And then it was Boucher who’d discovered the young
tourtier
, the tart-maker, in Bailly’s pastry shop and brought him to the attention of Monseigneur Talleyrand.

‘Cinderella, yes indeed,’ added the master chef. ‘And with a name like mine, Carême – short for
quarantième,
the forty days of Lent that begin with
dies cinerum,
Ash Wednesday – one would imagine that I’d have been more interested in ashes and sackcloth, that is, in the ancient tradition of fasting, rather than the art of feasting!

‘But from each of my great tutors and my patrons, I’ve discovered something most mysterious about the connection between these two things – feasting and fasting – and of their connection with fire. However, I get ahead of myself. First, it is of this creation that I am building now, for the prince and his guests and family tonight, that I wish to speak.’

Carême glanced toward Talleyrand, who nodded for him to continue. The chef rolled out a parchment with strange designs drawn upon it of arcs and lines, and he unmolded one of the sugar forms upon it, in the shape of an octagon perhaps one meter in diameter. Then one by one, he unmolded progressively smaller octagons and placed each atop the last, like stair steps. Lastly, with his tongs, he plucked up one of his twisted columns and touched it briefly to the coals, before resuming both his assembly process and his story.

‘It was from Bailly, the master pâtissier, that I first learned the wonderful art of the
architecture
of cuisine,’ he said, ‘for he let me study by night and copy those designs of ancient buildings he’d borrowed from the print rooms of the Louvre. I came to understand that the fine arts are five in number, to wit: painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and architecture, whose highest expression is confectionary. I learned to draw, with the steady and skilled hand of a seasoned architect and geometrician, those structures of the ancients – Greece, Rome, Egypt, India, China – that one day I would create as architectural masterpieces in spun sugar, like this one.

‘This is the greatest of the early structures, seminal to all that inspired Vitruvius. It is called the Tower of Winds, a famous tower of eight sides in Athens, containing a planetarium and an elaborate water clock, which Andronicus of Cyrrhus built one hundred years before Christ, and which is still standing today. Vitruvius tells us, “Some have held that there are only four winds… But more careful investigators tell us that there are eight.” Eight: a sacred number, for it lies at the root of the most ancient temple designs of Persia and India in deep antiquity.’

Everyone watched closely, as the maître’s fingers flew back and forth across the board with those architectural components he’d miraculously crafted himself. When he had finished the structure, it stood two meters high from the table and
towered over all, an octagonal tower with astonishing detail, including grillework at the windows and the designs of frescoes around the top, representing the personae of the eight winds. Everyone in the room applauded, including the prince himself.

When the staff had returned to their duties, Talleyrand escorted the master chef into the gardens. ‘Yours is truly a remarkable achievement, as always,’ Talleyrand said. ‘But I have missed something, I fear, my dear Antonin. For just before you began your magical architectural reconstruction of what must surely be one of the most remarkable structures of early Greece, you’d mentioned some mystery that prompted you to build the Tour des Vents. It was something, I recall, to do with feast and famine – with Lenten sackcloth and ash? Though I confess, I still do not make the connection.’

‘Yes, your highness,’ said Carême, pausing only for a moment to look his patron and mentor in the eye. For they both knew what Talleyrand was secretly asking. ‘Vitruvius himself shows us how – by erecting a gnomon to track the sun and by using a compass to construct a simple circle – we can give birth to the octagon, the most sacred structure, as the ancients knew, for it is the divine intermediary between circle and square.

‘In China, the octagon is the
Ba’gua,
the oldest form of divination. In India, the square of eight is called the
Ashtapada
– ‘the spider’ – the oldest board game that we know of. It is also the base of the mandala upon which they construct the Hindu and Persian fire temples. Less known, but surely known to Vitruvius, is that these represent the earliest forms of the
altar
where the sacrifice was made, where things could be ‘altered’ – where heaven was brought down to earth in ancient times, like lightning from the sky. During the eight
fire festivals that took place each year, the fire sacrifice to God and the feast of the people were both one.’

He added, ‘That is why the center of the house, the center of the temple, and the center of the city itself were called the
focus
– that is, the hearth. We chefs are all blessed. For to be a chef or magus, a master of fire, of the feast and sacrifice, was once the holiest profession.’

But Carême could not go on. Despite the fresh air in the garden, or perhaps because of it, his chronic cough had returned to grasp him by the throat once more.

‘You sacrifice
yourself
to that holy profession and those coals of yours, my friend,’ observed Talleyrand, raising a hand to call for a steward, who ran from the house with another coupe of champagne and gave it to the chef. When the servant had left, Talleyrand added, ‘You know why I have brought you here, of course?’

Carême nodded, still sipping the champagne as he tried to recover his breath.

‘That’s why I hastened to come, sire – though perhaps I ought not to have, for as you see, I am ill,’ he managed to choke out at last. ‘It’s the woman, is it not? She has come back, somehow – the woman who came to Paris late that night, so many years ago, when I was first sous-chef under Boucher at your palace, the Hôtel Galliffet on the rue de Bac. That woman who later appeared at Bourbon-l’Archambault, with Charlotte. It’s the woman for whom you’ve had me collect all those pieces. Mireille—’

‘We must not speak of it openly, my trusted friend,’ Talleyrand interrupted. ‘You and I are the only people on earth who know the story. And though we must share it with someone quite soon – tonight, in fact – I wish you to save your strength for that encounter. You are the only one who may be in a position to help us, for as you are aware, you’re the only one I have trusted to know the entire truth.’

