The Grey Horse

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  “Back to front,” said Toby in an embarrassed rush. “Making sure you don’t dig too hard into the central cleft, nor sore the heel.”

  Anraís set face relaxed a trifle. “That’s good. And to what use would you put the steel curry comb?”

  Toby had to think about this one, for he knew there was a trick. His posture of battle eased and he rubbed the back of his sleeve over his mouth as his father had done, fifteen minutes before.

  “It’s to get out the mud from the coat of a work horse. On a high-blood horse I wouldn’t use it at all.”

  “Except to clean the other brushes,” added Anraí, but he was slightly better satisfied with the boy.

  Ruairí MacEibhir watched all this, and when the flighty filly was led out, rolling her eyes and pulling up on the rein in Donncha’s hand, he watched Toby’s expression closely. Ruairí smiled.

  Five minutes of instruction in mounting was ill tolerated, both by the boy and by the filly, and thirty seconds after his heels set the filly into motion, Toby lay flat on his back on the churned earth of the ring, and the horse was dancing from one end of the confinement to the other, panic and willfulness fighting for supremacy in her round, rolling eyes.

  Donncha helped Toby up, and his mirth was not at the boy’s expense. “She’s a challenge, that little girl,” he whispered.

  Toby’s face was grey, but he allowed himself to be put back in place in the saddle and suffered a lecture about sitting deep in the saddle.

  This time he was off within ten seconds.

  He saw the grin on Donncha’s wide mouth, showing all the wreckage of teeth. He did not stop to reflect that Donncha might be smiling in sympathy or, indeed, that he had never yet seen Donncha without a smile. Toby was not thinking at all, and as soon as he could speak, he shouted, “I will not be made a figure of fun in front of a group of … a group of …”

  He stalked off, bending under the rail of the fence. Once outside, he paused to dust very ineffectually his jodhpur pants and his hacking jacket. Then he stalked off in the direction of Knockduff.

  “It’s a long way home, if he’s walking,” Donncha said to Anraí, who watched his pupil’s departure without moving from the center of the ring. “And I wonder what it was that we were a group of?”

  Toby cursed his father for telling him he had to ride that damned mad horse. He cursed his mother for not standing up to Father, though she thought this idea of his idiotic. He cursed himself, for showing emotion in front of the natives. He wished the damned, mad horse had broken his neck and solved all his problems at once. Now he had to go home and tell Father why he could never show his face back at Raftery’s stable again.

  And he would not. No matter what.

  I was going to be a long walk home.

  He was outgrowing these boots.

  Knockduff rose up to the right and the main road was straight ahead. Perhaps he could get a ride with some farmer. Perhaps he would meet his father coming back for him. It would be too bad if Father missed him and went on to Raftery’s and heard about all this first from the old man. As mother said about him, he’d always rather believe a native.

  There was a sound of hooves from the meadow at the right, but Toby didn’t look over, for these acres were Raftery’s and full of foraging horse and pony mares and their offspring. But five seconds later a figure stepped out onto the road. It was the man with the strange eyes the peasant who didn’t speak English.

  He stood with one foot on a stone and the other on the plain dirt of the road and said to Toby, “I’d like to show you something.”

  Very odd. Toby’s understanding had been wrong, for the fellow spoke without even a trace of Gaelic accent. He stood in bright light and the boy could see how perfectly dark and brown were his eyes, with only a dot of white at each corner.

  Perhaps the color of his eye had broken in an accident, like the yolk of an egg, and run into the surrounding area. Toby’s knowledge of human morphology did not deny the possibility of such a thing. He wondered if perhaps he shouldn’t be staring. But the man seemed to see perfectly well, and if he didn’t, then he wouldn’t notice being stared at. Toby found he was following over the blooming fields.

  The first foals had been born already, and followed their indolent mothers on broomstick legs. Three of the mares, two with babies and one perfectly enormous, tagged along after Raftery’s groom, and one bear-furry infant blundered into Toby himself and sucked at the boy’s fingers. No teeth at all.

