An Appetite for Violets Read online

  30th October 1772

  Mawton Hall

  Cheshire

  Dearest Uncle

  I have arrived at my husband’s estate and found it to be a mouldering ruin on the far edge of nowhere. Is this the reward for my suffering? As for the bitter cold and damp, (not to mention the strain to my nerves), it is all most dreadfully injurious to my health. Sir Geoffrey refuses to write or to see me and has sailed away (the arrant coward!) to his estate in Ireland. I am quite ill from it all and wretched, truly wretched.

  I know that you would say I should gather my wits and play on. I must puzzle it all out myself I suppose, and play my hand the best I can. I expect the immediate business here to take some short while, after which I shall write again, so I beg you prepare my old chamber at Devereaux Court for my return.

  We may speak freely then,

  Your devoted niece,

  Carinna

  Loveday shook his head and bit down the urge to smile. ‘Turn back London,’ he muttered, as he wet the seal with a drop of stolen wax. Whatever tide he was riding, it was turning rapidly, after all.

  The second letter was in Miss Jesmire’s curly hand. The message was less veiled and he understood every single word. So the old woman was eager to escape as well:

  The Editor

  The Lady’s Magazine

  30th October 1772

  Messrs GGJ & J Robinson

  No 25, Pater-noster’s Row

  London

  My Dear Sirs,

  I should be grateful if you would post the following Notice in an attractive and prominent position in your Advertisements for Employment, within the pages of your soonest edition. I enclose 2 shillings secured within a twist of paper in payment for your services.

  NOTICE

  A Lady of Age & Most Estimable Experience, most genteel, the daughter of a much admired late Suffolk clergyman, who understands the business of making up clothes and linen, is dextrous with a needle, dresses hair admirably, & possesses the benefits of a genteel private education, would wait upon a respectable Lady and make herself useful in any Capacity such as Maid, Nurse or Companion. Most eager to take up a suitable position without the slightest delay. Please reply in the strictest confidence to Miss J at Mrs Wardle, Haberdashers, The Strand.

  IV

  The Kitchen, Mawton Hall

  Being the day before Souling Night, October 1772

  Biddy Leigh, her journal

  * * *

  To Make A Fricassee of Chicken

  Take your chickens fresh killed and cut in pieces and brown them quick in butter. Have some strong gravy, a shallot or two, some spice, a glass of claret, a little anchovy liquor, thicken your sauce with butter rolled in flour. Garnish with balls of forced-meat, cockscombs and toast cut in triangles all around.

  A dish given to me by a Tavern Cook at Preston as being in the great court style, Martha Garland, 1743

  * * *

  That Jesmire creature was indeed in my kitchen, peering at the row of spoiled tarts. She was dabbing a handkerchief to the tip of her pink nose.

  ‘What in heaven’s name are those?’

  ‘A small accident,’ I said shortly. ‘So what can I do for you?’

  ‘Lady Carinna requires some chicken cooked nicely,’ she announced, pursing her vinegar lips. ‘But you will have to do better than this. These will never do.’

  Oh, I was right ashamed she’d even seen them.

  ‘Of course I’ll do me best for her, ma’am.’

  With a snort my visitor began to peer about the kitchen.

  ‘So, the chicken. Dress it as well as you are able. The diner is – a true gourmand.’ A nasty twitch played at the corners of her lips.

  I’d been looking her up and down and decided she was nowt but a servant like me. Her fancy green gown was plainly a hand-me-down too large for her frame – she were a pilchard dressed as cream, as Mrs Garland would say.

  I stopped nodding and glared. ‘So are you fetching it up then?’

  You would have thought I’d told her to mop the floor.

  ‘Me? Why, I have never lifted a plate in my life. Loveday, my lady’s footman, will come down for it. I am taking the carriage directly. Well, get to it, girl.’

  * * *

  Sauce-box! I racked my head to remember the fine old dishes that Mrs Garland used to make for Lady Maria. Fricassee, I settled on, for it had a fancy French sound to it. I browned the chicken in my pan and dressed it up with the proper garnishes.

  No one came. That footman of hers – was he also too tip-top to fetch and carry? With a curse I sent the hall boy upstairs. Moments later his sleepy head reappeared.

  ‘There in’t no one there, Biddy.’

