by Mary Stewart
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes,’ and began, with savage but barely effectual hands, to push and break a way back through the tangle to the doorway.
‘I’ve got a tourniquet on, of a sort.’ Adam’s voice was still muffled, so that I hoped Julie, working a yard or two away, couldn’t hear it. ‘And it’s doing the trick. I don’t think he’s losing much, now. But it’s tricky in the dark, and I can’t hold it indefinitely. You’ll have to get the doctor straight away. Annabel?’
‘Yes?’
‘The car’s there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you go? If you can’t find Wilson straight away—’
Julie had heard, after all. She turned among the wet branches. ‘The tree’s down across the road, too. We can’t take the car, and it’s four miles.’
I said: ‘The telephone at West Lodge, Adam? It’s the same line as Whitescar, isn’t it?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
I was on my feet. ‘I’ll go on foot. It’s all right, Julie, once I get to the road I’ll get a lift.’
‘There’s never anything along the road at this time of night,’ said Julie desperately, ‘you know there isn’t! If you drove the car into the field, couldn’t you get it round the tree, and—?’
‘No use. We’ve nothing to cut the wires with, and anyway she’d bog down in a yard. We’re wasting time. I’m going. I’ll run all the way if I have to.’
Con said: ‘It’s more than four miles, it’s nearer six. And you might get a lift or you might not. Your best chance is Nether Shields.’
‘But there’s no bridge!’ cried Julie.
‘No,’ I said, ‘but I can drive right up to the footbridge at West Lodge, and then it’s barely two miles up to the farm. Yes, that’s it, Con.’ I turned quickly back. ‘Adam?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you hear? I’m going to Nether Shields. Their telephone may be working, and I can get Dr Wilson from there. If it’s not, one of the boys will go for him. I’ll send the others straight over here.’
Julie said, on a sob: ‘Oh, God, it’ll take an hour. Two miles up from West Lodge, and all uphill. You’ll kill yourself, and it’ll be too late!’
‘Nonsense!’ I said. ‘Run and open the gate,’
‘It’s open. Con left it open.’
‘Not that one. It’s quicker if I go by the top track through the Park. If I go down by Whitescar, I’ve to use the little track up behind the house, and there’s three gates on that. Hurry, let’s go!’
But she didn’t move. ‘A horse! That’s it!’
I was propping my torch where it would help Con. I turned. ‘What?’
‘A horse! If you took the mare you could go straight across the ford and across the fields, and it’s hardly any further than from West Lodge, and you’d be there much quicker!’
Con said: ‘That’s an idea,’ then I saw it hit him. He paused fractionally, with his fingers curled round a lump of sandstone, and I caught his bright sidelong look up at me. He said: ‘The mare’s not shod.’
Julie cried: ‘That doesn’t matter! What does the mare matter?’
I said impatiently: ‘She’d be lame in half a mile, and I’d get nowhere.’
Con said: ‘Take Forrest’s colt. He’ll let you.’ Even then, it took me two heartbeats to realise what he was doing. Then I understood. I had been right: none of this touched him. The agonising emergency was nothing more to him than an exciting job. In this moment of terror and imminent death, he was unscathed. By everything that had happened, he was untouched. And I had liked him for it; been grateful for it.
Well, he still had to get Adam out.
I said shortly: ‘It would save no time. I’d have to catch him.’
Adam’s voice came again from beyond the beam. It sounded, now, like the voice of a man at the limits of his control. ‘Annabel, listen, wait, my dear . . . It’s an idea. The colt’s in the stable at West Lodge. I brought him in today. Take the car across there . . . if he’ll face the water . . . only a few minutes to Nether Shields. He’ll go, for you, I think . . .’
The gap in the wall was open now. Con laid a stone down, and sat back on his heels. The twin torchbeams held us, Con and myself, in a round pool of limelight, one on either side of the gap. We stared at one another. He was no longer smiling.
I said to Adam, without taking my eyes off Con: ‘All right, I’ll manage.’
‘The second door in the stableyard. You know where the bridles are.’
‘Yes. I know.’
Adam said: ‘Take care, my dear. He doesn’t like thunder.’
