‘Be quiet!’ bellowed Spittleworth towards the wall. The singing stopped.
‘When I finish this foot, my lord,’ said the broken voice, ‘will you let me out to see my daughter?’
‘Yes, yes, you’ll see your daughter,’ Spittleworth called back, rolling his eyes. ‘Now, be quiet, because I want to talk to your neighbour!’
‘Well, before you get started, my lord,’ said Mrs Beamish, ‘I’ve got a few things I want to say to you.’
Spittleworth and Flapoon stared at the plump little woman. Never had they placed anyone in the dungeons who looked so proud and unconcerned at being slung in this dank, cold place. Spittleworth was reminded of Lady Eslanda, who was still shut up in his library, and still refusing to marry him. He’d never imagined a cook could look as haughty as a lady.
‘Firstly,’ said Mrs Beamish, ‘if you kill me, the king will know. He’ll notice I’m not making his pastries. He can taste the difference.’
‘That’s true,’ said Spittleworth, with a cruel smile. ‘However, as the king will believe that you’ve been killed by the Ickabog, he’ll simply have to get used to his pastries tasting different, won’t he?’
‘My house lies in the shadow of the palace walls,’ countered Mrs Beamish. ‘It will be impossible to fake an Ickabog attack there without waking up a hundred witnesses.’
‘That’s easily solved,’ said Spittleworth. ‘We’ll say you were foolish enough to take a night-time stroll down by the banks of the River Fluma, where the Ickabog was having a drink.’
‘Which might have worked,’ said Mrs Beamish, making up a story off the top of her head, ‘if I hadn’t left certain instructions, to be carried out if word gets out that I’ve been killed by the Ickabog.’
‘What instructions, and whom have you given them to?’ said Flapoon.
‘Her son, I daresay,’ said Spittleworth, ‘but he’ll soon be in our power. Make a note, Flapoon – we only kill the cook once we’ve killed her son.’
‘In the meantime,’ said Mrs Beamish, pretending she hadn’t felt an icy stab of terror at the thought of Bert falling into Spittleworth’s hands, ‘you might as well equip this cell properly with a stove and all my regular implements, so I can keep making cakes for the king.’
‘Yes… Why not?’ said Spittleworth slowly. ‘We all enjoy your pastries, Mrs Beamish. You may continue to cook for the king until your son is caught.’
‘Good,’ said Mrs Beamish, ‘but I’m going to need assistance. I suggest I train up some of my fellow prisoners who can at least whisk the egg whites and line my baking trays.
‘That will require you to feed the poor fellows a little more. I noticed as you marched me through here that some of them look like skeletons. I can’t have them eating all my raw ingredients because they’re starving.
‘And lastly,’ said Mrs Beamish, giving her cell a sweeping glance, ‘I shall need a comfortable bed and some clean blankets if I’m to get enough sleep to produce cakes of the quality the king demands. It’s his birthday coming up too. He’ll be expecting something very special.’
Spittleworth eyed this most surprising captive for a moment or two, then said:
‘Doesn’t it alarm you, madam, to think that you and your child will soon be dead?’
‘Oh, if there’s one thing you learn at cookery school,’ said Mrs Beamish, with a shrug, ‘burned crusts and soggy bases happen to the best of us. Roll up your sleeves and start something else, I say. No point moaning over what you can’t fix!’
As Spittleworth couldn’t think of a good retort to this, he beckoned to Flapoon and the two lords left the cell, the door clanging shut behind them.
As soon as they’d gone, Mrs Beamish stopped pretending to be brave and dropped down onto the hard bed, which was the only piece of furniture in the cell. She was shaking all over and for a moment, she was afraid that she was going to have hysterics.
However, a woman didn’t rise to be in charge of the king’s kitchens, in a city of the finest pastry-makers on earth, without being able to manage her own nerves. Mrs Beamish took a deep, steadying breath and then, hearing the reedy voice next door break into the national anthem again, she pressed her ear to the wall, and began to listen for the place where the noise was coming into her cell. At last she found a crack near the ceiling. Standing on her bed, she called softly:
‘Dan? Daniel Dovetail? I know that’s you. This is Bertha, Bertha Beamish!’
But the broken voice only continued to sing. Mrs Beamish sank back down on her bed, wrapped her arms around herself, closed her eyes and prayed with every part of her aching heart that wherever Bert was, he was safe.
Chapter 45
Bert in Jeroboam
At first, Bert didn’t realise that the whole of Cornucopia had been warned by Lord Spittleworth to watch out for him. Following the guard’s advice at the city gates, he kept to country lanes and back roads. He’d never been as far north as Jeroboam, but by roughly following the course of the River Fluma, he knew he must be travelling in the right direction.
Hair matted and shoes clogged with mud, he walked across ploughed fields and slept in ditches. Not until he sneaked into Kurdsburg on the third night, to try and find something to eat, did he come face-to-face for the first time with a picture of himself on a Wanted poster, taped up in a cheesemonger’s window. Luckily, the drawing of a neat, smiling young man looked nothing like the reflection of the grubby tramp he saw staring out of the dark glass beside it. Nevertheless, it was a shock to see that there was a reward of one hundred ducats on his head, dead or alive.
Bert hurried on through the dark streets, passing skinny dogs and boarded-up windows. Once or twice he came across other grubby, ragged people who were also foraging in bins. At last he managed to retrieve a lump of hard and slightly mouldy cheese before anyone else could grab it. After taking a drink of rainwater from a barrel behind a disused dairy, he hurried back out of Kurdsburg and returned to the country roads.
All the time he walked, Bert’s thoughts kept scurrying back to his mother. They won’t kill her, he told himself, over and over again. They’ll never kill her. She’s the king’s favourite servant. They wouldn’t dare. He had to block the possibility of his mother’s death from his mind, because if he thought she’d gone, he knew he might not have the strength to get out of the next ditch he slept in.
Bert’s feet soon blistered, because he was walking miles out of his way to avoid meeting other people. The next night, he stole the last few rotting apples from an orchard, and the night after that, he took the carcass of a chicken from somebody’s dustbin, and gnawed off the last few scraps of meat. By the time he saw the dark grey outline of Jeroboam on the horizon, he’d had to steal a length of twine from a blacksmith’s yard to use as a belt, because he’d lost so much weight that his trousers were falling down.
All through his journey, Bert told himself that if he could only find Cousin Harold, everything would be all right: he’d lay down his troubles at the feet of a grown-up, and Harold would sort everything out. Bert lurked outside the city walls until it was growing dark, then limped into the wine-making city, his blisters now hurting terribly, and headed for Harold’s tavern.