HOW A MILANESE BAKER-BOY AND A PADUAN PHYSICIAN KEPT POISON OUT OF THE
KING'S DISH
Ranulph the troubadour was riding along a lonely moorland trail, singing
softly to himself. In so poor a neighborhood there was little fear of
robbers, and the Barbary horse which he had under him could outrun
most other horses. The light-stepping hoofs made little noise upon the
springy turf, and as the song ended he heard some one sobbing behind a
group of stunted bushes. He halted and listened. The sound ceased.
"Ho there, little one--what is the trouble?"
He spoke in Saxon, the language of the country folk, but at the first
words a figure sprang up and dodged from shrub to rock like a scared
leveret. He called again quickly in French:
"Hola! little friend, wait a moment!"
There was no answer. Somehow he did not like to leave the mystery
unsolved. There must be a child in trouble, but what child could there
be in this wild place, and neither Norman nor Saxon? It was not far
enough to the West to be Welsh borderland, and it was too far south to
be near either Scotland or the Danelaw. He spoke in Provencal, and the
fugitive halted at the sound of the soft southern o's and a's; then he
spoke again in the Lombard dialect of Milan. A boy ventured out of the
thicket and stood staring at him. Ranulph flung himself off his horse
and held out his hand.
"Come here, little comrade, and tell me who you are, and why you are all
alone here."
The boy's dark eyes grew wider in his elvish face and his hands opened
and shut nervously as he answered in Italian:
"I am no one, and I have no home. Take me not to prison."
"There is no thought of a prison, my lad, but I cannot wait here. Come,
ride with me, and I will take you to a kind woman who will take care of
you."
The boy hesitated, but at last loneliness conquered timidity and
distrust, and he came. The troubadour swung him up to the front of the
saddle and they rode on through the gathering dusk. Forgetting his
terror as he heard the familiar sound of his native tongue, the boy told
his story readily enough. His name was Giovanni Bergamotto, but he had
been born in Milan, in the year that Barbarossa crossed the Alps. The
first thing that he could really remember was his mother crying over her
father and two brothers, who had been killed in the siege. He remembered
many days when there was nothing to eat in the house. When Milan was
taken he was old enough to walk at his mother's side as the people were
driven out and the city destroyed so that no one should ever live there
again. His father had been killed when the Emperor hung a siege-tower
all over with hostages and captives to be shot at by their own people
within the walls. He remembered his grandfather lifting him up to see
when the Carocchio was brought out, and the great crucifix above the
globe was lowered to do homage to the Emperor. He remembered seeing the
Imperial banner unfurled from the top of the Cathedral. These things,
his grandfather told him, no Milanese should ever forget.
He and his mother had wandered about from one city to another until his
mother died, two or three years later. He had worked for a pastry cook
who beat him and starved him. At last he had run away and stolen his
passage on a ship bound for England. They had beaten him when they found
him, but kept him to help the cook. When he landed at a southern port on
the English coast, he had found himself in a land of cold mist, where no
sun shone, no fruit grew, and no one knew his language. He had turned at
first naturally to the towns, for he was a city boy and craved the
companionship of the crowd. But when he said that he was a Lombard they
seemed to be angry. Perhaps there was some dreadful mistake, and he was
in a land where the Ghibellines, the friends of the Emperor, were the
rulers.
When at last he faltered out this question his new friend gave a
compassionate little laugh and patted his shoulder reassuringly.
"No, little one, there is no fear of that. This is England, and the
English King rules all the people. We have neither Guelf nor Ghibelline.
A red rose here--is just a rose," he added as he saw Giovanni's
questioning look at the crimson rose in his cap. Red roses were the
flower of the Guelf party in North-Italian cities, as the white rose was
the badge of the Ghibellines who favored the Imperial party; and the
cities were divided between the two and fiercely partisan.
"The Lombards in London," Ranulph went on, "are often money-lenders, and
this the people hate. That is why thy black hair and eyes and thy
Lombard tongue made them suspect thee, little comrade."
Giovanni gave a long sigh of relief and fell silent, and when he was
lifted off the horse at the door of Dame Lavender he had to be shaken
awake to eat his supper. Then he was put to bed in a corner of the attic
under the thatched roof, and the fragrance of well-known herbs and
flowers came stealing into his dreams on the silent wind of the night.
