Once in a Blue Moon (40 page)

Blue Moon stood, legs splayed, on four stone slabs set into the ground, while a man measured the height of his withers with a rod. The big bay's head nodded as if he were dozing in the sun.

Jessalyn sidled up to the Sarn't Major. She felt conspicuous, sure that at any moment someone would shout and fingers would point her way, declaring her an impostor. She had pinned her hair close to her head and covered it with Topper's bright scarlet skullcap, then rubbed dirt over her cheeks to disguise their feminine pallor. Beyond binding her breasts, she hadn't needed to bother with her figure. She'd always been slim-hipped and long-shanked, and her feet had fitted perfectly into the boy's lightweight leather boots.

"How do I look, Sarn't Major?" she asked, pitching her voice low.

The trainer flicked a glance in her direction. "Ye look like a proper knight, but ye're walkin' like a regular dolly-mop. Quit swivelin' and swishin' yer hips. What ye need to do is strut."

"Strut. Right." Jessalyn affected a swaggering stance, cocking one hip. She tried to spit through her teeth and nearly splattered her boots. She eyed Blue Moon, whose head was drooping to his knees. "He looks half asleep. Are you sure he wasn't given something?"

"Our boy never perks up till he's coming down the flat and lookin' at the finishin' post. Ye know that. Ye best go weigh in now, and don't get to flappin' yer jaws while yer about it."

Jessalyn put her fingers to her lips and winked at him. He answered with a ferocious scowl, and her mouth broke into a big smile.

"Christ in his cups, don't go flashin' yer ivories!" he exclaimed. "Never been a boy born what looks as pretty as ye do when ye smile."

"Why, I do believe you have just paid me a compliment, you ol' softy. I would kiss you for it were I not in disguise."

"Hunh. Good thing then."

The Sarn't Major continued to grouse and grumble as he handed her several thin, flat pieces of lead to bring her weight up to handicap. She tucked them into the special slots sewn into her saddle for that purpose, then
strutted
over to sit on the scale plate. She kept her mouth shut, and the man barely glanced at her as he added the weights onto the opposite plate until she was balanced out. He nodded, made a tick on a slate, and motioned for her to get down.

The Sarn't Major took the kit from her hands when she rejoined him. He saddled Blue Moon in his efficient one-handed manner, then gave her a leg up. It felt as if she were straddling a mountain as she settled onto Blue Moon's broad back.

The Sarn't Major studied her seat, then decided to shorten her stirrups a notch. She looked down at his bent head, at the bald spot in his gunmetal gray hair that was clipped close to his scarred and knobby scalp. "Does Gram know what we're doing?"

"Aye. I told 'er." He glanced up, and for a moment Jessalyn could have sworn he almost smiled. "She said 'twas better to die game than to die chicken."

A nervous laugh, rusty as old bellows, burst out of her. She squelched it by sucking on her lower lip. She could feel her heart beating through the soles of her boots. "Is there anything special I should do?"

"Aye. Don't fall off."

With that admonition ringing in her ears, Jessalyn walked Blue Moon to the starting post through a crush of carriages and spectators milling around on horseback. Most of the runners were already there, and it was their knights Jessalyn worried most about, for they all knew Topper and would have expected to see him up on Blue Moon. She pulled her skullcap so far down over her ears, she could barely see out from beneath the stiff beak.

The other jockeys circled the post, making sure their girths were tight and making last-minute adjustments to their stirrup lengths. It was perfect racing weather. The sun was a hazy yellow ball in a sky the color of birch bark. The light shifted with the breeze, from brilliant sparkle to soft mist. The horses' coats gleamed like dew-wet grass.

Jessalyn had never seen so many people on hand to view a race. They sat on the roofs of their carriages, burst from the seams of the grandstands, swarmed in a thick cluster around the betting post. The royal white pavilion looked like a miniature castle with its battlements and Gothic arches. The king wasn't there today, for he was busy preparing for his upcoming coronation. Earlier that morning Jessalyn had flirted and bribed her way into obtaining a seat for Gram in the pavilion, out of the sun and the crowd.

