“We need to have a wedding feast.”
“What?!”
“A wedding feast. So I can write about it in my book.”
“A feast generally means more than two people, Cranwell.”
“There’s Sévérine.”
“Feast implies at least twenty people.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
The problem was that I had researched medieval cuisine when I had first moved into the chateau. I had vague recollections of what it involved. “Cranwell, that would mean a whole roasted pig, a whole side of beef, and at least ten to twelve other dishes. A feast is five or six courses with five dishes in each course.”
He shrugged. “Invite your friends.”
“Invite your friends. You said you knew people in Paris. They could stay here for the weekend.”
“I guess I could.” He took a sip of espresso and let the subject drop.
Later that evening, I surfed the Internet on the subject of medieval food and feasts. They were even more elaborate and time-intensive than I had remembered. Out of curiosity, I flipped through the cookbook Cranwell had given me for Christmas. The recipes and text were fascinating, but would require a fair bit of research to translate and time to find equivalencies for ingredients.
Two days later, he dropped his bombshell. It was over dinner. Up until that point, it had been a relaxing dinner. I’d made a navarin d’agneau, and we had enjoyed the tender chunks of lamb with its accompanying root vegetables. It was when I started on my custard-filled pastry mille feuille dessert, the one that I’d been looking forward to the entire day, that Cranwell made his announcement.
“They’re coming next weekend.”
“Who’s coming next weekend?”
“My friends. For the wedding feast.”
“What?!”
“Remember, Freddie? The wedding feast? The one we were going to have so that I could write about it.”
“Next weekend?”
“Next weekend. On Friday.”
That was only ten short days away.
“How many friends?”
“Twelve.”
“Twelve!”
“Twelve. You said a feast was at least twenty people, but I knew you only had seven rooms.” He hesitated. “Well, six rooms plus mine. So that makes fifteen of us. You and myself and Sévérine included.”
“So, these people will be taking up how many of my rooms?”
“The other six.”
I exploded. “Cranwell, this is not your house. I can’t just order a whole pig and a leg of venison and a…” I couldn’t stop thinking of that long list of dishes I’d found on the Internet. I was overwhelmed.
“Just add the rooms to the month’s bill.”
My eyes ducked away from his. I was overcharging him as it was. I compromised with myself. I’d add it to his bill, I just wouldn’t charge as much as I should. He was giving me free publicity.
“And don’t give me any deals. These are my friends, not yours.”
How was he always able to read my mind?
The next morning, I started working on the feast, cursing Cranwell’s name all the while. He had absolutely no idea.
It wasn’t that I had no period recipes. Among them were those in the book he’d given me for Christmas. But to turn a period recipe into one that worked with modern tools and ingredients required a lot of experimentation and quite a bit of time. And it wasn’t as if these people could be faked out with a platter of oversized turkey drumsticks.
The first thing I did was pray that his friends would cancel.
The second thing I did was to try and settle on some sort of menu. I discarded recipes with ingredients I knew I couldn’t get on short notice. That meant no berries, no grapes, no red fruits, no leafy green vegetables.
Why couldn’t he have had his brainstorm back in October when game would have been plentiful, wild mushrooms would have been in season, and fruits still available?
Medieval meals involved different courses, much as modern formal meals would, but the medieval courses were self-contained. At each course, there would have been some sort of meat, an accompaniment, a starch, and a dessert. So a four-course meal would have been the equivalent of four meals, if a person were a large eater. In effect, I would have to prepare not one meal, but four.
It was easiest to start with meats. I decided on lamb, venison, fish, and fowl. Chicken would have been eaten by only the poorer classes. Beef was rarely eaten as a cow was more valuable alive than dead. I might have chosen goat over lamb, but I knew that lamb was more readily available. Not to mention the fact that I’d never cooked a goat before. It would have been an interesting experience, but I simply didn’t have the time.
We’d have a soup. That much was certain.
