Cinnamon and Gunpowder (11 page)

It is no great secret that cooking is, in essence, seduction. As with
amour
, pleasure does not bloom in the body so much as in the mind. One may be a “gymnast in the sheets,” as the coarse say, but without passion and internal fire, without longing and anticipation, one may as well be doing calisthenics. So food. The most rarefied tastes on the unprepared tongue may be ignored or, worse, misunderstood. How then is the mind prepared for delicacy? As with Don Juan, reputation stirs desire. But even the best chef must entice interest, use aroma to flirt, caress and kiss with silken soups, reassure and coddle with a dulcet pudding.

Beginning at the end, I roasted walnuts and ground them to a fine crumb, then mixed them with half of my yeast starter, whose spongy surface, to my delight, was capped with a vigorous froth—evidence of its appreciation of the coconut water. To this batter I added flour, honey (warmed and strained through cloth to rid it of the grit), a pinch of salt, and a little lime juice and set it aside near the hearth. My heart leaped up when, an hour later, it had risen. I added a little more coconut water to thin the dough and spooned it onto a hot grill to make walnut crisp-cakes.

Let me sing the praises of wheat, for its powers seem bounded only by imagination. It can thicken, crisp, lend strength and flexibility, or emulsify. It is the bridegroom to yeast and is more sensitive to air, temperature, and moisture than any barometer. I should not be surprised to learn that God had, in fact, not made man from mud but from a sun-browned durum. I’ve had breads made with other grains, such as farro, millet, and potato—even at their best they are more deserving of mason’s mortar than butter.

Then I set myself to the main meal. I mashed a cooked potato to a paste and dried it on the hot bricks of the hearth. Meanwhile I prepared the rice. Around my neck I wear a leather cord and a pewter locket filled with saffron, the favorite spice of my lost Elizabeth, rest her soul. It reminded her of sneaking tastes from the mulling pot as a child in her father’s inn. At closing time, the dregs, raisins, cloves, cinnamon, and cider would have formed a thick paste in the bottom, and nothing approached that heavenly liquor, she told me, so much as the smell of saffron. After I lost her, cooking became my solitary devotion, and I have touched nothing more voluptuous than a butternut squash since. My unwavering focus in the kitchen, what others have called an obsessive attention to the viscosity of a sauce or angle of a cut cucumber, is, in fact, the only medicine I have for grief. That’s not to say I have forgotten. When the tremors of life grow too jarring or when I fear I am losing touch with her memory, I open the locket, inhale, and hear the bell of her laughter and the soft graze of her arm by my side.

Of course I did not come to use the saffron easily. This was my reasoning: To leave the rice plain and be slain for it would be a class of suicide, frowned upon by heaven. Further, Elizabeth, should I meet her in that cloudy sphere, would not forgive me if, by reserving this memento, I met torture and death. And so I fed nostalgia to the grim jaws of practicality and tossed the scarlet threads into the rice as it boiled in seawater.

Such is the indomitable spirit of saffron that even after years stale on my chest, it brought the rice to life with flavor and the color of a sunset. Or perhaps my wife leaned down and touched my efforts with a kettle-blessing to keep me safe. When the rice was still covered in water, I added raisins, which plumped pleasantly.

When the potato was dry, I powdered it further with my fist and used it to bread the filleted cod, adding black pepper and salt. I sautéed onions in lard, then fried the fish quickly, until the potato crumbs were golden, finally seasoning with a squeeze of lime juice.

The wine here is reportedly from Madeira (no doubt via some slain intermediary) and surprisingly good, if smoky. It hits the palate with a berry musk that sublimates to ephemeral lavender, all the while supported by a stalwart essence I can describe only as saddle leather. So it is true what they say about the enhancing effects of sea voyages on Madeira wine. Now that I know that the potation the men are rationed every day is this delightful, I might line up for it as the others do. The men call the gargantuan wine barrels “hogsheads,” but to my eye they are properly firkins if not entire pipes. Each must carry at least one hundred and thirty gallons and several of these comprise the main ballast of the ship.

