The Price of Horses

by Ian Taylor

  Ambrose sighed. "It all started twenty years back," he began. "Your mother and me, we'd gone down to Stow Fair, hoping to do a spot o' business. We left you three chavvies with your Uncle Taiso."

  As Ambrose talked, Luke pictured the scene. Groups of gypsies were doing deals over horses, some slapping hands in agreement, others shaking their heads and walking away. Clifford Yates, a forty-five-year-old travelling farrier, approached one of the groups leading a lively piebald vanner. Phil, a mean-looking twenty-year-old, was with him. Clifford called out to Ambrose to give him a price for the piebald.

  Ambrose and Clifford argued over the vanner. The haggling grew rancorous. Ambrose eventually turned away, gesturing dismissively at Clifford and Phil. "He's been rough used, I can tell," I said to them. "He's not worth half what you're asking."

  Riley put more wood on the fire as Ambrose continued his narration. "I fell out with Clifford and Phil over that deal at Stow. They were trying to cheat me. I thought it was over—and so it should have been. But later that day they came back."

  Again Luke pictured the scene as Ambrose talked. Mireli was cooking on a camp fire outside their trailer. She was pregnant. Ambrose fetched her a full water jack.

  Clifford and Phil suddenly appeared with the piebald vanner. Clifford came at a run, whacking the horse's rump so that it galloped through Ambrose's camp. Mireli had no time to move out of the way.

  Ambrose struggled with his story. "That grye knocked your dai down and she fell on the water jack… She lost our unborn chavvie…and near died herself… It was murder, and I wanted revenge. But it took me two years to catch up with Clifford and Phil."

  Luke was drawn in by his father's vivid description. The old brickworks was left behind, and he was standing in a wild grassy valley dotted with elder bushes and hawthorns. Ambrose and a gypsy traveller in his mid-thirties named Nat Boswell faced Clifford and Phil.

  "It was early evening, but not yet dark, when Clifford and me squared up. Nat Boswell and Phil Yates were seconds."

  In his mind's eye Luke saw Ambrose and Clifford strip to the waist. They began to bare-knuckle box. A scattering of gypsy travellers and their friends, which included Tam McBride, watched from the bushes.

  The fight was fierce, with each man striking the other several hard blows. Both men

  were sweating copiously. Ambrose, the younger by twelve years, was getting the better of

  it, and he called for Clifford to give up. But Clifford cursed him for a coward and refused to tell Phil to throw in the towel, and so the fight continued. Eventually Ambrose knocked Clifford down, and he did not get up again.

  "I felled him stone dead," Ambrose recalled. "Never meant for to kill him, but that's how it was." Luke saw Phil, screaming with fury, running at Ambrose with a knife. Nat Boswell and Tam McBride restrained him.

  Ambrose drew his tale to a close. "Phil took Clifford's body away to bury it on a bit o' land they had. He's hated me and my blood ever since."

  They sat around the fire in the old brickworks, considering the implications of Ambrose’s story.

  "Phil swore revenge. Three years later, him and Harry Rooke burned our trailer." Ambrose looked sternly at his sons. "But I don't want no more o' this. No more tit for tat killing."

  "Phil Yates is a crook," Luke objected. He thought of Cath and Angie. "He wrecks folks' lives. Someone has to stop him."

  "And you're the great hero?" Riley sneered. "You're the Rom who's gonna do it, all on your own! They'll cut you up and feed you to their dogs!"

  "Riley's right, son. You go on with this killing there'll be never an end to it," Ambrose declared with passion. "I want my fam'ly to spill no more blood. This blood for blood thing has to stop."

  Luke disagreed. "It ain't as simple as that. It ain't just about us now. How many more juvals and raklies, mothers and daughters, fam'lys and chavvies gonna be destroyed 'cos o' this guy?"

  "That ain't none of our business now, bro." Riley's words hit Luke like a slap in the face.

  "Mebbe it ain't yours, brother," Luke replied, "but happen it could be mine."

