The Grey Horse

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  Anraí took possession of his cob, and after only a short disagreement with the owner for putting his new yearling out to winter grass, he started home. It was an uncomfortable passage, for the dun cob didn’t want to be ponied and it hung back behind the grey, and Anraí would be damned if he would sit the old pony’s trot when he had so much finer under him.

  The wind was up, too, and MacMathúna had not offered him eat or drink after his long ride down, so neither Anraí nor the horses were at their patient best. At Crompán the dun rebelled, pulling back, twisting Anraí half out of his saddle, and the grey stood like a stone statue expressing disapproval, when out of a two-window cottage came a very elderly man, who pointed at the scene and cried out very high: “An giolla! An giolla!” Then he ran back into the cottage.

  Anraí’s heart sank and the rope slipped through his fingers. The dun cob left the road at a canter, his hogged tail raised defiantly, like a flag. Anraí cursed the event, the ancient who had pointed, and all the effort and caring he had put into the grey horse that was not his.

  Out of the cottage came a much younger woman. “God to you, and I’m sorry if my father unsettled your horses.”

  The dun had stopped beside the dwelling, seduced by the grass fed by thrown-out dishwater. “Never mind that, woman.” He squeezed his horse off the road and toward her. “For we unsettled him first. Tell me, does he know this beast I’m riding?”

  She sighed and edged casually toward the dun cob, which avoided her, equally casually. Anraí’s horse took a few steps forward. “No, man: it is all the confusion of his years. The giolla is a seanchaí’s story, is all.”

  Anraí took his feet out of the stirrups and slid to the ground. “Well, life doesn’t get any easier as we get old. Nor are we easier on our children. It’s a lucky old man who has children to soften his evening. For the others, it’s as hard as a board from the bog.” Anraí spoke without thought in proverbs, and immediately afterward his mouth twisted tight.

  The dun saw him coming and was also aware of the young woman of the house, standing as a barrier in front with her arms folded into her shawl. Cagily it backed away, meaning to avoid the humans with least possible effort, when it found itself at the end of a taut rope. It flattened its ears in anger for a moment and then adopted philosophy.

  Anraí and the woman were equally surprised to find the horse caught, and tracing the rope back, found that the grey had stepped on the end of it.

  Anraí mounted again, and this time put a knot in the lead rope, so the dun could not pull it through his fingers. He put the grey into as fast a trot as the slower beast could maintain, for he didn’t want to be out late again.

  The black and white crows wheeled calmly through the sky, either looking for food or warming their wings in the rare winter sun. Anraí heard the bark of a fox as he neared the bridge, but he did not slow down for it.

  An giolla, he thought. The servant, or helper. It wasn’t a bad name for this grey horse, though such a servant would need a master with one eye open. Anraí could use some help. “It’s a lucky old man who has children to soften his evening.”

  Ten pounds for a uniform. Cow shit, said Anraí to himself. Ten pounds to hold off creditors till the cards turned around, was more like it. The boy was a shame to his parents and a grief to his mother, better off in the queen’s army and best off at the end of a rope. The fire of Anraí’s anger grew hotter as he grew more weary and the sun’s shadows lengthened, till he reached home, with Donncha in the barn and the good supper Áine was holding for him.

  He had sent off the ten pounds already. Yesterday.

  Chapter Three

  Ruairí MacEibhir, or Rory, Son of Granite out of Wind

  “Mr. Blondell is coming,” said Áine, standing in the doorway of the barn with her shawl pulled over her head to shed the rain.

  “Well, what of it?” Anraí was trimming the hooves of the chestnut filly, who didn’t like to stand still, and so he was sharper than he ought to have been with his wife.

  Áine did not flinch. “This time, you must invite him to dinner. Three times he has been here this year, and a long ride for him, and never has he set foot in the house. He must think we are not Irish hearted, or have not a bite to eat!”

  Anraí rumbled in his throat, and the filly hopped in place. “We’re poor enough, by Jesus. Ten pounds poorer than a week ago.”

