“Of course, sir.”
“Good lad,” said Uncle Ralph.
It was one of the most startling things he’d ever uttered.
Driving home with Bibbie, too preoccupied to pay much attention to her fuming complaints about overbearing, old-fashioned mothers, too numb to feel his usual terror at her recklessly extravagant driving, Monk gnawed at his bottom lip and wished he’d not eaten that third helping of roast beef.
Why hadn’t Gerald told him about the procedure? Was his silence another symptom of their ailing friendship? Doused in misery, as Bibbie rambled on he nodded in what he hoped were all the right places, offered an encouraging grunt every now and then, and felt his belly churn more and more nervously the closer they got to home.
Leaving his sister to garage the jalopy, he had her let him out by the gate. As he reached the bottom of the steps at the end of the path, he heard a familiar rustle of feathers.
“Evening, sunshine.”
Reg. She was perched on the big flowerpot by the front door, light from the window limning her long, sharp beak and making her eyes gleam.
“Evening,” he said, stopping. “What are you doing out here?”
Her tail feathers rattled. “Enjoying a little peace and quiet.”
There was something in her voice. “Oh. So… you know?”
“That our daft Mister Dunwoody spent the day having himself spring cleaned?” She sniffed. “Yes. I know.”
Monk folded his knees until he was sitting on the nearest step. “You think getting rid of those foul grimoire incants was daft?”
“No. That was smart. Going it alone was daft.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “Have you seen him?”
“I spoke to him. From the other side of his closed bedroom door. He’s not interested in company.” Reg chattered her beak. “I’ll try again in the morning.”
Yes. Reg had often been the only one who could talk sense into Gerald. He just had to trust that at least that much hadn’t changed.
“I’m worried, Reg. He’s not the same.”
In the darkness, a cynical snort. “Neither am I, sunshine. And neither are you. We’re all of us different now, aren’t we, Mister Markham? One way or another.”
He realised then that he wasn’t ready to answer that question, or to talk in any meaningful way about what had happened in the other Ottosland. About the Reg who’d died there, or the Monk who’d died here and the Gerald who’d killed them both. Those things were too enormous. Still too close. He needed more time.
“Is Gerald all right, d’you think?”
“No,” said Reg, looking down her beak at him. “But you don’t need me to tell you that.”
Groaning, Monk dropped his head in his hands. “Oh, Reg. What are we going to do?”
Another rattle of tail feathers, and then a flap and a thud as she landed on his shoulder. “Right now? You’re going to pour me a brandy. Then we’re both going to take our beauty sleeps. And come tomorrow? Well. We’ll see.”
He stood, his knees creaking. “Don’t mention this to Bibbie. Or Mel, for that matter.”
“Ha!” said Reg, and whacked him with her wing. “Do I look like I came down in the last shower of turnips?”
“No, Reg,” he said humbly.
“No,” she echoed. “Now gee up. My brandy glass isn’t about to fill itself, is it?”
CHAPTER THREE
“Ooooh, Ferdie,” said Mitzie, breathless. “Should we? I don’t think we should. What do you think?”
Grinning, Abel Bestwick slid his arm around the buxom kitchen maid’s willowy waist, then accidentally-on-purpose let his eager hand slip south to caress her delightfully plump behind. What did he think? He thought that if Sir Alec knew he was dipping his wick on Department time he’d find himself in very hot water. But seeing as how Sir Alec was several countries eastward, chances were his superior would never find out. And anyway, after living nearly four years as Ferdie Goosen, pantry-man in the Royal Palace of Splotze, he was owed whatever chances of wick-dipping wandered his way.
Sometimes it was a real bugger he’d been born half-Splotzin. And an even bigger bugger he looked all Splotzin through-and-through and thanks to his mother spoke Splotzin like a native.
“What do I think, Mitzie?” he murmured, nibbling at her ear. They were tucked out of sight in the palace kitchens’ vast drygoods pantry, surrounded by beans and sugar and flour and herbs and suchlike. “I think even lackeys like us deserve a noon break from our toils. And it just so happens I overheard the head groom mentioning he and the lads would be gone most of the day, taking the horses with them. So you and me, we can duck into an empty stable or up to the hay loft and-” He closed his fingers on her ample flesh. “Bounce.”
Mitzie squealed, her lavish eyelashes fluttering. “Ooooh, Ferdie. In broad daylight? Idn’t that playing dice blindfolded?”
“Bit of danger adds spice,” he said, and dared a kiss. “You feeling spicy, Mitz? My itsy bitsy mittens?”
She kissed him back. For all her protestations she was no innocent, Mitzie. She’d only been in the kitchens a few months, but he’d sized her up on her first day as a lass who wasn’t a stranger to bouncing. His luck, for once, that her come-hither eye had alighted on him.
“I’ll meet you round back of the stables, by the manure pile,” she said, giggling. “Don’t be late, Ferdie.”
And then she slipped away, not a moment too soon, for he’d barely tipped a fresh sack of flour into the drygoods pantry’s big stone crock when the cook-in-charge barged in shouting for more salt. He did a lot of shouting, did Cook. In that respect he was the opposite of Sir Alec, who never raised his voice… and was about a hundred times more frightening because of it.
As soon as Cook stopped shouting and waving his fat arms, Abel pointed. “Salt’s there, Cook. Came in fresh just yesterday.”
“No, no, no, that is the wrong salt!” Cook bellowed. His cheeks were scarlet, his jowls wobbling like badly-set calf’s-foot jelly. “You are stupid. You think I create the finest medallions of veal poached in malmsey for the Crown Prince and Princess and His Highness and the foreigners using plain marsh salt from Ottosland?” He spat on the stone floor. “Pah for your Ottosland! Where is my beautiful sea salt from Beleen?”
Abel blinked at him. “I don’t know?”
“Pah!” No respecter of lackeys, Cook brandished his ham-hock fists. “But you are the senior pantry-man! Why don’t you know?”
The answer to that was simple-because Cook insisted on jealously guarding his collection of recipes and his weekly menus, so that the underlings who cooked in his wake and the kitchen’s general lackeys never knew from one day to the next what ingredients would be needed.
But if he said that, Cook might well toss him out on his arse, which wouldn’t please Sir Alec at all. So he bit his tongue, looking suitably chastened. On the inside, though, he was seething. Enough was enough. As soon as the royal wedding was done with he was going to ask Sir Alec for a different assignment. It wasn’t just the scarcity of wick-dipping, though that didn’t help. No, it was the daily bollocking from Cook, and the mind-numbing, bone-breaking physical labour that went with being a pantry-man and the relentless, grinding reminders of his despised lackey status and the ever-present background tension over that bloody Canal. The whole bloody set-up was giving him the gripes. He was homesick. Fed up to the back teeth with all things Splotze. Desperate for a pint or several of good Ottish brown ale.
Cook was slamming his way around the drygoods pantry’s shelves, searching like a madman for his precious Beleen salt. As if it could make that much of a bloody difference! Salt was salt, wasn’t it? If it was white and salty, what else could any sane man possibly want? Clearly, Cook needed to get out more. He needed to do a little wick-dipping of his own, instead of spending his days making love to pots of bubbling stew.