A Whisper of Horses

by Zillah Bethell

  “An accident?”

  “Just,” he replied quickly, “a little one. Nothing much. Nothing much at all.”

  “Mr. Trott?” She turned to stare Trott directly in the face.

  “Er … Nothing much, ma’am. Er…”

  “Has my husband been driving that stupid car of his too fast again?”

  “Er…” Trott looked about the place, hoping for somebody to come and rescue him. “Er…”

  “It wasn’t entirely your husband’s fault.” I stepped forward.

  The woman looked at me and then turned back to her husband. “Oh, so it wasn’t entirely your fault, Roger?”

  “No, miss,” I carried on. “This man here was driving just as fast as your husband.”

  “Yeah. Only in the opposite direction, see?” Tab joined in, his hands wrapped around the dirty mess that was Mouse.

  “So, if anything, they should both take the blame. Equally.”

  The woman’s eyes twitched between her husband and me. “I’ll decide if my husband should be blamed for anything. Not two strange children I’ve never met before.” She was cold and tough and made Mr. Trott look like a teddy bear. “Roger, why have you brought these people here? You know what we said about outsiders…”

  “Yes, yes, my dear. But look … they need help.”

  “Because of your silly car.” She sighed. “Really, Roger, I wish you would take things a little more seriously. You just can’t bring outsiders into Ashdown.” Her eyes darted over me and Tab. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Well, perhaps let’s worry about that later, dear. Firstly, I think we need to take this poor man upstairs to one of the rooms to be cleaned up and put to bed. Molly should be sending someone down to the village to fetch Dr. Buxton. With some luck, he shouldn’t be too long. You might want to give our other two guests some food, eh?” And with that, Wessex and Trott lumbered towards the stairs carrying the man between them.

  “Guests? Huh!” Mrs. Wessex looked disbelievingly at us before turning away and walking out through a door.

  I looked at Tab and Tab looked at me. “Should we follow her?” I asked.

  “The man said summat about food. So yeah. We’d better follow her.”

  We went through the door, down a long corridor and into the kitchen where the girl Molly was busy stirring a large pot and rocking a toddler with her free arm. Mrs. Wessex took the bulbous baby off the girl and cradled it protectively in her own arms.

  “Molly,” she said, her eyes never leaving us, “give these two … people some of the soup you’ve been making. And perhaps a slice of bread.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “And I suppose you’d better take some up to their father.”

  “Oh no, he’s not our father,” I said almost instinctively.

  “Who is he then?”

  Tab stepped forward. “No one. He’s … er … no one. Well, I mean he’s someone … but he’s no one to us.”

  Mrs. Wessex pulled the child closer to her and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I don’t understand.”

  “Perhaps we’d better introduce ourselves,” I replied, sighing. “This is Tab and his dog, Mouse. And I’m Serendipity.” I held my hand out for her to shake.

  “Oh my goodness!” Her face changed suddenly as she saw my hand. “Your hand is burnt.” She put the toddler down on the floor. “Molly, a large bowl of water and towels please.” She came up to me and took me by the wrist. “You must be in tremendous pain.”

  To be honest, I had sort of forgotten the pain in the excitement of the moment. It seemed to have calmed down to a kind of dull thud and was probably more irritating than painful now.

  “It’s okay, miss. Nothing much.”

  She gave me a hard glare. “No, it’s not okay. If you don’t treat this burn straightaway, you could lose the use of your hand.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. We need to clean it up and get it covered immediately.” Mrs. Wessex looked up from my hand and stared deep into my eyes. “My name’s Lillibeth, by the way. Lily for short.”

  * * *

  Dr. Buxton arrived late that afternoon with a bag stuffled to the top with herbs. He strapped some over the palm of my freshly washed hand before disappearing up the stairs to the room where the driver was recovering. After some time he came back down.

  “He’ll be okay, Lily. A bad cut to his forehead, some severe bruising and slight concussion, but nothing more. Apply the cold poultice to the cut every few hours, and brew him some of this.” He handed over a bag of what appeared to be leaves. They had a strong, sickly odor and Tab pinched the end of his nose with his fingers. “He should drink it twice a day for the next couple of days. It will balance his aura.”

