It was a way out.
‘We need those done within the hour,’ said a harsh voice close behind, making me jump. Cook was squinting at us, her sunken lid quivering. She was short as Dot, and her hands, as she wiped them on her apron, were wrinkled as Old Charani’s. They were pocked with smooth burns and other marks, and I knew they’d be rough with work.
I longed to reach out and feel them on mine, to close my eyes and imagine for a moment it was divining day after all. I realised now the risk of how we had lived: that when home was a person and not a place, once they were gone you couldn’t get back. Home was lost for ever.
‘Sorry Cook,’ said Dot, and turned back to her work, tugging at my sleeve to make me start too. But Cook held my gaze a moment longer, then looked at Kizzy.
She placed her hands, her beautiful, gnarled hands, onto my sister’s exposed, raw skin, and the moment she did so, they both jolted as though the other had dealt them a blow. Cook’s brow furrowed in confusion, and she went back to her place at the onions without another word, taking short, fast steps, without looking back.
‘What was that about?’ said Szilvie, but when Kizzy replied, it was to me.
‘She has the gift,’ said Kizzy, and her eyes were bright with confusion and excitement.
My breath caught in my throat. ‘Are you sure?’
It was just something to say. My sister was always sure.
Kizzy nodded, her eyes feverishly bright.
‘Our divining day is not lost to us.’ She looked past Szilvie’s frowning face to Cook, who twitched as though Kizzy’s gaze was a physical weight laid upon her. I knew that feeling well.
‘Lil, we need to talk to her. She can tell us what we are to be.’
With so much food being made, I was certain we were preparing for a feast that evening, but it was barely past midday when Cook clapped her hands for silence and began to bark orders. I looked at the piles of fish being skewered by Szilvie onto long pikes ready for roasting, the hogs crisp and crackling. The whole room stank of onions by then, and the warmth from the fires was almost overpowering.
‘You two,’ said Cook, snapping her fingers at me and Kizzy. ‘Potatoes.’
She pointed to a large pot on a roiling boil, and to a slatted spoon atop a large platter. Kizzy held the platter beside the pot as I fished for potatoes, bringing them gleaming up from the steam like precious gems.
Once they were all out Kizzy could barely hold the platter, and I helped her lower it onto the nearest surface. The unskilled baster brought her vat of butter and dumped it beside us, and we began to ladle spoonfuls on.
‘More,’ said Cook impatiently as she passed behind us. My stomach ricocheted between nausea and a yawning emptiness I longed to fill, and the sight of potatoes freshly boiled dripping butter tipped it firmly into hunger.
I stepped back to check our handiwork and heard a soft grunt behind me.
‘I’m sorry, I—’
It was Mira. She was holding a bowl of sage and tiny specks of thyme leaves, painstakingly removed from their stems. Her fingernails were flecked with them almost as copiously as mine were with scales.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, and she only shook her head and held out the bowl. Her lips looked full but were pressed tight shut and colourless. Her nostrils flared as she sucked in air.
I took the bowl. Her hands were smooth as the fire-warmed pebbles Mamă used to place beneath our sheets in winter’s depths. Serving girl hands.
‘Thank you.’ I hesitated a moment. ‘I’m Lillai. Lil.’
Kizzy gave a gesture of greeting and as Mira looked between us I wished my sister were not so lovely and standing so close to me. ‘And this is Kizzy.’
‘You’re Mira?’ said Kizzy. But the girl had already turned away, and Kizzy took the bowl from me.
‘Poor girl,’ she said, as she began to scatter the herbs through the potatoes, using the ladle to move them around and coat them all. I brought my hands up to my nose and breathed in the mingled scents of my work and Mira’s: the lemon-tang of thyme the strongest of all.
‘What are you doing?’ said Kizzy. She was looking at me keenly.
‘Nothing.’ I bent my head so my hair shielded me from her gaze.
‘Are you done with those?’ Szilvie stomped over impatiently. ‘We have to put everything on the central table.’
Kizzy and I carried the platter and placed it beside the piles of stuffed fish, the fried onions, the hogs butchered and hollow eyed. My mouth watered.
Another door opened at the opposite end of the kitchens from the one we came in through, and as if pulled by some soundless bell, a line of girls came streaming in.
They were our age, and they were all, without exception, beautiful. None so lovely as Kizzy, but all well formed and long-haired, their tresses wound into thick, neat knots at the base of their skulls.
‘Serving girls,’ murmured Kizzy. So these were the girls chosen by Malovski to please the boyar, however he wished. Kizzy eyed them sharply.
The women of the kitchens shrank to the sides of the room, keeping out of their way, though a muttering went up like a brisk breeze. I caught nasty words, cruel and damning names. The jealousy was clear, but I doubt any kitchen worker would want to take their place.
It was a well-choreographed dance, fetching the food. Each girl took up their platter, and as though they were tied by an invisible thread, turned and trailed the one in front out.
Only one looked up, a fine-boned girl with long dark hair and blue eyes, who seemed to be searching for someone. She found them in the far corner, and gave a quick jerk of her chin in greeting, her hands full of plates.
I followed her gaze to Mira, standing in the shadows. She nodded her head back, and my chest tightened with something akin to what I felt when Mamă and Albu danced. That I was outside something I wanted to be a part of.
‘Quick, before it’s gone,’ said Kizzy, pulling me forward. I noticed there were wooden boards laid across the tables with a meagre assortment of leftovers on them: unbuttered potatoes I had not retrieved from the pot and burnt pieces of meat and fish rescued from the ashes.
There was no cutlery, but kitchen workers were falling upon the food without even washing their hands. I searched the room for a pail of water to clean the fish and herb smell from my skin.
Cook was standing a little way off from the melee, and I could see she was cleaning her hands carefully, working between the fingers with long strokes. She even had a bar of soap. I edged around the feeding women and made my way to where she stood hunched over a bucket.
‘May I?’ I asked, and she jumped, her faraway eye coming sharply back into focus. She handed me the soap and stood aside slightly, body angled away.
I began to lather my hands. The soap was coarse with husks of corn to scrape away dirt, and smelt of animal fat, like the lamps. I rubbed it across the backs of my hands, scraping beneath my fingernails, keeping an eye on Cook.
‘What is your name, Aunty?’
‘I am not your aunty.’
Her tone was terse, and I had to summon all my courage to speak again. ‘My sister says you have the gift.’
‘Do not speak of such things,’ said Cook harshly. She rubbed her hands dry with a clean cloth, and made for the table, which was already largely empty, but with a boldness I must have borrowed from Kizzy I caught hold of her sleeve.