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Chapter One
The Cold Kitchen
    We stood at the palace door and shivered. The wind was wintry, the grey walls gloomy. I was afraid.

    My mother was just about to knock for a second time when the door was tugged open and I found myself looking into the castle kitchen.
    A dozen dirty faces stared at me. The servants were sitting round a large table with wooden bowls in front of them.

    “Shut the door!” someone moaned. “It’s cold!”
    My mother pushed me into the kitchen and the door slammed behind us with a boom like the sound of doom.

    The dozen pairs of eyes followed us into the cold kitchen.
    There was a huge fireplace with copper pots, iron pans hanging down alongside dead rabbits and geese, and a shrivelled side of bacon. In that fireplace a miserable fire smoked under a small black pot full of pale and pitiful porridge.

    A man lifted the pot off the fire and placed it on the table. The servants passed it round and spooned out the watery mess. They ate silently.
    The man turned to look at me. He was the fattest man I’d ever seen. Folds of fat almost hid his little, watery eyes and his neck was like a bull’s. When he smiled, his teeth were yellow-green and broken. His greasy apron smelled nearly as bad as his breath. He put a hard hand under my chin and tilted my head up. “So, you’re the new kitchen maid?”

    “This is Eleanor–Ellie,” my mother said. “Say hello to Cook, Ellie.”
    “Hello to Cook, Ellie,” I muttered.
    The clatter of wooden spoons in the sloppy food stopped. Twelve servants at the table held their breath. Cook’s eyes almost vanished in a scowl. Then he grinned.

    “A lively lass, eh? Makes a change from this miserable lot!” he said, looking round at the servants who started eating again.
    He nodded to my mother. “Leave her with me and I’ll take care of her.”
    My mother left the bundle with my spare clothes and hurried to the door. She opened it and looked back, worried.
    “Shut the door!” someone moaned. “It’s cold!”
    She left me. Alone.

Chapter Two
The Shivering Servant
    The cook looked round the table. “Lambert Simnel,” he hissed.
    A boy rose to his feet. He was as thin as the porridge in the pot and twice as pale.

    “Yes, Cook?” he said, and he shivered.
    “Look after young Ellie. Show her where she sleeps. Show her what to do.”
    “Yes, Cook.”
    The boy looked back longingly at his half-full bowl of mush. He left the bench and moved towards me, walking almost sideways like a crab. As he passed Cook, the fat man lashed out at Lambert and the boy ducked.

    “He didn’t do anything!” I cried.
    Cook turned his fat face on me. His lips curled back to show those green teeth.

    “Lambert has been a wicked, wicked boy, haven’t you, Lambert?”
    “Yes, Cook.”
    “He doesn’t deserve a smack on the head!” I said, and my face was hot in that cold kitchen.
    “No,” Cook said softly. Then a dirty finger prodded me in the shoulder and he exploded with stinking breath in my face, “He deserves an axe on the back of his scrawny neck.”
    Suddenly, he picked up a meat-axe from a table and shook it wildly. “He deserves to be executed. Don’t you, Lambert?”

    “Yes, Cook,” the miserable boy murmured.
    “Now take her to the room over the stables and show her where she’ll be sleeping.”
    Lambert nodded, gave me a quivering smile, picked up my bundle and nodded for me to follow him. I stopped at the door and looked back to see one of the servants emptying Lambert’s porridge bowl.

Chapter Three
The Scratching Straw
    “I have to sleep here ?” I asked Lambert.
    He nodded and dropped my bundle on to a pile of straw in the loft.

    “Sleep on the straw,” he said. “Use the blanket to cover you. It’s warm with the horses below you in the stable.”
    I was staring at my bed.

    “The straw moved,” I whispered.
    Lambert laughed. “That’ll just be a rat. I have a special friend rat,” he said.
    Suddenly he darted to the top of the