A Falling Star, page 8
part #3 of Wintercombe Series
Below her, someone was singing very softly. She stood absolutely still, straining her ears to distinguish the tune, but it eluded her. Suddenly curious, she crept to the head of the spiral turret stairs that led to the ground floor, set her candle down at the top, and slipped down the first few steps, feeling her way in the shadows with a hand against the cold, smoothly curved stone of the outside wall, until she could hear more clearly.
It was a song that she knew, that her village maid Christian Birt often sang or hummed as she worked. And there was no doubt about the singer, either, although she had not realised until now that he possessed any interest in music. Crouched still and intent in the dark, Louise listened to her cousin Alex’s voice, slurred and roughened but drunkenly tuneful, meandering through the aching, agonised sadness of a ballad so old and so true that it was familiar everywhere:
‘The water is wide, I cannot cross over,
And neither have I wings to fly,
Bring me a boat that will carry two,
And I will sail my love to you.
Against the stream I dare not go,
Because the stream it runs too strong.
I’m deadly feared I’m one of those,
Who loved an unkind maid too long.
There is a ship that sails the sea,
She’s loaded deep as deep can be,
But not so deep as the love I’m in,
I know not if I sink or swim.
I leaned my back unto an oak,
I thought it was a trusty tree,
But first it bowed and then it broke,
And so my true love proved to me.’
There was no more, though she sat on the step for a long while, waiting, a forgotten, thoughtful smile on her face. Then she heard the door of the dining parlour open and close, and the careful, unsteady footsteps passing the foot of the stairs. Not until they had long gone did she rise stiffly to her feet, suddenly conscious of the cold and hardness of the stone and the draught from the narrow little window above her. In the Hall, the longcase clock in which her uncle had taken such pride and delight began to chime the hour. She counted to eleven, and no more: high time she was in bed, enjoying what Amy called her beauty sleep.
Louise grinned to herself, well aware that she would never be beautiful, even if she slept for a hundred years. She turned and crept back up to her shrinking candle and the warm embrace of her bed, snug against the cold gale outside. It was not long before she slept: but even so, the sound of that unexpectedly melodious voice, drunkenly singing of false love and unfaithfulness, echoed in her ears until slumber overtook her.
*
The wind had abated by morning, leaving a scattering of leafy and twiggy debris heaped in corners of the courtyard. In the stables, the grooms had been up since the cold first light of dawn, feeding and tending their charges. There were fifteen of these, ranging from stout brood mares, heavily in foal, through the various riding horses belonging to members of the family and the slightly less handsome animals placed at the disposal of the servants, to the beautiful and exalted creature which the new master of Wintercombe had brought with him from Holland.
When Louise entered the dim, aromatic stables, the entire staff, three in number, were gathered by the loosebox at the far end. As she walked down the narrow cobbled passageway between the stalls, the heels of her boots clopping sharply on the stones, and the vast trailing skirt of her habit draped over one arm, the familiar heads, brown, bay and chestnut, swung out to greet her.
‘So this is where everyone is! Good morning, Dan.’
‘Good day to ee, Mistress Louise,’ said Pardice, the head groom. He was a small, wiry man in his forties, with thinning sandy hair and shrewd blue eyes. He had originally set Louise down as just another aristocratic nincompoop, certain she knew best and always insistent on the most spirited mounts, and had told the stable lads that she was unquestionably riding for a fall. In less than a week, he had discovered that Mistress Kate’s French daughter was a skilled and confident horsewoman, knowledgeable about the strengths and weaknesses of the animals she rode, well versed in effective remedies and not afraid to put on a saddle and bridle for herself, nor to brush out mud and dust and prepare feeds and poultices. During her six months at Wintercombe, each had come to recognise the other as an expert, perhaps with some difference of opinion upon the finer points of horse management, but with a considerable amount of mutual respect.
‘What do ee think of en?’ Pardice asked her, and added to the two boys, short Renolds and long Earle, ‘Do ee stand aside, lads, and let Mistress Louise looksee!’