The sauce was a simple reduction of red wine, crushed garlic, peeled shrimp, dried figs, and salt—thickened with a simple roux. I say simple, but nothing on this rocking ship is simple. For decades I have enjoyed the meditative task of heating a handful of flour in butter to a perfectly roasted roux: the susurration of the wooden spoon in the pan and, as it darkens, the odor shifting from dry grass to wet terra-cotta and, ever so faintly, almonds. But here on the ship I must hold a pot with a rag in one hand and stir with my right, while at the same time dancing on the deck to the erratic music of the sea, hoping to avoid a bad scalding. Alas, for thickening a sauce, there is no replacement for roux.

For the occasion, Mabbot had provided miraculously intact china, with a blue glaze depicting horses running before a distant pagoda.

The cod parted in seams as if anticipating the red liquor I spooned over it, as I nudged the sauce-poached shrimp and figs around the edge of the porcelain. This was a moment that I struggle to put down in words. The arrangement of a meal on a plate is a sacred thing for me, representing the culminating moment not just of a day’s work but indeed of my life’s work, such as it is. It is an act that embodies untarnished hope for another’s pleasure, a hope both ambitious and humble. Fretting falls away briefly and is replaced with an acceptance of the jumbled forms and flavors of the world, a feeling that things are as they should be. In short it is the one moment when my character is at its best. At least it should be. But how torn I had become, how lost, at the same time calmly wiping the rim of the plate clean while a voice in my ear whispered,
For a villain!

I placed it, cakes and all, on a wooden plank and, lacking a proper silver lid, covered it with an inverted pot.

I kicked open the door of the galley, preparing to carry the meal out, and was met with a surprise. Unbeknownst to me—as focused as I was—my cooking had made a stir. The smell had enchanted the whispering men, who crowded near the door, sampling the air like so many alley cats, and had to be shoved aside by Mr. Apples so I could make my way to Mabbot with the tray.

Agonized in my knowledge that stumbling meant spilling not only the food but my life’s blood, I navigated the slick wood, the pitch of the sea, and finally the dark companionway to Mabbot’s cabin.

Rapping on her door with the toe of my boot, I was met by Feng. I flinched, remembering our last encounter at this threshold. This time, he stood aside to let me through the tiger-striped door. I stood, gaping.

Mabbot’s chamber was unlike any I have ever seen: a strange hybrid of a sultan’s pillow room, a duke’s library, and a naturalist’s laboratory. The entire back half of the cabin was windowed with thick glass set in heavy timber mullions. It being well night, the windows held nothing but our own reflections. During the day, though, they would provide a magnificent forty-five-degree view of the world behind. Upon the teak walls, fine oil landscapes and still lifes jostled for space. This bloodthirsty pirate had surrounded herself with scenes of tranquillity: a herd of distant cattle on a shady hill seemed curious about the pile of painted pomegranates just beyond the frame. The floor was thick with overlapping Turkish rugs. I smelled a cache of potpourri somewhere, heavy in cedar.

The cabin was of two levels, like the deck above: the bed, heaped with furs and hung with silk drapes, was on the upper; the saloon below contained a harpsichord and a small dining table. A stuffed pheasant perched atop a great mirror, its iridescent tail feathers unfurling all the way to the ground. Hanging on the mirror post was a grotesque and demonic mask with bugging eyes and scrolled tusks. Beside it a small door, ajar, led to an alcove. On a crowded bookshelf, a leaning stack of maps was braced by a human skull with a gaping hole in the brow, of the type made, I imagined, by a blunderbuss or perhaps a cudgel. This hole was filled by the languorous leaves of an orchid, its stalk reaching for heaven with a pristine burst of ivory flowers. Next to it, I spotted the brass bowl of potpourri that contained, my nose told me, the following precious items: cinnamon bark, bay leaves, rosemary, and cloves.

The captain was apparently a gardener. Rubbery vines crawled up the bedposts and framed the windows; potted ferns and plants with fanlike leaves squatted in the corners while, behind the bed, grew a citrus tree of some kind. With a deep envy, I saw, swelling upon it, the green buds of fruit. As if conjured by my covetousness, there appeared, almost hidden behind the tree, a small enamel bathtub.

Mabbot had been sitting on the plush chair near the bed, feet upon a carved stool, reading a book. When I entered, she removed her spectacles, sat up, and grinned.

“At last!” she said. In her lap rested a glistening ebon rabbit.

The table had been arranged with two settings of fine silver and china, candles alight. I set down the tray and turned to make my exit when Mabbot called in her jeering tone, “Forget something?”

