The patron thief of brea.., p.19
The Patron Thief of Bread, page 19
Griselde’s window was closed. Duck tiptoed closer and put her ear to the shutter — yes, the baker was conked out, in a deep sleep.
She glanced at the opposite end of the yard, beyond the fence to Petrus’s house. All his upstairs windows were open, Raina letting the light sweep through the halls, but Duck knew that even if Petrus looked down into the baker’s yard, the hedges would be obscured by the fence.
And so Duck let herself cross the long yard, rushing along the crust of old snow, brimming with elation until she was standing in the bushes with Ash—
But by the time she got there, her chest was a tangled, thorny mess. Ash let out a quiet whoop and picked her up in a monstrous hug, swinging her around, but Duck kept her arms stiff as boards, pinned to her sides.
“What’s the matter with you?” Ash set her down and frowned. “You look sick — did you eat raw potatoes again?”
“No.” Duck took in a breath, momentarily distracted by the memory of bygone days when the Crowns had to choose between the gurgles of an empty stomach and the gurgles of a stomach that had just been fed an uncooked tuber.
Griselde had served Duck potatoes cooked three different ways just this week alone.
“How come you haven’t been to see me?” Duck managed to say without her voice breaking. “It’s been forever.”
Ash folded his arms. “I could say the same thing to you! Where have you been? We miss you!”
Those were it. The magic words Duck needed to hear in order for the pond within her to thaw.
It had all been a misunderstanding.
She’d been waiting for the Crowns.
The Crowns had been waiting for her.
All that brooding for nothing.
“It was inspections,” she blurted out. “All of January, we were getting ready for these inspections — did you know a baker can be fined if they don’t grind their grains to the right consistency? Or if their loaves are more than one one-hundredth of an ounce lighter than they advertise? I swear, they’re stricter than a priest at the Feast of Divine Mercy.” She shook her head, exasperated, then realized, with a light chuckle, that she was mimicking Griselde to a tee.
“It’s all with the best intentions, of course,” Duck went on. “If you don’t have strict regulations, then some bakers will try to find shortcuts, ways to cheat their customers. They’ll fill their dough with sawdust. That’s what they were doing in Telgary until their guild tightened the laws—” Then she stopped. “What is it?”
The corner of Ash’s mouth tugged up in a surprised smirk, and his eyes were teasing. “Wow, Duck, you sound like a real grown-up.”
Duck said nothing. Above her, in the branches of the oak tree that grew in the corner of the yard, a pair of pigeons trilled and cooed, then took off together, the flap of their wings sounding like the pages of a book rustling.
It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, to sound like a grown-up, Duck thought. Surely Ash hadn’t meant it as an insult.
But it felt as if Ash was pointing out how much Duck had changed.
“The rest of the Crowns say hi,” Ash said, plucking a blackened leaf from the bush to shred in his fingers. “Drippy had a cold last week, but he’s doing much better. Spinner’s been holding these wall ball tournaments; she’s undefeated . . . so far. Oh! And Frog Eyes wanted me to tell you that Ringer had babies!”
Duck chewed her bottom lip, thinking hard.
“You know, the worm he got at the hot fair?” Ash prompted. “So now we’ve got all these wriggly baby worms on our hands. What’s wrong, Duck? You — you don’t seem yourself.”
A lump swelled in Duck’s throat. She had to concentrate so her eyes wouldn’t spill over. No, she didn’t seem herself. The old Duck would have remembered that Drippy got a cold every February without fail, and she would have helped the gang scrape together some stuffed eggs, Drippy’s favorite, in order to cheer him up. She never would have forgotten about Frog Eyes’s precious pet, no matter how squirmy. She would have found it unbearable to go so long without seeing them, because to be without the Crowns was to be without a part of herself, a rib or a finger.
She’d missed them the first night she was away. She’d missed them the second night. But somewhere between the third night and now, the old Duck had . . . gone.