Hastily, they leaped back, and gave her a clear view of the occupant of the loosebox. She walked right up to the bars which stretched from the wooden partition up to the ceiling. The area enclosed was some twelve feet square, a generous size — many poor families had less space in which to live — and held a manger, well filled with hay, a leather bucket of water, a considerable quantity of straw, and a horse.
She had already seen this particular beast, of course, plodding exhausted and mud-stained up the hill to Wintercombe the previous afternoon. Even then, she had marked its quality. Now, clean and groomed, fed and rested, the grey stallion stood beneath the one small, rather cobwebby window, and accepted their admiration as his due.
Louise rested her elbows on the top of the partition and put her right hand through the bars, palm upwards, a piece of carrot temptingly displayed. She clucked softly in her throat, and the horse, interested, swung his head and studied her with large, intelligent eyes, the silvery ears pricked. He stepped leisurely to the partition, blew gently on her hand, and took the carrot with evident enjoyment.
‘What a beauty!’ said Henry Renolds, his round ruddy face glowing with adoration. ‘Be he a Turk or a Barb, Mistress Louise?’
‘He has the blood, certainly,’ she said, running a finger down the silky dark muzzle, feeling the warm life beneath the velvet smoothness. ‘See his dark skin? That’s a sure sign of a Barb. But I don’t think he’s purebred, he’s too tall. Have you measured him, Dan?’
‘Sixteen hand and an inch,’ said the head groom. ‘And five year old, to judge by his teeth and his colour. That dappled grey allus turn white by the time they see ten. And sweet-tempered as a baby, so he be.’
‘I can tell,’ said Louise. She held out another piece of carrot, purloined from the kitchen where it had been intended to form part of a warming winter pottage. ‘He must be a wonderful ride.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Dan Pardice at once. ‘Oh, no, Mistress — Sir Alexander, he said most particular last night — nobody to ride him save hisself.’
‘I see,’ said Louise thoughtfully. More than anything, she longed to feel this big, powerful horse beneath her, to blend with the rhythm of his gallop, to sense the wind in her face and exult in the knowledge that she was in control of the swiftest and most beautiful horse in all Somerset. For no other animal she had seen, in all her time in England, could compare with the lovely, gentle grey stallion, who had taken the carrot from her hand without touching her skin. Even her stepfather’s purebred chestnut Barb, all fire and brimstone — he had been dubbed ‘Petard’ with reason — was no more splendid than this magnificent creature.
‘Has he a name?’ she asked Dan. The groom shook his head. ‘No, Mistress Louise, not that I know of.’
‘He is called Pagan,’ said her cousin’s voice, so close behind her that it took a considerable effort to conceal her surprise. Deliberately, eyebrows raised, she turned and surveyed him. He was dressed for riding, in the same dark clothes he had worn on his arrival the previous day. As she had noticed before, his garments seemed to have been shrugged on without much care, and his neckcloth was loosely and hastily knotted. That, and his coiling dark hair, gave him a distinctly slovenly appearance, at odds with his immaculate attire at supper. Louise, not without satisfaction, noted his pale face, the taut shadowed lines around his eyes, and the frown between his long level brows. He looked exactly as she would have expected after a night of drinking, and he undoubtedly had a headache.
‘Good morning, Cousin,’ she said, with her best and falsest smile, and inclined her head. ‘We were admiring your horse. Is he indeed part Barb, or Turk?’
‘His sire was an Arabian from the Prince of Orange’s stables, and his dam was a Spanish mare,’ Alex said. ‘And I trust you were not thinking of climbing on his back.’
‘Nothing could have been further from my mind,’ said Louise, archly and with transparent innocence.
Undeceived, he raised his eyebrows and turned to Pardice with a curt list of enquiries concerning Pagan’s well-being. Louise, unaccountably annoyed, caught young Henry’s eye. ‘Can you saddle Nance for me?’
The bay mare was standing by the mounting-block, Louise checking girth and breastplate, when Pardice emerged from the stable, leading Pagan. The big stallion looked almost asleep as he ambled after the groom, but she saw the length of his stride, and knew that the grey’s somnolent manner was deceptive. It was likely that he was in fact possessed of considerable speed, and likely, too, that within a short time all those sporting gentlemen who raced their fastest horses on the wide bare downs above Bath in the summer would be bringing their best mares hopefully to Wintercombe.
