The assignment the department gave him proved to be quite challenging.
The waters deposited a rich alluvium.
It was the better part of a mile wide, but save for some fathoms in the middle, where the Sker current ran, it was no deeper even at flood than a horse's fetlocks.
As cloacal factotum, the Groom of the Stool presides over the offices of royal excretion; he maintains the royal close-stool and examines its products for signs of health or distemperature; he serves, in this sense, both as a royal confidant and an intermediary between the royal self in its private and public capacities. The Groom's office, in short, involves an exquisite combination of intimacy, degradation, and privilege (Paster 1993: 32); …
