A Pie Thief

Denna leaned against a marble-topped counter, her freckled nose in a ragged cookbook.  Since her mother had passed on the previous year, Denna had become the head cook for the household that lived in Blackwood Castle.  It was time to make rations for the Lord’s adventuring he did each year on the pretext of keeping an eye on the far reaches of his realm.  Lord Westin Merria would want to set out as soon as winter thawed, and it would take a week or two to properly dry the meats and fruits.  Denna was trying to find the recipe for fruit leather that Lord Merria was so fond of, but kept becoming engrossed in other recipes. 

Denna felt sweat trickling down her scalp.  It did nothing to cool her.  She was baking pies this morning, and the kitchens were hot and muggy as usual.  She left the cookbook open on the countertop to the page where her thumb had been.  Past the last of the row of brick ovens that took up an entire wall of the kitchens, Denna unlatched the wooden shutters of a window.  Propping the shutters all the way open created a crisp draft through the already open door to the woodshed, across the kitchen, and out the window by the stoves.  It was another gray winter day, and the air cooling the kitchen had the scent of more rain. 

            Denna leaned on her elbows in front of her mother’s old cookbook and idly turned pages.  Enjoying the chill wind cutting through her sweaty dress, she admired the sketches of dishes and methods of preparation her mother had so carefully inked into the pages.  Random scraps of parchment and rough paper littered throughout the leaves, some of their edges serving as markers for certain recipes.  As she was running a finger across the ingredients for the missing fruit leather recipe, Denna thought she heard something scratching around the ovens.  Automatically turning, Denna saw Ralphe, one of the scullions under her supervision, scooting toward the first oven, closest to her. 

            He nodded a little bow and waved a long straw at her.  “Just coming to check the pies, ma’am.”

            “Wait a minute or two, would you, Ralphe?”  She gestured to a bushel of peaches that were small and shriveled.  “Take those to the peeler, would you?  Then check the pies?”

            “Yes, ma’am.  Of course, ma’am.”  The boy swung the bushel basket to his hip and retreated into a side kitchen where the peeler worked.  The peeler was usually some member of the household staff that had earned an infraction.  Whether an elite house guard caught drunk on duty or even the lowly scullions themselves on days when there were no troublemakers, someone had to peel the potatoes and other vegetables and fruits.  Likewise, for the cutters out in front of the woodshed, they had usually incurred a more serious infraction, however. There was always need of wood for not only the kitchens, but every fireplace in the castle needed to kept burning to warm the household.  

            Denna took a straw from her apron pocket and started checking the pies.  She opened an oven as Ralphe returned and joined her.  Drawing the rack the pie sat on out, Denna poked it into the very middle of the pie.  When the straw came out clean, she carefully lifted the pie in both oven mitt covered hands and carried it to the pie safe.

            “Apple up here, pumpkin on the middle shelf, and pecan on the bottom.”  She directed Ralphe as he carefully crossed the kitchen. 

“Meat pies over there on that rack.”  Denna waved at another rack on a table.

“Umm, ma’am?”  Ralphe’s voice squeaked.  “There aren’t any pies in this oven?  Just the pans. . .”  Sorely confused, he looked up at the head cook from the open door of the oven second closest to the window.

Puzzlement twisting her brow and bottom lip, Denna went immediately to the last oven and opened the heavy door.  A baby dragon sat in the uppermost pie pan, licking its claws clean of mulberry juice and crumbs.

“Oh, you pie-thieving beast!”  Immediately reacting, Denna grabbed for the chubby aquamarine wyrmling as it skittered out of the fruit-smudged pie pan and the oven. 

Unhurt by the baking temperature, the baby dragon squealed as it dashed for safety.   Flapping its tiny yellow-speckled wings, the wyrmling bounded out of the unshuttered window into the freedom of the cloud-laden sky.

