“But, back to the lesson. You may throw table offal beneath the table only if your host does so first, and if sharing a cup with a dining partner, be certain that your beard and moustachios be free of crumbs before drinking; but beware, never wipe your mouth and beard with your sleeve or the back of your hand.” In illustration, Sir Ali did just that, then added, parenthetically, “Although if a host is not sufficiently modern and civilized to have provided a footah or panolino”—he touched the large square of cloth tied around his neck and covering his front—”or if the improvident guest has not brought one with him, I have often wondered just how he is expected to remove stains from lips and face without making use of Nature’s footah.
“You see, Geoffrey, high-table manners are, I feel, the invention of those who take but little joy in their victuals and so would selfishly make the act of eating as difficult as possible for those who do.”
CHAPTER 17
On the morning after Sir Ali’s arrival, the two knights rode out with their respective retinues—Sir Ali’s gallowglasses and Sir Geoffrey’s lancers—to formally post and announce the change of overlords to the villages, hamlets, and the small halls and yeoman farms to the barony. Krystal, once she had broken her fast, seen to Little Joe, performed the most immediate duties of a chatelaine, and informed Master Milldn, the chef, that the day’s meal would be even later than on the previous day, since the two knights could not be expected back much before sunset, collected her three serving women and left the hall to walk down through the formal garden fronting it to the brick-and-frame trilevel house squatting incongruously among the yews and boxwoods. If she did not have a hot bath at least every third day she felt so grubby that she could not stand herself.
When the house had been so mysteriously transported into this world, Bass had not been the only living creature to come with it. His three house cats, four or five flying squirrels, and two or three mice had come along for the ride. One of the cats had been sterile, but the other two had lost no time in joyously fighting and fraternizing with the half-wild stable and barn cats of the hall, so that now the environs of Whyffler Hall abounded with all manner of feline mixtures and mutations, nor had the flying squirrels had any apparent qualms about bringing forth fresh generations, finding the formal gardens and the small park within the perimeter walls much to their liking.
When she made her way through the empty, echoing house to the large bath off the master bedroom, it was to discover that a young queen had, sometime within the last two days, decided to produce her litter in the bathtub and was currently in the full throes of labor—her legs twitching, her long, pink tongue drooping out from between her fangs as she panted in agony.
With a sigh, Krystal gave up the idea of a long, slow, leisurely tub bath and turned instead to the tiled shower stall. As she dropped her robe and stepped under the hot spray, she could hear the three serving women—Trina, Meg, and Bella—giggling and jabbering in their north-country patois as they added ice cubes from the refrigerator to a big pewter ewer of honey mead brought from the hall and then placed it in the unit to chill more thoroughly. Usually while the mead chilled the women would troop down to the bathroom on the lower level and take turns under the shower, which they never failed to find fascinating.
While she was showering, Krystal decided to shampoo as well, and as she fumbled blindly on the shelf just outside the shower stall, the lights flickered briefly, then went out
“Oh, dammit,” she breathed to herself, trying to think of where there still might be an unneeded bulb. The spares were long since used up and another winter here would see any occupants of this house existing by light of lamps or candles.
Finally out of the shower, she toweled her long hair briefly, then formed of the towel a turban and shrugged into her terry-cloth robe, slipped her feet into the soft, beautifully decorated pair of “shoon” that the dextrous Bella had crafted for her mistress from the hide of a fallow doe taken during the great Christmas hunt of last winter. Then she checked on the cat in the bathtub.