Chateau of Echoes

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 Severine 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 gratinee; and poulet roti 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.”