Mending Horses (43 page)

“No,” Daniel said, as Liam rose to chase after her. “Let her go think things out by herself. And when she comes back, we got to abide by her choice. All of us,” he added, with a pointed look at Mr. Chamberlain. “You can play all the games you like, sir, but you'll not be keeping Billy long if she doesn't want to stay. Isn't that right, Liam?”

Liam sighed wearily. “Indeed. No one's ever had much luck at making Nuala do what she doesn't want to.”

Mr. Chamberlain opened his mouth to retort, but Daniel cut him off with an impatient hand gesture. “As for you, sir, if you do aught against her brother, then you'd best be sleeping with one eye open, for she'll be taking her vengeance on you one way or another. And I'll be right alongside her.”

“And so will I,” said Mr. Stocking, putting a hand on Daniel's shoulder.

“All right, then,” Mr. Chamberlain said. “But she'd better not come running to me when she gets tired of her brother and his vermin-infested little shack.”

Augusta had to hold fast to Liam's arm to prevent him from striking the conjurer.

As the diners left the table, Mr. Ainesworth drew Daniel aside. “I've never seen or heard the like. Asking a child to make such a decision? I can't believe they agreed to it.”

“I don't know as they have. But they have agreed on one thing,” Daniel said, feeling the weight of Liam's and Mr. Chamberlain's angry glares. “They've agreed to leave off hating each other and start hating me instead.”

It was hours before Billy returned. Deciding that it would be better to do something other than sit in the tavern or pace the dooryard, Daniel groomed Ivy and polished her tack, while Mr. Stocking went to the wagon shed to inventory his wares, or so he said. Since the peddler had no tin and few notions left, Daniel suspected he would do little more than move things about and write meaningless notes in his ledger while he fretted over Billy's decision. Meanwhile, the Fogartys waited on the settee in Mr. Warriner's sitting room, when Liam wasn't pacing. Mr. Chamberlain headed down to the show lot to supervise preparations for the next day's performance. Mr. Ainesworth had joined him, expressing curiosity about the museum, although Daniel guessed that the constable was more interested in making sure that the conjurer wouldn't follow Billy and try to influence her decision.

It was an unseasonably mild afternoon. Daniel took a stool out to the barnyard to work in the thin November sunlight. He polished and repolished metalwork and buffed saddle and bridle until his arms ached and Ivy's tack looked almost new. He was just shining up the stirrups and buckles for the third time when someone hissed at him from the barn.

Billy lurked in the shadows, gesturing for him to join her. He felt an unexpected surge of delight that she'd sought him out first. The delight quickly faded at her words.

“Where's Liam?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

So she'd decided. Daniel's stomach clenched as tight as it would if someone had taken Ivy away. “In the sitting room, last I
saw him,” he replied gruffly. Avoiding her eyes, he gestured with his polishing rag.

Billy trotted toward the hotel, her arms swinging and her shoulders hunched forward like a boy's. Her new gown was already torn, mud and grass staining the pale blue flannel.

Slowly, Daniel hung the saddle in the space Mr. Warriner had allotted him. When he turned, Mr. Stocking was standing in the barn door, a canvas sack in his hand.

“I saw her come back,” the peddler said, setting down his sack. “She nipped into the barn when I turned to watch her, like she didn't want to be seen.”

Daniel nodded. “It's Liam,” was all he needed to say.

Mr. Stocking winced. “That's as it should be.” He took his spectacles off and blinked hard a couple of times. “That young man has had sorrow enough.” He took a long time wiping his glasses with his handkerchief and putting them back on. “Well, that's it, I guess.” He gestured with his chin toward the sack. “Will you see she gets that? It's the rest of her clothes and her books. Not that she'll have much use for 'em. Augusta'll probably trim her out in dresses and ribbons, and she was never much of a one for books.”

“Won't you want to be giving 'em to her yourself?”

Mr. Stocking shook his head. “I can't.” He moved farther into the barn. “I . . . um . . . I need to confer with Phizzy for a while.”

