Free Conceit by Mary Novik

puk puk came out of the golden lips. The mirror had been sent to Dr Donne’s daughter, but Dr Donne had four daughters, not just Con, who seemed tothink she ran the household. It was Pegge who had shown Walton the secret river. The fish had gone quiet again, and was listing to one side. Pegge held it under the water. When the carp surfaced, it made a quiet puk.
    “That’d be better off dead.” Bess heaved a foot onto the stool, then a second foot, and reached up to the ceiling to untie a string of garlic. Con was showered with dust as the bulbs fell onto the table. The stool wobbled and Bess stepped down, cursing the absent kitchenmaid. “Peel those,” she said to Con. “I’ve got a fish to cook on top of everything.”
    “Not everyone cares for garlic with fish,” Con said. “You can’t taste, Bess, because you can’t smell.” She kept on talking, though Bess was banging about the pantry. “There is plenty for you to do in the house without doing the cooking too. The bishop has offered us his second cook and I don’t see why—” A stack of pots fell over in the pantry and Con left the kitchen swiftly.
    Bess carried a joint of beef to the table. “I’ll need that dripping-pan,” she told Pegge crossly.
    Before Pegge could stop her, Bess was pulling the pan off the fire with her bare hand. She dropped it on the hearth, and smoke from the burning grease began to swirl out of the fireplace.
    Pegge sat her down and examined the red welt. “You should be more careful, Bess.” Pegge put some butter on the burn, then wound a strip of linen across and around the smarting hand, tying the ends snugly at the wrist.
    “That’ll need cleaning. Bring over some of your father’s malmsey.”
    Pegge splashed the bandage, then handed the jug to Bess who took a long pull and planted it at her elbow, not bothering to replace the stopper. Lately, there had been more of these accidents—burns and lesions, cuts in her large, roughened hands. Alarming nicks and bruises were appearing all over Bess’s arms and legs. She was now chopping the roots off the leeks and scoring the ends deeply, the knife flying dangerously high and fast.
    When had Bess got so old and stiff? Perhaps she would be safer out of the kitchen, though Pegge knew there was no point saying so. She stood the scored leeks in a pot of water to clean themselves. It was curious how the vegetable captured the grains of earth inside it as it grew. Pegge extracted a leek and scrutinized it. “What is it like to be in love?”
    Bess roused herself, looking in an exaggerated way from left to right, and Pegge dropped the leek back into the pot. As she suspected, Bess knew less than she did. Picking up the razor, Pegge scraped it across her arm, watching the hairs fly off one by one.
    Bess took the straight-blade from Pegge’s hand, then reached for a slab of fat. “Why don’t you ask your father? He was the one who addled your mother’s brain with poetry.” She shaved off thin slices of fat, shifting her fingers a fraction with each stroke, then butted them over the joint, so that none of the meat showed. When the joint was larded, Bess took another gulp of malmsey and splashed a thimbleful on the bandage. “I hope this is nothing to do with giving your bodice to that fisherman. What were you doing all that time at Sevenoaks?”
    Pegge reached up to the mantel where Bess kept her ball of bits and pieces of string. Unravelling a long piece, Pegge looped it crossways around the meat. Bess pressed her finger on it while Pegge turned the string and knotted, turning and knotting until the fat was secured against the flesh. Then Pegge lifted down the spit and drove it through the beef. She fitted the spit into the grooves above the fire, sliding the dripping-pan underneath.
    This was the time that Pegge liked best, when the smells began to fill the kitchen. For the next half-hour, Bess would sit in her old chair and put up her feet, listening to the meat brown and