Jessalyn's skullcap muffled the other jockeys' nervous chatter and the distant hum of the spectators. Fear and excitement tightened her muscles, and Blue Moon, picking up her mood, did a nervous little sidestep. Jessalyn drew in a deep breath to calm them both, filling her lungs with the smell of the turf, which was perfumed with wild thyme and juniper. The smooth green grass spread empty before her, looking like the baize on a billiard table. A white-railed fence bordered the course like a decorative strip of tatted lace. It didn't help to know that the posts were made thin and brittle, so that they would easily break beneath any jockey unfortunate enough to be dashed against them.

The last horse to come up to the post was the day's favorite, a dark chestnut with a starred forehead called Merlin. A richly dressed man with boot black hair and beady cockerel eyes rode alongside, imparting last-minute instructions to his jockey. "Give him a bellyful of the whip at the finish. Cut his bloody entrails out if you have to, lad. But bring him home a winner."

Jessalyn thought Merlin was splendid to look at: big, strong, and well muscled. But there was a sensitive, high-strung air about him. He didn't at all look the sort of horse that would respond well to the whip.

"Hullo, you there, boy."

A whip tapped Jessalyn on the shoulder. Startled, she spun around so fast in the saddle she nearly unseated herself. A jockey on a piebald gelding sat glaring at her out of spaniel-colored eyes. "That's Topper's pitch ye're sittin* on.

Jessalyn spit through her teeth. This time her efforts barely missed the shiny toe of the other fellow's boots. "What's it t' ye?" she growled.

The young man's sparrowlike mouth stretched into a tight grin as he slashed the looped end of his whip at her face.

If she hadn't shied back at the last moment, the thick rawhide would have taken out her eyes. As it was, she jerked hard on the reins and Blue Moon reared. She barely had him collected again when the starting bell clanged, catching them both flat-footed.

The race was off, and all Jessalyn saw was a cloud of dust.

It seemed to take them forever just to catch up with the pack. She hung back after that, although her nerves and muscles screamed with the temptation to forge ahead. It was so hard to let others pass her, to look at the flying tails of the leaders and not urge Blue Moon too early into his breakaway speed.

She made her eyes go soft and wide, opening them to all around her. Bleeding bands of rainbow colors flashed by. The air rushed past her ears in a gentle roar, like a winter sea. Pounding hooves thrummed in her blood. She tasted dust and grass and excitement.

An opening appeared at the rails, and she decided to take it. Blue Moon sprang forward with a powerful thrust of his hindquarters, anticipating her signal by half a second. They closed on the narrow space at the same time as the piebald gelding.

The two horses brushed, and the piebald's jockey shot her a glance. He thrust his knee upward, catching under her thigh, and flinging her out of the saddle.

She lost both stirrups and saved herself from falling only by snatching at Blue Moon's thick mane. She clung, dangling sideways, as the ground rushed past her eyes at incredible speed. It was like trying to sit on top of a greasy pole; she felt as if she were hanging on by her eyebrows. At last she managed to stab one foot back into a stirrup and haul herself upright again. It was, she thought with a shock of silent laughter, the most death-defying acrobatic feat she had ever performed.

Somehow, even with her flailing on his back, Blue Moon had still kept neck and neck with the piebald. The jockey, catching her out the corner of his eye, turned his head. Jessalyn saw his whip come up. She flung her arm around as if she were taking a wild swing with a cricket bat, and her fist caught him hard on the neck. Then all she saw were the soles of his boots.

Riderless, the piebald slowed, and Blue Moon took his place at the rails. Jessalyn cast a swift glance backward. The other jockey was rolling out of harm's way beneath the rails, bellowing curses.

They were nearing the home straight now, and the spectators began to gallop onto the course, crowding the field into the rails. Jessalyn kept her gaze straight ahead between Blue Moon's cropped ears. She held the reins lightly, giving the bay his head, her thighs and calves squeezing gently, her arms making smooth scrubbing motions in the air. Blue Moon's long, fluid stride tore at the turf, every ripple of muscle in his big body seeming to find an echo within herself.

