Chapter 285: Please Keep the Sibyl Out of the Kitchen

?? [RESIDENCE — CALLOWAY ESTATE]

Estate Type : Private Residence and Alliance Headquarters

Size : Medium (Twenty-One Rooms, Two Wings, One Courtyard)

Building Type : Spanish-Plan Courtyard House, Stone and Timber

Owner : James Calloway

Occupants : 7

Master : James Calloway

Harem : Anne Bonny, Milagros

Guest : Madame Zéphyrine

Staff : Agnes (Housekeeper), Cecily (Housemaid), Poll (Errand Girl)

Front Range : Entrance, Carriage Gate, Gate Passage, Porter’s Lodge, Cart Shed

Courtyard : Basin (Over the Cistern), Citrus Tubs, Trophy Wall

Main Gallery : Ground Arcade, Gallery Door, Stairs Hall, Upper Gallery

North Wing, Ground Floor : Dining Room, Kitchen and Larder, Servants’ Rooms, Back Door

North Wing, Upper Floor, East : Master Bedroom, Bath Chamber, Balcony, Office

North Wing, Upper Floor, West : Guest Bedrooms

West Wing : Alliance Headquarters, Chart Room, Cellar

Service Yard : Wash House, Privy

There is still no east wing. Thirty lasses were promised for it, and the experiment has show two so far, one of whom is spending her holiday in Havana. Doyle’s cellar, meanwhile, was finished right on schedule, which tells you which promise was worth taking seriously.

James read the boxes all the way to the bottom, chin raised and a grin spreading across his face.

Zephy walked around him, bells muttering, and peered into the empty. "Chéri, the sibyl sees nothing, and yet you stare like a priest at the mass. What are you reading?"

"Reading the clouds, lass."

Zephy flung arms at heaven, and the shells rattled like a dice-cup.

"Mon Dieu, the sibyl has been outplayed, chéri, you cannot steal her especiality!"

Ahead, the north wing rose above the arcade, its open upper gallery overlooking the courtyard from behind a railing. The west wing spread low across the left beside the trophy wall and its double doors, while to the right, the east wall offered nothing but bare plaster.

James led her past the basin and the citrus tubs, then touched his hat to the hog skull. The gallery door stood in the middle of the arcade, and behind it came the clink of a pot lid, a girl’s laugh, and the rattle of a ring of keys.

The door was pushed open and Agnes stood in the entrance, flour up to elbows and keys hanging from her belt, taking in the shells, the bells, and the crushed hair in a single glance without so much as changing her expression.

A veteran housekeeper, she had evidently dealt with enough kitchen trouble to know that gawping at it wouldn’t make it go away.

Beyond her lay the small, cool stairs hall, where the staircase climbed from the far wall to the upper gallery. A doorway on the right led into the dining room, while a passage on the left ran toward the kitchen, carrying the smell of salt fish with it.

James took off his hat, for Agnes, not for God, and nodded at the woman at his elbow.

"Agnes, this is the sibyl. A guest of the house, mind, so don’t be takin’ the ladle to her."

Agnes wiped one floury hand down her apron, leaving a white print on her hip, and looked Zephy up, down, and back up again at the bells.

"Well. I’ve fed worse."

Then some pause you could’ve salted.

Zephy raised her chin and rang every bell she owned, purely out of spite, which as far as she was concerned resolved the matter.

Then feet came hurrying down the stairs.

Anne reached the bottom tread with a towel over her shoulder and her copper hair dripping all the way to her waist. She’d just come from the tub at the east end of the upper gallery, and as she wrung a rope of water from her hair, she looked Zephy over.

"Ah, Jesus, so what are you, love? Out with it, I’d like to know what he brought this time."

Zephy tilted her head, shells ticking against, and smiled.

"The sibyl, chérie, only the sibyl."

Anne’s lips twitched.

"Then you’re welcome in it, so you are."

She cracked the towel at James’s shins, neat as a bosun’s lash. "Honest to God, James. Off you sail on your grand business, and home you come with a sibyl and a pig on a stick? Well? Does the pig stay?"

"Away with it lass, the pig’s a gentleman of the old school."