  Toby giggled. Such a thing had never happened to him before. He glanced to see whether the native had noticed his lapse, but Ruairí MacEibhir looked half asleep, and he was pulling great handfuls of dead hair from the croup of a bay mare who stood in glazed ecstasy to let him do it. They made a slow progress, and Toby had no idea where they were going until he looked up and found the small ring in front of him, with the nasty chestnut filly still in it, though her tackle had all been removed. No one else was about.

  “Watch me,” said Ruairí, and he squeezed between the rails.

  The filly put her neck up into the air, until she looked like a picture of a camel. Her back hollowed and her tail came up. She bobbed her head like the daughter of her father that she was and stared at the approaching figure.

  Ruairí MacEibhir walked over to her, his feet scuffing in the dust. He looked over her back and he yawned. Two yards from her hindquarters he stopped. “She’ll go around the circle for me, now,” he said, and Toby at the rail could scarcely hear him. Ruairí gave the filly a sudden glance.

  She did. She went around the ring at a smart pace, and he did nothing but turn in a little circle within hers. Sometimes he looked at her and sometimes, in a bored fashion, he looked at Toby. His hands were in his pockets.

  It wasn’t just for one revolution the filly obeyed him; she kept in motion for five minutes, and soon she wasn’t moving like a camel anymore. Her tight back was loosened and her quarters began to drive. She began to trot out like his father’s hunter, who was a grand animal and a half-bred son of the same sire. She began to look pretty, in fact, and Toby felt a slight pang, knowing that he was not able to ride her.

  As though he read the boy’s mind, Ruairí said to him, “She looks lovely at the gallop, too.” There was no great difference in the attitude Ruairí struck, standing in the middle of the round ring: a tension in the shoulders, a lowering of the head, a certain glower. But the filly sprang forward as though whip struck, and she did have a breathtaking gallop. Toby grinned through the dust, and the man in the center of the ring grinned with him.

  Another ten minutes of speed and he brought the glistening horse to a walk, seemingly by no more than relaxing his shoulders. At last she stopped dead, in place, and her head hung to her knees. Ruairí MacEibhir squeezed between the rails, and he was dry faced and yawning again.

  “Now, lad, you do it,” he said, and he took Toby by the hand. Toby giggled in the manner he had always hated in himself, but at the moment he didn’t notice. “I don’t know the trick,” he admitted. “I watched you, but I didn’t, catch it.”

  The strange fellow laughed, and the silver and black hair fell into his brown eyes. “There’s no trick at all but the certainty of your own power. You’re a human being and you’re eleven years old. She’s a filly horse and she’s only three. You are much larger than she, if you’d but know it, and many times more dangerous. Know that and walk toward her hindquarters.

  “Not directly behind, of course,” he added in a droll manner. Toby took two steps. He did not feel in the slightest bit more dangerous than the tall filly, but he was used to acting a part he did not feel. With the same stiffness of spine he had shown in front of Anraí, he approached the filly, who rolled her eyes and shied. She did not move.

  Damn you, you will move, he said to himself, and he thrust his head aggressively forward, as the man had done. The filly shot forward in an explosion that carried her all around the ring. As he was still in the same frame of mind when she came around again, and he
glared at her face on, she skidded to a stop ten feet away from him and stood sweating.

  “You’ve done it, my lad,” said Ruairí Quietly he stepped toward the filly, and he petted her, and was suddenly on her back, while Toby retreated to the rail, waiting for the fireworks.

  A crow hop, no more. The filly stood with no tackle on her and the man’s feet behind her elbow. His hands were on his thighs. “Go,” he said quietly, for Toby’s benefit, and he squeezed and leaned forward, and the filly did go. “Stop,” he said again, and his weight went to the back, causing her steps to dwindle and fail. Again he set her trotting, and it seemed his very attention sent her right and left. At last he let her stop beside the boy.

  “Now you,” he whispered, and Toby’s heart swelled with desire to the point of pain. Perhaps Ruairí took his expression for fear, for he said, “What could she do to you she hasn’t already done, and left you whole?”