At least several of the meats would be in pie or turnover forms. With limited utensil technology, foods were served in ways that made them easy to eat with the hands. Of course I wouldn’t deny my guests forks and spoons, but I did want the meal to be as authentic as possible.
Fruit tarts were a good idea, but I would have to research the availability of citrus fruits in fifteenth-century France. Would apples have been available in a medieval February? Dried apples, perhaps.
For drinking? A nice red wine and hippocras-a wine spiced with ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar-with dessert. Cider was also a possibility, but I would not serve ale. Ale was confined to England during that time period. No water either; it wasn’t commonly drunk. Absolutely no milk for drinking, unless it was for a child. And no coffee or tea; they were unknown in medieval France.
As I tore through my cookbooks and scoured the Internet for information, the thought occurred to me that it might be Cranwell’s secret wish to drive me insane.
My dinner menus that week were uninspired: quiche; boeuf bourginon, and from it, a tourte bourginon, meat pie; endives gratinée; and poulet rôti with a few potatoes and garlic cloves tossed beside the chicken in the pan.
Cranwell never complained. At least, I don’t think he did. If he did, it made no impact on me. My energies were entirely devoted to the feast. I read, tested, and tasted recipes during the day, and then I would dream about them at night.
The longer I worked on my menus, the greater my fear became. Unless they were superhuman Frenchmen, I was almost certain they wouldn’t like the meal. The medieval style of eating was the polar opposite of the basic tenet of modern French cuisine: sweet and seasoned foods must never be mixed. For example, just the suggestion of the classic American peanut butter and jelly sandwich would make a French stomach churn. Baked beans would be equally as revolting. Serving bread and jam was expected at breakfast, but at dinner?-never. Most French even go so far as to ban salted butter from their tables, because the seasoning clashes with the sweet cream base. The French like sweet food, it’s just that they like it confined to dessert. My medieval feast would propose that my guests intermingle sweet and seasoned foods at every course.
At that point, I made an executive decision about the third thing I would do: hang Cranwell from one of my towers by his toes.
It took effort, but I tried to remind myself that I was making this meal for Cranwell and not for his friends. I was sacrificing my better judgment for the sake of his novel. Maybe I’d get some sort of mention in the dedication.
Maybe not.
When I warned Cranwell to tell his friends not to expect great things, he just laughed at me and his friends came anyway. And by the way, Cranwell neglected to tell me that his closest friends in France were among those Frenchmen best known overseas.
“You didn’t tell me he would be here,” I hissed at him as I followed him down the stairs that Friday. The person I referred to was a well-known French actor who had starred in several of the films adapted from Cranwell’s books. In fact, most of the guests were related, in some way or another, to his books.
“Had you asked, I would have told you.”
An actor married to an actress. A producer and his model girlfriend. A composer, several writers, and a haute couture wardrobe designer. I had a Who’s Who of the French entertainment industry gathered together in my chateau that weekend.
Cranwell had asked me to set the table for fourteen. I counted only thirteen people in total.
“Who are we missing? The Prime Minister?”
“Everyone’s here.”
“I only count thirteen, Cranwell. Twelve guests and yourself.”
“And you.”
“Me?”
“You. You’re the hostess.”
“No, you’re the host. I’m your chef.”
“Hostess. Come on, Freddie, you’ve worked so hard on this; enjoy it.”
“Who’s going to serve?”
“Sévérine.” He had it all figured out. He always had everything figured out.
“Cranwell, I’m the chef; that means I cook. I can’t be a hostess and cook at the same time.”
“I thought you’d been cooking all day.”
“I have.”
“So what’s left to do?”
I surveyed the kitchen. “A little bit of everything. The finishing touches that have to be done at the last minute. No one wants to eat their food cold.”
“I can’t imagine anyone in the Middle Ages ever eating their food hot. It will be more authentic this way. Just leave a note for Sévérine and tell her what needs to be done.”
And if Cordon Bleu could have devised a degree by correspondence, I’m sure they would have done it by now! Frankly, I just didn’t want to do it. I needed an excuse. A better excuse. I thought of Sévérine and her magic charm; she should have been the one sitting at the foot of the table.
