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pestle-woman – you’ve just come through that department. I don’t know where she is now. She left us five or six years back; said the work was over heavy for her now she wasn’t so young any more, and she was going to find something easier. She wasn’t missed. No one liked her much, for some reason. But I doubt she was lying about Easton. She didn’t have anything against him. The other one’s still here, though. Madge Dyer, her name was in those days – she’s Madge Goodman now. She left to wed, but she was back in three years, widowed and with no wish to marry again, it seemed. I don’t know what happened, but I did once hear her say her husband didn’t live up to his surname. She’s working just across the passage there.’ He pointed. ‘Making comfits. You want to talk to her?’
    I said I did, and once more he led the way.
    I somehow expected Madge Goodman to resemble the massive pestle-women. She proved, however, to be small and rosy and slightly wrinkled, like a russet apple which has been kept all winter. Her mild blue eyes were clear, and the hair which her white cap didn’t quite hide was still brown. She must have been very young at the time of Hoxton’s death, for even now I thought she was under forty, though the lines on her face suggested a life in which there had been considerable wear and tear.
    We found her among a group of women who were all using their fingers to stir things in shallow brass bowls suspended over small charcoal fires. It looked dangerous, and when, at Sterry’s bidding, Madge left her work and washed her hands in a nearby basin, I saw old burn scars on her fingers.
    Sterry led us back to his office to talk. ‘Sit down, Madge,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about your work. This business is official. This lady is Mistress Ursula Stannard, and at the queen’s wish, she is enquiring into something that happened many years ago. I’m sure you remember how, when you were young and new to the castle, a man called Peter Hoxton died mysteriously. You were a witness of some importance. Indeed, I believe it was you who found him in a state of desperate illness in the first place.’
    Madge, who had been looking puzzled, brightened. ‘Oh yes, Master Sterry, ’course I remember. Who’d forget a thing like that? I never saw aught like it! I was that frightened.’
    ‘I’m sure you were. Well, will you tell Mistress Stannard here all about it? Every detail that comes to your mind.’
    Madge shot a scared glance at me.
    ‘It’s all right,’ I said gently. ‘No one wants to catch you out. Don’t be afraid! A man called Gervase Easton was accused, and his son wants to know more about it. I have said I’ll try to find out for him; that’s all.’
    ‘Go on, Madge,’ said Sterry reassuringly, and Madge, after swallowing nervously, did as she was told.
    It was the most dreadful thing she had ever encountered. Madge Dyer was only sixteen, and she had come to the Windsor kitchens to work in the Spicery barely two weeks before, straight from the shelter of her very respectable family. This was far outside her youthful experience, and she had no idea what to do about it.
    Maids and lads as far down the hierarchy as she was were often sent on errands not directly connected with their official department in the royal kitchens. They were merely pairs of hands and pairs of legs, to go here, go there, fetch this, collect that, take this to so and so and do it yesterday because you’re also needed in three other places now this minute. Madge, seized upon to fetch used dishes from an ailing man’s room, because his manservant had gone into the town to buy more medicine for his employer, hadn’t dared to protest, but she went upstairs very nervously.
    She had her reasons. To begin with, the territory above stairs was strange to her and she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to find the right room. She was also afraid that if she did find it, it might contain something alarming. Master Peter