Language is not needed when a boy finds himself in the home of a born
mother. All the same, Giovanni felt still more as if he must have waked
up in heaven when he found sitting by the hearth a kind, grave old man
who was himself an Italian, and to whom the tragedy of the downfall of
Milan was known. Tomaso the physician told Dame Lavender all about it
while Giovanni was helping Mary sort herbs in the still-room. Mary had
learned a little of the physician's language and knew what he liked, and
partly by signs, partly in hobbling Italian, they arrived at a plan for
making a vegetable soup and cooking a chicken for dinner in a way that
Giovanni knew. As the fragrance of the simmering broth came in at the
door Tomaso sniffed it, smiled and went to see what the little waif was
about. Standing in the doorway he watched Giovanni slicing garlic and
nodded to himself. Men had died of a swift dagger-thrust in a bye-street
of Lombardy because they cut an onion or ate an orange in the enemy's
fashion. By such small signs were Guelf and Ghibelline known.
"My boy," said the old physician, when dinner was over and Giovanni,
pleased beyond measure at the compliments paid his cooking, was
awaiting further orders, "do you know that Milan is going to be
rebuilt?"
The Milanese boy's pinched white face lighted with incredulous rapture.
"Rebuilt?" he stammered.
"Some day," said Tomaso. "The people of four Lombard cities met in
secret and made that vow not three years after the Emperor gained his
victory. They have built a city at the joining of two rivers, and called
it Alexandria after the Pope whom he drove out of Rome. He still has his
own governors in the cities that he conquered, but the League is gaining
every month. Milan will be once more the Queen of the Midland--perhaps
before very long. But it is a secret."
"They may kill me," Giovanni stammered, "but I will not tell. I will
never tell."
Tomaso smiled. "I knew that, my son," he said. "That is why I spoke of
this to you. You may talk freely to me or to Ranulph the troubadour, but
to no one else unless we give you leave. You must be patient, wise and
industrious, and fit yourself to be a true citizen of the Commune. For
the present, you must be a good subject of the English King, and learn
the language."
Giovanni hid the precious secret in his heart during the months that
followed, and learned both English and French with a rapidity that
astonished Dame Lavender. He had a wisdom in herbs and flowers, too,
that was almost uncanny. In the kitchen-gardens of the great houses
where he had been a scullion, there were many plants used for perfumes,
flavorings or coloring fluids, which were quite unknown to the English
cook. He was useful to Dame Lavender both in the garden and the
still-room. He knew how to make various delicious cakes as well, and
how to combine spices and honey and syrups most cunningly, for he had
seen pastry-cooks and confectioners preparing state banquets, and he
never forgot anything he had seen.
The castle which crowned the hill in the midst of the small town where
Dame Lavender lived had lately been set in order for the use of a
very great lady--a lady not young, but accustomed to luxury and good
living--and all the resources of Dame Lavender's garden had been
taxed to provide perfumes, ointments and fresh rose-leaves, for the
linen-presses and to be strewn about the floors. Mary and her mother
had all that they could do in serving Queen Eleanor.
The Queen was not always easy to please. In her youth she had traveled
with Crusaders and known the strange cities of the East; she had
escaped once from a castle by night, in a boat, to free herself from
a too-persistent suitor. She was not one of the meek ladies who spent
their days in needlework, and as for spinning and weaving, she had asked
scornfully if they would have her weave herself a hair shirt like a
hermit. Mary Lavender was not, of course, a maid of honor, but she found
that the Queen seemed rather to like having her about.
"I wish I had your secret, Marie of the Flowers," said graceful
Philippa, one weary day. "Tell me what you do, that our Lady the Queen
likes so well."
Mary smiled in her frank, fearless way. "It may be," she answered, "that
it is the fragrance of the flowers. She desires now to embroider red
roses for a cushion, and I have to ask Master Tomaso how to dye the
thread."
The embroidering of red roses became popular at once, but soon there
was a new trouble. The Queen began to find fault with her food.
"This cook flavors all his dishes alike," she said pettishly. "He thinks
that colored toys of pastry and isinglass feed a man's stomach. When the
King comes here--although he never knows what is set before him, that is
true,--I would like well to have a fit meal for his gentlemen. Tell this
Beppo that if he cannot cook plain toothsome dishes I will send for a
farmer's wench from Longley Farm."
This was the first that had been heard of the King's intended visit, and
great was the excitement in the kitchen. Ranulph dismounted at the door
of Dame Lavender's cottage and asked for Giovanni. Beppo the cook had
been calling for more help, and the local labor market furnished nothing
that suited him. Would Giovanni come? He would do anything for Ranulph
and for Mary.
"That is settled, then," laughed Ranulph. "I shall not have to scour the
country for a scullion with hands about him instead of hoofs or horns."
In his fourteen years of poverty the little Italian had learned to hold
his tongue and keep his eyes open. Beppo was glad enough to have a
helper who did not have to be told anything twice, and in the
hurry-scurry of the preparations Giovanni made himself useful beyond
belief. The cakes, however, did not suit the Queen. Mary came looking
for Giovanni in the kitchen-garden.
