In the banqueting room Vermillion Ruche is holding court. He has taken off his low riding wig and replaced it with a towering, platinum-blonde, two-horned wig. A string of pearls has been draped over the two horns. He is wearing a cream silk cravat with lace trim, a frilly white shirt and a suit of chalk blue satin. The coat long, falling to the knee and worn open. The arms are short with deep cuffs. The back of the coat has the family crest embroidered onto it with thread of darker blue. The buttons are of lapis lazuli. the trousers short and tight, stopping halfway up the calf. White stockings cover the bottom half of the calf. He is wearing long-toed shoes with a stacked heel.
‘More wine, wench’ he yells, giving the servant’s arse a hearty smack.
The banqueting room is vast, far longer than it is wide, with a high ceiling. Painted on the ceiling is a picture of the gods in heaven, Vermillion Ruche prominent amongst them. In the painting he is wearing a silver diadem and receiving grapes from a handmaiden. The table, covered with embroidered linen, mirrors the dimensions of the room. Its is laden with food from the hunting expedition, pheasants and peacocks, baby gorilla sprinkled with powdered rhino horn for virility, rabbit sweetened with lavender, violet and dark chocolate, a heron served with a salmon between its beak, deer, wood pigeon stuffed with chestnuts, all enriched with herbs and spices, supplemented with delicacies from across the world, purchased from Phoenician traders; goose fed on figs and mulberries, pig fed only acorns and sugar plums and cooked with cloves, cinnamon and lemon peel, song-birds boiled in mulled wine and stuffed with dates and orange peel, cygnets on a bed of fruit, lobster, honey-glazed kid in a cream-rich sauce, oysters seasoned with cardamom, aniseed and white wine, spiced ale in bejeweled tankards, heavy red wine in crystal decanters and fine cognacs, mangos, plums, pomegranate, strawberries and grapes. Everything is cooked to perfection. The kitchen staff well remember poor Valance, boiled alive in a huge pot with carrots, potatoes and celery after undercooking a calf. Rumour has it he was fed to the dogs.
A huge, ornate chandelier hangs over the centre of the table. Huge tapestries and oil paintings hang on the walls. They depict hunting scenes, significant moments in Ruche’s life, and portraits, both of Ruche himself and of his ancestors and, in one case, of his favourite hunting dog, Maximillion, killed after being gored by a wild boar he had bravely cornered. Ever since then there have been no boar in Ruche’s forests.
Compte Vermillion Ruche sits at the head of the table in a chair far higher than any other. It is framed in gold and upholstered in chalk blue satin embroidered with fleur de lis in gold thread. He has a megaphone which he uses to make announcements and to communicate with guests and associates seated at the far end of the table. The other chairs are of finely carved oak.
‘We’ll go falconeering tomorrow boys!’ bellowed into the megaphone, met with raucous cheers.
After all have eaten their fill the hall is suddenly enlivened with barely clad dancers who writhe and undulate lasciviously to roars of approval from the diners, clowns and acrobats perform their jests and pratfalls, while dwarfs scamper comically amongst them.
In the kitchen the servants feed on offal and offcuts, dry bread and beer.