Beyond Hogwarts -Chapter Five

-=Beyond Hogwarts; Chapter Five=-

Two days afterwards, when Lily mounted the deck in the morning, she found the ship docked in a harbor; during the night, they had arrived in Babylon. A quick smile spread over her face as she flitted back below and practically yanked James out of bed.
   “Wake up! Wake up! We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!”
   “Huh—er—whaaaa?” James was still asleep.
   “Wake up!” He was lying curled up in a fetal position on the floor, and she was trying to yank the covers out of his tightly curled fists. “Wake up up up!”
   “Arrgh!” James shook his head, pulling himself to a sitting position. “Lily, it’s seven fifteen!”
   Satisfied, Lily jumped up and picked up her toothbrush, singing something from Oklahoma. “They couldn’t pick a better time to start in life…”
   “Oh, yes, you could,” James mumbled as he pulled a haphazard piece of clothing over his head.’
   “It ain’t too early and it ain’t too late,” Lily continued, brushing her teeth.
   “It is too early,” her husband complained, pulling a pair of sandals from underneath the bed.
   “Startin’ as a farmer with a brand-new wife,” Lily continued, stopping to spit some toothpaste into a basin.
   “Farmer?” James frowned, pulling out the other sandal. “Someone’s got some thinking to do.”
   “Soon be livin’ in a brand new state!” She finished rinsing her mouth out and ran wet fingers through her hair, trying to make it stay out of her face. Smiling broadly, she emerged from the bathroom, throwing on a white chiton and sweeping her hair off of her neck. Appraisingly, she glanced at James, who was wiping sleep out of his eyes while trying to fasten a cloak with a golden pin they’d bought in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Fussing a bit, she took it out of his hands.
   “James, you’ll blind yourself—let me.” Her nimble fingers pinned his cloak over his right shoulder and she smoothed some of the folds out. “There. Ravishingly handsome.”
   He grinned as he wrapped his arms around her waist. “That’s always nice to hear. Especially when I’d most like to be asleep.”
   Lily laughed. “You sleep enough as it is. Come on—the Hanging Gardens are waiting!” She gazed around the room, frowning. “Do you have any idea where my sketchbook is?”
   “Not a clue,” James sighed. “It had better not be gone. You’ve got the Artemis temple in there, and I don’t think you can redo that. Not unless you want to spend another fortune going even further back in time, and remember, you can’t stop the guy that did it. It’ll happen no matter what.”
   “There it is,” Lily remarked, kneeling underneath a small table and holding up a book of papyrus sheets triumphantly. “Ready?”
   James felt in a pocket of the cloak for his moneybag. He touched it and grinned. “Ready.”
   Arm in arm, they stepped off of the boat and wove their way through the noisy crowds and were swept through the castle gates, something both of them had become quite adept at. A large, sandstone structure was visible from every point in the city, and it was there that they turned their feet.
   They turned a corner, and there the Hanging Gardens were. The building was a carved, tan, sandstone; it formed a quadrilateral from an aerial view. From the dusty streets, the couple could see the terraced roofs and the balconies facing the sea. The whole building was as tall as the city walls; they stretched 320 feet into the air, and if James hadn’t pulled lightly on Lily’s arm, she would have stayed outside all morning, staring at the building.
   “Come on; we didn’t come all this way just to stare at it, did we?”
   “No,” she agreed. “It—it’s impressive, that’s all!”
   There were two magnificently armed and dressed guards standing at attention at either side of the main doorway; their backs were to two elegant and tall columns that towered over them, with vines of hanging grapevines curling around them. The guards stepped aside, saluted the couple, and let them enter the Hanging Gardens.
   Lily bit her lip in excitement as she let her skirt drop to the floor; she had had it draped over her arm in a war against the dust. Clasping James’ arm a tiny bit more tightly, they moved forward, underneath the curved marble ceiling of the entrance.
   Her eyes opened to the size of tealights when the sight of the gardens flew to her eyes. Superbly and brilliantly elaborate, they were a sight to be waited for all one’s life. Stairways lined the walls; they led to the multiple lovely terraced roofs, and the banisters were slender. slim toothpicks, formed into twisting curves. The hanging plants hung over terraces that were supported by stone columns. Arched vaults were located on cubed fountains, the latter creating a humidity that kept the air wonderfully and pleasantly cool, as did the shade from the trees.