  " Speak with Taiso , Luke," Ambrose implored. "Don't try anything on your own. Taiso's gotta decide. If he likes what you're saying he might help you. But go peaceful. Don't make out you got all the answers. Remember, he's been going down the drom twenty-five years longer'n you, like a real dromengro. Will you promise me you'll do some serious rockerin' with him?"

  Luke looked at his father for a long silent moment before replying. "I promise to do as you ask, Dadu. I promise to do serious rockerin' with my uncle Taiso—if he'll let me."

  Ambrose smiled. "It pleases me to hear you say that, son. I'll speak with Taiso tonight and tell him you're jalling the drom to meet him."

  "Never speak till he lets you, bro," Riley advised. "Don't commit the sin o' pride in his presence."

  Luke nodded. "I hear you."

  The three men clasped hands in the firelight.

  * * *

  When Phil returned from the gallops, he found a second brown envelope waiting for him. The envelope was addressed as before to P YATES and with only the Birch Hall postcode. It contained a doctored photograph of the front elevation of the house, but instead of shattered bronze statuary there were four slender Corinthian columns, their elaborate capitals decorated with acanthus leaves and scrolls.

  On the top of each capital was a severed, blood-dripping head, arranged from east to west in the following order: Maureen, Harry, Phil and Dot, all clearly recognisable. At the foot of the main steps, a pair of slavering ghouls feasted on the remains of four headless bodies.

  Phil hurtled out of the main doors and down the steps, waving the photo at Harry, who was about to start cutting the grass of the front lawn on a big ride-on mower.

  "He wants to destroy us all!" Phil yelled.

  "Who does?" Harry climbed off the mower and looked at the photo. He turned it over, noting the neatly printed words 350K AND COUNTING. "He's just having a laugh,

  Phil. Like I said: He wants money, not stiffs. Get Brian and Steve to rig up a white flag."

  Phil calmed down a little. "Why are you mowing the grass? We have staff to do that

  kind of thing. Where the hell are they?"

  "They're patrolling the boundary with the dogs," Harry explained. "If that guy's out there we'll get him. I'm cutting grass while I wait for them to make contact. The dogs are bound to pick up his scent, as he must have been out there watching us for days." He waved his arm in the direction of the woodland to the south.

  For a moment Phil felt uncharacteristically contrite. "You've got everything covered as usual. Sorry I got wound up." He spotted something moving at the southerly edge of the lawn. "What the hell's that?"

  Before Harry could reply the answer became obvious. A large adult hare streaked across the lawn with the two Dobermans in pursuit. The hare knew exactly what it was doing as it jinked to the left, then to the right, each time increasing its lead on the dogs, who overshot their quarry by several yards at each change in the hare's direction.

  The hare's lead increased from ten to twenty yards before it vanished back into the woodland. The dogs would have continued their vain pursuit, but Brian and Steve appeared. After a few minutes' frantic chasing they managed to leash and quiet down the dogs.

  "If you're gonna go after hares, at least do it with the right dogs," Phil said, amused by the antics of the Dobermans. "Well-trained Bedlingtons crossed with those two and we would have had him." He added, scowling: "Ain't much of a patrol, is it? More like something out of Mack Sennett's Keystone Cops. We're turning ourselves into idiots!"

  He glanced up as a Microlight passed low over the woodland to the west of the lawn. Damnit, he thought, there's always some idiot spoiling the peace of the countryside. What the hell will these morons come up with next—a zip wire from Skiddaw to Scarborough? Will we all be happy then?

  He went back into the house. Harry waved the minders over and told them to give the dogs a drink, then
find an old white sheet in the laundry room.

  * * *

  Malcolm had decided it was too risky to remain in the woodland. In spite of his skills of concealment and surprise, the odds were not in his favour, even if their dogs were a pair of clowns. He had nothing to prove. The long procession of dead men who had never glimpsed the agent of their demise was sufficient testament to his abilities, whether in the use of firearm, blade or garrote.

  He hired a Microlight and overflew Birch Hall. He had flown in this manner many times over the Kent and Essex countryside and considered himself an accomplished pilot, although he hadn't flown for a good few years.

  He passed through the skies above Birch Hall and was just in time to see the hare chase, which he photographed. On his way back he noted that a piece of white material had been fastened to a couple of posts and placed out front on the edge of the lawn. They had seen sense at last.

  If this hadn't happened, he would perhaps have had to shoot one, or both, of the dogs—and he felt very bad about such things. But he had never messed up a contract, and this would be no exception. They would pay what justice demanded. It was simply a question of when, not if.

  Overflying the North of England in this way, he was very much aware of the landscape as a living being. A single once-beautiful fabric, too often thoughtlessly marred by the actions of homo sapiens, the wise man. He realised he had reached a point in his life when he didn't much like anything he saw, or anyone he worked for, with the exception of his brother.

  Getting justice for Tam was a fitting way to end his career and begin to put something in the other side of the scales, to restore his personal equilibrium. Planting trees, perhaps. Helping hedgehogs. Shooting recalcitrant farmers who had the gall to pronounce themselves custodians of the landscape, when all they were concerned about was profit. He laughed. Shooting greedy farmers—now that was something he could quickly get used to!

  20

  It was the first day of Appleby Horse Fair, and a vast encampment occupied Fair Hill to the north of the town. There were livestock transporters, expensive mobile homes, trucks of all kinds, pickups and horse trailers, plus a variety of motors including several Mercedes. There were a few Travellers' Specials, but these were outnumbered by less ostentatious (and cheaper) models. There were one or two Open-lots, but they had arrived on the backs of trucks. Very few persons attending the fair these days travelled in the old way with vanners and waggons.

  To an outsider it was hard to believe that the world of gypsy travellers was not thriving. But over recent years, Appleby Fair had changed. Many Roms felt it had been hijacked by a spurious non-traveller element who were mainly concerned with harness racing. The majority of these people were Irish. They had fine horses, it was true, but they were not Romany travellers.

  Those Roms who made a substantial part of their income from buying and selling horses now carried out their transactions elsewhere, in locations known only to themselves. The majority of poor Roms, who at one time looked on Appleby Fair as a place where they could meet with widely scattered friends and relatives, now kept in touch with each other by mobile phone and met privately. They no longer felt at ease at Appleby Fair.

  Gone were the days when fairgoers pulled their waggons on to the verges of the lanes around Appleby and greeted others of the blood by countless campfires. Those convivial times had become a distant memory among the elders. They felt they'd been treated like cattle, confined within a fenced-off enclosure on the Hill. They were already fenced off enough by the gorgios in their day-to-day lives.

  Folk still washed their horses in the River Eden at fair time, and visitors still took their photographs from the bridge. But few of the riders were Roms.

  Taiso had decided not to go to Appleby Fair this year. A number of families from several clans had been welcomed instead on his own land in the wild landscape an hour's drive south of Appleby. Luke and Sy planned to visit him later in the day but wanted to spend a few hours at the fair first.

  Sy ran through the crowds, leading Luke's lively spotted stallion Prince of Thieves on a rope. He called as he ran: "Dik akai! Dik akai!"

  After leading the stallion for a few hundred yards he stopped, and a dozen young Boswell men gathered around him. Sy kept up his call for another minute until he felt he had attracted a big enough crowd mostly of young Irish lads and the increasingly numerous fairground riff-raff.

  "I'll sell this grye to the mush who can stay on his back for a full minute. He's gotta be the best rider at Appleby Fair!" Sy looked around at his audience. "Who's gonna be the first?"

  Several of the Boswells attempted to ride the stallion bareback. Prince of Thieves bucked and kicked and threw them off one by one in a matter of seconds.

  "You put a hex on that grye!" a Boswell discreetly placed in the crowd called out. "No one can ride him!"

  Luke called out from another part of the crowd. "I can ride him!" He stepped into the space in the middle of the gathering. "I bet any mush a tenner I can ride that grye. I fall off in less'n a minute I give you twenty back."

  A dozen young Irishmen held up ten-pound notes. Two serious-looking raklies collected the money and made a show of noting the punters' names.

  Luke walked up to the spotted stallion and blew on its nostrils. He seemed to speak

  to it, or whisper, although no words could be heard, and his lips barely moved. It was all part of the mystique he was creating for the occasion.

