Chapter 20 Bardy #2
She was telling him how she wanted to live the rest of her life.
The thought stuns him and robs him of words.
“So what did the king do?” The smiler is back, encouraging him.
He glances from Linda to Kate and wishes he could tell her how her daughter, Ellie, had helped him.
Wishes he could tell Linda how glad he is to have a smiler with him now.
He lets his mind flood with mellow plum and takes a deep breath.
“He did what any king would do. He offered the baker great riches and jewels to become his personal baker and to move to the palace, where he created the most glorious kitchen for him.”
“I wish,” mutters the baker.
“He had mixing bowls made from the finest copper and spoons whittled from wood chopped from the royal forest. The ovens were so big that the kitchen boy could stand in them without bending down. The village came out to wave him off, and although they were sad to say goodbye, they were proud that their baker was to become so famous.”
Lou sits a little straighter in his seat.
“So the baker started to cook and the king and his court waited for these wonderful cakes, of which they had heard so much.”
“And?” Satya asks.
Bardy knows he struggled with some of the children they fostered. Anyone would. But none of them had ever complained about his bedtime stories.
“And,” Bardy continues, “the cakes were an enormous and breathtaking disappointment.”
Pia lets out a small, “Oh.”
“His once-tasty offerings were bland and unappetizing. His cakes were soggy, and his biscuits that once were crisp and delicious were so chewy they had to call for the royal dentist. The baker did not know what to do. He reread his recipes. He came up with new, more exciting recipes. But nothing worked. Now the king had a dog . . . uh . . . a whippet.”
This time, Pia lets out a small, happy, “Oh.”
“. . . of which he was very proud, as he was a most expensive dog. This hound could always nose out the most succulent truffles, and if he were to steal something from the kitchen, which I am afraid to say he did on more than one occasion, the baker had noticed that he always found the best, the most expensive ingredients to abscond with. The baker liked and respected this dog, and the dog liked the baker in return. So the baker started to take the dog out with him when he went to the market, and with his help, ensured that he brought back to the palace kitchens only the most succulent and tasty of ingredients.”
“And?” Linda asks.
“And still the cakes and pastries were a disaster.”
If he keeps talking, he won’t have to think about Hana.
“There were whisperings in the privy council about the duplicity of the baker, and the king began to listen. Maybe he should be thrown into the dungeon, and that would be the end of that.”
He catches Tay watching him. He cannot read her expression.
“Around this time, his great friend from the village came to visit him.
He had stopped receiving letters from the baker, and he was worried.
He traveled the great distance to the palace and, eventually, after many mishaps, found the baker sitting on a stool in the kitchen all on his own.
Except for the whippet, who was by his side, with his head resting in his lap.
“The baker was overjoyed to see his friend, and over wine and soggy cakes told him his sad tale. Now his friend”—Bardy catches Leonard’s eye—“was .
. . ah . . . he was an engineer. But he had the soul of a poet.
Which is an unusual and wonderful combination.
He looked around the kitchen at the expensive equipment, he stroked the dog—he was a man who liked dogs—and he made a discovery. And this is what he said to the baker:
“‘Your oven is too big,’ his friend proclaimed. And like a blinding light, the baker saw what his friend the engineer had seen at once. That with an oven that big, he needed to give his recipes much more time to cook.”
Bardy now knows what he wants to say.
“What the baker realized is that sometimes to achieve the best results, you have to give it time. What you really want cannot be achieved in the blink of an eye. It needs time and yes,” he glances at Linda, “patience, to get to where you want to.”
“So what happened to the baker?” Linda asks, still smiling, but with a good deal of understanding in the gleam of her eye.
He looks around at the others watching him. Will this help them?
“He did the obvious thing,” Bardy tells her.
“Which was?” Tay asks. And he is reminded of the little girl who used to sit on the sofa listening to his stories. In the days when he sat in a chair on the other side of the room.
“He baked the king the most wonderful cakes, the likes of which had never before been seen or tasted in the palace. He piled them high on the king’s golden table that stood in the privy council chamber.
Then he hung up his apron, left a polite note on the kitchen table, and returned to his village with his friend, to live where he was happiest.”
Was that it? After all this time.
This was his home. It was never Hana’s.
“And the dog?” Pia asks.
“Ah . . .” Bardy pauses, momentarily caught.
But Bardy’s stories always had happy endings.
It was what his listeners had wanted. Hope that it could be better.
Or somewhere where they could hide. “The baker took the dog with him. The king had never really loved the dog. He just prized him because he was expensive. He did not realize how special he was—a good and loyal friend, there for him when things were bad.”
A very gentle “Ah,” from Pia.
Lou wipes something from his eye. Wood dust, probably.
A round of applause from the others.
Bardy wants to walk out of the room and keep walking. To be alone with his thoughts. He is saved by an alert sounding on his phone.