An Appetite for Violets (14 page)

‘Surely not? You must have your own key?’

‘I have not. You must call upon Carlo. I will write and tell him to expect you. Don’t look like that. Collect it or sleep in a ditch.’

‘Well, I will not spend a minute longer in his low foreign company than is necessary.’

Tyrone laughed. ‘He is a person of quite beautiful manners. I confess it will be a considerable effort for you to rise to his level.’

‘He will be another filthy old man, I am sure of it.’

‘Confess it, then. You have an assignation,’ he accused in a jocular manner. ‘Carlo will respect that.’

A sudden crash of splintered glass reached my ears, followed by Carinna’s shriek. ‘Damn you, look what you have made me do! I can bear no more of this.’

To my dismay, I heard the rustle of her gown moving directly towards me. Fearing discovery, I dropped my head to my chest and shut my eyes, feigning sleep. I do not believe she even saw me, for I heard her uncle call out ‘Carinna!’ from the drawing room in a tone of admonishment. She was so close to me I heard her huff of breath. She must have been just behind me, my figure hidden only by the large chair.

‘I will do as you bid,’ she cried out sourly. Then in a very low whisper, added with vicious feeling, ‘Whoremonger!’

In a moment she had gone and I was alone. After some time I made mimicry of stretching, and climbed the stairs to my chamber, quite unseen and mightily pleased with this intelligence gleaned from the enemy’s camp.

Now what make you of that, my tender brother? Perhaps the girl intends a rendezvous with some young buck? It is a villainous affair, so much is certain.

Alas the candle burns low and tomorrow we leave for the Kentish ports. Her so-called Ladyship has at last settled on leaving, and there is much to attend to. I shall write ere we sail for France.

Wish me strength and health for the journey ahead,

I remain always, your diligent brother,

Humphrey Pars

XVII

London to Dover

Being Christmastide, December 1772
Biddy Leigh, her journal

Christmas Pie

Make a standing crust of twenty-four pounds of the finest flour, six pounds butter, half a pound rendered suet and raise in an oval with very thick walls and sturdy bottom. Bone a turkey, a goose, a fowl, a partridge and a pigeon and lay one inside the other along with mace, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Then have a hare ready stewed in joints along with its gravy, woodcocks, more game and whatsoever wild birds you can get. Lay them as close as you can and put at least four pounds of butter in the pie. Make your lid pretty thick and lay on such Christmas shapes as you wish upon it. Rub it all over with yolks of egg and bind it round with paper. It will take four hours baking in a bread oven. When it comes out melt two pounds of butter in the gravy that came from the hare and pour it hot in the pie through the hole.

Lady Maria Grice, from a most Ancient Receipt given to her by her Grandmama, 1742

My heart sang to leave the city; the horses bowled at a trot all along the smooth turnpike road out of London. As for my lady’s brother Kitt, what would Her Ladyship make of his chasing me? He was a mighty fine fellow in his spangled waistcoat and cambric ruffles. The very scent of the high-life clung to his honeyed voice and city pallor. Not that I’d forgotten Jem at all, it was just that I was riled at there being no news from him in any letters in London. And Kitt Tyrone was the very first man of rank to ever take notice of me. Each time I glanced at my mistress’s face I saw his lordly features outlined there.

‘What on earth are you staring at, girl?’ my mistress snapped, breaking into a daydream that might have been written by saucy Eliza Heywood herself.

‘Nowt, Me Lady.’

‘Indeed. When you address me, Biddy, you must say “My Lady” correctly.’

I did my best to shape my lips, though they felt like a stiff bladder stretching around a preserve jar.

‘Moi Lady.’

‘Are you sure you can read?’

‘Yes, a’ course I can,’ I said, lifting my chin up. Then I remembered and grumbled, ‘Me Lady.’

‘Humph. A liar too,’ muttered Jesmire.

My lady rifled about the carriage seat, then suddenly thrust a paper in my hand. ‘Go ahead then. Read it.’

