Mary's blue eyes opened. Surely a court cook like Beppo ought to have all the spice needed for a simple cake like this. However, she brought Giovanni a packet of the fragrant stuff an hour later, and found Beppo fuming because the work was delayed. The basket of selected eggs had been broken, the melted butter had been spilled, and the cakes were not yet ready for the oven. Giovanni silently and deftly finished beating his pastry, added the spice, rolled out the dough, began the baking. When the cakes came out of the oven, done to a turn, and with a most alluring smell, he stood over them as they cooled and packed them carefully with his own hands into a basket. Mary Lavender came through the kitchen just as the last layer was put in. "Those are beautiful cakes, Vanni," she said kindly. "I am sure they are fit for the King. Did you use the spice I gave you?" Giovanni's heart gave a thump. He had not reckoned on the fact that simple Mary had grown up where there was no need of hiding a plain truth, and now Beppo would know. The cook turned on him. "What? What?" he cried. "You did not use my spices? You take them and do not use them?" Mary began to feel frightened. The cook's black eyes were flashing and his mustache bristling with excitement, until he looked like the cross cat on the border of the Queen's book of fables. But Giovanni was standing his ground. "I used good spice," he said firmly. "Try and see." He held out one of the cakes to Beppo, who dashed it furiously to the ground. "Where are my spices?" he shrieked. "You meant to steal them?" He dashed at the lad and seized him as if to search for the spices. Giovanni shook in his grasp like a rat in the jaws of a terrier, but he did not cringe. "I sent that packet of spice to Master Tomaso an hour ago," he gasped defiantly, "asking him if it was wholesome to use in the kitchen--and here he is now." At sight of the old physician standing calm as a judge in the doorway, Beppo bolted through the other door, seized a horse that stood in the courtyard and was gone before the astonished servants got their breath. "What is all this?" inquired Tomaso. "I came to warn that man that the packet of spice which you sent is poison. Where did you get it?" "The cook bought it of a peddler and gave it to Vanni," answered Mary, scared but truthful. "You all heard him say that he did," she added to the bystanders. "He told Vanni to use it in these cakes, but Vanni used the spice you gave us." "I have seen that peddler before," gasped Giovanni. "He tried to bribe me to take the Queen a letter and a packet, and I would not. I put some of the spice in honey, and the flies that ate of it died. Then I sent it to you."