The Baker's Boy (3 page)

"It was
definitely Lord Maybor," Bodger was saying as Jack entered the hall.
"I saw him with my own eyes. Thick as thieves they were, he and Lord
Baralis, talking fast and furious. Course when they saw me, you should have
seen 'em scramble. Faster than women from the middens."

"Well, well,
well," said Grift with a telling raise of his eyebrows. "Who would
have guessed that? Everyone knows that Maybor and Baralis can't stand the sight
of each other, why I never seen them exchange a civil word. Are you sure it was
them?"

"I'm not
blind, Grift. It was both of them, in the gardens behind the private hedges, as
close as a pair of nuns on a pilgrimage."

"Well, I'll
be a flummoxed ferret!"

"If the
codpiece fits, Grift," chirped Bodger gleefully. Grift noticed Jack's
presence. "Talking of codpieces, here's a boy so young, he hasn't got
anything to put in one!" This struck Bodger as so hilarious he fell off
his chair with laughter.

Grift took this
chance, while Bodger was recovering, to haul himself off his bench and pull
Jack to one side. "What did you just hear of what me and Bodger were
saying, boy?" The guard squeezed Jack's arm and fixed him with a watery
gaze.

Jack was well
versed in the intrigues of the castle and knew the safest thing to say.
"Sir, I heard nothing save for some remark about a codpiece." Grift's
fingers ground painfully into his flesh, his voice was low and threatening.

"For your
sake, boy, I hope you're speaking the truth. If I was to find out you're lying
to me, boy, I'd make you very sorry." Grift gave Jack's arm one final
squeeze and twist and let it go. "Very sorry, indeed, boy. Now get you
off."

Grift turned to
his companion and carried on as if the nasty little scene had not occurred.
"You see, Bodger, an older woman is like an overripe peach: bruised and wrinkled
on the outside, but sweet and juicy within." Jack hastily gathered up the
empty jug of ale and ran as fast as his legs could carry him to the kitchen.

Things were not
going well for him today. Master baker Frallit was in the sort of black mood
that made his normal demeanor seem almost pleasant by comparison. It should
have been Tilly's job to scrub the large baking slabs clean, but Tilly had a
way with Frallit, and one smile of her plump, wet lips ensured she would do no
dirty work. Of all the things he had to do, Jack hated scrubbing the huge stone
slabs the worst. They had to be scoured with a noxious mixture of soda and lye;
the lye burnt into his hands causing blisters, and sometimes his skin peeled
off. He then had to carry the unwieldy slabs, which were almost as heavy as he
himself, into the kitchen yard to be washed off.

He dreaded
carrying the huge stones, for they were brittle, and if dropped would shatter
into a hundred pieces. The baking slabs were Frallit's pride and joy; he swore
they baked him a superior loaf, claiming the dull and weighty stone prevented
the bread from baking too fast. Jack had recently found out the penalty for
shattering one of the master baker's precious cooking slabs.

Several weeks
back, Frallit, who had been drinking heavily all day, had discovered one of his
slabs missing. He'd wasted no time in confronting Jack, whom he found hiding
amongst the pots and pans in the cook's side of the kitchen. "You
feeble-witted moron," Frallit had cried, dragging him from his hiding
place by his hair. "Do you know what you have done, boy? Do you?" It
was obvious to Jack the master baker did not expect a reply. Frallit made to
cuff him round the ears, but Jack dodged skillfully and the master baker was
left slapping air. Looking back on the incident now, Jack realized the dodge
had been a major mistake. Frallit would have probably given him a sound
thrashing and left it at that, but what the master baker hated more than
anything was being made to look a fool-and in front of the sly but succulent
Tilly, no less. The man's rage was terrifying and culminated with him pulling a
fistful of Jack's hair out.

It seemed to Jack
that his hair was always a target. It was as if Frallit was determined to make
all his apprentices as bald as himself. Jack had once woken to find that his
head had been shorn like a sheep. Tilly threw the chestnut locks onto the fire
and informed him that Frallit had ordered the chop because he suspected lice.
Jack's hair got the only revenge it could: it grew back with irritating
quickness.

