Dark Chocolate

The oven was still warm. The kitchen smelled of rich, fragrant chocolate and a strange tinge of bitterness dusted the air. Dessert was quickly approaching as the sun finally set through the small kitchen window. She waited, one leg draped over the other, on the stool with excitement twisting her guts into a bow. Her apron was covered in flour, her fingers and wrists dotted with chocolate sauce, and her hair tied up with a black ribbon. A smirk played on her face, sweet to behold but chilling to experience. 

“Fidela?” came a delicate voice from the doorway. She looked up and the smile dwindled on her face. 

“What is it, Amelie?” she asked in a sharp voice. Fidela set to organizing her utensils on a napkin to carry into the dining room. The young girl had soft, spiraling hair the color of the decadent cake that sat nearby. She curled the hair around her fingers and played with it in her hands as she stepped forward nervously and bit her lip.

“The Master is waiting.” Fidela’s lips curled sourly at the mention and Amelie regretted accepting her position, if not only for that specific, unpleasant moment. Her own stomach seized with anxiety as she waited.

“The Master…” Fidela repeated with a venomous flick of her tongue, “can wait a moment longer. I put my blood, sweat, and tears into this cake and he’s going to go just barmy once he tastes it.” The smirk returned to her face. There was a moment of empty space where Fidela’s silence chilled the air and Amelie was too afraid to break it. Her voice nearly splintered when she regained her courage. 

“It’s lovely.” She tried to smile, at least with her eyes, blue and swimming with tension. “It really is, I’m sure the Master will love i-” Fidela slammed the blade of a long cutting knife onto the flat, wooden surface of the table with a clang! 

“Thank you, Amelie. I hope you’re right.” Fidela kneeled down and inspected the cake closely, so closely that her nose nearly touched the grooved icing so intricately carved. Her eyes flared with delight at the precision and how the cake, layered high and smothered with the sugary, creamy spread, oozed with temptation and gleamed in the candlelight. 

“Do you…” Amelie started and Fidela once again lost the sparkle of joy in her face. “Do you need anything from me? Any help of any kind?” Fidela straightened and handed the young maid the pile of napkins that cradled the utensils they would need for cutting and serving the dessert to the master of the house they lived, worked, and labored in. Years of service under such a roof, below such men of little caring or compassion, had impregnated her joints with pain and stiffness, stolen joy from her heart, and carved wrinkles into her once lovely, smooth skin. No longer, she thought. No more will I wake to find such injustice. 

“Take those,” she instructed and Amelie snatched up the knives and serving set and clutched them tightly with both hands, making sure to avoid as much shaking as possible in her nervous fingers. Fidela removed her apron in a flash and hung it on a nail next to the now cooled oven. She flattened her bodice and skirt and fluffed the tucked material that squared her bosom.“And I’ll take this.” She lifted the cake with a smooth, graceful gesture and held it squarely in front of her chest. Her skirts shifted like an indecisive wind as she walked confidently, eagerly, to the dining room. Amelie followed behind quickly, adjusting her speed as she did the erratic rhythm of her heart. 

“Ah, there you are, Fidela. Our stomachs had almost begun to realize how full we were from dinner!” hollered the Master. “Or was it all the brandy, gentleman?” he practically sneered with large teeth that gleamed with a sea of gold across the rear of his mouth. Fidela swelled at the thought of all the rotting teeth he’d endured at the request of her desserts. It was her specialty and she found pride in the quite more sudden and quite more severe consequences of this particular delicacy. 

“I’ve arrived, my lord, and with your requested cake, chocolate of rich, deep, and tantalizing richness to tickle all your fancies.” She set the platter down, a thin column between the stand resting on the covered table and the tray beneath the cake itself. After checking for the Master’s reaction, a wide smile and greedy eyes, she turned to Amelie and opened her hands to the stack of utensils offered to her. 

“Come, come; we don’t have all day, now do we!” He smashed his fist on the table and Amelie jumped but Fidela only tightened her lips and narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. A few of the men seated around the long, now stained dining table sniggered and chortled to themselves and exchanged glances. 

She took the long knife first, the metal sliding against the rest with a spine-tingling peal. A groan of discomfort resounded blatantly from the group of men behind her and she pursed her lips to hide her smile. Just you wait, she thought as she turned back toward the coffee-colored confection. She lifted the knife and with the sharpened point stuck into the center, she pushed the handle down creating a perfectly clean cut. She repeated this until there was a thin slice for all guests: The Master, friends of the Master, colleagues, politicians, and those who would allow men, such as The Master, to rise in rank in the king’s civil service. 

A delicate plate was placed in front of the Master first and he immediately lifted the small, three-pronged fork in his fist. Before waiting for the second piece of cake to be served to his guests, he scraped off a corner and stuffed it into his mouth, followed instantly by a second. He moaned with satisfaction. The next man followed suit and then the next and the next just the same. 

Fidela stepped back and Amelie followed her with folded hands and a downward gaze. Fidela took a single, thin finger and took it to Amelie’s chin and lifted so she would watch the dessert being devoured. Amelie’s confusion only lasted a few moments. 