‘A hat, a coat, a shoe,’ I pronounced carefully, ‘deemed fit to be worn only by a great grand-sire, is no sooner put on by a dictator of fashions—’ I looked up and the mistress urged me on with a flap of her long white fingers ‘—than it is generally adopted from the first lord of the Treasury to the apprentice in Houndsditch.’

They didn’t laugh at that, for it was right well done. My mistress snatched the paper back.

‘So why did you read that so nicely? It was quite comprehensible.’

I had to think about that. I didn’t want to witter on about how Widow Trotter helped me mimic her own fine speaking voice. I was a natural, she used to say.

‘They are not me own words, Me Lady. When I read something from a paper I can say it like a schoolmistress, all prim and proper.’

Lady Carinna leaned back, a pucker showing between her eyebrows.

‘So if I wrote down your speech like the lines of a play you could recite them correctly?’

‘I should expect so, Me Lady.’

And so an hour passed in a sort of game, where lines were written out for me on the back of an old almanac and I made them sound all proper. It weren’t too bad a scheme, neither, for I surprised them both with my quickness. As the light failed outside, I announced in a perfect London drawl, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. Dinner will be served in the drawing room.’

Jesmire was mighty peeved to hear me read so marvellous well. Then the notion hit me – Jesmire believed my mistress was schooling me to take her place. As if I would ever give up the glories of the kitchen for a life of needles and hairpins! So all the while, as the old trot muttered into the pages of her London gazette, I crowed that my mistress was right pleased with all I ever did. I never stopped to wonder if I’d be safer keeping well out of her way.

*   *   *

Next thing, we all caught killing colds, so henceforth we wheezed and dripped our way to Dover. You would have thought my lady was dying from the way she complained of the potholes that jolted the carriage and the sick headaches she endured. Mr Pars was in a temper too, cursing the landlords who imposed tremendous charges on those who could take no other way to the ports. Just outside Dover we stopped at an inn and I snatched a taste of dainty fried fish named smelts, and some herrings served with their tails in their mouths. Afterwards, me and Mr Loveday went out to take a view of the ocean. The wind was blowing so strong it whistled through my teeth and the sea was horrible; a vast plain of water ceaselessly moiling like a simmering pot. At last my head cold had cleared enough to taste the sea on my tongue; it had a strange salted vegetable tang.

We both stared at the murky horizon where there was no sign at all of those famed shores of France. Then Mr Loveday nudged me and pointed to two figures fighting the wind far down at the end of the beach. I squinted, and the shapes of them were very like Mr Pars and my lady – yet that would have been a rum thing, if those two ever took a stroll together. The two of them seemed to be quarrelling like cat and dog, the lady in her flapping cloak raising her arms in a fury. Every few steps the man shook his head and halted to speak words that couldn’t reach us. After a few minutes he stumped off and disappeared. The woman stood alone on the strand, watching the grey waves chase at her skirts. It was too far to be sure, but I would have wagered it was my lady, for her grey cloak was of the same shade, though she wore the hood up to cover her face.

‘If it is them, why would they come out here instead of talking by the parlour fire?’ I asked Mr Loveday as we hurried back to the inn.

My friend pulled his thin coat tight around his elbows, slouching low with his head down. He said something I couldn’t quite hear.

‘What?’

‘—the wind, too hard catch—’

I followed his hunched back and thought no more of it.

*   *   *

Mr Pars’ intention was to find an inn at Dover and from there buy passage on the packet boat to France. But every inn we called on was bursting with travellers, all holed up till the wind would change and the boats could sail. To make matters worse, we were now but two days from Christmas. I got to see the confectioners’ shops, and all the iced glories of Twelfth Cakes and sugared fruits in every square of windowpane.

On each return from his enquiries Mr Pars wore a hangdog face and shook his head. At the York Hotel we took our supper not knowing where we might bed down. It was a noisy, ramshackle place, and the gale whistled through the shutters in an endless moan. Our party was upstairs in the parlour, while me and Loveday drank rotgut beer in a room below. I was sick of traipsing the earth and longed for the old Mawton range and a dish of tea with my toes up on the fender.

