He saw a gentleman in ruffled shirt and magnificently brocaded waistcoat of the period of Louis XIV, who was methodically eviscerating a small roasted bird. Beside him, clad in what Justin could only conceive of as a shift, a lady in a towering headdress sipped champagne from a crystal goblet.
There were others, including an apparent Egyptian, clad in the briefest of loin-cloths with a marcelled spade-beard that recalled the statues of the Pharoahs—a cluster of Orientals of various shapes and skin colors and degrees of disarray, busy with chopsticks—a Hindu temple dancer whose modest demeanor denied her professional carnality.
Justin said, "It must be quite a job supplying each of these people with the food they want."
"'Tis truly remarkable, Master Charles," the girl told him. "Faith, never in my wildest dreams have I conceived of such a miracle."
"I wish you wouldn't call me 'Master Charles'," Justin said.
"And how else should I call thee?" she inquired.
"It's that 'Master' business," he explained. "In my time it means a boy, not a man. Just as 'Mistress', in my era, implies a kept woman rather than a wife."
"Mast—Charles, ye abash me!" she murmured demurely although twin blue devils danced in her eyes. "Here we are."
She had led him to the far end of one of the long tables, at which a small cluster of oddly assorted folk were seated. One of them, a rough-looking little specimen, who seemed to be wearing nothing but a shirt of slightly rusted chain mail, was slashing a large chunk of half-raw meat.
A plump motherly-looking grey-haired lady, clad in a petticoat from the waist down and nothing at all above, smiled at Deborah over her suet pudding and said in English even odder and quainter than Deborah's own, "Good day, Mistress Wilkins, be this the other guest?" And, when the girl nodded, "Truly a comely cod!"—to which Justin, quite aware of the phallic meaning of the word, felt himself blush.