15. Chapter 15
Chapter 15
“ A lgernon.” Somebody shook Cemre’s shoulder. “Time to get up.”
“Wrghl?” said Cemre into her pillow.
“You slept right through the wake-up call.” It was Qhari. “The others are gone already, but we really have to go now if we’re going to get to makeup and interviews in time.”
Cemre bolted upright and then remembered she didn’t have her disguise on yet. She quickly faced the inside of the bunk and called, “Thank you, I’ll be out immediately.” Thank goodness the curtain was still mostly closed and Qhari had just stuck an arm through a sliver to tap her.
She rushed through her dress, quickly attaching the moustache and splashing glue everywhere in the process. It was too bad – she’d have to tidy up later. How on earth had she managed to sleep through everyone else getting ready?
Oh yes. She’d been awake most of the night, worrying about how Massimo was feeling, whether he’d accepted her apology, whether he could ever forgive her for lashing out. She kept seeing his forlorn face and slumped shoulders. He was always happy, full of smiles and mischief, and she’d . . . ruined it.
Her limbs felt like dead weights as she stumbled out of her bunk and raced over to where Qhari waited at the door.
“Oh, your cap.” Qhari reached up and straightened it, then stared at something to the right of her face.
“What?” She put her hands up to her head. “What is it?”
“You have one very long hairs – hair – there.” He pointed, and Cemre found the culprit. A lock had come loose from her hairnet.
“Oh.” She shoved it under her hat and pushed Qhari forward. “Thank you. We better make haste.”
“But why—”
“Cultural thing,” she blurted and dragged Qhari down the passage by the arm. “Maybe we should walk faster.”
They slid backstage just before the twenty-minute curtain call, and for the first time, Cemre was grateful she could run straight to makeup and avoid remedying Qhari’s still-befuddled expression.
Once they were all powdered and recorded and waiting in the wings for the 30-second call, Qhari addressed them with a stern face and his hands on his hips. “Recall what we said – we’re doing this for Massimo.”
“For Massimo,” echoed the others.
For Massimo. Cemre didn’t know how any of them winning would remedy Massimo’s having lost, but her friends seemed to have achieved a level of inner peace she hadn’t, so she would do her best to imitate them until their reasoning made sense to her.
They took their places on the stage. Cemre’s bindings itched and she desperately needed to adjust her socks, but she forced herself to stand still and look as composed as possible.
“And look at that, ladies and gentlemen,” announced Mr. Bronson with an arm flung out dramatically. “We’re down to seven contestants. We are just three nights away from the quarter-finals!”
Cemre restrained herself from fanning her face with her hand. The theatre seemed exceptionally warm today. But perhaps it was all the running she’d done in the last few minutes.
“We apologize for the heat, but our ice dragon had a family emergency,” said Mr. Ogleby, pointing upwards. “As always, we once again welcome our guest chef and mentor, Chef Santini!” He applauded in the chef’s direction, and the audience joined in.
Once the din had died down, Sir Beckwith-Parsons spoke. “In honour of our guest, we have set a challenge centred around his heritage. Cantuccinians are well-known for their hospitality and generosity. Especially when it comes to food, you can expect a warm welcome in the household of any Cantuccinian.”
Chef Santini muttered something to his interpreter, who then said, “If you leave a Cantuccinian house with an empty stomach, your mouth must be sewn shut.”
The audience laughed.
“For that reason,” continued Sir Beckwith-Parsons, “today you must cook us a three-course meal. And we expect generous servings of each dish.”
“You have three hours,” said Mr. Bronson, “and your time starts now.”
The crowd roared, and the seven contestants fled to the pantry.
Three courses – Cemre could do that. And it needed to be hearty. She thought of the things Massimo had cooked for them. The cianfotta, that stew full of flavour and warmth – was there anything more generous?
She’d need to get that on first, as it needed time for the vegetables to absorb all the flavours and create a thick sauce. She threw ingredients into her basket, seeing Massimo’s face when she chose her aubergines.
An orange rolled between her shoes, and she caught it and handed it back to Qhari, whose arms were full of citrus. “Gracias,” he said. “And may you have the milk in abundance.”
Cemre could only guess that was his way of wishing her good fortune, so she replied, “You too!” She smiled at Rhydian and Tsytryn on their way out.
An elf with a paunch – one of the most experienced and cocky contestants – was at the bench in front of her. She wiped the sweat from her brow and forced her head down. She wouldn’t let his apparent prowess distract her. She drew strength from the knowledge that her friends were with her, that they were all in this together.