  “Thank you, Jeremy.” Mr. Wessex patted the doctor on the arm.

  “Yes, thank you for coming out at such short notice.” Lily stood next to her husband. She was a good inch or two taller than him. “Good of you.”

  “Not a problem.” He stopped as he reached the front door and turned ominously. “There was … one other thing. I wasn’t sure I should mention it but…” His eyes flicked back to where Tab and I stood. “This chap upstairs. He was wearing a uniform?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well”—his voice slipped into a whisper—“two men wearing exactly the same uniform were making inquiries in the village earlier today. They were asking about…” His eyes shot back to us. “They were asking about a young boy and girl. And an old man. Wondering whether anyone had seen them.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “They were walking from house to house. Knocking on each door. Naturally, nobody had seen anything … up to then. Er…” He looked awkwardly at the husband and wife.

  “I think,” Lily started, “it’s probably best, Dr. Buxton, that still nobody has seen anything.”

  “Yes, Lily.” He nodded.

  “Should these men come back to the village, it might be best to send them away. Yes? You know our views on outsiders.”

  “Understood. Well, I bid you good night, Mr. Wessex. Mrs. Wessex.” The heavy door slammed to behind him.

  The air seemed thick and sticky in the hallway as the silence fell and I thought it best if I stepped forward. “I can explain,” I started.

  “I’m sure you can,” Mrs. Wessex said. “And you definitely will explain everything to us—I shall make sure of it. But not tonight. Tonight I am rather tired and we’ve all had a strange and busy day, so it will have to wait until morning. Mr. Trott will show you to your rooms.”

  “What about Mouse?” Tab asked. “Where’s he gonna sleep?”

  “I thought Molly might make him up a bed in the kitchen.”

  “But I ain’t never spent a night away from him.” Tab looked like he might just be on the edge of tears. “Tell you what, missus. I’ll sleep in the kitchen with him. On the floor, like. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.”

  “No, no. I’m sure Mouse can sleep upstairs with Tab, eh, Lily?” Mr. Wessex gave his wife a gentle nudge with his elbow. “No harm in him sleeping upstairs, eh?”

  Lily Wessex sighed, giving her husband a bit of a stare. “No. I suppose not.”

  Tab was taken aback. “Oh. Thank you. Thank you very much, missus. Very kind.” Then he whistled. An ear-quaking sort of whistle that made Mr. Wessex’s tired eyes bound open, and Mouse came running, slipping, sliding around the corner and jumped up into Tab’s arms.

  Mr. Trott was waiting for us at the top of the first flight of stairs and, as Tab and I started ascending, he turned his back and trudged off ahead of us, around a bend and down a corridor. We sped up and ran alongside him, at which point he stopped dead and glared viciously at both of us.

  “I don’t knows what you’re up to. Not yet I don’t. But”—his finger jabbed towards us—“I knows you’re up to something. Knew it from the moment I set eyes on you. Untrustworthy. Thieves, more’n likely. Thieves and vagabonds. Here to take advantage of his Lordship. Out to get what you can from him. Mrs. Wesse
x can see it too. Sneaky sort of raiders from Bristol, I’ll bet. Been taught new tricks by your masters.” He scowled even harder, his voice dipped even lower and his eyes looked even nastier. “But I tells you one thing. That man who’s sleeping in the room down there, one day soon he’s going to wake up and remember who he is. And just after he remembers who he is, he’ll remember why it is he’s chasing you. From what Dr. Buxton just said, sounds like there are some of his friends floating around the place. If he can’t remember, I’m sure they can.”

  He straightened up and went back to his usual level of volume. “You”—he stabbed his finger at Tab—“in there.” He indicated a door. “You”—he twirled his finger in my direction—“there.” He gave a horrible sneer. “Sleep tight now, won’t you?”

  chapter 23

  SADDLES AND BOOKS

  I DID SLEEP tight, as a matter of fact. It was nice lying in a bed not covered in the dust of a hundred years, and the sheets were slippery silky and cobweb light. I dreamt of nothing in particular and only woke when the sun was burning hard through the window, prizing open my eyes.

