Mending Horses (25 page)

The jugglers ceased their practice. “What is it, Mr. Varley?” the white one asked.

“These bumpkins're trying to catch a free show,” Mr. Varley said, raising a fist. “I'll give 'em something to look at.” A spiderweb of purply red veins stood out on his cheeks and nose.

The acrobats and jugglers lined up behind Mr. Varley–all except the black man, who stood aside with arms folded across his broad chest and an inscrutable expression on his face. The performers formed a solid row of well-muscled young men, the five dark-haired, dark-eyed acrobats ranged like stair steps from the shortest, who looked a little younger than Daniel, to the tallest, who seemed to be in his twenties. They'd been advertised as the Ruggles Brothers, and seeing them up close, Daniel believed that the relationship hadn't been invented. The only one in the row who looked out of place was the knife juggler, a blue-eyed man with ashy brown hair lightly sprinkled with gray. Thinner than the rest, but no less muscular, he sent his blade spinning end-over-end and caught it, grinning as if he were eager to use it.

“No, wait.” Daniel put his hands out in a placating gesture.

The girl on the cloud swing shouted the same thing. “No, wait! I'm coming down.” The swing was set lower for her practice than it had been for the performance, so she could easily leap to the ground unassisted. Still, the acrobats sprang immediately into action to break her fall if she should miss her landing. She didn't need their help, however, alighting as nimbly as a cat. Daniel noticed that she shared the same dark eyes and wavy black hair as the Ruggles brothers.

“Isn't he that horse boy Mr. Chamberlain hired to take Mr. Pruitt's place?” Francesca said with a sniff. There was something catlike about her face as well as her movements. With feline haughtiness, she looked Daniel up and down so thoroughly that he wished he'd done a better job of washing up after breakfast.

“Come to gawk, have you, boy?” the white juggler said, testing the edge of his knife against his thumb. Up close, Daniel saw that the blade's edge was thick and dull. Still, even if it was a poor knife, it'd make a fine club.

Billy poked Daniel in the ribs to prompt him to speak.

“N-n-no. I n-need–I need–,” Daniel stammered.

“Needs a thrashing, I say,” said the white juggler. Behind him, his partner smirked.

“Careful, Mr. Dale,” said Francesca. “I heard that raggedy peddler he came with is great friends with Mr. Chamberlain.”

“Mr. S. isn't raggedy!” Billy burst out. Daniel grabbed her to keep her from lunging at the performers. She jerked out of his grip. “Let's go, Daniel. Who needs their help anyway?”

Francesca raised an elegant eyebrow. “What sort of help?” Although she kept her head tilted at the same haughty angle, her eyes became less narrow.

“Naught,” Billy said. “Come on, Daniel.” She tugged his sleeve.

“I wanted to ask if you could help us learn a bit of tumbling. Something we could do with the horses.” Remembering how Billy had flattered Professor Romanov helped Daniel find his voice. “As you say, we're only the horse boys. We've got no particular talents. Not like you.” He squeezed Billy's elbow hard, hoping she'd get the message to follow his lead. “Not that we'd ever have such a gift for acrobatics as yourselves, but maybe if there was something easy you could teach us . . .”

“Mr. Pruitt never wanted any help,” Francesca said dubiously. One of her brothers snickered; the others' sour faces showed their opinion of the departed Professor.

“He never let anybody else near those ponies,” said the youngest Ruggles, his scowl deepening.

“Be thankful he didn't take you on, Philo,” said the oldest brother. “He'd probably have thrashed you as badly as he did those animals.”

Daniel and Billy exchanged glances. Daniel wondered how he could turn Philo's interest in the ponies to his advantage.

“I wouldn't treat a rat the way he treated those ponies,” Francesca said.

One of the middling brothers cleared his throat and spat into the grass. “What's worse is how high and mighty he always was, as if folks came only to see him and his mangy beasts. As if nobody but him knew anything about trick horses.”

“Good riddance to him,” said another middle brother. “He
wasn't ever pleasant to anyone but Madame, and what she saw in him is more'n I'll ever know.”

“I can't help feeling sorry for the ponies,” Francesca said. “They always look so sad.”