‘I’ll be all right.’ I said it straight to that stare of Con’s. ‘I can manage him. Don’t worry about me.’
‘You’ll take the horse?’ cried Julie.
‘Yes. Open the top gate for me. Hold on, Adam, darling.’
As I went, I saw Con sitting there, back on his heels, staring after me.
19
The water is rough and wonderful steepe,
Follow, my love, come over the strand—
And in my saddle I shall not keepe,
And I the fair flower of Northumberland.
Ballad: The Fair Flower of Northumberland.
It was important not to think about the scene I was leaving behind me in the dark lodge; to blot out Donald, his life ebbing slowly behind a wall of debris; Julie, helpless, holding panic on a thin thread; Adam, prone in the dust under that settling mass . . .
And Con there to help. I mustn’t even remember that. I didn’t know how that quick brain would work; what he would seize for himself out of this new situation. Con, if it suited Con, would work like a galley-slave, and do miracles; but if it didn’t, God alone knew what he would do.
But I put it out of my mind, and ran to the waiting car.
It seemed to take an hour to turn her, reversing out between the pillars of the gateway, over mosses made slimy with rain, and liberally strewn with fallen twigs, and fragments of rotten timber, and stray stones scattered from the smashed lodge. I made myself take it slowly, but even so, the wheels spun and slithered crazily among the fallen rubbish, and my hands and arms, shaking now as if with fever, seemed powerless to control the car. I heard the ominous sound of metal scraping stone, then we were free of the driveway, and swinging to face west again, and Julie had run across to open the gate to the upper track.
As I passed her, I called out: ‘Keep your eye open for the doctor’s car! He may already be on his way to see Grandfather.’
I saw her nod, looking pale as a ghost in the momentary glare of light, and her mouth shaped the one word: ‘Hurry!’
I drove my foot down as far as I dared, and tried to remember what I could of the road.
It was eight years since I had driven along the upper track to West Lodge. Two fields first, I remembered, then trees bordering the track, young firs, waist-high, that the forestry people had put in; for even then Adam had been trying all means to make the estate pay its way. It was a shock to run suddenly between black walls of spruce that shut out the lighter night, and towered well above the roof of the car. Time was, and they had grown a foot a year. The headlamps lit a narrow black canyon through which we ran at a fair speed, as the track was paved with pineneedles which had acted as drainage, and the walls of trees had kept off the worst of the storm.
Then a gate, standing open; a long hill curling down between high banks; an avenue, planted in more leisurely days, of great beeches that soared up silver in the lights, then a twisting, up-and-down quarter-mile along the gully cut by some small stream, where all I could do was hang on grimly to the controls and hope that the track was reasonably well drained.
It wasn’t, and I soon throttled down to a safe and cowardly fifteen miles an hour, which felt slower than walking, and brought the sweat out on my body till my hands slipped on the wheel.
Then a gate, shut, hanging a little crookedly across the way.
It was almost a relief to be out of the car, and running to open it. The l
ever was stiff, jammed by the sagging of the hinges, but I fought it out of its socket at last, and shoved at the heavy gate. This shifted a couple of inches, and stuck. It had sagged into a muddy rut, but that was not what prevented it from opening. As I bent to heave it forcibly wider, I heard the rattle of a chain. A loop of chain, dark with rust, and with a rusty padlock tightly locked, was fastened round gate and gate-post, holding them together.
A locked gate: no place to turn the car: the choice facing me of either reversing down that dreadful piece of track till I could turn for the long trail back, and round by Whitescar; or of abandoning the car and running the half-mile between here and West Lodge. Either alternative, unthinkable . . .
There are times when your body and nerves think for you. Adrenaline, they tell you nowadays. They used to say, ‘Needs must, when the devil drives’, or even, ‘God helps those who help themselves’.
I seized the chain and yanked at it, with the fury of desperate need, and it came off in my hands. It had only been a loop, flung loosely over the posts, to hold the gate from sagging further open. I think I stood for four precious seconds, staring at it in my hands, as if by some miracle I really had snapped its massive links like horsehair. I should have known that Adam wouldn’t have let me come this way, if it had been barred.
