The Price of Horses

by Ian Taylor

  Riley didn't want to risk more blows with a man he knew could easily beat him, but he didn't want to lose face, either. Anyway, he reasoned, his brother would find out from someone else. "Phil Yates. You any wiser for knowing that?"

  Luke had heard the name mentioned often in the world of gypsy travellers, and

  every time it had been accompanied by disparaging remarks and muttered insults.

  "Racehorse owner, ain't he?" Luke asked. "From what I've heard among our folk he ain't a well-liked man."

  Ambrose took up the story. "Travelling farrier, Phil Yates was once, like his father afore him. He calls hisself a poshrat, a half-blood, but I doubt he's more'n a diddekai, even with the name Yates. He'd go out of his way to con us Roms if he could, Boswells, Woods, all of us. Did some shady big-money racecourse deals. Got rich and bought hisself a big old country place."

  "Why don't you like him?" Luke persisted.

  "He's evil!" Riley growled. "No true Roms will deal with him."

  "Phil Yates was our enemy once." Ambrose cast a warning glance at Riley. "But we don't talk of him no more. You watch out, son, when you find him. He's trickier to deal with than a nest o' hornets!"

  * * *

  An hour later Luke sat in the BMW, waiting for Samson to open the yard gates. Ambrose leaned in at the driver's window. "I'd be happy to see you with a woman. Be a good influence on you."

  Luke laughed. "Ain't I too big a risk for a Romany juval? The way Riley goes on, you'd think I was carrying the Mark of Cain!"

  "Don't you bother your head about Riley. He worries too much. Get yourself to your uncle Taiso's," Ambrose advised. "Do some strong rockering and make peace with him. Give yourself a new start."

  Luke objected. "Taiso could banish me. I'd be worse'n a beggar. I'd end up tarmacing with pikies. And they'd despise me, 'cos they'd know I was no one."

  His father disagreed. "Taiso's the best judge of a man I know. If he judges you to be true in your heart, you've nothing to fear from him."

  Luke laughed. "He thinks I'm like the priest with a fox's face! Last time I saw Taiso he hardly spoke to me."

  "Give yourself a chance, son. I'll speak up for you with Taiso. Tell him you want to make a good life and you need to be wed. Don't be too proud to ask for help from your people. Remember that."

  Luke nodded. His father meant well, but he held out no hope of reconciliation with Taiso. The patriarch of their clan was a hard man whose word was law. He was nowhere near ready to speak with him yet.

  Samson opened the gates.

  "Jal! Jal!" Ambrose cried.

  As Luke drove from the yard, Riley joined his father.

  "Mebbe we should've told him what really happened back then," Riley suggested.

  Ambrose shook his head. "We do that now, he'll be as lost to us as your dai and Athalia."

  "He's gonna find out," Riley said gloomily, "but from the wrong folk. Then there'll be no end to the trouble til he's truly mullo. Dead as a dead mush can be. And his ghost tied to this world forever."

  6

  After four hours' sleep and a change of clothes, Luke left Radford’s in mid-afternoon and drove north up the motorway for ninety minutes. He turned off, passing through a succession of yuppified villages, until he located the minor road that led to the ancient green lane he remembered from the happy days of his childhood.

  His dadu had told him that the lane was a surviving fragment of a complex of drove roads, when Galloway horses and cattle had been brought south to sell to the English. Luke hung on his words, imagining the whole of England crisscrossed by these ancient ways, where drover and gypsy were free and at peace, one with the land.

  They lived in a workaday Open-lot back then, trading in horses and lurchers. Ambrose occasionally got him to climb an oak tree or an elm to take a fledgling hawk from its nest; then he showed his eager son how to rear it until it was ready for sale. They were mostly kestrels and sparrowhawks, with an occasional merlin or hobby. But what Luke wanted was a goshawk or a peregrine. He still hoped that one day he would have the chance to rear one.

  Two hundred yards down the lane, traveller families were camped on the verge. Three trucks and three fancy trailers were pulled on close to an open fire.

  Luke stopped at a respectful distance and approached the camp on foot. He was pleased to see that the trailer windows were dark and there were no chuntering generators, no flickering TV screens. Everyone seemed to be outside, and that very fact separated the gypsy travellers' world from that of the gorgio. It was a sad day when the traveller was forced to shut himself away and a thousand years of campfires and conviviality were abandoned.

