‘He,’ the Witcher unhesitatingly pointed at the vampire, who was standing close by, raptly admiring a tapestry that took up almost the whole wall, ‘is a count. But hush! It’s a secret.’

‘Understood,’ the chamberlain almost choked in amazement. ‘In the given circumstances… I shall put him on the right of Countess Notturna, nobly born aunt of the Lady Duchess.’

‘Neither you nor the aunt will regret it.’ Geralt was poker-faced. ‘He has no equal either in comportment or in the conversational arts.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. You meanwhile, Lord of Rivia, will sit beside the Esteemed Lady Fringilla. As tradition dictates. You bore her to the Vat, you are… hmmm… her champion, as ‘twere…’

‘Understood.’

‘Very well. Ah, Your Grace…’

‘Yes?’ the vampire said in surprise. He had just moved away from the tapestry, which depicted a fight between giants and cyclopes.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ smiled Geralt. ‘We’re just chatting.’

‘Aha.’ Regis nodded. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, gentlemen… But that cyclops in the tapestry, the one with the club… Look at his toes. He, let’s be frank, has two left feet.’

‘Verily,’ Chamberlain Le Goff confirmed without a trace of amazement. ‘There are plenty of tapestries like that in Beauclair. The master who wove them was a true master. But he drank an awful lot. As artists do.’

‘It’s time we were going,’ said the Witcher, avoiding the eyes of the girls tipsy on wine who were glancing at him from the table, where they’d been amusing themselves with fortune-telling. ‘Let’s be off, Reynart. Let’s pay, mount up and ride to Beauclair.’

‘I know where you’re hurrying,’ the knight grinned. ‘Don’t worry, your green-eyed lady is waiting. It’s only just struck midnight. Tell me about the feast.’

‘I’ll tell you and we’ll ride.’

‘And we’ll ride.’

The sight of the table, arranged in a gigantic horseshoe, signalled emphatically that autumn was passing and winter was coming. Game in all possible forms and varieties dominated the delicacies heaped on great serving dishes and platters. There were huge quarters of boar, haunches and saddles of venison, various forcemeats, aspics and pink slices of meat, autumnally garnished with mushrooms, cranberries, plum jam and hawthorn berry sauce. There were autumn fowls–grouse, capercaillie, and pheasant, decoratively served with wings and tails, there was roast guinea fowl, quail, partridge, garganey, snipe, hazel grouse and mistle thrush. There were also genuine dainties, such as fieldfare, roasted whole, without having been drawn, since the juniper berries with which the innards of these small birds are full form a natural stuffing. There was salmon trout from mountain lakes, there was zander, there was burbot and pike’s liver. A green accent was given by raiponce, late-spring salad, which, if such a need arose, could even be dug up from under the snow.

Mistletoe took the place of flowers.