  With a cuff to his head I decided to take it up myself. There were no backstairs at Mawton to keep us servants out of sight, though I reckoned little then how unmannered that must seem to the Londoners. Since my first day’s hiring I had loved Mawton’s castlements and crumbling towers, the black panelled halls and creaking stairs. It was built in the pattern of great houses hundreds of years past, with new parts clustered about a chilly keep tower from the days of the Conqueror. To pass above stairs was a rare treat for me, like visiting a palace of wonders, a chance to feel soft Turkey carpets beneath my boots and gaze at the shining pewter chandeliers.

  On the stairs the pictures slowed my pace. Above me in a golden frame, Sir Geoffrey looked lordly in his ermine gown, and much more personable aged forty than he did now he was more than sixty. Yet even then his gaunt cheeks and thin lips foretold his coming ruin. What in God’s own name did his young bride make of her new husband? I remembered the first time I’d seen him in this very same place. Not long after I’d arrived at Mawton I’d been summoned upstairs to help choose herbs for the linen. Afterwards, I’d fancied myself alone, and loitered to admire these same paintings. At the sound of a tapping cane growing ever closer, I’d frozen stock-still. It was too late to hurry off downstairs, so I drew back against the wall as Sir Geoffrey himself appeared above me. I saw him for only a moment, but his countenance was one I would never forget. Unlike his portrait he was a wreck of a man, his white hair hanging in greasy tails, and his back bent beneath a faded velvet coat. Two pale eyes lifted from his florid face, meeting mine for an instant and narrowing in annoyance. His eye rims, both upper and lower, were unnaturally scarlet.

  Mrs Garland’s instructions suddenly rang in my ears. ‘Biddy, if you should ever meet the master, turn to the wall.’ I swiftly turned about, dropping my head and praying with eyes screwed up tight that he might not speak to me. He lumbered closer, his cane thudding on the floor as he dragged himself behind it. As I held my breath he passed me like a frost creeping through the night. Long ago he’d been good-tempered, by all account. ‘When he married Lady Maria he treated the whole village to a roasted ox,’ Mrs Garland had told me. Yet all I’d ever known of him were tales of drunkenness and vicious harangues at any who crossed him. I pitied the young mistress, fleeing up here and fretting for his return.

  Beside his portrait was a dainty picture of his first wife, Lady Maria, her timid face as pale as a pearl. Every inch of her was bedizened with jewels and lace, and at the picture’s heart her thin fingers dandled the ruby called the Mawton Rose. For hundreds of years it had been kept at Mawton, after being ripped from a saint’s grave by one of Sir Geoffrey’s ancestors. It had been painted very finely, every sparkle tricked as if it stood before your eyes. The foolish tale was that the jewel had leached away Lady Maria’s strength, so all of her babes miscarried, and she herself was dead at less than five and twenty.

  Mrs Garland had known her, when first she came to Mawton. A fine confectioner she called her, and said it was true that the poor mistress had worn the jewel night and day, till Sir Geoffrey had finally plucked it away as she lay cold in her coffin. She was long dead, of course, with no remembrance at all save by us, who made free with the ruins of her precious old stillroom.

  * * *

  No footman
waited at Lady Carinna’s door. So there was nowt for it but to knock. No one answered, so I knocked again. Finally, I heard a weak voice. Inside, I found only Lady Carinna all alone. God’s tripes, I swore under my breath. I was not at all used to serving gentlefolk.

  ‘Me Lady,’ I racked my brain-box for polite words. ‘I’ve fetched you your dinner.’

  She was propped up on the vast four-postered bed, almost hidden by its twisted pillars and blue brocade. The room was so thrown about with cloths and chests that I had to be mighty careful with the tray as I made my way towards her.

  She flicked a limp finger towards the table at her bedside. I set down the tray and took a quick look about me. She was lounging on the bed in a gaping lilac gown, and showed a pair of white stockings with dirty grey soles. Scattered on the quilt were the remains of a cake, and a greasy rind of ham. Honestly, I wanted to spit, I was that offended at her fetching her own dinner.

  She was staring at a letter, a frown between her painted brows. There were signs of tears, too, in the pink rings about her eyes. I was so busy gawping I almost cried out when one of the heaps of silk suddenly shifted and moved. An ugly little face pushed out from beneath the bedclothes. It was that poxy dog.

