Only a king could impress the lesser nobility, so King Fernando welcomed his guests to his wedding banquet as only a king could. Small dishes of grouse liver mousse baked in a puff shell, olives from the colonies on the sea, and chilled Sicilian wines loosed the tongues of the gentry, as everyone paid compliments to the king and his young bride. When the fiddlers started playing, the guests knew the feast was truly about to begin. Servants brought skewers of goat, dripping in their juices. They brought a cold soup of chestnuts and cream, and a plate of greens brought still planted from the southern reaches of Portugal. This was followed by peacock-and-pigeon pie, and the fruit of the all the seas: lobsters, crabs, scallops, mussels and clams, salmon three ways: tartare, baked, and grilled. There was black bread and white, and cakes of oatbran, with bowls of honeycomb and butter for dipping, each to his own. Heaping bowls of steamed vegetables followed to accompany the meat - peas and turnips, onions charred to a crisp, lightly wilted greens with slivered almonds . Here the chefs outdid themselves, bringing forth a haunch of ox, rare and bloody; swan in its plumage stuffed with game hens; lamb chops and racks; the ribs of a boar glazed with honey; a deer, roasted whole and studded with cloves, with skewered persimmons on its antlers was the centerpiece. A train of sweets came out next: creams and candied lemons, stone fruit poached in mead, wheels of white cheese with blue veins, and spun sugar in the shape of small crowns. After the wedding feast, his wife was imprisoned for life.