  I washed in the neat bathroom attached to my room before wandering down to the kitchen. The only people in there were Mrs. Wessex and the baby. The baby was strapped in a tall chair whilst Mrs. Wessex spooned a sort of gray gooey substance into his mouth. Most of it seemed to be on his chin.

  She looked unsmilingly at me as I came in before leaning close to the child and pulling a silly, pouty kind of face. The baby gurgled back appreciatively, dribbling more of the food onto its chest.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked, looking around.

  “The boy and his dog got up early and went with Roger to the train. They’re bringing back the supplies they picked up yesterday.”

  “Oh.” I suddenly felt a bit put out. What was Tab doing going off without me?

  “They’ll be back sometime this morning. That is if Roger doesn’t get too distracted showing him an internal combustion engine or some such thing. Mr. Trott is upstairs trying to give that man some breakfast.” My heart slipped. “I suppose you’d better eat something yourself.” On the table sat plates dotted with the remnants of breakfast. Some crumbly toast, juicy sausages, streaky bacon and dark golden eggs all waiting to be finished up. I grabbed a plate and filled it. Mrs. Wessex got up and charged a cup with milk from a jug before plonking it roughly down on the table beside me.

  As I stuffed my mouth, I remembered the night before. The doctor looking over at us, Trott pointing his finger. A slight sense of guilt slowed my chewing so I could speak through my food.

  “Mrs. Wessex.”

  “Hmm?” She’d given up on feeding the child—who, now I noticed him, looked like a tiny babyish version of his dad—and was wiping spittle and bubbles of breakfast from her own hands.

  “Last night. I need to explain.”

  “I was wondering when you’d start.”

  I set down my knife and fork and began to explain. Everything. Well, nearly everything. I told her about Lahn Dan and the Minister and the Professor and the police men. I told her about Mordecai and Caritas and the Aus and Pbs. I told her about Mama and the map and the horses. The only thing I left out was about Tab being a smuggler. I thought it best not to give Mr. Trott any more ammunition to fire him up.

  After what felt like an hour, I shut my gob up, grabbed the fork and poked away awkwardly at the last few strands of egg white. Mrs. Wessex drained the last of her tea.

  “So you’re not from Bristol, then?”

  “What? What’s Bristle?”

  She gave a small smile. “Bristol is a city, over the hills in that direction. The people who live there sometimes like to come over the hills and raid our stores. We grow our own food, you see. They don’t. They prefer to just steal it. There’s a lot less work involved in stealing it.” Tab once again leapt into my head. “We have to defend ourselves against them. That’s sort of why we grew the maze around the house. In case they ever try to attack Ashdown.”

  I nodded and laid my knife and fork flat on the plate.

  “After breakfast,” Mrs. Wessex said suddenly, standing up, “I like to take Lysander out for some fresh air. Would you care to join us?”

  * * *

  “I lost my mother when I was young too.” Lily Wessex watched where her feet were treading, the baby strapped to his mother’s front in a sort of back-to-front rucksack thing, his little limbs dangling out and his head flopping from side to side. “Younger than you, even. My father brought me up on his own.”

  We had come outside of the maze and were picking our way across the grounds towards a small patch of trees at the rear of the house. The grass was dullish green and stony, and tiny, aggressive weeds knotted the way.

  “What happened to her?”

  “Oh, just sickness. You know. The Gases. People did that a lot back then—just die suddenly. Not quite so bad nowadays. Of course, having children”—she patted the bobbing baby on the bottom—“is still difficult. We were lucky, though. Tried for ages to no avail and then, all of a sudden … Well … We were lucky, Roger and I. Lucky.”

  I thought back to the smugglers and their tents. No children. Except Tab, that is. No children at all. Only adults.

  “But in Lahn Dan there are lots of children,” I muttered, more to myself than to Mrs. Wessex. “In the storytelling sessions there are always lots of children.”

  “I suppose,” she replied, “there are probably more people, full stop, in London than there are out here. More chance of there being lots of children, you think?”

  I shrugged as we made our way through the dark clump of trees. As my hand brushed the bark I noticed that they felt different from the trees I was used to in Lahn Dan. These felt more … alive. Not just brittle, peeling, barely breathing stumps. These were strong and solid. Trees that were still fighting to live. Tying the earth together with their roots.