Her face flushed with anger, she jerked Ralphe back to the first oven.  “Merissa!”  She called another scullion away from the dirty dishes. Turning back to Ralphe, she gave her orders.  “You two get the rest of those pies out of there.  Both of you stand guard once they’re in the safe and don’t let another of those little monsters get even a crumb!”

Turning on her heel, Denna hurried outside past the cutters, the smoke house, and up a spiral staircase into Hugh’s Tower where Randall kept his dragons.

*     *     *

“If you don’t keep those bleeding -” Denna sputtered in fury. “Scaled rats in their cages, I’m going to be serving lizard-on-a-stick for an afternoon snack!”  The angry woman pounded an oven mitt-covered fist on the heavy oak door.  “You hear me, Randall?”

“Now, Mistress Denna,” came the young man’s reply through his closed wooden door.  “You well know that my wryrmlings help keep our lovely home free of such rodents.”

The cook’s anger rose a notch.  She hated being called “Mistress” as if she were the owner of slaves or a brothel.  Instead of offering a retort, Denna panted, trying to catch her breath.  The hawker’s eyrie was all the way at the top of the tallest tower in the entire castle.  It was also rather chilly up here in the wind, Denna decided, shivering a little in her sweat-soaked work dress.

A moment later when the door to the eyrie opened, Denna pushed inside, not waiting for an invitation, though Randall offered one as he pushed the door shut behind her.  She felt a blush rising to her cheeks when she spotted the steaming basin of water by the fireplace, and turned to find Randall dripping wet and wrapped rather hastily in a ratty robe.  Certain that her face was already red from the heat of the kitchen and the hike up the tower stairs, she continued with her tirade.

“Your bloody little blue one’s been at my pies again, Randall!  What are you going to do about it?  The little monster ate seven pies this time!”  She raised her arms above her head, waving her oven mitts for emphasis. 

He gestured to a plush seat near the fire and bathtub.  Frowning, Denna slumped into it and watched the silent man as he packed himself a bowl of pipeweed from the supply on the mantle.  As if finally realizing how silly the oven mitts looked, she jerked them off and hid them under a fold of her skirt.  Trying to avoid looking at the half-clad man, she turned her attention to his bookshelf.

“My, my, no wonder little ‘Drick hasn’t been eating his rats.”  Randall, the household’s “hawker”, lit his pipe with a twig from the fireplace.  “You’d think meat pies in a pie safe would keep the little buggers out. . .”  He puffed thoughtfully.

“Meat pies?  Nah, they were mulberry pies, and I hadn’t even gotten them out of the ovens yet, much less into the pie safe!  Emptied four ovens, he did.  Left nothing but empty pie plates.  I’d have wrung his little neck if he hadn’t jumped out the window as soon as I opened the oven door.”  The head cook harrumphed and crossed her arms in front of her breasts.

Coughing, Randall turned from the fireplace to give the cook a surprised look.  “He was inside the oven?  While you were baking pies?”

Denna raised an eyebrow.  “Yes.”

“One of the blue wyrmlings?  Inside the oven?  Did he look hurt?”

“No,” Denna huffed.  “He looked full and sticky.”

“Amazing.  And eating mulberries?  Well, this does just beat all. . .”  Randall began rifling through papers on his desk in search of a quill pen & ink.  “And to think all this time I’ve been keeping the blue ones in a wet environment - but that must be why the reds aren’t thriving in the fiery environment!”

Denna watched the skinny man as he puttered around his cluttered little desk with his pipe dangling from his lips.  Apparently, in his excitement, he had forgotten she was even there.  She cleared her throat as she gathered her oven mitts and stood.

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry about your pies, Mistress Denna.”  He offered her a sincere smile as he ushered her to the door.  “Please forgive my wrymlings.  I will try to keep better track of them in the future; I assure you.”

A moment later, Denna found herself once more in the drafty tower stairwell, her mouth open to give the hawker a piece of her mind.  Instead, she sighed and shook her head at the heavy door he had closed behind her.

*     *     *