Quoted By:
"What did I just drink?"
It is a challenge not to sound disgusted.
"Meep, the honey-wave and the cure of speech. Mead, Your Majesty. Drink deep and well; we have enough to make your horn a waterfall!"
A crowd of servants with various jugs close in to your table. There is pure honey-fermented mead, a damson plum-added mead, a mead mixed with tart apple cider, mead mixed with a variety of berries plucked on the island of Logres, and mead mixed with exotic sweet grapes from across the cruel sea! There is mead and mead and mead!
In desperation, you asked to try a bit of what the Baphomet guests were drinking. You discover that what they're drinking is worse than mead.
It's ale! Horrible, strong ale! It takes a great deal of willpower not to shudder with disgust and swallow the drink from your horn goblet. You decline a second helping offered by an overly solicitous servant.
In addition to the press of drink servers, there are the trays of food. Numberless varieties of food are coming to your table for sampling as suits your whimsy.
Freshly baked hot brown bread with a pat of butter melting to create yellow rivulets, they dribble down the crusty sides. Piles of oatcakes sweetened with honey and sweet red berries. Cheeses of all shapes, hues, and smells that roil your stomach rather than delight. Salads with mysterious greens, flowers, slivers of walnuts, and pieces of fresh oranges. Cabbage stuffed with acorns and carrots with a nutmeg sauce. Stewed pears in piquant sauces, cold green soups sharp with raw garlic, small silvery fish roasted over charcoal, roast beans mashed with turnips and parsnips, messes of stewed root vegetables in a variety of sauces and gravies, ground rabbit meat and chicken liver pates, meatballs in spiced wine sauce, and so much more.
You catch on quickly that you are not to load your plate with food but rather take extremely small portions of each dish before sending it out to the guests to eat. Otherwise, you would explode from food! This is all just the first course too. Hanbei mentioned that feasts can last for hours. You try not to show the servants that you are in the throes of culture shock at the excess of it all. The meals you had before this day were all quite simple, and the meat was limited to fish. This is the first time you've seen meat flesh served. There's no beef, but there's all sorts of bird flesh, pork, chicken, mutton, and other mysterious meats from animals that only reside in Avalon.
There is no way this can be all eaten just by the guests, and you see a steady stream of servants exiting with trays of uneaten food.