There were other changes too. I was aware that I was becoming a man, from the fire igniting in my veins; and a reasonably good-looking man at that, from the admiring glances I received from the girls who worked in the kitchens, not to mention the ribald comments passed by their older, married colleagues. Then there was Emilia Grandinetti . . . Like me, she was fifteen. Apprenticed to one of the seamstresses who made dresses for the court, she was the sweetest thing I had ever seen. Her skin was the
colour of butter when it was heated in a pan: her teeth, and the whites of her eyes, were as clear and bright as snow in that dark, laughing face. Soon the glances between the two of us became smiles; flirtations became conversations; laughter turned to love. 1 cim the luckiest prince in nil Florence^ I thought proudly. We spent stolen hours sitting on the roof of the palace where no one could see us, dizzy with love, holding hands and talking about our dreams.
‘I’m going to be the greatest confectioner in the world,’ I told her.
‘Really? And how will you do that?’ she teased.
‘I’m going to make ices in a thousand flavours. The smoothest, richest ices that have ever been made.’
But when I told her I would make an ice especially for her and smuggle it out of the kitchen, she shook her head.
‘I don’t want to get you into trouble.’
I asked her about her hopes for the future too, but these were all about me: she wanted us to be together, to have a family; perhaps, if we were very fortunate, to see our children one day become servants of the Medici in their turn.
Marriage was forbidden to apprentices, but those who had their master’s permission might become betrothed, and an apprentices’ betrothal was considered almost the same as a marriage, if not quite in the eyes of God, then certainly in the eyes of those immediately below Him. So I waited for the most auspicious moment, and broached the matter with Ahmad.
We were working on a magnificent ice sculpture of a soaring eagle, the centrepiece of a table of iced jellies. I did most of the carving now, my hands wrapped in rags against the cold. Not only was my touch surer than my master’s, and my eye truer, but I could bear the work for longer - almost as if the cold that had claimed my finger had at the same time numbed the rest of me against its effects. Or perhaps, I thought, as I polished the ice until
the sculpture seemed to glow from within, my master was simply getting old and lazy. I knew that on this occasion at least Ahmad was pleased with my work: when I had finished the Persian gave a nod and a grudging, ‘Not bad.’
‘Master, I have been thinking . . .’ I began.
‘Yes.> What is it?’
‘There is a girl I have become attached to. I was wondering if I could have your permission to become betrothed to her.’
Ahmad busied himself wiping down the table on which we had been working. ‘What makes you think my permission will make any difference?’
‘Those are the apprentices’ rules, sir,’ I reminded him. ‘I may not marry without my master’s consent.’
Ahmad shot me an amused glance. ‘You see yourself as my apprentice, do you?’
‘Of course,’ I answered, surprised. ‘What else?’ For one delirious moment I wondered if he was about to say that he considered me no apprentice but his equal; perhaps even, one day, his partner.
‘An apprenticeship is purchased,’ he said briefly. ‘Your parents were poor.’
‘I don’t understand. So poor that they could not afford to buy me an apprenticeship?’
‘Poorer even than that. So poor that they were happy to sell you. You are no apprentice, boy, and never will be. You are my possession, and you will not be at liberty in your lifetime to become betrothed to any girl, let alone to marry.’ He threw the handful of soaked rags to one side. ‘Now take these outside and rinse them.’
It was the sliver of ice in my heart that saved me. But for that, I might have killed the Persian there and then, and to hell with the consequences.
Not to marry. That was bad enough, but if I was not at liberty to marry it also meant that I was not at liberty to become a crafiis
man in my own right. I would be Ahmad’s chattel until the day I died. I would never get the opportunity to create anything of my own: I would go to my grave still churning out the four flavours of his damned notebooks. My life would have been wasted, my flesh and blood melting into the grave as surely as a block of ice left on a table melts away to water. At the thought of it a mute, terrible fury throbbed in my veins. But like a bulb in frozen ground I waited, my anger contained, until an opportunity presented itself.
The opportunity was a Frenchman called Lucian Audiger. I never discovered how he found me: presumably he bribed someone for information about the Persian ice makers and was told about an Italian youth who might be a weak link. Amassing information, truly, was Audiger’s great skill, although he himself believed that he was driven only by a burning desire to become a great confectioner. That was why he had travelled - first to Spain, where he learnt the art of making seed waters such as pine-kernel, coriander, pistachio and anis; then to Flolland, where he studied distillation, both of flowers and fruits; and from there to Germany, where he mastered the skill of making syrups. It was inevitable that he would eventually come to Italy, where both the Hapsburgs in Naples and the Medici in Florence were famous for mixing snow and ice into their wines and desserts.
He came to me in the middle of the night and shook me awake. The person who had brought him through the warren of service rooms slipped away, unseen, and by the time I was fully awake Audiger was already talking of Paris, of the glorious court that the young Louis XIV was constructing, the new palaces at Marly and Versailles; wealth to dwarf even the Medici’s, and a city filled with fashionable men and women eager for new delights. Coffee and chocolate houses were opening all over Paris: those who could make iced drinks and chilled confections would never starve, and as a partnership - two young men who between us could create every kind of confection or novelty - we would surely
enter the -service of the king himself. . . By this time I was barely listening. I had heard all I needed to hear. If you were going to run away from the court of the Medici with a Persian’s trade secrets in your head, you needed just two things: a patron at least the equal of the Medici, so that they could not simply demand your return, and for it to be somewhere a long, long way from the reach of a Persian’s dagger.
‘I have two conditions,’ I said, when Audiger finally paused for breath.
‘Name them.’
‘Never to call anyone master. And twenty-four hours to convince Emilia to come too.’
‘Done,’ Audiger said, holding out his hand. ‘I’ll meet you by the Porta San Miniato at midnight tomorrow.’
As early as was respectable, the next morning I found Emilia outside the seamstresses’ room. Drawing her aside, I told her of my plan.
‘But . . .’ she said. Her voice faltered. ‘If you run away, you’ll be caught. And then you’ll be put in prison. Hanged, even.’
‘It’s the only way, now. Don’t you see? There’s nothing for us here. If we leave, at least we have a chance.’
She glanced around. ‘I can’t talk now. My mistress . . .’
‘Emilia!’ I hissed. ‘I have to know. Are you comifig or not?’
‘I - I—’ she said, glancing nervously ,at the door, and in that moment I saw that she was too afraid.
I said desperately, ‘Look, I understand, caro. You loved me because you thought it was allowed. Now that you know it might get you into trouble, you’re frightened. But this is the only opportunity either of us is going to get. I have to take it. The question is, will you come?’