It had to be said that the worst of the pots were nothing like the worst ones in Master Cole’s kitchen. There was not a one he would have consigned to the coals here.
That might have been due to the huge metal vessel of hot water with a fire under it that stood in one corner of the kitchen—this made cleaning ever so much easier. No burned pot ever got quite clean unless it was filled with coals back at the mine, but when you did that, you ruined the finish on the inside and made it more likely that things would stick. But it was most probable that it was due to the cooks. There could always be accidents—something left a little too long—but there were not that many of those with a good cook about. None of Cole Pieters’ cooks had ever been more than “adequate,” or so Mags realized now. It was very strange; he had gradually come to understand that it was not only that the ingredients of the food here were so much better, it was not only that he was getting good, wholesome food instead of scraps. It was that the cooks themselves were good. They didn’t let things burn—and the kitchen at the mine was always full of the smells of something burning.
:I can’t ever ’member a loaf of bread without th’ bottom crust burned.
:Ugh. That is ... well, awfuclass="underline"
:So were the cooks.:
Now the scullion watched him from under a thick fringe of straw-colored hair that almost obscured his eyes and looked as if it had been hacked off with a knife. He still said nothing, but as Mags’ remedies loosened the crusts so that most of the nastiness could be washed off rather than scrubbed off, he began to copy what Mags was doing. It was very clear that this boy was no fool. Mags began to wonder if maybe he ought to cultivate him. With another set of ears in the kitchen, he himself would not need to be there.
Meanwhile, Mags was listening.
Most of the gossip was ordinary kitchen chatter. A maid sent to fetch food and drink had got a glimpse of someone being in a gentleman’s chamber who shouldn’t have been there, since she had a husband of her own. The kitchen knew who was quarreling with whom in the Court, and how the alliances were shifting. They knew who was going to have a child, often before the lady herself did. They knew what young men the daughters were seeing, often when the parents were unaware.
And within the kitchen there was plenty of gossip, too. There was always someone romancing someone else in the kitchen staff, and plenty of jibes about that.
Most of it was harmless. Wasn’t so-and-so the handsomest young lord you ever had seen? And Lady thus-and-such was angling to marry off her daughter to the highest bidder, so to speak, and the poor thing only had eyes for that nice young fellow up from the country with whom she would never be allowed to keep company.
Mags let all the gossip flow around him, although he very quickly realized that this was going to be very useful stuff to the King’s Own. That made him feel rather cheerful.
Finally a serving maid came rushing in, all a-flutter, and not in the sort of way that anyone would connect with “being interfered with,” which was kitchen code for a maid who’d been taken advantage of. “Oh!” she exclaimed, as her entrance caused a stir. “If you had just seen what I’ve seen!”
One of the cooks looked at her indulgently. “Na, missy, if ye’d seen as many things as we hev, ye’d think twice afore ye said that.”
But when Mags angled himself so that he could get a good look at the girl he saw that she was white as paper—and so, at that moment, did the cook. “Mercy!” the woman exclaimed. “Girl, ye look fear-struck!”
“And I should be!” The cook pushed a stool toward her and she sat right down on it, groping after a mug of water that was shoved into her hands. “’Tis them terrible furriners, the bodyguards! They’re haunted!”
Mags started, almost dropping the pot he was scrubbing.
“Haunted! Never!” By this time the head cook, an enormous man, had taken notice, and reacted to the statement with scorn. “There’s never been a spirit in this Palace, and there never will be! The Companions and Heralds keep us safe from such unholy things, and even if they didn’t, the Bards could sing it away!”
“I tell you, I seen it! With me own two eyes!” Normally a girl like this maid would have been overawed by the big man, but whatever she had seen had frightened her too much for her to be in awe of anyone. She stared at him with passionate, if terrified, defiance. “I did! And they seen it, too! They’re as scared as I was! I swear it! That’s why they been looking so seedy!”
“Start from the beginning, girl,” the undercook urged.
Hands shaking, clutching the mug, the girl ducked her head. “It begun like this. You know. They never eat with staff—get us to bring them their dinner special, so they eat before their masters, an’ then go and stand guard behind the chairs during Court dinner.”
“Aye, we know that,” the first cook agreed, as the head cook sniffed his contempt.
“Think they’re too good for the likes of us,” growled the pastry cook. “Think they’re highborn themselves.”
:Actually they are probably testing their food for poison before they eat it, and they would need to eat before their masters do.: Dallen sounded as if his excuse for their behavior made him embarrassed. Mags didn’t have the heart to be as rude about it as he would have liked. Dallen always did see both sides of a situation. And, more and more, so did Mags.
“So I brought ’em their dinner on the cart, like I always do,” the girl continued. “But yesterday and the day before they’ve been—different—when I came. Nervous, I would have said, except I’ve never seen them nervous. And today they were even jumpier. Every time there was a squeak or a rattle, they jumped and looked for what might have caused it. I pushed the cart into the room, just like always. And that was when it happened!”
Her hands were shaking so much that the water sloshed out of her mug and all down the front of her gown.
“What happened?” the cook asked, dabbing at her uniform gown with a napkin. The girl was so shaken she didn’t even notice.
“The ax! There was an ax in the room, on the wall in the room! And all of a sudden it just leaped off the wall, and flipped over three times, and split that dress-helm the tallest one likes to wear because he’s going bald!” She shuddered. “It didn’t just fall! It just about flew! Like someone was throwing it!”
Some of the kitchen staff looked apprehensive, and there was some murmuring back and forth. The maid spoke right over the top of them.
“I saw it and they saw it and they just went white! And the sly one pushed me out of the room and shut the door, which was a good thing, because I couldn’t possibly have moved otherwise! And I ran here.” She wasn’t as close to hysteria as she had been, but Mags had no doubt that she was very near some sort of breakdown.