Best Served Cold

I couldn’t get the grin off my face. Years of lying through my teeth had paid off. Seventeen years ago he killed my daughter. He wasn't charged. He denied the whole thing even though my son saw him do it.

No one believed a Jake. He’d suffered from delusions all of his life. He’d talk about the angels and the demons as if they were in

the room with us. That’s why we stopped going to church. As

soon as we did people said my boy was possessed. Jake was a good boy.

Jake had a baby’s blue eyes, an innocent smile. His brown hair was always a mess no matter how much Ellen fussed with it. He’d almost always looked happy. Maybe he didn’t really live in our world, but I honestly think that if he was somewhere else, it was better.

When Jake said Ellen’s

suitor pushed her from the cliff he was as sane as I’d

ever seen him. The shock of seeing her murdered cut through the daydreams.

There was no doubt in my mind.

I think I'm cursed. Ellen and Jake’s mother died giving birth to Jake. I never blamed the

boy. He was a sweet child, always smiling. Ellen was a good sister to him. She

protected him from the town’s children when

they spoke ill of him or threw stones. I ended up having to defend her from

others when she burst a nose to protect her brother.

Ellen was a bold girl. Beautiful as the dawn.

Golden hair, big brown eyes, freckles on her arms and cheeks. Her smile could

swallow her face. She was smart as well. The only one of us who could read.

When she was happy you saw all of her perfect teeth.

Then Dylan showed up. He seemed like a good

boy at first. He was from a good family, better than ours. His father was a

rich merchant who traded silks and carpets from foreign lands. The parent’s didn’t approve of

Ellen. We didn’t have enough money for them to tie

their only child to us.

Dylan was a pretty boy, long black hair that he had curled. He wore perfume and girls liked his sneer. I called it a smile back then. I thought Ellen would do well to be the wife of a boy like that who would inherit a small fortune.

Dylan is rich now. He inherited his father’s business and expanded, buying more ships to bring more goods from across the world. Now his company imports spices and exotic fruits candied in sugar. He had a mansion build for himself when he returned from years of voyaging abroad.

Oddly he decided to set off to see the world not long after Ellen fell from the cliffs by the castle. It had been a favourite spot for the two of them. It was the place they’d sneak off to for a stolen kiss. I knew. I don’t know why they thought we didn’t know. They were the gossip of the town. Mismatched couple as they were, the gossips liked to whisper about them whenever they were out of sight.

Dylan bought Ellen fancy dresses. He’d buy us a ham as a gift. I was grateful. We’d never eaten so well, and I had the coin for once to pay someone to keep an eye on Jake while I worked.

As a blacksmith I couldn’t afford not to work but I couldn’t have my son around the forge either. He’d stuck his hand in a cooking pot on the boil once with a smile on his face then screamed the house down for hours after.

One day while I worked at the forge Dylan came to me with tears in his eyes and a scratch across his cheek. He said Ellen had fallen from the clifftop and was nowhere to be seen in the water and the rocks below.

I ran as fast as my stiff old legs would take me to look down over that edge. I saw a scuffmark in the grass where she had clearly slipped. Black rocks just beneath the water gave no hint of my daughter. I screamed until my throat ached, calling her name in vain before turning home.

Jake was there by the door of our thatched cottage by the workshop. His face was pale even compared to usual and he stood like stone. Normally he twitched or swayed, almost dancing, with a vague smile on his face. He’d talk as if in conversation with birds in the sky. Not that day. Those blue eyes of his were veined with red. He’d been crying as long as I’d been screaming on the clifftop.

I took my boy in my strong arms, and I held him. For the first time, perhaps ever, he held me back as if he knew I was there. He wailed the way anyone would if they’d seen their sister die. The only soul kinder in this world than Jake had been Ellen.

            “He pushed her papa. He fought with her, and he pushed her.” I had him pinned by the shoulder in a moment and looking me in the eyes. I knew Jake and I wondered if it could be true.

            “Are you sure Jake? Dylan pushed Ellen?”

            “Yes. I saw him. He shouted and she hit him. He pushed her. She tried to hold him.”

Jake had never spoken such a coherent sentence in his life. To me it was as if the gods had given him his mind for that truth to be spoken. By the time he’d finished crying Jake was gone again. Not smiling as usual but shaking and slapping his arm in frustration, pulling his hair.

