The Silver Horse Read online

  ‘Wait!’ Felipe called again.

  Emilia drew Alida to a halt at the very crest of the hill.

  ‘The day is running away,’ she said coldly. ‘You are wasting my time. If you want me to stay and run this race for you, I need to know now. Otherwise, I’m for the road.’

  Cosmo laughed. ‘Girls don’t race,’ he said. ‘If your mare is to run today, I’ll be on her back.’

  Emilia shook her head. ‘She’s my mare.’

  Cosmo leant in towards Felipe and whispered. After a long moment, Felipe nodded his head.

  ‘Here’s a bargain for you, little girl,’ Cosmo said mockingly. ‘You take my mother’s charm, and you race for us today. If you win, you get to keep the charm, as long as you need it, and we swear to help you if we can.’

  Emilia’s heart leapt with joy.

  ‘But you must leave us with some kind of surety. That seems only fair. So if you race for us today, and win, you have our precious family charm and our promise of help, but we get to keep the mare. Agreed?’

  Emilia could only stare at him, aghast.

  Filthiness and Folly

  The iron door to the cell grated open. The guard loomed in the doorway, holding a tray. He was a big man with a smashed nose, ears like red cabbages, and hands like overcooked steaks.

  Mimi and Sabina screamed and shrank back against Maggie, their grandmother, who put her arms around them. Mimi’s mother Silvia looked up dully. Since she had inadvertently caused the death of a constable, causing the charges against them to include murder, Silvia had been sunk in a bewildered misery and apathy, a stark change from the busy, cheerful woman she had always been.

  ‘Now, now, no need for shrieking,’ the guard said. ‘I’ve brought you some breakfast. Aren’t you hungry? It’s not much, I’m afraid, the cook here is mean, and takes the best stuff for himself, but it’s better than nothing.’

  He shut the door behind him with his shoulder, and set the tray down on a rickety table.

  The two little girls stared at him from the shelter of Maggie’s arms. The guard smiled, showing a mouthful of crooked, discoloured teeth. ‘Come, am I so scary?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Look what I’ve brought you.’ He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and brought out two beautifully made little rag dolls. He offered them to Mimi and Sabina, but they shrank back and did not go to him. After a moment, he turned and gave them to Beatrice, saying apologetically, ‘It’s my face, it scares them.’

  Beatrice smiled wanly, and took the dolls to the little girls, who pressed them close. Although they were cousins, not sisters, they were alike enough to be twins with their skinny arms and big black eyes. Sabina was ten and Mimi a year younger, and they were tired, bored, scared and fretful. It had been hard work keeping them entertained over the past two days, and the women had long ago run out of stories and games, or the heart to tell them.

  ‘I’m guessing you didn’t sew them yourself,’ Maggie said to the guard as she got stiffly to her feet. She was a thin scarecrow of a woman, with a face that was all nose and eyelids. She spoke around an empty pipe that she kept clamped between her wrinkled lips, occasionally taking it out and staring at it as if she hoped some tobacco may have materialised there miraculously.

  The guard grinned. ‘Not I!’ he said. ‘That’s my wife’s handiwork.’

  ‘She’s a fine seamstress,’ Maggie said. ‘Not like me.’ She gestured down at her ragged skirts with one hand, and the guard grinned again. ‘I can throw a meal together, though,’ she went on as she bent over the tray and examined the food there. ‘Not like this cook of yours. He calls this a meal?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ the guard replied.

  Maggie screwed up her face. ‘No wonder everyone in this gaol gets sick,’ she said. ‘Not one of us got a wink of sleep last night listening to the coughing of that poor man next door. Can’t they get a doctor in to him?’

  The guard looked as apologetic as was possible for someone with his face. ‘Doctors cost money,’ he said.

  ‘That they do,’ Maggie said. ‘Tell me, is this wife of yours as good a cook as she is a seamstress?’

  ‘Indeed she is,’ the guard said proudly.

  ‘You’re a lucky man.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘I’m guessing she’s a fine housewife too, and has a little garden where she grows herbs and vegetables for the table?’

  ‘She does,’ the man agreed, sounding a little puzzled.

