“I don’t think Darcy likes watermelon,” she said to Tomas as I curled my lip at the unfamiliar treat. The two of them kept up a steady stream of chatter on the way home.
“I can’t believe ye bought lipstick instead of candy with the money from all the bramble jam ye sold at the church fair,” Tomas said to Shannon. “Who are ye planning to kiss with yer pretty red lips—Darcy?”
I flicked back my ears at the sound of my name, and the two youngest children dissolved into giggles. Back at the farm, I settled down to an evening of grazing and soon put the afternoon’s unpleasantness out of my mind.
But late that night my keen ears picked up the sound of footsteps crossing the yard. I trotted over and caught sight of a silhouette heading toward the road. Horses’ eyes are quite sharp at night, and I realized it was Liam with his school knapsack slung over his shoulder.
I whinnied to him, but he did not turn. Where could he be going at such an hour? I called to him again and he hesitated, then hurried over to the fence.
“Hush, Darcy,” he said, putting his hand on my muzzle. “Ye’ll wake everyone.”
I nosed at him curiously. I smelled bread in his bag and hoped he might share. But he only gave me an absent pat, then whispered, “Be good, sweet Darcy. I wish I could ride ye to Dublin instead of sneaking onto a railway car like a common tramp. But it’s unfair to bring beasts into men’s wars, and ’twould be as bad as stealing to leave Ma and Da without a horse. Take care of them, will ye?”
Liam’s hand tightened briefly on the bridge of my nose, then let go. He turned and slipped away into the night, my eyes tracking his progress until he was swallowed by darkness.
English Roses
In the weeks that followed, everyone moved about in a state of shock. Liam had left a note saying that he had taken the train to Dublin to join the Irish Republican Army. The family was devastated. Not only had Mr. McKenna been counting on Liam to cut extra turf to sell in town—the rent had increased again this year—but there was also a very real possibility that Liam could be killed in the brutal trench warfare between the Nationalists and the British troops.
But Liam wasn’t the only McKenna child who had been harboring a secret. Shannon often took me on long rides through the countryside, saying she was going out to pick berries. But instead of going south toward the burren, where blackberries clustered like gems on the vine, she only gathered from the sparse bushes alongside the road, then continued on to Hulton Manor. She liked to gaze at the elegant house with its walled courtyard and gardens full of exotic plants.
“How wonderful it would be to own such a home,” she murmured one afternoon as I paused to graze at the crest of the hill overlooking the estate. “Feather beds, great halls that sparkle with mirrors and crystal, tea served on china plates by servants every afternoon.”
Shannon did her work without complaint at home, churning butter, washing clothes, and digging in the vegetable garden, but I knew she yearned for a life of refinement. At church picnics she cast envious glances at the fashionable dresses and high-heeled shoes of the town girls, daughters of shopkeepers and middle-class landowners. The Hultons themselves, like all the wealthiest people in the region, went to a different church.
As Shannon watched an old gardener pruning the maze of hedges surrounding the house, I caught the scent of a strange horse. A moment later, a young man emerged from the walled courtyard, mounted on a chestnut stallion.
No, chestnut wasn’t the right word. The horse’s coat had an almost metallic sheen. It was brighter than copper, redder than brass. I whinnied a greeting, and the stallion’s hawklike head turned toward me. His nostrils flared, but he made no sound.
His rider had seen us too and urged the stallion toward us. Shannon shifted uneasily on my back, as if she wasn’t sure whether to stand her ground or turn and flee.
As the pair approached, I could see that the stallion was several hands taller than me. His rider was about Shannon’s age. The young man removed his hat and greeted her politely. His stallion stared at me, jingling his bit, but remained silent. I pawed uneasily at the ground.
“I—I was just admiring your gardens,” said Shannon, tugging sharply on my reins to make me stand still.
“Really? Then why don’t you come take a closer look at them.” The boy turned his horse and gestured invitingly. Shannon nudged me with her heels, and we followed them down the hill.