Carême nodded to indicate that he was once more prepared to serve the man he had always referred to as his greatest patron. And much more.

‘Is the woman herself expected at Valençay tonight?’ asked Carême.

‘No. It is her son who arrives,’ said Talleyrand, placing his hand upon the chef’s shoulder with unaccustomed familiarity. Then, after a long breath, he added softly, ‘That is – her son and mine.’

Maurice wanted to weep as he regarded his son for only the second time in his life. In a rush, it brought back the memory of all the bitterness that had followed their parting, so many years ago, at Bourbon-l’Archambault.

Now that the household had been fed and the children put to bed, Maurice sat and watched until the sunset had seeped into lavender twilight – his favorite time of the day. Yet his mind was filled with a thousand warring emotions.

Carême had left them alone to speak, but agreed he would soon rejoin them, along with a small cask of the aged Madeira and some of the answers they both were seeking.

Now Maurice gazed across the small garden table that the chef had provisioned for them beneath the boughs of an enormous linden tree within the park. He studied the romantic-looking young man that his own passion had produced more than thirty years ago. It was an astonishingly painful experience.

Charlot, just come from Paris and still in his riding clothes, had only taken time to brush off the dust from the road and to put on a clean shirt and cravat. His coppery hair was pulled back onto his nape in a tidy queue, from which only a few unruly wisps had managed to escape. Even this small thing was so evocative of his mother’s sweet-smelling mass
of strawberry locks, in which Maurice could still remember burying his face whenever they had made love.

Before she’d left him.

But in all other details, as Maurice forced his thoughts back, he saw that Charlot more closely resembled his natural father: Those cold blue eyes that seemed to assure one that they would reveal none of their owner’s innermost thoughts. That high brow, the strong cleft chin and retroussé nose were all marks of the long, noble line of the Talleyrands of Périgord. And those surprisingly sensual lips – it was a mouth that bespoke the born connoisseur of fine wines, beautiful women, all the voluptuary arts.

But his son, as Maurice had quickly discerned, could be none of those things.

When it came to bloodlines, that was why Maurice had followed Charlot’s earlier request – when as a mere boy Charlot had suggested that his father arrange to marry Charlotte into Talleyrand’s own family that she might not share her brother’s fate. Thanks largely to the folly of his parents in not marrying, as an illegitimate child Charlot would never hold rights of primogeniture, even to inherit his father’s own estates. Indeed – for there was little Maurice could do about it under French law – Charlot’s physical features would likely be his chief inheritance through the noble line of Talleyrand-Périgord.

But even Charlot’s features themselves, Maurice realized, seemed to rebel against their inborn disposition. His mouth might suggest overt sensuality, but the set of it showed that inner determination that had manifested itself in bringing him here, from whatever distant land, for some critical purpose, a purpose that, from Charlot’s expression, was clearly not his mother’s, but his own.

And those eyes that at first glance had seemed so icy and self-contained. At their indigo depths Maurice discerned some
secret, a mystery that, it was also clear, he’d traveled this distance prepared to share with his father, and no one else.

It was this alone that gave Maurice his first glimmer of hope that this visit, this reunion, perhaps after all would not prove to be what he’d been imagining and fearing, these past twenty years. And Maurice knew it was time for him to disclose something, too.

‘My son,’ he began, ‘Antonin Carême will soon return to join us, as he must. For during those years when I had to perform certain critical tasks for your mother, Antonin was the man I trusted with my very life – with all our lives.

‘Before he returns, though, while we are alone, let us speak frankly. It is long overdue. In my capacity as your natural father, I seek and beg your forgiveness. If I were not of the age I am, nor the disposition, I would go down upon one knee, at this very moment, and kiss your hand to implore you—’

But he stopped, for Charlot had leapt up and come around the table. He drew his father to his feet and kissed his two hands instead. Then he embraced him.

‘I see what you are feeling, Father,’ he told him. ‘But you may rest in assurance, I am not here for what you believe.’

Talleyrand looked at him, at first in shock, then with a guarded smile. ‘I’d quite forgotten that skill of yours,’ he admitted, ‘your ability to read thoughts or to prophesy.’

‘I’d nearly forgotten it
myself,
’ Charlot said, returning his smile. ‘But I’ve not come hither to seek my sister Charlotte, as you seem to be fearing at this moment. No, as far as I am concerned – for I can see that you love Charlotte dearly and want to protect her – she needn’t know anything about us at all. Nor need she, in future, ever have anything to do with the Montglane Service, or the Game.’

‘But I thought that the Game had ended!’ cried Talleyrand. ‘It
cannot
begin again. To prevent it, Mireille permitted little
Charlotte to be raised by me, where she’d be safe. Away from the service, away from the pieces – away from the Game! And away from the Black Queen – her mother – for that was the prophecy.’

‘The prophecy was wrong,’ said Charlot. He was no longer smiling, though he still held his father’s hands in his own. ‘It appears that the Game has begun again.’