  The tranquillity of the evening reminded him of similar scenes from his childhood, the long-lingering light of early summer evenings giving the scene a magical timelessness. At a short stretch of the imagination, the figures around the fire seemed as if they might belong to ancient times and a world of untamed places, where the invading presence of settlers had never occurred.

  A burly Rom in his mid-forties got up from the fire and came to greet him.

  "I know you. You're Boswell kin. We met at Stow fair last year." He offered his hand. "Davey Wood."

  Luke introduced himself and the two men shook hands warmly. Davey gestured for Luke to join them at the fire, where he shook the hands of Davey's kin. Twenty travellers, from grandparents to toddlers, enjoyed a supper of rabbit stew, sitting around the fire at peace with themselves and the world.

  As Davey put more wood on the fire and his daughter served mugs of hot sweet

  tea, Davey's father got out his fiddle and played a haunting lament.

  "My Dadu's still a great boshomengro, ain't he?" Davey remarked. "I don't have half his skill."

  Amos Wood interrupted his own playing to make a comment addressed primarily, it seemed, to Luke. "This is music from the sadness of our present times," he explained. "I'd be pleased if a singer could put the right words to it one day. I mean a proper singer, not a gypsy pop star!"

  Everyone laughed, which saved Luke the embarrassment of having to respond. He knew no gypsy singers. Maybe he should try to find one, someone with the power of the Gitano singers of Spain, who could melt your heart in a minute—if such a singer existed in England.

  He felt the company was sufficiently at ease with his presence for him to introduce the subject of his mission. He moved closer to Davey.

  "I'm after a mush who used to be a putcherlengro, a travelling farrier, but now he's got to be a big shot in the horse-racing world. Know anyone like that?"

  Davey pulled a sour face. "Sounds like you're wanting that nasty little runt they call Lucky Phil Yates." He paused, pursing his lips in thought. "I can mebbe get a message to him if you want."

  "I'm in no great rush," Luke cautioned. "I'm just starting a rumour. I know all about his T'ang horses."

  Davey raised his eyebrows in polite surprise. "You do?"

  "Yeah. It's a real small world, ain't it? But I don't wanna meet him till I'm ready. Know where I can dikker him?"

  Davey thought a moment, then nodded. "He'll most likely be up on the gallops first thing, but you'll need field glasses. Got a new chestnut stallion. Calls it Good Times. 'Bout

  sums the mush up. Why don't you meet with my good friend Sol Boswell's palesko, his brother's boy Sy, tomorrow up on the hill? You've had a few adventures together, you and him, so I hear!" Davey pointed in the general direction. "Say I sent you. You might have to help him break a spotted'n he's got up there. He tells me the grye can't be tamed."

  Luke thanked Davey for his help. Night encircled them as they sat around the fire. They drank more tea, and the conversation turned to general traveller topics.

  "This still a good atchin tan for travellers?" Luke asked. "I recall it was a stopping place for my fam'ly twenty years or so back."

  "We'd have lost it," Davey replied. "But my dadu bought the grazing land both sides, so they can't really stop us living here—though they try—as we have to see to the g
ryes. And we let other kin pull on, too, so it's grown into a good meeting place. We even applied to build a bungalow here, but the council turned us down." He shook his head sadly. "I think they'd rather we all died out than tried to make a life for ourselves."

  "I've a little spot you can pull on if you need to. But it's only for folk I know." Luke told Davey the location. "And I'm after another place soon as I've done with this Lucky mush." He smiled. "Mebbe he won't be so lucky time I've finished!"

  Davey grinned. "You know where you can find us then."

  "Is it okay if I kip in my motor tonight?" Luke asked. "I'll find Sy in the morning."

  "You're very welcome. We'll be eating at first light."

  Luke got to his feet. "Kushti rardi."

  "Kushti bokt."

  * * *

  Luke came on the vehicles first: two big pickups, one hitched to a horse trailer, the other to a modest living van. He parked the BMW next to the pickups to avoid driving too close and spooking the horse. A couple of hundred yards further on, he found his friend Sy (short for Sylvano) Boswell, a very dark Rom of thirty, with two younger male helpers, breaking a handsome spotted stallion on the grassy hilltop.

