4. Don’t Forget the Feast

We used the mistletoe boughs Bellis had cut down for us to decorate the high-traffic areas around the manor. Now that we had the grandest sprigs of mistletoe hanging in the entrance hall, it was truly starting to feel like the New Year’s season. I was all but ready to run around shouting, “Happy Flür Day!”

“Nothing brings out the New Year’s spirit like mistletoe,” I remarked.

“Indeed,” agreed Rohtas.

Even the butler, who had his hands full inspecting each room, hanging the decorations, and doing whatever else needed to be done, had to stop and admire the plant.

“We’ve finished decorating the rest of the rooms. Would you like to see for yourself?”

“Nah—I’ll take a look later. For now, there’s work to be done.”

“Oh? What’s next on the agenda?”

“Deciding what’s on the menu! It won’t be long now before Mother and Father Fisalis arrive.”

“My, my. You’d better do some serious brainstorming, then.”

“That’s the plan! Off I go to see Cartham.”

I left Rohtas and headed for the kitchen.

* * *

Though the kitchen clean-up was all done, the ingredients for the new year had yet to be delivered or sorted, so the place wasn’t as busy as it could have been.

“Is Cartham around?”

“Yeah. Over there,” said one of the cooks.

“Hm?”

I glanced in the direction he’d pointed, and there I found a certain someone sitting in a corner of the servants’ dining room, giving off some seriously ominous vibes.

He was holding his head in his hands, as still as a statue. Never before had he felt so difficult to approach. Where had the Cartham I knew and loved gone off to?!

“Uh... That is Cartham, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I take it he hasn’t settled on a menu yet?”

“He’s struggling to come to a decision.”

I slooowly sidled over to the chef in question and peered at his face, only to find him glaring down at a blank sheet of paper. He was like a totally different person compared to his usual easygoing self. Heck, he hadn’t even registered that I was there.

“And we can’t order anything until he knows what he’ll be making, huh?”

“Exactly. If he doesn’t decide soon, we might not get the ingredients in time,” the cook explained, a troubled look on his face.

“I get it! Well, everybody has days like that, don’t they?” There wasn’t a person in the world who’d never gone through a slump.

I asked the cook to prepare some tea for the two of us, then took the seat across from Cartham.

“Hey, Cartham. Decided what’s on the menu yet?”

“Oh, Madame! I didn’t see you come in!”

“I’ve been here for a while now.”

“My apologies for the oversight, then. Uncle Cartham is in a bit of a bind, you see... I’m fresh out of ideas.”

“And here I never thought I’d see the day. You always manage to come up with the tastiest of dishes!”

“What could the issue be? I’m not even sure myself,” Cartham said with an exaggerated shrug.

“It doesn’t have to be anything too fancy. As a matter of fact, anything too rich is gonna be murder on my stomach, so why not keep it simple and use the same ingredients we always do?”

“I suppose that’s not a bad idea...”

“Should we bust out the usual regional dishes?”

“Ha ha ha! Not for New Year’s, I’m afraid.”

He finally laughed like his usual self.

“Racking your brains too hard is just going to leave you even more stuck. Why not make the kids a snack for a change of pace?”

“If only I could...”

“Huh?”

Cartham threw a glance across the room. When I followed his gaze, there was Tinctorius, happily working away on some new creation.

“Dun-dun-da-da! For today’s treat, we have ourselves a pudding topped with a healthy helping of fruit!”

From the looks of things, he was humming his own little made-up tune as he whipped up a snack for Violet and her friends. He’d inherited his father’s happy-go-lucky personality—and his formidable skill with a kitchen knife too. The way he could turn a piece of fruit into anything from a flower to a bird was a sight to behold.

Tinctorius took over snack duty again, I see. Yesterday he made that pie, and now he’s whipping up a pudding... Oh man, I can’t wait for tea time! I mean, uh...back to the point!

“Your son robbed you of your distraction, huh?”

“You got it... Weh.”

Cartham’s melodramatic reaction was almost as funny as Tinctorius’s total obliviousness to the fact that he was the source of his dad’s slump.

“There, there. Let’s leave the snacks to him and focus on the dinner to come. Let’s see... How about some kind of meat confit? That’s Mr. Fisalis’s favorite.”

I wasn’t too familiar with the ins and outs of fine cuisine, but I went ahead and named one of my husband’s dishes of choice, hoping it might give Cartham some sort of inspiration.

And wouldn’t you know it?

“That’s a great idea! And it doesn’t have to be meat—I could make a confit of some seasonal fruits and vegetables while I’m at it.”

“Mm-hmm!”

“Shall we poach the fish?”

“Yeah, that sounds good!”