It made sense to me. Ellen knew better than to go to the edge of the cliff. She’d talked Jake away from there often enough over the years. The scratch on Dylan’s cheek had been her fighting for her life. Then he’d pushed her. It was the clearest thing my son had ever said, and I had seen the clear truth in his eyes. It wasn’t his imagination. He’d seen his sister die and forced his way through his visions back to me to tell me how my daughter had died.

Jake was never the same after that. Some of his babble would be to Ellen. For the next three years he talked to the angels. He growled at the demons, and he laughed with Ellen. Sometimes he would ask her when she was coming back.

Then he ate the berries. There are two kinds of berries that grow in the forest past the town. Both are red berries on thorny bushes. One has yellow thorns. They’re safe to eat. The other ones have pinkish thorns. They taste just fine but a mouthful of those will start to have you vomiting after an hour or two. After three you’re dead without a doubt.

Jake was grumbling about his stomach for a while before I paid him any mind. When he stopped moaning and started vomiting, I rushed to bring him a doctor who asked him what he’d eaten and after taking too long to get any sense from my son the doctor heard him talk about the red berries.

I already knew when I heard it that I was going to have to watch him die. I held his hand as he threw up everything he’d eaten and more. When there was nothing left and he’d chucked up bile and blood he lay down, pale and wincing. He wasn’t talking to his visions anymore. He rocked himself gently and I held his hand and told him he would be alright. I hated lying to him, but I wanted to believe those lies.

I’d never gone to anyone to accuse Dylan of murder. His family had enough money to do whatever they wanted with me. If I died what would happen to Jake? That didn’t matter after he’d died but Dylan was gone.

My hope of vengeance had sailed away to distant lands after his father had passed away in his sleep. I’m not sure if I think Dylan killed his father as well. I doubt it would have been hard for a strapping young man like that to hold a pillow over the man’s face long enough to send him off to his next life.

I quit the smithing after Jake died. For a while I drank my sorrows away. Constant drinking did something to my voice. It crackled like a fireplace after that. Then I ran out of money. I sold my cottage and the workshop. I went hunting. We’d chase pheasants in the forest for the lord of the castle. All I had to do at first was make some noise to scare the birds towards the lord with his crossbow.

One of the men in the castle kitchen was a childhood friend of mine. He got me a job scrubbing pots and as weeks became months, I got to help preparing the food for the lord. Months became years before I knew it and I was cooking here and there.

A lot of the lord’s favourite seasonings came from Dylan’s company. Cinnamon, paprika, salt, all of it came in bags or barrels. I learned how to make it all go together.

I was a different man. I’d lost the muscle from working the smithy, put on a paunch and aged twenty years older than I was. My once hard face had jowls and creases. My eyes were dimmer. Laughter lines were drowned out by frowning. I liked cooking but happiness rarely came to me by then.

Then, years after he’d left, Dylan returned. I’d not thought so much about what I wanted to do to him in years. I passed him in the street, and he didn’t look at me. He didn’t flinch. Not the way a man who’s killed another man’s only daughter should flinch. He didn’t recognise me. It was little wonder. No one would recognise the twisted wreck I had become. I didn’t recognise myself when I saw myself in the silver steel of a carving knife.

I began to dream of my revenge. I dreamed of using one of those big knives to cut Dylan into ribbons. No. I’d never get close to him. He’d turned a small trading company into an empire. He had guards. He had servants. He’d made more money by then than the lord.

I quit the castle kitchen with a bit of a fuss. I offered my services as a cook to Dylan. I looked him right in the eye and said I’d rather cook for him than the lord. He smiled. That pasty upstart shit smiled. He thought he was stealing me away from the castle.

I cooked for him in the new home he was throwing up. He’d bought land near the forest. He built a manor house from wattle and daub. He said he wanted stone but was too impatient to wait for it.

His kitchen was only half the size of the one in the castle but infinitely better stocked. It it was foreign and expensive he had it. I made him cinnamon apple pies. I make him honey soaked ham with peppercorns. I make him steaks that were half a cow cooked in wine the castle would envy.

My hands were starting to shake from old age almost the way Jake’s had. I had a plan, and I knew it was time to enact it before he turned me out in favour of a younger cook.