She’d been replaced by this apron-wearing, flour-streaked version of Duck who thought about proper yeasting techniques and whose forearms were bulging from all that kneading.
“Hey.” Ash crooked a finger under Duck’s chin, lifting her face until she was staring into his steady eyes. “It’s still me. And you’re still you.”
Happiness fizzed deep in Duck’s bones. At least this hadn’t changed.
Ash could still look right at her and know.
Know what she was thinking, know what she was saying.
They didn’t need words, she and Ash.
They were beyond them. Now more than ever.
But Duck still wanted to use them. She still wanted to tell Ash everything, about how much it had hurt to see the Crowns on Christmas, about how strange it was to be in this bakehouse day after day, like being trapped in a cage and yet also free in a way she’d never felt before, both at the same time—
But the sound of shutters clattering open made Duck straighten. Ash dropped down to the ground, ready to crawl out of the hedges on all fours if necessary.
“Duck? Is that you out there?” Griselde’s face was still drowsy as she stood at her window.
“Yes!” Duck called, her insides fluttering. “Just . . . just talking to Ash!” She said it before she had time to truly think, but one could argue it was the truth. After all, Ash the cat could be skulking around the yard like he did most afternoons, fruitlessly hunting pigeons.
Griselde chuckled. “That rascal’s back, is he? Tell him I’ve got a few sardines lying around if he’s interested.”
“All right.” Duck forced herself to exhale; beside her, Ash tugged on Duck’s tunic and whispered, an insatiable gleam in his eye, “Sardines?”
“The headache’s gone,” Griselde went on, “so I’m off to see Master Cooper about my barrel repairs. I’ll be home in time for supper. Is there anything you need?”
“No!” Duck prayed to every saint she knew of that Ash the cat didn’t choose this moment to come sauntering into the yard. How on earth would she explain such a thing to Griselde?
“All right, then, I’m off!” Griselde said. “My, what a glorious day! Good on you for getting some sun! And Duck, maybe tonight we’ll break out the jacks and play a little — I’m feeling lucky!”
Duck waited until the baker moved away from the window, then said to Ash, “You should go.”
Ash got to his feet, not bothering to brush the dirt off his knees, then blinked at Duck. “Holy bones, Gnat wasn’t kidding! You’ve got that baker eating right out of the palm of your hand! Listen to how she fawns over you!”
Maybe this should have pleased Duck, but instead, a flame of annoyance curled within her. Why did everyone assume she was masterfully manipulating the baker?
Maybe the baker just liked Duck.
Maybe Duck was actually likable, once everyone stopped underestimating her and acting like she was too quiet to bother listening to.
“Aw, Duck, I didn’t mean it like that.” Ash nudged her, and that singular motion was almost enough to transport her back to that moment on the roof right after she’d made her first lift.
Almost.
“You should go,” she repeated, somewhat snappishly. “I don’t want you to get caught here.”
“Come on,” Ash persisted. “I can stay awhile longer. We can hunt for skipping stones. Or play jump the shadow.”
When Duck looked at Ash, ready to tell him no and insist that he leave before he said something else to inflame her, there was a curious furrow in his brow.
His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were glazed with melancholy.
He missed her, Duck realized, more than he would let himself say.
“You really have grown,” Ash repeated, “but you still look like yourself. Same round face, same serious eyes. Still my little duckling.”
His little duckling. But this time, instead of feeling comforted by the thought of brave young Ash wading into the river to rescue baby Duck, whom he would keep under his wing for the rest of their days, an uneasy feeling settled in her middle.
There were so many holes in the story. How had she never noticed before? In Ash’s version, there was a cry in the darkness, and then a bundle in the river, and then a baby in his arms . . . but how had she gotten there in the first place?
Where were her parents? Her mother?
Had anyone gone looking for her?
Were they still looking?
Duck had always thought it was such a grand story of how she’d been chosen, but now as she listened, she couldn’t hear it as anything but a bunch of unanswered questions.