  They held the horse on two ropes while the frisky animal circled them. Luke had prepared himself for the encounter by rubbing a few drops of a herbal decoction on his forehead and hands, the recipe for which he had learned from his East Anglian contact. Then he approached the three men on foot.

  "How much d'you want for him, mush?" Luke asked. It was the gypsy travellers'

  regular opening gambit.

  Sy laughed and gave the customary reply. "He ain't for sale." They embraced warmly. "Good to see you, Luke."

  "I've been down at Davey's."

  "I know. I've been expecting you."

  Luke was impressed by the reliability of clan communication. Mobile phones had evidently replaced telepathy, at least that was what some of the old folk told the few credulous gorgios who cared to listen.

  He had no wish to intervene, but after a few minutes watching Sy's unrewarded efforts with the grye he suggested as tactfully as he could that maybe he might have a go.

  "I bought him a week back, but he don't seem to like me," Sy admitted. "All he does, as you can see, is try to break from the circle and lame me. I should've known better. It should've been obvious to a dinilo, a complete idiot, that mush I paid had made naught of him. But I fell for the grye's looks. I've rarely seen a spotted'n so strongly marked."

  Luke agreed with his friend's observation. The stallion's markings were bold and striking. He had a sense that the animal was aware he was unique and would only allow himself to be ridden by a man who thought of him as at least an equal.

  "However good you are, you always meet someone smarter when it comes to gryes," Luke said. "I lost a bit o' vongar on a grye trade last year at Stow fair. He was an older mush—one o' the Herons—and I should've guessed he'd know more'n me."

  Luke took one of the ropes and walked slowly towards the stallion, talking quietly all

  the time, while Sy and his helpers disappeared among nearby trees. As he expected, the horse showed an immediate interest in him because he could smell the herbal mixture on his skin. Luke took the ropes off the horse and rubbed his hands over the animal's nose and mouth, whispering to him all the while and blowing on his nostrils. The animal nuzzled up to him, and he rubbed his hands over its chin.

  Luke's next move was to walk around the hoof-worn circle and to wait while the stallion followed. Then he ran across the hilltop and the stallion tried to get in front of him to cut him off. But he changed direction each time, and the horse found he was chasing a shadow. Luke laughed; the stallion neighed in reply. It was huge fun.

  After a while Luke allowed himself to be caught. He rubbed his hands on the horse's nose, then vaulted effortlessly on to its back. The stallion stood still, rigid as an effigy, as if it had been poleaxed and would collapse to the ground any second. Then it sprang into the air, twisting and bucking like a maddened bull at a rodeo. But Luke hung on.

  All at once the stallion quieted and stood still. Luke walked it around the circle, then galloped it across the hilltop. When he trotted it calmly back to the circle, Sy was waiting.

  "Never seen a grye with a strong spirit charmed so fast," Sy remarked with undisguised awe.

  "Takes one to recognize another," Luke replied with a laugh. He took a bundle of notes from his inside jacket pocket. "Name your price." He was pleased he had taken all the cash he possessed from Radford’s when he left.

  Luke tied his newly acquired spotted stallion to the smooth trunk of a young sycamore. He felt the horse was a kindred spirit—one of those rare animals that truly knows what you're thinking, that knows your every mood as clearly as it senses changes in the weather.

  Sy echoed his thoughts. "He's been waiting for you. No one else was going to ride that grye."

  Luke talked quietly to the stallion, knowing it needed the reassurance of his presence. After a while he turned to Sy. "I didn't aim on buying a grye this morning! I wanted to ask if you could show me the gallops?"

  Sy laughed. "Gonna ride your new grye against Phil Yates?"

  Luke smiled. "Who knows? One day I might."

  "You got a name for him yet?"

  "Thought I'd call him Prince of Thieves."

  "Mush—that's a winner!"

  * * *

  After a fifteen-minute walk, Luke and Sy stood among trees at the edge of a belt of hilltop woodland, watching four riders exercise their mounts on the smooth grasses of the gallops below them. Four men observed the riders through field glasses from a dirt car park, where an E Class Mercedes, a Range Rover and a Ford Focus were parked up.

