Read Online Mayflowers for November: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn by Malyn Bromfield - Free Book Online Page A

soapwort. Goodness me, you don’t favour your father for your height, do you my dear. You’re going to have to stand on a stool to reach the jars of preserves on the shelves in the closet.’ She seemed to think this was very funny. ‘I never cease to wonder how children can be so unlike their parents.
    ‘Now then, Avis, your apron and coif, let me see.’ She held my shoulders and turned me around. ‘Good, good, good, not a hair escaping from under the coif. A servant in the confectionary should never let me know the colour of her hair. Your mother could be as bald as the King’s fool for all I know, for never has a hair been known to escape. We cannot have King Henry VIII finding a hair in his gingerbread; that would never do. We would all be out in the streets with our begging bowls.’
    She bent forward with her hands on her thighs chuckling. ‘Now for my own cap.’ She tucked away several strands of brown curls that had hung prettily about her cheeks. ‘I dare say your mother has told you that I am so vain about my hair.’
    ‘Not so, goodwife,’ I lied, chewing my cheeks because all this giggling was infectious. If I joined in it might be considered bad manners. Mother wasn’t tittering.
    ‘Your mother knows that I cannot face the morning without first arranging my locks in my little looking glass that King Henry gave me for my New Year gift some years past. He does so much enjoy the sugar deceits and sweetmeats I make for his banquets.’
    Mother and I put on serious faces and each gave a little nod and a short curtsey to show respect for someone whom the King so much admired.
    ‘Now, Avis, here you are at last with your mother, learning to cook for the King’s grace. No doubt you will find us smaller and quieter than the great kitchen.’
    ‘It’s cooler here and there’s no fireplace,’ I said. Instead of the sweet, nutty odour that I had anticipated, there was a porky, salty cloudiness.
    ‘I told you we have only brick built charcoal ranges and the portable chaffing dishes you see here,’ Mother said sharply. ‘I have spoken to her many times of my work here,’ she told the pudding wife. ‘My daughter knows well enough what to expect. She has worked hard in the herb garden and is eager to apply herself here.’
    ‘We are concerned with more costly ingredients than mint and bindweed,’ Mistress Pudding said. ‘Our gold leaf and sugar supplies are closeted away and guarded. Don’t you be thinking that you may take a little pinch of sugar, albeit good for your digestion, for even a grain will be missed.’
    ‘Of course not, goodwife.’
    ‘As for the little bits of shavings left over from the trimming of the gold leaf, don’t go throwing them out on to the compost like you do with the weeds from the garden.’
    The pudding wife was cackling again and bobbing her head like a woodpecker. I was beginning to think I might like working in the confectionary after all, with mother and this happy pudding wife.
    ‘You can start by learning how to make the gelatine.’
    She led me to the source of the piggy stench, one of the ranges where pigs’ trotters boiled in a copper pot.’
    ‘I’ve seen gelatine boiling in the great kitchen,’ I said, unable to disguise my disappointment. ‘I would rather learn something new. Perhaps the making of marchpane.’
    ‘List to the goodwife, hold your tongue and let your betters advise you,’ mother hissed into my ear.
    ‘Gelatine made in the great kitchen won’t come up to standards required for the King’s privy table,’ the pudding wife said. ‘Imagine the King or Queen finding bits of hair or skin inside their jellied deceits. ‘Tis enough to make Queen Anne Boleyn queasy in her dainty condition. We’re very particular how we do things here, as your mother will have explained to you.’ She turned to Mother.
    ‘Avis needs to learn how we toil here to please the King, whereas in the great kitchen the cooks have meaner persons to feed and a