TotW 259: Banquet - WINNER'S CIRCLE
Congratulations to Caillagh de Bodemloze, winner of TotW 259! Winning story is here:Banquets are supposed to be happy occasions. Wedding banquets, even more so. This one, however, was not.
The great hall was draped with bright banners and adorned with tall stands of flowers, while the sun streamed in through the stained glass windows, lighting the tables and the guests with equally radiant patches of colour. The tables were laden with all manner of food, as you would expect. Great platters of roast meat whose scent wafted across the room and caused more than one guest to apologise for the unseemly rumble from his innards; shining piles of fruit – apples, pears, even exotic oranges and pineapples, grown in the constantly-heated greenhouse; freshly-baked bread; vegetables so beautiful and so appetising they would have tempted the sternest carnivore; and the centrepiece – an enormous wedding cake, shaped like the house itself, and iced to make the resemblance perfect.
Everything had begun well. The guests – even those whose journeys had been the longest and most fraught with danger – had arrived safely and in good time. The cooks had toiled for days to produce the grandest meal any of them had ever seen. The servants had swept, and polished, and decorated. The gardeners had trimmed lawns, pruned bushes and weeded flower-beds. The wedding itself had proceeded without the smallest hitch, and everyone had returned to the house, laughing and talking, eager to see – and eat – the feast they were assured awaited them. They had dispersed to their rooms, to dispose of their coats and cloaks, and repair any small deficiencies of their appearance, and then they had made their way to the great hall.
Except that once the guests were all assembled, it became apparent that not everyone had arrived in the great hall. The bride was missing.
The groom, who had left her pinning a recalcitrant curl of hair into the precise shape she wanted, had been one of the earliest to reach the great hall. He had not begun to worry until almost everyone else had arrived. He thought his new wife intended to make a grand entrance in front of all the assembled guests, so it was not until all but three of the seats were filled that he commanded a servant to go and find her. As the host, he would be expected not to keep his guests waiting too long for their food, but it would be improper to begin a wedding banquet without the bride.
Moments later – moments that felt like hours to the groom – the servant returned. The bride – or rather, the bride’s murdered body – had been found. One mystery had been solved only to reveal another. Who among those present could have done such a thing?
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