Storm and the Silver Bridle (16 page)

“Why not? Are you worried it’s going to buck you off?” Avery grinned. Then he explained. “The idea is to get your position right in the saddle before you mount up on Angel. Racehorse jockeys have a different centre of gravity. They ride with very short stirrups. Hop up on the saddle here and I’ll show you.”

“OK, but I feel pretty silly,” Issie grumbled as she clambered up and threw herself into the saddle. She let her feet dangle down because the stirrups seemed to be adjusted so that the leathers were really short.

“Put your feet in the irons and tell me how they feel,” Avery instructed her.

“I feel like a bird on a perch!” Issie giggled. “Look how high my knees are! It feels weird.”

Avery eyed her up carefully, and shook his head. “They’re the perfect length, you just need to get used to them — you’re riding like a jockey now.”

“Well, I don’t know how they do it,” Issie said.

Avery climbed up next to her on the hay bales, crouching down as if he were the jockey on his horse. “You need to tilt forward like me. It’s a bit like two-point jumping position. You keep your weight over his wither and stay low. Your aim is to stay off his back and let him run. It will make you twice as fast around the track.”

“I don’t get it,” Issie said. “My legs are up so high, how do I make him go?”

“Urge him on with your arms,” Avery replied, “and give him little taps with your ankles and increase these as you want to go faster. It’s easy, really.”

Issie looked at him quizzically. “How do you know all this?”

“I rode trackwork for a few years,” Avery said. “I had big plans to be a jockey.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I grew two feet too tall!” Avery grinned. “So you never raced?”

Avery shook his head. “Afraid not, but I rode the training sessions like a demon. I even had a nickname.

They used to call me ‘The Spaceman’ because I had a knack of finding the smallest space on the inside rail and slipping through it. I’d sit back and wait at the back of the field until we were right down to the wire and then I’d kick on and make my move. Always go for the inside rail, Issie, that’s the fastest way. No matter how small the space may look, if you’re a smart rider you can make it.”

Avery paused. “Not that you’ll be riding with tactics like that. You need to get out in front of the other riders right from the start. It’ll surprise them when you take an early lead. They won’t be expecting it. Once you’re out in front, Angel must hold that lead. He’s got the stamina to maintain the gallop the whole two kilometres, for three laps of the track. If you ride the race like I show you, they’ll be left in your dust.” Avery smiled. “Anyway, are you ready to get off the hay bales and start training a real horse?”

Issie felt the butterflies surging in her tummy. “I guess so.”

“Then let’s go saddle up.”

With Avery riding by her side on Sorcerer, Issie headed out of the gates of El Caballo. She was practising her new jockey position, standing up in her short stirrups, keeping her
weight centred over Angel’s wither, but she nearly lost her balance when Avery turned Sorcerer to the left and headed up the dirt road in the opposite direction from the village.

Issie was confused. “Aren’t we going to the village to train in the square?”

Avery shook his head. “I talked to Roberto about it last night. We both decided that training Angel in the village is too risky. It’s full of gossips and Vega probably already knows that Marius is lame and Angel is racing in his place. We don’t need Vega’s spies watching us while we train and telling him what we’re up to.”

“So where are we going?” Issie asked.

“Follow me, you’ll see,” Avery said.

The two riders cantered up and around the winding roads that led to the peak of the olive hills behind El Caballo and a few minutes later they had reached the rise of a hill overlooking flat fields. The fields directly below them were planted with olives, but beyond the olive trees was a flat, barren plain, perfect for riding trackwork.

“This is where we’ll train him,” Avery said. “Do you see those trees over there? They mark the edge of the course. Then you take him all the way to the old stone building there, and then back to me. That’s about two kilometres — the same distance as the Silver Bridle.”

Avery pulled a stopwatch out of his pocket.

“What’s that for?” Issie asked.

“Timing you,” Avery said. “On a decent track, a fast racehorse can do two kilometres in a little under two minutes thirty. I want to get a sense of how fast Angel is.”

Avery scratched a line in the dirt with his shoe right next to a tall olive tree.

“This is your start line. Now I don’t want you to take him flat out, the first time around just breeze him, OK?”

Issie looked puzzled.

“It’s a racing term,” Avery said. “It means ride him at a medium pace. Let him gallop, but don’t push him.”

Issie did up the strap on her helmet.

“Take it easy this time. We’ll see how he goes,” Avery said and Issie lined the stallion up.

“On your marks, get set… go!”

Avery dropped his hand and Issie took the cue, letting go of her tight grip on the reins. Angel lunged forward, breaking like a racehorse. His burst of speed was so sudden that for a moment Issie was left behind the stallion’s movement and had to snatch at his mane to hang on. She looked down and saw the ground rushing beneath her, felt a sick sensation and a rush of nervous energy.
Don’t look down and don’t think about it
, she told herself firmly. And
then she pulled herself back up into position and shook off her fears, focused on looking at the track ahead of her.