Anne bit her lips at him, then turned down the passage toward the kitchen, swinging the towel as she went.

The passage opened into the kitchen at the west end of the ground floor, where the hearth and bake oven sat beneath the great chimney. The larder opened off one side, with the servants’ rooms beyond it, and the back door stood open onto the service yard, where the wash house leaned to one side and the privy sat well downhill from the cistern, just as the Code required.

The dining room lay back across the stairs hall, leaving them carrying a hot plate with a long, cold walk. Whoever had designed the place had either never served a meal or thought precious little of the people who did.

Poll sat on the table with a pie under a cloth.

Her eyes moved to Zephy and stopped there. "Is that yer pig out in the yard, the one with no skin on, that grins? ’Cause he does, he grins at ye, I seen him."

Zephy pressed a hand to her chest as though the child had stabbed her there, then bent low, amused, until her shells swung under Poll’s nose. "Oui, petite, oui. He is mine, and he speaks, you know, at midnight, in the courtyard, with no tongue at all."

A dreadful pause.

"And always, always, only of the mutton."

Poll wrapped both arms around the bowl, and whatever else she believed, she wasn’t taking any chances with the pie. Nearby, Cecily stood by the hearth and curtsied so low that her cap slipped before she held out a cup of ale.

"If it please ye, madam, there’s no salt in it."

Zephy accepted the cup and crossed one ankle behind the other, but her bells rang once regardless. Agnes cocked an eyebrow, a small movement that could be considered as a warning in that kitchen.

Then one voice cracked across the courtyard and came through the shutters. "CAP’N! Oi, Cap’n! Oi got ’em! The whole bleedin’ lot, every runt skipper an’ quartermaster, sat in the room like pigs at a trough! Herald of the Alliance, reportin’ as ordered, Cap’n, reportin’ loud! Now, oi, is me pie safe? Tell me me pie’s safe!"

James turned his head toward the shutters with weary fondness.

"He’ll live! Tell the lad he’ll live, and so’ll his pie."

Then, briskly, to Agnes, flinging a hand toward Zephy. "Zephy’s been stewin’ in canvas since cock-crow, and she’s startin’ to stank of the sea-bed, so do me a favor and show her the bath."

Agnes jerked her thumb at the ceiling.

"Tub’s fired, up the stairs and through the master bedroom."

Zephy lowered her cup. "Through the Scourge’s bedchambers! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu, chéri, the sibyl must have a pass, signed in the captain’s hand, and sealed, just to reach her bath!"

Anne looped the towel round her neck and made for the stairs, hips swinging. "I’ll walk her up myself and hold the door, James’d only stand there grinnin’ at the lot of us like an eejit at a christenin’."

James grinned wider, which was its own confession, took Zephy by the elbow, and passed her over to Anne.

"Aye, I would, I would and all."

Then, to Agnes.

"Feed her, scrub her, and for the love of God keep her away from the stovies."

Agnes’s fist shut on the ladle like a trap on a hare.

James tipped his hat to everyone in the kitchen and left by way of the gallery door.

The door shut behind him, leaving the white afternoon outside. Kit stood beside the basin with grass in his hair, watching him as eagerly as a hound watches a ham, then mouthed a single word.

It was pie.

James clapped him on the shoulder and carried on.

The west wing’s double doors stood propped open with the Falmouth eighteen-pounder, and the uproar inside could have passed for a broadside.

"Where’s that bloody Scourge, eh? I’ve been stood here since noon, me feet’ve gone numb, an’ some bastard’s elbow’s been in me kidney the whole bleedin’ time!"

"Twelve chairs, ye great daft lubber! An’ ye’ll stand like the rest o’ us poor bastards, or ye’ll sit on yer hands an’ like it!"

Beside the doors, the trophy wall hung in the sunlight, the morion and jerkin sitting crooked on their hooks beside the Falmouth lantern. They’d been given a place of honor, but no one had bothered to straighten them.

Inside, the round table occupied the hall. It had twelve chairs and no head, with dozens of captains, quartermasters, and officers packed three deep around it. There was plenty of rank in the room and precious little space for it.

James squared his hat, the key lying warm against his ribs, then planted his boot on the entrance as every head in the hall turned toward him.