The Wild Boy and Queen Moon (15 page)

Faithful was an unusually affectionate pony. Whether she was grateful for Julia after her treatment by her former owners, or whether it was just in her nature to show affection, Julia did not know. But Julia remembered being struck, the first time she had seen her, by the look of misery quite transparent in her demeanour. It was unusual for a horse to show these human emotions quite so clearly: they could look dejected or lively, in general, but rarely ‘spoke’ of their condition quite so patently as Faithful did. Even in the middle of her feed, Faithful would take time off to give Julia a loving shove. Julia couldn’t imagine Big Gun from Minnesota lifting his greedy nose for one instant under the circumstances. This unstinting love gave Julia the best feeling in her life. She felt she had an anchor at Drakesend – her faithful (how well-named!) mare who would never deviate in her loving trust.

‘I don’t think we want to do team-chasing, do we?’ Julia said. ‘You might get hurt. The only thing is – they will need us.’

Faithful was only an inch over fourteen hands, and would be markedly smaller than her companions in the team, which meant she would be going flat out to keep up. She was very fit; it wouldn’t damage her, but the sport was much rougher than show-jumping and injury came easily. Julia thought she would tell Polly to try and find somebody else – not this first time, because it was too late to change things, but later, when Tony had got going. The competition bug still eluded Julia. She had no desire to win rosettes.

‘She’s a funny girl,’ they all said.

But weren’t they all?

When it happened, Sandy and Leo were totally unprepared. It was a Friday night and in the morning they were all going over to have a look at the team-chase course. The competition was the following weekend. According to Polly, it was ‘a doddle’.

‘But none of us have jumped together over more than a couple of ditches down on the marshes, or over those two fences Tony built up in the wood,’ Leo moaned. ‘Then we stop. What will it be like over a mile and a half and sixteen fences? They’ll get so excited – and pull—’

Sandy was feeling more relieved day by day that it was going to be Leo riding and not herself. Or so she told herself. But sometimes, underneath her encouraging remarks to Leo, there was a big blank of disappointment. She was still the fat dogsbody whom no-one considered for any of the plums of this life: the one who would muck out when the others had gone for a ride, who fetched the furthest horse from the grazing, who mended the torn New Zealand rug when it was unwearable – even when it wasn’t her horse’s. They all knew she would.

Jonas had disappeared from the planet. Being deeply in love with a disappeared person made life no easier.

She lay in her campbed listening to Leo getting herself in a state, and wondered where she had gone wrong. Leo liked excitement in her life; she enjoyed frightening herself in bed at night. Sandy hadn’t the heart to discourage her. She could have said, ‘The Empress is very old. She’ll probably drop dead after the second fence.’ But she didn’t. She put the light out and pretended to go to sleep. Leo went on talking to herself for some time, then fell asleep too.

What time it was when they woke up, they had no idea. It was pitch dark. They woke up simultaneously, disturbed by the unfamiliar sound. It was a car at the end of the drive.

‘Oh, lawks!’ Leo whispered.

They both lay staring at the ceiling. Sandy willed the noise not to have happened. All was now silence.

‘Did you hear it?’ Leo squawked.

‘Yes. Of course.’

He wouldn’t come right up, of course, or he would be heard from the farmhouse. He would stop down there, turning the car round to make a getaway towards the village.

Had it been their imagination?

They lay without talking for what seemed like an hour.

‘Are we imagining things?’ Leo whispered.

‘No. Shut up.’

There was no moon, no stars. It was hard to make out even the rafters above.

Faintly, a soft clunk came from the yard. King of the Fireworks whickered. He had seen someone, Sandy knew. It was a quite friendly, curious, surprised whicker. People didn’t come to feed them in the middle of the night, but he was optimistic.

Then, from below, they heard the familiar click of the key turning in the lock and the soft squeak of the tackroom door opening.