“Well, I want to do things different from the Perfesser,” said Daniel. “I've a lot to learn, but I'm none too proud to ask for help from them that's smarter than me.”

“Flattery, horse boy? To what end?” Francesca's laughter seemed to relax her brothers.

“Just to learn some tumbling, like I said. Something we can do with the ponies.”

They all laughed now, including Mr. Varley and the white juggler. A brief smile even flashed across the black juggler's face. Mr. Varley's face grew redder in laughter than it had been in anger. For a few uneasy moments, Daniel feared that one of the purplish veins in the man's cheeks might burst. But finally Mr. Varley collected himself and wiped his eyes with a large pink handkerchief. “You know what they say about pride going before a fall,” the red-faced man said.

“Well, sir, I've naught to be prideful about, and I'm no stranger to falling,” Daniel said.

“Well said, boy, well said.” Mr. Varley clapped a hand on Daniel's shoulder. He put his free arm around Francesca. “Well, my dear?” He nodded toward the oldest brother. “Harry? What do you say?”

The tumblers slowly walked around Daniel and Billy, looking them up and down with the same sort of intensity with which Daniel had studied the ponies. He half-expected them to examine his teeth and check his feet.

“How old are you?” Harry asked.

“Sixteen,” Daniel said.

“Twelve,” Billy replied.

“Hopeless,” Harry said. “Maybe the little one, but the big one . . .”

“He's positively ancient,” said another brother.

“Oh, let him try, Teddy,” protested Philo.

“He'll break his head,” said a fourth brother. “But it might be fun to watch.”

“Will you let us ride the ponies?” Francesca asked. “And let us do some tumbling with them in the ring?”

Teddy's eyes lit up. “We could do Billy Button's Ride to Brentford.”

“Dick Turpin!” said Philo.

“The Drunken Cossack!” said another.

Daniel blinked groggily. “Who? What?”

“Riding tricks, boy,” explained Mr. Varley. “New and different ways for fools like you to break their necks.”

Daniel shook his head dizzily. “I only meant for you to show us some things, not–” The brothers' faces began to harden again, and Daniel quickly changed to a more conciliatory tone. “I mean, I don't even know if they're saddle-trained,” he protested. “I don't know yet what they can do, other than what I saw in the show yesterday.”

Her dark eyes glowing, Francesca took his arm. “Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?”

“Billy Button,” Mr. Lamb, the menagerie keeper, said over dinner. “It's a comic piece. You pretend you need to be somewhere in a hurry, but your horse won't stand still for you to mount him. When you finally get on, you're turned around backward, or you get on one side and fall off the other. Then the horse runs off without you, and you chase him around for a while until he ends up chasing you. That spotted pony was doing that routine when Neezer bought him. Only when Neezer tried it, the damned fool just got himself bit.”

“So that's how he come to be called Teeth,” Daniel said between mouthfuls of chicken fricassee. He'd spent the remainder of the morning bruising just about every limb trying to learn what Harry Ruggles called “a few simple falls.” It had been worth the pain for the reward of dining with the performers at their hotel. The food was much better than the fare at the tavern on the other side of town. And there was the added benefit of sitting
directly across from Fanny Ruggles, a.k.a. Francesca de V., the Fascinating Danseuse. At least Daniel had thought it would be a benefit, but he found himself so intimidated that he couldn't look at her straight on.

“Neezer was pretty heavy in the saddle,” Mr. Lamb said with a chuckle. “He was better working his horses from the ground.”

“Someone your size, though, boy, or any of us could do it.” Harry Ruggles gestured at his brothers with his spoon. They were lean and light on their feet, no burden at all for the ponies. “I've been known to do a comic turn as fine as any Joe Pentland can come up with.”

“What other tricks do you know?” Billy asked, her eyes shining. She'd taken to the tumbling like a duck to water and was eager for more. Daniel, on the other hand, had earned the Ruggles boys' grudging respect not for any native skill, but because of his pigheaded persistence and his ability to endure failures and falls without complaint.

“Harry used to be a wonder at the Drunken Cossack,” Philo said.

“Speaking of drunks . . . ,” Harry said. “There's this one I've seen where a fellow blunders into the show as if he were staggering drunk. The horse seems about to pitch him off. Then the drunk starts sobering up, so it seems, and he throws off his coat and starts doing handstands or jumping through hoops, all the time taking off another costume, then another, 'til underneath it all, you see it's one of the trick riders in his tights.”