They broke free from the pack with a quarter of a mile of flat green grass to cover and the dark chestnut favorite a furlong in front of them.

The smell of the race was in Blue Moon's nostrils; it thrummed through his blood. He smelled victory, and he went after it, straining, reaching, striving with every beat of his great heart. They bore down upon the winning post, and Jessalyn knew suddenly that they weren't going to make it. Blue Moon ran as if his legs bore wings, but it was not enough. She'd left it until too late.

Merlin's jockey heard them coming and craned a look back over his shoulder. His eyes grew wide to see them so close. He flailed madly at his horse's withers with his whip, as if beating at a carpet, a frenzy of flapping elbows. Merlin's ears went back, and he shied just as Blue Moon stretched out his neck, striding past the finishing post...

And winning by a nose.

It wasn't until they'd slowed to a walk that the great waves of sound hit her, though it must have been going on all along. Cheers rolled and lapped over her, buffeting her; shrill whistles pierced her ears. Blue Moon stopped flat-footed, his sweat-foamed sides heaving. Jessalyn leaned over his neck, pressing her cheek into his wet hide, her heart swelling with love for him, and pride in his stamina and courage. "You were magnificent," she crooned. He was truly rare and special, a blue moon.

Horses and men surged around them, plucking at her sleeves, slapping her on the back, shouting questions in her face. The Sarn't Major pushed his way through the crowd. "Give way, damn ye," he shouted. "Give way."

Jessalyn slid out of the saddle, and the Sarn't Major stood in front of her, blocking her from the pressing crowd. "Not 'alf bad," the crusty old trainer said. And then to Jessalyn's utter shock he bussed her on the cheek. A choking feeling clogged her throat, something between joy and exhaustion, so that she couldn't speak.

Suddenly her legs went so weak and wobbly she would have slithered to the ground like a collapsed balloon if the Sarn't Major hadn't caught her beneath the elbow. "Don't ye go turning back into a vaporish female yet," he groused at her as he fumbled with the girth buckles. "Ye've got to weigh in."

It was on her way to the scales that she saw him. Her dark angel. He stood beside a red-and-white-striped ale tent, a leather jack clutched in one fist. Their gazes clashed and held. There was no doubt that he knew her, but then hadn't he once said that he would know her anywhere?

He tipped his hat at her, but he didn't smile. He tossed what ale was left in the jack into the dirt and after, turning on his heel, pushed his way through the sharpers at the hazard tables, walking fast with his long, hitching stride.

After Jessalyn had been weighed back in, and the man had put another tick beside the Letty name on the slate, she borrowed a coat from one of the other jockeys to cover her bright scarlet and black taffeta shirt so that she could slip unnoticed through the crowd. She hurried past all the tents and booths, with their greasy smells and their flapping flags, until she was almost running by the time she reached the royal pavilion. She wished she could have seen Gram's face when she and Blue Moon had flashed past the winning post, but she would see it now.

She mounted the steps to the upper balcony two at a time. But at the top she paused to take something out of the small slash pocket in her taffeta jockey shirt. She had pawned a garnet necklace, the only piece of jewelry she had of her mother's, to buy it. She thought of it now as her good-luck charm. She had carried it with her on that wild ride and it had brought her down the home straight a winner. It had made winners of them all.

Lady Letty sat in a ribbonback chair before the balcony railing. She looked straight ahead, out over the rolling downs, a scene she must have shared a hundred times in the years gone by with her baronet.

For a moment Jessalyn stood behind her. She saw the white rails that marked the home straight, and she heard again the thunder of a thousand cheers. Tears welled in her eyes—from pride in herself and Blue Moon and from the special joy of at last having a dream come true. She laid her hand on Lady Letty's shoulder and swung around to kneel beside her chair. "We've done it, Gram. We've won the Derby."

Lady Letty sat stiff, unmoving, not speaking.