Great banquets in the King’s Hall were not very neat affairs, and most nannies wouldn’t have been very concerned about the little boy’s table manners. Why, he is to be the King! they would have said, a little shocked at the idea that they should correct him in such piddling matters. Who cares if he spills the gravy boat? Who cares if he dribbles on his ruff, or even wipes his hands on it? Did not King Alan in the old days sometimes vomit into his plate and then command his court jester to come nigh and “drink this nice hot soup”? Did not King John often bite the heads off live trout and then put the flopping bodies into the bodices of the serving girls’ dresses? Will not this banquet end up, as most banquets do, with the participants’ throwing food across the table at each other?
Undoubtedly it would, but by the time things degenerated to the food-throwing stage, she and Peter would long since have retired. What concerned Sasha was that attitude of who cares. She thought it was the worst idea anyone could ever plant in the head of a little boy destined to be King.
So Sasha instructed Peter carefully, and she observed him carefully on the night of the banquet. And later, as-he lay sleepy in his bed, she talked to him.
Because she was a good mother, she first complimented him lovingly on his behavior and manners-and this was right, because for the most part they had been exemplary. But she knew that no one would correct him where he went wrong unless she did it herself, and she knew she must do it now, in these few years when he idolized her. So when she was finished complimenting him, she said: