These worthies were doing ample justice to a chine of beef, a wild-boar pie, a couple of fat capons, a peacock pasty, a mess of pickled lobsters, and other excellent and inviting dishes with which the board was loaded. Neither did they neglect to wash down the viands with copious draughts of ale and mead from great pots and flagons placed beside them. Behind this party stood Giovanni Joungevello, an Italian minstrel, much in favour with Anne Boleyn, and Domingo Lamellino, or Lamelyn—as he was familiarly termed—a Lombard, who pretended to some knowledge of chirurgery, astrology, and alchemy, and who was a constant attendant on Henry. At the head of the bench, on the right of the table, sat Will Sommers. The jester was not partaking of the repast, but was chatting with Simon Quanden, the chief cook, a good-humoured personage, round-bellied as a tun, and blessed with a spouse, yclept Deborah, as fond of good cheer, as fat, and as good-humoured as himself. Behind the cook stood the cellarman, known by the appellation of Jack of the Bottles, and at his feet were two playful little turnspits, with long backs, and short forelegs, as crooked almost as sickles.
On seeing Mabel, Will Sommers immediately arose, and advancing towards her with a mincing step, bowed with an air of mock ceremony, and said in an affected tone, “Welcome, fair mistress, to the king's kitchen. We are all right glad to see you; are we not, mates?”
“Ay, that we are!” replied a chorus of voices.
“By my troth, the wench is wondrously beautiful!” said Kit Coo, one of the yeomen of the guard.
“No wonder the king is smitten with her,” said Launcelot Rutter, the bladesmith; “her eyes shine like a dagger's point.”
“And she carries herself like a wafter on the river,” said the bargeman.
“Her complexion is as good as if I had given her some of my sovereign balsam of beauty,” said Domingo Lamelyn.
“Much better,” observed Joungevello, the minstrel; “I shall write a canzonet in her praise, and sing it before the king.”
“And get flouted for thy pains by the Lady Anne,” said Kit Coo.
“The damsel is not so comely as I expected to find her,” observed Amice Lovekyn, one of the serving-women, to Hector Cutbeard, the clerk of the kitchen.