She chopped up the vegetables in record time and got them onto the stove, then she sprinted back to the pantry to get what she needed for her starter and dessert. The starter had to be appetizing but not too rich, or it would be too much before the heavy stew. Something light and fresh but still generous. Salad? Too simple. Focaccia? But that would need more time to prove and bake than she had.
Her eyes fell on a leg of dry-cured ham. Ah! Paper-thin slivers of prosciutto, with – she scanned the fruit crates and found a beautifully ripe melon – and some mozzarella and pesto would be a perfect antipasto.
Then for dessert . . .
Well, they were doing this for Massimo, weren’t they? And he couldn’t live without his espresso. So she would make the most Cantuccinian espresso dessert there was: affogato.
It took time to set, so she’d have to move as fast as possible. She grabbed her ingredients and fled back to the bench. Sweat dripped down her spine between her wings, soaking her chest bandage.
She got a pot of crème anglaise onto the stove beside the stew, stirring both at the same time. As she leant over them, the steam almost blinded and burned her. She wiped her eyes and kept going.
And then . . .
Plop.
Cool air brushed Cemre’s top lip. Horrified, she glanced down into the pot she’d been stirring.
Bobbing amongst the diced potato and bell peppers like a rat swimming across the River Loo was her moustache.
The audience gasped.
Well, that put paid to any ideas no one had noticed.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the offending appendage. The orchestra’s jolly background music died away in a tangle of wrong notes and strangled wind instruments. The cameras all scrambled to face her. She was on the big screen now, no moustache.
Perhaps they’d only think she was very young and had not been able to grow a moustache. She peeled her eyes up to the big screen, and her stomach sank.
Two long locks of hair had slipped out of her cap, framing her undoubtedly feminine face.
“Mr— Miss—” stuttered Mr. Ogleby, all aghast. “What . . .”
A confused murmur rolled through the crowd, picking up volume along the way.
Sir Beckwith-Parsons huffed. “What is the meaning of this?”
“She’s a woman,” the sound tecknician said matter-of-factly into the megalophone.
“Yes, I can see that,” barked Sir Beckwith-Parsons as his face reddened to match his waistcoat. “What is she doing in our competition?”
All hope of passing off her appearance as adolescent male dashed, Cemre set free her hidden fury at being deliberately prevented from entering the competition as a female. She pulled off her cap and began removing the hairpins that had managed to cling to her skull. “I’m here because you judged me worthy at the audition.” Hairpins clattered to the floor one by one. “And then you judged me worthy again and again after that.”
“But we didn’t know . . .” Mr. Ogleby trailed off and peered guiltily at the suddenly hushed audience.
“That I was a woman,” finished Cemre, flinging her hairnet to the floor and shaking out her locks. “I wonder if the audience knows that you turned away all females who auditioned, whether they were any good as cooks or not?”
Boos rippled through the crowd.
“That’s not . . .” stammered Mr. Ogleby. “We didn’t . . .”
“You didn’t? Then why did you send me away without even letting me finish my dish when I auditioned in a dress, but when I came back with a moustache and trousers and a male name, you not only let me complete my cook of the exact same dish I had been making the first time, but you simpered and crooned over how delicious it was?”
“We did not simper and—” Mr. Ogleby jumped when a tomato splatted at his feet.
“That’s quite enough of that!” Sir Beckwith-Parsons yelled at the audience. “As for you, young lady, you’re disqualified.”
The audience roared their displeasure, and two more tomatoes pelted the stage.
“It does no good to throw a tantrum,” Sir Beckwith-Parsons hollered over the clamour of the audience. “Falsifying one’s identity cannot be tolerated.”
Riiiip.
The sound cut through the noise of the crowd, amplified by the nearby megalophones.
The crowd hushed, searching for the source of it. One of the camera pixies spotted it first, and soon, Rhydian’s face filled the screen.
He didn’t have a moustache anymore.
He cleared his throat, and a voice that was no longer breathy but clear as a high-pitched bell said, “Are you quite sure there’s a rule against disguises in the competition?”
Cemre felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach. Rhydian was—
Riiiip.
The camera swung to Qhari, upper lip bare but so red it hardly made a difference. “I too have this question,” he – uh, she – asked sweetly as she pulled off her cap to reveal a mass of dark curls.
Before Cemre’s stomach could recover from the second punch, Tsytryn grunted, drawing all eyes to him, and carefully scraped away the moss below his nose.
