A few minutes later the male rats came along. The bats, Chip, and the female rats were gathered around a table on the terrace. The trellis above, which must once have been vine hung, was now festooned instead with batforms. Their dark silhouettes were stark in the moonlight. Occasionally one would swoop down on the table.
“We can’t get to it . . . have you got anything to spare?” the male rats asked from below, an edge of dangerous hunger in their voices.
Food had had a mellowing effect on the rest of them. “All right. Come up. There just might be a few scraps left.” Phylla gestured at the stairs with a slopping wine glass. “Connolly made us some fancy chow.”
The male rats fairly galloped up the stairs.
* * *
Chip, on seeing what they had found, had pushed the rats and bats aside. “I’ll prepare it. Go and find us a bottle of wine.” This was what he had done for five years . . . well, for the first year he had scrubbed pots . . . but he had an eye for this sort of thing.
Several by now half-empty filigree-edged silver platters rested on the table, filled with an array of delicate, elegantly presented canapes. Even the starving rats could only gape.
“Here, Fal. Try one of these bits of meatloaf,” said Mel cheerfully. “What’s it called again, Chip?”
“Pâté de foie gras, with truffles and cognac.” Chip winced, watching the fat rat shove it into his face and chew. Twice. Gulp.
“Methinks ’tis not bad for tinned meatloaf, really,” Fal pronounced, washing down the exquisite delicacy with a draft tipped straight from the bottle.
“Hey! What do you think glasses are for, you Philistine?” demanded Nym, helping himself to a glass and a biscuit piled with slices of pickled quail’s eggs in chopped aspic, topped with mayonnaise and dusted with caviared trout-roe.
“Dunno. What?” Fal had another pull at the bottle, and another piece of “meatloaf.”
“Drinking out of,” said Chip, raising his glass, swirling the ruby liquid and savoring the bouquet.
Fal clung to the bottle, pointedly ignoring the glasses. “A waste of time, when the bottle is handy.” This time he examined the pâté briefly, before putting it in his face. He gave it a cursory chew before asking in a spray of crumbs: “What was the little black bits in it? Con nyak, it’s called? Some sort of testicle?”
“Cognac is brandy, you pleb,” said Nym, looking curiously at the strange thing on the toothpick.
Fal grabbed for the platter. “Gimme. Gimmeee! Food and drink at once!”
“Too late, Pistol got there first.” Nym chewed the toothpick. By the looks of it, he had decided that the stick tasted better than that pickled fishy-roll.
The odd food had even mellowed Eamon. “Just watch out for those little black balls he’s put on those round biscuits. Chip’s admitted ’twas just buckshot softened in fish oil, indade.”
“What about the big ones in that bowl? Some kind of droppings?” inquired Pistol, reaching happily for them.
Siobhan swooped down and took a spiral of smoked oyster and gherkin slivers. “Black olives,” she said, distastefully. “Beware, I tell you. There are pips in them. Nearly broke my teeth on one.”
“Besides, what kind of fruit is salty?” demanded Phylla. Suspiciously: “I think Chip was having us on.”
“S’like t’ose snake eggs.” The plumpest bat belched and pointed a wing.
“Pickled quail’s eggs, O’Niel,” said Chip, grinning over his wineglass.
O’Niel condemned them with a lordly flap. “T’ay taste just like the eggs in boot camp.”
Melene laughed “The ones we used to bounce?”
“Myself, I like those little bits of fish with green bits in the middle.” Doll burped in an unladylike fashion and swilled back some of the Director’s Reserve ’03 Cabernet.
“Which do you mean?” inquired Doc. “The ones with the crunchy green-bits or the dark red ones with the wrinkledy bits of stuff in the middle.” He inspected the one of each in each paw, squinting through his spectacles.
“The crunchy ones. What did you call it, Chip? Oh yeah. Roll-ups.”
“Are you sure you’re not supposed to smoke them?” asked Fal. “And the other fishy ones? Tried those?”