   The garden itself was built on several levels, closely planted, forming a replica of mountain greenery. They were supported by an intricate structure of stone pillars, brick walls, and palm tree trunk beams that had been made watertight; they were laid over with mats of reed and bitumen and encrusted with two layers of baked mud brick. The structure then was covered with a layer of lead.
   The plants themselves that adorned the gardens had been imported from around the world; cedars, cypresses, myrtles, juniper evergreens, almond trees, date palms, olive trees, oaks, ash trees, firs, weeping willows and usual ones; pomegranate, plum, pear, quince, and fig trees. Grapevines twined around trees and columns; deadly nightshade decorated the tree roots, and trellises were heavy with hanging white Clementine. A uniform smell of wood, summer grass, water, fruits, and flowers hung heavy upon the air, and the brilliantly coloured flowers that dangled from the walls created a lush, tropical atmosphere.
   The couple spent the day walking through the fourteen vaulted rooms, the terraced roofs, and the underground crypts; Lily had picked samples of every lovely flower she could reach; her arms were filled with a bouquet near evening. The fruit was spectacularly cultivated; they had never tasted such rich, ripe pomegranates or seen such lush, large pears and plums. There were artificial fountains disguised as waterfalls throughout the gardens, and they could run their hands underneath the flow of water after letting the pomegranate juice run down their hands and chins.
   Lily had affixed at least twenty sketches into her book; a waterfall, a willow draping behind an olive tree, the terraced roofs, a cluster of tropical flowers. She hugged her drawings to her chest tightly; not for anything would she have parted with them. On one sheet she even dropped, purposely, the juice of some of the fruits; she pressed several of the flowers and the leaves of trees and vines between the pages.
   They had encountered only two groups of people during the day; two ladies with their expensive entourage and a noble and his wife, accompanied by what seemed like hordes of servants. Every member of each parade had stared down their noses at the handsome, young couple as they meandered along the paths alone, but their eyes had to drop as they faced Lily’s hard, determined, scornful gaze. She wasn’t standing for any nonsense from people that had been born rich, and she had no intention of concealing it.
   “Lily,” James whispered, after the lord and lady had passed by, “why’d you look at them like that? They didn’t do a thing to you.”
   “No,” Lily agreed, “besides stare at me as if I were dung underneath an anthill and needed to be removed from sight quickly. They don’t like seeing people that don’t flaunt their wealth.”
   James shrugged. “True, but you don’t have to go out of your way to make enemies, do you?”
   “I didn’t,” Lily replied. “They went out of their way to turn up their noses at us. I was forcing their noses back down. Don’t tell me you liked looking at that lord’s hairy nostrils!”
   Her husband wrinkled his own nose. “Say, is that the only thing you noticed?”
   “It was rather hard to miss,” Lily said dryly. “He was advertising them freely.”
   James snorted loudly and had to mask it by a cough, as several of the lord’s servants had looked at him curiously.
   They dined in the house of an important political personage that evening; he was inviting anyone that was anyone to the dinner, and as Lily and James couldn’t be mistaken for anything but wealthy, according to their clothing, the servants at the doors simply bowed low as they ushered the couple inside.
   The dinner was nothing elaborate, but it was expensive and quaint in its own way. Oranges carved into the shapes of flowers lay on white silk napkins; roasted duck stuffed with all kinds of exotic herbs lay on a centre platter; the wine, though not of especially good quality, still was enough to impress James, who had grown up with nothing but quality.
   They spent that week in Babylon; by the time they boarded their ship again, the fragments of the Hanging Gardens’ plants were dried and hanging upside down in their room; the smell permeated the ship and made it reek, so James said, of ‘the landmasses’.
   Lily and James returned to Egypt in several days; their first motion was to seek out the small store they had emerged from when they traveled to the ancient times. They found it easily; the owner was still adjusting picture frames on the walls, and he was the same as he had been two thousand years into the future; still dark, short, and fat. The greasy smile as he greeted them was the same; as was the price of their journey, Lily noted.
   She let James hand him the money; her mind was fixed on one thing. She intended to visit one of her favorite historical periods as far as costuming went, and she anticipated overflowing trunks when they returned.
   James nudged her in the back. “Go on. Where’re we going?”
   “Twelve hundred ninety-six, please,” Lily said clearly, and she watched James frown a bit. But before he could say anything, she had pulled him into the fireplace, and they were whirling off through future centuries.
   They landed in the same store, though the dusty, homelike, comforting, sunny noise outside had diminished a bit; the streets were changed almost beyond recognition. None of the lavish wealth penetrated the atmosphere, and Lily shook herself.
   “I liked it better back then—let’s get to our ship.”