“Disqualified, disqualified – you’re all disqualified!” howled Sir Beckwith-Parsons, his face and neck purple as the spare aubergines on Cemre’s bench.
“Th-they’re all women?” stuttered Mr. Bronson, who was only just catching up with current events. “This is an outrage.”
“ Pardona.”
One more rip drew all eyes and camera lenses to the special guest at the back of the stage. Chef Santini stood moustache-less and toque-less, long grey hair in a bun on top of her head, formerly bent back straightened to show the curve of her chest.
Sir Beckwith-Parsons’ colouring – disgruntled by the continuous wardrobe changes – fled his face altogether. His mouth opened and his lips fluttered around words his voice box had been unable to pronounce.
There was a peel of laughter from the royal box. Cemre peered into the auditorium. The queen leaned over the balustrade of her box, overcome with mirth.
“Capital! Capital!” she yelled between chortles and bouts of clapping.
The sound seemed to rouse the audience from their stupor, and soon the theatre echoed with the mirth of two thousand people who’d just seen an excellent trick performed flawlessly. Mr. Bronson soon joined in.
Cemre’s head spun, her stomach long ago having leaked into her shoes. All her conversations with Rhydian and Qhari and Tsytryn – well, not so much Tsytryn – played back in her head. Had there been clues? What had she missed? Was that why no one had noticed her odd behaviour around dressing and undressing, because they were all far too occupied playing the same game?
And Chef Santini, the person she’d idolized for the better part of her life. He— She— She had been hiding her identity for years. While living in the house of the royal family.
And finally, at this silly competition in a foreign land, she’d revealed herself. How could she give up everything here and now after all that work and . . .
What about Massimo? Had he known? Was he . . . No, she couldn’t believe he could be anything but male. Her stomach jumped back into her abdomen to make quite sure she knew this. Besides, she’d seen him as Prince Vittorio. There was no question who he truly was.
Sir Beckwith-Parsons began arguing with Mr. Ogleby while Mr. Bronson continued to guffaw like a donkey. The camera pixies didn’t seem to know whom to focus on. The audience was a brouhaha of laughter, argument, and shouting at the stage. They seemed to want the competition to continue, but all the contestants stood around looking perplexed. Cemre wondered if she should carry on cooking. Their time was ticking away, and no one had given them any instructions.
Finally, Mr. Ogleby took centre stage and gestured for everyone to quiet down. “Please, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll let me speak.” The hubbub reluctantly petered out. A last tomato splatted near Mr. Ogleby’s feet. After flicking the pulp from his shoe like a displeased cat, he said, “We have decided to review the rules, after which we will make a decision about how to proceed.”
“Let them cook!” yelled someone in the audience, and a murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd.
Mrs. Dudley clacked onto the stage and stood beside Mr. Ogleby. She whispered something to him while the megalophone pixies stood aside. Mr. Ogleby nodded and eventually sighed. He beckoned a megalophone over and gestured for Mrs. Dudley to stand in front of it.
“You best tell them,” he said.
Mrs. Dudley cleared her throat. “I can confirm that there is nothing in the rules about gender or disguises. So long as the contestant has not done anything to gain an unfair advantage over the other contestants, they are allowed to compete.”
The audience roared with approval and then broke into applause.
Sir Beckwith-Parsons looked as though his head was about to pop like an overripe tomato. “This will not do! Their disguises put them at an unfair advantage!”
“How is that?” asked Mr. Bronson, but he backed away when Sir Beckwith-Parsons shot him a deathly glare.
Chef Santini strode forward with her interpreter, who announced, “Chef would like to say something.”
Chef Santini took the place that Mrs. Dudley courteously vacated for her and addressed the audience in her smooth and rather powerful voice. Gone was the soft, gruff voice she’d used before.
“In this world,” translated her assistant, “being born a woman is a disadvantage. We are only allowed the privileges men deem us capable of: motherhood, cooking in private homes, cleaning. All my life, I wanted more. I worked harder than any of my brothers or cousins, cooking and reading books about cooking and observing the women in my life who all cooked so well.”
Chef Santini spread her hands and shrugged.
“But when I applied to restaurants for a position in the kitchen, I was turned away. Why?”
She pointed to her trousers.
“I did not have these. And I thought, ‘Why should I let clothing prevent me from having my dream?’ So I sewed myself some trousers, hid my hair under my hat, and got one of these.”