Neither of the girls had realized how frightened they would be when this eagerly awaited incident happened. Sandy could hear her heart thumping so loudly she thought it must echo through the whole building. She felt insufferably
breathless
. Leo lay like a dead body beside her, rigid. They had neither of them worked out what they were going to do. Look through the hole in the floor . . . it seemed completely mad now, the dark so all-embracing, the floor squeaky, and the flesh so utterly unwilling. Sandy bit her lip till she could taste blood. She remembered vividly Duncan’s head appearing in the trapdoor. Even more vividly she remembered their exchange of words: ‘We’re setting a trap. We want to see who it is,’ and his reply: ‘You’ll be sorry.’ He had covered it up later, but that was what he said. Why?

Was it Ian? He had several friends with cars. Duncan himself, being clever? Sandy couldn’t bear it.

She sat up in bed and reached for the light switch. She jumped out and screamed, ‘Go away! Go away!’

There was a crash from below and the sound of feet, running.

Leo sat up and screamed, ‘You idiot! You idiot!’

Sandy burst into tears.

Leo got up and flung open the trap, switching on her torch. The door below was open and Ian’s bike lay half in and half out, its back wheel spinning. The sound of running footsteps floated, echoing for a moment, from under the archway. Leo turned furiously and shone her torch out into the lane.

She screamed, ‘We saw you! We saw you! We know who it is!’

‘You didn’t!’ Sandy shouted.

‘No, of course not – thanks to you, you idiot, you fool, you nutcase! Why? After all the time we’ve put in? Are you mad?’

Leo was livid with rage. Her eyes glittered in the torchlight. ‘He’s gone. I never saw him. How could I?’

They heard the car engine starting up and its rapid retreat in the direction of the village.

Sandy sat up, hugging her knees. Ian wouldn’t steal his own bike, surely? Oh, she was glad! She didn’t care a toss for Leo’s fury. It wasn’t anyone they knew. It couldn’t be.

‘I didn’t want to know.’

Leo flumped down on her bed. She was trembling.

‘You’re so stupid!’ But her voice lacked conviction now. ‘Why do you say that? Why are you so frightened of who it might be?’

‘Of course I am! Of course I am!’

It was all right for Leo – she wasn’t involved. It wasn’t her farm, her family all falling apart, her mother acting so strangely, her brother so incalculable. Leo didn’t know about Duncan’s penknife. Sandy felt herself so mixed-up, so weary of this horrible thing hanging over them.

Leo said softly, ‘However bad it is, it would be better out in the open. Better solved. Quicker,
then
, to get right again.’

She was right of course. Sandy started to cry.

‘It must be someone in the know,’ Leo went on inexorably, ‘because he knows about the key, and that there’s something here worth stealing.’

‘What shall we do?’

She couldn’t bear to tell her parents, to upset them all over again. It had been bad enough last time. If she shut her eyes, would it go away? Would the burglar give up, being so frightened?

Leo said, ‘It’s up to you.’

If she thought she had troubles before this happened, Sandy realized, she had been living in cloud-cuckoo land. Now she had real problems. They both lay on their beds with the light on, trying to get over the shock.

In the end they went downstairs and put the bike back in its place, replaced the key in its hiding-place, shut the door and went back to bed.

‘I’ll tell them in the morning,’ Sandy said.

It would all seem better in the light of day.

IN THE MORNING
they overslept after their eventful night and when they went in for breakfast there was no-one there. Mary Fielding had gone shopping and Bill was out in the fields. Gertie was still in bed and Grandpa had gone for his tobacco. Ian was still asleep. They made their own breakfast and went back to the stables.

‘Don’t say anything to the others,’ Sandy said. ‘They mustn’t know before my parents.’

‘No.’

Polly and Tony arrived in their respective cars; Julia had gone for a ride early. As soon as she came back, Polly decided, they would all drive over to Aspen Farm to view the team-chase course.

