HartsLove (9 page)

They all heard their father tramping down the stairs at breakfast time, calling Gryffed's name. They stood up as he opened the dining-room door. Charles remembered something of the night but not everything, though he had a faint notion that he should be angry. Something to do with clothes. Something to do with their mother. Something, something . . . He eyed his children nervously. They seemed expectant. Daisy was speaking. Her words made no sense.
‘Gryffed?' he said. ‘He's here, isn't he? What do you mean, he's under the chestnut tree?'

Daisy repeated herself more slowly.

‘Dead?' said Charles, and another, less faint recollection hit him. He heard the pistol's retort. It resounded again and again in his head. ‘Oh God,' he said. ‘Oh my God.' He reversed out of the dining room, running through the castle. ‘Gryffed!' he shouted. ‘Gryffed! Gryffed!'

Rose made to go after him. ‘Let him be,' advised Mrs Snipper. ‘That's best.'

After a breakfast that went entirely uneaten, the children pulled on coats and walked slowly to the Resting Place. A grave had been dug and Gryffed's body was carefully shrouded in a blanket. Garth and Rose lowered the body into the ground, and they all folded the earth around it. Charles appeared just as they finished. They moved aside to let him through. There was nothing to say.

Until the very end of January, the castle hung under an icy pall and no buyers came. Charles was locked in his library. Rose and Lily, Clover and Columbine drifted about. Garth juggled constantly with the set of knucklebones he kept in an old skull in his room.

Daisy alone went out, and she only went to the stables to visit the horse. When she was with him, sitting in his stable as he mooched about, or watching Skelton walk him round the yard, the ground being too hard for anything else, she could still believe in her dream. She could tell The One about Gryffed and cry as much as she liked. She could also confide her worries about Garth. Indeed, she could speak about anything at all, and when he was not staring into the middle distance the horse liked to listen to her. He began to look forward to her visits. Soon he preferred her to the middle distance. ‘Some people might give you a pet name,' she told him when he sneezed all
over her hair, ‘but I'm always going to call you The One. That way you'll not forget who you are, and that's very important.' Though she mourned Gryffed deeply, Daisy could not give up on the future. In the still reaches of the night, she fretted that if Charles did not soon give Skelton instructions about training, the Derby might yet slip away.

At the beginning of February, when the ice was turning slushy, she found Arthur Rose in the yard, his cob tethered to the mounting block. Skelton had swept a clear path and was trotting The One smartly up and down, occasionally flicking a long whip. The young vet was deep in thought, two slender fingers on his chin. Daisy leaned her crutches against the wall, her heart quailing. Arthur Rose should not be here. ‘What's wrong?' she asked.

Arthur removed his fingers, unable to keep his eyes from flicking behind Daisy, hoping for Rose. ‘Nothing, nothing at all,' he said, pushing back two thick strands of blond hair escaped from a bow a century out of fashion. ‘Your father asked me to come to make sure the horse is quite sound.'

Daisy knew this could not be true.

‘Trot him again, please, Mr Skelton,' Arthur called.

The One was in frisky mood. He did not need Skelton's whip, but Skelton applied it anyway. At its sting, the colt bucked and shimmied. ‘He's stocky,' said Arthur. ‘Not like your father's usual purchases.'

Daisy looked at Arthur. ‘He's The One,' she said.

Arthur returned her look. ‘The One?'

‘The One who's going to win the Derby.'

‘Oh, I see,' said Arthur. He fiddled with his collar.

‘Mr Snaffler sent you for money, didn't he,' Daisy said in the end.

‘That'll do, Mr Skelton.' Arthur waited until Skelton was back in the stable before he nodded. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Sorry or not, we can't pay,' Daisy said flatly. ‘Or at least we can't pay until the thirtieth of May.' The vet looked puzzled. ‘The day after the Derby,' explained Daisy. ‘We can pay you then.'

‘Is that because you'll be gone by then?' Arthur asked. A furrow appeared on his forehead.

Daisy drew herself up, every inch a de Granville. ‘No. But even if we were to go, we'd still pay our debts.'

‘Of course – yes – no!' Arthur kicked himself. ‘I didn't mean . . . I meant . . .'

‘Oh, I see,' said Daisy. ‘You mean that Rose will have gone.'