  So accustomed was Áine to her husband that she took this last as a comment uttered from Anraí to Anraí. “I’m expecting him, man. I will put out the white china and an extra place. And I’ll add ham to the eggs.” Áine faded into the drizzle, but the sound of her feet was heard, splashing.

  “Won’t she be disappointed if the man rides right by here,” said Anraí to the filly, who stepped on the side of Anraí’s foot.

  Since Anraí had brought the grey stallion to the barn, the filly had not given herself a moment’s rest. Sometimes she would hug the wall of her stall with her ears flat against her head for hours, and at other times she would fling herself away from her handler and scamper over to the wall of his loose-box and deliver to it a resounding kick, squealing. Of course she was a three-year-old, at the age when young mares don’t know at all what they want out of life, but still it made working in the close barn very difficult. It had set the filly’s learning, already very erratic and slow, back to nothing.

  Anraí stopped, led the filly back, tied a rope onto the straw halter that he had never quite dared remove from the grey, and took that horse outside, to stand in the drizzle. He put an oilcloth over its back and apologized and then went back to finish the filly.

  Mr. Blondell was a large man with a round chin and long side-whiskers. He came in while Anraí was finishing the trimming, accompanied by a man leading a huge red horse. His son Tobias, a boy of some eleven years, came behind. He also had a round chin.

  “Nice little grey you have tied out there,” Blondell said to Anraí.

  “He makes his share of work.”

  Blondell shrugged his tweedy shoulders. “Bet he could give a good day’s hunt, if the ground weren’t too fast. For a lady, or a man up in years, who doesn’t want to climb …”

  Anraí clenched his teeth and reminded himself that this man was something of a squire. Neither Martin nor Ross, of course, but he had influence. “He’d give a good day’s hunt to any man. Or woman. At any speed. But he still makes his share of work.”

  Good-naturedly, Blondell shrugged again. “Go by the height of him. Only a glimpse.”

  Blondell spoke in Irish, which language he knew imperfectly gut used by principle, whenever speaking to a Gael. Anraí Ó Reachtaire answered him in English, which he knew somewhat better than Blondell did Irish, but which made him feel awkward.

  “Do you want that I should be at training of that great ruddy thing?” Anraí pointed to the chestnut horse, which was rolling his eyes at the chestnut filly.

  “I do want that,” answered Blondell, giving the horse a look half admiring, half doubtful. He wrinkled his forehead, opened his mouth, and relapsed into English. “He used to be decent to handle, but all autumn and winter he’s been a regular rogue. Come spring, when we need him …”

  “He’s for stud, then?”

  The squire grinned. “He’s a stakes winner and the father of others. That lass there is by him.”

  Anraí spared a glance for the filly, which was standing in her stall with a white-ringed eye fixed on her daddy and one hind foot raised to kick. The stallion’s eyes were also excited and his nostrils whuffling. He raised his proud red tail and deposited a load at his owner’s feet.

  Anraí wanted suddenly to walk out of the barn and away across the fields. To forget horses, or at least his labor with horses, and stand on a rock over the ocean until the rain turned his hair into elf knots. He gave a silent sigh, looking at the Thoroughbred’s sharp withers, which rose above Anraí’s head. “I haven’t forgotten this one,” he said noncommittally. “We had him here three years ago, when he was fre
sh from the track.”

  I was a mass of bruises the whole time, he did not add aloud. He smashed me against every stone wall I own.

  “I’ll give you fifteen pounds to make him over,” said Blondell, staring at the horse manure. “Again.”

  Anraí took a deep breath, considering the money and remembering his responsibilities. All his responsibilities. “You must stay for dinner,” he said.

  Mr. Blondell ate enthusiastically. He adopted the manners of a field hand, in an obvious attempt to make his hosts comfortable. Anraí ate delicately, because he didn’t care whether Blondell felt comfortable or not. Áine hardly ate at all, so busy did she keep herself supplying ham, eggs, and buttermilk gravy to men who could not possibly have eaten the quantity presented, though Blondell gave it a good trial. Young Tobias stared at his plate.

  The rain came down with the evenness of fabric. Anraí and Donncha returned to the barn while Mr. Blondell and his small party splashed off, leaving the bad actor to Anraí’s correction.

