But Mistress Slab’s bear-like voice would always summon her from those reveries: the onions needed peeling or the grates needed sweeping or the spit needed turning or peas needed shelling or the butter needed churning.
When the goose was plucked naked, and looked faintly embarrassed to be in such a state, the girl sat back on the stool. She reached for the second bird she had been instructed to denude before the cook returned.
High above, on the battlements, a trumpet sounded. Down in the kitchen, Columbine heard and knew it heralded the return to Mooncaster of the Jack of Clubs from the day’s hunt.
A delighted smile flashed over the girl’s dirty face. She leaped from the stool and raced up the stairs to the passageway that linked to the Great Hall.
At the end of the passage a carved wooden screen hid the entrance from view of the nobles within. Columbine waited there, peering eagerly through the fretwork. Lords and their ladies came sweeping by, speaking of the day’s adventure and how the Jack of Clubs had the almond hind in his sights at least twice, but refrained from loosing his bow. The Jill of Spades was most scornful. His love of beast and bird was well known, but such displays of mercy were foolishness.
Hearing their chatter, the girl grinned and moistened her lips. The Jack of Clubs always took a long time to enter the Great Hall, for he would not suffer any groom to stable Ironheart, his splendid horse. He did the work himself, speaking to it like a lover, and often slept in the stall for it was the last of the untameable steeds and there was no finer beast in the land.
Columbine stroked the back of the screen with her rough fingertips, impatient for a sight of the handsome youth. He was the pride of Mooncaster, the hero of many hearts, and his golden hair and steadfast voice were always capering through her dreams when she was away from this place.
The gossip of the Court fell to a hush and the Jack of Clubs came striding through the main doors. He laughed with the Jill of Hearts, who stepped forward to try and capture him with her beauty, and shared a pleasantry with his father, the King of Clubs.
Columbine drank in every detail: his curling hair that was likened to a ram’s fleece bathed in the sunset, the soft, wispy moustache that curled at the ends and heightened his beguiling smile. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up past the elbow and she clasped herself in her own grubby arms, breathless with imaginings. She closed her eyes and shivered with secret pleasure.
Suddenly a real hand closed tightly round her arm. She gasped in fright as a tall, portly man came sidling further behind the screen.
“Haw haw haw,” he chuckled softly.
It was the Jockey, the one courtier whom everyone in Mooncaster feared. He played unpleasant tricks and games on them, always seeking to cause mischief and strife between friend and neighbour. Even the Ismus found his presence unsettling and ungovernable.
He brought his stout bulk closer and the caramel-coloured leather of his tightly buttoned outfit creaked and strained. Columbine tried to pull away, but his grip was fierce.
“You set your eyes on too high a trophy,” he told her. “But what eyes they are, as green as the stone in the head of a wishing toad. How they flash and glare at me. Such hate, such pride in one so low.”
“My arm!” she protested. “You hurt, my Lord.”
“Haw haw haw,” he laughed. “No bruise will show through the filth on your flesh!”
“I shall cry out.”
“Then do so. None shall attend. The Jockey’s ways are never questioned.”
Columbine pushed at his paunch and his fingers loosed on her arm. She spun around and darted back along the passage and down into the kitchen.
The creaks and squeaks of the Jockey’s costume followed her. He came tippy-toeing down the stairs.
The girl ran to her place and the heap of goose feathers whirled up into the air.
“And where is Mistress Slab?” he asked, stealing closer. “Why is she not broiling over her pots?”
“She is in the slaughterhouse,” the frightened girl replied.
The Jockey laughed. “Ah, yes, ’tis sausage day. How the Punchinello Guards adore them. How readily they accept them as bribes. Would that you were so easy, my dirty scullion. Still, now we are quite alone, with only dead geese for witness and they shall not honk any secrets.”
“Keep back,” Columbine begged, reaching for a knife. “Else there will be one more fat pig stuck this day.”
The man hesitated. Yes, she would dare do it and that inflamed him even more.
“My glance has oft been your shadow ere today,” he said as he paced warily from side to side. “Your hands are coarse as an ox’s tongue and your smudges and smuts rival only the midden-man. And yet… I have observed you long and I am enamoured and enslaved by you. The dirtier you are, the more like a queen you appear. A celestial goddess, come down amongst us, disguised in rags and ashes. My Lord, the Ismus, would bring you to his bed only if you were soaped and scrubbed by the tiring women till you shone like a shield. But I… I would have you as you are, all grimy from your base toil, with mutton grease and straw in your hair, soot etched in every cranny and aglow with sweat that smells of pepper and freshly sliced onions. I would tongue-bathe every inch of your fire-bronzed skin, baste you with the juices of my mouth and rip those rags from your shoulders and hips, as you have torn the feathers from that goose. You are a banquet I intend to gorge on and my appetite will never be sated.”
“No closer,” she warned, brandishing the knife.
“You have already pierced my heart, my pretty slattern. Bitter steel would only relieve me of that keen pain. Jab away, prick me, fillet me – shred my being even more than your grubby beauty already has.”
He lunged forward. She struck out. The blade sliced into his reaching palm. He yelled in anger, slapped her with the back of his other meaty fist and smacked the weapon from her grasp. It went clattering across the flagstones.
Then his strong fingers were around her throat and she was pushed against the table. He leaned in and licked the sweat trickling down her cheek. The cut on his palm dragged a vivid scarlet wake over her skin.
“The Jockey rides everyone at Court in the end,” he hissed into her ear as she struggled. “One way or another. You must give him his due.”
His frenzied paws snatched at her rags and tore them. Her bare shoulders glistened in the firelight and he buried his florid face into her dirty neck as his bloody fingers went roving.
“My Lord Jockey!” a voice called suddenly.
The man snarled and glared round at the stairs. The small, dumpy figure of the Lockpick was standing at the top of them.
“What business have you here, Jangler?” the Jockey demanded angrily.
Jangler bowed. “His Highness, the Lord Ismus, would speak with you,” he said.
“His Highness can wait.”
“On a matter most urgent.”
The Jockey ground his teeth. His eyes shone as fiercely as the fire in the grates. Then, reluctantly, he stepped away from the girl.
“Do not think I am done here,” he told her, clenching a fist till the blood squeezed between his fingers. “I shall be back; the Jockey will have his sport.”
Columbine watched his stout figure go skipping up the stairs after the Lockpick. Then, shaking, she covered herself with the tatters of her clothes and sank down on to the feather-strewn floor where she sobbed quietly. What was she to do? There was no escaping the whims and fancies of the Jockey and she was now the next game he was determined to play. Who could she turn to for protection? Nobody would dare stand against him. If she tried to run away from the castle,