He bit his lip. ‘It's Mr Snaffler,' he said. ‘He told me to come and settle up. Your father's bill is – well, Snaffler's forbidden me to treat any animal here unless the outstanding accounts are settled. Gryffed's hunting wound—'

‘Gryffed's dead,' said Daisy.

Arthur blenched. ‘Dead? Oh, Miss Daisy, I'm so sorry.' An awful thought struck him. ‘Did he need me? I'd have
come. Surely you know that. You know I'd have come, money or not.'

His anguish was so genuine that it made Daisy's lip tremble. ‘He didn't need you, Mr Rose.'

‘Poor Gryffed. What happened?'

‘He just died,' said Daisy shortly.

‘Your father must be very upset.'

Daisy did not answer. Instead she walked towards The One's stable. ‘You never said if The One was sound or not,' she said, trying to make her voice normal.

Arthur gave her a moment to compose herself. ‘The horse is sound as a bell,' he said, standing beside her.

‘We'll have to start training very soon. The Derby's not far off, and we'll only get this one shot. Runners have to be three years old, don't they, and next year The One will be four.' She could not hide her anxiety.

Arthur pushed his hair back again. He felt a duty. ‘It's a risky business, having a racehorse, Miss Daisy. Not all three-year-olds make it to the Derby.'

‘I know that.'

Arthur still felt a duty. ‘And you know that if the horse is to have a chance, you can't just turn up at Epsom. You need to run him in a Derby trial before running him in the Derby itself.'

‘I know that too,' Daisy said, though her sudden pallor showed that this had never occurred to her.

‘And there are entry fees and travel costs.' He had to say
it. She was silent. Arthur untied his cob. ‘I'll tell Mr Snaffler that nobody was at home,' he said.

‘Tell him to go to hell!' cried Daisy vehemently.

Arthur swung himself into the saddle and smiled sadly down at her. ‘He'll get there in the end without our wishes.' He clicked his tongue and the cob moved off obediently. Daisy waited behind, then grabbed her crutches and swung herself after him. He slowed his cob when he heard her call his name. ‘I wish you could marry Rose,' Daisy said.

Arthur blushed to the roots of his hair. ‘I wish you could keep Hartslove,' he replied. He watched her swing herself towards the Resting Place. The wind got up and his eye was caught by the de Granville standard, the blood-red horse visible then invisible in the cross-currents. The cob walked on, unmoved by the ‘for sale' sign that clanged against its post so hard that half of it became unhooked. Arthur could have leaned down to hang it up again. Instead, he left it hanging on a solitary chain, one corner dragging in the dirt.

Back in the yard, Skelton was busy. The let-up in the weather meant it was time for the saddle again. The groom tried his hardest, but as soon as the colt sensed the saddle anywhere near, he bucked and twisted, legs and hooves flying. For fully twenty minutes Skelton cursed and swore and took swipes. At last, red in the face, he threw the saddle down. ‘I'll twitch you,' he said. ‘See how you like that.' The colt, sweating and kicking out, eyed him balefully.

Skelton returned with a rounded handle of wood just over a foot long, a circle of cord threaded through a hole at one end. He shook it at The One, who tried to bite it, giving Skelton just the opportunity he needed. Seizing the horse's top lip, he slid the small noose over it and began to turn the handle. The noose tightened round the tender flesh. When The One tried to back away, the cord bit deep. When he half-reared, it bit deeper still. When he twisted, it bit deepest of all. In the end, realising that the pain intensified when he moved, the colt was completely still. Now Skelton himself was stuck. He couldn't hold the twitch and grab the saddle at the same time. He swore again at his own stupidity. When Daisy swung back into the yard, he tilted his head. ‘You'll have to help me.'

Daisy stood as still as the colt. ‘What on earth are you doing?'

‘Come and hold this.'

‘I won't,' she said. The One's eyes were set in a dreadful stare.

Skelton was unapologetic. ‘Now look here, missy. Do you think the horse can win the Derby without a saddle on? He's three years old. This should have been done long ago. We've no more time to waste.'

Daisy shook her head.

Annoyed, Skelton twisted the handle further. The horse's eyes widened. His lip, bulging through the cord, turned a blueish shade.

Daisy's eyes fixed on the lip. ‘Take that thing off,' she said.