“Or
her
tights,” Francesca put in. “In some versions, the drunkard turns out to be a lady.”

“Sometimes,” Teddy stage-whispered behind his hand, “it's really a boy in a skirt and a wig.” At least Daniel thought it was Teddy. He still couldn't keep any of the brothers straight except for Philo and Harry. The three middle brothers–Teddy, Moze, and Charlie–didn't stay in one place long enough for him to remember which was which.

“It's much better when a woman does it,” Francesca insisted.

“I–I–um, I'm sure it is, m-miss.” Daniel wondered if he'd ever be able to look at her without blushing.

“I still think you should put some juggling in,” said Mr. Dale as he sent three rusks whirling from one hand to the other.

Daniel grew dizzy at the flurry of ideas the performers tossed at him, stunts enough for ten shows and sixty ponies. He wished he had pencil and paper to write them all down.

“Enough,” Mr. Stocking said, banging the table with his knife to quiet them. “You've got the poor fella cross-eyed.”

“No, no. I want to hear more!” Billy said.

“I'd like to try riding a Roman team. See, you stand with one foot on each horse . . .” Teddy put one foot on his bench, kicked a gap between the show's teamsters sitting at the next table, and put his other foot on their bench. He then crouched as if he were straddling two moving steeds. “Sometimes with a third horse in the middle.”

Harry crawled between Teddy's legs to mime the third horse, then climbed onto a protesting teamster's shoulders and flipped himself over Teddy's back. “Or they jump from the horse's back over a ribbon or through a flaming hoop,” he said when he landed in a crouch.

“Somersaulting on the horse's rump,” Philo said, leapfrogging over Harry.

“Or maybe we could do a human pyramid,” Charlie Ruggles said, “straddling two horses at a full gallop . . .” Plates and cutlery went flying and chairs scattered as Philo and Harry went down on all fours and Teddy and Charlie climbed onto their backs. Some of the diners cheered them on and came closer to watch, while others grabbed their plates and retreated to a safe corner or out of the dining room entirely.

“Out!” the landlord's wife shrieked, scattering the Ruggles brothers with her broom. “Out, all of you heathens! Such carryings on, and on the Sabbath, too! If you can't take your meals like human beings, you can eat in the barnyard.”

The brothers somersaulted outside. Billy grabbed Daniel's
arm and dragged him out to watch their antics. They shouted more ideas at him, one brother or another miming a horse while the other boys leaped over and around each other. Francesca danced impatiently from one foot to the other, as if she longed to shed her gown and petticoats and join them.

“Come on, Billy!” Harry swooped up the lass pickaback, then tossed her to Teddy.

“It's entirely mad, they are,” Daniel said, shaking his head.

“Not entirely,” Mr. Stocking said. He gestured with a chicken leg at the crowd collecting in the hotel's dooryard, then at Mr. Lamb and Mr. Varley, who were passing out handbills and urging the bystanders to see the real show tomorrow, only four bits a ticket.

“And I'm to be part of this madness,” Daniel said in wonder and trepidation.

“Don't worry, son.” Mr. Stocking offered Daniel the remainder of his chicken leg. “You teamed up with me, which means you're already halfway there.” He nodded toward the tumblers sporting about the yard. “So, they give you any ideas?”

“A bit of a daft one,” Daniel said. “I been thinking it's an amazement to see a horse do clever tricks and such, but for him to stand quiet while there's noises and flags waving and folk leaping about and all sorts of commotion . . . well, that's something of a trick, too, isn't it?”

“The Incombustible Horse,” Mr. Stocking said, with a snap of his fingers. “You bring a horse into the ring, and you set your tumblers tumbling around him, jump another horse over him, get your brass band playing, wave flags, shoot off pistols, light fireworks, and he stands still as a statue–except maybe to yawn to show how bored he is with the whole hullaballoo. It's one of Phizzy's specialties.”

“I dare say.” Daniel had never met a horse as unflappable as Phizzy. “And once you've made 'em incom–incombustible . . . well, I fancy that all the other tricks'd come easy as child's play, wouldn't they?”