She mounted Nance while Henry held the bay’s bridle, and arranged the heavy, soft dove-grey skirts of her riding habit. When she looked up, Alex was there, Pagan’s reins looped over his arm, his hat pushed on his head at an angle, his face unsmiling. ‘Are you riding alone, Cousin?’
Damn him. Louise kept her voice level and cool. ‘It is my usual practice. Do you object?’
‘Not at all — if you are happy to risk lying undiscovered in a ditch all day, who am I to gainsay you? But it seems churlish to ride out at the same time and go our separate ways — so, Cousin Louise, will you accompany me?’
A small red devil gibbered temptingly on one shoulder, and on the other, her conscience, freshly burdened, urged her to decline. She was no green girl, however, and she was well aware that she was risking her good name, at the least, by consorting with him.
There was, however, an easy remedy for that. ‘Of course,’ she said, resisting the impulse to comment that he was eminently qualified to judge churlishness. ‘If we can just wait for the groom… Henry! Hurry and saddle up, will you? We shall be riding along the Wellow Lane — you can catch us up.’
‘Yes, Mistress Louise,’ said the boy, startled but willing, and scuttled back into the stable.
Louise, her honour safeguarded, glanced sideways at her cousin, and surprised a look of amusement on his face. ‘Very wise,’ said Alex approvingly. ‘Although I always find February so cold for an outdoor rape, don’t you? Far better to wait for warmer weather — or to do the deed in a nice soft, comfortable bed. Though of course one misses the thistles and nettles — they always add a certain je ne sais quoi, don’t you think?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Louise coldly, praying that her suffocating urge to laughter was not nakedly displayed on her face. She turned Nance, largely so that she could hide her expression from him, and rode out of the stable yard and on to the track which ran past Wintercombe on the crest of the hill.
To her left lay the huddled miscellany of buildings collectively known as the Barton farm; to the right, down in the valley, the muddy lane along the Norton Brook, where she usually rode. She turned Nance’s head that way, wishing that she had Shadow beneath her instead of this sedate, lazy old mare. But perhaps, given Alex’s presence, it was as well she did not. She had already decided not to mention anything concerning last night, if possible, and to avoid arousing any of that blistering ire. He had expressed a wish to ride in her company: that boded well, and she wanted, with surprising force, to rediscover the Alex she had known long ago and never forgotten. Even now, even after the unpleasant scenes at supper, she could not believe that it had all been a childish illusion. With Henry’s presence, albeit at a distance, she could preserve a semblance of decorum, even if their talk was less proper. And if it was, Louise, her wit and conversational skills honed in her mother’s company, knew that she was more than a match for her cousin.
Hoofbeats sounded lazily behind her, and a silver-grey nose drew alongside. Still looking sternly ahead, she asked, ‘Where did you acquire him?’
‘Pagan? He was owned by an acquaintance of mine,’ said Alex. ‘And “acquire” is probably the right word. He was payment for a debt.’
‘A debt of dishonour?’ Louise enquired, and had the reward of a laugh.
‘Of course. My extraordinary luck at cards is one of my more respectable attributes.’
‘Really? Then you don’t cheat.’
‘Not unless it’s absolutely necessary, no.’
‘A very useful skill,’ Louise said reflectively. She risked a turn of her head, and saw his profile, pale and faintly smiling, edged in the wan light of a feeble February sun. ‘Perhaps you will teach me, when we have the leisure? I would dearly love to beat Amy at piquet.’
‘By all means, sweet Cousin — though I would have thought it was unnecessary to cheat in order to beat Amy at anything.’
‘Believe me, at piquet she is a demon.’
‘Perhaps she cheats.’
‘Perhaps she does.’ Louise shrugged. ‘Since I’ve never lost more than pence to her, it doesn’t seem to matter.’
‘Still, you may well find yourself playing for higher stakes one day.’