‘Look, you can either help me or go away,' Skelton said through his teeth. ‘He's got to have a saddle on and you know it.'

‘But not like this,' Daisy said. ‘Take it off.'

‘And who are you to order me about?' Skelton barked. ‘Your father wants this horse entered in the Derby. That means he's got to be saddled.'

‘Take it off! Take it off!'

To Skelton's utter fury that's exactly what he had to do. When the cord slackened, the One stretched his lip into the air in a way that would have been comical but for the pained and betrayed look in his eye. Skelton swore again, stamped across the yard and slammed the door into his house, leaving The One tied up and the saddle dumped on the mounting block.

Daisy tried to approach The One. The horse backed away until he could back no further and stood, ridiculously, with rope taut and his neck stretched out. Daisy stood quite still and repeated in a low, crooning voice, ‘It's me, The One, it's me.' It was an age before he eased forward, a further age before he did not wince when she touched him. She longed to rub his lip but he would not let her do that. ‘You know,' she told him, ‘you
will
have to wear a saddle, just as I have to wear a dress.' She slowly raised her hands. He threw up his head. ‘It's not nice, I agree,' said Daisy, ‘but
if we can solve it in our way, Skelton won't have to solve it in his. The One sighed.

Daisy untied him and led him loosely behind her. When she picked up the saddle the horse baulked and flattened his ears. With the whites of his eyes always showing, he could look very fierce. But Daisy, crooning again, did not place the saddle on his back. Instead she walked with it to the harness room, now sadly bare. There was a fire in here since Skelton had been working on Tinker's traces. It seemed to Daisy that the solution to the saddle was quite obvious: The One did not like the feel of the cold leather after his warm rug. She wound the lead-rope loosely round a hook, went into the harness room, found a thick cloth and warmed it in front of the fire. She could not reach over The One's back from the ground so she took the cloth and the saddle to the mounting block and returned for the horse. He was curious now, rather than frightened, and followed Daisy quite willingly. The cloth smelled of dust and spiders, and when it touched his neck he liked the warmth. Still crooning, Daisy climbed up the mounting block and gently slung the cloth over his withers. His ears flicked back, but now he was sniffing her callipers, whose mix of steel and wood was even more interesting than the cloth. Daisy could feel his whiskers tickling her knees. She waited until he had quite finished before she picked up the saddle itself. It was important that he knew what she was doing. He regarded it with misgiving and moved away. It took Daisy an hour
to get it on, an hour in which she never raised her voice, and when The One backed off, simply waited for him to return to her. She never put the saddle down, so in the end, it became part of her and The One barely noticed when she slid it on to the cloth. She did not attempt to do up the girth, but climbed down from the mounting block and wandered out of the yard. The One wandered after her. She meandered back to the Resting Place and sat on the flat stone. The earth on Gryffed's grave was still raw and Daisy wished she had something to sprinkle over it. The horse, meanwhile, lost interest in both her and the saddle. He began to pull up strands of dead grass to grind between his teeth. After a bit, Daisy pulled the saddle off and balanced it on her knee. The horse raised his head, then lowered it again. When he had finished with the grass, he came to her and sniffed the saddle. He stuck out his tongue. The leather tasted deliciously of salt and oil. Daisy allowed him to lick it all over, then lifted it on to his withers and slid it on to the cloth. The One blinked. He had already forgotten what the fuss was about.

Daisy walked the horse back to the stables. ‘You really are a funny creature,' she said conversationally. ‘Your bottom's higher than your withers and your head really is a little big. As for your mane and tail – was your father a blackberry bush?' The One flapped his ears. His mane and forelock flapped in sympathy. For the first time since Gryffed's death, Daisy laughed.

She stayed with the horse long into the dark, taking the saddle on and off, smoothing his rug, petting him and making his bed comfortable. Skelton appeared only to give The One his corn and fill the hay-rack. He made no comment about the saddle. The horse ate the corn with gusto and pulled systematically at the hay. The rhythmic chomping was so soothing that Daisy could hardly bear to tear herself away. In this warm loose-box, everything seemed so simple. But she had to go. The others would worry. She hugged The One, which made him snort, and kissed his velvet nose, which made him sneeze. ‘See you tomorrow,' she said.