The Scorpio Races (31 page)

I try, without success, to imagine Gabe crying. Even at our parents’ burial, he had looked dry-eyed into the hole in the ground, shivering in the wind, letting Finn and me lean against him and weep. Despite that, the image of him in this chair, crying, creeps into my head, and I can feel myself softening toward him. I’m resentful that this hypothetical Gabriel can work such magic on me. I say, “But he doesn’t even have to go.”

“Mm. I will tell you one thing he said, Kate. He said that you don’t need to ride in the races.”

“Of
course
I do! We need the money.”

“And the races are your answer to that problem. It’s how you feel you can solve it. Gabe has a problem, too, and leaving is how he feels he can solve it.”

It’s a horribly wise way of looking at it, and it annoys me. “Isn’t there something holy about taking care of widows and orphans? Isn’t he supposed to be taking care of us?” But even as I say it, I remember him saying
I can’t bear it.
He had been taking care of us. From that dry-eyed funeral where he let us lean on him in our grief to working late on the docks to trying to spare us from Malvern. I suddenly feel very selfish to begrudge him his escape. I sigh. “Why does it have to be leaving, though? Can’t he come up with a different answer? Can’t I change his mind?”

Father Mooneyham considers this. “Leaving doesn’t mean not coming back. It wouldn’t hurt you to meditate on the story of the prodigal son.”

This is about as comforting as a cold brick when you’re lonely. I stuff Father Mooneyham’s handkerchief back under the curtain, and when he takes it, I scowl at the stained-glass window over the altar. There are thirteen red panes in the middle of it, and Mum or someone told me once that they were supposed to represent drops of Columba’s blood. He was martyred here. It was back before the natives knew that confession and priests and sin were good for them, so they stabbed Columba and threw him off one of the western cliffs. Then his body washed up with the
capaill uisce
one October and because it wasn’t disgusting, even after being in the ocean for so long, he was sainted. I think his jawbone is still kept there behind the altar.

This reminds me, suddenly, of how Gabe had decided when he was fifteen that he was going to be a priest. He’d been absolutely no fun for about two weeks. It was Gabe who’d told me the story of Columba; I remember sitting in the pew with him then. His hair had been slicked back with water because he’d felt it added to his ethereal appearance. I feel a sudden pang of longing for that foolishly serious Gabe and the trusting and always ill-contented Puck that I’d been then.

“Aren’t you going to give me a penance, Father?” I ask.

“Kate, you have yet to confess any sins to me.”

I cast my mind back over the past week. “I considered taking the Lord’s name on Monday. Well, not ‘God.’ I thought about saying ‘Jesus Christ!’ I also ate an entire orange without telling Finn, because I knew he’d be annoyed.”

Father Mooneyham says, “Go home, Kate.”

“I
have
been horrid. I just can’t think of them right now. I don’t want you to think otherwise.”

“Will it make you feel better to say two Hail Marys and a Columba Creed?”

“Yes, thank you.” He absolves me. I feel absolved. As I get up, I see that someone is waiting in the pews on the opposite side of the church, waiting to confess. It’s Annie, Dory Maud’s youngest sister. Her lipstick is a little smeared, but it seems cruel to tell a blind woman that, so I don’t say anything. I almost don’t notice Elizabeth, sitting at the end of the same pew with her hair pinned up to her head and her arms pinned across her chest. I can’t decide which of them is confessing. Annie looks dreamy, but she always does because she can’t see farther than three feet away. Elizabeth looks vaguely angry, but she always does because she can see farther than three feet away.

“Puck,” Elizabeth says.

Annie says hello to me in her soft voice.

“Where are you headed?” Elizabeth asks.

I feel a little lighter. “I have to return a jacket.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

PUCK

Even before I get down the twilight-darkened lane to the Malvern Yard, I can see evidence of it — the fields and fields of horses — and I can smell it — good horses making good manure from good hay. I reckon horse manure is a lot like a cat scratch. There’s nothing too disagreeable about either of those things so long as there’s not too much of it and it’s not too fresh. And there’s nothing disagreeable about the grass-hay-manure scent of the Malvern Yard. Because it’s been a long day and there’s no reason to expect that it’s not going to get longer, I allow myself the small pleasure of imagining that the sloping fields and glossy mares on either side of the lane are mine, and that I’m strolling pleasantly down to my own yard, filled with the buoyant contentedness that comes from the certainty of one’s holdings and the knowledge that dinner will have once been a cow.