  "Recognise Phil Yates?" Luke asked.

  "Like a bug in a blanket," Sy replied sourly.

  Sy pointed out a man of around forty, turned out like a country gent but a little too loudly. He wore a check-patterned jacket and cap with knee breeches and knee-length hosiery.

  Luke observed him in his binoculars, shielding the lenses with his free hand so they didn't catch the sun. "So he's the little guy in the snazzy jacket?" he remarked.

  "That's him. Anyone would think he'd dressed for the winners' enclosure," Sy commented with undisguised contempt. "He's like his clothes, a show-off and a loudmouth. The big guy next to him is Harry Rooke, Phil Yates' personal minder and brother-in-law.

  He's another cruel bastard like his little buddy, but mebbe not so tricky."

  Luke studied the big man. Dressed in smart casuals, he looked to be about the same age as Phil Yates but a giant in comparison. Luke estimated the man must be six-foot-five and weigh at least three hundred pounds. "Who is this Harry Rooke? I've heard the name, but it was a while back and I can't recall much else."

  "He used to travel round the fairs, not just horse fairs but traction-engine rallies and the like. He'd set up a boxing ring and challenge anyone to bare-knuckle him for a tenner. If they were still on their feet after three minutes, they'd get fifty back. He had a big clock on a stand that everyone could see. No one managed it for years til a young Irish traveller took him on."

  Luke's interest was aroused. "I heard about that fight, but it didn't mean much to me at the time. I recall my dadu years back talking to a mush from County Down at Wickham. Didn't the Irish lad get hurt?"

  Sy continued his narrative. "Be ten or twelve years ago now when Harry Rooke and that Irish mush fought. By all accounts at the end of two minutes Harry was getting beat. He couldn't lay a fist on the Mick, who was giving away five inches and as many stones, but he was picking Harry off as he pleased. Now Phil Yates was courting Harry's sister Dorothy—she'd have made a great stand-up when she was sober, she's got a rare wit—and he'd taken over the refereeing from a retired pro called Jimmy Hobbs. They say Jimmy would've stopped the fight, but Phil had other ideas."

  Sy paused to light a roll-up. "My nano, who was there, said Phil shouted, ‘Come on, Harry, use your head,’ and Harr
y must've thought he meant for him to head butt the Mick, not smarten up his fighting. So, my uncle said, that's what Harry did, and he sent the Mick down with a broken nose. The crowd was shouting foul!, but Phil raised Harry's arm as the winner. Harry only did a few more fairs before he retired, so my nano told me. Some folk said he didn't fancy meeting the Mick again, who was after getting his revenge."

  So that's the team, Luke thought. Phil the schemer and Harry the muscle. "Who are those other two?" he asked.

  The figure next to Harry Rooke seemed about ten years older, a man who looked very much at home in cords and waxed jacket.

  "That's Clive Fawcett, the trainer," Sy commented. "He's by far the best o' the lot."

  "Who's the mush at the end who seems to keep muttering into Phil Yates' ear?" Luke asked.

  "That's Detective Inspector Nigel Hirst, meanest gavver that ever was born." Sy spat to emphasize his contempt. "Word is he's on the Yates payroll. Watches his back."

  Sy's revelation hit Luke like a blow. So this was the man his father had denounced as a criminal in uniform. This was the police sergeant who had dismissed the incident of the trailer fire, brushing it aside as an unfortunate domestic accident.

  Luke studied the man in his binoculars: a lean reptilian figure in his mid-forties, dressed in a charcoal grey suit like a bank manager, except Hirst's suit was ill-fitting and crumpled.

  Nigel Hirst. A name to conjure with. Now a detective inspector. Hirst, a cop who no doubt thought he was untouchable.

  "A bunch o' rogues if ever I dikkered the like!" Sy gave voice to his companion's thoughts.

  They continued watching the horses, taking turns with Luke's binoculars.

  "Davey said Phil Yates has a horse called Good Times. I've a mind that's the chestnut out in front, am I right?" Luke asked.

  Sy confirmed Luke's observation. "That's the one. Fine looking animal. That

  little shit Yates don't deserve him!"