People began rumbling their annoyance, and a few shouted, “Shut the beast up!” But the trumpeting, groaning, thudding, and chain-clanking went on, and Pell thought, Someone’s got to do something about that horse. But nobody did, and for the rest of the night she lay awake.
In the early dawn, when the possibility of sleep had passed, she edged away from Bean and stoked up the fire for the kettle. Quite near to Jack, a man sat awake in the near-darkness nursing a smoldery fire and a pipe; when he spoke, Pell recognized at once the voice she had heard in the night. A pair of shaggy deerhounds lay crouched at his feet like sphinxes, heads up, eyes alert. He had black hair streaked with gray, and his eyes glittered blue-black and gold, reflecting the fire. When he spoke to his dogs, they turned their heads gravely to listen.
They were the only two people awake in the vicinity, though the entire town would soon begin to stir. When he turned and held her gaze, Pell shivered, unable to look away, knowing what Mam would say about staring at a strange man in a place like this. But he didn’t change expression, just looked at her until his curiosity had been satisfied, and then turned away. When next she dared to look, he and the dogs were gone.
Mr. Bewes rose and dressed, anxious to revisit his horse, while Mrs. Bewes reminded him that their budget wasn’t a penny over twenty pounds no matter what sort of animal he fell for, if he didn’t want his family going hungry all winter. Her husband tipped his hat and was off, dodging a child dressed in nothing but a pair of his big brother’s boots.
The sun came up strong and hot, and despite yesterday’s rain a thin curtain of dust hung in the air, rendering horses and men indistinct. Boys with great sacks of feed on their shoulders jostled each other and called out to buyers. It became difficult to push through the crowds. One man grabbed on to Jack’s headstall and said, “What you asking for this one, girl?” and pointed to a bony-polled bay who might have had half a soup spoon of thoroughbred blood in his veins, and said she could have him for eighteen guineas and him worth “more’n twice that.”
“Thank you, no,” Pell said politely, thinking, Anything I paid for that horse would be too much. She had already seen a fair few horses worth owning, but many more you couldn’t have paid her to ride away.
All that day Pell sought work, and all that day heard nothing but rejection, often in the least flattering terms and sometimes accompanied by offers that had nothing to do with honest wages. The liveries had legions of small boys to do their bidding. At the Coach and Horses she applied to help with grooming and mucking out, but the owner’s wife said without any civility that they’d plenty of help and didn’t need doing with a snake in the henhouse and her own bastard besides. Pell clasped Bean by the hand and took her leave with a careful dignity she didn’t feel. For an hour or two, she joined a milling group hoping to find places as household staff, but the takers for workers without proper references were few and far between. At another hotel she offered to cook or clean or serve, but they were too busy even to reply. By late afternoon she had exhausted every possible avenue and thought bitterly that she might have better luck in the empty villages all those people had left behind.
Returning to camp, she found Esther’s children gathered around Mr. Bewes and his new horse. The animal was marked like a Friesian cow, with a broad honest chest and four good legs all around. He lowered his head and lipped the front of Bean’s shirt, and the boy wrapped his arms around his nose and nuzzled his cheek, making chirping noises like a bird. The horse looked no worse in daylight than he had the night before, and Mr. Bewes clucked to him and led him round in a circle.
“He’s a beauty, ain’t he?” said he, but Mrs. Bewes wasn’t pleased.
“What do you think of that man,” she complained loudly to Pell, “wasting good money on a Gypsy nag?” And she refused even to look at the horse.
Mr. Bewes winked at Pell, but the couple were put out with each other. Mrs. Bewes attempted to exact revenge by demanding the money to buy a lovely pony, thirteen hands and smart as a whip, the perfect mount for her favorite grandson, “who’s been begging for a horse of his own,” said she, “since he could walk.”
“Foolish woman,” snorted her husband. “All that talk of being careful with money, and then wanting six months’ wages spent on a child.” He shook his head. “Twenty-nine years we’re married, and her determined to put me in the workhouse every one of them.”