   James nodded. “Yes—it was friendlier, then.” He guided her through the jostling crowds outside, finally reaching a harbor, which smelled awfully of fish; no spices were being fingered and no silk felt in appreciation.
   As soon as the two boarded the galleon, they set sail, not wanting to stay a minute longer in that country. Egypt had reached its golden age during the pharaohs, and now the palace and temples were dilapidated with wear. Lily leaned on the figurehead, eyes wide open, trying to block out the memories of the newer Alexandria by the rough wind hitting her forcibly in the face.
   James walked up quietly behind her, putting an arm around her waist. He felt her tense and then relax, and he sighed.
   “It’s a shame, but we couldn’t possibly do anything about that.”
   “No…” Lily whispered, “we couldn’t, but I do wish it could have stayed at least somewhat like it was!”
   “I do, too,” he said, “but you saw it in its golden age, you bought beautiful what probably now is artifacts, and you met Cleopatra VII, which is more than I can say for anyone else I know.”
   Lily kissed him. “You’re magnificent at cheering people up.”
   They anchored in England two weeks later; they had stopped along a string of French resorts; at the lower French shores, Calais, and Forges. From there they crossed the Channel into middle England, and they anchored on the western side of the country.
   It was wooded, not heavily so, but pleasantly; the sun was mild, and the fishermen of the town they landed at had guided the couple to a man that sold horses as soon as they found out that the pair did not intend to stay in the seaside hamlet.
   Lily chose their horses; she knew more about them than James did. True, James had been taught to ride at five years, but she knew horses; after all, Svordsja was one of the unparalleled of her kind.
   She had run her palms over the backs of several steeds, but the ones she finally picked were two James wouldn’t have looked twice at. In a rather dingy stable at the back of the barn, the two had hay almost plastered to their coats; the stable hadn’t been cleaned in ages, and their water had dirt floating inside it. Lily wrinkled her nose as she glanced at it, then swerved towards the owner.
   “This is a disgrace,” she said bluntly, and the man’s eyebrows went up in surprise and disgust.
   “M’lydy!-never would I-“
   “You obviously have,” Lily commented ungraciously and rather rudely. “A child could take better care of these creatures than you are. They haven’t been brushed in months. How well do you treat them?”
   “Ye-es, well-m’lydy-“ He was hee-hawing around the point, and it was then that James stepped in.
   “My wife has asked you a question, and it is imperative for the continuation of your business that you give her a legitimate answer.”
   The owner gave in. “I can’t touch ‘em, m’lydy. They’s vicious brutes, them is. Kick us as soon as look at anyone. They bites, too. I wouldn’t touch ‘em, not fer the world, and I’d advise you and yer ‘usband ter do the same.”
   Lily had her competitive spirit roused, and she shook off James’ hand airily. “Open the door; let me inside. I’ll handle them.”
   Alone, she stepped around a large pile of manure till she reached the horse nearest her. Casting a glance around her, she found what she was looking for, and pulled a blanket off of a shelf. Dipping it in the watering trough, she rubbed the blanked calmly and firmly over the horse’s back; it didn’t make a move towards attacking her, and she didn’t expect it to. Calmly, both of them stood inside the stable, and the two men outside stared.
   “Lily-careful now. You don’t know what he can do.”
   ”Yes, I do,” Lily informed him. “She won’t hurt me.”
   A short, meager brushing down of the animal revealed a beautiful black coat, dark, glossy, and elegant. The other horse was a reddish-brown colour, and it was slightly taller than the other. The owner told them that he had bought both of them from a lord that was leaving for France, but that the horses hadn’t let anyone come near them; they bit, kicked, and generally were extremely violent. The stable boys had resorted to throwing buckets of water through the window over the door into the water trough, and their hay was forked through the same opening. Lily was the only one that had touched them for two and a half months.
   Lily had commandeered the black horse, but then again, James hadn’t expected anything different. In two hours, the horses were groomed enough to please even Lily’s eagle eye, and they were thundering across a moor; then crossed the forest by a slender path.
   The afternoon sun was just turning pink when the couple arrived at a larger town. Dismounting, they tethered their steeds in front of a lodging-house a farmer had recommended to them, James handed a small boy a few pennies, ordering him to watch the horses, and the two entered the hostel.
   There was a woman in her late twenties dusting shelves in the back of the small room the front door opened into; she whirled around, hitching up clean brown skirts and brushing wisps of braided, mousy-coloured hair behind her ears as soon as she heard them enter.