  The lanky red stallion in the loose-box kicked rhythmically against the wall and occasionally slapped his nose sideways against the door.

  “He’ll have the skin off his nose before nightfall,” said Anraí. He released the top door of the box and slouched over to the hay that was Donncha’s bed, where he sat himself down to watch the stallion aggrievedly.

  It shrieked three times, setting four of the other five horses in the barn into nervous motion. Then it wagged its very elongated head up and down at the end of its very elongated neck.

  “It is a pity we have to promote that creature. He hasn’t enough sense to chew with.”

  The grey horse, tied at the other end of the aisle, rumbled deeply, either in agreement with Anraí or in response to the red. The big horse chose to take it as an insult. It put its ears back and squealed like a pig, showing teeth.

  Donncha joined his employer. “Anraí! The horse is a stakes winner. You don’t appreciate quality when it stands there before you.” Then he broke out into a stream of high-pitched giggles, very equine in effect. “Sweet mother of Christ! We might as well break a stoat to saddle. He’s going to kill us both!” The idea of his impending demise reduced Donncha MacSiadhail to uncontrollable laughter, but old Anraí merely groaned.

  Once again the grey spoke, and Anraí, glancing over, felt that he himself was addressed. The huge dark eyes, ringed in smudged black and set into a white face, looked spectral in the dim light of the barn. Solid and square the grey horse stood, paying no attention to the chestnut’s antics, and it slammed one black hoof against the floor stones for emphasis.

  Anraí stood, not knowing quite why, and took a few steps toward his horse, when he heard a bang, a crash, and the splinter of wood behind him.

  He turned to see the chestnut standing on the wreckage of the loose-box door, which had been two inches thick and of oak. Anraí had never seen a horse look so much like a snake. Donncha, who had been sitting only two feet from the spot now occupied by the front feet, was now somehow perched nine feet up in the air, on the winter’s supply of hay and bedding. Even as Anraí watched, the chestnut rose up on its hind legs once more, demonstrating how it had smashed its way out.

  “I’ll close the back door,” cried Donncha, sliding down in that direction. “You edge your way to the front.” Anraí answered him from a tight throat. “Don’t do it. A runaway is the best we can hope for.”

  Indeed, the tall chestnut stallion had no thought of flight. It advanced toward Anraí and the grey horse stiff legged, swinging its neck from side to side. Its face was the bony mask of an adder.

  Anraí slipped between the grey and the wall and yanked sharply on the end of the rope that tied to a ring in the wall. The quick-release knot fell apart. Anraí slapped the grey hard on the shoulder. “Go, Son of My Heart. This is no time for heroics.”

  The grey didn’t budge, but instead watched the advancing menace with calm, almost scholarly interest. “You ass! You can’t fight a beast that hasn’t the sense to feel pain!” This time, Anraí hit his horse over the nose. Hard. When this had no more effect than words, he backed away, lest he be smashed against the wall when the chestnut attacked.

  It danced sideways, its head below the level of its withers. Yellow teeth snapped together with a sound of breaking wood.

  The grey stood motionless, until the chestnut was ten feet from it. Then it put back its ears.

  The chestnut stallion started so that both men in the barn heard it: a sound like a heavy drum beaten. It shied sideways into the wall of the dun cob’s stall. It raised its head high into the air, snorted, and turned tail. Donncha very bravely swung the barn door in its face, and it was left no retreat except for the loose-box it had left so tumultuously sixty seconds before. Donncha closed the upper door and dragged a heavy feed box across the bottom, over the shards of oak.

  “For this, Mary should get a tall candle at the altar, Anraí, for as I flew over the straw I promised it to her, if she’d keep me in one piece. You owe her another, old man.”

  Anraí, who had seen the incident drawn in shapes of light and shadow from the doorway of the barn, advanced to the grey horse again. He embraced the animal’s hindquarters. “I do, Donncha. More than you, I owe it.”

  Donncha gave his yellow smile and looked slyly over at his employer. “If I left now, I could have this red weasel back at Blondell’s door before supper, couldn’t I?”