  “I can’t get up that far by myself,” was all of Toby’s reply, and when Ruairí offered a boost, he wasn’t slow in taking it.

  The red filly was very handsome, shining with sweat and with all the nonsense run out of her. It was fortunate for the boy that this had been done, but it was Toby’s own intelligence and courage that moved her forward.

  He put his hands on his thighs, as the man had done, though he wanted desperately to grab mane. He leaned and squeezed her forward. Glory of glories, the horse went into a good trot, and Toby sat that trot for half an hour, under the windy sky of April. She went left for him and right for him, and at the end of the lesson, she stopped for him. All without bridle or saddle.

  Like a hero out of a story.

  Toby slid off, his trousers and the skin on the inside of his thighs were wet with horse sweat. He loved it.

  “I can ride her,” he said, as though Ruairí MacEibhir needed to be told.

  The man nodded his head, almost as the horse had done. He had such a nice face, thought Toby. He liked the broad cheekbones, the short nose, and the black, smiling eyes, even if they were like scrambled eggs. At the moment Toby liked everybody.

  “You surely can. But she’s too stupid for you, I think.”

  Toby blinked and looked back at the expensive filly.

  “Oh, she may learn cleverness, but three-year-old horses are like babes in nappies. With the best will in the world, they can’t be trusted to take care of their feet. I can find you a good pony who is so clever even I can’t outthink him, and on him, you won’t have to stay in a pen, like a monkey riding a dog.”

  But Toby was doubtful. “My father meant this horse for me.”

  MacEibhir raised his head and gazed out over the hills. Over Knockduff. “If you show your father how you’ve mastered this girl, then perhaps he’ll have no objection if we let her off to … to grow into you.”

  Toby giggled once more, thinking of the tall filly having to “grow into” him.

  “However,” continued Ruairí, and he leaned against the rail of the pen, as though too lazy to stand upright. “If I teach you, you must treat me with respect, and old Anraí too, for he is the best man on a horse in Connemara.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise!” Toby really believed his own words; he had no memory of having had other feelings. “But … is he really better on a horse than you are?”

  “Of course not,” said Ruairí, and then James Blondell came trotting up the road on his covert hack, and Toby exploded away to tell him all about his lesson.

  Blondell was pleased, and more pleased when Toby climbed onto the weary filly to take her naked around the ring once more. He acceded to Ruairí’s request that the filly be given a “rest” while Toby was schooled on a horse of the trainer’s choosing.

  He went in the house, full of satisfaction, to speak with Anraí

  Anraí was very surprised, for he hadn’t known there had been a lesson, and the last he had seen of the boy had been his dusty rear view as he had limped angrily away down the road. When the squire praised the English of his new hired man, his cup of confusion overflowed. He said little to Blondell, but only nodded and smiled.

  Anraí walked out into the fresh air and wind to find the fairy helping Donncha pull a mane. “Are you teaching Blondell’s son, then? And have you really excellent English?”

  Donncha stared. Ruairí answered, “I’ll teach the boy, if it’s the same with you, Anraí. He’s bold enough, though his tongue, is awkward. But as for English.”

  He left off what he was doing, and ran his hands through his heavy hair in thought. “In the center of four walls, my friend, and on a floor, I have no English, for I have never learned it. But on my own earth … there I can speak to anyone.”

  His eyes, intent on Anraí, were themselves holes into the brown earth.

  Chapter Seven

  Grand Shoulders

  The spring night was very warm; moths of various colors dashed themselves against the chimney of the lamp.

  “He’s out there, all right,” said Eibhlín Standún, who stood in willowy languor by the window, looking out sideways from beneath her lashes.

  “What would I do without you to keep me abreast of things?” murmured her sister, who sat by the lamp, doing her poultry accounts. Máire Standún was very close about her egg money.