"Vanni," she said, "will you make some of your lozenges for the banquet?
Beppo says you may. I think that perhaps his cakes are not simple
enough, and I know that the King likes plain fare."
Giovanni turned rather white. "Very well, Mistress Mary," he answered.
Giovanni's lozenges were not candies, although they were diamond-shaped
like the lozenges that are named after them. They were cakes made after
the recipe still used in some Italian bakeries. He pounded six ounces of
almonds; then he weighed eight eggs and put enough pounded sugar in the
opposite scale to balance them; then he took out the eggs and weighed an
equal amount of flour, and of butter. He melted the butter in a little
silver saucepan. The eggs were not beaten, because egg-beaters had not
been invented; they were strained through a sieve from a height into a
bowl, and thus mixed with air. Two of the eggs were added to the pounded
almonds, and then the whole was mixed with a wooden spoon in a wooden
bowl. The paste was spread on a thin copper plate and baked in an oven
built into the stone wall and heated by a fireplace underneath. While
still warm the cake was cut into diamond-shaped pieces, called lozenges
after the carved stone memorial tablets in cathedrals. The Queen
approved them, and said that she would have those cakes and none other
for the banquet, but with a little more spice. Beppo, who had paid the
sweetmeats a grudging compliment, produced some ground spice from his
private stores and told Giovanni to use that.
"Vanni," said Mary laughing as she passed through the kitchen on the
morning of the great day, "do you always scour your dishes as carefully
as this?" The boy looked up from the copper plate which he was
polishing. Mary thought he looked rather somber for a cook who had just
been promoted to the office of baker to the King.
"Things cannot be too clean," he said briefly. "Mistress Mary, will you
ask Master Tomaso for some of the spice that he gave to your mother, for
me?"
Mary's blue eyes opened. Surely a court cook like Beppo ought to have
all the spice needed for a simple cake like this. However, she brought
Giovanni a packet of the fragrant stuff an hour later, and found Beppo
fuming because the work was delayed. The basket of selected eggs had
been broken, the melted butter had been spilled, and the cakes were not
yet ready for the oven. Giovanni silently and deftly finished beating
his pastry, added the spice, rolled out the dough, began the baking.
When the cakes came out of the oven, done to a turn, and with a most
alluring smell, he stood over them as they cooled and packed them
carefully with his own hands into a basket. Mary Lavender came through
the kitchen just as the last layer was put in.
"Those are beautiful cakes, Vanni," she said kindly. "I am sure they are
fit for the King. Did you use the spice I gave you?"
Giovanni's heart gave a thump. He had not reckoned on the fact that
simple Mary had grown up where there was no need of hiding a plain
truth, and now Beppo would know. The cook turned on him.
"What? What?" he cried. "You did not use my spices? You take them and do
not use them?"
Mary began to feel frightened. The cook's black eyes were flashing and
his mustache bristling with excitement, until he looked like the cross
cat on the border of the Queen's book of fables. But Giovanni was
standing his ground.
"I used good spice," he said firmly. "Try and see."
He held out one of the cakes to Beppo, who dashed it furiously to the
ground.
"Where are my spices?" he shrieked. "You meant to steal them?" He dashed
at the lad and seized him as if to search for the spices. Giovanni shook
in his grasp like a rat in the jaws of a terrier, but he did not cringe.
"I sent that packet of spice to Master Tomaso an hour ago," he gasped
defiantly, "asking him if it was wholesome to use in the kitchen--and
here he is now."
At sight of the old physician standing calm as a judge in the doorway,
Beppo bolted through the other door, seized a horse that stood in the
courtyard and was gone before the astonished servants got their breath.
"What is all this?" inquired Tomaso. "I came to warn that man that the
packet of spice which you sent is poison. Where did you get it?"
"The cook bought it of a peddler and gave it to Vanni," answered Mary,
scared but truthful. "You all heard him say that he did," she added to
the bystanders. "He told Vanni to use it in these cakes, but Vanni used
the spice you gave us."
"I have seen that peddler before," gasped Giovanni. "He tried to bribe
me to take the Queen a letter and a packet, and I would not. I put some
of the spice in honey, and the flies that ate of it died. Then I sent it
to you."
"It was a subtle device," said Tomaso slowly. "The spice would disguise
the flavor. Every one knew that Giovanni was to make the cakes, and that
the Queen will not come to the banquet. When it is served do you send
each sauce to me for testing. We will have no poison in the King's
dish."
The plot, as Tomaso guessed, had not been born of the jealousy of a
cook, but of subtler brains beyond the seas. The Queen might well have
been held responsible if the poison had worked. But when she heard of
it she wept.
"I have not been loyal," she flung out, in tearful defiance, "but I
would not have done that--never that!"
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