Maria McCann - As Meat Loves Salt

‘That was an evil day for him. The sermons!’ Margett gloated. ‘Table lectures, fireside lectures, pillow lectures! – until he said she might bring you to the house. A fellow was sent for you directly, before the Master could change his mind.’

I remembered that. When the man came into the field and bade us follow him, for we were now to work indoors at Beaurepair, he must have thought we would never move off. Izzy stood motionless and speechless, while I dropped to my knees thanking God, for I knew what we had escaped. Servitude inside the house was still bondage in Egypt, but we were now shaded against the noonday heat.

Caro’s fortune was even humbler than my own. Margett told me that Caro’s mother, Lucy Bale, had been a maid at Beaurepair in time past, a woman about the Mistress’s own age and her entire favourite.

‘It ended sadly, though,’ the woman said. ‘In the same year that the Mistress married Sir John, Lucy found herself with child. That’s a fault easily wiped out, to be sure! – but her Mathias was killed. An unlucky fall.’

Later, Godfrey told me more. Lucy, it seemed, bore up under her shame with no little dignity. Sir John would have sent her away, but his wife argued that provided she showed herself repentant, she should stay, else she would surely sink to a most degraded condition. In the event she had no chance to sink, for she died in giving birth to her daughter.

The child, which was of a rare white-and-gold beauty (both Lucy and Mathias were, said Godfrey, bright as sovereigns), was christened Caroline and put under the care of the then steward’s wife, to be raised up a servant. I remembered her being shouted for, and once, when she might be six or seven, dragged by her hand through the great hall, trembling, for the steward’s wife was sharp of tongue and temper. Had Mathias lived, Caro should have been called Caroline Hawks, but none of his kin wished to claim her, so she kept the name of Bale. Izzy, finding her one day weeping in the garden, took her in his arms and dried her eyes and nose on his shirt. He called her Caro for short, and Caro she became.

‘Come along, Jacob.’ Godfrey stood before me, smoothing down his collar. ‘Leave that for later and wash your hands. The meat is ready to go out.’

I rinsed the sand off my fingers in a bowl of water before following him into the kitchen. The roast was set upon a wheeled table, and as fragrant as the stalled ox must have smelt to the Prodigal – a fine piece of mutton stuck with rosemary. Around it stood dishes of carrots and peas, a pigeon pie and sweet young lettuces dressed with eggs, mushrooms and oil.

‘Let us hope they leave plenty over,’ I said to Godfrey.

‘Amen to that.’ The steward poured wine from a decanter, held it up to the light and sipped it. ‘Very pleasing. I will help you with the dishes and then come back for the drink.’

We trundled in with the mutton, my mouth watering. Someone, most likely Care, had set up the table with such precision that every cup and dish was in absolute line, not a hair’s breadth out. No pewter today; instead, the plate glittered. At one end of this perfection sat My Lady, her hair like string and face flaky with white lead; at the other, Sir John, bloated and purplish. To his mother’s right Mervyn sprawled like a schoolboy in a sulk, tipping the chair back and forth on two of its four legs. He was far gone in drink. I silently thanked Godfrey, grate on me as he might, for keeping Caro away. Only men and whores should serve Mervyn Roche.

When he saw us he shifted in the seat with annoyance and almost fell backwards.

‘Mother!’

‘Yes, my darling?’

‘Mother, why don’t you get a proper butler? Here’s the steward serving the wine – what does he know of it? – and none but that booby to help him. If there be any wine.’

‘It is decanted, Sir, and I am going back for it directly,’ Godfrey soothed.

‘I saw a man at Bridgwater carve in a new way entirely,’ Mervyn announced. ‘It was a wonder to see how he did it – here—’

To my amazement he leapt from his seat and held out his hands for the carving knife and fork.

Godfrey kept his hands on the trolley but dared do no more; he looked helplessly at My Lady. Sir John, seemingly oblivious, stared at the ceiling.

‘Do you think you should, my sweet?’ Lady Roche implored. On receiving no reply she tried for help elsewhere. ‘Husband, if I may speak a word? Husband?’

‘Might a man eat in peace?’ the husband grunted.

Mervyn glared at his mother, then snapped his fingers to me. ‘You, Jacob. Give it over here. Christ’s arse, if I can’t carve a joint of meat –!’

The Mistress winced at her son’s foul tongue. I took the roast to him and laid the knife and fork ready. Godfrey disappeared through the door leading to the kitchen. I stood back, arms by my sides as I had been taught. He made a fearful butchery of it, hacking in chunks the sweet, crisp flesh which the cook had so lovingly tended. I saw his mother sigh. When the best part of the meat was ruined I brought forward the plates and shared out the tough lumps between the diners. Why, O God , I was thinking, do You not let slip his knife?

‘A butler, I say,’ he persisted, cutting into the pigeon pie with rather more finesse than he had displayed in carving the mutton.

‘Where is the need?’ asked his mother. ‘We live in a very small way here.’

‘Aye, I’ll say you do!’ He pushed off with his legs from the table, almost dropped backwards onto the floor, but retrieved the balance of the chair just in time. ‘Where is Patty?’ This was his name for Patience.

‘Patty is no longer with us,’ came the reply.

‘What! Dead!’

‘No.’ My Lady began crying.

‘What, then?’

‘Run away. Or—’ She shook her head.

Mervyn glanced at her, took a gobbet of flesh and chewed on it. ‘If she’s run away she’s a fool. You,’ he again snapped his fingers at me, so that I itched to twist them off, ‘tell that Frenchified capon I’ve had better mutton in taverns.’

I bowed and took my chance to escape him a while. Going out of the door I met Godfrey returning with the wine and I hoped it might find better favour than the meat. Best of all would be if it were poisoned. One thing was cheering: Sir Bastard might scorn me but I had beaten him to the woman he desired. Setting aside his sulks and his drink-stained eyes, Mervyn was handsome, especially round the mouth, with its fierce scarlet lips hemming in very white teeth. In him a man might see what his father had been when young, just as in Sir John his son’s fate was laid out plain – if the son were fortunate, for his whoring was proverbial and a lucky pox or clap might yet shorten his days. He had always had a thirst for Caro. If I could think at all on my wedding night, I should take a minute to exult over him.

In the kitchen the cook, used to madness in his masters, shrugged when I told him the insults heaped on the roast.

‘I have a syllabub for that lad,’ he told me. ‘A special one. Don’t you go tasting, Jacob. Barring Godfrey, everyone’s helped with it.’

‘Not me,’ I said. I took my turn and spat in the thing too, stirring in the spittle. A voice like Father’s somewhere in my head said, Sweetly done, my boy . I carried in the syllabubs, placed the defiled one before Mervyn and stood the picture of submission, watching him eat it.

The man who had joined with us servants in taking this small but choice revenge was called Mister, or Mounseer, Daskin. Between him and Mervyn was deadly hatred. We were out of the ordinary in having a foreign cook. Margett, who had told me of my father’s debt to Sir John, dropped dead one day while arranging a goose on the spit, and the Mistress, who clung still to some pretence of elegance, tormented Sir John for a French cook, such as were just then starting to be known in London.