Freax and Rejex

THE YOUNG CAMERAMAN smiled shyly, the lids of his glassy eyes blinking sleepily. Then he tore another impassioned bite from the grey, slimy fruit in his hand. The livid juices had already stained his chin.

“Here’s the book, Sam,” the Ismus said. “It’s time for Miss Kryzewski to join us in the Realm of the Dawn Prince.”

Sam shoved the rest of the minchet in his mouth and chewed it urgently. Then he wiped his hands and took hold of Dancing Jax.

“Don’t do it, Sam!” Kate pleaded. “Please don’t.”

The fair-haired man swallowed the fibrous lumps in his mouth and grinned. “It’s all right, Kate,” he assured her. “It’s just like they said. We were dead wrong. This place, this crap – it isn’t real. We belong in Mooncaster. You’ll see.”

He lowered his eyes and began to read.

“Beyond the Silvering Sea, within thirteen green, girdling hills…”

The assembled crowd muttered along with him, following the words as he read them aloud. The Jacks and Jills came to join them and everyone began to nod their heads in time to the rhythm of the sentences.

Kate Kryzewski felt the day darken around her. The sunlight dimmed and a faint buzzing sounded in her head. She tried to think of something else, anything – it didn’t matter what.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled and the skin crept on her scalp as something drew close to her.

She blotted out Sam’s voice and flooded her mind with her most vivid memories: a child searching the rubble of Haiti for her mother, the smoking wreck of a bus after a suicide bomb in Gaza, a rocket attack over Baghdad that made the night bright as day, pouring a glass of Merlot over Harlon Webber’s hair plugs when he made a pass at her at the Emmys, the crooked smile of the Ismus…

Frantically she shook that last image out of her head. Sam’s voice filled her ears. She couldn’t blot it out any more. She couldn’t fight any longer. She had to listen. There was nothing else.

Before the darkness rushed in, one final thought of her own flickered briefly.

“Poppa, I’m so sorry!” she cried.

The Ismus’s stark white face reared in her mind. His lean, hungry features were triumphant and she felt her will, her spirit, everything she was, spiralling out of her – till there was nothing left. She threw back her head and her eyes fluttered open. The tall white towers of a magnificent castle stood against the bright blue sky. She gasped in amazement. Then the Black Face Dames let go of her arms and she sprawled on the ground. The grass tickled her hands like feathers.

Columbine looked up from the goose on her lap and wiped her brow, leaving a faint smear of blood behind. Her fingers returned to the dead bird and she continued to mechanically rip the snowy feathers from its body. The goose’s head dangled and jerked to the motion of her hands.

The kitchen was unusually quiet that wintry afternoon. Mistress Slab was in the slaughterhouse across the courtyard, elbow deep in a basin brimming with a bloody mixture. That pink, sticky mash of minced pork, breadcrumbs and herbs would soon be fed into empty lengths of pig intestine. The Mooncaster cook would not permit anyone else to learn the secret recipe of her sausages and always barred the slaughterhouse door when she was busy at this task.

Ned and Beetle, the kitchen boys, were in the village, bringing fresh loaves from the miller’s wife in a barrow. Columbine was completely alone.

It was a huge kitchen, much larger than the four others that prepared the meals of the Royal Houses. It was kept at a constant summer heat by two great fires. Their flames shone in every copper pot that hung on the limewashed walls and sweat splashes were an ingredient in every dish that Mistress Slab prepared.

Columbine was used to the fires by now and she dressed in loose, ragged garments, patched and mended with more squares of cloth than a quilt. She was a young, red-haired girl whose face was only clean on high days or when the pranking kitchen boys carried her to the horse trough and threw her in. She went about her endless chores barefoot, for it was good to feel the cool flagstones under her soles and trail her grubby toes through the straw or cinders.

She never complained when Mistress Slab beat her with the largest wooden spoon if she 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 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, he would surely loose the hounds and hunt her down like an animal.

Lifting her face, she saw the glint of the knife he had knocked from her hand.

“Next time I shall not fail,” she told herself. “Before he lays another greedy finger upon me, I shall let out every last gill of his blood. There must be a whole hogshead’s worth swilling in his veins.”

At that moment, a gentle but insistent tapping sounded upon the kitchen door. Columbine wiped her eyes before answering. She did not want Mistress Slab, Ned or Beetle to see she had been crying.

A draught of sharp, wintry air came biting in when she opened the stout oak door. Standing upon the frost-glittering step was the bent figure of an old woman, wrapped in a thin shawl that was no defence against the icy wind. A large wicker basket sat heavily on her crooked back and the wide brim of a black straw bonnet hid her downcast face. In her cold, pinched hands she carried another basket. When the door swung inward, she lifted it in greeting.

“Chestnuts,” her cracked and weary voice said. “And apples, as sweet and juicy as last autumn when they was picked off the bough.”

Columbine did not recognise her, but there were many strange folk who dwelt in the woods and forests. She wondered how far the woman had walked that day. Even the effort of lifting the basket seemed too much. For a moment, she forgot her own predicament and pitied her.

“I cannot buy your wares,” the girl answered apologetically. “I have no purse and my mistress is busy. She would box my ears if I disturbed her. Have you called on the lesser kitchens in the castle? Or down in the village?”

The old woman’s shoulders sagged even more.

“Slammed doors and curt words are the only blessings Granny Oakwright has been given this bitter day,” she said unhappily. “I must return to my hut in the Haunted Wood, where no fire, no crust and no cheer await me.”

She turned to leave, looking more hunched and feeble with each shambling step. Columbine could not bear it.

“Wait!” she called. “I haven’t any pennies, but there are no warmer hearths in all Mooncaster than here. Come you in, old dame, and thaw yourself.”

The woman shuffled about and entered the kitchen, muttering her thanks. Columbine guided her to the stool by the largest fire where she eased herself down and removed the basket from her back.

“Oh – my old bones!” Granny Oakwright exclaimed, holding her mittened hands towards the leaping flames. “Granny can feel her chilblains resurrecting! What a tingling in her knobby fingers!”

Columbine smiled then ran to the larder, returning with a thick slice of mutton pie and a wedge of cheese. She knew Mistress Slab would beat her for this charity, but what did that matter?

“Here,” she said kindly. “’Tis a meal fit for the Lord Ismus’s table and you shall have hot spiced ale to wash it down.”

The old woman gasped in astonishment and clapped her hands at the sight of such princely fare.

“What a virtuous, generous child you are!” she cried, with her mouth full. “The most unselfish heart in the whole Realm – and a pretty face to match.”