  The girl’s sitting room, which was also their bedroom, had glass in the window, and curtains of lace woven by nuns. Their father owned five big boats: sleek Galway hookers that trolled out in Cashla Bay or further. It was simply furnished, however, and whitewashed instead of papered, because the Stantons, despite the name, were more or less Gaels. They did not hobnob with Hermione Blondell.

  Máire’s hair, falling in torrents to the tabletop, was the color of the ink she was using: more blue than brown. Eibhlín’s hair was gold, and it caught the light no matter where she stood.

  “He is a fine-looking man,” she said. “He has grand shoulders.”

  “He does that.” Máire’s reply was vague.

  “A uniform would become him, I think,” added Eibhlin, which was one of her highest compliments.

  Máire Standún tried to imagine Ruairí MacEibhir in the military uniform, and in the effort she made a blot in the shillings column.

  Eibhlín’s eyes were huge, and as bland as a baby’s. She rarely looked straight at the thing she wanted to see. “He has been so faithful, Mary. Every clear night for weeks. Perhaps he has stood there in the rain, too, and we cannot see him. If he wanted to see me so badly, I’m sure I’d share a word with him.”

  “I’m sure you would,” said Máire, even more vaguely.

  “… even if it were only to remind him his suit was hopeless.”

  Máire mumbled, “I’m sure it wouldn’t be.” Eibhlín glanced at her sharply, straight on, but only for a moment.

  Fragrant breezes, not too warm, and moonlight. Máire Standún closed the door behind her gently. She had not sneaked out, exactly, but she had not made a great deal of noise.

  Her sister’s garden, with its roses and herbaceous border, had the south wall of the house. She passed through it and passed by the sally hedge, which was tall in this spring season, like stiff hair on a head. Beyond this was her chicken yard, its fence woven out of the willow shoots. Her hens were in the stone shed, their sleep noises barely audible. Beyond this stood her beehives: a wooden box in the modern system and three empty skeps, waiting for swarms to fill them.

  This was Máire’s garden. It had a few flowers, too, and pea plants on a trellis of willow. She stood by the hives, uncertain. Seeing no one about, she lowered her head and put an ear to the wall of the wooden hive.

  “You’re brave enough!” said Ruáirí MacEibhir, stepping out from the shade of the hedge.

  Máire straightened and made sure her shirt was tucked. “Bees don’t want to sting you.”

  He laughed, raising his chin up. “Me, they do. The smell of me offends them terribly.” He took a step into moonlight and his head shone white. “Not that I’m a dirty fellow, mind you
. It’s only the smell of horses.”

  Máire watched him advance. “They come out at night sometimes,” she told him. “When the moon is this bright.”

  “Are you warning me off?” He chuckled, but he stopped in place. “Do you use your bees in the place of guard dogs?”

  There was a faint buzzing in the air, or perhaps it was his imagination. Máire’s teeth were bright as flowers in the illumination of the full moon. “I don’t need guards, Ruairí. I am sufficient to myself.”

  The silver headed bobbed. “I believe you, woman! I would not … Ow!” With a flapping of hands, he retreated to the hedge again. “You may not need protection, but you certainly have it. I’m stung on the nose, by heaven!”

  Máire herself backed away from the hive, though with a bit more dignity. She came to him in the shadow of the hedge and pulled him by the arm into moonlight. “Here. Don’t pluck at it; you’ll force the venom into your skin. Let me.”

  With a fingernail she scraped the pulsing venom sack from Ruairí’s nose. The stinger, she made sure, came with it.

  “It won’t swell much, I don’t think,” she murmured. “It hadn’t time to …”

  Her hand was between his suddenly, and he had kissed it. She yanked back futilely, but he would not let go. “You’ll hit me, lass. I know it, and now I don’t dare release you.” Her anger growing, she pulled with all her strength and almost pulled the man off his feet and on top of her.

  “You see my problem,” he whispered hurriedly. “I should have thought of it before I dared kiss you, but I’m not clever. I never was.” Twice more she yanked against his hold, and the man followed in the most ludicrous manner, his feet always in his own way, apologizing that necessity had made him such a bother.