Jay Lake - Green

I climbed back down, slipping twice, and forgot myself to the extent that I went back to my sleeping room still wearing the Dancing Mistress’ blacks, along with the soft leather shoes and gloves I always stored with them. When I tugged my gear off, I balled everything up, snuck to steal needles from the sitting room, then sewed it all into a little pillowcase I had been stitching with the design of pale flowers growing through a broken crown.

My heart was hard for the next weeks. I still had my daily lessons with the Dancing Mistress, but there was no warmth between us. She did not push me away or cause me to be punished, but neither did she embrace me nor spare me good words. A few times I thought I caught her studying me when she believed me too busy to notice, but that was her concern.

At the time, I thought we were done. Pride, like patience, can be taught. But as patience may be unlearned all at once in a hard moment, tenacious pride can be acquired in that same hot rush.

I had not lost my ability to stalk the future, and the villains who ruled my life. I had lost my ability to tell friend from foe.

Mistress Tirelle must have sensed that some break had occurred between me and my favorite teacher. She interrupted a long course of instruction on the mechanics of baking-leavening, flours, inclusions and exclusions to dough-to show me how we might make sweets. These were little crushed preparations of bitter almonds, oil-packed dates, and diced apples, which we rolled in sheets made of pastry and grape leaves. When they were fresh baked, I ladled pine honey over them to set up with the heat and a mixture of scents that made my mouth water unreasonably. We then experimented with sugar reductions, and how fanciful designs could be scribed on the sweetmeats with the appropriate flick of a spoon.

“You must know how someone is honored with the preparation of the final course,” the duck woman told me. “A person can be insulted as well, in the subtleties of preparation. Food is a language.”

I clasped my hands. She nodded.

“What of foreigners?” I asked. “Is their language of food known to us?”

My question earned me a suspicious glare. Mistress Tirelle had always been troubled that I had come from across the Storm Sea, as if the circumstances of my birth were somehow my doing. After a moment, she seemed to decide I was not making a subtle slight against her charter here in the Factor’s house. “Sometimes a cook will trouble to learn a foreign way of eating, to show a bit of respect to a powerful merchant or prince.” Her tiny smile ghost-danced across her face. “Remember, those from far away will never measure up to our standards. At need, we make allowances for them, but it is always a charity they should know enough to refuse.”

My unintended criticism is returned fivefold. I never seemed to be in good standing with any of my Mistresses, for all that some were civil enough. Only the Dancing Mistress had treated me fairly. Then she cast me off as well, I thought.

I stepped away a moment to tend the sugar kettle, which served to hide the tears in my eyes.

“Girl.”

Turning around, I looked at Mistress Tirelle, not even trying to swallow the misery that must have been naked on my face. To my good fortune, she seemed to believe her slight had cut me to the quick.

“We will be sending a fine bread out tomorrow.” Her voice dropped. “To be judged.” A strange, false smile drew her lips upward like dead men plucked reluctantly from the soil. “Think on what you will make that will reflect best on the Pomegranate Court.”

I clasped my hands again. She frowned, but tipped her chin that I might speak.

“Judged by whom, Mistress?” I asked. “Against what?”

“What happens outside the walls of the Pomegranate Court is no concern of yours, Girl. We’ll send your work out, and it will be judged.”

The answer seemed clear enough to me. There was to be a competition among the courts of the Factor’s house!

I swallowed my own answering smile. Several years in this place, and finally I could show my worth. I could only thank the sun there was not to be a riding competition. It might have been better for me if we were playing at tree climbing, those invisible girls and I, but this would do. This would do.

Early the next morning, I sifted through grades of flour and sugar in my thoughts. Duck eggs, for their richness, or quail’s, for their delicacy? I was still considering inclusions in the bread, but a wash for the top seemed apropos. Coarse sugar and cardamom could be sprinkled to accent the loaf.

My washing went quickly, and my cotton shifts were ever my cotton shifts. We were approaching autumn, but I did not need a wrap yet, not even early in the morning. Heat and cold were almost the same to me now, except when my breath stung or I was required to protect my feet.

Out on the balcony I saw a mist swaddling our little courtyard. The pomegranate tree bulked strange in the poor light, its branches splayed like broken fingers. The air smelled of cold stone and the not-so-distant sea. My eyes strayed to the branches where my night running blacks should be. They were stored away now, and the Dancing Mistress’ little scrap with them.

Baking was so much… less… than pushing myself in darkness. Would I rather be a girl who could make a pretty loaf to please a lord, or a girl who could gain a rooftop on a fifteen count unseen by those within the house?

Neither choice held a purpose, I realized. Mistress Tirelle had told me time and again I would not be expected to ply my arts. Only to know them very, very well.

A frightening question occurred to me: Were the Mistresses failed candidates? Perhaps Mistress Danae’s knowledge of letters or Mistress Leonie’s mastery of sewing and weaving were the result of a dozen years behind these bluestone walls before some defect or small rebellion had cast them out.

I wanted to go home. More than anything, I wanted my life back. But if somehow that never happened, I did not want to spend my years here teaching other girls lessons I’d learned under the blows of the sand-filled tube.

That brought to mind what I missed most about my night runs with the Dancing Mistress. Not the work, but having someone who would allow me to speak, and without reservation heed the words I spoke.

Then it’s too bad for her that she used me ill!

The anger buoyed me. That emotion I put away to sustain me through the day, and headed downstairs to the great kitchen. I would not break my fast until Mistress Tirelle gave me permission to prepare the morning meal, but I could look over my spices and flours and bring my earlier thoughts closer to the oven.

This was the best day yet with Mistress Tirelle. We had a project, and my skills had grown strong enough to lead.

The Pomegranate Court had recently taken a delivery of a batch of exotic fruits, which I was told had been grown in a glass house that brought a little sliver of the southern sun to the Stone Coast. I chilled plantains on ice, then sliced the fruits thin and fried them with sesame seeds. The smell of that cooking was heavenly, for sesame improves almost everything. At the same time, I reduced guavas to a jelled paste into which I folded crushed almonds. That sweet-and-bitter combination made my mouth water as well.

For the crust, Mistress Tirelle and I made a very buttery dough, which I stretched and folded and stretched and folded, layering coarse sugar and thin-sliced almonds in at the last. The dough I cut into a dozen squares. I spread the guava paste within these, arranged the crisped plantains, then folded the dough over again. I topped each with a wash of quail’s egg, more coarse sugar, a few grains of rock salt, and a scattering of sesame seeds. I placed a whole nut in the top of each so that they would bake up with a dent, into which I planned to place a slice of chilled plantain when the pastries were out and cool.