On the gallop to my left, there’s a scrawny guy on a trotting thoroughbred gelding. He’s got his stirrups strapped up short like a jockey, which I guess he is, and when he trots, he looks like he’s hovering over his mount instead of riding it. A man leans on the rail watching, and if I were a betting sort like Dory Maud, I’d put money that he isn’t from Thisby. He’s wearing white shoes, for starters, and I don’t think there’s a place on Thisby that sells white shoes. Closer to the main building, another groom leads a dusky gray with a soaking coat back toward one of the pastures. The horse looks cleaner than I feel, and considerably better fed. Then, through the open stable doors, I glimpse a chestnut standing in cross ties in the aisle while a boy brushes it down. The evening light pours in around them and makes a purple copy of the horse and groom on the ground behind them. A whinny peals across the yard, and another horse replies from inside the barn.

It’s all very much like I expected a famous race yard to look like, and I feel a little funny about it. I’m not an ambitious person, I don’t think, and it’s not as if I ever spent any time daydreaming of having a farm of my own. And I generally have a pretty dim view of people who waste time sighing and moaning and rending their clothing about things that they don’t have and never will, because Dad’s religion was all about knowing the difference between need and want. But standing here looking into the heart of the Malvern Yard, I feel a small, fierce pang of sadness that I won’t ever have a farm.

I try to decide if it would be worth being Benjamin Malvern if it meant that I could live in a place like this.

“Who are you looking for?”

I scowl at my shadow before locating the voice. It’s the groom with the just-bathed gray thoroughbred — imagine a world where the horses get baths; how does a horse ever get dirty in a place like this? — stopped halfway across the yard. The gray shoves at his back, but he ignores him.

“Sean Kendrick.”

It feels strange to say it out loud. I hold up his jacket, like it’s an invitation. My heart taps lightly against my breastbone.

“Where’s Kendrick?” the groom calls to a man who’s just come from one of the smaller buildings. They confer. I fidget. I didn’t expect to be taken seriously.

“Stable,” the groom says. “Probably. Main stable.”

They don’t ask me what I want with him or tell me to go away, though they have that curious, helpful look about them like they’re waiting for me to do something. I just say thanks and let myself into the yard. I’m careful to close the gate as I found it, because I’m aware it’s the worst crime on a farm to do otherwise.

I pretend I can’t feel the grooms looking after me as I step into the stable. It’s hard to think of it as a stable, even with the obvious presence of horses in it, because it’s awesome in the way that St. Columba’s is. It has the same high ceiling, the carved stone, the carried sounds. The only thing that’s missing is the afterthought confessional with the inadequate curtain. The stable reminds me, for some reason, of the great rock that all of the riders spilled their blood on.

With effort, I draw my eyes down. I don’t want to stare because the boy is still currying the chestnut in the aisle, and I don’t want to be seen looking like Finn with his round-eyed, ogling face. Both boy and chestnut look clean and purposeful, and I feel grubby and mismatched in my pants and smock and hooded sweater. I point to where the cross tie meets the wall, which is the universal way to ask,
Can I duck under this?
and the groom nods. He wears the same sharp, curious expression as the others. I think that the interest is simply because I’m a stranger, until I’m past him and he says, “I think you’ve got a real head of hair on you to ride that mare of yours in the races.”

The way he says it, I think it’s a compliment, but I’m not sure.

“Thanks,” I say, in case it is. “Do you know where Sean Kendrick is?” Again, I hold up his jacket. It feels very important that everyone know that I have a real purpose for seeking him out. The boy jerks his chin down the aisle past him, past endless beautiful, shining stall doors with stone arches over the doors as if each stall is a shrine and the horses gods within them. I walk past them until I see a stall at the end with pale white bars instead of iron ones, and the unmistakable shape of the red stallion’s head behind them.