Pell expressed her sympathy for him, and when the time came for them to leave she bade them farewell with a cordial smile, and they wished her luck finding a horse. But it was her own worsening situation that occupied her now.
At the Haunch of Venison tavern on the other side of Salisbury, her father—having considered the day too warm and the night too cool to search for runaway children—redoubled his ever-futile attempts to slake his thirst. He would tell his wife that they could not be found, which was close enough to the truth, for they could not be found by a man whose only view was of the back room of a drinking establishment. It was not long before he could not find his own elbow, either, and so he slept under a bench till dawn, satisfied that the price of half a dozen flagons of ale had saved him the cost of lodgings.
Eleven
Pell emerged from the womb with a view of ponies on the green, some of which had a habit of wandering into the house in search of food or company. By the time she was old enough to run, she was charged with bringing the mares in from the heath to foal—not an easy task, for they were moody and unpredictable in that state. And it was the strangest sight to see the little girl with her own wild mane of hair leading a string of swollen mares out of the forest, and them tame as tame, or so you thought till you tried to take over the job yourself.
The traditional way of herding involved ropes and traps and wild chases, catching what you could by the tail and hauling it in, or galloping a handful of ponies round to where someone was waiting with a gate and hoping they didn’t swerve before the chute. Stillbirths were common, but in the absence of anything better that’s how it was.
Pell’s method confounded the men, but it worked, transforming the process from a trauma to something altogether more peaceful, with a word of calm and a slim hand to change the direction of a breech or a stuck foreleg. And afterward she cleaned and stroked the foals and muttered fondly to them so they would not grow up wild.
Finch’s children could all ride and catch a pony before their fifth birthday, and Pell and Frannie learned just the same. In an acre of bays and roans and grays, they never hesitated in knowing which belonged to whom, and the name and nature of each. The yearlings given into their care they taught to stand quietly and be led, while the two-year-olds learned to carry a child to the next village or haul a load of cabbages to market. Like the Finches, Pell watched and learned the way to shape a shoe to correct a bad stride or foster a good one and, as she grew, to hammer it on quick as any grown man. Unlike them, she could see through the skin of a horse, through the thick bony skull to its brain, or deep into its chest where resided the heart and soul. She could tell at a glance what a horse could do, or might do if asked nicely, and how to ask so that the answer was always yes.
The day Birdie’s father took Pell on to work for pay was the day he found her sat backward astride the very devil of a stallion, untamable, or so everyone said, braiding celandine and hound’s-tongue through his tail. Her own father had only ever noticed that she was a girl, and thus had no aptitude for preaching.
By fifteen Pell knew the farrier’s craft as well as any full apprentice, despite the fact that neither of her parents cared a whit for animals or could tell a pit pony from the Darley Arabian. Birdie’s father made a habit of watching her, while thinking what a useful daughter-in-law he’d be getting in time.
“You’ll make a fine helper for my son one day soon,” he told Pell, pleased as pleased, on her seventeenth birthday.
This pronouncement surprised her. She had always assumed Birdie would make a fine helper for her. The genesis of this misundersta
nding was simple enough: she could handle a horse better than he could, and anyone with eyes in his head knew this to be true. That it was not the natural order of things, she chose not to acknowledge.
On Birdie’s twentieth birthday, when he learned that his uncle had leased him ten acres of his own and a cottage besides, he ran to her shouting that they could be married at last. And in that moment, years of unacknowledged doubt turned to dread. When Birdie saw the look on her face, he had to sit down.
“Aren’t you happy for us?”
“For you,” Pell said.
