“What do you think she’s doing?” I wondered out loud.

Judyta fastened the last one of my buttons and pulled out a few wrinkles from the back of my garment. “It’s not proper to spy on people,” she said. “Especially not on your own mother.”

With a tired gesture I waved her objections aside. “She’s not my real mother,” I said with a dour expression on my face. Even though she had raised me and taken care of me all my life after my mother died in labour, I would still always think of her as my stepmother. I tilted my head when I continued: “And isn’t it curious that she now has an interest in the stables? She never visited the stables when my father was alive, the horses were all his pride and joy, and she never visited him there. And now she’s there almost every day.” I turned around in my chair and looked at my maid. “Aren’t you curious?” I asked.

Judyta shrugged. Even though she was my maid, we were on friendly terms, almost like sisters. At 22, she was a year younger than I, but unmarried, as her position wouldn’t allow for any male company, while I was just to sit idle and wait for a proper suitor, so all we had for now was each other. Still, she was cautious to put on a proper demeanour when she was around me, and make sure she would not get caught with something untoward.

I knew better, though. I’ve heard her talk to the kitchen staff, and knew her penchant for gossip and crude humour. So I eyed her, asking again: “Aren’t you curious? I’m curious.”

She didn’t answer, and instead looked out of my window, where she saw my stepmother, dressed in her black widow’s dress, turn around the corner of the stable house and disappear out of sight. I grabbed Judyta’s hand and pulled her with me. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s have a look.”

She followed reluctantly, but didn’t try to hold me back, and so we rushed through the manor and snuck out of the servant’s entrance and approached the stable house from behind. Inside, the familiar smell of hay and horse greeted us, with the sound of horses whinnying, bristling, stomping. We hid behind a horse box and I peeked around the corner, to see if I could find out where mother went.

Suddenly, from a box at the far end, I heard her voice. “Ahh, good boy,” I heard her say. “Did you miss me?”

I put my finger on my lips and motioned Judyta to follow me quietly as I held up my skirt and kicked off my shoes, tip-toeing along the boxes to where I heard the voice from. Finally, peeking into a box, I could see the wide backside of her black skirt.

We took a few steps back, trying to stay out of sight, and I frantically looked around for a cover that would keep us hidden, and yet allowed us to see what was going on. Judyta, finally, pointed upwards, at the hayloft. The minx! I knew she was proficient at this, familiar with all the places around the mansion that only servants knew.

Quiet like mice, we snuck up the ladder to the loft, where we crawled across the rafters, carefully balancing, hoping and praying not to make a creak or noise. When we were above the box my stepmother was in, I swept a little hay aside with my hands and then peeked through the gap between the floorboards. Judyta knelt beside me, doing the same.

Down below, my stepmother was grooming one of the horses, Heimdall, I think, a tall, muscular, brown riding horse, while muttering something that I couldn’t understand. I looked sideways at Judyta, who smiled sheepishly and shrugged, then turned her eyes back down. Suddenly, I noticed my stepmother’s left hand reaching underneath the horse, stroking something there. At first I didn’t think much of it, but then she knelt down beside the animal and pulled with her hand a long, fleshy, thick protrusion from underneath towards her, taking the strange, mushroom-shaped end into her mouth.

Judyta gasped audibly, while I curiously stared on. “What is this?” I asked, partly to myself, partly to her.

“I ... do not know, Miss,” the maid replied.

Down below, I could see my stepmother’s head bobbing forward and back, as if she was trying to swallow the long, pink-brown appendix, gasping for air in between strokes, then taking it back in. As strange and curious as it seemed, the sight stirred something in me that so far I only knew from lonely nights and romantic novels, and it took me a while to draw the connection. Then it struck me.

My stepmother was sucking on the horse’s penis!

I looked sideways at Judyta, my mouth open, while she tried to avoid my gaze. “You knew this!” I hissed. “You knew what she was doing!”

She swallowed hard, while now muffled moans came through the floorboards from down below. “Please, Miss,” she whispered. “Let’s just go.”

I pursed my lips and scooted closer to her. “Oh no,” I whispered into her ear. “We’re going to stay and watch and make sure we can see everything!”

Side by side, we lay flat on the floorboards, peeking through the gap, where my stepmother rubbed the thick end of the horse cock against her face, which was slightly shiny and wet. Was it spit? Was it from the horse? I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. Something under my skirt, between my legs, demanded attention.