A Royal Kiss and Tell

Leo saw his opportunity and blurted awkwardly, “I’ve had a hangering for good poultry.”

The three men looked at him.

Leo looked back.

“I believe you meant to say hankering, Your Highness,” said Sir Granbury.

“Pardon?”

“The word you are seeking is hankering, not hangering,” Beck supplied, grinning.

“Ah. Thank you.” Leo could feel a warmth in the back of his neck. He’d picked up some words in the last few years that he had not learned from his childhood English tutor.

“If it’s poultry you want, I’ve the best in Lancashire,” said Mr. Humble. “You’ll not see better meat than what is produced on my land. Plump birds.” He used his hands to demonstrate just how plump.

“It is good poultry, Davis, I will grant you that,” Beck agreed.

“Perhaps something a bit closer than Lancashire,” Leo suggested. “Surely there is a market...”

“What have you got all those servants for?” Beck scoffed. “Send them out to fetch good poultry and don’t concern yourself.”

The three men nodded in agreement. Leo would have, too, because naturally, if he wanted poultry, he would tell someone, and it would magically appear on his plate. “Truth be told, sirs...my man does not have an eye for the fattest hen.”

“Neither do I,” said Sir Granbury, and the three men burst into laughter. Various jests about the gentlemen’s appendages and how they’d like to fit said appendages into fat hens went round the table while Leo tried to think of another way to ask about the market.

When the laughter died, he said, “But is there a market for poultry? Someplace I might send him?”

Mr. Humble shrugged. “There is Leadenhall. Or Newgate.”

Leadenhall! That’s what Ann Marble had whispered.

“Not Newgate,” Beck argued. “Leadenhall for poultry, Newgate for beef. Everyone knows it.” He looked at Leo. “Tell your man to go to Leadenhall.”

“Yes, thank you—I will.” That answered the question of where. But as the four of them prepared to leave the gentlemen’s club and seek supper, he moved on to fretting about how he’d convince Miss Marble to tell him what he needed.

ON WEDNESDAY, Leo had to convince his valet, Freddar, that he did indeed want to dress like an unassuming gentleman of English descent. “But the cut of the English suit does not serve your physique, Highness,” Freddar had sniffed.

“It serves me well enough. And a hat, Freddar. Not a beaver hat. Something less conspicuous than beaver.”

“Less conspicuous,” Freddar repeated, as if he didn’t understand the word.

“I’d like a plain hat,” Leo clarified.

Freddar frowned. “As you wish, Highness,” he said primly, his curtness signaling that he was being made to do this under duress.

Kadro and Artur, too, seemed to participate in Leo’s excursion under duress. He overheard Kadro complain to Artur that the English coats were restrictive.

But Leo rather liked it. And he liked the plain hat with the wide brim. He was able to wander the wide lanes of the Leadenhall market with scarcely a notice.

The market was fascinating. So many people, so many animal carcasses! It wasn’t that Leo had never been to markets—he’d visited them on occasion in Helenamar. But those ventures were always done with a coterie of royal observers, and the visit arranged so he’d see only what the hosts wanted him to see. In England, he’d had opportunity to enter markets, of course, but there had never been any need to actually do so. The idea of wandering through stalls of meats and leathers and various goods he did not want had never crossed his mind.

Well, he had no idea what he’d been missing! He’d commanded Kadro and Artur to wait at a public house near the entrance of the market, so that he might stroll at his leisure. Just the number of beef carcasses alone hanging from the tops of the stall fronts were a sight to behold.

He was so entranced with the number of people and the sale of the meat that he very nearly collided with an old woman who was carrying the carcass of a sheep wrapped around her shoulders. She looked through him and carried on to her stall, one foot before the other, trudging along as if no one else was in the market.

Costermongers moved in between the shoppers, barking out their wares, singing about their fruits and vegetables, their herbs and flowers. People crowded the stalls, bartering for their cuts of meat. Ale was sold out of carts, and gentlemen strolled through the lanes with tin tankards. An enterprising young man had roasted legs of mutton to sell, too, and the smell made Leo’s mouth water.

On another aisle were leather goods. Belts and knife sheaths, saddles and shoes. Leo walked past a heated argument that had broken out at one tanner’s post. The gentleman apparently thought the tanner’s price for leather to make boots was exorbitant. The tanner accused the gentleman of sullying his reputation and took a swing.