darkened alley. “And Rothgay’s is known for its food.”
My stomach grumbled unhappily. It did not seem impressed by this knowledge. It wanted steak, not some dime-store sandwich. Or roast beef—didn’t the Brits do good roast beef? Or fish and chips or Irish stew or meat pies—God, I could really go for a meat pie right now! Or anything served in an old-world pub with leather booths and pints filled with frothy beer that was almost like a meal itself.
My stomach grumbled again, louder this time.
“It was a holdover from the Middle Ages,” Pritkin continued. “When apothecaries sold candy and cakes—”
Wish modern docs prescribed those, I thought enviously.
“—due to being the main source for sugar and spices, many of which were also used in medicines.”
“That’s great, but—”
“In fact, apothecaries were originally part of the Company of Grocers, which itself belonged to the Guild of Pepperers, and sold wine as well as sweets. But in the early seventeenth century, they broke away and established the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, which still exists today.”
I narrowed my eyes. I was starting to suspect that I was being teased. “Pritkin—”
“However, in the magical community, the association between food and medicine—or potions—has remained strong.”
I was about to put my foot down—damn it, I was starving—when he threw open a door at the end of the alley, and—
“Oh!” I just stood there for a moment, staring. You know that scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy goes from a black-and-white farmhouse to Technicolor Munchkinland? It was like that. Only with food.
I stepped through the door into a world of bright marble and gleaming countertops and bustling, happy shoppers and a rotating centerpiece sculpture three stories high that seemed to be made out of candy, not to mention case after glass-fronted case full of—
“Would mademoiselle like a canapé?” A tall brunet in a green apron paused to offer me a shiny silver tray. It was full of some kind of mushroom tarts that were oh my God wonderful.
I was about to grab another six when Pritkin dragged me away, past a long case stuffed with stuffed things: figs and eggs and peppers and tomatoes, all bursting with goodness and ready to eat. And then another with seafood: clams and calamari and salmon served about eighty different ways, including intriguing little roll-ups that looked like they had cream cheese in them. And then past another case with all sorts of meats and sausages, and one with a couple hundred cheeses, and then half a dozen with pastries, an explosion of colorful glazed and sugared and honeyed—
“Dinner first,” Pritkin said sternly, and pulled me away again.
“We’re not already there?” I asked, staring around. And realized that we’d barely covered a tiny bit of the huge room, with its gleaming marble floor and walls plastered with blackboards behind the counters, listing the day’s specials, and shelving crammed full of all kinds of things in baskets and jars, and an absolute mass of curved windows above it all that gave the room a giant greenhouse effect. It kind of reminded me of some of the church roofs in Russia, only transparent and rising up several more stories to show the darkly clouded skies outside.
They looked familiar, at least. Grumbly and laced with lightning, and dark enough that I was pretty sure I would have noticed a massive cathedral of food rising above the streets on the way here. How did they hide all this?
“This is magical London; we just came in through a side door,” Pritkin said, helping not at all. “Look, they’ll make you a sandwich with whatever you like,” he added, as we finally stopped in front of a polished wood and glass counter.
And, okay, yeah. Sandwiches were starting to sound better all the time, I thought, my eyes going huge at the selection. I finally settled on thick-cut ham with a honey glaze, sliced chicken piled high, three kinds of cheese, some spicy Italian sausage, even spicier brown mustard, mayo, boiled eggs, sliced tomatoes, and pickled asparagus, because when I asked for pickles they asked what kind and had only about a hundred different ones to choose from.
Seriously, they pickled everything. Plain old cucumbers were apparently passé. But they gave me a sample, and these were garlicky and good, and—
“Oh, oh! Can I have some of the bacon? The thick kind with the pepper?”
The guy making the sandwich cocked a bushy white eyebrow at me, probably because the big, torpedo-shaped roll with the generous dusting of black poppy