  Then he stroked the animal's nose and rubbed its chin. A moment later he vaulted on to the back of the stallion. The animal bucked and kicked briefly, then became still. Luke walked it a little way, turned and walked it back.

  "Minute's up!" Sy called out. "You're the winner, mush."

  "He charmed it! I seed him!" a brawny Irish lad shouted. "He rubbed a potion on its nose!"

  Luke dismounted and held out his hands. "Money back if you can smell a potion!" A few Roms tried, but no one could.

  "Deal's a deal, guys," Sy said. "If he'd lost, you'd be the happy ones, eh?"

  The Irish lads shook their heads and walked away. A few looked angry, but the young Boswells encircled Sy and Luke and the angry men gave up and wandered off.

  "Gorgios call this teamwork, don't they?" Sy laughed.

  Luke patted Prince of Thieves. "I told him we were gonna have a bit o' fun! He knew what he had to do from the start!"

  "Did you charm him?" Sy asked.

  "I don't need to. He was reading my mind."

  Sy wasn't sure if he should believe his friend or not. Luke was pleased to see he had everyone guessing.

  "Let's test him," Luke suggested. "I need to know I can ride him anywhere."

  The group of Boswells, riding their horses bareback, accompanied Luke and Sy down to the River Eden, where a few Irish girls were washing their horses. Some swam their animals in the deeper parts of the river. Luke on Prince of Thieves and Sy on a bay mare rode their horses into the Eden. The other Boswells joined them. There was banter and laughter, a great good-natured Romany spectacle, like those in days gone by that would soon be lost in the mists of time.

  Luke took Prince of Thieves under the town bridge, then rode him into the deep pool on the south side of the river. Horse and rider were almost completely submerged.

  "Trying to drown him, mush?" Sy called out, laughing.

  Luke laughed too. These were rare moments of happiness. He was so much at one with the animal he felt the stallion might really be picking up his thoughts. He decided to swim him across the river to where Sy was sitting bareback on the mare. Prince of Thieves set off at once, without Luke urging him or saying a word.

  "He's a magic animal," Luke stated with evident pride. "He can do anything! He knows what I want to do before I've had the idea myself!"

  "Ever thought that mebbe it's the other way round—that he had the idea first and you just picked it up?" A young Rom called Royston laughed at Luke's look of surprise.

  They rode their horses from the river and dismou
nted.

  "Are you ready now, mush?" Sy asked.

  Luke smiled. "Never been readier."

  The two men clasped hands.

  "It's time we were on the drom to Taiso's," Luke decided.

  * * *

  As dusk descended on the trucks and trailers pulled on to Taiso's land, outdoor cooking fires were lit, horses were tethered and water jacks filled. The entire place was surrounded by trees, most of which had been planted by Taiso and his extended family to baffle the prying eyes of gorgios. Taiso had built a bungalow at one end of the site, but he preferred to live in his trailer and to cook outside, unless the formidable Pennine weather closed in.

  Luke walked through the encampment, leaving Sy and his relatives to take care of the bay mare and his spotted stallion. He approached a new but modest trailer, in

  front of which a small cooking fire burned brightly.

  Taiso, Luke's uncle, a little taller and darker than Ambrose, his younger brother, sat by the fire. He stood up as his nephew approached. Luke stopped at a respectful distance.

  "D'you think you might be the prodigal son?" Taiso asked, not smiling.

  "That's for you to say, Nano,” Luke replied with equal seriousness.

  Taiso gestured to a vacant folding chair that had been set ready by the fire. “Best sit.”

  Luke obeyed the invitation, and the two Roms became quickly immersed in quiet conversation about traveller times gone by and their thoughts on the years to come. An hour passed with the two men remaining uninterrupted. Luke realised his father had

  phoned his elder brother and briefed him on the situation, and Taiso had spread the word that they must be left alone.

  They talked at length about justice and the need for self-respect among gypsy travellers. The trailer fire was discussed in this context, and Luke was invited to express his honest opinion. Then they talked of his future, and Luke mentioned Cath and her struggle with Phil Yates. He was careful to stress her gypsy credentials and his own hopes that this was the woman with whom he wished to form a long-term "law-abiding" relationship.