“Are you Brendan Hulton?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m recently home from Oxford.” He turned in the saddle and looked us over. “And you, clearly, are some fairy maiden who has wandered accidentally into civilization.”
Shannon let out a nervous and uncharacteristic giggle. “Not hardly,” she said. “My family is McKenna. Your father owns our land.”
We passed under a rose trellis into the garden. The hedges had been planted in a lattice pattern, like strips of pastry on top of a pie. The diamond-shaped mounds of earth in the center were filled with flowers and fruit trees. In the very middle of the garden was a fountain with water spouting from the mouth of a stone cupid. I was thirsty, and I tried to drag Shannon toward it. She dug in her heels and hissed, “Darcy, behave!”
As she and Brendan dismounted and walked together among the rows of bright blossoms, I eyed the red stallion beside me. He looked bored as he strolled beside his owner, and truth be told, I was a little insulted by his indifference. Was I not a mare, after all?
What is your name? I asked finally.
Embarr, he said, pricking his ears briefly in my direction.
Is it true that the horses here wear silver shoes? I had to ask.
Embarr pawed the air with one foreleg. Something glinted on the bottom of his hoof. It’s not silver, he said, but some other metal. It’s not for decoration. It helps to keep our hooves from cracking when we jump cross-country.
This sounded odd to me. I had been roaming these hills my whole life and my hooves had never cracked. By now, our owners had completed a circuit of the garden and were standing together under the rose trellis. Brendan reached up and broke the stem of the largest flower.
“An English rose for an Irish beauty,” he said, handing it to Shannon with a smile. Then he glanced over at the manor house. “But I’m afraid I must be going. I’m supposed to go hunting with my father after tea, and he hates to be kept waiting. Perhaps I’ll see you again?”
“Aye, perhaps,” said Shannon, twirling her flower. Brendan mounted Embarr and rode across the smooth green lawn. Shannon turned me toward home in a daze. It was a good thing I knew the way, for I probably could have walked straight into a ravine and she wouldn’t have stopped sniffing that rose.
When we reached the farm, an unsettling scene awaited us. Mr. and Mrs. McKenna were in the yard, talking to a young man in uniform. Mrs. McKenna clutched her husband’s arm, tears streaming down her face.
Shannon jumped off my back before I had even halted. The rose from Brendan fell from her hands and landed by my hooves. “What is it?” she said, hurrying over to her parents. “What’s the matter?”
“Liam,” said Mr. McKenna. His face was ashen. “He’s been shot.”
Night Ride
Mr. McKenna left for the train station that very evening. Liam was in a hospital in Dublin. He was still alive, but his leg had been blown off by artillery and he’d lost a lot of blood. He was in surgery now, but no one knew if he’d live.
Shannon insisted on going too. At first Mr. McKenna had argued, saying that Dublin was no place for a young lady in these times. But as usual, Shannon managed to get her way. They rode to the station with a neighbor who had business in town, leaving Tomas and Fiona to look after the farm. Mrs. McKenna had taken to bed with a fever, and the normally squabbling siblings were unusually serious, dividing up the chores between them.
Although there was better grazing on the far side of my pasture, I stayed near the house to keep an eye on things. The day after Mr. McKenna and Shannon left for Dublin, Mrs. McKenna came outside t
o work in the garden despite the children’s protests. “I cannot bear to stay in bed all day,” she said. “When the hands are idle, the mind is full of worried thoughts.” She pulled carrots and beets up by their leafy tops while Tomas and Fiona washed the supper dishes inside.
Mrs. McKenna noticed me watching her and lumbered over with a carrot in her hand. Halfway across the yard she stopped and swayed, as if the ground had turned to tossing sea beneath her feet. The carrot dropped from her hand, and she crumpled onto the ground. A red stain was spreading across the apron of her dress.
I knew that something must be terribly wrong with the baby inside her. I whinnied in alarm and struck the metal gate of my pasture with my hoof. Tomas and Fiona emerged from the cottage, drawn by the noise. They ran over to where their mother was lying on the grass. They shook her shoulders and called out to her, but she did not awaken.