‘If the stakes included Pagan, I would cast all my scruples to the wind,’ said Louise. ‘Those which I still possess, of course.’ She glanced behind: Henry, on a fat shaggy brown cob, had come into view, trotting doggedly down the hill. She turned back to Alex, and met his vivid blue gaze, bent unwaveringly upon her. It was a mistake: somehow, she could not look away, nor would her pride permit her to do so.
‘Scruples,’ said her cousin softly. ‘I was unaware that you were familiar with the word, sweet Louise.’
‘On the contrary,’ she said instantly, despite all her earlier good intentions. ‘My command of English is quite excellent. From all the evidence, yours is more deficient.’ And she forced herself not to flinch under the intensity of those brilliant eyes, already regretting her words.
But Alex had always been unpredictable. The storm failed to break: he gave a sudden wild shout of laughter that brought Pagan’s head up like a startled stag’s. ‘No, Cousin, I dance to no one’s music but my own, and I’ll warn you, it’s a morning too pleasant for picking quarrels. Is this lane fit for a gallop?’
They had reached the end of the Wintercombe track and the road, muddy and narrow, running between Philip’s Norton and Wellow. Louise nodded. ‘Yes — it’s rather wet at present, but not enough to be risky. Not many people use this route — the highway on the hill may be longer, but it’s drier, and more convenient.’
‘Excellent,’ said Alex. He smiled at her suddenly, startling her; before she realised it, she had bestowed on him the same glowing, mischievous grin that only her close friends usually saw. ‘You go ahead,’ she told him, as if, given the quality of her mount, she had any choice in the matter. ‘Henry and I will jog along behind.’
‘Without a chaperone? For shame, sweet Louise,’ said Alex, and twitched Pagan’s reins. ‘See you in a mile or two.’
She had been right: the grey was surpassing swift. She held Nance firmly in check as he exploded away from her, the silver mane and tail flying and Alex crouched over his back, his coat whipping behind him, heedless of mud and water, cold and wind.
‘Lord a’ mercy!’ said Henry’s high voice in amazed admiration. ‘That horse d’have wings, I reckon.’
‘I wish he did — he wouldn’t throw up so much mud,’ said Louise, glancing down at her besplattered skirts. ‘Well, Henry, I suppose we’d better follow on, in case they end in a ditch.’
Nance was no Shadow, but Louise had ridden her regularly all winter, and she was fit, hardy and willing. She needed little encouragement to break into a brisk but uninspiring canter, and even to extend, on firmer ground, to a gallop. Louise kept her eye on the lane unwinding in front of them, guiding the mare away from the deeper puddles and ruts, aware of Henry, toiling distantly behind, and more so of Alex, somewhere ahead. A part of her, the malicious part, would have relished his coming to grief in a ditch, but it was most unlikely, even in this soft chancy ground. He had always ridden like a centaur.
And sure enough, he was waiting for her, a mile or so further on, where the hills crowded in on either side, and trees grew close to the lane. Pagan, mud-splattered and gently steaming in the cold air, was sampling the scanty contents of the hedgerow, while his rider sat relaxed on his back, his feet out of the stirrups, and watched her approach. Nance blew hard as she pulled up, and Louise was guiltily aware that she would not usually have ridden her so fast and so far.
‘I can see why you were riding that big dark bay yesterday,’ said Alex, as the mare came to a breathless halt beside him. ‘This old nag sounds like a pair of leaking bellows. I take back all I said to you then — you may take the gelding in future.’
‘For the pleasure of fishing me out of a ditch?’ Louise enquired caustically.
‘Of course. Though I can see that you are not usually at risk of such an accident.’
It was the nearest to a compliment that he had yet offered her. Once, long ago, the child Louise would almost have died to earn those words, and hearing them, would have blushed and said something distracting and silly. The adult Louise gave him her wide, cool stare, and inclined her head in graceful acceptance. ‘I do prefer to ride Shadow. He might at least make a show of keeping up with you. Do you plan to race Pagan?’
‘I might — though my need of the prize money is not so acute these days. But my main purpose in bringing him here was to improve the Wintercombe stock. My late father was more concerned with cattle and sheep than horses, as I remember. Is there a stallion here at present?’
