The Ninth Ingredient

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

“A bold flame to a whimper of coals; a wise pâtissier knows which their desserts need.”

—From the salvaged notes of A., apprentice in the kitchens of Fontainebleau c. 1530s

Henri’s angel wings were shapeless. He looked down at the pairs piled on the pewter platter. Not even his glorious stacking job would save them.

He’d woken up before the c**k crowed and walked in the cold darkness through the woods between the village and the palace. Not stopping, even when he heard the howls of couples finalizing their evenings against bark.

He’d walked through the side gardens still littered with streamers. Henri laughed as he tripped over a runaway peacock pecking at an overturned goblet. Something caught Henri’s eye, nestled by the pale legs of a marble bench. He snatched up the green bottle shimmering in the dying starlight. Henri smiled. Half full.

A sign. This morning was going to be his. This was a toast to his victory. Though the king slept somewhere above, he’d unknowingly given Henri a taste of the blessings in store. Henri’s sugary artistry would be praised above all others.

Henri palmed the squat bottomed bottle. Its neck was embossed with a crest he wasn’t familiar with. Certainly not French, he thought as he squinted in the darkness. A gift from Italy perhaps? Like their little toadess, Henri thought. He hadn’t seen a glimpse of her yet, but the rumors went that her beauty was scarce.

“Let’s hope the little toadess doesn’t just eat flies,” Henri had quipped and sent the rest of the apprentices into laughter over their swirling flour and rolling pins a few mornings before.

Henri couldn’t identify the crest in the waning moonlight. He rubbed his thumb over it. It felt like six balls raised, like sugar plums on a shield. He slugged it back. Henri’s insides sang. He tipped the bottle in the direction he imagined the wedding guests had hastily departed, dropping their bounty on the lawn.

The celebration of the Medici princess’s marriage to the king’s son had stretched into a week of performances, jousts, and feasts. Many of which, surprisingly, featured new dishes served by her army of Italian bakers.

Swords and tongues of different nations clashed above in merriment, but for the kitchens of Fontainebleau, it meant a lot of drunk, hungry royals around the clock. An exhausting affair finally extinguished with the last ambassador’s carriage waved off and the royals put to bed a few hours ago.

At this hour the palace sat silent. It’s sprawling grounds were hushed. Even the posted guards’ helmets drooped like tulips under a spell of slumber. This hour of twilight was Henri’s favorite. For at this hour reigned a silence beyond the bustle of humanity. A world untouched by the affairs of men. An intoxicating stillness Henri loved to wander. He walked the halls where stable boys and chambermaids dreamed.

This hour was his. Henri would fry heaven on earth. Once the royal chefs de dessert tried his crispy angel wings, they would drop to their knees in reverence. All of them. Blind with tears of rapture after finally tasting true salvation. The court would gobble up his desserts and fall into ecstasy. The king’s curiosity would lead him to commissioning a trough of gold where Henri could dump trays upon trays of angel wings and more while the king gorged on his hands and knees.

The vision of his creations sliding down the king’s royal gullet brought tears to Henri’s eyes.

Once satiated, the king would look upon Henri. Not as he would his subjects or servants, but he would really see Henri. It would be like the sun bowing to its brother moon.

The king would have to declare him, Henri du Roi de France, the king’s private pâtissier till the entire world demanded Henri share his delicious gifts! Earth’s lips would drool in anticipation every day for the latest of Henri’s golden confections!

This morning was the beginning of it all. Henri smiled as he lit the royal ovens. He added kindling slowly till a tampered flame rose, a temperature Henri knew would yield a gentle heat to turn the butter block to oil.

A bold flame to a whimper of ash, the best chefs know which their desserts prefer, Henri overheard once. Now what did angel wings prefer?

To achieve the flakey crust, Henri knew he must not drown the angel wings in the oil cackling as it heated. He rolled out his prepared dough from the night before. Using a knife, he slit the rolled dough into boulevards. He twisted the wings tenderly. As if each pair were truly sky bound. He blessed each one before dropping it into the melted butter. He made his entire roll of dough. And another, then another.

He dipped them all. First with a fork. Then a knife. Finally turning them one by one, delicately with his bare fingertips. Though it burned, perhaps it would give him more control over the crisping? Not a single wing seemed to take to the butter. Henri’s skin was turning more gold than his cookies.

He ran low on dough. Henri tried again with the last piece of twisted batter. He raised the temperature from a single hot coal to an inferno by adding sticks. The pan of melted butter jumped from a calm pond’s surface to a hellfire lake in a matter of moments. Henri no longer cared about the scalding oils singeing his forearms as he dipped one. Last. Pair. He lifted it from the roasting butter.

The pair could barely hold together in the bridge of his fingers. Wilted. Failures like the rest. He tossed the cookie and it flopped on top of the pile like a starfish corpse.

Henri braced his hands on his station table. He raised on his tip toes like a dancer, not an apprentice in the bowels of a palace. He threw his head back sniffing at the air above. It was still cool. Hovering past the morning smells of beaten creams and eggs cracked, beyond curling smoke, the air floated fresh.

Henri exhaled heat and exhaustion.