It was a lovely spring day and Tony and Polly were in great spirits. Leo and Sandy could not help but be subdued after their night’s adventure, but it went unnoticed. Polly thought Leo was getting cold feet and made encouraging remarks about Empress of China’s reliability – no-one had ever mentioned it before, mainly because it wasn’t
really
apparent, but the chatter was welcome and Leo made clever, hopeful replies. Julia returned and put Faithful out in the field, and they all piled into Polly’s gruesome car. Tony wanted to drive his own, but they wouldn’t let him.

‘You’re in a team now, mate, and we all have to do everything together,’ Polly stated. ‘Nothing is for self, all is for the team.’

‘I just want to get there,’ Tony said mildly.

‘Trust me.’

Aspen Farm was some ten miles away, rather off the beaten track and so not a high-powered venue, more a fun course. This was why Polly had chosen it. The land was open and rolling, with clumps of woodland just coming into leaf, and narrow ditches gurgling with spring rainwater. They parked their car in the farmyard and, having asked permission, set out to survey their task. It was too soon for the course to be flagged, but Polly had ridden it before and knew the way.

Sandy was glad now she was out of it. She had enough to worry about without the added terrors of picturing herself out here on an uncontrollable Empress of China.

‘All this galloping grass!’ Leo wailed. ‘She’ll cart me for sure.’

‘Look,’ said Polly severely, ‘we’re all likely to get carted, save Julia. Charlie’s not done this in company before, and we none of us know what King of the Fireworks is like once he gets
steam
up. So it’s no good you looking for sympathy. The thing to remember is: we want to get round. We’re not trying to win. There’s nothing in the rules to say we’ve got to gallop flat out. We can trot if necessary. We must all try to keep under control, we must all help each other.’

She then spoilt this sensible harangue by saying, ‘It’s a super place if you do get out of control – miles and miles of grass. You’ve only got to go round in circles till the horse gets tired – no problems at all.’

Leo then thought she would probably drop off with exhaustion before they finished: it seemed miles. They set off from the start across a field towards a not-too-awful ditch with a telegraph pole lodged over the top. Over the first and it was right-handed across more grass towards a copse. In front of the copse was a stream made into a coffin jump – a bar in front of it and a bar on the far side, with room inside for the horse to take the stream as a separate jump. Once into the wood the course went down a peaty ride with jumps built at intervals – mostly stacks of fallen timber or fallen trees.

‘Slowly through here,’ Polly said. ‘Just a trot really. It’s no place to run amok.’

The jump out was large, up a bank and over.

‘But horses are always keen to get out of a wood,’ Polly said. ‘No problem.’

The problem followed at the next jump where they had to turn and jump into the wood again, which Polly said they wouldn’t like.

‘Perhaps you should take the lead here, Julia,’ Polly said. ‘Faithful is probably the most obedient.’

The second loop through the wood was short, with another jump out over a clipped hedge, quite easy, then a long gallop up a grass field like a prairie.

‘This will be the problem, keeping in control up here, after all that jumping in the wood. Whatever you do, keep a hold over this jump – don’t let them get away with you on landing, when they see this wonderful sea of grass.’

At the top of the field was the catch: the pen, with a slip-rail into it and a jump out, where all the members of the team had to stay inside the pen together before they started to jump out. The fastest had to wait for the slowest, or for the rider who had fallen off and was running up the field on its own legs.

By now even Tony was looking worried. Julia was the only one apparently unaffected by the task ahead.

‘I think you might be the key member,’ Polly said to her quietly. ‘The one who holds us all together.’

Sandy knew that Polly wasn’t completely confident of being in full charge herself. Sandy was the only one who had been to hunter trials
with
Polly and seen how hard her horse was to hold even when going round on his own. Going round with his mates was going to be a great lark.

After the pen there were several jumps across natural hedges and ditches, none too awful, and then a gruelling uphill finish which came back to the same place as the start. By the time they got back to this spot, Sandy was the only really cheerful member of the group. Instead of being jealous of Leo, she was radiantly happy that none of this was going to happen to her. Leo was white as a sheet, Tony unusually quiet, and Polly thoughtful. Julia was her usual enigmatic self.