   “And what may I be doing for you two?”
   “We’re looking for a room,” James said evenly, “and Farmer Abbot told us to pay you a visit.”
   “Well, that’s nice of him, I’m sure,” the lady smiled, sitting down behind the desk and pulling out a ledger. “Never thought he’d remember me, did I, though his sister did marry Madge’s brother…where are we?-oh yes, here.” She looked up. “You’ll be wanting a larger room, then?”
   “Larger?” James questioned. He had instructed Lily to leave this to him, after all, she hadn’t exactly been particularly nice to the stable manager.
   “It holds a table and two chairs, it does,” the lady explained. “It’s also got several nice pictures, and a big rug all over the floor. I can give you a window or no.”
   “Window,” Lily said determinedly. “Definitely a window.”
   “I could give you two, miss,” the lady said, posing her sentence as a question. “Only two pence extra, it is, and we’ll do your washing twice a week in the bargain.”
   James glanced at Lily, then put his hand into his robes. “We’ll take the two windows. How much?”
   He paid quickly, and they were taken up a smallish, though clean stairway into a room with a white linen bedspread on the bed, two pillows, an old dark red carpet, a simple table and two chairs with a white tablecloth and cushions. The lady flung open the shutters, letting a cheerful smell of freshly dried grass float into the room.
   She had put a pair of curtains over her arms when she stepped upstairs, and, taking the curtain rod down, hung them up nimbly. They were plain linen, too, and freshly washed.
   The lady stepped down from the chair and dusted her skirts off. “I’ll be leaving you to yourself, then. Happens you’d like to do some shopping? We’ve got nice dressmakers around here, and we’re not too far from London. Three miles, as happens. They’d give you more fancy things, like. But we’re good local businesspeople, and no doubt my sister as lives in the town’s square makes the best bread I’ve ever tasted, to be sure.” She finished smoothing her skirts. “I’ll be leaving you, then. If you want anything, my nephew’ll be within calling distance.”
   She scurried off after putting the room’s key on the table, shutting the door behind her, and Lily sank down on the bed.
   “Ouf!”
   “What’s that supposed to mean?” James asked.
   “She’s nice enough, I suppose. And respectable…but a little too overwhelming.”
   “Overwhelming is just the word. Now, I’m supposing you want to see the dressmaker she talked about?”
   “You suppose correctly. Besides, that boy outside is theoretically still looking after our horses.”
   “Good Lord, so he is!” James vaulted to his feet. “I’ll be back in a second!” He was gone instantly, and Lily laughed as she locked the door behind her, following James.
   The boy was still standing outside, but he was tapping his foot impatiently and reaching his hand out for the bracelet Lily had left attached to the saddlehorn. He snatched his hand away quickly when the two stepped outside, and with a sinister glare, James handed him another penny and waved him away.
   “You shouldn’t have left that bracelet there,” he remonstrated as soon as Lily had swung herself upon her horse’s back. “It was bound to have been stolen.”
   “No,” Lily shot back. “It’s one of those lovely Muggle objects that have been bewitched. He’d have put his hand through it every time he touched it.”
   “Say, isn’t that illegal?” James asked, frowning, as they turned their horses towards the town square. “I mean, you can’t bewitch Muggle things, can you?”
   “Yes, you can,” Lily laughed. “This is the twelfth century; that law hasn’t been made yet.”
   James rolled his eyes. “You’ll be burned at the stake, though.”
   “Yes,” Lily nodded. “I always wanted to know what the Flame Freezing Charm felt like, and I might have a chance at finding out.”
   “Mental,” James mumbled, but aloud he said “Are we going up to London today or not?”
   “Ye-es-no. No. We’ll have more time tomorrow. I’ll just buy a girdle or something today-something to make these robes look-er-well, more twelfth-century than they do.”
   “Good idea,” James nodded.
   The clothing store was very simple; it specialized in linen clothing, and there were very few things in there besides cream and brown overdresses. However, there were a few large sashes and girdles, and Lily bought a brown sash and woven belt to wrap around the golden robes she was wearing; James was outfitted with a leather belt that also held his sword. Neither of them bothered with shoes; not may people did pay attention to shoes, and those they could buy in London.
   There was not much to see in the square, besides a rabble of children washing their hands in a well and several ladies gossiping at market stands dotted everywhere. People were packing up their things, though, and there wasn’t much of the noisy clamor that usually prevailed at marketplaces.
   They picked up a few loaves of bread, three potatoes, some spices, a clove of garlic, and several pieces of meat, and, turning around, they headed for what was temporarily ‘home’.
