The carved and panelled gallery whence his
minstrels cheered the banquet still stood firm on its massive pillars,
and the great stags'-antlers which surmounted it told of his skill as a
sportsman. What giant logs might once have burned in the wide
fireplaces, what sounds of revelry have gone up to the bare rafters! Our
guide's tongue went glibly as she pointed out these familiar objects,
and in the kitchen, buttery, and wine-vault, which were situated
conveniently near to the dining-hall, she seemed equally at home. It was
easy to recognize in the great stone chimneys, with their heavy hooks
and cross-bars, symptoms of banquets for which bullocks were roasted
whole and sheep and calves slain by the dozen; but we needed her
practised lips to suggest the uses of the huge stone chopping-blocks,
the deeply sunk troughs, the narrow gutters that crossed the stone
pavement, all illustrative of the primitive days when butcher and cook
wrought simultaneously, and this contracted cellar served at once for
slaughter-house and kitchen. Her little airy figure was in strange
contrast with these gloomy passages, these stones that had reeked with
blood and smoke. She glided before us into the mysterious depths of the
storehouse and ale-vault, as the new moon glides among damp, black
clouds; as she directed our attention to the oaken cupboards for bread
and cheese, the stone benches that once supported long rows of casks,
the little wicket in the doorway, through which the butler doled out
provisions to a waiting crowd of poor, she might well have been likened
to a freshly trimmed lamp, lighting up the dark, mysterious past.
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