In fact, growing
in general was starting to become quite a problem. Not a week went by without
some evidence of his alarming increase in height. His breeches caused him no
end of embarrassment; four months ago they'd rested discreetly about his
ankles, now they were threatening to expose his shins. And such horrifyingly
white and skinny shins they were! He was convinced that everyone in the
kitchens had noticed the pitiful expanse of flesh.

Being a practical
boy, he'd decided to make himself another more flattering pair. Unfortunately
needlework was a skill that required patience not desperation, and new breeches
became an unattainable dream. So now he was reduced to the unauspicious step of
wearing his current ones low. They hung limply around his hips, secured by a
length of coarse twine. Jack had sent many a desperate prayer to Borc, begging
that the twine in question didn't give way in the presence of anyone
important--especially women.

His height was
becoming more and more of a problem: for one thing, his growth upward bore no
relation to his growth outward, and Jack had the strong suspicion he now
possessed the physique of a broom handle. Of course, the worst thing was that
he had started to outgrow his superiors. He was a head above Tilly and an ear
above Frallit. The master baker had started to treat Jack's height as a
personal affront, and could often be heard muttering words to the effect that a
tall boy would never a decent baker make.

Jack's main duty
as baker's boy was to ensure the fire under the huge baking oven did not go
out. The oven was the size of a small room, and it was where all the bread for
the hundreds of courtiers and servants who lived in the castle was baked early
every morning.

Frallit prided
himself on baking fresh each day, and to this end he had to wake at five each
morning to supervise the baking. The massive stone oven had to be kept going
through the night, every night, for if it was left to go out, the oven would
take one full day to fire up to the temperature required for baking. So it was
Jack's job to watch the oven at night.

Every hour Jack
would open the stone grate at the bottom of the huge structure and feed the
fire within. He didn't mind the chore at all. He became accustomed to grabbing
his sleep in one-hour intervals, and during winter, when the kitchen was
bitterly cold, he would fall asleep close to the oven, his thin body pressed
against the warm stone.

Sometimes, in the
delicious time between waking and sleeping, Jack could imagine his mother was
still alive. In the last months of her illness, his mother's body had felt as
hot as the baking oven. Deep within her breast there was a source of heat that
destroyed her more surely than any flame. Jack remembered the feel of her body
pressed against hisher bones were as light and brittle as stale bread. Such
terrible frailty, he couldn't bear to think of it. And, for the most part, with
a day full of hauling sacks of flour from the granary and buckets from the
well, of scraping the oven free of cinders and keeping the yeast from turning
bad, he managed to keep the ache of losing her at the back of his mind.

Jack found he had
a talent for calculating the quantities of flour, yeast, and water required to
make the different bread doughs required each day; he could even reckon faster
than the master baker himself. He was wise enough to conceal his talents,
though. Frallit was a man who guarded his expertise jealously.

Recently Frallit
had allowed him the privilege of shaping the dough. "You must knead the
dough like it were a virgin's breast," he would say. "Lightly at
first, barely a caress, then firmer once it relents." The master baker
could be almost lyrical after one cup of ale; it was the second cup that turned
him sour.

Shaping the dough
was a step up for Jack, it signaled that he would soon be accepted as an
apprentice baker. Once he was a fully fledged apprentice, his future at the
castle would be secured. Until then he was at the mercy of those who were above
him, and in the competitive hierarchy of castle servants that meant everyone.

Somehow, from the
time he left the servants' hall to the time upon his arrival in the kitchens,
night had fallen. Time, Jack found, had a way of slipping from him, like thread
from a newly made spindle. One minute he would be setting the dough to rise,
the next Frallit would be cuffing him for leaving it so long that it had
toughened and was attracting flies. It was just that there was so much to think
about, and his imagination had a way of creeping up on him. He only had to look
at a wooden table and he was off imagining that the tree it came from once gave
shade to a long-dead hero.

"You're
late," said Frallit. He was standing by the oven, arms folded, watching
Jack's approach.

"Sorry,
Master Frallit."

"Sorry,
" mimicked Frallit. "Sorry. You damn well should be sorry. I'm
getting tired of your lateness. The heat in the oven has dropped perilously
low, boy. Perilously low."

