The Cooks
Genesis 19:3
And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
Hadassah rolled over, again, in bed, but there was no help for it; she couldn’t sleep. Since her husband had left, she seemed to wake earlier and earlier in the morning.
She rolled out of bed and went to the window, but it was still so dark! There was nothing to see.
A faint smell came to her, and she grinned. There was something she could do, something she had not done in years!
She threw a robe on; there would not be any men in the kitchen at this hour except a boy to stoke the fire, who would not be shocked to see her in a robe, or anything else she cared to wear, and crept out her door. She felt as if she were eight again, worried about being caught. And here she was in her own mansion!
She crept down the stairs and through the small dining room and, finally, arrived at the kitchen.
No one noticed her at first, her creeping skills standing her in good stead, and she had found a stool, quietly lifted it and moved it over near the door, and watched for a good five minutes before one of the young cooks finally looked up and gave a startled squeak. “My Lady,” she said, making a very awkward curtsey with flour-covered hands.
“Oh, don’t mind me, please!” Lady Ambrose said, as the other cook looked up, startled, and the fire boy grinned. “I couldn’t sleep with my husband gone, and I do so love to watch bread.”
The servants seemed nervous but bent willingly enough back to their work, pounding out the dough. She had been there a good half of an hour before the older one took the bread paddle and started lifting bread out of the oven and replacing it with fresh loaves.
“How many do we make?” she asked, coming over.
“A good dozen every day, and twice that on Saturday,” the youngest servant said. “Because of not doing any at all on the Lord’s Day. We make four different kinds, as you can see, My Lady. The good black bread, the fluffy white, and two types of brown bread.”
“Can I have a piece?”
“Oh, certainly, my Lady. Boy, run get some butter from the crock. Which kind do you want, My Lady?”
“I’d like a piece of each, please. I just love it when they are right out of the oven.”
Lady Ambrose sat there for another hour, eating her samples of the bread, which truly were delightful, and watching the cooks. Then she heard other voices and fled back upstairs before she could be accused of being unladylike or some such.
She got back to her room. Nara wasn’t there yet. She stared at the communication door. The chambermaid would never be awake yet, nor have any reason to be in his room. She went over to the door and quietly opened it… peering in. The room was dark.
She went to his window. There was enough light that she could see the view. But it didn’t console her.
She turned and went to his bed and sat on it. The maid would no doubt be surprised that the bed was mussed, but she didn’t care. She sat on his bed, pulled her legs up to her chest and cried. For a million pounds, she could not have told anyone why she cried, but she cried.
She had no idea how long she had been there when she heard a noise and fled back to her room… too late. Nara looked up, surprised, from the bed which she was making and stared at her and the door, in shock. Then, the brazen hussy, she grinned! As if she somehow knew why she had been there!
Hadassah could think of absolutely nothing to say. She had never been more embarrassed in her life!
Well, that certainly wasn’t true. There were incidents in her childhood that she couldn’t even dream of remembering. That one time, she had tripped and fallen down the stairs in full view of a dozen guests. The adults had been oh so solicitous, but she had seen several of her boy cousins doing a very poor job of hiding their laughter.
This was obviously a very different matter, least said, soonest mended. She went and got a book of sermons from her shelf and tried to find a sermon on ‘bread’. Surely, someone would have preached on it. It was in the Bible in several places.
She arranged the cushions, sat herself down, opened the book… and caught Nara grinning, again! Oh, it was impossible!
Then the humour of the thing caught her, and she laughed.
“Men,” Nara said, “We can’t live with them, and we can’t live without them.”
Hadassah flushed, trying desperately to think of something she could say that would deny the obvious truth of Nara’s words, but eventually, she gave in. “I never did think, when I first heard that I would be married, that I would be capable of forming any sort of attachment.”
“Oh, I’ve heard that story before,” Nara said. “But you can’t share a bed with a man, even for the short time we have done, without getting attached. But then he will say something, and you will wonder what kind of a fool you are to love such a man.”
Say something or… or leave. Leave and spend time with other women and in low houses. How indeed could she love such a man? Not the true love that Esther talked about. That was a duty, and she prayed every day to do it well. But the silly, heart-fluttering romantic love of the cheap novel. How could she feel any such thing?
Thank you for coming round Arthur’s Substack. I hope and pray it will be a blessing to you.
Arthur publishes with Wise Path Books and includes the children’s/YA books:
The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid: A Christian historical fiction chapter book about four orphans who go to live with their aunt on a dairy farm.
The Bobtails and the Cousins: The sequel to Preacher’s Kid. The aunt has married, and the cousins come to visit. Meaning town kids dealing with chores and manure and…
The Bobtails go to France: The sequel to cousins. The Bobtails, and Preacher’s Kid, get to take a trip to New York, London, Paris, and a small town in France. To get some cheese.
and
No Ordinary School: A brilliant but socially clueless boy gets recruited for a special school. Where he makes a lot of money, gets a girl, and solves a mystery.
As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations. The book is a series of essays on how modern politics has gotten the wrong prescription for the wrong diagnosis.
Quite a few chapters of the Bobtails and No Ordinary School are here on this substack as audio.
I also write as Von, and I encourage you to check out that substack. There is a lot of theology and politics there, as well as quotes, poems, other articles, and links to other Science Fiction. But ‘Von’ also is publishing some serial books and stories. Much more adult and serious books than here, for the most part. Some of them.