  Eventually the trees stopped. Suddenly. Like a brick wall that somebody had given up on building—and we stepped out into the brightness of the morning again. On this side of the wood the grass was slightly browner and obviously hadn’t been cut for a very long time. We had to lift our legs higher to step through the clearing, and as we did so, I spotted a long, low construction a hundred yards or so away from us.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing. “That building over there?”

  “Those haven’t been used for a long, long time.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re the stables.”

  * * *

  I had never smelled a horse before. Nor had Mrs. Wessex. So neither of us knew if the scent filling our nostrils in that dark, wet outhouse was the smell of a horse or just something else. Years of rot or rat droppings, maybe. But as I stood there, sucking up the musty, chocolatey aroma, I told myself—persuaded my brain to believe—that it was definitely the smell of a horse. I imagined a big, velvety chestnut thing with a long, wavy mane and a neat, sweeping tail. A Whistlejacket. Trotting into his stable on the cold winter nights, nuzzling hay, dreaming of fields of praise. His master, a loving man with rough hands and a kind face.

  “These were the reins.” She lifted some leather straps off a hook on the wall. “You’d put them around the head so that you could ride the horse properly. And this”—she threw the reins down over a glossy black seat, itself thrown over a large wooden block—“is the saddle. The seat, if you like.”

  I ran my hand over the cracked, slightly gritty saddle. Who knew what horses it had sat on. Who knew what riders had slipped their feet into the silver stirrups that drooped below. I patted it like you’d pat a horse and it sounded dense yet hollow.

  “Is it true?” Mrs. Wessex repositioned the baby trussed to her chest. “Do you think there are horses still alive somewhere?”

  I nodded. “I hope so.”

  “Yes. So do I.” She looked sad all of a sudden and stroked Lysander’s face with her finger. “I imagine them to be beautiful things. Strong. Useful too. A few hor
ses pulling plows on the village farms would be more reliable than tractors that chew through diesel and constantly break down needing new parts. Much more natural. Roger always has to go searching for them, you know? Tractor parts. That’s what he was doing yesterday. Getting a sprocket or a shaft or a whizzybung or whatever the hell they’re called.” She sighed. “The people in the three villages all look to Roger, you see. Always have done. Even before Roger they looked to his father and his father’s father before that. Looked to them for leadership.” She gave her head a shake as though clearing the unintentional thoughts out of her head. “Anyway … Enough of that.” She picked the reins up from the saddle and slipped them back onto the hook like they should always be kept there. “These horses wouldn’t have been working horses. They would have been kept for pleasure. Roger’s family used to hunt, you see.”

  “Hunt?” I squinted at her. “Hunt what?”

  “Foxes. With hounds.”

  “Hounds?”

  “Dogs, if you like.”

  “What? Like Mouse?”

  “Well”—Lily smiled—“perhaps not quite like Mouse. The hounds would sniff out the fox and the riders would chase behind. Then, when the hounds had cornered the fox, they would attack and kill it.”

  “The riders?”

  “No, no. The dogs.”

  I weighed it all over in my mind. Hunters that didn’t hunt. What was the point in that? Why not just ride without having to have something killed? Was that the way mankind worked—always destroying, always killing?

  I stood there in the silence for a second or two. “It sounds horrible.”

  “I know,” Mrs. Wessex agreed.

  “People in the old days were such idiots, weren’t they?” I said, my voice quivering with anger.

  “Perhaps,” she said softly, squeezing Lysander’s hand. “But we weren’t there, so we don’t really know. All we can hope for is that people in the future think better of our actions.”

  They’ll think better of mine, I told myself, still upset about the foxes. I’ll make sure of it.

  * * *

  The bandages on my hand were bound tight and thick and I found it difficult to wiggle my fingers back and forth because of them. Twice a day they had to be changed, refreshed with a new smear of herbs. Mrs. Wessex helped me to do it, gently unraveling the cloth, washing the burns with cool water and applying the herbs before wrapping my hand with a new dressing. It was after one such change that Mrs. Wessex led me into a room tucked away in the corner of the building.