That might have been due to the huge metal vessel of hot water with a fire under it that stood in one corner of the kitchen—this made cleaning ever so much easier. No burned pot ever got quite clean unless it was filled with coals back at the mine, but when you did that, you ruined the finish on the inside and made it more likely that things would stick. But it was most probable that it was due to the cooks. There could always be accidents—something left a little too long—but there were not that many of those with a good cook about. None of Cole Pieters’ cooks had ever been more than “adequate,” or so Mags realized now. It was very strange; he had gradually come to understand that it was not only that the ingredients of the food here were so much better, it was not only that he was getting good, wholesome food instead of scraps. It was that the cooks themselves were good. They didn’t let things burn—and the kitchen at the mine was always full of the smells of something burning.

:I can’t ever ’member a loaf of bread without th’ bottom crust burned. . . .:

:Ugh. That is . . . well, awful.:

:So were the cooks.:

Now the scullion watched him from under a thick fringe of straw-colored hair that almost obscured his eyes and looked as if it had been hacked off with a knife. He still said nothing, but as Mags’ remedies loosened the crusts so that most of the nastiness could be washed off rather than scrubbed off, he began to copy what Mags was doing. It was very clear that this boy was no fool. Mags began to wonder if maybe he ought to cultivate him. With another set of ears in the kitchen, he himself would not need to be there.

Meanwhile, Mags was listening.

Most of the gossip was ordinary kitchen chatter. A maid sent to fetch food and drink had got a glimpse of someone being in a gentleman’s chamber who shouldn’t have been there, since she had a husband of her own. The kitchen knew who was quarreling with whom in the Court, and how the alliances were shifting. They knew who was going to have a child, often before the lady herself did. They knew what young men the daughters were seeing, often when the parents were unaware.

And within the kitchen there was plenty of gossip, too. There was always someone romancing someone else in the kitchen staff, and plenty of jibes about that.

Most of it was harmless. Wasn’t so-and-so the handsomest young lord you ever had seen? And Lady thus-and-such was angling to marry off her daughter to the highest bidder, so to speak, and the poor thing only had eyes for that nice young fellow up from the country with whom she would never be allowed to keep company.