“For us,” replied Birdie, reaching out to her. But she ducked away from him and ran out into the forest calling for Jack. She came upon Birdie’s mare, Maggs, who showed the usual friendliness, happily ignorant of goings-on in the human realm. The mare followed along until Pell turned on her, impatient, and shooed her off, whistling for Jack and him taking his time answering. When he finally did bother, she swung up on his back and asked him to run. Maggs ran beside them for a dozen strides and then slowed, more interested in standing quietly in the sunshine than racing across the heath for no reason.
Jack ran, and the wind whipped Pell’s face while the pulse in her neck pounded out fear at the decision she had nearly made. Her thoughts had no time to catch up or take in what she felt, and the tears flew out sideways when she admitted to herself that she could not go through with it. But how could she betray him? They would have to be married, and she would have to make the best of it, despite the fist that squeezed her heart dry.
She practiced what would happen when he found her, what she might say and how to make it credible to them both. And when she saw him far off on Maggs she raced to him but at the last minute didn’t stop. It reminded him of the game they had played as children, one of them standing in the path and the other galloping full tilt, and neither wanting to be the one to jump aside. Only this time he didn’t move, but stood with a puzzled expression up until the last second, and it wasn’t Pell but Jack who flinched, thrown back almost onto his haunches, so that when she flew up on his neck and then slipped off, trembling, Birdie was there to catch her in his arms, and hear the words she knew he wanted to hear.
“When shall we marry?” She could barely speak, but answered before he did. “Today? Tomorrow?”
He smiled, and forgave her instantly, used to her moods and tempers and like a fool, ready to put them aside. “We’ll need to post the banns,” he said. “And you’ll need a new dress.”
She was fierce then. “No. We’ll do it now.”
And poor Birdie clasped her to his heart while she panted against him like an animal.
“You’re wrong to marry that boy,” her mother said when at last Pell came home, half crazed with determination. “You won’t make him happy and God only knows what he’ll make you. Leave him to a proper wife, someone who’ll make a home for him, like Lou.”
Abruptly Pell was calm. “I’ll make a proper wife for him. I swear.”
Her mother, who knew her a hundred times better than she knew herself and a thousand times better than the simple-hearted boy next door, shivered at the calm as much as at the storm. And she was right, for Pell was thinking, I shall bring him his tea and work myself to death by the time I am thirty bearing children and scrubbing floors and working in the fields digging turnips till my hands bleed and my back gives out and everyone urges me to keep on for just one more year, at which point I will die of exhaustion and the meagerness of my own life. I will love him and care for him, will never tell him to get his own tea, or sweep the ashes from the hearth or give birth to his own twelfth child himself.
All the strength in her, all the resolve and pride and power would surrender to him now, and for an instant she felt a kind of relief. He would care for her, provide for her today and every day for the rest of her life, as long as they both should live.
Pell’s mam sat with her eldest daughter, her face stony with doubt. She was not a woman to believe untruths, no matter how fiercely uttered.
Twelve
There was money to be made in Salisbury. There was money to be made holding horses for a penny. The blacksmith made money, the horse dealers and bread sellers made money during the day, and the pickpockets, thieves, prostitutes, and gamblers made money after dark. But what job could Pell do, except to look at a horse and know it?
All around her, men sealed deals while the sun rendered the scene harsh and flat in the midday glare, then set it afire at twilight. As darkness fell, a man sang a mournful tune while a handful of others kept time, but the smoke from the fire made Pell feel faint and she moved away. Bean, who usually followed without complaint, tugged at her sleeve unhappily.
“Not much more,” she murmured to him, and picked him up in her arms. He weighed little enough, but she was tired too. Wandering farther, she saw an old man holding two identical brown geldings, and the buyer who examined them merely an outline in the sinking light. Behind him stood another man, one she recognized even as a silhouette, with the shaggy deerhounds at his side.
His dogs had a quality that made her think of stag hunts and kings. The male stood nearly motionless with his head up, ears pricked, nose rising and falling gently to pick up scents in the wind, while the bitch trembled. Pell didn’t like the anxious feeling flowing off her. You couldn’t say they were handsome dogs, with their broken fawn coats and long noses, but there was a certain nobility and a good deal of greyhound in them and when their owner turned and showed his profile she shivered, and wondered if there might not be a good deal of greyhound in him as well.
