Taking the Reins

by Dayle Campbell Gaetz

  Katherine related how she had tumbled from the saddle in front of those three strangers and her bonnet fell off and George stuffed it back on her head all crooked and with her short hair sticking out from under it. She lifted her hat then, the hat she always wore, to show Emma how short her hair still was.

  Emma’s grumpy look melted, the corners of her mouth twitched, and her eyes crinkled. Laughing, Katherine struggled to finish telling her story. But as soon as she was done, memories of Susan came flooding back, memories of the carefree laughter they used to share. What was wrong with her today? Had she forgotten her sister so easily?

  Emma could not recall ever laughing so hard. There had been little to laugh about in her life. It felt good, she decided. It filled her with a warmth that remained long after the laughter ended. She was intrigued by Katherine’s story and wanted to ask what the girl was doing up in Hope, who had cut her hair so short, and how could she not have been wearing a skirt? More than anything she wanted to know how Katherine had been allowed to use a man’s saddle.

  But Katherine had stopped laughing so abruptly Emma decided to keep quiet. Something was bothering that girl. Emma didn’t know what, but she had never been one to pry and wasn’t about to start now. “I shall take your advice then,” Emma said, “and get down from the horse right here.”

  Katherine held Nugget still. She explained how to dismount and Emma managed to lower herself to the ground without falling. But the moment she stepped away from the horse, she knew Katherine was right. Her legs wouldn’t straighten out properly. They felt numb and shaky, as if they would give out beneath her if she tried to take a step.

  An unexpected laugh burst out of her. Seemed like this laughing business was an odd sort of thing; once you got started, you did it more and more. “Can you just see the look on Tall Joe’s face if I fell in the mud at his feet?” Emma pulled herself up tall, threw her head back, rubbed a hand over an imaginary beard, and glared down at Katherine, eyebrows raised.

  “But – you look exactly like him!”

  “I look like my mother,” Emma snapped. “Not Tall Joe!”

  “I only meant you imitated his expression so well.”

  “Mrs. Douglas says I have his eyes, but I don’t want them.”

  Katherine stared at her. “Emma, why should you have his eyes in the first place? Is he a relation?”

  “Turns out the man is my father.” Ahh. And now she had done it.

  “Oh!” Katherine stammered. “I thought...”

  Emma felt trapped on this narrow path with no way out but past Katherine. And those eyes gaping like her tongue had gotten stuck in her throat. But not for long enough.

  “Then how is it your last name’s Curtis and not Bentley? Where is your mother? Why do you live with the Douglas family and not your own father?”

  The girl asked too many questions, and that’s for certain-sure. Emma wasn’t about to tell her how Tall Joe ran off with a promise to return and marry her mother when he was rich enough and neither one knew there was a baby on the way. This Katherine would look down on her if she learned of the shame her mother had endured at the hands of polite society. Jenny Curtis, a girl not yet eighteen, was kicked out of her home by her own father, a pastor, who never did speak to her again. Her mother had made her way to Manchester and the workhouse but later ran away so they couldn’t take Emma from her. She had raised Emma on her own, with never enough to eat until she died on the floor of a nethersken and never once heard from Tall Joe in all that time. “I grew up believing my father was dead,” Emma said at last. “It was only by chance I found him living here after I arrived.”

  “Oh!” Katherine bit her lip, opened her mouth, and slapped it shut again. She frowned up at Emma. “So then, if he’s your father, and he wants to take care of you now...how old are you, Emma?”

  “Almost fourteen.”

  Katherine’s eyebrows rose. “I guess your father is trying to make up for his past mistakes?”

  Emma shrugged. “Can we go now? I’m cold.”

  “But...” Katherine stared at Emma.

  Emma felt her face twist up with pain, but this Katherine kept staring, bursting with too many questions. Well, and Emma knew how to stop her. She opened her mouth to make an angry retort.

  Before she could speak, Katherine’s face softened. “All right then,” she said, and led Nugget away.

