Chapter 41 – The Bannerman Family Recipe

Mrs. Gable was in the kitchen, occupying the space with the natural authority of a woman who had grown into her domain the way a tree grows into a hillside. She looked up when Florence appeared.

“How is she?”

“Feverish. But awake. Would you mind if I used the stove?”

Mrs. Gable waved a hand that encompassed the entire room. “Pantry’s yours, dear. Help yourself to whatever you need. There’s stock in the pot from last night.”

Florence worked quickly. She knew this recipe the way she knew the sound of her own breathing—not from a book, not from instruction, but from the accumulated memory of every Sunday morning in the Bannerman kitchen in Briar’s Crossing, standing on a stool beside her mother while the pot bubbled and the windows fogged and her father read the paper aloud at the table.

It was porridge, technically. But calling it porridge was like calling the Cathedral a building. The oats were toasted first, dry in the pan, stirred until they darkened to the colour of wet sand and the kitchen filled with something warm and nutty that smelled like home. Then the stock—not water, never water, because her mother had been firm on this point and Florence was not about to dishonour the dead by taking shortcuts. A pinch of salt. A knob of butter, the largest Mrs. Gable’s pantry could spare. And at the end, when the mixture had thickened to a consistency that held a spoon upright, a generous pour of honey and a crack of black pepper that made the whole thing sing.

Florence carried the bowl up the stairs, a spoon tucked into her apron pocket.

Alice had not moved. She was sitting exactly where Florence had left her, propped against the wall, her legs stretched beneath the blanket. A book lay open face-down on the bed beside her—one of the volumes from her satchel—but the effort had apparently defeated her, because Alice’s eyes were closed.

They opened when Florence’s foot hit the creaking board at the top of the stairs.

“It’s important to eat when you’re sick,” Florence said, settling onto the edge of Alice’s bed. “Even if you don’t feel hungry.”

Alice eyed the bowl. “What is it?”

“The Bannerman family recipe.”

“That tells me nothing, Florence.”

“It tells you everything you need to know.” Florence dipped the spoon and held it out. “Open up.”

Alice looked at the spoon. She looked at Florence. The expression that crossed her face was a negotiation between pride, hunger, and the specific indignity of being spoon-fed by a girl from Briar’s Crossing.

“I am not an infant, Florence.”

“Then feed yourself.”

Florence turned the spoon around and offered the handle. Alice took it. Her fingers closed around the stem with careful deliberation, and for a moment the grip held steady. She dipped into the bowl, scooped a reasonable portion, and raised it toward her mouth.

The tremor hit halfway up. Her hand spasmed—a small, involuntary jerk, the mana sickness pulling her strings—and the spoonful departed its intended trajectory. A warm, honey-scented glob of porridge landed on the front of the pyjamas Florence had given her less than twenty minutes ago. A second, smaller droplet struck the blanket.

Alice stared at the stain on her chest.

Florence said nothing. She took the cloth from her shoulder, leaned forward, and dabbed the porridge from Alice’s front with the brisk, unsentimental efficiency of a woman who had been cleaning up after people her entire life and was not about to make a fuss about one more.

Alice surrendered the spoon without a word.

Florence reloaded it, brought it up, and Alice opened her mouth with the expression of someone accepting a verdict from a judge. She chewed. Swallowed. Her eyes drifted shut for a moment, and something in her face—the tight, guarded architecture of it—loosened by a fraction.

“Well?” Florence asked.

Alice was quiet for a moment.

“…Not bad,” she said.

Florence beamed. She dipped the spoon back into the bowl, already loading the next mouthful.

“That’s high praise, coming from you, m’lady,” she said, her voice light and teasing, the title landing with the same playful weight it had carried on a muddy forest path a lifetime ago. She brought the spoon up, her eyes bright. “Wait until your taste buds are working properly.”

Alice swallowed another spoonful. Then another. The colour was returning to her face in slow, uneven patches, the mana-flush competing with the pallor of exhaustion for dominance across her cheekbones.