  ‘And I can tell she’s a kind-hearted woman, just as you are kind-hearted bringing in our lasses these lovely little dolls.’

  ‘The very best of wives,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think this wife of yours could be sparing a little pottage for our lasses? They’re only little, they don’t eat much. And for our laddie too? For they’ll be sick, for sure, if they eat this maggoty stuff.’

  The guard gulped. ‘I’m not sure I’m allowed . . .’

  ‘No need to tell anyone,’ Maggie said. ‘Just a nice bit of stew, with some potatoes in it, or a bit of bread and cheese. It won’t be for long. We go up before the magistrate come the end of the month, and then we’ll be out of your hair.’

  The guard gulped. He knew as well as Maggie did that the gypsies faced the gallows. He looked back at the little girls, now playing happily with their dolls, and said, ‘I’m sure a bit of stew won’t do any harm.’

  ‘You’re a good man,’ Maggie said warmly. ‘Tell me, what’s your name?’

  ‘Maloney, ma’am,’ he answered, and then reddened, for one did not call a tattered old gypsy woman ‘ma’am’.

  ‘And your good wife?’

  ‘Jenny.’

  ‘Give Mistress Jenny my thanks for the dollies. It’s hard on the little ones, being locked up in this bad place.’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Maloney agreed, looking sad.

  ‘Tell me, do you have girls of your own, to be knowing so well what my little ones would like?’

  The guard’s sad look deepened to real grief. ‘We did,’ he said. ‘But they died. Two years ago now. Mary, my eldest, would be eight now, and the little one, Annie, she’d be six.’

  ‘Oh, that’s hard,’ Maggie said sympathetically. ‘There’s nothing harder, is there, than losing a child? Have you and your wife had no more, to comfort you in your grief?’

  He shook his head. ‘We’ve tried, but . . .’ His voice trailed away, then he squared his shoulders and said gruffly, ‘But I mustn’t be standing here, chitchatting like some old gossip. I’ve work to do.’

  As he turned to go, Maggie stretched out one of her thin, clawlike hands to him. ‘If you’d like, you can bring your wife in to see me,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I can tell her if there are to be any more weans for her and, perhaps, help her have another.’

  He shot her a quick glance from under his heavy brows, and said, ‘You can do that? Truly?’

  ‘I can try,’ Maggie said.

  ‘All right,’ he said eagerly. ‘It’d have to be late, I wouldn’t want the pastor or the warder to know.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Maggie said. ‘Let her wrap her shawl about her head, so no one knows she’s come to the prison.’

  He nodded and went out, shutting the door behind him. Beatrice had time only to turn to her grandmother with a questioning look before he was back, thrusting a little package wrapped in paper into her hands.

  ‘For the little ones,’ he said. ‘So they don’t go hungry.’

  As he went out again, Maggie opened the paper. Inside were two hard-boiled eggs, a crust of brown bread, some cold bacon, a wedge of cheese and two small red apples.

  ‘That must be his own lunch,’ Beatrice said wonderingly, surprised at his kindness.

  ‘It’s better than some cold, maggoty porridge, that’s for sure!’ Maggie sat down again, beginning to peel one of the eggs. ‘Come here, my darling girls,’ she crooned to Mimi and Sabina, breaking the egg in half. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Wasn’t it dangerous, offering
to tell his wife’s fortune like that?’ Mimi’s elder sister Lena said curiously as she came across to demand a portion of the food for herself.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Maggie replied. ‘What can they do to me? Lock me in prison, threaten to hang me?’

  ‘They could burn you as a witch,’ Beatrice said, a tight knot of anxiety in her throat.

  ‘Well, yes, there is that, but I thought it worth the risk.’

  ‘But . . . why?’

  Maggie held up the bread and cheese, which she had broken up into small portions for them all. ‘At least he may bring us some better food,’ she said, ‘if he feels sorry for us. And I need to think of the future too.’

  ‘The future,’ Beatrice said, hopeless misery in her voice. ‘What future?’

  ‘Whatever future I can salvage for us,’ Maggie said. ‘I may not be able to save myself, or my sons, or even you, but the little ones? Will they truly hang the little ones? And if they don’t, where are they to go? Who will look after them? My kin, I hope, but these are bad times for the Rom. I have to grasp whatever straws I can find.’