“Nonsense,” Cranwell scoffed when I presented my argument. “And we can’t have thirteen people at the table. It’s bad luck.”
Since when?
Sévérine saved me by appearing in the kitchen at that moment. I explained to her the situation and suggested that she could help me best by playing hostess.
Defying all my insight into her personality, Sévérine adamantly refused. At the time, it was mystifying. “But no, Frédérique. You are the chatelaine. Robert is correct. You must not serve. It is to me to do this.”
“But-” The rest of my words refused to follow when I saw daggers she was throwing with her eyes. Threatening and dangerous were the words I would have used to describe her at that moment. And suddenly, I no longer had any interest in refusing her.
Sévérine turned her back on me, took an apron from a drawer, and tied it around her waist.
At Cranwell’s prompting, I wrote the notes for Sévérine.
Then he spun me around, took my hand in his, and marched me up the stairs. He led me directly to my bedroom door as if, without his supervision, I might have tried to run away.
And I might have. I’ll never know.
As Cranwell pushed the door shut behind me and left for his own room, panic engulfed me. Looking at my wardrobe, I realized that I had nothing to wear.
People say things like that all the time, but for me at that moment, it was the truth. I wished the clothes Cranwell had bought me would have worked, but I had the feeling they would have been too casual. I hadn’t bought any new clothing for the previous three years; not since Peter had died and I had moved from Paris. To be in the presence of a collection of fashionistas, and to know that the average French woman buys thirty pounds of new clothes each year, meant catastrophe.
Not that I cared.
I must have stood in front of my armoire for at least ten minutes rationalizing why I could not be seen in any piece of clothing that I owned.
After glancing at my alarm clock, I abandoned that task and decided to direct my energies toward a shower. Fifteen minutes later I was standing in front of my mirror, towel wrapped around my body, agonizing over how to wear my hair.
There was a knock at my door.
Startled, I scampered across the floor and opened it a slit, hiding my body behind the stolid oak of the door.
Cranwell pushed past me anyway.
“Cranwell, you can’t just-”
“Why aren’t you dressed yet?”
“Because I have absolutely nothing to wear.”
“That’s ridiculous.” He strode across the carpet and threw open the doors of my armoire. He shoved a few hangers back and forth before seizing on a robe of steely-blue velvet. Just seeing it brought back skin-numbing memories of the night back in October when he had nearly kissed me.
“I am not wearing my bathrobe to dinner.” I tore it out of his hands and tried to replace it on its hanger. When my towel started to sag, I let the robe drop to the floor. But I did manage to glare at Cranwell while I refastened the towel around my chest.
“Why not? I need a muse.”
“A muse?”
“An inspiration. It isn’t enough to partake in a feast. I need to be able to imagine what the people would have looked like.”
“I will not wear a bathrobe.” Granted, it looked as if it had been purchased at a Renaissance costume shop. The Basque waisted skirt began well below my natural waist, in the style of late medieval fashion. The upper body was cut on the bias and it molded around my torso as if it had been tailor-made for me. In fact, I rarely used it because it hugged my body too tightly.
“Please, Freddie.” Cranwell had picked the robe up and given it a shake, holding it up by the almost nonexistent shoulders. The bodice had a two-inch roll of material that framed the neckline and covered the seam of the close-fitting sleeves. “Please.”
At least he had an idea. I could offer no alternative.
Shoving damp strands of hair behind my ears, I tried to hold up my towel with the other hand. “Fine.”
“Wonderful!” He leapt forward as if he were going to kiss me but then held himself back and thrust the gown into my hands instead. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be back to do something about your hair.” He slammed my door shut behind him.
Something about my hair. Of all the nerve! I decided to take care of that possibility myself. I spent the next four minutes bent from the waist, aiming all the ferocity of a high-speed, high-heat blow dryer at it. And I finished fastening myself into the robe only seconds before Cranwell burst into my room.