It was old Pars who saved us, for he made the acquaintance of a Mr Harbird, a gentleman of Dover who offered my lady lodgings at his own house until the boats should leave. So at nearly midnight we followed Mr Harbird’s groom up a pitchy lane, all yawning loudly and blessing the gentleman for his Christmas spirit.

*   *   *

The next day we all woke up at Waldershore House, a large, grey stone manor with gabled roofs and barley twist chimneypots. There was none of the new-fangled whitework there, only oak linenfold panels and faded rugs hung on the walls against the cold. Mr Loveday told me Lady Carinna didn’t care for such an old ruin as she called it, but I thought it a spanking improvement on those tumbledown inns.

Then, to my delight, Mr Harbird said I should help out with the Christmas cooking, for they were short of skilled hands. Fifty persons were invited – the largest company I had ever cooked for. Try to stop me, I swore. Oh, if Mrs Garland had only been with me, we should both have been as merry as a pair of larks.

*   *   *

The kitchen at Waldershore had a fireplace tall enough to walk inside, and before it three great turnspits that sprung down from the walls. It was crowded with a rag-taggle band of a dozen women and children – some ancient crones, and others young minxes who giggled and pulled daft faces. My knees shook under my skirts as I told them who I was, trying to speak plain, for my northern speech confounded them. They welcomed me kindly enough, for they needed skilled hands, the usual housekeeper being away with her sick daughter.

Thankfully, there were amongst them some women well versed in Christmas craft. A silver-haired woman named Nanny Faggeter was their leader. She made Christmas Pies, while others plucked fowls and mixed cakes and puddings. As for the children, they were set to watch fires and wash pots. I spent a joyful morning making the stuffings, fine pastries and doughs. After dinner a pair of young maidens launched into ‘I Saw Three Ships’, and soon the whole company joined in a chorus. I sang and hummed while I worked, all the time calculating baking times and conjuring Christmas fancies from the pages of
The Cook’s Jewel.
By three o’clock we had ten great boards piled full of goods, and ‘All Bells in Paradise’ ringing in our ears. Five pairs of the strongest arms lifted the first two Christmas Pies from the oven, and I poured melted butter deep in their spouts, praying they might set succulent and firm.

Next we got the Plum Pudding mixed, and all the young ones crowded about the tub to make a wish. When they had finished I grasped the wooden thribble myself and walked the circle, thinking of Jem and Mawton. At least one of my wishes was answered, for soon afterward, Mr Loveday came tapping at the door.

‘You been working hard, Miss Biddy.’ He grinned at the boards of baked goods. ‘You ’spect an army come by?’

I wiped my brow with a rag. ‘Nothing is busier than English ovens at Christmas. It’s the one day a year when everyone must eat their fill.’

Then he handed me a large wooden box that had been waiting at the post house in Dover for days. It was a cheese from Mrs Garland that released all the pungent richness of those sweet Cheshire meadows. There was also a letter that I only opened when alone in my room, reading every word with all attention.

My Dearest Biddy

I do heartily pray this letter finds you safe in Dover and being of good cheer and that the cheese is not knocked about on the road for it should make a good whet for Christmas and Mr Pars will take a slice I am sure of it.

’Tis lonely now since you have gone and I pray you do not take our parting ill for I would always wish to be at peace with you my dear, for we have so long been good friends and you my stout right arm. The rain and cold has been most troubling since you left and my pains none the better, but I must not complain for there are worse than me I be sure out there on those dirty roads. I make ready for a trifling Christmas as our household is so shrunken, but I still make the pudding and cakes even with no promise of great revels as so few young folk remain. Teg is my only helpmate now Sukey is dismissed and she does the least she can without a scolding. As for this Mr John Strutt who has taken over Mr Pars’ duties, we have no liking for him, he is an interfering, changeabout type of fellow who sees ill in all our old ways, that we know are proven best. As for what he says of Mr Pars, this Mr Strutt has no proper gratitude, if you should ask my opinion.