  My mistress sniffed at the plate and pulled a face. ‘Scrape that stuff off,’ she said, pointing at my stately garnish of toast and cockscombs. Some people just don’t know fine food when it’s put in front of them.

  ‘Cut it up,’ she demanded, as I curtseyed in readiness to leave. So I set about cutting it, wondering that a lady such as she could not even master her own knife. With another small curl of her finger she bid me come closer with the dish. And then I had to stand as still as a sentry with the plate held before me for a full ten minutes as she fed the dog my perfectly fricasseed chicken. What had that old toady said? ‘The diner is a gourmand.’

  Oh my stars, she would pay for that one day.

  Whenever the dog distracted his mistress I looked about myself. She had set down the letter she had been so mighty interested in and folded it over so I could make nothing of it. That she had been trying to answer it I could see from the balls of crumpled paper thrown around. I did my best to spy them out and found I could read a little of one of her crumpled fragments. It had been crossed out so hard that the paper was torn right through. Ink blots smeared much of it but I did my best to cipher it:

  It made no sense to me at all, for only gibberish words were left. Yet even I could comprehend her unhappiness. What was Sir Geoffrey thinking to grieve the girl so? It was a tragic case indeed.

  Finally the lapdog turned his head aside with a yap of temper. Lady Carinna fell back on her bolsters, all exhausted. Staring absently into space, she nibbled at nails that were bloodied to the quick. I suppose her looks passed for beauty in London, for her complexion was as smooth as a boiled egg. Yet her rosebud lips were cracked beneath the carmine, and her hair, half-down to her shoulders, had little powders of scurf. Then I remembered she was an abandoned bride and to be pitied.

  ‘Me Lady. Is there nowt else I can fetch you?’

  She didn’t even look at me, only shook her head while lifting the letter to read it again. I retreated to the door.

  ‘Wait. Can you fetch me these?’ She picked up a ribbon-festooned box of sweetmeats. ‘Jesmire,’ she said, as if the word tasted like a sour lemon, ‘has gone to look for some, but I doubt she will succeed.’

  ‘Can I see?’ I hesitated and then at her nod, came forward and peered into the paper-layered depths. A fragrance rose from the wooden box of fine sugar and a pulsing scent that one moment delighted and the next disgusted, like charred treacle.

  ‘Violet pastilles?’ I ventured.

  I took her silence for agreement.

  ‘You won’t find them in these parts,’ I explained. ‘Yet I could have a go at making them.’ My blood was still up, from the offence I’d taken over my fricassee. ‘Well,’ I shrugged, ‘I could make summat like ’em. I pride myself I can cook almost any article I taste.’

  I pride myself. Puff-headed words.

  ‘What did you say? Damn it, girl, I can barely comprehend your foxed speech. You could make them?’ From her grimace you would have thought I had told her to pin them in her hair. ‘Why, these are from The Cocoa-Nut Tree at Covent Garden. You have heard of that establishment?’

  No doubt she expected me to scratch my head like a right country numkin.

  ‘The Cocoa-Nut Tree at Covent Garden? Why it’s the finest confectioner in the capital and sells bonbons, macaroons, candied fruits, and ices,’ I said in my proper reading voice. I had long studied their advertisement in Mr Pars’ London Gazette after he’d left it by the kitchen fire. It was a beautiful advertisement, with little drawings of sugar cones, ice pots, and tiny men attending wondrous stoves.

  ‘Why, you are quite the monkey mimic, aren’t you?’ I felt her scrutiny like something crawling on my skin. Beneath her slummocky ways she had wits aplenty.

  ‘Yet I reckon,’ I added quickly, ‘I would need one to copy.’

  ‘What’s to lose,’ she sighed, falling back upon the pillow. ‘Take one. Your name?’

  ‘Biddy Leigh, Me Lady.’ I curtseyed deep.

  ‘Take one,’ she repeated. ‘But if you cannot make a perfect copy, Biddy Leigh, you must send to London for a whole box, all from your wages. Do you understand?’ I felt a quickening of alarm. A fancy box like that might cost me a quarter year’s wages.

  ‘You do understand? A perfect copy. Not just – what was it you said? “Summat laak um”.’

  She laughed at her aping of my speech, a hoarse chuckle that I did not like at all. Did I truly sound like a witless beast?