  Understanding dawned in Beatrice’s eyes. ‘You think . . . you hope . . . that he . . .’ She gestured towards the door.

  ‘No harm in planting a few seeds,’ Maggie said. ‘Besides, we all need hope in our lives. Even a prison guard deserves that.’

  Beatrice sat down with her tiny wedge of bread and cheese as her grandmother tried to coax Silvia into eating some of the hard-boiled egg. She mulled over what her grandmother had said. She wished she could be so optimistic. Her mind flashed to Emilia and Luka, and to her betrothed, Sebastien, and though she wanted desperately to believe that they could help her and her family in some way, she could not think how. Beatrice could see no hope at all in the future. No hope at all.

  Luka and Sebastien, at that very moment, were talking about Beatrice. Sebastien wanted to know everything about her. So Luka told him about how Beatrice had practically raised Emilia and Noah by herself, even though she was not much older than they were, and how she had taught herself to sew so she could get work up at the manor, helping the seamstresses, which paid better than the usual gypsy method of helping out at harvest time and making baskets and other trinkets. Sebastien already felt a warm glow of interest in his young wife-to-be. Luka wanted to stoke this blaze even higher, so he told many tales of Beatrice’s sweetness of temper, her practical good sense and her gentleness. He did not even have to exaggerate very much, for Beatrice was indeed very sweet-tempered, if rather too prone to dissolving into tears for Luka’s taste. He thought to himself, with a private grin, that he was glad he was not having to burnish Emilia’s character. It would have been much harder to do so with every appearance of sincerity.

  ‘It is a crime that such a sweet and lovely girl should be locked up in prison,’ Sebastien cried. ‘What evil has she done? What wrongdoing?’

  ‘They said we were begging, but we weren’t, we were performing for our pennies,’ Luka said righteously. ‘You’ve heard Beatrice sing, don’t you think it’s worth a handful of gold to hear her?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Sebastien said. ‘She sings like an angel.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why the pastor had her locked up,’ Luka said. ‘He hates anything beautiful or joyous, he hates people to be happy. He wants us all to be as gloomy and miserable as he is.’

  ‘I don’t understand these Puritans,’ Sebastien said. ‘If they want to go around with long faces, wearing nothing but black and feeling utterly miserable, let them. But why do they have to make everyone else miserable too? What do they care if we want to sing and dance and make merry?’

  ‘Makes no sense at all,’ Luka said, and lifted Zizi so he could cuddle her under his chin, taking comfort from her little nuzzle of affection and the softness of her fur.

  While Luka and Sebastien were filling in the long hours of the day with idle conversation, Pastor Spurgeon was writing letters. He wrote swiftly and strongly, filling page after page with sloping black letters that flowed from his pen with utter assurance and certainty. Every now and again he signed his name with a flourish, then sealed the letter with red wax and set it in a neat pile of other letters to be franked.

  He wrote to people he knew all around the country, admonishing them, exhorting them to greater efforts, rallying them to his cause, and informing them of the great work he was doing to rid his parish of those treasonous and heathenish elements that sought to undermine the Great Work, like termites chewing at the foundations of a house.

  And so you can see the clear meaning of the verse in which the Lord Our Father declared the great end and design of his mission, Pastor Spurgeon wrote fluidly, namely, not that he should ‘condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved’. The first inference is very sweet and comfortable, and known to us all, in that ‘He that believeth is not condemned’, that is, he who entrusts his lost and ruined soul into God’s hand, although he be a sinner, and a great sinner, he must be absolved and acquitted. God, as his Surety, has paid the debt, and obtained the discharge under the hand of justice.

  Pastor Spurgeon scattered sand on the page, to dry the ink, dipped his quill into the inkpot, and drew another page to him.

  The second inference, he wrote, is very terrible and awful; and you have it in the understanding of the words, ‘He that believeth not, is condemned already.’ For which there is a very relevant reason given, in the close of the verse: ‘Because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.’ What this so clearly means is that not believing is therefore a capital crime chargeable upon all gospel hearers. Not only is he condemned in the eyes of the Lord, he is condemned already, for endless eternity.