Adam. I dropped the chain into the soaking grass by the gatepost, shoved the heavy gate wide as if it had weighed an ounce, scrambled back into the car, and was through the gate and away before the grasses had stopped shaking.
A sharp rise, then, away from the trees: and here was the straight, good half-mile across a high heathy pasture where the dry gravel of the track showed white in the lights, and as clear as if it had been marked with cats’-eyes.
The crest of the moor. A single birch tree, its stem flashing white, and then lost again in the darkness behind us. Then the sudden, sharp dip of the descent towards the river, the swift, curling drop into the sheltered saucer of land where West Lodge lay.
I had forgotten just how steep the hill was, and how sharp the turn.
As my lights met the crest of the hill, we must have been doing forty-five. I stood on the brake, but as we switch-backed over the top and dived for the river, we were still travelling like a bomb. The car went down the drop like an aircraft making for the touch-down. I saw the bend coming, drove my foot hard down on the brake, and put everything I had of strength and timing into getting her round the corner.
I felt the front wheel mounting the edge, swinging, thrown wide by the force of our turn. I had the steering-wheel jammed hard over to the left. I felt the rear swing, too, mount, pause . . .
We could do it. We were round . . .
On a dry night, we might have done it, even despite my bad judgement. But the track was damp, and the grass; and the wheels, at the very verge, had met mud . . .
The front of the car drifted, slid, swam uncontrollalby wide. The wheel topped the bank, was over. The car lurched crazily as she hit the rough turf of the slope to the river. The lights struck the water ten yards away, and the mirror-flash startled my eyes.
I must have straightened the wheel instinctively as we left the track, or we would have turned over. As it was, the car plunged down the last four feet of the bank dead straight, in a dive for the river, lurched over a nine-inch drop to the shingle, hit the edge of the drop with her undercarriage, and stopped dead, with the front wheels on the gravel, and the water sliding by not a yard from the bonnet.
In the silence after the engine stalled, the river sounded as loud as thunder.
I sat there, still gripping the wheel, listening to the tick of cooling metal, and stupidly watching the wipers still wagging to and fro, to and fro, squealing across the dry glass. It had stopped raining some time back, and I hadn’t noticed . . .
I don’t know how long I sat there. Not more than seconds, I think, though it seemed an age. I was unhurt, and, though I must have been shaken, I had no time to feel it. This was a pause in the movement; no more.
I clambered out of the car. The stableyard lay no more than fifty yards away, at the foot of the hill. I retained enough wit to switch the ignition off, and the headlights, and then I abandoned the car, and ran.
I had forgotten the route, and crashed Con’s car in consequence, but when I got to the stable door my hand went automatically to the light-switch, and, as the light snapped on, I reached for the bridle without even looking for it. Leather met my hand, and the cool jingle of metal. I lifted it from its peg, and then stood still for a moment or two, controlling my breathing, letting my eyes get used to the light, and the horse used to the sight of me.
It was no use approaching him like this. A few more seconds now, to let my heart slow down to something near its normal rate, and to control my hands . . . I hadn’t realised, till I lifted down that ringing bridle, that my hands were shaking still.
I leaned back against the wall of the stable, and regarded the Forrest colt.
He was in a loose-box opposite the door. He stood across the far corner of it, facing away from me, but with his head round towards me, and ears pricked, inquiring, slightly startled.
I began to talk, and the effort to steady my voice steadied me. When I saw the ears move gently, I opened the loose-box and went in.
He didn’t move, except to cock his head higher, and a little sideways, so that the great dark eyes watched me askance, showing a rim of white. I slid a gentle hand on to his neck and ran it up the crest towards his ears. He lowered his head then, and snuffled at the breast of my blouse.
I said: ‘Help me now, Rowan, beauty,’ and cupped the bit towards him. He didn’t even pause to mouth it; he took it like a hungry fish taking a fly. In seven seconds after that, as smoothly as a dream, I had him bridled. In ten more, I was leading him outside into the night. I didn’t take time for a saddle. I mounted from the edge of the water-trough, and he stood as quietly as a donkey at the seaside.