He gulped at the air like one of the garden’s koi did for francs. There was no time to continue making batches. His cookies were not getting any better and he was out of dough. The chefs would be there in about three-hundred Ave Maria’s. They’d be expecting their morning tea and pastry. He’d been so sure his angel wings would take flight.

Something was off, his ingredients, or the recipe, or him. No. Henri refused to let doubt linger in the rooms of his mind. For doubt was just an eyelash to be blinked away.

Who said that? Henri laughed. For the maxim bubbled up from the kettle of his memories unexpectedly. He closed his eyes, searching. A smile spread across his face. Henri remembered. It was a pearl she’d sewn into his lips. His auntie. Always waltzing through the chaos of crusaders and Huguenots, through adjacent inns and plague. Whenever it seemed Le Mollusque would surely be swept out from under them, she’d always find a way.

Henri remembered once he’d been so frightened by the banging and angry voices at their front door that he’d run right up to her bedroom on the third story. He’d crawled into her lap and refused to leave. She held him, staring at their reflection in the mirror as if sitting for a portrait. She seemed deaf to the shouts and splintering of wood below.

Her vanity stretched before them, bare. Gone were her jeweled cases and broaches. The chandelier wept wax, its candles burning down to fat.

She’d sat silent, holding him to her chest like a doll. Henri had thrown his head back, resting it on her breasts. Always so soft and warm like twin loaves fresh from the oven and dipped in lavender. He slept best there.

But this time, something pricked the back of his head. Not sharp enough to be an unclasped pin. More like a thorn through his auntie’s corset and layers of pink velvet. His eyes filled with tears as he looked up at her accusingly. The pain of her betrayal hurt more than the prick. She lifted a small silver flower from the valley of her bosom. She handed it to Henri and he immediately smiled. It sparkled like magic. Each petal dipped in silver. It was the most magnificent thing he had ever seen. The flower seemed planted atop a slender box with sharp edges of silver. One of those four must’ve been the culprit. Digging through his auntie’s dress and into his curls.

Auntie showed Henri how to twist the flower till it popped off, revealing the small space beneath. When he looked within, Henri had thought it snow.

She laughed and reached a finger into the box, “In a crisis, one just needs a little powder.”

Henri laughed, returning from memories into the royal kitchen.

A little powder in a crisis.

Sugar. He had a small pouch of it in his apron. He had planned on using just a sprinkle on his angel wings. But his stack of cookies needed a blizzard of the sweetest of stuff. A cover. Not his raw crystals, but soft, ground to a fine powdering.

Powdered sugar. Henri’s eyes leapt past the sleepy apprentices tying their aprons at their waists as they found their stations. Many of the boys were bringing out their chef’s sieves, pans, and mortars with loud clangs. The custard-makers would have some for sure, but Henri had made an enemy of one of their apprentices last week. Marin the Baron of Snot, Henri had quipped, when the drippy-nosed apprentice displayed his latest lemon-custard. The entire kitchen had heard it and laughed. The name had stuck to the boy like honey between thighs.

Henri had no time to gloat. His cookies were looking more and more like the chopped fingers of orphans. He needed sugar fast.

“Bonjour, Henri!”

The squeaky voice hacked at his concentration like a dull blade. Henri whirled around to see Alix, the apprentice with the countenance and frame of a titmouse. Henri had caught himself more than once checking to see if the boy’s pink tail had flopped loose of his tunic. Not yet.

“Alix, I can’t be bothered right now.”

“Oh, sorry!” Alix’s gaze wobbled to the piled angel wings, “They look…majestic!”

Blood rushed to Henri’s face, threatening to burst through his delicate skin.

Alix had called Henri’s angel wings “majestic.” His cookies were many things: distorted, pale, undercooked, almost sullen if a cookie could be so, but not majestic. And if this mousy little boy was too blind to see it, then perhaps he belonged…Henri opened his mouth, but Alix piped in before he could, “Henri, these cookies will be perfect with what I’m brewing for the chefs. Angel wings with a lavender infused cocoa!”

Henri had to bite back his need to tell Alix where he should pour his melted chocolate. Then he was glad he did, for Alix thrust something into his hands.

Henri looked down. The front of his tunic was now splashed white by a small sack of glittery dust. His hands were also covered in white powdered sugar.

Something akin to a summer breeze or a warm pear syrup dripped between his shoulders and down his back. Henri’s skin pulled tight.

“Alix, how did you…” Henri was cut off.

Henri watched the boy's nose scrunch up. Alix had the face of a mouse face missing its whiskers.

“I was up most of the night trying to perfect the chocolate shavings to milk ratio with some crumbled lavender…” A gurgle from his guts silenced him. He hugged his waist suddenly, his face draining of its color. Henri watched him scurry across the kitchen to where his brew bubbled in one of the twelve hearths.

Henri’s panic paused. The sudden kindness felt unwarranted. The gesture puzzling. Henri usually sidestepped the nervous apprentice who was prone to jitters and dropping pewterware brimming with creams. Henri actively ignored him. Working meticulously to ensure they were never partnered when it was time for the apprentices to pit dates or marinate the mock-entrails of fruit and nuts. What did this mousey boy want?

The powdery solution sparkled in Henri’s fingers as the sun’s rays found their way into the kitchen. At least his angel wings would glisten, he mused, as he punched his hand deep into the sack of Alix’s sugar.