  Emma limped along behind.

  “No one’s in sight,” Katherine whispered as they neared the barn. “I’ll whip this saddle off Nugget and no one will ever know the difference.”

  “I shall be on my way then,” Emma said stiffly. “Thank you for the riding lesson, Katherine.”

  “Will you be back tomorrow?”

  “No, I am unable to return again until Wednesday.”

  The sky was black, the air gathering cold when Emma reached the back door. Inside, she was greeted by a welcome warmth and the enticing aroma of duck roasting in the oven. Mrs. Douglas, with little Martha beside her, turned from the woodstove, her broad face flushed with the heat, black hair pulled back in a bun. “You must be cold, Emma. There’s tea made.”

  Mrs. Douglas placed cups and saucers and a plate of little cakes on the table.

  “How is your horse today?” she asked, lowering herself to a chair across from Emma.

  Martha joined them, her eyes on the cakes.

  “But how could you know where I’ve been?”

  “You smell like a horse,” Martha said, wrinkling her nose.

  “Oh.”

  They sat in comfortable silence, broken only by the creak of Martha’s chair as her short legs swung back and forth beneath the table. Emma reached for a second cake. Even after all this time, she never could eat something so delicious without a sense of wonder, without marveling at how lucky she was to have so much food and never a hungry day.

  After Martha excused herself and ran off, Emma could wait no longer. “I did it!” she said. “I rode...” She was about to say Liberty, but something held her back, some sense that Mrs. Douglas would not approve of her changing the horse’s name. “...I rode the horse, at a walk at least.”

  Once started, Emma found herself telling Mrs. Douglas all about the horse, and Katherine’s help, and how truly horrid it felt when the horse began to trot.

  Mrs. Douglas nodded. “I worried about your leg. It must hurt, bending in that cramped position on the sidesaddle.”

  Emma hesitated. She reached for a third cake but no longer felt like eating. She put the cake on her plate and leaned across the table. “I didn’t use a sidesaddle.”

  Mrs. Douglas frowned. She sipped her tea. “Was that Katherine’s idea?”

  Emma pushed the uneaten cake around her plate. If she answered ‘Yes,’ would Katherine be in trouble?

  “Because, if it was, she must be a very understanding young lady.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And a good friend.”

  Friend? Emma Curtis did not need a friend. And never one so proper as that Miss Katherine Harris.

  Mrs. Douglas leaned in close. “You must be careful though. Governor Douglas would be shocked if he knew about the saddle. And as for your father...”

  “Horrified!” Emma pursed her lips, tossed back her head, rubbed an imaginary beard, and glared down her nose.

  They both laughed. Mrs. Douglas said nothing about Emma’s looking like Tall Joe when she made that face.

  Emma stood to clear the dishes away. She was washing up when Mrs. Douglas said, “You must go every afternoon to practice riding, Emma. You need to be ready when your father and Ned Turner make up their minds to go in search of land.”

  Emma clutched a soapy saucer in both hands. Her first thought was to object. She wanted to say that, really, she should be working at that time of day, and didn’t Mrs. Dou
glas need her? She placed the saucer to drain and glanced over her shoulder. The look on her employer’s face revealed how happy Mrs. Douglas was to give her this gift. A gift of time.

  “And don’t worry about your work,” Mrs. Douglas added. “It’s time Martha began helping out after school. Her older sisters knew how to cook and clean at Martha’s age.

  “Thank you,” Emma said. “I’ll do my best to learn and hope it doesn’t hurt too bad.” She hobbled across the room to pick up the cakes, exaggerating her limp, rubbing her backside as she went.

  Mrs. Douglas glanced at her in quick surprise. They both laughed again.

  Emma had never laughed so much in one day in her entire life before. She was amazed how good it made her feel.

