The Serpent and the Pearl Read online

  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 brightened—ah, yes, one of those illustrious silk-clad ladies whose eyes shone not for sweets or jewels or compliments, but for the thought of getting something cheap. Better yet, free.

  “Your son’s wedding, madonna?” I continued in my creamiest tones. It’s an art, oiling the patrons—my father had no sweet words for his family but he was a master at oiling up his customers. He could have a cheap old bitch like this one sweetened, spiced, and on the spit before she even knew she’d been skewered. “A happy occasion! All is as it should be here, I assure you.”

  “I heard, er, shouting.” My cousin’s employer hunted about the borrowed kitchens with her keen peppercorn eyes. “You’re certain all will be ready soon? The wedding procession has crossed the piazza—”

  “And your son will hardly taste a bite of any dish we make, he’ll be so eager to see his bride, but all will be ready anyway.” I pinned a smile into place like a capon’s little trussed legs, not breathing until Adriana da Mila gave a last dubious look.

  “Be careful with that good sugar,” she warned over her shoulder. “So expensive!” And then, thanks be to God, she was gone.

  “So.” I turned on the now-cowed cluster of undercooks and maidservants, foot tapping beneath my aproned skirts. “You know who I am. I am the one who can pull this wedding feast out of thin air.” Can you? my traitorous thoughts whispered. You haven’t done any real cooking in two years. But too late to think of that now. “I am the one who is going to save your position in Madonna Adriana’s household,” I continued in the most confident voice I could muster. Their positions, and Marco’s with them. Normally I’d have threatened to cut my cousin’s ears off and toast them with basil and pine nuts for abandoning a wedding feast midflow, but now I could kiss him. I hadn’t even laid eyes on Marco yet, but already he owed me a favor. Or he would, if I truly managed to deliver this wedding feast.

  I’d have to. Because it was quite a favor I needed out of him in return.

  My heart began to hammer and I tasted fear again in my mouth, sour and rancid, as I thought of just what I was risking. But I had no time for fear, not now. I was Carmelina Mangano, daughter of a great cook in Venice and cousin to another here in Rome, even if he was a card-playing fool. I was twenty years old and maybe all I had to my name was a mummified hand and a keen nose, but I had a houseful of hungry wedding guests coming and may Santa Marta herself cook me and eat me if I sent them away unfed.

  “Everyone listen.” I clapped my hands, and when that wasn’t enough to stop the apprentices’ grumbling, I stamped one foot. “I want to see mouths shut, mouths shut and hands moving, because if the wedding procession has turned out into the piazza, we’ve no time to waste. Piero, get that peacock off the spit, brush the breast with honey, and stick it all over with candied pine nuts. You, what’s your name? Ottaviano, the bergamot pears; peel them in hot wine and roast them with some ground sugar and whole cloves. Serving girls, the credenza. If it’s groaning with things to nibble, they won’t notice if the first dishes are late. Dried figs, olives and capers, those small Neapolitan limes and pink apples over there, Ligurian cheese if you have it—”

  “I don’t know where—”

  “Start looking.” My own fingers were flying over the pot of zuppa someone had left over a low fire. I took a sniff, and my ecstatic nose told me pepper, verjuice, sautéed truffles—ah, yes, the oyster stew on page 64, Chapter: Soups and Stews. I found a small knife and began shucking oysters into the sizzling mix. Tiny roasted chicks were supposed to go into the pot; had anyone roasted any chicks? All that came to eye was a spit of roasted squab. I tossed the knife down and fished out the packet of papers from my pouch (the other pouch, not the one with the dead hand) and flipped to page 84. Squab may be used in place of chicks, my father had written in his tight scrawl. Add more verjuice and some ground Milanese almonds to thicken the broth. It was the first time I’d looked at his collection of recipes since the day I’d stuffed the loose-bound ragged-edged pile of handwritten paper into my pouch when his back was turned. For a moment I blinked, looking at the tightly packed lines of text, written in the odd shorthand code he’d employed to keep his secrets from thieving rivals. But not from me—I’d read all his recipes, and now the black penned lines of coded spices and meats was all I’d have of him.

  Never mind. We’d never shared much, my father and me, besides recipes. If he could see me now, he’d be the first to drag me back by the hair to face the justice of Venice.

  “Signorina, the credenza—” The harried maids were hovering around me now, too resigned or too desperate to object to taking my orders.

  “Put the cheeses out, all of them, and the cold meats.” I finished with the oysters and took swift stock of the storerooms, calculating dishes. Salty nibbles to make the guests reach for their wine—once they had enough wine in them they wouldn’t notice how late the roast peacock was. “The mortadelle, the sow belly, the salt ox tongues—that prosciutto, slice it very thin first so it looks like marble—skin those pears, ox-brain, skin them before you add the sugar!” A steward stumped past, muttering, trailed by a stream of servants with wine flagons. “Keep
that wine pouring,” I called after him.

