“Ah ha!” she cried, gleefully. “Here it is!” She scrutinized the tag attached to some sheets of parchment in a green leather binding (stamped with the Mearely crest). The parchment bore characters in black India ink and each page was ornamented by a coloured margin of very badly painted fishes, birds, bunches of fruit, and other delicacies. There was even one little creature on a platter which may have represented a stuffed suckling pig, or a mulatto baby au jus, with its mouth pouting with prunes. The countess, by her own confession, had wantonly tossed toxic and gaseous particles together and then dared indigestion to murder love. Most of her gluttonous recipes bore this introductory note:—
And upon thys day, beinge of ambitious mynde to pleasure the gracious appetyte of milorde, the Prince of Paradis withe delicate dyshes of newe raptures, I didde herewythe devyse and prepare and with myne owne handes styrre the essences thereof, thys—“puddynge,” “sauce,” “souppe,” or whatever it might be.
So well had his fair one pleasured, devysed, and styrred to feed Dom Paradis’s earthly appetite that it was easy to believe the last legend of their love; namely, that, in dying, he had left her his jewelled belt—no doubt as a grateful remembrance from the princely “tummy” it had adorned though not restrained, and which she had kept so well lined.
“Contessa, if love and greed kept pace in your little affair, your hearts must have been overflowing with sweet spices and goo; for you smothered your food in them. I think a plain, boiled potato would have been a chastening experience for you both.”
Rosamond was sitting on the floor, tailor fashion, in the centre of a scattered ring of tagged leather cases and books of all sizes, with the countess’s illuminated parchments spread on her knees. She turned several pages of death-defying sauces, before she came upon the welcome phrase “I didde devyse a cake”—or “a goodlie heartes cake”—as Contessa Lallia y Poptu de Sillihofo Sanza Mountjoye preferred to describe it.
Wrote the Countess:
On thys day, beinge the same of a most warme myd-summere day, I dydde persuade milorde husbande to waite upon his highness and so to goe forthe and dydde sende unto milorde the Prince of Paradis, who is in alle weatheres mye beloved kinsmanne and friende in exile, to come unto me to taste of a cake....
“Oh, you wasteful woman, to use all those eggs!” exclaimed Rosamond, in reading the list of ingredients. “You must have passed over the first-born of the hen houses of Mountjoye like the destroying angel over the Egyptians. A piece of butter as big as milord’s fist, she says; that is, half to three quarters of a pound. Figs, raisins—so ‘thatte they dydde cover mye two handes.’ That’s the way Amanda measures—by hand. All born cooks do. Contessa, I believe this is the original Lady Baltimore cake—except that it is ever so much richer, and peppered with spice and ground perfumes, which I shall omit with the ‘oil of beaten milk,’ which is merely melted butter. No wonder he died, your Dom Paradis. You oiled his goings for him, and slid him down where all breakers of the commandments go. You were not only a Portuguese, you were a Portu-grease.”
She read on and presently repeated the lines aloud with little murmurs of laughter.
Thys cake dydde so pleasure mye deare Dom Paradis thatte he therewythe expressed a greate love for mye person; whych he dydde declare to be beauteouse beyonde compare, and manny tymes dydde kysse me, and wysh milorde the Earl myght nevere return, and dydde suddenlye falle into a greate jealousie, and beseech me to vowe thatte I would no cakes make for Mountjoye, and dydde aske and importune me to saye if he be stille so younge and handsome thatte I do love him, I beinge twentie yeares youngere than milorde Dom Paradis. Then sayde I thatte I would bathe and dresse mye hearte for hys delights, but at this he cryde oute and would not and—when he had eaten alle my love-cake—Mountjoye dydde enter.