Chapter 198: A Kitchen Fit for Kings
The ladderway swallowed the deck noise one rung at a time.
Daylight faded, the rope-fed voices thinned away, and the air grew thicker beneath the lanterns. Cudjoe came after him without being told, just as he had stayed at James’s shoulder since the channels finally let them through.
A hundred-odd souls made for a crowded belly, and the Grand Dame didn’t bother pretending otherwise. The hammocks hung wherever a beam offered a man somewhere to hook one.
Nearby, some Rose sailors crouched around a dice game that had fallen so far in fortune that the stakes were buttons.
Beyond them, a Fortune sailor was receiving a very patient lesson in tying a bowline. He nodded along with deep attention, though James knew the fellow had spliced rigging before the lad teaching him was old enough to walk.
Then he was hit by the aroma. It grew stronger with every yard, cutting straight through the ship’s ordinary mixture of tar, bilge, and old salt. It felt like some browned and rich cuisine was cooked down there, and sweeter than it had any right to be.
More than one head turned as they passed, drawn after the aroma like a compass needle finding north, regardless of what the fool holding it might prefer.
James had expected some broad old salt built like a rum cask, without half his teeth and the other half of his patience. The man bent over the pot belonged to an entirely different sort of story.
He was lean and narrow through the shoulders, wearing a waistcoat that had somehow kept its crease through voyages that left grown sailors white-knuckled at the rail. A clay pipe was wedged into one corner of his mouth.
On a shelf that had no earthly business to be there sat a small pot of basil, green and thriving, as though the entire ship had taken it upon itself to keep the plant alive.
His hands had none of the scars or split knuckles that marked nearly every other pair aboard. They looked like a gentleman’s hands that had wandered belowdecks by mistake and, finding the place agreeable enough, decided not to go back.
"Captain."
Cudjoe nodded toward the galley, half amused.
"This is Vincenzo Callari. Crew’s worn it down tae Enzo, and he answers tae that well enough."
"Enzo, then." James held out a hand. "James Calloway."
There was more from Cudjoe. "Ask him about the fellow he put in the scuppers a week gone for mouthin’ off about the stew, boot tae the seat of his breeches, and never once set down his spoon tae do it."
"His boot? Not his fist?"
"Says his hands belong tae the pot, and only the pot."
Cudjoe folded his arms, and some dry smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
Whatever Enzo had been doing with the pot, he abandoned it the instant the word ’Captain’ reached him. He came around with the spoon still in his hand and bowed so low that the pipe nearly fell out.
It was a bow fit for a royal drawing room, and therefore considerably more elaborate than anything a ship’s galley had ever asked of anybody.
"Capitano!"
The word came out delighted and long, as though he had been saving it for days. "Vincenzo Callari, at your service, and at the service of every soul aboard this magnificent, altogether enormous vessel of yours."
Cudjoe stepped in before Enzo could draw another breath.
"He does this. Best let him have his say, Captain, or he’ll only start again from the beginning."
Enzo continued as though nobody had spoken. "One thing first, Capitano. The women. I have heard talk, secondhand, of a household at your settlement with more remarkable women than any man has a right to keep beneath one roof. Is it true? Are there women aboard this fleet worth the trouble of cooking for?"
James laughed.
"True enough, you’ll meet them eventually."
The disappointment survived for one breath.
Then his whole face brightened again. "Then the meal will have to do today. Sit, both of you, and let me show you what I can manage with what this ship has given me."
"Speakin’ of what the ship’s given ye."
James lowered himself onto an overturned cask, letting a little doubt creep into his voice for the sport of it.
"What exactly does a man make out of hardtack and salt pork?"
Agony flashed across Enzo’s face so quickly James nearly missed it. It was genuine hurt, swift and complete, as if had just heard somebody insult his mother. Enzo didn’t waste time pretending otherwise.
"I do not surrender to hardtack, Capitano."
Enzo started, knife in one hand and a block of pork fat in the other.
"Watch, and you will see exactly what a lesser man surrenders to."
He worked fast and clean in the galley, splitting the biscuit and softening it with a splash of water before laying it into fat already spitting in the pan.
Some unlucky lad, no older than Kit, hovered beside him with a jar of molasses. His hands were none too steady under Enzo’s eye, and he corrected the boy’s grip without looking away from the pan, muttering beneath his breath words that needed no translation.
The biscuit turned golden. Rum went in, then molasses, and the pan caught for one bright, hissing instant before Enzo snatched it clear.
The biscuit stayed a biscuit through the whole business. It was hardtack, softened, browned, and glazed, the plain stuff every man aboard had eaten off a plate a hundred times.
What Enzo did with it afterward was another matter entirely. He turned it onto an upturned mess tin, gave it more care than anybody had ever shown that poor tin, then straightened up like a man presenting the crown jewels.
"Ecco."
He said it to the tin as tenderly as another might address a woman. Then he shifted into a voice meant for a much finer room than this one.
"Biscuit à la royale. Glacé au rhum et à la mélasse."
"And in plain English, for the two of us who never learned tae talk fancy?" Cudjoe asked.
"The King’s biscuit, Signor Cudjoe. Glazed with rum and molasses, in the old style."
Enzo spread both hands over it as though he had just unveiled a monument.
"Even a king would ask for another."
James took a bite prepared to be polite about whatever disappointment followed. A man owes that much courtesy to a cook who has put that much pride into a plate.
Then the rum, scorched sugar, and good rendered fat struck him all at once. The biscuit had gone soft beneath its own crust and turned sweet in a way hardtack had no earthly business becoming.
He finished the first bite, took another, and only then found a word worth spending.
Cudjoe took his own bite chiefly to prove a point to himself. His arms remained folded, and he had clearly made up his mind to be unimpressed.
Then he went back for a second helping without unfolding those arms, and without offering a single word of complaint.
James asked, once his voice had returned to him.
"Where does a man learn to do this with nothing?"
"Nothing, Capitano? Nonsense."
Enzo swept a hand over the tin. "Rum, molasses, good rendered fat, and a biscuit with enough backbone to carry the glaze. That is what stands between hardtack and the King’s table."
"And you left a King’s kitchen for that, to go cookin’ for pirates?"
"I departed, Capitano."
He drew the word out with real pleasure, like a man tasting a wine he already knows has turned sharp. "In something of a hurry, too, well before sunrise. I trained in a fine house, and nobody ever questioned my skill at the stove. My skill with the maids, and at once with my master’s daughter caused considerably more trouble, so I left my back-pay sitting on the table and never once returned for it."
"Ye’d have kept the coin an’ all, if ye’d learned tae run faster," Cudjoe snickered.
"Money returns, Signor Cudjoe. Four wonderful months happen only once."
Enzo showed not the slightest shame. If anything, he wore the memory with the tender, wistful pride.
James left him to his memories, waistcoat, pipe, basil, and all, well pleased with the last quarter hour.
"I’ll be back for a second helping before we raise Port Royal, Enzo."
"Always, Capitano. My door is open, and so is my pot."
James clapped him once on the shoulder and fell back into step beside Cudjoe. He was already talking again, turning his thoughts toward whichever corner of this ship was hiding the master-at-arms neither of them had met yet.