Daniel felt aimlessly melancholy. Normally when he felt that way, he would take Ivy for a ride or groom her. But Ivy was in the barn with Phizzy, and Daniel didn't want to intrude on Mr. Stocking's solitude. He finally decided to go up to his room to sort out the things Billy had left behind and to add them to the sack Mr. Stocking had given him. He slipped in the back door and went up the narrow stairway, avoiding the sitting room and Billy and Liam.

When he came back outside, he discovered Billy in the wagon shed, rummaging through the storage bin under the wagon's seat. “Where is it?” she mumbled to herself. “I know he kept it.”
When Daniel called her name, she banged her head on the lid of the bin. She turned to him, her face grimy with tears.

He felt a prickling at the back of his eyes and a leaden weight in his chest. What was the good of making friends if you had to be forever leaving them? Surely it was better when he'd not let anyone into his heart. But young Ethan, and now Billy—both of them had made something inside him go soft, and giving them up was more painful than anything Lyman or any bully had ever done to him.

“Here,” he said brusquely, thrusting the sack toward her. “Your things.”

As she rooted through it, the bag wriggled and jerked as though it held an animal struggling to break free. “Ah!” came her muffled voice, and she emerged with something in her hand. She polished it with a fold of her skirt. “Where's Mr. S.?” she asked, her head down, intent on wiping the object clean.

“With Phizzy,” Daniel said.

She dashed into the barn. Daniel followed. Mr. Stocking came out from Phizzy's stall and into the narrow sunbeam that slanted onto the barn's floor. The peddler and the lass stood apart from each other, poised on the balls of their feet like dancers waiting for the music to start.

Then Billy reached out her hand. The object that she held was somewhat the worse for wear; most of its papery brown husk had broken off, and it had lost several kernels, but those that remained glowed like rubies.
“A red ear of corn for the one you love best,”
Mr. Stocking had said, it seemed like years ago.

He couldn't hear what Billy said as she presented her gift, but Daniel had never seen such a smile on Mr. Stocking's face. The peddler took the red ear and gathered Billy into his arms, then kissed the top of her head.

They came out of the barn, Billy's arm around Mr. Stocking's waist, and the peddler's hand on her shoulder. She was still crying, and Mr. Stocking seemed unsteady on his feet, his glasses fogged with tears.

“It's not Liam, then?” Daniel said.

Billy shook her head, then came at Daniel so fast that she nearly knocked him over. She threw her arms around him, and the front of his shirt grew damp. “Here, lass,” he said at last. “I can't hardly breathe.” But what he really felt was as if he'd been holding his breath all afternoon, and now he finally could breathe.

“You're sure this is what you want, Billy?” Mr. Stocking said.

She nodded as she pulled away from Daniel. “For a while I thought of not coming back here at all, just so's I wouldn't have to choose. After I made up me mind, I still couldn't come back for ages and ages because I didn't know how to tell Liam.” She let out a hiccuping sob.

Daniel fished his handkerchief out and handed it to her.

She took a long time wiping her face and blowing her nose. “Bloody hell and damnation! I didn't want to cry. But since I come back and told Liam, I can't stop.”

“Is he all right?” Daniel asked.

“He has Augusta,” Billy said. “Maybe I'd'a chose different if he was alone.” She tried to hand Daniel back his handkerchief, now sodden with tears and phlegm, but he put up a hand to tell her to keep it. “I love him with all me heart, but I couldn't stay there. I know it'd be better, now Da's gone, but it'd still be naught but cooking and sewing and washing up and helping Augusta tend the babies when they start coming, and being trapped in one place all the time. If I stayed, it'd be the death of me. I tried to explain to Liam, but he just couldn't see.” She fidgeted with her skirt, making the tear larger. “I think maybe Augusta understood a bit, though. Liam didn't understand, either, when I told him Mr. S. is me proper da, the one I was meant to have.”

“'Scuse me.” The peddler snatched Daniel's handkerchief away from Billy and wiped his eyes and his spectacles, but only redistributed the damp smears on the glass and his cheeks.

