Free Queen of Ambition by Fiona Buckley

luck.”
    When Wat and I had finished, the pieces went into a cauldron with some ladlefuls of stock, to be stewed slowly till they were tender. Then the meat could be stripped from the bone, cut small, and mixed with mushrooms, oatmeal, onions, and spices to make pie fillings. When Jester did buy from butchers, he usually purchased sheep or pig carcasses, and these were similarly prepared. He never bought beef. It was twice the price of mutton and, therefore, too expensive.
    We had to toil hard but it could have been companionable if we could have worked together in a friendly fashion. Alas, instead of amiable cooperation, we had Roland Jester continually finding fault in the shrill, aggrieved voice that went so ill with his big physique.
    “Phoebe, what’re you doin’ with that dough? Get the loaves into the oven for the love of God; we’ll have the customers poundin’ at the shutters afore long. Hurry
up
, girl, or I’ll be after you with a stick, I will. Ambrosia, take that basket of eggs to the pantry afore someone knocks ’em clean off the shelf! Ain’t them fowl drawn yet? What are they—freaks? They got twice as much inside ’em as ordinary fowl? You’ve not got time to stand still and eat, Wat. Leave off guzzlin’ that roll and get busy with the cleaver … and don’t answer me back, you great loon; I’ll give you
I’m working as fast as I can, Master Jester!
” And with that, Roland Jester’s callused palm would crack against the back of Wat’s head.
    The most frequent victim was Wat, because he wasthe only one who deliberately answered back. Wat himself paid these onslaughts little heed, because he was so hefty that he merely shook his head when Jester’s palm landed, as though to discourage a bluebottle.
    For all his loutish appearance, though, Wat had a chivalrous streak. Once or twice, Jester had hit him for stepping in the way with a disapproving, broad Norfolk: “Aisy naow, aisy!” when the real target was Phoebe. Phoebe, who could be no more than fourteen, was too timid to do any answering back, but she was sometimes awkward and often drew Jester’s ire by dropping things or clattering them.
    Wat seemed shy of me and so far I hadn’t had anything like a conversation with him; indeed, because his accent was so broad, I found it hard to understand him. All the same, he had twice come wordlessly to help me haul the insides out of a difficult bird.
    However, he wasn’t always there to interfere on Phoebe’s behalf and as yet hadn’t actually tried to defend me from Jester, though I would have been grateful if he had. I was deft enough and I tried to be respectful, but I seemed to have a positive knack of inadvertently saying things that Jester considered impertinent. Phoebe and I were both liable at times to find ourselves ducking a hurled platter or seeing stars as Jester’s powerful palm sent one or the other of us reeling across the kitchen.
    He didn’t, I noticed, hit Ambrosia or throw things at her. When one morning her father actually knocked me flat on the kitchen floor, Ambrosia picked me up and since Jester had by then marched out of the room, sheexplained, in apologetic tones, why she was exempt.
    “I have to give orders when he’s not here and he thinks I’ll be respected more if the rest of you don’t see him knocking me about, so most of the time he doesn’t—though it happens now and again. He used to treat my mother very badly, though. I hope you’re not much hurt. Sit here for a moment.”
    She helped me to a stool. A wave of her heavy dark brown hair slid free of her headdress as she did so. Ambrosia had beautiful hair, although no one ever saw much of it because her father made her wear very concealing caps. I opened my mouth to ask her how long it was since her mother left, but my throbbing head managed, just in time, to remind me that I wasn’t supposed to know anything about the household. Instead, I said: “Is your mother dead? How old were you when you