Prologue
Winter 1956. Erith Shore, Southwest Thames.
Professor Sayers met her students on site after gathering reinforcements from stores earlier that morning. The weather was cold but clear, and they planned to take full advantage before the fog rolled in. They knew exactly where to go, which added more time to their day. Some students could be seen exploring the other graves as the jeep and trailer made its way down the track-past an abandoned church. Ravaged by flooding five years earlier; burnt out by vandals, or perhaps bombed during the blitz. All that remained was the façade, a Tudor brick structure without a ceiling to protect it from the elements. Vines and weeds were all that seemed to hold the structure together.
Erith Shore’s loneliest burial ground had succumbed to the short attention spans of city life and long worn were the narratives etched on headstones. Some had fallen and cracked, others washed away by centuries of flooding and tidal surges. Wrought iron cages that protected the dead, now rusted, twisted, and bore little assurance for the hallowed.
“How far down, professor?” one enquired.
“Six feet, of course,” Seamus the foreman looked at the professor wryly.
The Jeep and winch were positioned, work could now begin of the excavation.
Hand troughing was painstaking, but each student took their turn. The deeper they dug, however, the less stable the walls became. Mud leached from either side, making it slippery and dangerous. Timber planks were slid in on each side to prevent the walls from caving in, but it was difficult to hold back the mercurial muddy bog. When finally reaching the corpse, everyone cheered and stared into the crevasse, but someone needed to go down and secure the traps around the whole section.
Persey wedged herself into position over the grave, gripping the rope and harness hanging from the pulley with one hand and a spade in her free hand. “Lower me down,” she instructed. Suspended over the lump, she frantically scooped mud into buckets to be raised to the surface until she could get leverage on either side and beneath the interred; eventually, three wide straps could be threaded around its breadth, which would hopefully keep everything in one piece for the lifting.
The block and tackle creaked, and the wire tensioned as it wound back onto the winch of the jeep. It pulled inch by inch, as the wet bog sucked and slurped. Seamus reached down into the crevasse with the help of another student guiding the body to the surface. The wet earth had encased the cadaver over centuries, adding to the bulk and weight of the specimen.
“Slowly, keep going. Stop! stop!” she yelled, “it’s collapsing, get us out!” The team ratcheted the pulleys into a faster gear. Persey was still in the hole, trying to gain traction on the walls with her boots. Seconds after she was pulled to the surface, the muddy walls of the trench collapsed and reclaimed the fissure. Persey found herself spreadeagled on top of the suspended corpse, grabbing hold of a waterlogged object about to dislodge from the cadaver.
Still full of adrenaline from the incident, everybody helped to finish refilling mud into the hole. All were glad it was finally over and certainly relieved no one was buried alive. The archaeology students were instructed to bring the crude headstone back to the campus as it might hold some clue to the life of their ‘homme de terre.’ They carefully wrapped it in an old blanket and carried it up to the trailer. It was late afternoon, with darkness and fog approaching. Wet, muddy, and miserable, and still needing to get the specimen back to the university. The team stretched open a fawn calico body bag left over from the war. Stencilled with R.A.C. on either side, it was originally designed to drag injured soldiers across battlefields, not hold together mud sodden corpses from a peat bog along the Thames. Heaving the load onto a sled-like stretcher-complete with straps and handles, and the aid of the winch, everyone pitched in to drag it up the knoll. With equipment packed and specimen secured, they began the twenty-minute drive from the southeast to Greenwich University.
PART 1
Chapter One
Sours Estate, Sidcup England 1925.
It was a time of culinary celebration. The Guild of Ultra Tasters may have had many fine restaurants to critique on their global tours of gastronomic enlightenment, but few events topped the annual weekend celebrations held on the luxurious Sours Estate - a generous gift from the Tudor king to his Court Tasters many centuries before.
Certainly, there was not much use for food tasters and cup bearers in 1925 England, nor the high priest of the ancient society. These days, brethren were free to indulge in any pursuits providing they served the advancement of gastronomy, and ensured the survival of the Adroit - the rare taster gift that resided in the Ultra Taster – which the Guild of Ultra Tasters, or GOUT, as it was commonly known, was meant to protect.
High Priest Lord Ambrose Sayers, a descendant of the Segas Taster of King Henry VIII, never gave much thought to the anatomy of his inherent olfactory and gustatory gift. He likened it to the great painters and musicians. “Some have it and some don’t,” he said once to describe his exceptional ability to detect the ingredients of a dish to a microbial level. As long as his taste receptors were constantly stimulated, he saw no point in complicating things from a biological perspective. It was the 'pleasure principle' that informed his role as the High Priest of GOUT, and food and wine were predominately at the forefront of such pleasures.
Lord Sayers promulgated that a modern Guild must embrace the burgeoning world of gastronomy as bohemian expressions of art and culture, as opposed to the futile sacrifices forced upon his forebearers. He saw GOUT as the patron of good times. His studious daughter Persey, however, had a more logical explanation for her inherent gift. She may have been fourteen years old, but her theories on gastronomy leaned toward empirical explanations; in that this inherent phenomenon of gustatory and olfactory talent should be understood through the workings of human anatomy. Persey's obsession with attending medical school no doubt perplexed her father, who made it his sole purpose in life to take life less seriously.