She waved the false moustache between her fingers.
“I was given a job immediately. And now I am amongst the top chefs in the world.”
She nodded as if she’d made her point. Then she looked down at her trousers and spread her hands at them.
“These are not an advantage. They are an equalizer.”
The audience gave her a standing ovation. No matter how much Sir Beckwith-Parsons yelled at them over the megalophone to be quiet, they did not stop clapping.
Finally, Chef Santini put out her hands to hush them, and they obeyed.
“I think we have a competition to finish, not so?”
Sir Beckwith-Parsons spluttered, “But we can’t simply—”
“Let them cook!” shouted an audience member, and then another, until everyone had taken up the chant, including Chef Santini.
Let them cook! Let them cook!
Mr. Bronson and Mr. Ogleby exchanged glances. They seemed to agree on something, then turned to Sir Beckwith-Parsons. Whatever they said to him, he did not take it well. He stormed off the stage, more purple than ever.
Mr. Bronson waved the audience to their seats and called for the clock to be set back to only thirty minutes expired. “We shall begin at more or less the point where we . . . erm, were interrupted.” The crowd applauded. Mr. Bronson held up a hand. “Your time starts now!”
Feeling as if she’d just stepped off a not-quite-seaworthy dinghy after a stormy ride, Cemre tried to shift her mind back to her dish. She couldn’t see the ingredients in front of her, only Chef Santini and Rhydian and Qhari and Tsytryn. All girls like her with a dream and the audacity to do whatever it took to pursue it. For the first time in the competition, she felt . . . proud of herself.
She hadn’t done a terribly wrong thing, which was how she’d felt since first putting on her disguise. She was part of a sisterhood fighting against the unfairness in the cooking industry. Would this display of prowess from no less than five talented women prove to the world that they deserved – more than deserved – a seat at the table? Or should she say a bench in the kitchen?
She glanced up at the audience. They were lapping up the activity on the stage, cheering and applauding, not a single tomato hurled or a boo yelled. Perhaps there were young girls present who also wished to have a career in food, and Cemre and her friends and, above all, Chef Santini, had proven once and for all that it was possible, that women were more than capable of cooking, not just as well as, but even better than some men.
Of course, nothing in life was that easy, she knew. More than likely, this was a flash in the pan and once the competition was over, everything would go back to the way it was.
“Com'è la cucina?”
Cemre’s head whipped up. Chef Santini stood in front of her bench, peering curiously into Cemre’s cooking pots.
“How is the cook going?” translated the interpreter.
“Uh, it’s going well,” she stuttered after a moment of struggling to comprehend the words that had been said to her. She left her wooden spoon in a pot and clutched the edge of the countertop, leaning forward. “How long have you been cooking in disguise? Does your family know? Did anyone you worked with ever find out? What—”
“Shh,” said Chef Santini with her finger pressed to her smiling lips. In Anglish, she added. “We will talk. Now, you cook.”
Cemre smiled back and nodded. “I’m making cianfotta.”
“Mmm, bene.” Chef Santini sipped a spoonful of the vegetable stew, and her fingers sprung into the air to pinch it. “Tutto bene.” She moved onto the next bench and spoke to the – still rather flabbergasted – human male there.
And so the cook was completed and the dishes were tasted by the two remaining judges and Chef Santini, and Cemre found herself having won first place.
She knew she should be thrilled, but instead she was . . . confused. Overwhelmed? She’d had the protection of her disguise ripped away, and she felt exposed. Her biggest fear had been losing her friends because of her dishonesty, only to discover that they’d been dishonest too, even the role model she’d looked up to for so long. And somehow, that made it seem honest, the dishonesty. That it wasn’t about lying or subterfuge, but rather it was camouflage, a perfectly natural way to protect oneself from harm, a small advantage in a world bursting with predators.
By some silent agreement, Cemre and her friends walked to their room without a word. They perched on their bunks or the floor, facing each other but not quite meeting each other’s eyes, and no one seemed to want to start the conversation that loomed over them like a banshee filling her lungs before a wail.
It was Qhari who finally released a long breath and then said, “My name is really Qori. I choose Qhari because it sound similar, so it would be easier for me to recognize when someone call me.” A small chuckle popped out, and she brushed a lock of dark curls behind her ear. “It also mean ‘male’, which make me laugh.”
“Gwyn,” said Rhydian— Gwyn. “I didn’t put as much thought into my fake name as you did, butt. Just picked the name of one of my brothers.”