The master baker
took a step forward. "And who'll get into trouble if the fire goes out and
there's no baking for a day? I will. That's who." Frallit grabbed his
mixing paddle from the shelf and slammed it viciously against Jack's arm.
"I'll teach you not to put my good reputation at risk." Finding a
place that took the paddle nicely, he continued the beating until forced to
stop due to an inconvenient shortness of breath.

Quite a crowd had
gathered at the sound of shouting. "Leave the boy alone, Frallit,"
one wretched scullery maid risked saying. Willock, the cellar steward, silenced
her with a quick slap to her face.

"Be quiet,
you insolent girl. This is none of your business. The master baker has a
perfect right to do whatever he pleases to any boy under him." Willock
turned to face the rest of the servants. "And let it be a lesson to you
all." The cellar steward then nodded pleasantly to Frallit before shooing
the crowd away.

Jack was shaking,
his arm was throbbing-the paddle had left deep imprints upon his flesh. Tears
of pain and rage flared like kindling. He screwed up his eyes tightly, determined
not to let them fall.

"And where
were you this time?" The master baker didn't wait for an answer.
"Daydreaming, I bet. Head in the clouds, fancying you're something better
than the likes of us." Frallit swept close, grabbing Jack's neck-the smell
of ale was heavy on his breath. "Let me tell you, boy, your mother was a
whore, and you're nothing but the son of a whore. You ask anyone in this
castle, they'll tell you what she was. And what's more, they'll tell you she
was a foreign whore at that."

Jack's head felt
heavy with blood, spent air burnt in his lungs. There was one thought in his
mind-the pain was nothing, the risk of ridicule wasn't important-he had to
know. "Where did she come from?" he cried.

He'd spoken the
one thing that mattered most in his life. It was a question about himself as
much as his mother-for wherever she came from so did he. He had no father and
accepted that as his fate, but his mother owed him something, something she had
failed to give him-a sense of self. Everyone in the castle knew who they were
and where they came from. Jack had watched them, he'd witnessed their unspoken
confidence. Not for them a life of unanswered questions. No. They knew their
place, their personal histories, their grandfathers and grandmothers. And armed
with such knowledge, they knew themselves.

Jack was envious
of such knowledge. He too wanted to join in conversations about family, to
casually say, "Oh, yes, my mother's family came from Calfern, west of the
River Ley," but he was denied the pleasure of self-assurance. He knew
nothing about his mother, her birthplace, her family, or even her true name.
They were all mysteries, and occasionally, when people taunted and called him a
bastard, he hated her for them.

Frallit eased up
on his hold. "How would I know where your mother came from?" he said.
"I never had call for her services." The master baker gave Jack's
neck one final squeeze and then let go. "Now get some wood in the oven
before I change my mind and decide to throttle you all the way." He turned
and left Jack to his work.

Bevlin was
expecting a visitor. He didn't know who it would be, but he felt the approach.
Time to grease up another duck, he thought absently. Then he decided against
it. After all, not everybody had a taste for his particular favorite. Better be
safe and roast that haunch of beef. True, it was a few weeks old, but that
hardly mattered-maggot-addled beef had never killed anyone, and it was said to
be more tender and juicy than its fresher counterpart.

He hauled the meat
up from the cellar, sprinkled it with salt and spices, wrapped it in large dock
leaves, and buried it amongst the glowing embers of the huge fireplace.
Roasting beef was a lot more trouble than greased duck. He hoped his guest
appreciated it.

When the visitor
finally arrived, it was dark outside. Bevlin's kitchen was warm and bright, and
fragrant cooking smells filled the air. "Come in, friend," croaked
Bevlin in response to the knock on the door. "It's open."

The man who
entered was much younger than the wiseman had expected. He was tall and
handsome; gold strands in his hair caught the firelight in defiance of the dirt
from the road. His clothes, however, had little fight in them. They were an
unremarkable gray; even the leathers that had once been black or tan bore
testament to the persistence of the dirt. The only bright spot was a
handkerchief tied about his neck. Bevlin fancied there was something touching
about its faded scarlet glory.