Her mother’s tablet sat among four generations of Chloe’s ancestors. She’d learned about all of them a little, but most of all, her mother.
Her father had told her story after story about her mother’s childhood; it was all she knew of the woman. In return, Chloe told her mother about herself.
“Here.” Chloe spooned a bit of the sauce she’d taken from her father on top of the pieces of bun. “You’ll like this one, Ah Me. The broad beans have been fermenting nine months; I think it’s the right aroma, don’t you?”
As if in answer, a charred end of an incense stick fell off in a cylindrical clump of ash.
“Ah Me.” Chloe lowered her voice. “You know Ah Ba and how he is about me and Unnamed Sauce.”
For as long as Chloe could remember—ever since they’d landed in the tiny community of Wedgeford, with its population hailing from around the globe—her father had been working on a sauce. The sauce, the sauce to end all sauces. The base of the sauce was broad beans fermented with white qu over the course of months. To that, her father added soy sauce, honey, a hint of ground spice, red yeast rice, and some potato vinegar that he also brewed. It was an alchemical triumph, turning bland crops into delicious magic.
What her mother would think of her involvement in Unnamed Sauce… That was another question entirely.
“Your mother,” her father had told her, “when Taiping Tianguo opened the imperial examinations to women—she was determined to take part. She was much older than her younger brother and had half the education. But she set to studying—pushing him, teaching him when she was herself learning.”
Chloe had always listened to these stories with rapt attention.
“She passed the examinations too,” her father had told her with a smile. “Better than her little brother managed in any event. They made her a Deputy Chancelloress of the Winter Department. Your mother could do anything; she usually did.”
Her father always spoke of her with love in every word, as if the loss of her were still recent and searing.
“But what was she like?” Chloe had asked as a child.
“Kind,” he had said. “Quick to think, but shy around new people. Always looking out for her little brother, who hadn’t half her wits. Taiping Tianguo brought change, good at first, but what followed…”
That was one of the things he rarely talked about—what happened as the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace had gone to war.
He just said this: “It was not good.” For him, that was tantamount to ranting about death and destruction.
The only thing he had ever told her about the time that came after was that he had made her mother promises on her deathbed: that Chloe would never starve, that he would protect her, that she would get an education, and that she would grow into her name.
Chloe had never quite understood that last one. Her Chinese name of YiLin meant...the tinkling of feathers, maybe? Or perhaps just the sound of feathers. “Your mother picked the name out for you before you were conceived,” he had finally said. “And Baba approved. She wanted you to have what she did not.”
Feathers made no sound, and she had not been able to square the demure, dainty image that brought to mind with the vibrant, determined woman her father described. Maybe that was what he’d meant—that she had wanted Chloe to avoid the fate she’d courted. Perhaps without that rise to fortune, there would have been no devastating fall at the end. Perhaps the name had been meant as a warning, something like the Western legend of Icarus.
It was faintly unsettling to know that her mother would have found fault with her had she lived. But Chloe had come to know her through these morning interludes. If she objected to Chloe’s path, there had been no sign that Chloe could see.
Maybe her mother had resigned herself in death to a daughter who took after her too much. That much she could tell from the tales her father told—story after story from her mother’s childhood and none from his own. He’d told her more stories about her mother’s youngest brother and what she did for him and how silly he had been. He said barely a word about himself or how he’d grown up. And when he did, he always referred to himself as “Baba,” third person—as if he could distance himself from the memory and reduce himself to just a relationship. He rarely said more, no matter how she begged.
Chloe had not really understood how much he’d sacrificed to keep his promises to her mother until she was fifteen and she’d pried the story of Unnamed Sauce from him.
His desire to make the best sauces in all of Britain was the one thing he was doing for himself, not Chloe. He had allowed her to help, but only grudgingly. It was his sauce, his legacy, his revenge, he had said. No reason for Chloe to be involved.
When Chloe had found out the truth, she had cried and she’d promised her mother then that she would never let her father stand alone. So here she was.
“Ah Me,” she said. “All I have to do for the next three days…” It was daunting, so daunting. “All I have to do,” she said, “is not make a single misstep. I can do that, right?”
Except. There was…also the small matter of Jeremy. For a moment, Chloe thought about mentioning him. But… No. She’d handle him on her own.
“I hope you like the sauce.” She bowed one final time, then stood.
“Done, Ah Lin?” her father asked.
He spoke to her in Hakka. Her father could speak many languages. English, of course, and French and Mandarin and Cantonese. But when it was just the two of them, he used the language that his parents had spoken at home. Chloe understood it well enough to follow, but she rarely spoke Hakka with anyone but him, and complex concepts came to her first in English.
She was going to have to handle these next moments with all the delicacy her Hakka skills allowed. She had only barely convinced him to allow her to assist in the matter of Unnamed Sauce. Additional complications would not put him more at ease. If she mentioned Jeremy straightaway, he’d know something was odd. On the other hand, if she mentioned Jeremy not at all during the conversation, he’d become suspicious if he heard the gossip.
She walked to the table. Breakfast was laid out before her.
The upcoming Wedgeford Trials were an opportunity. The daylong game their village hosted had attracted people from all over Britain for centuries. Rich and poor, young and old, from south of London to the highlands of Scotland. Wedgeford was a village of mere hundreds, but for three days—the Trials themselves, and the days before and after—its population would swell to almost a thousand. Those from outside who wanted to take part would be assigned to one of the three teams. They’d spend the day searching and running and shouting.
By the time a team was crowned the winner in the early evening, they would all be starving. And Chloe and her father would be at the booth they’d constructed on the green with steamed pork bao made with Unnamed Sauce and little printed paper squares advertising where to inquire for more.
He sighed. “You’re taking on too much. It’s not too late to call it off; if we wait until next year, I’ll be able to take on more of the burden. And it will give me a chance to make sure the nine-month fermentation is the right one to use…” He trailed off.
“Ah Ba.” They had spent the last handful of weeks filling four hundred jars of the sauce. She was going to scream. “I know you want everything to be perfect, but it is already perfect. There’s no need to wait.”