The Lion and the Rose

  “Maestra?” Bartolomeo blinked. “There’s no such thing.”

  “As of today there is.”

  The apprentices goggled. Bartolomeo looked as if he were trying to decide whether to keep arguing with me or congratulate me, but I wasn’t having either. He shouldn’t be arguing with me or congratulating me; he shouldn’t dare say anything to me at all except “Yes, signorina” or “No, signorina.” After our frightening time with the French army when he’d seen me with all my defenses down, he’d forgotten that. So I shredded him and his pretensions and his recipes up and down with my tongue until he was sputtering and all the other apprentices were hooting, and then he shouted back at me, or tried to because I just shouted right over him, and in the end I’m sorry to say we ended up slinging ladles at each other. It was not dignified to fight with one’s own apprentices, especially before the others, and I probably should have demonstrated my new authority by sacking Bartolomeo altogether. But he really was quite a gifted young cook, or he would be as soon as his head deflated. So in the end I put him on pot duty, docked his free afternoons for the next two months, and stripped his wine ration for three, adding a new punishment every time he tried to argue. He should count himself lucky. My father would have taken him into