  11

  True to his word, Mr. Brett prepared lessons that would challenge Katherine. She read novels and discussed them with the teacher while the other pupils worked. She studied history texts but especially enjoyed reading maps and learning about faraway places in her geography lessons. She marveled that so many countries around the world were a part of the British Empire, as were these two colonies on the western edge of North America.

  Katherine spent part of every school day teaching the younger pupils. She learned how to explain things in a way that made it easy for the children to understand. Seeing a child’s face light up when he suddenly realized he could read the words in front of him gave her a warm sense of satisfaction. And because she was accomplishing so much, Katherine no longer cared what Margaret Steeves and the other pupils thought of her. She had come to Victoria to improve her education, and that was what she intended to do. Maybe, if she worked hard enough this year, she could gain enough education to open that little school she and Susan had dreamed of, for children too young to be away from their parents.

  Thursday afternoon, as she practiced printing with a group of eight-year-olds, Katherine could not resist glancing out the window every few minutes. And each time she was delighted to see the sun still shining, the air still and clear and inviting. She could hardly wait for school to be over. Today she would have Nugget all to herself.

  Half an hour after school ended, Katherine had the sidesaddle on Nugget. She was leading the horse outside when Emma appeared. Katherine couldn’t hide her disappointment. “What are you doing here?” she snapped.

  Emma sucked in her breath. She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “Mrs. Douglas says I should come every day to practice riding so I shall be ready to travel by spring.”

  Katherine grimaced. Every day? She had so looked forward to this time alone with Nugget. And by next spring the horse would be gone. “I’ve already saddled her.”

  “I see that.”

  “She needs a good run.”

  “Yes.”

  Katherine watched Emma, willing her to leave. Emma shuffled her feet on the dirt floor. Her eyes wandered from Katherine to the horse and back again as if she weren’t quite sure what to do.

  Finally Katherine’s sense of fairness won over. “Wait,” she said. “I have an idea.” She went to the tack room and came back carrying a bridle and the sidesaddle they had used the day before. She put the saddle down and took the bridle into a stall.

  A few minutes later she led the short, light grey horse out. The mare’s head hung low as if her neck were tired of holding it up. She plodded along on short, bony legs that looked like they had not supported a rider in many years.

  “This is Princess,” Katherine announced. “She’s nineteen years old and much smaller than Nugget, but Edward told me she’s stronger than she looks and has the smoothest ride of any horse on all of Vancouver Island. She has the best temperament too, so she’s perfect for a beginning rider and especially for learning how to trot without too much pain.”

  “Good!” Emma said with so much enthusiasm that Katherine chuckled.

  “You might be a wee bit sore from yesterday?”

  Emma nodded. “More than a wee bit, if you want to know.”

  “Fine. We’ll take it easy today.” Katherine smiled, relieved she had found a way to include Emma without giving up Nugget so soon.

  With Katherine leading both horses and Emma following behind, they walked toward a narrow, overgrown path leading into a thick cedar forest. “No one is likely to see us on this path,” Katherine said, stopping near a large stump. “I’m hoping it meets up with the path I noticed yesterday before you arrived.”

  She helped Emma onto Princess and handed her the reins. “How does that feel?” she asked.

  “Not so bad.” Emma pulled on the reins in an attempt to raise the horse’s head. Princess took no notice. “This horse won’t likely go galloping off with me crying out for her to stop.”

  “No,” Katherine agreed, “but you may soon be crying for her to get moving.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, the two horses wound through a tangle of undergrowth. Katherine glanced back often to see Emma holding the reins in one hand, the other clutching the saddlehorn. The grey horse moped along, head scarcely above the thick bushes.

  The path emerged on a deserted meadow leading to a hillside dotted with Garry oaks. “We did it,” Katherine said. “We found a secret path to the track below Beacon Hill.”

  Nugget pranced into the meadow, tossing her head and tugging on the reins. Katherine turned to Emma. “Nugget needs her exercise. Will you be all right on your own until we get back?”

  Emma nodded. “I shall be fine.”

