The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) Read Free

peacock in its plumage—”
    “Veal with morello cherries—”
    “Bergamot pears with cloves—”
    A menu pieced itself together out of the disjointed chorus. A good one, too—Marco was a dice-rolling
pazzo
, but the
pazzo
had trained under my father, and he could cook.
    So could I. And there wasn’t a recipe here I didn’t know as well as my own name.
    “Someone get me a small knife.” I looked around the kitchens, found a discarded apron, and tied it over my disreputable dress. “And where are the onions? Genovese onions, if you have them.”
    The pot-boys gazed at me as they perspired in the heat of the banked fireplace; the white-aproned apprentices stood behind the long trestle tables with their haphazard arrangement of pots and bowls and looked at their toes; the serving maids whispered behind their hands before sinks mounded with dishes. “Who are you again?” one of the apprentices said at last, rudely. “We aren’t taking no orders from you.”
    Ah, the sound of an insolent apprentice. How long had it been since I’d put one in his place? Even longer than the last time I’d smelled good cheese.
    “I’m Maestro Santini’s cousin.” I smiled benevolently, finding a small knife and beginning my hunt for Genovese onions. “And who are you?”
    “Piero. And just because you say you’re his cousin—”
    “The wedding guests approach, Piero,” I interrupted him, leaching the sweetness out of my voice and letting it sink to a venomous whisper. My father’s whisper, the one that could whip round a kitchen shriveling spines as it traveled along. “The wedding party will soon arrive, and the peacock isn’t even off the spit yet. The pastry hasn’t even been rolled. The one dish I see plated in this ninth ring of hell you call a kitchen is a very nice shad over there.
And the cat is eating it.
”
    The maids and scullions just looked at each other and mumbled. The cat hissed at me: an enormous tom with a tattered ear who bent to give a leisurely swipe of his tongue along the length of the fish. Beautiful shad, impeccably braised in what I suspected was the sauce of cinnamon and cloves that my father detailed in the packet of recipes in my pouch (page 386, Chapter: Sauces). Though when I made that sauce I liked to add a dash of salt and vinegar for bite, and just a few threads of saffron to give it color . . .
    “Out!” I shooed the cat to the floor, helping it toward the door with my foot. “Out, unless you want to end up on the spit! Now, if you batch of parboiled fools can tell me—”
    “Maestro Santini?” A woman’s voice sounded behind me. I whirled and then hastily followed the example of the maids and curtsied before the stout gray-haired matron in her elaborate headdress. “Maestro Santini, where—” Her eyes traveled apprehensively around the kitchens, as though she were afraid something would explode all over her maroon silks.
    “Madonna Adriana,” Piero the sulky apprentice said, and then apparently ran out of inspiration. His eyes hunted desperately around the mess of pots and pans, the piles of flour, and the blackened pastry.
    “Madonna Adriana da Mila, I take it?” I swept forward with my most radiant smile, hoping she wouldn’t notice my stained dress under the apron. “Maestro Santini has spoken to me often of how honored he is to work in your household.” No one had told me anything about her, actually—just her name, the employer in Rome who had been fool enough to hire Marco as her cook. Just an idle line of gossip from my father, but I’d followed the slender thread of that name all the way south to Rome. “I am his cousin Carmelina Mangano, newly come from Venice. Naturally I agreed to assist my cousin for such an illustrious occasion as this.”
    She reared back. “I agreed to pay for three extra pairs of hands in the kitchens, not four—”
    “I work for free,
madonna
.” I crossed myself. “As is a girl’s most sacred duty.”
    Madonna Adriana