“I'd not have understood, meself, a few months ago,” Daniel said. “I'm sorry for your brother, though. He's a good man.”

“Aye, he's grand,” Billy said. “I'll write to him, and I'll visit every chance I get. Anyway, if I stay, I can't help him, can I? If I go with you, I can send him some of me wages.”

“Here.” Daniel picked up the sack that held Billy's things. “I s'pose you'll be pleased to have your trousers back.”

“Aye, that I will.” Billy tugged at her skirt as if she wanted to rip the dress off then and there. Then she stopped herself and smoothed the fabric out. “But maybe I should wear this a while yet. Augusta was up an entire night making it for me—all new cloth, though I told her I'd be fine with someone's made-over castoffs.” She frowned, rubbing at the stains. “And look, I've spoiled it already. It'd be ungrateful, I s'pose, did I put it aside before we take our leave.”

Daniel exchanged surprised looks with the peddler.

“That's mighty thoughtful of you,” Mr. Stocking said.

“I hardly see the virtue in all this thinking you've been wanting me to do,” Billy said, running a hand through her short curls. “All it does is give me a powerful headache.”

“I know what you mean,” Daniel said with a grin. “Sometimes I've felt me head would burst with all the thinking I've done since I've joined the two of you. But still and all, I been doing a bit of thinking on me own about your trousers.”

“Me trousers?” Billy repeated.

“Aye. You know there'll come a time when trousers and short hair and bad manners can't hide that you're a lass, don't you?” He braced himself for her angry denial, but she just nodded grimly. “Don't be looking so sour. It mightn't be as bad as all that,” he continued. “I was just thinking that it's grand and all for a lad to be riding like the devil and tumbling and doing tricks and such. But for a lass to be doing it, that's something really out of the ordinary, isn't it? I think folk'd like seeing that even more than what you're doing now.”

“You mean I could be like—like Francesca?”

“Better, I'd say,” Daniel replied.

A smile flickered across Billy's face, then quickly faded. “So long as Mr. C. doesn't throw us out of his show and take away our ponies. After all, I didn't choose him, now, did I?” She took one of Mr. Stocking's hands. “I chose you.” To Daniel's surprise, Billy took his hand, too.

Daniel stood a moment in stunned silence, his ears and face reddening. Then he shook his head and laughed. “You never. The truth is, you were really choosing Phizzy.”

“Haven't you learned anything being with me, son?” Mr. Stocking said. “You don't choose a horse like Phizzy, or like your Ivy, neither. A horse like that chooses you.”

Readers often wonder how much of a historical novel is fact and how much is fiction. All the characters and events in
Mending Horses
are fictional, except for Jerry Warriner, his tavern, and his household, but the situations are as accurate to the time period as possible.

With the exception of Farmington, Massachusetts, and Chauncey, Connecticut, all the towns and villages mentioned in the book are real places. The names of some villages have changed over time. Cabotville and Factory Village were villages of Springfield, Massachusetts, and are now part of Chicopee. Jenksville was a village of Ludlow, Massachusetts, and Bethel, which in 1839 was a village of Danbury, Connecticut, is now a separate town.

A fortuitous coincidence was my discovery that the opening of the Western Rail Road in Springfield happened on October 1, 1839—perfect timing for my story. I'd known that the railroad was under construction in the late 1830s and early 1840s, but it wasn't until I'd already chosen the date for my story and decided to make Hugh a railroad worker that I learned of the October 1 event, which fit in perfectly.

The “Paddy camps,” like “the Patch” where the Fogartys live in Cabotville, were a brutal fact of life for Irish immigrants in the 1830s. No housing was provided for the Irishmen who dug canals, built mills, and constructed boardinghouses for Yankee mill girls to live in. In milltowns and along rail lines, the first homes of the Irish were usually makeshift shanties built with construction rubble scavenged from work sites. Brian C. Mitchell's
The Paddy Camps: The Irish of Lowell, 1821–61
provides an excellent and grim account of the conditions under which Irish workers and their families lived.