of the circle made by forefinger and thumb. Old-fashioned sugar plate, the boiled-up kind. The temperamental kind. Why isn’t Richard doing this? I could be getting on with something else. It’s not as if there isn’t a lot else for me to do.
And lo and behold: Richard, slipping into the room as if his absence has been of no consequence. In his twenties, but acting as if he’s still in his teens. An odd mix, Richard: worldly and other-worldly. Whatever he says—and whatever I feel—I’m not in fact old enough to be his mother. Yet it’s as if there’s not just a generation’s difference between us, but a lifetime’s. He steps out of his clogs and, shoeless, pads across the warm oak floor. Standing a head above me, he looks down over my shoulder at the glistening, amber roses. And keeps looking. Which makes me uneasy. I scan the roses for imperfections—bubblings, darkenings—and wonder how it happened that he checks up on my work.
Now he has his back to me, bending down, putting his leather slippers on. ‘What needs doing?’
‘You know what needs doing. Because you did half of it, earlier.’
We both look at it: a Marchepane, an embossed disc of marzipan as big as the king’s biggest dinner plates. Not long out of the mould, it’s cooling. But if Richard isn’t quick, it’ll be too cool and the goldleaf won’t stick.
‘Did we get the goldleaf?’ he asks.
‘I got the goldleaf, yes. I need this pan washed—where is Stephen?’ A glance out of the window reveals nothing but wet cobbles and a smile from the yeoman guarding the spicery office. ‘Oh—’ I remember—‘did he find you?’
‘Stephen?’ Richard’s peering into Kit’s abandoned mortar; shifting the pestle among the grains, his eyes closed and head cocked.
‘No. That boy, just now.’
‘Who?’ He touches a fingertip to the inside of the mortar, then raises the hand, palm upwards, into the light, as if setting something free.
‘He didn’t, then.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. Someone came looking for you.’
He dabs the forefinger into the basin of water, rubs it with his thumb. ‘What’d he look like?’
‘Nice-looking.’ Because it occurs to me that this was what he’d been.
‘Nice-looking?’ Richard regards me admiringly. He enunciated the expression as if it had never been used before. ‘Well, could have been anyone,’ he concludes, breezily. ‘You know what I always say: if he wants me badly enough, he’ll come looking again.’
‘Is that—’ I nod towards the mortar—‘up to it?’ Down to it: ground sufficiently for today’s purposes.
‘Of course. Kit’s a good man.’
True, but Richard rarely says so. He can be a hard taskmaster, even though it isn’t his job to be any kind of taskmaster at all; it’s mine. I say, ‘You’re in a good mood.’
He’s browsing along the shelves of spices, doesn’t look at me. ‘Yeah, well,’ is all he says.
And yet again I wonder: how come he’s so familiar with me, and I know so little about him? I brought him up from an orphan, an under-sized urchin living on his wits. I made him who he is, now: confident, respected assistant to the king’s confectioner. (Equal, really: face it. Equal, now, in skill. Rival, if he so chose.) But in so many ways he’s a mystery to me. Sometimes I can barely believe that we’ve spent a decade living alongside each other, working together all day every day and then spending our nights in adjacent lodgings. All these years living like sister and brother. Perhaps that’s why he still captivates me. I find myself watching him when he’s absorbed, when a peculiar clarity comes into those river-green eyes of his and everything that is Richard dissolves away in them, leaving them with a life of their own. For all the contrived appearance to the contrary, he’s deadly serious about his work. That’s something I do know about him. Something I’ve learned. It’s probably the only aspect of life that he’s serious about. I’m probably the only person who ever gets to see beyond his flippancy.
When he arrived, a decade ago, to chance his luck in the royal kitchens, he was just one of so many boys hanging around in hope of paid work. Who could blame them? Doubtless they’d heard how there were wages to be earned as well as two meals a day and, at night, space to curl up near the massive ovens. A job in the royal household is a job for life, and it’s a good life; and when we’re not up to the job—sick, or old—we’re still paid. Less, yes, of course, but enough to keep body and soul. It’s hard work, in the kitchens, but worth it. If the boys couldn’t find paid work, they worked anyway and made it pay: muscling in on household life, and trading in the leftovers which were supposed to go to beggars. They made lives for themselves, even if they were barely clothed. My own little kitchen had a bevy of such boys, always coming and going. I’d inherited a situation which had been gaining ground, unchecked, for years. I didn’t like it; didn’t like the chaos. I only managed any serious work after the boys had gone away to sleep and before they returned in the mornings. And then, inevitably, there was the filching. The sticky fingers. The Chief Clerks hold me personally accountable for the most valuable substance in all the kitchens, but how could I watch every grain? How could I supervise hordes of hungry, destitute children around sugar?
The day I came across Richard, I was doing just as I was doing a moment ago: boiling sugar syrup. One of the boys wanted my attention. Mrs Cornwallis? Mrs Cornwallis? Mrs Cornwallis? I was very busy; surely that was obvious. No? Well, I’d make it obvious, by ignoring him. Not that I had much choice—I couldn’t take my attention from the sugar—but I could have spoken. I could have said, Hang on, please, Joseph, or whoever. Just a moment, John. Missuscornwallismissuscornwallismissuscornwallis—Before I knew it, I’d shot round and was glaring at him, furious with myself for having been distracted. Heat bloomed in the pan behind me, and there was a coppery flash as I whirled back to it. It was gone from the charcoal brazier; it was sinking into a basin of water. I was there, instantly, assessing the damage: none. It was saved, it was saved. I took a moment to appreciate that some kid had done it. Some boy had not only judged the critical point—and from across the room—but had acted without hesitation, snatching a weight of flame-hot and explosive gold from the king’s own confectioner. Then he’d relinquished it, immediately; he was already busy wiping a workbench. He didn’t look at me.
I asked him: ‘Who are you?’
Strange eyes: green, slanted. Elfin. He could have been any age between seven and twelve. ‘Richard.’ He shrugged.
‘Richard,’ I repeated, stupidly, because I didn’t know what else to say; where to start. And, anyway, he was wiping again. His mousy hair was a little matted at the back, I noticed.
Less than a fortnight later, we were visited by a representative of the Cofferer. A not unexpected visit. Word was that Cardinal Wolsey had decreed a great clean-up, a great head-count in the household: enough is enough; time’s up for hangers-on, and hangers-on of hangers-on. When the representative had finished remarking on the fact that I’m the only woman working in the kitchens, which was hardly news to me or to anyone else, he explained his mission: ‘When I’ve finished, there should be around two hundred people working in the kitchens. Not…’ he faltered. ‘Well, not more.’ He said, ‘Basically, anybody who’s not somebody has to go.’ He looked at Kit. ‘Obviously the yeoman here is somebody.’ Kit smiled. Kit, in his yeoman’s green. What