Retreating to his bureau aside the dining room, Lord Ambrose used the opportunity to raise his leg on to the desk. He had been on his feet all day and still, there was still much to do in preparing for the gathering of the Inners of the society and their families that weekend. His leather chair squeaked back and forth as he tried to draft his welcoming speech. He took a quick snuff of his cocaine powder to ease the pain of shrapnel in his ankle. Gastronomy is Art etched boldly across his personal stationery:
Food pleasures by being pleasured..., he began scrawling the opening of his welcome, then tore the page and crumpled it into a ball. On a fresh page, he wrote:
My father, High Priest Cleophas of the Guild, was the last of many generations of Sayers Clan Ultra Tasters to protect the royal family. However, as the world became less treacherous, and more civil, and the need for the food taster in Court has all but subsided, I am determined to use my gift to influence the future of cuisine - and the artistic processes from which it evolved.
Brethren, this summer weekend of the bounty welcomes Monsieur Escoffier and Doctor Kikunae Ikeda as our special guests. Their work on understanding the pleasures of the palate and expanding the flavour spectrum is truly fascinating, and indeed worthy of a place in the archives of our epicureum.
I also want to wish our contestants well, for this weekend's test of the palatum vivum. It’s a fun event that brings out our brightest, even though its original purpose was to challenge the incumbent family’s tenure as the English Apex of the Order. That said, I wish young Anatole of the Freebody Tasters Clan the best of luck against my equally talented daughter Persey and may the best Ultra Taster earn the honour of sealing their air and spit into the third vial of breath as surety to the survival and perpetuity of the sacred Adroit.
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Sours gardens came to life in the warmer months. Rhododendron and Azalea bushes burst from under the evergreen canopies in pinks, reds, and whites. The Sidcup Garden Club had only just departed after an early morning of potting up cuttings and carting them off for a charity fete in the high street. Now the paths had to swept over, hedges perfected, and Lady Blodwen's 'Gastro Garden’ ready for a GOUT member tour as part of the weekend’s festivities.
It was important to impress upon members that generations of Sayers Tasters had met their obligations towards the maintenance of Sours Estate. Lady Blodwen even had her prized Plymouth rock hens washed, groomed, and running reckless on the freshly clipped lawns. The majesty of the estate had to be on full display for the Guild's inspection. Lady Blodwen’s official role was of Kindred to her high priest husband and was greatly appreciated by the English Guild of Ultra Tasters for her services to the smooth running of the epicureum - the archival vault and private function centre at the other side of the property.
The Sours Estate had an army of gardeners, cleaners, and cooks who took equal pride in the property's keeping. The hothouse staff were preparing the various varieties of tomato, as they cleverly staggered the development of each bush to ensure a steady supply over the season. Squash, capsicum and her favourite chilli patch of reds, yellows, and greens were bursting with elongated fingers of hotness.
It was not uncommon that Lady Blodwen would recruit the whole family to gardening duties. It was her way of catching up on the busy lives of their teenage children, Persey and Basil. Lord Ambrose would join in on these working bees as he navigated the treacherous pathways without spilling his wine.
"Darling, whilst you cannot distinguish parsley from lawn clippings from a culinary perspective, your gardening skills are the real reason I married you." Lord Ambrose liked to badger his wife as she toiled away.
"Thank you, now, please follow me with that barrow of horse manure."
"I would follow you to the ends of the earth-with any type of manure, my love."
"You’re very kind husband. You shall be invited to my bed tonight," she teased.
“Really mother? You are both determined to scar your children with such images?”
"Oh, don't be such a prude, Basil, it's a fact of life."
"Private life, Mother, if you don't mind."
"Look, here come the peacocks. Throw them some of those grubs, Ambrose, I want to encourage them to eat all my pests."
"Too late, he’ gone back to the house for more wine." Persey could not help alerting her mother to her father's quick escape from his gardening duties. It was typical of Lord Ambrose to inspect, learn something new, then move on to the next source of entertainment and curiosity. Little wonder he was the life of the party. The only problem was that the party never seemed to end.
#
Deciding to see how the preparations for the weekend were coming along, his Lordship followed Mrs Ormiston around the grand dining room, checking on her work.
"Is everything alright?" She noticed him peering over her shoulder.
"Dandy, Mrs Ormiston, I'm just admiring your attention to detail."
"As you wish." Her air of familiarity could be excused, as she had been in the Sayers’ household since Ambrose was a child and was well accustomed to his obsessive personality.
Ambrose was oddly anxious about the fast-approaching event, particularly because the grand Dinner of the Inner would be held at the main residence this year. Normally such events would be held at the Epicureum, the impressive mediaeval stone structure on the other side of the Sours Estate. However, he wanted to demonstrate to his fellow gastronomes how modern house design could place its culinary heart in a more central and accessible proximity to the dining room. Victorian mansions always burrowed their kitchens out of view, usually in some damp and dark basement; but times had changed. Lord Ambrose had effectively spent the winter moving the old kitchen up to the main living section of the house.
"Imagine your father’s horror if he was alive to see that you have virtually invited the servants to live with us?" Lady Ora Sayers reprimanded her son at afternoon tea.
"Mother, I work closely with the cook of the house. I cannot go racing downstairs every time I need to discuss matters of culinary importance."
"What about the epicureum? We usually use that enormous dining room down there." She pleaded with her son to come to his senses. "King Henry's eating table, rarely used; and last time I looked there was a fully functional kitchen unless you've seen fit to tear that out as well?"
"Of course not, Mother, but won't it be nice to have a new American kitchen? I hear they are truly time saving. We can all share afternoon Pimm’s in the Atrium, enjoy Basil's clarinet playing, and I can tutor Persey for her elevation to inherit my place at the Apex."
"Well, that will depend on her defeating the Freebody boy at the palatum vivum."
"Persey is a gifted Ultra Taster - she carries my gene of the Adroit."
"She carries your gene of rebelliousness!"
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