He nodded. ‘No need for you to say nothing,’ he said fairly. ‘I’d never put you in the least danger. Your grandpa knows that. Her la’ship is right, I did not think about you riding astride. And I did not think about Acre. I’m damned if I know what she would have had me do. But I had no chance to ask that. No chance to tell her that I was anxious only to get them searching for Master Richard …’ He broke off. ‘When his lordship comes home, he’ll find me a place,’ he said. ‘But it’s a poor return for twenty years’ work.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said again. ‘It isn’t fair.’
‘Aye,’ he said, the first edge of bitterness in his voice that I had ever heard. ‘It’s never fair for those at the bottom. I know who I have to thank for this. I’d rather that horse had dropped dead when Master Richard took his tumble than all this bother. And my sister having to feed me with a houseful of hungry mouths of her own…You’d not understand,’ he said. ‘Go home, Miss Julia. I don’t blame you.’
I stared at him and had no answer. Then I nodded, unsmiling, and turned back for my home, and the candlelit parlour, and the card game.
But I did not forget that he and Jem had said that Scheherazade needed exercise, and when Richard and I were on our way to our beds that night, I stopped him at the foot of the flight of the stairs which led to his bedroom.
‘Richard, would you mind if I asked Mama if I might walk Scheherazade in the paddock and perhaps down the drive and in the woods a little? Not proper riding, of course, just walking her. Jem said this morning that she would need to be walked out until you are ready to ride her again.’
Richard’s face was shadowy in the candlelight. ‘Would you like that?’ he asked.
Oh, yes,’ I said, but I was cautious. ‘If you would not mind. Not otherwise.’
‘Would you like to learn to ride her properly, perhaps? I could teach you while my arm is getting better.’
‘Richard! Would you?’ I exclaimed, and I grabbed his sound hand so the candle bobbed ad the shadows grew and shrank wildly. ‘Oh! I should so love that! Oh, Richard! I knew you would let me ride her! Oh, Richard! you are such a darling, darling, darling to me! And when your arm is better, perhaps my grandpapa will find us a pony for me to ride and we can go out riding together every day. And we can learn to jump! And…oh, Richard!…perhaps he would take us riding to hounds! And we could be famous as neck-or-nothing riders like your mama!’
Richard laughed, but his voice was strained. ‘All right! All right! No need to set the house afire!’ he said. ‘And mind my bad arm! Don’t hug me, whatever you do!’
I stepped back and did a little dance on the spot in delight. ‘Oh, sorry!’ I said. ‘But, oh! Richard!’
‘There,’ he said. ‘I knew you wanted to ride her all along.’
‘You are the best of cousins,’ I told him exuberantly. But then we heard Mama’s tread in the parlour coming towards the hall and the stairs, and we fled to our bedrooms.
I could hardly sleep for excitement, and my sleep was light. Something awoke me in the earliest hours of the morning, just before it grew light. I heard someone on the stairs outside my room and I called out, ‘Who’s there?’
‘Shh,’ said Richard, pushing open my door. ‘It’s me. There’s someone prowling around the stables. I heard a noise and went down and saw him from the library window.’
‘Who?’ I said, muddled with sleep.
‘Too dark to see,’ Richard said. ‘I opened the window and called out and he ran off, whoever he was.’
‘Whoever could it be, and what could he want in the stables?’ I asked. Oh, Richard! The horses are all right, are they? Should we wake Mama?’
‘I could see their heads over the doors of the loose boxes,’ Richard said reassuringly. ‘The only person I could think of was Dench. The figure I saw had the look of him. He could have been visiting Jem and run off when he heard me call. He’d know that he’d not be welcome here after that scene he made yesterday afternoon.’
‘What shall we do?’ I asked. I was warm and cosy in bed and I did not relish the thought of getting out. As long as Scheherazade was safe, I had little interest in midnight prowlers.
Richard yawned mightily. ‘Go back to sleep, I think,’ he said. ‘There’s no harm done that I can see. It did indeed look like Dench, but he certainly ran off out of the stable yard. I’ll tell Mama-Aunt in the morning; there’s no point waking her now.’
‘And in the morning I can go riding!’ I said in sleepy delight. ‘Will you come out and teach me first thing, Richard?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said indulgently. ‘First thing. Until then, little Julia.’
I slid back into sleep immediately, but my excitement about riding Scheherazade woke me early. At once I jumped out of bed and threw on my oldest gown and pattered down the stairs. Mrs Gough was already up, making our morning chocolate. I said I would be straight back for mine, but I had to see Scheherazade first.
Mrs Gough eyed me dourly, but I paid no heed to her and slid out of the kitchen door, scampered to the orchard for a windfall apple and ran back to the stable. I called, ‘Scheherazade!’ as soon as I got to the stable yard, but her head did not come over the half-door at my voice as it usually did. I called her again and felt suddenly uneasy that I did not hear her moving.
‘Scheherazade?’ I said uncertainly. And then I looked over the stable door.
She was lying on the straw. For a moment I thought she must be ill, for she scrabbled with her forelegs like a foal trying to rise when she saw me. But then my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I saw the blood on the straw. The silly thing had cut herself.
‘Oh, Scheherazade!’ I said reproachfully, and I flung open the door and bent under the pole which slides across the entrance. She scrabbled again, pulling her front half up, but her back legs seemed useless. I realized her injury was serious. Her straw was fouled with urine from where she had lain and it was all red, horribly red, in the bright morning light. She must have been bleeding steadily for most of the night. Her beautiful streaming copper tail was all matted with dried blood. Then she heaved herself up again and I caught sight of her wounds. At the side of each back leg was a clean smooth slash.
She looked as if she had been cut with a knife.
I gazed around wildly, looking for a sharp metal feeding bucket, a mislaid ploughshare, something which could have caused two matched injuries. She looked exactly as if she had been cut with a knife. Two neat small cuts, each severing the proud line of tendons on each leg.
She looked as if she had been cut by a knife.
She had been cut with a knife.
Someone had come into this stable and cut Richard’s most beautiful horse with a knife, so that he would never be able to ride her again.
I was dry-eyed; but I gave a great shuddering sob to see her so injured. Then I went, slowly, lagging, back to the house. Someone would have to tell Richard that his horse, his most lovely horse, was quite lame. And I loved Richard so dearly that even in my own grief and horror I knew it had to be no one but me.
Dench had done it.
Richard said it at once. ‘It was Dench.’
Dench who knew that life was unfair.
I could not understand how a man who had spent all his life caring for horses could do such a thing to such a flawless animal. But Mama, her face white and pinched, said that poverty did strange and dreadful things to the minds of the poor and filled men with hatred.
He had been hanging around the stables last night, as