I step quietly up to the stall, and I think, at first, that Sean’s not here. It’s a concept that, for some reason, aggravates me to no end — and then I see him in the dim shadows near the floor of the stall, crouched around Corr’s legs, wrapping them below the knee. He’s very slow about it — he turns the wrap around Corr’s leg once, then spits on his fingers and reaches up to touch Corr’s body. Then he winds it once more before spitting again. All the while Corr’s neck is arched and he’s looking out the small window of his stall. He has a view of bare rock with just a bit of sod clinging to the edges. It’s a dreary view, I think, but he seems to enjoy looking at it well enough. I reckon it’s better than the walls.

For a moment I just watch Sean wrap Corr’s leg, watching how his shoulders move when they’re not hidden by his jacket, how he tilts his head when he’s involved in his work. He either hasn’t noticed my arrival or he’s pretending that he hasn’t, and either’s fine by me. There’s something rewarding about watching a job done well, or at least a job done with everything you’ve got. I try to put my finger on how it is that Sean Kendrick seems so different to other people, what it is about him that makes him seem so intense and still at the same time, and I think, finally, that it’s something about hesitation. Most people hesitate between steps or pause or are somehow uneven about the process. Whether that process is wrapping a leg or eating a sandwich or just living life. But with Sean, there’s never a move he’s not sure of, even if it means not moving at all.

Corr turns his head to look at me with just his left eye, and the movement makes Sean look up. He doesn’t say anything, and I hold his jacket up high enough that he can see it.

“I couldn’t get all the blood out.”

Sean ducks back down, leaving me standing there with the jacket. I debate whether I’m supposed to leave it in front of the stall or wait for him to say something else, but before I can decide, Sean has finished the wrap and stood up to face me. His fingers press on the side of Corr’s neck.

“That’s kind of you,” he says.

“I know,” I reply. Dove’s blanket didn’t really need washing but it got washed anyway, since I had Sean’s jacket to do as well. I worked at it until my fingers became wrinkled and my benevolence became irritation. “What are you doing?”

“Wrapping his legs with seaweed.”

I’ve never heard of wrapping a horse’s leg with seaweed, but Sean seems to be approaching it with great confidence, so clearly it must have some good purpose.

I gesture with the jacket. “Do you want me to leave this somewhere?” I only ask it because it’s polite. I don’t want him to say yes. I don’t know what exactly it is I want him to say, only for it to be something that gives me an excuse to stay here watching him for a few more minutes. Admitting this to myself is a sharp blow to my pride, as, with the exception of my six-year-old self’s desire to marry Dr. Halsal, I’d always thought I was above being fascinated by anyone but myself.

On the other side of the stall door, Sean looks up and down the aisle, as if he’s scouting for a place for me to hang the jacket, but then he frowns at me as if that wasn’t what he was looking for at all. “I’m nearly done. Can you wait?”

I try not to stare at where his hand rests on the red stallion’s neck. It’s a warning, the way his fingers lean into his skin, telling Corr to keep his distance, but it’s a comfort as well, the way that I would touch Dove to remind her just that I’m there. The difference, though, is that Corr killed a man yesterday morning.

I say, “I suppose I have one minute or two to put together.”

Sean does the sweep of his eyes that he does, the one that goes from my head to my toes and back again and makes me feel that he’s scanning the depths of my soul and teasing out my motivations and sins. It’s worse than confession with Father Mooneyham. At the end of it, he says, “If you help, this will go faster.”

There is a little narrowing to his eyes at the end of it that makes me understand that this is a test. Whether or not I’m brave enough to go into the stall with Corr after yesterday morning, after I’ve had time to think about what happened. The thought of it makes my pulse trip. The question is not if I trust Corr. The question is if I trust Sean.

“What would helping look like?” I answer, and Sean’s face clears like a fair day over Skarmouth. He spits on his fingers again and pushes Corr toward the back wall of the stall to give me room to open the door. I stand inside the stall.

He says, “Don’t trust him.”

I narrow my eyes. “What about you?”

Sean’s expression doesn’t change. “I won’t be the one to harm you. Do you know how to wrap a leg?”

“I was born wrapping legs,” I say stiffly, because I’m insulted.