. All was quiet the Lord and Lady retired, courtiers all gone to bed, the Great Hall silent. Hounds slumberingly snored next to the dying embers of a cooling Inglenook, occasional crackles popping as the heat catches wood resin, it splatters and dies. A lute lays idle amongst the mess of banquet as a lonely secretive figure detaches from the shadows, prowling through the detritus. Slim fingers pick up the lute and gently strums a chord, the Minstrel exits stage left, to compose and construct new songs and ribald stories from this nights celebrations. Retiring to his chamber his eyes stare balefully at an uneaten bowl of stew, the gruel of his station, a metaphor for the content of a nearby journal, closed but waiting, for a quill rich in ink to fill its void with the musings of a Fool.