‘Get up on ’er,’ he said softly in my ear; his breath foul. ‘Or I’ll beat you till you can’t ride ’er, nor any other for a week.’
I jerked away from him: sullen, ineffective. And I scowled at my stepmother who stood, picking her teeth with her free hand and watching this scene. She had never stood between me and him in my life. She had seen him beat me until I went down on my knees and cried and cried for him to stop. The most she had ever done for me was to tell him to stop because the noise of my sobbing was disturbing her own baby. I felt that I was utterly unloved, utterly uncared for; and that was no foolish girl’s fear. That was the bitter truth.
‘Get up,’ Da said again, and came to the horse’s head.
I looked at him with a gaze as flinty as his own. ‘I’ll get up and she’ll throw me,’ I said. ‘You know that, so do I. And then I’ll get on her again and again and again. We’ll never train her like that. If you had as much brains inside you as you have beer, you’d let me train her. Then at least we’d have a sweet-natured animal to show this farmer. The way you want to do it we’ll show him a whipped idiot.’
I had never spoken to him like that before. My voice was steady but my belly quivered with fright at my daring.
He looked at me for a long hard moment.
‘Get up,’ he said. Nothing had changed.
I waited for one moment, in case I had a chance, or even half a chance to win my way in this. His face was flinty-hard, and I was only a young girl. I met his gaze for a moment. He could see the fight go out of me.
I checked he was holding the horse tight at the head and then I turned and gripped hold of the saddle and sprang up.
As soon as she felt the weight of me on her back she leaped like a mountain goat, stiff-legged sideways; and stood there trembling like a leaf with the shock. Then, as if she had only waited to see that it was not some terrible nightmare, she reared bolt upright to her full height, dragging the reins from Da’s hands. Da, like a fool, let go – as I had known all along he would – and there was nothing then to control the animal except the halter around her neck. I clung on like a limpet, gripping the pommel of the saddle while she went like a sprinting bullock – alternately head down and hooves up bucking, and then standing high on her hind legs and clawing the air with her front hooves in an effort to be rid of me. There was nothing in the world to do but to cling on like grim death and hope that Da would be quick enough to catch the trailing reins and get the animal under control before I came off. I saw him coming towards the animal, and he was quite close. But the brute wheeled with an awkward sideways shy which nearly unseated me. I was off-balance and grabbing for the pommel of the saddle to get myself into the middle of her back again when she did one of her mighty rears and I went rolling backwards off her back to the hard ground below.
I bunched up as I fell, in an instinctive crouch, fearing the flailing hooves. I felt the air whistle as she kicked out over my head but she missed by an inch and galloped away to the other side of the field. Da, cursing aloud, went after her, running past me without even a glance in my direction to see how I fared.
I sat up. My stepmother Zima looked at me without interest.
I got wearily to my feet. I was shaken but not hurt except for the bruises on my back where I had hit the ground. Da had hold of the reins and was whipping the poor animal around the head while she reared and screamed in protest. I watched stony-faced. You’d never catch me wasting sympathy on a horse which had thrown me. Or on anything else.
‘Get up,’ he said without looking around for me.
I walked up behind him and looked at the horse. She was a pretty enough animal, half New Forest, half some bigger breed. Dainty, with a bright bay-coloured coat which glowed in the sunlight. Her mane and tail were black, coarse and knotted now, but I would wash her before the buyer came. I saw that Da had whipped her near the eye and a piece of the delicate eyelid was bleeding slightly.
‘You fool,’ I said in cold disgust. ‘Now you’ve hurt her, and it’ll show when the buyer comes.’
‘Don’t you call me a fool, my girl,’ he said rounding on me, the whip still in his hands. ‘Another word out of you and you get a beating you won’t forget. I’ve had enough from you for one day. Now get up on that horse and stay on this time.’
I looked at him with the blank insolence which I knew drove him into mindless temper with me. I pushed the tangled mass of my copper-coloured hair away from my face and stared at him with my green eyes as inscrutable as a cat. I saw his hand tighten on the whip and I smiled at him, delighting in my power; even if it lasted for no more than this morning.
‘And who’d ride her then?’ I taunted. ‘I don’t see you getting up on an unbroke horse. And Zima couldn’t get on a donkey with a ladder against its side. There’s no one who can ride her but me. And I don’t choose to this morning. I’ll do it this afternoon.’
With that, I turned on my heel and walked away from him, swaying my hips in as close an imitation of my stepmother’s languorous slink as I could manage. Done by a skinny fifteen year old in a skirt which barely covered her calves it was far from sensual. But it spoke volumes of defiance to my da who let out a great bellow of rage and dropped the horse’s reins and came after me.
He spun me around and shook me until my hair fell over my face and I could hardly see his red angry face.
‘You’ll do as I order or I’ll throw you out!’ he said in utter rage. ‘You’ll do as I order or I’ll beat you as soon as the horse is sold. You’d better remember that I am as ready to beat you tomorrow night as I am today. I have a long memory for you.’
I shook my head to get the hair out of my eyes, and to clear my mind. I was only fifteen and I could not hold on to courage against Da when he started bullying me. My shoulders slumped and my face lost its arrogance. I knew he would remember this defiance if I did not surrender now. I knew that he would beat me – not only when the horse was sold, but again every time he remembered it.
‘All right,’ I said sullenly. ‘All right. I’ll ride her.’
Together we cornered her in the edge of the field and this time he held tighter on to the reins when I was on her back. I stayed on a little longer but again and again she threw me. By the time Dandy was home with a vague secretive smile and a rabbit stolen from someone else’s snare dangling from her hand, I was in my bunk covered with bruises, my head thudding with the pain of falling over and over again.
She brought me a plate of rabbit stew where I lay.
‘Come on out,’ she invited. ‘He’s all right, he’s drinking. And he’s got some beer for Zima too, so she’s all right. Come on out and we can go down to the river and swim. That’ll help your bruising.’
‘No,’ I said sullenly. ‘I’m going to sleep. I don’t want to come out and I don’t care whether he’s fair or foul. I hate him. I wish he was dead. And stupid Zima too. I’m staying here, and I’m going to sleep.’
Dandy stretched up so that she could reach me in the top bunk and nuzzled her face against my cheek. ‘Hurt bad?’ she asked softly.
‘Bad on the outside and bad inside,’ I said, my voice low. ‘I wish he was dead. I’ll kill him myself when I’m bigger.’
Dandy stroked my forehead with her cool dirty hand. ‘And I’ll help you,’ she said with a ripple of laughter in her voice. ‘The Ferenz family are nearby, they’re going down to the river to swim. Come too, Meridon!’
I sighed. ‘Not me,’ I said. ‘I’m too sore, and angry. Stay with me, Dandy.’
She brushed the bruise on my forehead with her lips. ‘Nay,’