“And now, here you are, getting us our bread, slipping us coins, keeping us in a manner to which we have grown quite accustomed — the luckiest Duck we ever did fish,” Ash said proudly.
How strange, Duck thought, to wonder about a piece of yourself that you’d never even known was missing.
“Ash?” she started tentatively, but before she could say anything else, the baker leaned over the gate.
“Yoo-hoo, Duck!” Griselde shouted. “I’m afraid my eyes aren’t in much of a cooperating mood today, and with the snowmelt, that canal sounds mighty full. Raging. Would you mind being an old bird’s escort around town for a few hours?”
“I’ve got to go,” Duck whispered to Ash after she’d answered the baker. “After we leave, count to fifty, then crawl out the back way — don’t stand up until you’re back in the square, understand?” She paused, then added, “See if Gnat’ll let you be the one who comes next market day.”
“I miss you, too.” Ash’s mouth split into a wide smile, but he grabbed Duck’s arm. “Duck . . . do you think you could get those sardines for me? I wouldn’t want them to spoil.”
Duck grinned. “I’ll go through the house and leave them on the front windowsill. Take them quickly and don’t let anyone see you.”
He held up his hands defensively. “I’m a Crown. I know the rule: Don’t get noticed.”
Duck nodded, but a pang of homesickness twinged beneath her ribs. She missed the Crowns. She missed the rules. She even missed Gnat’s lectures, his sternness, the way he sometimes glared at every Crown as if he were minding a herd of guileless sheep in a field of sleeping wolves — all of it. She missed all of it.
“Does Gnat ever say . . . how much longer?” Duck suppressed a sob, gesturing around her, and Ash shrugged.
“He seems pretty happy to keep you here awhile — we’re living the high and fat life, thanks to you.” He plunked a kiss on her forehead. “You clever thing, you.” Then he tucked himself beneath the hedge, patiently waiting until the coast was clear so he could collect his sardines and scamper back home.
Home.
Duck turned back around at the door, and she couldn’t see him among the leafless skeletons of the bushes.
Like he was already gone.
A storm of emotions welled up in her throat.
How could the Crowns stand it without her? Wasn’t there a Duck-size hole in their group every day that she was at the bakery instead of the cathedral?
For every day that she stayed here, stealing and lying until her lungs were black, she could feel such holes being carved out of her, one for every Crown.
And yet if Gnat came for her tomorrow . . .
Would it be as easy as that to go with him?
Would it be easy to walk away from the bakery in order to go back home?
Or would Duck feel, with every step, a Griselde-size hole cut right out of her middle?
A Cake for Bacon
Duck blinked and it was spring.
One minute her head was down as she scraped out the ovens, scrubbed the dishes, flipped dough out of bowls, and the next, trees were in full green. Dark mornings at the bakery were suddenly made much cheerier with the accompaniment of birdsong. Butterflies flew past the open storefront, glittering in the sunlight.
Duck inhaled and smelled the dandelions and the cowslips and the forsythia from the wild hills beyond Odierne, all of them mixing with the warm scent of hardening crust.
Griselde Baker, too, reveled in the shift of the seasons. “I do enjoy a good winter feast,” she said, “but I am always happy to see the sun return.”
Such a beautiful, colorful world, Duck thought, taking in the geraniums in window boxes and the boughs of Saint Justine’s lilac hanging over every door. Such a shame that Griselde could only see the blues.
At her lesson with Master Frobertus, she read a full page from the Book of Kells without stumbling over a single word. He was so pleased by her recitation, he was practically frothing at the mouth. “If you ever want to abandon the baking life and come work as a notary’s apprentice, I’d be happy to have you.”
“I didn’t know notaries took apprentices.” Duck had never seen anyone else in Master Frobertus’s dusty old office except a few clerks, all of them as wizened and puckered as he was.
“We don’t,” he said with a smug wink, and Duck had to glance down at the book to keep from blushing.
So now there were two doors open to her: one to a bakery and one to a notary.
Doors she had no intention of walking through.