   It was the easiest thing in the world to say that they weren’t feeling up to eating anything after their journey to their hostess, and after she and her page-boy nephew had bustled away, Lily locked the door, pulled out her wand, and conjured up a cauldron, a bucked of clear, clean, cold water, and a portable fire which she placed underneath the cauldron, first making sure the table on which she placed the fire and cauldron was in no danger of burning.
   Splashing most of the water into the cauldron, she pinched several spices from their wrappings and threw them on the surface and waited till they dispersed. Nodding, she pointed her wand at the potatoes, which cut themselves up and dumped themselves into the cauldron along with some salt and pepper from her wand. Slicing up the beef thinly, she spread the slices so that they floated thickly on top of the water and potatoes; squeezing the garlic clove was done in a matter of minutes, and she scraped the garlic into the makeshift pot.
   James grinned. “That does smell good.”
   “Thank you,” she accepted. “It should be. Conjure up a barrier in front of the door for me, will you? I don’t want that lady asking questions.”
   He nodded and waved his wand, muttering a few words; a bubble-like glutinous matter burst from his wand and shaped itself around the door, moulding itself into the frame itself and disappearing.
   “There. Good enough?”
   “I trust your magic.”
   “Lily,” he groaned, “for heaven’s sake, don’t say that word so loudly! This isn’t the twentieth century!”
   “Okay, okay. Just so you’ll stop nagging. And I won’t use it in London, unless we’re in deep cow manure. Satisfied?”
   “I will be satisfied,” James grinned, “when you let me taste what’s in that cauldron. I’m simply drooling over here.”
   Lily laughed. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
   With a quick motion, he was standing behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist. “I love you, Lil,” he said in a singsong way of talking.
   She smiled and leaned her head against his chest. “I’m awfully happy that you do.”
   The next morning, they woke up early; for once, Lily wasn’t the one pushing James out of bed. He threw his clothes on at the same time she did, and by the time they were leaving the house and getting their horses out of the small stables belonging to the hostel’s owner, the lady was just cleaning up downstairs with a mop and a broom. She looked at them oddly as they went out, and Lily was aware of a hard stare piercing her back.
   “Oh, well.” She shrugged it off. “She can’t hurt us very well, can she? After all, we’re wizards, and she’s a common Muggle.”
   They dashed off to London, arriving there just as the shops were opening. By asking around, they found a clothing-store usually patronized by the nobility, and they headed towards it.
   The fashion then was, for women, a bliaut, a dress fitted to the torso and loose from the waist down; the sleeves were long, usually down to the wearer’s knees or farther, and there usually was a girdle fastened around the waist. Men wore almost the same thing; though it was shorter, reaching only to the knees, and the sleeves weren’t as long. Both sexes wore cloaks, and many had hoods as well.
   Lily pushed James over to the part of the store carrying men’s clothing, and soon they had picked out an elegant dark red bliaut with golden embroidered trimmings, a pair of leather shoes, and a cream-coloured cloak with the same golden embroidery on the edges.
   He insisted on picking out Lily’s apparel. He’d let her pick out her shoes, since they all were the same style-leather with a pointed toe-but the gown she chose was going to be his affair for once.
   James riffled through many of the pieces of clothing the owner carried, but finally he saw one he knew she’d look absolutely lovely in. Dark green crushed velvet with the same golden embroidery as on his own, it had a golden belt and trim around the collar. When she tried it on and modeled it in front of him, it fit her like a lady’s glove, and he nodded.
   “Don’t even bother taking it off. You’re wearing that no matter what, and see if all the men in that square don’t turn and look at you.”
   Lily blushed. “James-“
   “What-Ja-ames? You are beautiful, and I’m going to make it my mission in life to make you believe that,” he said emphatically, slapping his money down on the counter for the shopkeeper to greedily stuff inside his clothing.
   He led her out of the store proudly, completely aware of the admiring looks she was receiving from both men and women alike, and also disappointedly conscious of the fact that Lily wasn’t noticing the stares. He wished she would; it was almost ridiculous, the way she didn’t realize anything extraordinary, exotic, or breath-taking about herself. As he held out a hand for her to faux lean on as she mounted her horse, he heard something from his right that couldn’t but be mistaken as a sniff. Turning, he found himself faced with about five horses and their riders.
   Lily, smiling at her husband, had allowed him to help her onto her horse, and just as James had swung himself onto his own, she had arranged herself to sit side-saddle, so that her train barely missed sweeping the ground. As she looked up, though, a splash of color caught her eye, and she turned her head in the same direction James was looking.