  ‘Aye, Me Lady.’ I bobbed deep and slipped the sweetmeat in my pocket. As I turned to leave I saw her grasp the ratty dog and begin a new game. She made it dance on its hind-legs while she dandled one of the precious violet sweetmeats, till with a gobble the pastille disappeared.

  V

  The Stillroom, Mawton Hall

  Being the day before Souling Night, October 1772

  Biddy Leigh, her journal

  * * *

  To Make Violet Pastilles

  Take your Essence of Violets and put into a Sugar Syrup, so much as will stain a good colour, boil them till you see it turn to Candy Height, then work it with some Gum Dragon steeped in Rosewater and so make into whatever shape you please, pour it upon a wet trencher, and when it is cold cut it into Lozenges.

  Lady Maria Grice, given to her by her grandmother the Countess of Tilsworth, from a receipt well favoured in the days of Good Queen Bess

  * * *

  Later that evening I marched to my dear Mrs Garland for help, leaving the servants singing over their cider, and the kitchen scrubbed clean. To Lady Carinna I’d sent what I could conjure from the larder: white soup, a little hock of ham, jugged hare, medlar jelly, and the speedy whipping of a plum fool. Still, I felt wretched as I trod the sodden paths through the Old Plantation with my lantern held high. Tonight I had finally to choose between life as a cook with Mrs Garland or as Jem’s sworn wife. To prick my guilt further I knew my old cook was ailing, and feared she would not bless our union. As the dusk gathered and the ravens’ mournful cries split the air, I shivered to think of her all alone, for the stillroom was no place for an invalid. In the time of old King Charles it had been a fine brick-built distilling house, with twin pillars at the door and glass panes in the metalled windows. But it was now many years since Lady Maria had made her fashionable cordials there. Some of the more foolish maidservants avoided that dark avenue and talked of glimpsing a thin white lady in the twilight. Her ill-luck was a warning, they said, against meddling in herblore. Mr Pars called them empty-headed minxes, for he still came by and helped himself to bundles of herbs to ease his lungs. For myself, I saw no ghostly shade in the dark trees. As for Lady Maria’s uneasy rest, I now wonder if that wronged lady was indeed stirring in her barren grave.

  Inside the stillroom I tiptoed between teet
ering rows of bottles and flasks, and skirted around chests heaped harum-scarum with spices. Dipping my head, I knocked against bunches of herbs that scattered powdered dust. It was a worse mess than I remembered. It was here that Mrs G had given me my education, in this kingdom of smells and flavours. Now apparatus stood furred with mould on the tiled floor. The air was sour with mildew.

  It pains me to think how I found my dear old friend asleep on the couch, her breath wheezing, and the grey fuzz of her hair escaping its cap. It is cruel to see what a life of hard labour can bring: I’d seen her knees, back, and hands failing day by day.

  Then her eyes opened and I saw joy in them. ‘Biddy dear,’ she sighed.

  For a while we chattered on about the kitchen and Her Ladyship’s arrival. Then I made an effort to revive her in the best way I knew – by challenging her clever wits.

  ‘I wonder, did you ever make these?’ I dropped the violet sweetmeat into her swollen fingers. She pressed it, squeezed it, sniffed it. Finally, she nibbled the edge and licked her dry lips.

  ‘Lady Maria made many such sweetmeats. Long ago.’

  ‘But what is that to us now?’ I said. ‘For she is not here to show us.’

  My friend stayed silent, which was strange. I met her eyes and the shine in them was aguey, I thought.

  ‘I have found something, Biddy. But first, you must swear not to tell.’

  ‘On God’s blood.’

  ‘It’s a book,’ she burst out. ‘I saw a mouse run out from a loose brick, or I should never have found it. It was hidden, Biddy. By Lady Maria herself.’

  And there it was, tucked away beneath her bolster. As she pulled it out, I saw it was leather-bound, and bore on its cover the words: The Cook’s Jewel, being the Household Book of Lady Maria Grice, given to her by her mother Lady Margaret Grice, being a Treasury of the whole Art of the noble Grice Family of York. I craned to see inside it and turned a handful of pages. There were close scribbled sheets on every sort of fruit, fowl, and fish, all the pages copied in different long-stemmed scripts. On a sudden I, too, began to grasp our good fortune. It was a marvel.