The Pirate Cook


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward (title supplied by Ylan)
Date: 2005
Note: not a small variation on another story I read


        There once was a young man who served as a cook on a pirate's ship. Life had taken from him an arm and a leg already. It is also said that he had lost all sensation of taste in his tongue. Nobody can be sure of this apart from him, of course. But all those who observed him closely noticed that he showed no interest in eating except for the purpose of sustaining his life. He ate little more than was needed for this end. The meals he cooked, however, seemed to be the creations of someone who truly understood the love of food. When he caught enough rats on the ship, he would make a little feast for the crew, a feast which gave each pirate more satisfaction than they would have got from their own mother's cooking after all these years. This is the story of how the outlaw chef became a palace cook. It begins with a great storm. The storm destroyed the ship. Its cook woke up on the shores of a country unfamiliar to him, the only one to survive.


        The dishevelled cook wandered through the districts of the seaside town searching for a place to stay. If he could only cook for them, he would have had endless offers. But he did not know the language of the land. Muttering in a foreign tongue and carrying with him the stench of the sea, he appeared to the townsfolk to be a crazed beggar. Every pair of eyes that the helpless pirate gazed into looked out at him with frosty prejudice. That was until he came face to face with a haggard old woman. It was like a family reunion. The two were connected not by blood but by being fellow practitioners of magic. Soon mouth-watering aromas wafted from her tired home into the streets. First the beggars came, then the poor but housed. Finally even the more prosperous left their districts to investigate the rumours of culinary masterpieces on offer.


        The cook became a local legend. Life was pleasant. The great chefs of the seaside town even abandoned their initial bitterness. Envy was saved for immediate superiors. The gulf between their own cooking and that of the young upstart made it ridiculous to envy. But one day the cook's happy stay in the town was called to an end. A messenger of the Queen summoned the cook to her court.


        After sampling one small helping of his cooking, the Queen said, 'I would like you to cook for us a splendid supper.' 'The price for such a service will be high,' said the former pirate. Despite the fame he had acquired, he still looked like a rat-catching sailor. 'Name your price,' said the Queen, confident that she had more treasure to give than he had seen in his wildest dreams. 'Your left arm, ma'am. I would like your left arm to replace the one I have lost.' The Queen's face turned red. She threatened to force the cook to make the evening meal. 'I would rather die ma'am than submit to a will other than my own,' said the cook with cool sincerity. The taste of the small delight that she had just eaten lingered in her mouth. Her tongue demanded more. 'It is only my left arm after all,' the Queen thought to herself, before agreeing to the cook's outrageous proposal.


        The food she ate that evening gave her such satisfaction that at first the Queen believed she would never want to eat again. She requested her regular cooks to do the cooking for the days that followed. The palace cooks sweated to compete with the new arrival. They over-reached themselves with fanciness until the Queen herself ordered that things be plain. She ate merely from a lifetime's habit, indifferent to the taste. On a bland diet she soon recovered. She felt herself to be ready for another supper from the pirate cook. Once again he said the price would be high. Once again the Queen asked him to name her price. 'The lower part of your right leg ma'am, that I may trample the earth with two feet once more.'


        The supper she had this time was painfully satisfying. The Queen did not eat for days afterwards. She told the cook to leave her court. 'Why do you not just kill me here, your majesty?' he replied with a wily smile, before bowing in the knowledge that it was he who held the power between them.


        Months passed, but eventually the cook was summoned back to the court. The Queen asked him for a third time to name his price. 'First,' said the cook, 'let me make the meal. Then we shall discuss my terms.' The cook asked that the discussion take place in privacy. Alone with the Queen, he told her, 'If you only give me this one thing, I shall ask for no more from you. Your tongue ma'am, I would like your tongue in place of my own.' The cook was holding a bowl of food in his hand. He moved it in small circles as he spoke, as if practising hypnosis. The aromas moved upwards. The Queen stretched fingers to the back of her throat. She passed her tongue to the cook. He in turn passed the bowl to the Queen. She brought it close to her nose to take in the smells. Then the Queen began to shake. The bowl dropped. She had turned deathly pale as realization of her madness dawned. How can one eat without a tongue? The cook escorted the shocked monarch gently to a chamber, locking her in there. He then called together the lords and ladies of her court. The Queen, he told them, wanted to be alone, absolutely alone, and she had left him in charge of her Queendom. They were not surprised by his words. She came from an eccentric lineage. And under the spell of foreign cooking, the Queen had been behaving stranger and stranger. In the minds of some of those present, plots were being formed to rid themselves of the cook and take charge themselves. But plots take time to carry out. For the moment, the cook had managed to seize control of the country.


        The cook did not replace his own tongue with the Queen's, as may have been expected. He did not wish to have for himself the weakness that proved to be her downfall. Instead, his criminal heart felt a pressing need to destroy this artefact of crime. He went out into the garden and gathered the palace hounds. He tossed the tongue behind them and watched them rush to devour it. But when they approached it, they did not sink into it. The hounds all sat down, as if they had been instructed to by the tongue itself.


        After this failed attempt, the cook grew anxious. He took the Queen's tongue to a room with a great fireplace. He lit a fire and tossed it in. But again his effort was unsuccessful. There was a terrible scream as the tongue jumped back out. Guards rushed in, believing that the Queen herself had wailed for help. By then, the quick-thinking cook had already hidden the royal meat. He kept it under his pillow that night, tossing and turning as her voice filled his dreams.


        In the early hours of the morning, unable to sleep any further, the cook set off for the sea. He borrowed a fisherman's boat and went a considerable way out, far beyond the distance his body appeared capable of. There he dropped the cursed object into the sea. The water fizzed with agitation. Slowly the sea grew more and more irritable, until the little boat grew out of its boatman's control. Several hours later the cook awoke once again on the shore.


As he opened his eyes, he wondered if the whole adventure since surviving the pirate's ship had been nothing but a dream. He took in the sensations of the world around. He gazed at the now calm sky. He listened to the gulls and to the sea as it came in and withdrew. He remembered old stories that portrayed the sea as a great beast whose heavy breaths made the tide come in and out. As he continued to listen, he could hear whispering. But there did not appear to be anyone one around. The whispering was coming from the sea itself. Each time it withdrew from the shore, he heard it say, 'Bring me back.' Then the old witch who had first taken him in appeared by his side. 'Trust,' she said. 'When you cook you never taste to see if everything is going well. You trust. Only when you truly trust, when you lay yourself in the hands of fate, is magic possible. Where is your trust now? You are trying to force your will on the world. If it cannot be eaten, if it cannot be burnt, if it cannot be drowned, where next will blind determination lead you?' The cook understood. He walked a little way into the sea and dipped his hand in it. Nothing happened at first, but he did not worry. He just kept his palm open, waiting till the time was right. Soon enough it felt like a fish was wriggling between his fingers. He collected the tongue from the sea and set off on his way back.


Even though he had tricked her, the Queen was glad to see him. She was starving and knew that only he had the solution. With her tongue returned to its place, she drank up the soup he had prepared, barely registering its taste. The cook invited the old witch into the room. He detached from his body the arm and the leg he had taken from the Queen and told the witch to restore them to their rightful positions. Then he bid the two women farewell. They watched him leave the room with measured steps. That was the last that was ever seen of the pirate cook.