Dylan had a sweet tooth. I’d encouraged it all the while I’d worked for him. I’d feed him anything with berries and talk up their healing qualities and whatnot. Whether or not he believed the rot I told him I don’t know but I know from his swelling belly that he loved the food.

Dylan wasn’t the pale, toned young man who had courted my daughter with flowers. He wasn’t the tanned adventurer who had returned with a beard and stories that sounded like fantasy.

Dylan had turned red from wine and fat from the love of my meals. He had himself a wife his parents would have approved of. She was from some other trading family and if I’m honest with myself she was almost as beautiful as my Ellen.

He never mentioned my girl. I would listen when they talked from doorways. If other servants asked what I was doing I would say I wanted to know what he thought of my meal. Never once did I even hear him mention the girl he’d promised to marry.

Life had gone well for Dylan. I couldn’t have that. If he’d even left Ellen alone she might have been happy with some other man, giving me grandchildren and hopefully seeing Jake to the end of his life. I don’t have a brother. I’m the last of my line. When Dylan threw my girl from the cliff, he ended my family.

Tonight, I made Dylan’s favourite meal. Chicken soup spiced with paprika. Honeyed ham with salt and peppercorns. Not too much of that. I wanted him to have an appetite for the dessert.

For dessert I made a mixed berry crumble. Blueberries I picked fresh from the forest. Apples from his orchard. Strawberries from the market. The red berries from the bush with the yellow thorns, just a few. Red berried from the bushes with pink thorns, a whole lot.

If he’d taken three spoons worth from that dessert it would have killed him. Dylan scoffed down everything I’d made and asked if there was more. I stood by like the proud father, watching him gobble down my creation. He smiled at me to see what he thought was pride in my work and complimented my work yet again.

If you cook the berries from the bush with the pink thorns the poison loses its potency. Dylan frowned at one bite to ask why some of the meal was hot and the rest not.

            “I assure you my dear sir that while the apples are best cooked that the berries are a dish best served cold for maximum effect.”

The murderer grinned. His teeth were stained purple by the blueberries. When servers cleared the platters away I excused myself and left the kitchen to be cleaned by my apprentices.

It was getting dark. I took a walk through the town to my old cottage. Flowers, just common weeds that could be found in the forest, had been planted near the door. A glow came through the windows, and I heard the laughter of a man and woman.

I remembered the laughter I had shared with my wife when Ella was young. I remembered watching my wife die in our bed as Jake was placed in my arms. I remembered the look on his face as he told me Dylan pushed his sister from the cliff. I remembered each stage of the poison taking my son from me.

In the first hour there was nothing but a few rumbles as warning. Dylan would be starting to feel those as I watched the light in the cottage window.

I walked to the workshop. The outer doors had been painted. The new smith had a sign with his name on it. He was good supposedly. For a while I stood and remembered showing Ellen the forge and the hammers and the tongs and the cooling bucket as my father had shown me.

I walked through the town, taking a last look at my home. Up the hill I wandered slowly. By that point Dylan would be in pain. He’d be vomiting up everything he’d gobbled down greedily. I hoped he would realise it was me. I hoped that some part of him would see my face anew as he died. I wanted him to know that Ellen’s father had paid him back. It was a shame about his wife I suppose. She’d not eaten so much as him. It was possible she would survive.

I walked along the grass beneath the black stone walls of the castle. I came to the clifftop in the light of the moon. I edged myself closer and sat with my legs dangling off the edge. No matter how I fell from there it would be the end. I was hoping that someone would come to me, calling me a killer so that I would know I’d done it right.

The stars were brilliant over the ocean. Ships belonging to the man I work for rose and fall on the waves at anchor in the dock a mile away. There was a calm feeling in my soul. Tears were rolling down my face not because I was sad but because I felt at peace. It was done. Wherever Ellen and Jake are I might just see them when I’ve hit those rocks below.

Little figures grew as they ran along the grass towards me. Town guards. They were shouting.

            “Murderer. He killed the merchant, Dylan.”

Bliss. Those were the only words I needed to hear. I leaned forwards as the first rays of the sun broke over the calming sea.

The wind rushed in my ears as I closed my eyes. I’m coming to you children. Please let me see you again.