As she watched from the shadows, the first man checked over every inch of the brown cobs, felt their knees and examined their teeth, while the owner looked on, silent. He had pulled one slightly forward, and Pell knew he meant to sell that one, despite pretending the buyer should choose whichever he preferred and it made no difference to him.
“Not a grain of sand between them,” said the owner proudly. “Ought to sell them as a pair, but seeing as how you’ve got your heart set on just the one—”
The buyer hesitated and Pell stepped up close behind Dogman and indicated the horse standing at the front. “Not that one.”
He turned just enough to see who she was. Nightfall had erased the detail of his face but his eyes crackled with gold sparks.
She nodded at the horse standing back. “That’s the one.”
The owner caught the nod and made a spluttering noise. “Nothing one’s got the other hasn’t. Better stick to something you know, miss.” He looked from her to Bean with a sneer.
Pell said nothing, held fast by the black-and-gold eyes. At last, with a great effort of will, she freed herself and left.
Later that night the two men reappeared, one leading the big gelding, the good one. Dogman crouched down at his fire, blew gently on it to ignite the smoldering embers, and lit his pipe. The other man approached her. His voice was sharp. “I’d give something to know what you saw between those two. They looked as like as sparrows to me.”
She didn’t know him, and he hadn’t thanked her either.
“Well?”
“If you’d bothered trotting them out,” she said at last, “you’d have seen how weak the other was behind.”
The man frowned, his face all doubt. “Weak?”
Pell looked past him. He could think what he liked.
“You’re quite sure of your own opinions, Miss . . . ?”
Take it or leave it, she thought. There was nothing in it for her.
Dogman watched her face carefully, but Pell was looking at his hounds now, noticing for the first time that under the dense tawny coat his bitch had a full set of hanging teats. So that’s why she looked anxious. Poor thing.
“Can you do that horse trick more than once?” The man again.
She bristled. “Trick?”
“Can you spot a good horse in a crowd? Because if you can it’d be worth something to me.”
“How much?”
Behind his frien
d’s back, Dogman grinned. The other man merely blinked.
“Well,” he said, regaining his composure, “if you can choose half a dozen sound horses, one hundred guineas to spend, there’ll be five pounds in it for you.”
The sum was far more than she would have dared ask, and Pell said nothing for a long moment, struggling against an urge to shout assent. “All right,” she said at last, “if you’ll bother telling me your name.”
“Harris,” he said, bowing with exaggerated politeness. “Does that suit you?”
She looked straight into his eyes and tried to fathom him. And then she almost laughed, because the truth was she needed the money so badly that it didn’t matter whether she could trust him or not.
Thirteen
Day three saw walleyed horses stood up against walls, and lame ones brushed and polished and posing stock-still. Bootblack found new uses on lopsided or unlucky markings, and if someone had a horse with two short legs on one side you’d sure as sure find him standing square on the side of a hill. The obvious beasts had been sold; what remained was the dust thrown up by a thousand men and horses, enough to obscure any truth that lingered in the place. Day three was for sharp-witted sellers and sharp-eyed buyers, and there wasn’t a man in the place didn’t fancy himself one or the other.
Esther had done whatever business she had come to do, taken the money, and disappeared. The children scattered through the fair, seeking food and entertainment. Pell’s father had long gone, encouraged on his way by an unpaid hostler. Meanwhile, Pell searched the crowd for Harris, and just when she began to think he must have changed his mind, he appeared.
“Let’s go” was all he said by way of a greeting, and off they set—Harris, followed by Pell with Bean last, trotting to keep up. Harris led them first to a handsome bay with a look in its eye that made Pell shrink. When she shook her head, Harris muttered to himself in a low voice, “But does she know what she’s about, eh?”