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Page 40
Chapter Three
Although the dinner hour was far later than usual, there was still sufficient sunlight in the Great Hall to glitter on the jewel-encrusted gilt and silvered goblets and on the gold plates set ready at five places at the High Table. There were no such refinements at the long trestle tables placed at right angles down the length of the Hall. However, the slices of manchet bread that would serve as plates were thick and white and the serving bowls of lentils and greens stood so close together than no man would need to ask his neighbor to pass a dish.
Nor could any man claim that this profusion was to make up for other deficiencies. There was roast lamb and baked mutton, boar roast on open spits, venison and beef, boiled and spiced. There were pies and pasties, high-seasoned with pepper or made sweet with honey. And to wash it down there was ale and sparkling cider, hard and sweet. For the High Table there were special dishes in additiona swan stuffed with a goose, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a dove, stuffed with a lark; a pheasant, refeathered and crouching in a cleverly devised bracken of drawn and twisted pastry crust. The noble diners of course drank wine, white and red, sweet and sour, all cooled in the deep wells of the castle and served in chilled goblets.
The seating arrangements at the High Table were a little lopsided. Out of consideration for Alinor and because she did not know what state of disorder she might find, the Queen had not brought her high-born entourage. Alinor was too young to have children of

 
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