  She would be, Emma told herself. She would be fine. Quite all right. Even so, her stomach did somersaults just thinking of being alone with the horse in this wide open space.

  “Good then, we’ll be off.” Katherine flicked the reins and sped away.

  Emma watched horse and rider soar along the track so fast Liberty’s black tail flew straight out behind. She envied the way Katherine sat so comfortably in the saddle while the horse’s dark legs blurred and her heels kicked up little clods of grass and damp earth. Princess watched too, and her head sank lower, as if the very sight exhausted her.

  Emma thought of her mother, old and tired before her time. Her eyes slid down to the ring, admiring the way it glowed. If Mam could see her now, would she be proud? Tall Joe said her mother had been a good rider. Emma tapped the horse’s sides, and Princess began a slow plod around the field. “I’m tryin’, Mam,” she whispered. Then, remembering her promise to speak properly, added, “Mama, I’m doing my best to make you proud of me.”

  Twice around the track and Emma was beginning to get bored. Maybe she should try a trot. Now, with no one to see her fail, was the perfect time. Emma tapped Princess with her heels and flicked the reins, bracing herself for what was to come.

  Princess might have increased her pace, but it was difficult to say for certain. Emma tried again. She tapped a little harder with the heels of her boots and jerked the reins with more force. Princess stopped altogether. She twisted her neck to look up at Emma.

  “An’ it’s high time you did as I say unless you fancy endin’ up in the glue factory,” Emma warned.

  As if she understood, Princess raised her head and started to walk, picking up speed until Emma found herself bouncing along on the horse’s back. Princess might be trotting, but Emma soon realized she was still in control – sort of. She bounced up, landed. Stayed with the horse for a few steps. Bounced up again. It was true. Princess was smoother than Liberty. Easier to keep from colliding with. Easier to control. Oh, ow! But only if Emma concentrated. Better. Good. Stay with the horse. Not so bad. Not so bad. Oh, no! Ow! What happened?

  Emma’s brain rattled. Enough of this. Do something. Now. She pulled on the reins. Princess stopped and dropped her head, tossing Emma forward in the saddle.

  She clutched the saddlehorn in both hands and sat completely still. Princess didn’t move either. Horse and rider both breathed hard, relieve
d to no longer be trotting. Emma heard hoofbeats and looked up to see Katherine heading her way.

  “An’ I hope she never did see that performance,” she whispered. “Let’s get moving, old girl.” She tapped Princess with her heels, and the horse plodded on. Better bored than battered, Emma thought. Better bored than battered.

  They returned to Beckley Farm by the same secret path, swishing through undergrowth too dark to see. A glow of lantern light spilled from the barn door.

  “Could you hold Princess while I get Nugget settled?” Katherine asked, leading Nugget to her stall.

  Emma nodded. Her heart might beat too fast and her breath stick in her throat with the horse looming so close behind her, but she would not let Katherine see. She forced herself to stand still, tried to look unconcerned, and wished Katherine would hurry up.

  A warm hand touched hers where she held the reins. Emma whirled around. “Edward!”

  “I knew you’d done it,” he whispered. “I knew you had gone off and not used the sidesaddle!”

  “But...”

  “Good idea. It must be easier for you, uh, I mean for anyone to learn that way.”

  “Yes.”

  “But Mr. Bentley now, I don’t suppose he’ll like it so much.”

  “No, he, uh...”

  “He has his set ideas on how young ladies should behave.”

  “Yes,” Emma agreed.

  “Let me take care of Princess for you,” he said, and took the reins from her hand.

  Emma followed. “I’ll be needing to get back now,” she told him.

  “What’s your hurry? You’ve got to stay a while at least.We need to make some plans.”

  “What sort of plans?”

  Edward turned his attention to the horse. “You might have noticed Mr. Bentley hasn’t been stopping by here in the last few days?”

  “I have, and...?”

  “I might have, uh, suggested that if he left you alone for a while, you might try riding on your own.”