CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Down in Hartwig’s underground kitchens, Melissande found a level of busyness to make an anthill look lazy. Kitchen maids and pot boys and under-cooks and spit turners and an assortment of culinary dogsbodies scurried under the lash of the highly strung-but apparently sober-head Cook’s sharp tongue. The lamplit air was rich with the mouth-watering aromas of roasting meats, frying meats, baking pies, stewing fruit, boiling sugar syrup and cakes cooling on racks. Knives scythed against sharpeners, pots and pans rattled, oven doors slammed. Someone dropped a plate. Shouts mingled with the smashing. Someone else cut themselves, and curses curdled the thick air.
Unnoticed at the foot of the staircase linking kitchen complex to palace, Melissande took in the mayhem with appalled admiration. Hartwig’s kitchens made Rupert’s look like child’s play. Even Lional, whose appetite for fine food and entertaining had been far from modest, never achieved a choreographed pandemonium like this.
A pot boy staggered by her, burdened with dirty saucepans. She stopped him with a smile and a raised hand.
“Essa?” he said, fox-red curls lank with steam and grease, eyes wide with surprise at the sight of a well- dressed lady.
Essa. That was Splotzin. Of course the child didn’t speak Ottish. And she hadn’t even a smattering of his tongue. What was essa? Yes?
“Mitzie?” she said hopefully, and pointed to the outer kitchen where a couple of maids were frantically working. Then she pointed to herself. “Mitzie.”
The boy was young but not ignorant. He grinned. “Mitzie, essa.” A jerk of his chin suggested that she stand where she was, then he staggered away.
Eager to avoid a confrontation with the near-hysterical cook, Melissande shuffled into a conveniently shadowed corner and waited.
“Psst. Miss! Miss? Were you wanting me?”
She turned, and saw a kitchen maid’s astonished face peering round a nearby whitewashed archway. “Are you Mitzie?”
Nodding, the incredulous maid stepped into view. She was a plumply pretty lass, her plain blue dress swathed in a juice-stained white apron, with a limp white cap on her curls and her cheeks pink from the hot ovens.
With another cautious look in the loud cook’s direction, Melissande darted to the archway. “Mitzie, I’m Princess Melissande of New Ottosland. I was wondering if you had a moment to talk, but-” Another look at the kitchens. A few of the bustling staff had noticed her, but were too busy to stop and point and stare. If that changed… “Perhaps this isn’t a good time.”
Mitzie’s mouth dropped open. “You’re Gladys’s princess?”
Oh, thank Saint Snodgrass. “I am. Gladys told me all about you, Mitzie. I just wanted to see if you were- Mitzie? Mitzie! What’s the matter?”
The kitchen maid’s cheeks had blushed a deeper pink, and she seemed on the point of tears. “Oh, Miss! Are you come to help me with Ferdie?”
Help her with- Oh, lord. Heart racing, Melissande took the girl’s arm. Abel Bestwick’s alive? “Mitzie? Are you saying you know where Ferdie is?”
With an anguished glance at the head cook, who had his back to them for the moment, Mitzie pressed a finger to her lips, then daringly took hold of Melissande’s sleeve.
“Will you come, Miss?” she whispered, almost tugging. “Please?”
Melissande nodded. “Of course.”
She hurried after the maid, who whisked through the kitchen labyrinth like a field mouse going to ground. They scuttled past rows of benches, bake ovens, spit ovens, an enormous pantry, the buttery, the cold larder and the wet larder and the hanging room ripe with game.
“Up here, Miss. To the servants’ wing. Mind your step,” said Mitzie, and after ducking between two halves of a heavy leather curtain they toiled up a narrow, winding staircase, higher and higher, up to the miserly maids’ rooms beneath the palace’s lofty roof.
“Ferdie’s in here, Miss,” said Mitzie, stopping at a door painted a dingy dark green. It was the last room in the narrow corridor leading off the staircase landing. A small, grimy window leaked grudging light onto the uneven timber floor. “I leave a lamp lit. Oh, Miss, I know it’s wrong of me, but I been hiding him. I had to. He’s my Ferdie. And oh, Miss, he idn’t a bad man, he’s only in trouble.”
Melissande, still panting after the staircase, pressed her palm to the girl’s flushed cheek, then took the small brass key that was fumbled into her grasp. “Bless you, Mitzie. You were right to tell me. And as for hiding him, well, you’ll likely never know what a good thing you’ve done.”
“Miss, I can’t stay,” the maid said, her eyes anxious. “They’ll be shouting for me in the kitchens.”
And the last thing either of them needed was a Mitzie hunt, raising a ruckus and making inconvenient discoveries. “You go. I’ll talk to Ferdie. And Mitzie?”
“Yes, Miss?”
“Don’t you worry,” Melissande said, patting the girl’s arm. “We’ll sort this out. You’ll not get in trouble, I give you my word.”
Mitzie’s dimples were as pretty as Bibbie’s. “Thank you, Miss. I’ll find you later, if that’s all right.”
“Yes, yes. Now go!”
The dingy green door swung open with a soft creak. Melissande slipped into the room beyond and pushed the door until she heard its latch quietly click. Then, clutching the key, she turned and looked around. A small room, holding only a single bed, a chest of drawers, an elderly wardrobe and one rickety wooden chair. It was pushed next to the bed, a dim oil lamp burning on it.
Close to tip-toe, she crossed to the bed and touched her fingers to the bare shoulder of the man asleep beneath its blanket. “Ferdie. Can you hear me?”
With a muffled oath the man startled awake, twisting away from her. His breath caught, a sound of sharp pain. The lamplight fell over his face, revealing cheeks stubbled and sunken, eyes bright with lingering fever. A plain face. Unremarkable. A Sir Alec kind of face, that wasn’t noticed in a crowd.
“Who the devil are you?” he demanded hoarsely. “And how the hell did you find me?”
“Mitzie.” Ignoring his curse, she sat on the edge of the bed. “As for me, I’m Melissande Cadwallader. And you are Abel Bestwick. Sir Alec’s man in Splotze.”
Sir Alec’s man in Splotze choked. “What?”
Oh dear. Was he going to be difficult? “Look, Mister Bestwick, we don’t have much time. I know who you are, I know why you’re here, and I know about the message you got through to Sir Alec. He’s sent in another janitor. Gerald Dunwoody. D’you know him?”
With a pained effort, Bestwick shoved and wriggled until he was sitting up against his pillow. The blanket fell to his waist, revealing faded bruises and a bloodstained bandage wrapped around his skinny ribs.
“No,” he said, his eyes hard with suspicion. “And I’ve never heard of you.”
“Well, actually, you might’ve,” she said. “I’m also known as Princess Melissande of New Ottosland.”
“I’ve heard of New Ottosland,” Bestwick said grudgingly.
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” she muttered. “Will you at least admit you know Sir Alec? Medium height, brown hair, grey eyes, a disturbing habit of chilly sarcasm? Does that ring a bell?”
A cautious nod.
“And Monk Markham? Don’t you dare tell me you’ve never heard of him!”
Another cautious nod. “Who hasn’t?”
“Well, it’s a start,” she said, cross with relief. “Mister Bestwick-Abel-I do appreciate this is confusing. And that you’re under strict instructions not to reveal your true identity. But I think we’re a bit past that now, don’t you?”
Mutely, he stared at her.
“Abel, please, you must believe me!” she said, trying not to sound desperate. “I’m not secretly working for the Jandrians or the Lanruvians or whoever the enemy is this week. I’m on your side! Gerald and I and Monk Markham’s sister are trying to finish what you started and stop whoever’s out to ruin the Splotze-Borovnik wedding.