As the men began to clean their plates with forks and fingers and tongues, less than silently enjoying Fidela’s work, something began to occur between them. 

“Your mother smells of blood sausage,” came the first jab from a young man who’d barely reached the age of military service but donned an officer’s title nonetheless. The young man looked around with surprise as if he was unsure who had said it. The rest of the guests watched him in shock at the insult and wondered who he could possibly have spoken to. 

“Knothead.” Heads turned toward the second voice with the same shock to find the same confusion as the first man had displayed. More voices began to chirp despicable abuses and break the awkward, baffled silence. 

“You ball-busting plonker.” 

“Excuse me, sir,” one man interrupted with a semblance of restraint, “but who are you to insult me, you son of an alley-ridden whore?” The yelling then began at full volume. Men stood at their seats and pointed and cursed, old men slurred insults and awful names they had rarely used since their youth. The Master stood up in the midst of the chaos and shrieked at the oldest, most respected man at the table to whom he owed his best manners were he to ever rise in society. 

“You wrinkled old scoundrel!” he began with vicious hostility. “I find the lot of you scum, traitors, liars, and gluttons!” His face was red with anger and his mouth spit as he screamed, thrashing a pointed finger at all he knew, liked, and feigned respect for. He carried on, insulting mothers, wives, and daughters around the table. The more delicately-spined men at the table sat with defeated expressions and clasped hands, some scoffed and turned their heads away with upturned noses, and others began to scream in unison back at their host.

Plates were tossed and shattered against cabinets of glass. The long, linen cloth that protected the mahogany wood of the table was ripped away and tossed at another man who threw it to the floor and stomped on it with vehement indignation. They all carried on small, combative interactions of their own among the score of men that filled the dining room. 

Fidela still stood against the wall, watching the circus of raging men. Amelie sat with her hands clasped to her ever-gasping mouth. Her eyes were wide with disbelief. Her ears rang with dismay at the sound of such horrid verbiage amongst the higher class. Fidela began to laugh, hands on her stomach, leaning forward and back. Those she mocked were too distracted with throwing punches and pinning each other with unpracticed technique to hear her, though she wouldn’t have cared if they had. 

The tinkling of her laughter infected even a timid, trembling girl such as Amelie who watched her superior with incredulous awe. The utter disarray of the dining room began to frighten her as chairs were thrown and fights erupted into broken glass and slicing of air and clothes. She took Fidela’s arm and pulled her to safety toward the kitchen. 

“What is happening in there? Have they all lost their plot?!” she asked breathlessly, pointing back toward the ruckus. She waited for Fidela to stop laughing but she couldn’t. Tears ran down her round and rosy cheeks from the exertion of her roaring amusement, cackling and giggling the more she thought about the scene in the adjacent room. Amelie continued: “I don’t understand. Why are you laughing?”

“Because, Amelie!” Fidela cried. “Because! How long have I been mistreated, abused, used, and overworked under this roof? How long? Twenty years, am I right?” Amelie nodded ever so slightly, waiting for it to make sense. “How long have you? How long has it been since that awful night when you started sleeping with a blade beneath your pillow? Can you tell me?” Amelie’s face went white at the thought and her mouth went dry. Fidela ignored the lack of response and continued. “It’s not the time we’ve spent in misery, my dear, but the misery that has been spent at all, and for what?” 

The sounds of debauchery and violence slowed and came to a prolonged halt. “How long have they deserved every consequence that will stem from this seemingly arbitrary brawl?” Amelie only listened now with a stony expression. “How long will each man remember the terrible things the others have said?” 

“I imagine too long.” 

“Too long. Just long enough. They deserve this, we deserve it, Amelie… and I saw to it that they get it.”

“But how?” Amelie asked with pleading hands. 

“How else?” Fidela said and she walked over to the stone of the oven and lifted a tiny glass vial with liquid bobbing at the bottom. It was a deep purple with sparkling contents that seemed to glow and dim as it swirled with no cause for its animated speed. Amelie watched the liquid dance with an open mouth and a wildly beating heart. Her amazement was interrupted.

“Fidela!” came a familiar call from around the corner. The head maid stood straight and wiped at her face. She smiled once more, nodded curtly at Amelie, and disappeared around the separating wall of the kitchen.

“Yes, my lord?” she answered sweetly. Her employer had the swelling of an eventual black eye, a busted lip, and his pristine, white wig had been torn halfway off and disheveled terribly. She held in a chuckle at the sight. 

“Gather my guests' belongings and see to… see that they’re…” He gave an uncomfortable glance to his peers, “See that they’re shown out.” Fidela nodded and bowed her head with a curtsy before she turned away. She scurried with speed to find a place to continue her laughter. “And Fidela?” he muttered, avoiding her gaze, his hands steadying himself on the back of his seat at the head of the table. 

“Yes, my lord?” she echoed, holding back her impatience. He looked at her with shame in his eyes and cleared his throat as if to relieve it of a lump of embarrassment. He nodded, awkwardly, and she waited with wide eyes for whatever he’d ask next of her. He smiled.

“Spectacular dessert, as usual.”