Cold Magic

A young male servant pulled out the chairs. We sat. The first course was carried in by four silent servers: a clear-broth fish soup, several lamb and chicken dishes swimming in bright sauces, platters of gingered beans, gingered rabbit liver, roasted sweet potato, and a pair of savory vegetable stews fortified with millet. How I wanted to display my offended dignity by spurning the food, but I was so very, very hungry, and it smelled so very, very good.

They set down the plates, and the woman spooned lamb in red sauce onto his plate for his approval. He tasted it and winced.

“Absolutely not.”

The chicken with an orange sauce.

“I can’t be expected to eat this.”

“I would be willing to try it,” I said in a low voice, but although the woman glanced at me, my husband ignored my words.

The lamb in gravy, the gingered rabbit liver, the beans, and the vegetable stews met with the same scorn.

“Is this all your kitchen can manage? It is not what we are accustomed to at the estate, but perhaps you’ve been so long away tending house here in the city that you’ve forgotten.”

I winced, trying to imagine what Aunt would say if she ever heard me speak so ungraciously. The servers carried away the offending dishes. I wanted to weep. I would have scraped the smears of sauce off his plate, just to get some flavor on my parched tongue. He considered the clear soup and the bland orange potatoes with disdain.

“These are so simple they can, one hopes, offend no discriminating appetite. Very well. Can I hope there might be a suitable wine, a vintage better than that sour mead? A cheese, perhaps, and sliced fruit?”

The woman’s expression was as emotionlessly correct as his was disdainful. “I will ask personally in the kitchens, Magister.”

She deserted the chamber.

“I have certain things I need,” said my husband.

“All that was requested is ready,” said the man in a tight voice.

“Is it?” my husband replied in a tone thoroughly insinuated with doubt. “I’m relieved to hear it, after this supper.”

The room lapsed into an awful silence. For the longest time he merely sat, looking out the frost-crackled windows into a dark courtyard. The heat rising from the floor warmed my feet and legs, but my shoulders were cold as I stared at the bright slices of potato and the cooling soup with its pure broth and moist, white fragments of fish floating among scraps of delicate cilantro. I thought I might really and truly start crying when my stomach rumbled.

“But after all,” said the man abruptly, as if his chain had finally snapped, “I’ll just go to the workshop and make sure.” He rose and left.

Without looking away from the window, my husband hooked the bell and rang it.

The young man who had maneuvered the chairs entered the chamber, quite flushed, and touched the fingers of his right hand to his heart. “Magister?”

His voice softened slightly. “Serve the soup and potatoes to the maestra, if you please.”

“Yes, Magister.” The attendant looked relieved.

So I supped on potatoes and on soup, which even lukewarm was spectacular, subtle and smooth and perfectly seasoned, although my husband did not deign to touch it. Afterward, the woman returned wearing a mulish expression and carrying a tray with six bottles, eight varieties of cheese, and fruit. He sampled the wines—pouring a few drops into the offering cup before each tasting—and the cheeses and rejected them all, while finally accepting a single apple, sliced at the table and shared between us, and one precious hothouse mango, prepared likewise.

Yet when he rose, thereby announcing that our supper was complete, I was still famished.

“If you’ll show me to the workshop,” he said to the woman.

“Of course, Magister.”

They left the dining chamber as if they had forgotten I existed. I sat there too tired to rage, and just as I had begun to contemplate actually stealing the bits of food placed as an offering on the platter next to the stone, the girl appeared to save me from an act so disrespectful I was ashamed even to have thought of it. She escorted me through my parlor and into the sleeping chamber, where she helped me out of my celadon supper dress and into my nightdress.

“Maestra,” she said at last, an utterance that offered neither question nor answer except to remind me bitterly that I was now a married woman, with all that implied.

She left me sitting on the edge of the bed with a bowl of light to keep me company. Heat drifted up from the floorboards. My toes were warm, and my heart was cold. In all the years I remembered well, I had never gone to sleep without Bee beside me to whisper to before slumber overtook us. Now I was alone.