Mending Horses (9 page)

“Learning,” Sophie repeated. “And what sort of grammar do you have?”

Billy wrinkled his nose. “I never knew me grammar. I s'pose she'd be living in Ireland, if she's still living at all.”

“I mean what sort of book is he ‘learning' you from?”

“He started with the Bible, but we hadn't got very far into it when he said there's stories in there not fit for young folks' eyes. So he mostly learns me from these.” Billy pulled a wad of crumpled papers from his pocket.

Sophie smoothed out the faded advertisements for horses and cookstoves and patent medicines, menageries and traveling acrobats and conjurers. “No books at all?”

“Sometimes. But just as soon as we get to reading one, someone'll be wanting to buy it, so I'm forever missing how the story ends. Mr. S., he's a lovely reader, he is. He can play all the parts while he's reading, just like he was in a show.”

Sophie gritted her teeth. “I'm sure he can.” She closed her book and laid it on the table. “Never mind. I'll tell you the story. And then tonight we can read some of it together.” She went back to work, snipping until there seemed to be enough hair on the floor to stuff a bolster. “There.” She handed Billy a mirror. “You look like a proper little man now.” The boy winced.

With his hair cut nearly to his scalp, the boy could have passed for thirteen, so long as he didn't stand up and reveal how slight his frame was. Yet at the same time, the exposure of his forehead and ears and cheeks and neck made him seem vulnerable as a newly shorn lamb.

Billy grinned up at her. “Aye, that's grand. Thank you, ma'am.”

“Soph, where're you hiding my—” Jonny stopped dead in the kitchen doorway. “For God's sake, woman, what have you done to his hair?”

“I cut it.” There was a little more acid in her voice than she'd intended.

“Cut it? Damn it all, you scalped the poor boy!”

“She done a grand job, ain't she, Mr. S?” Billy said. There was a little too much bright innocence in his voice, causing Sophie to wonder if there was more to the haircut than a little boy's wish to look grown up.

“Folks'll think he's got lice. Now, Soph—”

“Now, Jonny,” Sophie said, her protest quelling her cousin's. “We need to have a talk about this boy's education.” She waved her scissors threateningly under Jonny's nose. “Or, rather, the lack of it.”

Jonny deflated like a punctured balloon. “Um,” he said. He studied Billy's haircut again. “Very nice. A handsome haircut, very fine indeed.”

Daniel slapped at a mosquito and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. Whose daft idea had it been to send him and Billy off collecting fox grapes? Ah, yes, the bloody peddler, probably so he and the Taylors and the Ainesworths could have some privacy to decide Daniel's future for him. He stopped short, a bunch of fat grapes warm and heavy in his hand. Mr. Stocking and his friends had proven their good will, and here he was full of ungrateful suspicious thoughts. Maybe the only reason they'd sent him and Billy out was that the ladies really did need to do their jelly making, and perhaps Mr. Stocking only wanted to give the lads a go at learning to be sociable together. But how did one do that?

Billy hacked at the vines as if he hoped to draw blood, and there wasn't much doubt whose blood the lad wanted. Ever since Mr. Stocking had invited Daniel to join them, Billy had done nothing but scowl and cast venomous looks at him.

Daniel took a breath—as much as he could, with the humid air clinging around his face like a steamy damp towel. All they wanted was for him to say a few friendly words and put the lad at ease. It wasn't very much, was it? But he'd no clue how to knit together the little chains of pleasantries that normal folk called conversation, never mind how to spark a friendship. He thought of how young Ethan had befriended him at Lyman's. Ethan had been the one always speaking first, with his endless questions. All right then. He'd start with a question that wouldn't get the lad's back up.

The sweet, sticky aroma of the ripe grapes hung heavy in the air. He could already taste the fruit's promise, and licked his lips
in anticipation. So he said, “Won't Mrs. Ainesworth be pleased? She can make barrels of jelly now.”

“Barrels?” Billy looked at the wheelbarrow mounded high with bunches of grapes. He wrinkled his nose, as if the fruit wouldn't fill a thimble with jelly. “She'll not be half as pleased to be cooking 'em as we are to be picking 'em.”

Daniel wasn't sure whether this was progress or not. It was, at least, more than two words from the other boy's mouth, even if they were hostile words. “Whyever wouldn't she be pleased? She likes to cook, don't she?”

“And I fancy you like doing everything you're s'posed to, now?” It was a good thing the grapes were destined for jelly, for Billy flung them into the wheelbarrow as though trying to pulp the fruit right then and there.

“Work ain't about liking or not liking. It's only about doing,” Daniel said. “And anyway, it'd hardly be natural for a lady not to like cooking and such.”

Billy grunted. “I'd rather be spending a week picking grapes or cutting hay than an hour tending a mess of kettles in a kitchen.”

Daniel couldn't see that tending a pot of jam was any work at all compared to wrestling grapes from a tangle of saplings and vines on a sweltering day that felt more like July than September, all the while watching for poison ivy and plagued by mosquitoes.

Billy stomped off through the underbrush, cursing Daniel for an idiot and a lot of other things that Daniel couldn't catch, except that hearing them reminded him how much his Gaelic was slipping away, no matter how often he practiced it with Ivy.