She was in sync with the grey horse’s gallop now, moving with him, staying low over his neck, crouching like a jockey. As they rounded the first corner her arms were beginning to ache, feeling the strain of holding the stallion back. Avery had told her not to push Angel too hard, but she wasn’t pushing at all — she was using every bit of strength she had just to hold him!

Issie’s fingers were cramping from holding the reins so tight, the leather cutting into her fingers. Now, as she came past the trees that marked halfway on the course, she loosened her grip a little and Angel instantly took the bit and lengthened his stride. He was still fighting her hands, asking for even more rein, wanting to go faster.

“You want to go, huh, boy?” Issie whispered to him. She loosened the reins off more this time. She wasn’t going to fight him any more. “OK, Angel,” she said, letting the reins go slack, “time to go!”

As the great, grey stallion began to really lengthen his stride and extend his neck, Issie felt the wind in her face, blowing dust into her eyes, blurring her vision. She tried to stay low so that the horse’s mane protected her, and
focused all her energy into hanging on as they headed down the final stretch.

As they crossed the line, Issie saw Avery out of the corner of her eye, clicking his stopwatch. He looked pleased. Angel, meanwhile, was thrilling at the chance to run, so much so that it took Issie another few hundred metres before she could pull the stallion back to a trot and turn him round to return to her instructor.

“Well?” she said to Tom. “How did we do?”

Avery showed Issie the numbers on the stopwatch. “He just did two kilometres in two minutes twenty. Never mind the Silver Bridle,” he said, “we should be entering Angel at Ascot.”

Over the next two days Avery and Issie trained Angel at the fields. Avery would get her to gallop the horse flat out for a lap or two and breeze the horse for a couple more laps of the barren fields, before trotting him for another twenty minutes or so to cool him down.

Every time Issie rode Angel around the track, she felt more and more in the groove with the grey stallion beneath her. When Avery had first shortened her stirrups so that she was riding high in the saddle she had felt a little
unstable, out of balance. Now, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to be perched up there on top of this enormous horse, feeling the wind biting into her face as the stallion ran at a gallop towards the finish line.

On the Thursday, Francoise and Alfie accompanied them to the training grounds. Francoise wore a shotgun at her hip and Alfie carried a length of white rope slung over his shoulder.

“What’s that for?” Issie asked.

“You want Angel to be fast at the break, don’t you?” Francoise replied. “Well, this is how they start the horses for the Silver Bridle. There will be a length of white rope strung across the square. The horses will line up behind it and then when the starter’s gun goes they will take off. That is what we will now practise.”

And so Issie spent the morning lining Angel up again and again behind the white rope while Avery and Francoise held each end. Alfie stood nearby with the shotgun and fired it into the air every time Francoise and Avery dropped the rope. At exactly the same moment, Issie dug her heels into Angel’s sides, urging the stallion forward.

“We want him to make the connection between the gun firing and the rope falling so that he leaps forward on cue,” Avery explained. And so they kept going, starting
the horse over and over again, firing the gun and dropping the rope, honing his instincts so that after a dozen or so times, Issie didn’t even need to kick him on, the stallion instinctively surged forward the moment the rope fell. By the end of the day all four of them were convinced that when the race day came, Angel would be the fastest horse at the break. Now all he had to do was stay in front.

“How is the training progressing?” Roberto asked them at dinner that evening. “Do we have a champion in our stables?”

Avery pushed his fork into his paella. “I think so,” he replied.

“Victorioso will be the horse to beat,” Roberto continued. “The black stallion is a threat, especially with Vega on his back.”

“Angel can take Victorioso,” Avery said with certainty. “He’s fast, Roberto. Faster than any Andalusian has the right to be. When the race starts he’ll be out in front. Issie just has to keep him there.”

“Do not forget, you must be careful on the corners,” Alfie told Issie. “The village square isn’t built like a real race track. The turns are much sharper than they look.”

“He’s right,” Francoise agreed. “The square is white chalk underfoot and very slippery. It is not uncommon for horses to slide and crash, and the houses are built so close to the streets if the horses don’t stay on course they risk slamming into the walls.”

“OK,” Issie said nervously. “I’ll be careful on the corners.”

Roberto shook his head. “It is just as dangerous on the straight. There, the riders will try and grab you, your clothes, your reins, anything they can get their hands on. They will try and unbalance you, try and pull you off your horse so that they can get past you.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” Issie asked.

“Nothing is illegal in this race,” said Roberto. “On the day of the Silver Bridle the village square will become a battleground. Do you truly think you are ready for that?”

Issie put down her fork. Suddenly she didn’t feel so hungry any more. The race was coming and nothing could stop it now. Was she ready? She had to be.