If she was looking for grandeur, she didn’t find it in the vestiary, where Sadie helped her into a gray-blue dress that was her size, with an apron to match. The walls were lined with shelves of the gray-blue clothes. Imagine that every dress was one rainy day. The vestiary housed years of them. Sadie helped Petra tuck her sleek hair under the cap and said, “Take good care of your clothes. They are part of your wages.”
“What?” Petra objected. “Couldn’t they pay me with fur-lined boots? Or hot, saffron-scented baths? Or pastries?”
“Once a week you’re allowed to have a bath.”
“A hot one?”
“Er … it’s lukewarm. Sort of. After all the older girls—like me—have their turn in it,” Sadie said somewhat apologetically.
Petra groaned. She turned to the spider and pointed at her cap. “Well, get in.”
“Surely not,” said Astrophil.
“Where else are you going to hide?”
Astrophil crawled inside her cap and lay flattened against her head. “I am cramped,” he complained in a muffled voice.
Sadie led her down yet another dark hallway that looked almost completely identical to the last dark hallway. But this one had a large door at the end of it. Rattles, bangs, and various steamy smells came from the door.
“There you go, Petra. I’ll see you tonight. Enjoy your first day in the kitchen.” Sadie smiled. “And try not to throw any knives.”
The kitchen was a flurry of activity. Men and women were shaking pans over a brick oven fueled by wood-burning fires below. Several pots large enough to take a bath in hung in the fireplaces. Petra felt sweat spring immediately to her forehead. The other workers in the kitchen did not seem to notice the sweat dripping down their faces as they scurried around a large wooden table that took up nearly the entire room and was loaded with meat, vegetables, and cheese.
Petra asked a girl if she could speak with Mistress Hild. She was led toward a broad woman with a meat cleaver in her hand. Mistress Hild’s face looked permanently irritated. Wrinkles fanned out from her small mouth. When the servant girl introduced Petra as the new kitchen maid, Petra uneasily noticed that Mistress Hild’s right arm was more muscular than her left, the result of hours of chopping. When the woman set down the cleaver, Petra relaxed.
Mistress Hild placed damp hands on Petra’s shoulders and pushed her toward one end of the table, where there was a mountain of dirty onions. Petra stumbled. One of the kitchen boys snickered.
“Peel them,” commanded Mistress Hild.
“All of them? Alone?”
“Of course, you stupid girl. Everyone else is busy. Tonight there will be a great feast for thirty people, including ambassadors from Italy, England, and the Ottoman Empire.”
Petra looked longingly at the other servants, who were stuffing small quails, chopping celery, grating cheese, and mincing meat. One lucky woman was blending butter, eggs, sugar, and a dark spice. Several of the kitchen workers gave her smug looks, glad to have escaped the worst task of all. Petra searched Mistress Hild’s face for some trace of pity. She found none. “Where’s a knife?”
“You will peel them with your fingers only. When you are done, you may have a knife to chop them.”
Petra looked with despair at the huge mound of yellow-brown balls. “But what are they all for?” She couldn’t imagine what dish required so many onions.
“Genovese.”
“Jeno-what?”
“Jen-oh-vay-zay.” She pronounced it slowly, like she was talking to someone who had been dropped on her head as a baby. “Genovese is made with onions and meat. It’s a dish from Italy. You have heard of Italy, haven’t you?”
A snicker came from a scrawny girl.
Petra shot a dangerous look in her direction, then replied, “Most of Italy’s wealth comes from taxing ships that come into its ports. It often gets attacked by pirates.” She paused, and Astrophil silently helped her. “Italy is composed of city-states. It is divided into several different regions, each run by a duke.” Petra became aware that the noises of chopping and scraping had stopped. Everyone in the kitchen was staring. “Italy—”
“Enough.” Mistress Hild pushed her into a chair and handed her an onion. “Peel.”
When she had walked away, a freckle-faced girl leaned toward her and whispered sympathetically, “At least you get to sit down.”
After a couple hours of peeling, Petra was covered with papery onion skins. Her fingers were black with dirt. The table now held countless bald onions. Mistress Hild passed by. She handed Petra a knife and an enormous pot. “Chop,” she said.
Petra chopped. She cut the onions quickly and with a grace that was noticed by some of the girls around her. But Petra did not see their admiration, because tears leaked out of her eyes from the tang of the onions. She sniffed to ease the burn in her nostrils and wondered if the prison guards ever used this form of torture on the unfortunate people under their lock and key. She tossed the chopped onions into the pot.
She split open one onion and saw, instead of white rings, a pool of black, reeking goo. Its smell hit her like a slap in the face. Petra paused, wrinkling her nose. Then she deliberately (and naughtily) swept the bad onion into the pot.
Genovese, she discovered, must cook for many hours. After Petra finally finished her task, Mistress Hild set the full pot over one of the kitchen’s fires, adding a few hunks of meat. Then she steered Petra toward a sink heaped with oily dishes. She tipped a kettleful of boiling water into the sink. “Wash,” she said.
Petra washed. To say she was bored would be an understatement. But she was at least somewhat entertained by Astrophil’s continued report on the details of Italy, and by imagining what would happen to Mistress Hild once the Italian ambassador tasted her Genovese.
But Petra was denied the pleasure of seeing Mistress Hild fired, or demoted to Dishwasher-in-Chief or Chamber Pot Scrubber Supreme. Mistress Hild passed by the bubbling pot and dipped in a wooden spoon. She slurped a spoonful. Gagging, she spat into the fire and grabbed a pitcher of water. She gulped at it, and water spilled over her stained apron. She coughed and spat again. Then she whirled around and saw the woman who had been in charge of selecting and cutting the meat. Mistress Hild whacked the woman’s arm with the wooden spoon. The woman howled. “It ain’t me, mistress! That meat was fresh, I tell you!”