Cemre giggled. “I got mine from an advertisement for tooth powder. I’m Cemre, really.”
“Tsytryn,” said Tsytryn. “I only change last name spelling. Judges don’t look at my form after hear ‘Miss’.” That made sense – the judges likely wouldn’t know whether her name was male or female either.
Cemre squinted at the troll. “I think I saw you go into the audition the first time. As a girl, I mean.”
Tsytryn shrugged.
“What made you decide to . . .” Cemre waved at Tsytryn’s physique.
Tsytryn shrugged again. “Easy,” she rumbled. “They don’t like what they see, so I change it. Just put on trousers and make moss moustache. They don’t know troll man don’t usually grow moustache.”
“You had it easy, butt,” groaned Gwyn, rubbing her back. “Nothing to bind up like the rest of us.”
“Ah, we can take them off now!” Qori began undoing her shirt buttons, then halted abruptly. “Oh. I don’t have a corset here.”
Cemre momentarily grieved with Qha— Qori, then remembered something. “How much longer will we be here anyway? They didn’t say whether they’d be continuing the competition to the end.” She rubbed her chin with the heel of her hand. “I’m sure the male contestants will have something to say about their decision.”
“They can hardly complain when even Chef Santini is a woman,” said Rhy— Gwyn.
“How did she hide that for so long?” asked Cemre, still bewildered. “All those years pretending to be a man . . . How could she bear it?” She gingerly prodded her raw upper lip and winced. “I could hardly stand it for a few days.” And her poor wings ached from being restrained so long. Although . . . “Oh! Excuse me a moment.” She darted down the hall to the washroom and removed her binding, setting her wings free. As she didn’t have a corset, she still needed the binding for modesty. Then she realised that her chef’s jacket was not designed for dorsal appendages. After some trial and error, she put it on back-to-front with a section unbuttoned for her wings to break through.
Back in their room, the girls cooed over the pretty butterfly-like limbs. They were interrupted by Mrs. Dudley, who wore a cat’s smile and didn’t blink at Cemre’s wings, as if she’d known all along who she was, as well as the other three girls.
“Good evening, ladies ,” she said, and something about her tone made Cemre think she was very happy to be able to say it. “You’re likely wondering how the competition is to proceed. The judges have discussed ” – she said this as though the word was not at all appropriate for the type of interchange the judges had had – “the situation and concluded that the production must go forward. The moment today’s show ended, tickets for all remaining shows sold out, and their qualms about female chefs were trumped by their love of crune.” She gestured to their clothing. “You are, however, still required to wear your uniforms and keep your hair bound for hygiene and safety purposes.”
Cemre slumped. So she’d have to bind her wings again, then. At least they could enjoy a moment’s freedom first.
Mrs. Dudley strode out the door, then poked her head back inside. “Well done, ladies. Well done .” And then she disappeared.
“So we carry on,” said Qori. “It will be nice to cook without worrying about moustaches or changing our voices.”
Cemre let out a long sigh and dropped her chin in her hand almost as dramatically as Rubella. “I miss Massimo.”
“What is going on with you two?” asked Gwyn. “You looked about to cry when he left.”
“He knew all along.” Cemre stared at a hair trapped in a gap between two floorboards. It was a long one, but now that she’d learned the truth about her roommates, she didn’t automatically assume it belonged to her. “We met before, you see. But then I …” She sighed again.
“It can’t be that bad,” said Qori.
“I was so mean . I told him he had an unfair advantage because he’s—” She stopped herself just in time. That secret was not yet out. “A man,” she said instead.
“Do you think we’ll get anywhere now they know who we really are?” asked Qori. “There are still three men left in the competition.”
“You heard what they said: the shows are sold out,” said Gwyn. “And that was after everyone found out about us. They want to see us , not the men.”
“Perhaps you should write to Massimo, explain how you feel,” suggested Qori.
“How would I get a message to him? We’re still not allowed to leave the theatre, and I don’t even know where to find him.” Except she did know where to find him; she just didn’t know how to get a message inside the palace.
Gwyn scratched her scalp, shaking out her fine silver mane. “Didn’t he work with Chef Santini before? She’s sure to know how to contact him.”
“Oh.” That was true. Of course, it meant that she’d have to talk to Chef Santini. Why did she feel even more afraid now that she knew she was a woman?
“It’s late now, but perhaps tomorrow, before the show,” said Gwyn. “Hyounhie should be able to tell you where her dressing room is.”