But Duck couldn’t stop replaying that conversation in her head. It was nice to hear that she was good for something other than palming coins.
Gnat wanted Duck to be a siphon.
Master Frobertus and Griselde Baker both thought she could be more.
One bright morning, Petrus went to assist the local bishop with a minor home repair, leaving Griselde and Duck to handle the baking by themselves. “You go ahead,” Griselde had insisted. “Help the bishop. We may need him to vouch for us at the pearly gates someday.”
Duck mixed up the trenchers, the barley loaves, and the horse bread as easily as if she’d done it a thousand times already — which, she realized as she counted back the seasons, she may well have. She did not kill the yeast. She did not overknead the dough. She shaped the blobs of dough on the trays so they would bake straight and fat and pushed them into the oven without breaking a sweat.
Her very temperature had changed. She was now able to tolerate the great heat of the ovens without getting flushed. At night, she could kick off all her covers, and she never woke up with the shakes.
The evening chills of spring were actually refreshing to her; her life as a Crown had weathered her against the cold, and now her life as a baker’s apprentice had hardened her against the heat. Soon she would be like one of those old gargoyles: crackly skin made of stone, able to thrive in all manner of climate.
All the regular loaves were either in the oven or cooling, so all that was left on the list was a special order.
A honey cake.
It was going to a farmer, John Bacon, who had helped Griselde seal off a hole in her storeroom through which the mice had been relentlessly attacking her grain sacks.
The baker had gone into her counting room to tabulate this week’s earnings. This used to terrify Duck, who would yank her hair out with nerves, hoping that the baker didn’t notice that a certain number of coins had been taken from the strongbox.
But she knew by now that the baker’s grip on math was . . . less than masterful, and that her record-keeping was somewhat slippery. Perhaps Gnat had already known this, Duck sometimes thought. Perhaps he had witnessed the ways in which Griselde Baker rounded up, tallied up, always assuming an obnoxiously optimistic way of viewing everything, including income.
Perhaps Gnat had known, months before Duck did, how perfect this was going to be — she wouldn’t put it past him.
Gnat always thought of everything.
Griselde seemed happily lost in her columns of numbers, and since Duck had seen the baker make honey cakes numerous times now, she decided to go ahead and give it a try.
A good apprentice tried to make life easier for their master, after all.
Every cake needed the following building blocks: flour for structure, yeast for leavening, something sweet for flavor, like honey or beet juice or, if you could afford it, sugar. It also needed salt for contrast, fat for richness, and a binder — eggs or milk or something moist.
Butter.
Griselde was a firm believer in butter.
The larder had all these things, but Duck’s eyes went right to something else.
A basket of spring’s first peaches, fresh from the market.
Her mouth watered.
Peaches in a cake would be delicious, wouldn’t they?
And there — a bowl of strawberries, ripened red, waiting to be mashed into something worthy.
Her nose hunted down the last ingredient: rosemary.
It always found her.
She inhaled again.
Peaches, strawberries, and rosemary.
A perfectly springy, refreshing cake.
Two layers.
She measured flour, added warm water and sugar to a bowl with a few other things, then set it in the sun to work its rising magic.
She mashed the peaches and strawberries into a paste and added honey — would she need additional eggs? she wondered. Or would the fruit and honey be enough of a binder to keep the cake together?
She paused, thinking deeply, then opted for a bit of milk to keep everything clumped and moist. She decided she wanted a cake-like texture, yes — but she wanted it to melt in the mouth, a representation of how it felt to bite into a juicy peach.
She used a knife to chop the rosemary into fine bits, then sprinkled them into the mixture, the oils making her fingertips smell piney.
Finally, she poured the batter into the cake tins, and just as she turned to put them in the oven, there was the baker, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, taking up all the space and blocking out the sunlight — and it startled Duck so much, the cake tins nearly jumped out of her hands.
“Whoa, there!” Griselde reached out to steady Duck. “That would have been a real mess! But what’s all this?”