  Was that the clamor of guests upstairs already? I flung another prayer heavenward as I threw myself on an onion and began to chop. “Help me now, Santa Marta. You know what it’s like to cook for important people.” Of course, Santa Marta had cooked for our Lord, but I suspected He would be a lot more patient if His food was late than Adriana da Mila’s son and his new bride.

  On the other hand, maybe not. Hungry guests are hungry guests, and I very much doubted if the heavenly ones were any more useful than the earthly kind when it came to helping in the kitchen. They say Mary was wiser than Marta, sitting at the feet of Christ and worshipping, but I always had more sympathy for Marta. Somebody had to do the dishes while everyone else was worshipping at the feet of Christ. Christ must have thought so too, since He made Marta into a saint, and not just any saint but the patron saint of cooks like me all over the earth. Maybe He was grateful to get a good meal for once, instead of having to do all the work Himself conjuring up fishes and loaves.

  We understood each other, Santa Marta and I, long before I’d started carrying her dead withered hand around in a pouch under my skirt.

  Despite my flying thoughts, I couldn’t help smiling as my fingers sealed a crumble of fresh cheese and sweet olive oil and Genovese onions into a pastry crust. The cramped little kitchens were humming like a beehive, the apprentices were working like hired mules, and I imagined I could hear the murmur of guests upstairs: the whisper of expensive silks, the peal of laughter from a happy bride. The clink of fine glasses, the crunch as salted nuts and honeyed dates and morsels of Ligurian cheese disappeared into the mouths of cardinals and wedding guests and bridegroom alike. The oohs and aahs that went up as the roast peacock, my roast peacock, came swaying in at last on the backs of two serving men, proud and feathered and sweet-cooked and not at all looking like it had been whipped together in a quarter of the time it needed (at least if you didn’t look too close).

  My heart was hammering, my hair was frizzing out of its scarf again, I had no past and only the barest of futures—a future I was trusting to luck, and to my own rusty skills. If either failed me, I’d probably end up on the Ponte Sant’Angelo hanging next to all the other thieves and renegades whose luck and skill had failed them. Or sent back to Venice where an even more gruesome fate lurked, God help me. But my cheese and onion tourte was already bubbling sweet and golden in the oven; I had the smell of olive oil and cinnamon in my nose again; my hands and no doubt my face were covered in flour. I hadn’t cooked in two years, but I was cooking now—my old skills were rusty, but not gone. I hadn’t lost my touch. And for now, that was enough to call happiness.

  Leonello

  T he man across the table from me was proving a bad loser, but most of my opponents are. Men who play for money do not like to lose, and even less do they like losing to a dwarf.

  “Fluxus,” I said, laying four cards down across the wine-sticky table. “All hearts. The pot is mine.”

  “Wait now,” the heavy fellow on my left protested. “You haven’t seen my cards yet!”

  “Doesn’t matter. You have nothing higher than a numerus.” I leaned forward and began to scoop coins from the center of the table.

  He flung his cards down, swearing. A numerus—three diamonds and a spade; a hand that wouldn’t win you enough to buy a cup of the rotgut wine they served at this tavern, much less the pot in the middle of the table. I grinned and began counting my winnings. “Another round,” I told Anna the tavern maid. “Three of whatever my friends are drinking, and my usual.”

  Anna winked. My usual was water darkened with just enough wine to make it look like the real thing. With Anna’s expert hand mixing my wine, I could keep a clear head all through the night while my partners got drunker and drunker. She was the best thing about the tavern, which otherwise wasn’t much but a dim little room, ill-lit from dirty windows, its long tables grimed by smoke and rickety at the legs. Besides myself and the three players I’d just fleeced, a pair of drinkers grumbled and swigged wine and rolled grubby sets of dice, and two boys in black velvet sat by a sullen fire playing zara and swearing over the game board. The usual mix for a tavern like this: drunks looking to lose the money they’d earned driving carts or working the docks, and rich boys ducking their tutors in search of whores, wine, and a little low-quarters fun.

  The heavyset man on my left was still staring at me, flush mounting in his raddled cheeks. “How did you know what cards I held?”

  Dio. I gave him a flat look. No one wants to have lost to a dwarf; therefore the dwarf must have cheated. I could cheat, of course—I could palm cards invisibly from my sleeve to my hand; I could deal games that were all hearts, all jacks, anything I wanted. But I didn’t. Tavern cheats are too often beaten to a pulp and tossed out the door, and a beating for a man my size was like to kill me. “I used no tricks, I assure you,” I said in a bored voice. “Merely mathematical certitude.”