Then I turned him towards the river. The way led to his pasture, so he went willingly and straight, with that lovely long walk of his that ate up the yards. I made myself sit quietly. Momentarily blinded by the darkness as I was, I could neither guide nor hurry him. I talked to him, of course; it seemed that this was more for my own comfort than the horse’s, but it took us both as far as the faint glimmer of the river, where a path turned off towards the pastures, from the foot of the narrow wooden footbridge.
Now, I had no idea if I could get Rowan to cross the water which, swelled a bit by the recent thunder-rain, was coming down at a fair speed, and with some sound and fury over its treacherous boulders. It would be bad enough crossing by daylight, and in the dark it was doubly hazardous. But there is no horse living, except a circus horse, that will cross the unsafe echoing of a wooden footbridge – even if I had dared put him at the triple step at either end. It was the water or nothing.
At least here we had come out from under the trees, and I could see.
The bank shelved fairly steeply near the bridge. The river was a wide, broken glimmer, with shadows where the boulders thrust up, and luminous streams of bubbling foam where the freshets broke. The sound was lovely. Everything smelt fresh and vivid after the rain. As I put Rowan at the bank I could smell thyme and water-mint, and the trodden turf as his hoofs cut it.
He hesitated on the edge, checked, and began to swerve away. I insisted. Good-manneredly, he turned, hesitated again, then faced the drop of the bank. Then, as his fore-hoofs went down the first foot of the drop, he stopped, and I saw his ears go back.
Now, when one rides without a saddle, there are certain obvious disadvantages, but there is one great advantage – one is with the horse; his muscles are joined to, melted in with, the rider’s; the rider is part of the beast’s power, moves with him, and can think into his body a vital split-second faster than when the impulse has to be conveyed through reins and heels alone.
I felt the colt’s hesitation, doubt, and momentary fear, even before the impulses had taken root in his mind, and
my own impulse forward was supplied instantaneously. He snorted, then lunged forward suddenly and slithered down into the water.
I held him together as he picked his way across between the streaming boulders. I was saying love-words that I thought I had forgotten. His hoofs slipped and rang on the stones, and the water swirled, shining, round his legs. It splashed against his fetlocks, then it was to his knees; he stumbled once, and in recovering sent one hoof splodging down into a pool that drenched me to the thigh. But he went steadily on, and in no time, it seemed, the small shingle was crunching under his feet, and we were across. He went up the far bank with a scramble and a heave that almost unseated me, shook his crest, then plunged forward at a rough canter to meet the track.
This ran steeply up, here, from the footbridge, and, though rutted and uneven, lay clearly enough marked in the moonlight between its verges of dark sedge. I twisted my right hand in Rowan’s mane, set him at the slope, and gave him his head.
He took it fast, in that eager, plunging canter that, normally, I would have steadied and controlled. But he couldn’t, tonight, go fast enough for me . . . and besides, there was this magnificent dreamlike feeling, the flying night, the surging power that was part of me, the drug of speed, the desperate mission soon to be accomplished . . .
The canter lengthened, became a gallop; we were up the slope and on the level ground. There was a gate, I knew. We would have to stop and open it. Even if I hadn’t been riding bare backed, I couldn’t have set him to jump it in the dark. I peered ahead uncertainly, trusting the horse to see it before I did, hoping he knew just where it was . . .
He did. I felt his stride shorten, and next moment saw – or thought I saw – the dim posts of a fence, joined with invisible wire, with the shapes of cattle beyond. Across the road, nothing. The way was clear. The gate seemed to be open . . . yes, I could see it now, set to one side of the track, as if it were lying back, wide open.
Rowan flicked his ears forward, then back, and hurtled down the track at full gallop.
I had hardly time to wonder, briefly, why the cattle hadn’t crowded through the gap, when we were on it, and I saw. The gate for the beasts stood to the side, and was shut, as I should have known it would be. And, clear across the way, where I had thought there was a gap, lay the cattle-grid, eight feet of treacherous, clanging iron grid that, even if it didn’t break his legs, would throw us both . . .
