The Long Sword by Christian Cameron Page B

guests and twenty kitchen staff crammed into the corners of a great kitchen gave her both silence and room – and that she had an open strip of tiled floor no wider than a horse’s stall and not much longer, and she held us all spellbound.
    I finished my pies. I put Master Arnaud’s mark on them – I don’t know what imp moved me to do that. Perhaps just the memory of every other apple tart I’d ever made. The cook swept them away into the great oven by the fireplace, itself big enough to roast an ox.
    Donna Giuglia finished, her honey-coloured hair swaying, and every man and woman whistled, shouted, clapped their hands or laughed aloud, and she stood and swayed a moment, eyes closed.
    Ser Niccolò went and threw his arms around her and kissed her – a lover’s kiss. I had seldom seen outside of army camps a woman kissed in such a way in public, but I gathered that there were few rules that applied to Ser Niccolò.
    After the dance, it was difficult for any of us to reach the level that Donna Giuglia had set us, and we chatted. I began to tidy up the mess I’d made, and the cook and his apprentices began to look at me reproachfully, but in truth, it gave me something to do, and I didn’t want to stand idle and silent among strangers.
    Ser Niccolò came and put an arm around my shoulder. ‘Now I believe that you were truly a cook,’ he said.
    ‘While I confess, my lord, that I have trouble believing that you were ever a stingy banker,’ I said.
    He laughed. ‘Perhaps I became a knight because I was such a very bad banker.’
    My little pies emerged from the oven, no thanks to me, and carefully watched, no doubt, by the professional. But they were golden brown, and the scent alone – I’d used more eastern spices in six small pies than one of Prince Edward’s cooks would see in a month of Sundays – the scent alone suggested that the gates of heaven might be close.
    I put one small pie on a wooden trencher and presented it on my knees to Donna Giuglia.
    She laughed. ‘I think I have been bested,’ she said.
    Ser Niccolò took a bite, and he looked at me over his pie with pure, unadulterated approval.
    I cut the pies as small as I could, and almost everyone had a bite.
    At the door, Ser Niccolò took my hand. ‘I love a man who is not afraid,’ he said.
    I assumed he was serious, so I shook my head. ‘My gracious lord, I’m afraid all the time.’
    ‘You were not afraid to make the pies. In public.’ He was serious.
    ‘I was afraid that they might not come out. It has been a few years.’ I smiled.
    He didn’t return the smile. ‘But this is exactly what I meant. Wait, please. I want you to meet my son Nerio.’
    I had seen Nerio all evening, and never known him to be the great man’s son. But of course, when I saw them together, it was obvious. Nerio was my own age, as handsome as his father, and at this late stage he had another spectacularly beautiful woman at his elbow, this one thinner and more otherworldly than Donna Giuglia, but neither more nor less magnificent. I knelt to her and to him, and he pulled me sharply to my feet.
    ‘By God, messire, you are a famous knight and a competent pastry cook, and I am neither!’ He laughed. ‘When there is steel singing in the air, I find a lady’s lap and hide my head there like a unicorn.’
    It has amused me all my life, the different ways men boast.
    I had a fine night. After I saluted Nerio, I slipped around the palazzo and in by the tradesman’s alley, and found the cook. ‘Here’s three florins to share,’ I said. ‘I know how much work you went to for me.’
    He took the florins without hesitation and gave me a little bow. ‘You were truly a cook?’ he asked.
    I looked past him at the circle of apprentices. ‘Never,’ I said. ‘I was a cook’s boy , and Master Arnaud would never have trusted me to cook a pie on my own.’
    That made them all laugh, even the master. And as if he’d been drawn by the laughter, I saw Ser Niccolò