Free Robin Jarvis-Jax 02 Freax And Rejex by Robin Jarvis Page B

found her idling. The girl knew how privileged she was to work in the castle and in rare free moments she would creep up the kitchen stairs and peep out at the finely dressed courtiers going by in the Great Hall. What a feast for the eyes they were, so sumptuously dressed and lordly. During the revels, when the music came filtering down into the kitchen, she would close her eyes and twirl in time to the dance, imagining herself draped in the finest gowns wearing slippers of golden silk.
    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 eagerlythrough 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 histightly 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