“Aye, and the same to you, you foul-tempered little wretch,” Daniel muttered. He flung himself down on the pond's bank, cooling his feet in the soft mud. Lifting his cap, he raked a hand through his sweaty hair. He picked up a stone and hurled it toward the opposite bank. It fell short and plunked beneath the murky water. “Dammitall,” he muttered as he tossed his cap and cravat aside and shrugged off his suspenders.

“What're you doing?” Billy asked. Trousers rolled to his knees,
he stood in the shallows a dozen yards away, poking a stick at something in the water.

“I'm having meself a swim.” Perhaps it would clear his head. “Come on, if you like.” He stepped out of his trousers and kicked them aside.

“I can't—I don't—” Billy backed out of the water.

“I'll teach you.” Daniel yanked his shirt over his head. Perhaps a swimming lesson might soften the lad. He waded out, slowing as the water lapped to his knees, then his thighs. He turned to encourage the other boy in, and found Billy staring at him.

Billy's lips clamped shut tight, and his eyes were wide and darting anywhere but at Daniel.

It must have been the scars: the pale stripes and splotches marring his arms and shoulders like spilled paint, standing up in ridges and puckers where the burns had healed badly. He ran his fingers along one long scar. “'T'ain't nothing.” He swallowed hard, trying to bring the words without the memories. “Was a fire is all. When I was small—”

Billy glanced up, then just as quickly ducked his head, crimson spreading from his forehead to his collar. He wrapped his arms around himself, clutching at his shirt as if he feared that Daniel would come and snatch it away. Daniel realized it wasn't his arms that the boy was staring at after all. A flash of revelation made him sit down in the pond, his own face burning even though the chilly water reached to his chin.

“Sweet Jesus!” he blurted out as Billy turned and ran away.

Jonathan shoved the map aside. “No, Eldad, I had my fill of peddling down south.” He loosened his collar and glanced out the parlor window, which overlooked the surrounding hills, red and yellow just beginning to splash across the green slopes. Although it felt as though summer were back to stay, frost wasn't far off. “I'd rather get my shivers from the cold than from the things I seen down there.” He pulled another map from the pile. “What about this Berkshire route? Who's working that one?”

Eldad glanced out the window. “Well, there's—uh, oh.” A mischievous grin lit his face. “Send 'em off to pick grapes, that'll make friends of 'em, isn't that what you and Sophie said?”

“Something like that.” Jonathan rose from his seat to follow Eldad's gaze.

“Well, only one of 'em's come back, looking kind of soggy and none too friendly.” Eldad's blue eyes crinkled with merriment. “Drowned the other one, no doubt.”

With a silent curse, Jonathan squinted at the lone figure trudging behind the wheelbarrow. The sour look on Daniel's face made it clear that the afternoon had been a failure. Jonathan had no doubt Billy was to blame. “That little devil,” he said as he headed for the door.

As Daniel drew nearer, Jonathan's mind was already whirring with how to smooth things over and try again. “Billy give you a ducking?” he asked.

Daniel dropped the wheelbarrow's handles and thumbed his cap back. “I went for a swim,” he said, his voice sharp as broken glass.

An uneasy knot gathered in Jonathan's stomach. “And what about Billy?”

“Run off the minute I dropped me trousers.” The boy's eyes were dark with accusation. “Don't s'pose you'd be knowing why, now, would you?”

“Billy ain't too easy around the water.” Jonathan cocked his head so the sun was in his eyes. With the light reflecting off his spectacles, maybe the boy wouldn't be able to read his face.

“No, I don't fancy
she
is.” Daniel's eyes pinned him hard. “How long have you known?”

“She? Well, uh—” Jonathan began to reach into his bag of peddler's bluff and bluster, then stopped himself. He owed this boy the truth. “Pretty soon after I'd bought off his—her—dammit—
her
daddy. Now look, you've got me thinking about it just when I'd schooled myself to stop.”

“Thinking about what?”

“About Billy being a girl.”

“How can you not be thinking about it?”

“I can't afford to if I don't want folks catching on. The key to a good performance ain't keeping them convinced.” Jonathan gestured at an imaginary audience. “It's keeping yourself convinced.” He stabbed a finger at Daniel's chest. “The minute you stop believing you're King Lear and start remembering you're Sam Slick from Podunk, you're doomed.”

“This ain't no play.”

“No, it ain't. The minute she forgets she's William James Michael Fogarty—the minute I forget it—some constable or overseer of the poor'll be snatching her away.”

“At least she'd be brung up like a proper girl.”

“She'd be brung up by her father.” Jonathan spat a wet, brown stream that splatted hard onto a stone. “Or by nobody, which'd be a damn sight better.” He gestured for Daniel to follow him into the cool dimness of the barn. After finding a pair of milking stools, he settled himself into a shadowy corner. “Sit down, son. I got a story to tell you.”

“Hey, Jonny! Somebody's stealing your horse!”

It had to be a joke. What horse thief in his right mind would steal a nag as slack-jointed and swaybacked as Phizzy? Jonathan crossed the smoke-filled taproom and looked out the window. His wagon was there, the shafts empty. He rushed outside. Damn it all, wasn't it that same scrawny boy with the black eye who'd tried to pick his pocket that morning? But the joke was on the boy this time. He'd unfastened the harness and climbed onto Phizzy's back, but that was as far as he'd gotten. He flapped the reins, and his bony heels thumped away at Phizzy's sides with about as much effect as raindrops. The gelding looked over his shoulder at Jonathan with sleepy annoyance, as if asking his master to rid him of a pesky deerfly
.