  Anraí’s arms fell to his sides and he leaned wearily against the cob’s stall. “Donncha, I can’t. We can’t afford it right now. Stoat he may be, but he’s James Blondell’s stoat, and that man is half my business and more.” Looking at the sheet of rain that appeared bright next to the dark of the barn, he continued, “But you needn’t see to him, Donncha. Or ride him. I don’t pay you enough to expect that.”

  “I should let you do it, old man?” asked Donncha. The man’s puffy, unkempt face wore a tight grin. He added, “Look clever, now. Your wonderful white plow horse has found the oat bin.”

  It was toward the end of the same afternoon (no change in the rain) when Anraí came to where he had left the grey horse tied, by the grass harrow. He was not there, of course, but neither was he in the oat bin. Instead his silky, silver tail was seen twitching through the door of the harness room, where he stood looking at a row of bits, either in wonder or speculation.

  Anraí sighed. “It seems you haven’t the habit of leather chewing, at least.” Anraí’s breath smelt oddly, the horse noticed; it turned its muscular neck and snorted.

  “Worse than a wife. I guess I won’t fool you often. It’s poitín. I had a thimbleful, and that’s not a thing I do often. Not because of morals, you understand, but expense.” He reached below the horse’s chin and found the short lead rope that was part of the rope halter he had never dared take off this unconfinable horse. “But at the moment, I needed it.”

  He squeezed past the animal and then pushed it backward out of the little room. “Come with me, Son of My Heart,” he said.

  Out of the close barn he led, and into the rain. His hat was pushed down to his eyes. He sighed, again and again, and the horse rested its chin on his shoulder. “It’s a very dirty world, horse,” said Anraí, stepping through mud in his heaviest boots. “A stallion is valued for being able to hit his head against the barn roof, and the more valued because he is willing to do it! They’re happier to stuff three times the food into a beast that uses it up in fidgets … And you know, it’s as easy to bet on a fly on the window as it is on a horse race. You might lose your establishment equally quickly, and see Terrence Fenton throw your furniture onto the street.

  “Even so, they show more wisdom in judging horseflesh than human. Why it should be that I work my bones crooked and Mr. Blondell hands me the horse he’s ruined! Twice, he does. And on top of the whole, he has a son that obeys him.”

  Anraí gave a loose and unhappy laugh as he pulled the door of the far barn open on its track. “Time enough, though. It’s when the you
ng fellow comes into his manhood he’ll ruin and scandalize his father. God my witness.”

  This barn was presided over by Anraí’s other resident stallion, a black Thoroughbred of smallish size, used on the local pony mares for the production of hunters and driving horses. It was an innocuous beast, though not educated to any excellence.

  It was also the home of a half dozen horses in training, as well as a harness ox and Áine’s red cow. In the center of the floor was a rectangular frame of very sturdy stanchions, like a cattle chute, beside which stood the huge, pedal-powered clipping machine with which Donncha worked his wonders.

  Donncha himself was in the far corner, his back turned to Anraí. He had a bucket in front of him and was washing tools. “Come on,” said Anraí to the horse. “This place is nothing new to you; your white hair is still stuck in every crack of the floor.”

  Without hesitation the grey horse walked into the chute, for there was a small manger at the end, filled with sweetened oats. Anraí slammed the gate down behind. Four of the oak posts had wide leather bands riveted to them, which could be buckled around the legs of rowdy or belligerent horses.

  The grey had never been either rowdy or belligerent, and when the first shackle was wrapped around his hock he seemed to react with surprise. He objected. But with Donncha on one side and Anraí on the other, the job was soon accomplished.

  “I couldn’t be more sorry for you, lad,” said Anraí, taking a swig from the bottle Donncha presented him. “If I had my way, every horse in my barn would wear your face. But then we’d all starve, the horses and Áine and Donncha here and myself together.”

  Donncha took a thin, blue-bladed knife from the bucket. “I hate this,” he murmured. “Worst thing we ever have to do, except for shooting them. And him a grown stallion and full of his pride …”