White Horses. Joan Wolf

This is going to be a long night.

      Nine

      When Gabrielle awoke the following morning Leo was still asleep. She watched him for a minute without moving.

      His hair was tangled on the pillow, his lashes lay still on his cheeks. He looked like a god strayed from the shores of ancient Greece, she thought. She had a sudden impulse to bend over him and kiss him awake, an impulse that immediately horrified her.

      Mon Dieu! What am I thinking? I cannot become attracted to this man. That would put us in a horribly awkward position.

      As if he had heard her thought, his eyes opened. She looked into their aquamarine depths and said briskly, “Wake up, sleepyhead. It’s time to go to work.”

      He blinked, as if trying to place her.

      “It’s Gabrielle,” she said. “You’re with the circus.”

      He looked annoyed and his serene godlike aspect faded. “I know who you are,” he said.

      “For a moment there you looked unsure.”

      His eyes glittered but he didn’t reply. After a moment’s silence he said, “Are you going to get up?”

      “Yes. And I am going to get dressed. Gather your clothes together and turn your back.”

      She pushed the covers back and got out of bed, carefully pulling her nightgown down over her legs.

      “Do you know, Gabrielle, I am getting rather tired of you issuing orders to me.” His tone was pleasant, but she detected anger behind the words.

      She turned to look at him in surprise. “How will you know what to do if I don’t tell you?” she asked innocently.

      He was sitting up in bed, the covers pulled to his waist. The open neck of his nightshirt showed his strong throat and chest. She looked at them, then quickly pulled her eyes away.

      He said, “I am perfectly capable of figuring things out for myself.”

      “If I had joined you in the army, I would expect you to tell me what to do,” she said reasonably. “You don’t know anything about the circus. I am only trying to keep you from making a mistake. The last thing we need is someone suspecting that you are an English officer.”

      He folded his lips into a frown but didn’t reply.

      “Bon,” she said, pleased that she had put him in his place. “Now can we get dressed?”

      People started arriving for the circus at eleven o’clock the following morning. Gabrielle had put Leo in charge of selling tickets, and he stood beside the wagon emblazoned with the circus name and collected money and handed out tickets.

      The circus-goers were mainly families: mother, father and children. They looked like shopkeepers from the city and local farmers—solid, middle-class folk, the sort that Leo scarcely ever noticed so far were they below his own high head.

      It was almost show time when Leo sold a ticket to an army lieutenant. He got a little shock when he saw the uniform but kept his face expressionless. “Come to enjoy some fun, Lieutenant?”

      “I have come to see your circus,” the lieutenant said. He looked closely at Leo. “You have an accent, monsieur. Are you English?”

      Damn, Leo thought. I should have kept my mouth shut. “My wife’s family owns this circus,” he said, as genially as he could.

      The lieutenant nodded, took his ticket and moved toward the tent.

      There’s nothing to worry about, Leo told himself. The man has just come to see a circus.

      He waited at the wagon until he heard the band strike up and then he locked the ticket money in the wagon and moved toward the tent. He went around to the performer’s entrance and outside he found Gabrielle with her five white Arabians. Their flowing manes were brushed and they wore a golden plume on their heads. They wore no other equipment and each was being held by a rope looped loosely around his neck. Gabrielle herself was dressed in male hunting attire: red coat, breeches and high boots. Her hair was pulled high on the back of her head and swung between her shoulders in a shining fall. She was not carrying a whip.

      “Go and sit with the band,” she said to him. He hesitated a moment, decided to wait until after the show to tell her about the lieutenant, and went into the tent. As he entered, Gerard, who was also dressed in hunting attire, announced to the audience, “Mademoiselle Gabrielle Robichon and her Liberty Horses!”

      The band started a gay tune and the horses trotted through the door, followed by Gabrielle, who went immediately to the middle of the ring. The horses began to trot energetically around the ring, their tails flying high in true Arabian fashion.

      The demonstration that followed had Leo as fascinated as the rest of the audience. Without a hand touching them, without a voice telling them, without even a noticeable signal from Gabrielle, the horses went around the ring, wheeling, turning, reversing and circling in perfect unison. They reared in unison, and went down on their knees at exactly the same time. At one point, Gabrielle put numbers on their backs, mixed them up in the ring, and they all found their exact places in order as they went back to circling the ring.

      Toward the end of the performance, Leo began to watch Gabrielle closely. She was cueing them, he realized, but the motions were so minuscule as to be scarcely noticeable: a slight step forward, a step backward or sideways, the slight lift of a hand—all scarcely visible to the audience but obviously visible to the horses.

      Leo was deeply impressed. He thought of some of the horses he had known, and their lack of obedience, and was even more impressed. And these were hot-blooded Arabian horses, not slugs.

      As the horses trotted out of the arena, the audience applauded enthusiastically. Gabrielle bowed once to her left, once in front and once to her right, then exited after her horses. She passed Leo with a serious face and didn’t acknowledge his presence.

      Leo studied the faces in the crowd, looking for the lieutenant. Benches had been set up on three sides of the circus ring by laying planks over wooden trestles, and behind the benches people were standing. While Paul Gronow gave a dazzling display of juggling with plates and knives, Leo searched the audience. The juggling act was almost over when he finally located the lieutenant standing on the right side of the ring. He appeared to be watching Paul with interest.

      The next act was the Maroni brothers’ tumbling. They started off by somersaulting off a springboard and landing on a big mattress in the middle of the ring. Following this act, Coco was brought in and they somersaulted over his back. Then three of the Arabians were brought in and they somersaulted over the three horses’ backs. After that, the last two Arabians were brought in and Gianni somersaulted over the six horses’ backs. Then the horses were led out, the mattress brought closer, and each of the brothers followed each other in rapid succession from the springboard, throwing special twists and variations to a lively galloping tune from the band.

      Next, a very tall man with an impassive face walked into the ring. He was wearing evening clothes with an elegant high hat. Sully, dressed as a rustic booby with a red wig and a ruddy face, came in also and spoke to the tall man, but the man didn’t answer. After a few minutes of this, Sully, in irritation, knocked his hat off. To the delight of the audience, his head came off, too. The ringmaster brought out a coffin and Sully tried to stuff the headless corpse into it. After a few minutes of Sully’s comical endeavors, the headless corpse got up and ran out of the ring.