  “What’s that?” Suspicious. “Magic?”

  “It means I count, good sir, when I play primiera. I count the cards that are dealt, I count the cards that are played; I calculate the certainty of the cards not shown. Calculation produces mathematical odds, not magic, and thus I knew what cards you held in your hand.”

  “Big words for a little man,” one of the other players guffawed. “You got as many words as you’ve got magic tricks, little man?”

  “Counting must be magic for some.” I swept the last coins into my purse. “Do you wish to try it for our next game? I understand you will need to take off your boots when the count passes ten.”

  I waited patiently while he worked his way through it. My insults are wasted on the drunk. When he figured it out, the flush rose dark to his hairline. “You stunted little piglet!”

  Not so stunted as your skill at cards, I could have said. Or that shriveled prick you keep wheedling Anna to grab. But I didn’t say it. No man likes his uglinesses pointed out; it’s a sure way to a bloody mouth or a broken nose. Dwarves don’t like it either, but a dwarf’s looks belong to everyone. Children, men, women; they’re free to point and laugh, to say what they like. I’d known that ever since I was small—or rather, since I was very small and first realized I was never going to grow big.

  “Another game?” I said instead, and fanned the deck of cards faultlessly with a flick of my wrist.

  The drunk slapped one meaty hand down on the table with a crash of cups, and the zara players by the fire glanced up. “You runty little cheat, I’ll have your guts round your filthy neck—”

  The knife thumping down into the table silenced him. I’d slammed the blade down into the wood precisely between his two first fingers without drawing even a whisper of blood—a pretty trick, if I do say so myself, and one that’s bought me many a fast exit. The drunk looked down at the knife in the table, and by the time he realized its point had trapped the wood and not his hand, I’d yanked up my blade and Anna had slipped fast between us.

  “Another drink?” she wheedled in that tired sweet voice that was the prettiest thing about her. “The little man already paid, you might as well drink it. Here, our best red—”

  He allowed her to pull him away and fold the cup of rotgut wine into his hand, and she allowed him to grope a little at her flat breast while giving me a stern look over his shoulder. I made an apologetic face, sliding a coin across the table in her direction, and turned to my other two partners. “Another game?”

  “Primiera’s not for me,” A big affable fellow, handsome and black-haired, who had grinned when I slammed the knife into the table. Marco, his name was, and for some reason he always smelled like cinnamon. I’d taken a good deal of coin off him in the past months, but he never seemed to hold it against me. “I’m a man for zara, myself,” he confided.

  Zara is a game for idiots. I never played zara, or any game of chance for that matter. Chess was the game I liked best, but chess is for aristocrats. Not many chessboards in the lower kind of Roman taverns, the one
s where I made my money. “Fortune be with you,” I told Marco, though I knew well enough that he’d lose, and snapped my cards together. Old worn cards by now, frayed about the edges and greasy with thumb marks and wine stains, but I’d made good money from them over the years. I might look like a seedy fellow down on his luck—my leather doublet was battered, my shirt had patches on the threadbare elbows, and the hose stretching over my crooked legs fit very ill—but it didn’t do for a dwarf to look prosperous. We’re easy enough marks as it is without wearing embroidered sleeves or fine cloaks. Besides, the less coin I spent on clothes, the more I had for books. I fingered the coins in my purse, enough for a good meal tonight and a flask of wine to go with it, and tucked my cards away. “I think I will try my luck elsewhere today,” I told Anna as she came back, wiping her hands on her apron. “Your friend is still giving me black looks from the fire.”

  “You can carry my basket to market for me, that’s what you can do,” Anna told me, hands on hips. “Least you can do after I sweetened that fellow off the idea of choking you. The cazzo had his hand up my skirt like he was fishing for gold.”

  “The flesh of fair Anna is sweeter far than gold,” I said, and offered my arm. Anna laughed as she took it, but not at me. Anna never laughed at me, and that made her a rare girl indeed. Woman, really—she claimed twenty years, but I would have bet twenty-five, and she looked thirty. Life serving drinks in a tavern is quick to put a slump in a woman’s shoulders, a sag to her breasts, a net of lines about her eyes. But she still had a sweet dent of a dimple beside her mouth, and it flickered at me as we left the tavern.

  “You’ll get yourself killed one of these days,” she warned as we slid into the crowd. Men and women alike were pressing eagerly along the street, craning their necks toward something I was far too small to see—there must be a dancing bear up ahead, or a cardinal on procession. Maybe a dancing cardinal; I’d pay to see that. “You don’t have to twit them after you take their money, Leonello. You’ll jape at the wrong person someday, and he’ll put a knife in your ear.”