Meridon. Philippa Gregory

‘I sold him with a warning that he had been badly broke and badly ridden before he came to me. But he was not a killer when he left me, and he is not one now.’

      Mr Smythies looked ready to explode, his colour had flushed deeper, his hat pushed back even further on his head had left a strawberry stripe above his popping eyes.

      ‘Why, my little housemaid here could get on his back,’ Robert said beguilingly, drawing me forward. ‘She rides a little with my show, she goes around crying it up, you know. But she’s just a little lass. She could stay on him, I’d put money on it.’

      ‘A wager!’ shouted someone from the back and at once the call was taken up. Mr Smythies was torn between a beam of pride at being at the centre of attraction and confusion that Robert seemed to have clouded the issue.

      Robert looked thoughtful. ‘I did not mean to say that she could ride the horse here and now,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I was just saying the horse is not so black as he’s been painted.’

      ‘Yes you did,’ Mr Smythies said, back into his stride as a bully. ‘You said (and my friends here will bear witness) that you’d put money on your little housemaid staying on his back. Well, fifty pounds says she cannot get near him, Mr Robert Gower. If you can’t put that up you’d better give me my money back and a handsome apology with it.’

      Robert glanced around; it was beautifully done. ‘All right,’ he said unwillingly. ‘Fifty pounds it is. But she only has to sit on him.’

      ‘Keep her seat for three minutes by my watch,’ said the drunken man, sobering suddenly at the prospect of some sport.

      ‘And not here,’ Robert said suddenly, looking at the cobbled yard. ‘In the parish field in ten minutes.’

      ‘Right!’ roared Smythies. ‘Anyone else want to bet on a housemaid who can stay on a horse which has thrown me? Anyone else with money burning a hole in his pocket? I’ll take bets at two to one! I’ll take bets at five to one!’ He suddenly reached around Robert and grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. I made a half-curtsey and kept my face down. Da and I had sold several pups in this town at one time or another and I didn’t want to be recognized. ‘Damn it, I’ll take ten to one!’ Mr Smythies yelled.

      ‘I’ll put a guinea on the wench!’ someone from the back shouted. ‘She looks as if she’d keep her legs together! I’ll risk a guinea on her!’

      I stepped back in apparent confusion and tugged at Robert’s sleeve again. He bent down to me with an expression of benign concern.

      ‘Start a book, for God’s sake,’ I hissed in an undertone. ‘And find someone to put money on me for you.’

      ‘No bets now,’ Robert said authoritatively. ‘We’ll start a proper book down at the field. Come on! Who’ll bring the horse?’

      I watched as a stable lad ran to tack the horse up. It was a man’s saddle, and a whole tanner’s shop of leather to keep the poor beast from throwing his head up or pulling too hard, a martingale to keep him from bolting. Everything but a safety strap to bind the rider into the saddle. I slipped across the yard unnoticed.

      ‘My master don’t want that stuff on him,’ I said pleasantly to the lad. ‘He told me to tell you, just the saddle and the bridle with a simple bit. Not the rest of that stuff.’

      The lad thought to argue, but I was gone before he could query the order. I followed the crowd down to the field. We picked up a good couple of dozen on the way. I saw Robert had got hold of a small weasel-faced man who was passing among the noisier famers and placing bets with them. The odds were getting better all the time. I took great care to walk in Robert’s shadow in mincing steps and keep my eyes on the backs of his heels.

      In the field they formed into an expectant circle. The horse was led down the path from the inn, he jinked at the leaves rustling on the ground at his feet. The little lad at his head led him at arm’s length, wary of a sudden nip. The horse’s ears were laid back hard and his face was bony and ugly. His eyes were white all around.

      ‘Damn,’ Robert said softly. The horse was worse than he remembered.

      I looked at him as he came towards me under the blue wintry sky and I smiled as if I was warmed through at the very sight of him. I knew him. I felt as if I had known him all my life. As if he had been my horse before I was born, as if he had been my mother’s horse, and her mother’s too. As if he and I had ridden on Wide ever since the world had been made.

      ‘Sea,’ I said softly, and stepped into the middle of the circle to wait for him.

      I had forgotten my bonnet and he shied and wheeled as the ribbons were whipped by the wind. There was a chorus of ‘Look out! Mind his back legs!’ as he backed suddenly and three drunk young bloods swayed backwards out of harm’s way. But then I pulled my bonnet and my cap off too and felt the cold wind in my hair and on my face.

      I stepped forward. Robert at my side took the reins from the stable lad and waited to help me up. There was a continual mutter of men placing bets behind me and some part of my mind knew that I was going to make Robert a small fortune this day, but the most important thing was that I was going to win Sea for my very own horse.

      I went to his head; he sidled anxiously. Robert was holding the reins too tight, and he could sense the tension among all the people. Robert turned, waiting to throw me into the saddle; but I took a moment to stand absolutely still.

      Sea dropped his head, Robert loosened his hard grip on the reins. Sea dropped his head towards me and put his long beautiful face towards me and snuffed powerfully at the front of my dress, at my face, and at my curly hair. Behind us there was a sudden rush of talk as the odds shortened and some people tried to recall bets which had not been recorded. I hardly heard them. I put a gentle hand up to his neck and touched him on that soft piece of warm skin behind the right ear and rubbed him as gentle as a mare her foal. He blew out, as if he had lost his fear and his anger and his remembered pain at that one touch and then I lifted my eyes to Robert and smiled at him and said, ‘I’ll go up now.’

      He was too much of a showman to gawp at me, but his eyes were disbelieving as he nodded and clasped his hands together for my boot and threw me up, astride, into the saddle.

      ‘Stand aside,’ I said swiftly. It was as I had feared. At the touch of weight in the saddle the horse could remember nothing but the pain of breaking and the cruelty of training and the hard sharp joy of ripping back at the men who tormented him. He reared at once above Robert and only Robert’s quick cowardly dive to the ground and swift roll kept him out of range of those murderous hooves.

      ‘Catch him!’ screamed one man at the stable lad.

      But Robert was on his feet. ‘Wait!’ he ordered. ‘There’s a bet on.’

      I had clung like a louse when that white neck soared up. When he thudded down I had waited for him to rear again but it had not happened. I stayed as still as a novice rider. My weight was so light, compared to the fat farmers who had tried to train him, he might even think he had thrown me, and all I would have to do was to sit still for three minutes. I saw the man with the watch out of the corner of my eye and I hoped to God he was sober enough to see the moving hand crossing off the minutes.

      The horse was frozen. I reached a hand down to his neck and I touched his warm satiny skin. At my touch the fretwork of muscles in his neck trembled as if a human touch was a gadfly.

      ‘Sea,’ I said softly. ‘Darling boy. Be still now. I am going to take you home.’

      His ears went forward his head went up so that he was as trim and as proud as a statue of a horse. I touched him lightly with my heels and he moved forward in a fluid smooth stride. I checked him with a little weight on the reins and he stopped. I looked forward over his alert, forward-pointing ears and saw Robert Gower’s face blank with amazement, jaw dropped. I gave him a little smile of triumph and he recollected himself and looked correctly judicious and unsurprised.

      ‘Two and a half,’ the drunk with the watch said.

      They