It seemed I’d managed to light a fire under our chef.

Once he had a prompt to start from, the ideas began pouring forth one after the other, and he jotted each of them down in a furious scribble. Our Cartham was a regular treasure trove of creativity.

In no time at all, what had been a blank sheet of paper was filled with notes on the names of dishes, their ingredients, and how to cook them.

“Wow... Impressive! You’re so good at this, Cartham.”

“I’m flattered to hear you say that, Madame. But of course, it was your hint that got me past my mental block! Merci!”

Then, as always, he took my hand in a sweeping gesture and kissed it. Yep, he was definitely back to his normal self.

“Aww, don’t mention it!”

I chose to simply shut up and take the compliment.

With Cartham’s slump conquered, we managed to decide on the menu. We could finally move on to ordering the ingredients!

Now that they had work to do, the cooks flew into action. Rohtas joined us in the kitchen, and then it was time to start reviewing the ingredient list. We called for our go-to merchants so that he and Cartham could put in our order.

The kitchen had burst into a frenzy of activity, the relaxed atmosphere from earlier nowhere to be seen. Thus, we decided to move to the dining room and have our afternoon snack.

* * *

Tinctorius snuck in with a plateful of pudding when the maids brought us our tea.

“Today’s special treat is pudding! Enjoy!”

“Yay! Thanks!” the girls whooped.

As per usual, “the girls” happened to include me. You better believe I was going to have a taste of that snack!

“Do you like it, Miss Lettie? Daisy?”

“Yeah!” the pair replied.

“All right—now I’ve got them by the stomachs! See what delicious treats I can make, Miss Lettie? Do you like me now?”

“Yeah!”

“Woohoo!”

Tinctorius raised a fist in triumph, but not for long.

“You’re my next-next favorite after Quin. No, next-next-next-next-next...”

“That’s scraping the bottom of the barrel!”

Violet frowned in thought as she counted off people on her fingers. To be fair, he was almost never around the house...but then again, neither was Quince.

Once we’d finished off our delicious snack, we went to the servants’ dining room to help the maids clean up. The negotiations with our suppliers must have finally finished, seeing as Cartham had gone back to the table to write something down on his sheet of paper.

“What are you up to now? Jotting down a recipe before you forget?”

“Oh, no. I’m making a sketch of my mental image before I lose it.”

“What mental image?”

We gathered around Cartham and took a peek at his work. The product of this fluid, uninterrupted flourish of his hand was a picture of one tasty-looking confit atop a plate.

“Wow, that looks downright mouthwatering! I didn’t know you were such a talented artist, Cartham.”

I was surprised at how good the drawing was. It was only a rough sketch, yet it perfectly conveyed the look he was going for.

“Merci!”

“Do you always make a point of doing this?”

I’d advised him on the dinner menu countless times before, but this was the first time I’d seen him make a sketch.

“Not usually. I only bother for formal dinners, or when I’m trying out a new recipe.”

“Huh, I see!”

Cartham kept on drawing the whole time he was explaining, filling the page with more and more sketches of tasty-looking foods.

“I always have an image of what I want a dish to look like, and putting it on paper is the only way to share that vision with my apprentices.”

“Interesting! So it’s how you convey information!”

“You got it.”

That made sense. Drawing a picture was the easiest way to get his ideas across to the other cooks.

While I was admiring the finished sketches, Violet and Daisy gawked at the artwork with stars in their eyes.

“Wow! That looks good!”

“Yum!”

“I bet it beats the pudding!”

“What?!”

It’s nice of you to compliment Cartham’s drawings, but you don’t have to put down Tinctorius while you’re at it! You’re going to bring the poor guy to tears!

“I wanna draw too,” said Violet.

“What, no more interest in helping with the clean-up?” I asked.

“Nope!”

It looked like she’d gotten bored of being the grown-ups’ little helper. But that was fine by me; having something to keep her busy would make things easier on the rest of us, at least.

The moment one of the maids brought them a piece of paper and a pen, Violet and Daisy jumped straight into drawing. With that, the impromptu Servants’ Dining Room Art Awards had begun.

“What should I draw?” my daughter pondered.

“I’m gonna draw that fruit over there.”

“Oh! Me too!”

The subject Daisy had spotted was an arrangement of fruit slices over a plate. The leftovers that hadn’t made it into our pudding, no doubt!

He cut it into such pretty shapes that I can’t imagine it’ll be too easy to draw...

Violet and Daisy fought a long, hard battle against the blank canvas.

“I can’t make it look yummy...”

“Me neither.”

Just as the girls were getting down on themselves, struggling to get their pictures to come out the way they wanted, a maid showed up with an announcement.

“Madam, Master Fisalis has returned.”