“It’s all there, madam.”

“Sit, then!”

“I cannot,” I said.

“Hemorrhoids?”

“I
will
not.”

The rabbit leaped to the floor and darted under the bed when Mabbot rose. She approached until she was standing quite close. Lilac and sheepskin.

“Lively conversation and stimulating company can make a meal,” she said. “Without it, the rarest delicacy has no savor. Don’t you agree?”

“This is a depraved game,” I said.

“I’m glad you see the fun in it.”

Mabbot pulled out a chair and I sat, apprehensive and frankly exhausted.

She lifted the lid and gazed at the moon-pale fish on the bed of saffron rice, the figs and shrimp swathed in dark fragrant sauce. My blood beat in my ears.

Slowly, as if to tease, Mabbot took a crisp-cake, disregarding the proper order of things, and bit into it. I could not help but mark her face, which had grown quite placid as she chewed. The muscles of her jaw danced, lifting her ear under a curl of hair lightly, rhythmically.

Then she looked at me, her face lit with pleasure, and said, “Let’s!”

She sat with the eagerness of a child and pulled a piece of the still-steaming cod onto her plate, then she apportioned some to me. She lifted her fork, waiting for me to do the same.

“It’s for you,” I objected.

“Why, have you poisoned it?”

With a sigh, I lifted my fork as well.

When Mabbot took the first bite to her lips, Feng coaxed, by memory and without mistakes, a Mozart minuet, haunting and delicate, from the harpsichord.

Suddenly, I was ravenous. Not having touched food to my tongue all day except to sample, I allowed myself to enjoy the first real meal since my capture. I had removed the fillet from the pan while it was still glassy in the middle and it had continued to cook by its own heat to a gentle flake. Between the opaque striations, wisps of fat clung to the crisp potato breading and resolved upon the tongue like the echo of a choir surrendering to silence. The saffron warmed all together as sunlight through stained glass blesses a congregation, while the shrimp sauce waved its harlot’s kerchief from the periphery.

Mabbot, too, lingered on each bite, her face lovely with hunger. The captain knows how to eat, I grant her that.

“You’re an alchemist, Wedgwood! What do you call this?”

“Call it? White fish with red sauce.”

“Nonsense. That isn’t a proper name.”

“I’ll call it … Hope of Rescue.”

Mabbot laughed and was obliged to cover her mouth, which was still full.

“These plants—you must have fresh water,” I said.

“Oh, just a little cask of rainwater, only enough to get them from port to port. I drink panch like everyone else. That and wine.”

Feng finished the piece and left the room discreetly.

“By the way, everyone knows—you should too,” Mabbot said, pausing here to regard me with such scrutiny that I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, “that Joshua, the cabin boy, is my personal responsibility. If I learn he has been mishandled in any way, I’ll cut you into pieces so small even the fish won’t find you.”

“Mishandled? I’m teaching him letters! A thing that should have been done long ago!”

Her eyebrows rose at my outburst and she sat back and crossed her arms. “I see. Well, then, how does it go?”

“He has eyes. I don’t see why he shouldn’t read. It’s slow going, but even a dog may learn many things if the teacher is patient.”

“It’s true,” Mabbot said, appraising me with an unkind expression. “Even a dog.” After several bites in silence, she said, “Tell me about yourself.”

I took a moment to consider my situation. There was, at my core, a glow of gratitude for being alive while those near me had fallen. The murder of Jeroboam, which had so sickened and enraged me, also stoked this glow. This becoming woman sitting across from me was as grisly a villain as ever walked the earth, and yet I was more at home in the quiet of her parlor and the comfort of a good meal than I had been since my ordeal began. Taste and talk—these were the privileges of the living. I could refuse to make conversation and bring out the monster in her, or I could pacify and live long enough to escape. I obliged.

“My father was a cobbler,” I said. “Or so they tell me. I was raised in the orphanage kitchen—”

“Where you learned that the cure for the dullest routine lay in a certain liberality of spices.
Saveur sans culotte!
”

“You may say that, yes. A duchess—she was a patron of the orphanage—came to view the grounds when I was twelve and already doing much of the cooking. She was a secret Jesuit, this kind woman, and a feast was prepared for her. She became a fan of my sauces and sent me to apprentice with a friend of hers at the Jesuit campus in Sanghen.”