  Pastor Spurgeon paused for a moment, thinking of the godless Egyptians that he had discovered singing and dancing and begging in the marketplace. He remembered the black-haired girl, her feet bare beneath her skirts, the sun warm on her smooth skin, her sweet voice singing of the rapture of love.

  He could not forgive her for her beauty.

  Pastor Spurgeon wrenched his attention back to his page, read over what he had written, and then added, writing so strongly his nib tore the page, Therefore know that those who deny the word of God serve the Devil in filthiness and folly, and for them there can only be one just punishment for their sins, and that punishment is death.

  The Silver Horse

  The silver horse was no larger than the first knuckle of Emilia’s smallest finger. With all four hooves lifted in a gallop, its tail was lifted high like a banner, and its mane flew in the wind. It was warm from lying against the old gypsy woman’s skin.

  Emilia cradled it in the palm of her hand, staring at it through a swimming haze of tears. Then, her fingers trembling, she hooked the charm onto the golden chain she wore about her wrist, next to the ancient coin her grandmother had given her.

  ‘An Arab mare in return for an old piece of junk,’ Felipe said in an undertone to his brother. ‘It doesn’t seem fair.’

  Cosmo rubbed his hands together. ‘As long as both parties come out of an agreement happy, that’s all that matters.’

  But Emilia was not happy. She felt as if her heart was breaking. She had helped Alida struggle out of her mother’s womb, she had helped the tiny filly stumble to her feet and find her way to her mother’s side, and she had fed the filly her first handful of grain. Girl and horse had never been separated since. Both were orphans, their mothers cruelly wrested from them. Emilia had thought she would rather die than give her mare away.

  Yet if she did not give Alida up, she would have no chance of freeing her family. Emilia believed in the story of the six lost charms with all her heart. Felipe Hearne might think the little silver horse a piece of worthless junk, but Emilia knew that its worth was incalculable, mysterious and unexplainable. To have refused the bargain would have been to have lost all chance of adding it to her chain of charms, and to Emilia, this would have been like condemning her family to death.

  ‘Now
, my wean, it’s time to get ready for the race,’ Felipe said, his voice surprisingly kind.

  ‘It’s ridiculous to let her ride the mare,’ Cosmo said. ‘She’s nothing but a child, what does she know about horseracing? She’s our mare now, I should be the one riding her.’

  ‘No,’ Emilia said angrily. ‘You want to win, you have to let me ride. She’s used to me. No one else has ever ridden her.’ Tears spilled down her face, and she wiped them away.

  ‘She’ll have to get used to me eventually,’ Cosmo said. ‘If she’s as good as you say, we’ll be running her whenever we can, to try and earn back some of the gold we’ve lost today, thanks to you.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Emilia protested. ‘Did I take your horses away?’

  ‘You led that Coldham man to us,’ Cosmo said implacably. ‘If it wasn’t for you, he’d never have bothered us.’

  Emilia’s tears ran faster. She took a sobbing breath, to say something furious, but Felipe dropped his hand on her shoulder. ‘Come, child, no need for tears. You’ll upset your mare, and we want her happy and eager for the race. It’s a shame you’ve already galloped her this morning, we don’t want her to be tired. I’ll get her some of my special oats and molasses, and you have a bowl of hot soup and a sup of ale. Nothing heavier, we don’t want you weighed down. Cosmo, leave the child be. You’ve no time to be schooling the mare today anyway, and you’ll have plenty of time to get used to her once Emilia’s gone.’

  ‘All right then,’ Cosmo said ungratefully, ‘but I’d better be giving her some coaching. We don’t want her thrown at the first corner.’

  ‘Alida wouldn’t throw me,’ Emilia cried. ‘I haven’t had a toss since I was a little girl!’

  ‘What, last week?’ Cosmo said.

  She glared at him, fists clenched.

  Felipe laughed. ‘Come now, Cosmo, stop teasing her. Emilia, I know you think no one could ride Alida as well as you, but Cosmo’s right. It’s a tough course. Let him lead you round it slowly, and tell you what he knows.’