   Closing her eyes lazily, she tilted her head to one side, weighing the nobles—for such they must be—before her.
   The lord and lady at the head of the spangled parade were the gaudiest of them all, and as a result the most important. The lord was encompassed in an outfit of blue linen, with glass ornaments hanging from a golden belt. He wore a sword, decked out with a sheath festooned in paste jewels, and a large chain that hung around his neck was bedecked with a large cross almost the size of his horse. His hair, black and shining, was swept backwards and hung down his back.
   The lady—most probably his wife—wore a scarlet dress, belted loosely around her waist with gold leaves, and her fingers were covered with rings. A thin chain wore a cross about half the size of her husband’s, and golden brown hair was covered with a white veil, fastened with a chain from which dangled obviously glass gems. The only thing about her that Lily admired were her almost golden eyes, her hair, though not its ridiculously curly arrangement, and her hands, long and fine from laziness. The lord held no attraction for her whatsoever; he was inclined to be fat, had no sense of what color clashed with which, and didn’t look as if he had ever needed to handle his sword in his life.
   Nevertheless, as they inclined their heads towards the couple, Lily did the same, and James followed suit. Immediately afterwards, the female of the pair burst into torrents of speech.
   “I remember you—you were at Lady Tennent’s gala last month. Oh! I’ve got so much to tell you—you can’t believe how much happened since then. Lord Bassen performed suicide!” she said in a whisper, leaning towards Lily. “His wife’s almost crazy with grief—just think, the church refused to bury him! They say it’s silly that they should bury someone that took his own life. And we had a magician in here last week—just think, he said we were all doomed and that our palace would blow away into the winds as soon as we were dead! We can’t get a decent servant now, think of that!—“
   The man interrupted her. “I think,” he said, glancing up and down Lily’s figure, “that you two should join us at our manor for dinner. I am sure I would not but enjoy your company.”
   Lily cast a quick look over to James, who shrugged—he knew the lady had obviously mistaken them for someone else. She made up her mind instantly.
   “We would be delighted to accept your hospitality,” Lily said imperiously, and the lady flashed a bright smile at them and turned her horse and parade around a street corner; Lily and James rode with them at the front, Lily grinding her teeth at the sound of bagpipes floating from a member of the parade that obviously hadn’t studied the art of making non-eardrum-piercing music come out of the bagpipes.
   The manor (or “palace”, termed by the lady) was large enough, once they had been leisurely riding for one hour to get to it; it had large, wooden doors with a newfangled latch, and there were mismatched tapestries on the walls. Long curtains hung at the tall windows, and carved wooden chairs were set around a large table in the dining hall. Servants dressed in combinations of orange, pink, and purple flutterings dashed forward and relieved James of his cloak and the lord and lady of their veil and mantle, and Lily smiled to herself to realize that this was what was termed as ‘comfortable living’.
   The dinner was well enough, interrupted frequently by chatterings from the lady and several of her other guests. Her name turned out to be Elinore of Sunnamen, and her husband’s name was Sir Richard.
   A roasted pig sat in the middle of the table, with tureens of gravy set all around it. Pieces of white bread were placed at intervals around the table for dipping in the gravy, and fruit was jumbled together in glass bowls. There were no napkins, but in compensation there was a long tablecloth. It was apparently the custom to drink large amounts of wine and fall over one another telling long and drawn-out stories that only made sense if you were as drunk as the relater, and Lily found herself wishing she hadn’t come. James was constantly on the watch, tense, for a man beside her had already tried to grope at her shoulder, mumbling something about a lovely princess. He had had to threaten that man with his fist, and her neighbor had immediately fallen off of his chair.
   Lily leaned over to James. “This is enough to put me off of wine forever.”
   “It is,” he agreed. “Now aren’t you glad I’m not a heavy drinker?”
   “Definitely,” Lily frowned. “If you entertained people like this, you’d be without a wife.”
   She pushed her chair back, looking around the room for an opportune temporary exit, for she felt she’d be sick to her stomach if she had to keep on breathing the reeking fumes at the table. She found a narrow hallway with a window, and, gasping in air, leaned relievedly on the sill.
   Lily heard steps behind her, and she sighed.
   “Are you ready to go, too?”
   “Quite definitely,” a voice behind her said.
   She whirled. If that was James’ voice, he had undergone surprisingly quick surgery of his vocal cords. Besides, James didn’t spit when he had finished a sentence.