She watched Florence reload the spoon.

“So,” Alice said, her voice still rough but steadying. “How was the grand tour? Thomas seemed quite enthusiastic about his itinerary.”

The question was light. Conversational. The kind of thing you asked a friend over breakfast because the silence had gone on long enough and you needed to fill it with something that wasn’t the sound of your own chewing.

Florence recognized the tone.

It was Alice’s probing tone—the one she used when she wanted information but didn’t want to look like she wanted information. It always started the same way. Casual. Airy. A question lobbed with one hand while the other was already reaching for the answer.

She’d heard it on the road from the bandit’s shack, when Alice had asked how long she’d been practicing magic. She’d heard it in the hansom cab to the Registry, when Alice had steered the conversation toward Thomas with the affected nonchalance of someone who absolutely needed to know what kind of man Florence’s brother was. And she’d heard it again at the Admissions Hall, when Alice had leaned toward Thomas with wide, fascinated eyes and asked about his recent cases—fishing for what the D.A.A. knew about a certain destroyed carriage on the Old King’s Road.

Florence decided to go along.

“It was wonderful,” she said, and meant it. She brought the spoon up. Alice opened her mouth without being asked this time, which Florence chose to interpret as progress. “It was really wonderful, actually. Thomas had the whole day planned out. He’d made a list.”

“Of course he had,” Alice murmured around the porridge.

“We started at the chophouse on Mulberry Lane. The one he’d been talking about since the Admissions Hall. He was so excited about this pie, Alice. He practically dragged me through the door.” Florence smiled at the memory, scooping another portion. “And he was right. The crust was—I can’t even describe it. Flaky, golden, the butter ratio was perfect. I kept trying to reverse-engineer it in my head. He caught me staring at the pastry instead of eating it and told me I wasn’t allowed to turn lunch into a lecture.”

Alice’s lips twitched. “What kind?”

“Steak and kidney.”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Acceptable.”

“Then the tram.” Florence’s voice brightened, the enthusiasm surfacing the way it always did when she forgot to be self-conscious about it. “Have you ridden it yet? The Dunwick Tram? We took the upper deck across the iron bridge. You can see the whole city from up there, Alice. The rooftops go on forever. And the river—the Thein—it’s so wide. Thomas was pointing out all the districts. The Docklands, the factory quarter, the spire of Parliament.” She paused, the spoon hovering. “He knew the name of every bridge. Every single one. I think he’d memorised them just so he could tell me.”

She brought the spoon to Alice’s mouth. Alice took it. Her expression had softened into something that wasn’t quite a smile but lived in the same neighbourhood—a loosening of the jaw, a slight easing around the eyes.

“And then the Cathedral,” Florence said. Her voice dropped half a register, the way it did when she talked about things that had touched something deeper than her appetite for detail. “St. Silas. We went inside and it was… Alice, I’ve never been anywhere like that. The ceiling just went up and up. The sound disappeared into it. And the stained glass in the west window—when the light came through, the colours spilled across the stone floor like something living. I just stood there. I couldn’t move.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“There was a Reverend there. Sophia. She walked us through the eastern wing, told us about the arches. They took forty years to build. She said I could come back whenever I needed quiet.” Florence reached for the bowl, stirring slowly. “I think I will. It felt safe.”

“Sounds like you’ve found your church,” Alice said. There was no mockery in it.

“I lit a candle for our parents,” Florence added. Quieter now. “Thomas stood behind me. He didn’t say anything. He never does, when it matters. He just put his hand on my shoulder.”

The spoon came up. Alice took it without comment. Florence was grateful for that.

“And then,” Florence said, straightening, “he took me shopping. Insisted I couldn’t celebrate in secondhand wool. His words. He found this dressmaker’s shop on the high street and sat in a chair by the door for forty minutes while I tried things on. He kept giving the seamstress his opinion. She hated him.”

Alice made a sound that was too weak to be a laugh but carried the shape of one.