‘A little more grouse, perhaps?’

‘I vow on the heron!’ A young knight from the end of the horseshoe stood up and blindfolded himself with a sash given him by the lady sitting next to him. ‘I vow not to take off this sash until the marauders from the Cervantes pass are entirely wiped out.’

The duchess gave her acknowledgement with a gracious nod of her diamond-sparkling head.

Geralt hoped Fringilla wouldn’t continue on the subject. He was mistaken.

‘You don’t believe me and you don’t trust me,’ she said. ‘You’ve given me a doubly painful blow. You don’t only doubt that I sincerely want to help, but neither do you believe I can. Oh, Geralt! You’ve cut my pride and lofty ambition to the quick.’

‘Listen—’

‘No!’ She raised her knife and fork as though threatening him. ‘Don’t try to apologise. I can’t bear men who apologise.’

‘What kind of men can you bear?’

She narrowed her eyes, and continued to hold her cutlery like daggers about to strike.

‘The list is long,’ she said slowly. ‘And I don’t want to bore you with the details. I merely state that men who are ready to go to the end of the world for their beloved, dauntlessly, scorning risk and danger, occupy quite a high position. And those that don’t quit, even though there seems to be no chance of success.’

‘And the other positions on the list?’ he blurted out. ‘The other men to your taste? Also madmen?’

‘And what is true manliness—’ she tilted her head playfully ‘—if not class and recklessness blended together in the correct proportions?’

‘Lords and ladies, barons and knights!’ shouted Chamberlain Le Goff loudly, standing up and raising a gigantic cup in both hands. ‘In the given circumstances I shall take the liberty of offering a toast: to Her Enlightened Ladyship, Duchess Anna Henrietta.’

‘Health and happiness!’

‘Hurrah!’

‘Long live the duchess! Vivat!’

‘And now, lords and ladies.…’ The chamberlain put the cup down and nodded solemnly towards the liveried servants. ‘Now… The Magna Bestia!’

An enormous roast on a dish, filling the hall with its marvellous aroma, was carried in by four servants on something resembling a sedan chair.

‘The Magna Bestia!’ roared the revellers as one. ‘Hurrah! The Magna Bestia!’

‘What bloody beast is that?’ Angoulême expressed her anxiety loudly. ‘I’m not going to eat it until I find out what it is.’

‘It’s an elk,’ Geralt explained. ‘A roast elk.’

‘Not just any elk,’ said Milva, after clearing her throat. ‘That bull weighed seven hundredweight.’

‘With a fine six-point rack. Seven hundredweight and forty pounds,’ gruffly commented the tight-lipped baron sitting beside her. They were the first words he’d uttered from the start of the banquet.

Perhaps it would have been the beginning of a conversation, but the archer blushed, fixed her gaze on the tablecloth and resumed her crumbling of bread.

But Geralt had taken Fringilla’s words to heart.

‘Did you, my lord baron,’ he asked, ‘bring down that magnificent bull?’