“We must get a doctor,” said Fiona. She ran into the barn and emerged with my bridle. “Stay with Mother,” she said to Tomas. “Fetch some water, and help her inside if she wakes up.”
“But it’s nearly two hours’ ride into town!” said Tomas. “Ye’ll never make it before nightfall. And Mother could die before then.…” His lip trembled.
“She won’t. Darcy will gallop so fast, we’ll be there in no time at all.” Fiona bridled me and jumped onto my bare back. Tomas held open the gate, and Fiona dug her heels into my ribs. I sensed her urgency and broke into a gallop.
The road to town snaked away into the distance, and I remembered how long it took to drive to church each Sunday. Fiona must have thought the same thing, for she drew me to a halt and turned to face the bog that lay between the McKennas’ farm and the town. The reason that the road was so circuitous was that it wound around the large expanse of swamp. Any pathway through it would simply sink into the spongy ground.
The sun blazed low on the horizon, casting twisted shadows across the bog. The land looked black and the water silver, like a mirror reflecting the burning sky. In daylight, it was hard to tell where the water ended and the earth began, because everything was the same muddy color. Now it looked like an image from a dream or a fairy tale, not like an ordinary stretch of land that could be crossed by a mortal horse.
But town was so much closer this way—less than two miles straight through, compared to twenty by the road. Fiona had made up her mind. She urged me forward into the gloom. After a moment’s hesitation, I stepped off the road. I wondered if we would ever find it again.
The most treacherous thing about the bog was that ground that appeared solid might be soft as cornmeal mush underfoot. There were ridges of safe, dry land between the pools, but sometimes they petered out and left no other way through.
As dusk gathered around us, all my senses focused on finding a safe path. My eyes were fixed on the ground, searching out hummocks of grass that signaled drier ground. My ears flicked in all directions, listening for danger. I could even smell the difference between the soil under the grass hummocks and the rich, decaying smell of the mud pits.
Fiona murmured words of encouragement from time to time, but my eyes were sharper than hers at night, and she let me pick my own way through the gloom.
When we reached the center of the swamp, I felt a moment of disorientation. On this low ground, I could no longer see the far edge of the swamp, nor the path back to the road from which we’d come. I had only my instinct to guide me. I knew where the town was in the same way that a bird knows how to find its way home in the spring.
The moon came out from behind a cloud, illuminating a trail through the silvery surface of a flooded plain. And beyond it was the most welcome sight I’d ever seen—a grassy bank and a glimpse of the road that led into town.
In my haste to reach it, I stopped paying such careful attention to where I stepped. I felt my hooves sink into deep mud. I tried to turn back, but the soft earth sucked at my legs and held them fast. Panicked, I thrashed deeper into the deadly sinkhole. Fiona’s fingers clenched my mane, and black muck splashed her bare legs.
I had sunk up to my belly now. My instinct was to fight my way through the mud with brute strength. But if I did, Fiona could fall and be hurt. I had to get both of us out safely. Instead of stumbling deeper into the bog, I carefully lifted one of my submerged hind hooves. If I moved with aching slowness, the mud did not trap them. Only if I struggled did it bind me.
One painstaking step at a time, I backed out of the pit. It went against my every impulse, and my fear was multiplied by Fiona’s trembling hands as she clenched the reins. A step, and another, and more precious time ticking away. If only we had taken the road—perhaps we were already too late to save Mrs. McKenna and her baby.
Another step, and yet another. Now the ground felt solid under my hooves. Summoning the last of my strength, I backed the rest of the way out of the pit and then followed the raised path out to the road. Any passerby who saw us emerge from the bog would probably think they’d seen the dreaded kelpie or dullahan of ancient lore.
Mud splattered from my legs and haunches as I galloped into town, but that didn’t matter now. We had reached the doctor. Fiona pounded at the door, and a light went on inside the house.
A Matter of Honor
With the aid of Dr. Farber, who hitched his black mare and followed us back to the farm, by the road this time, Mrs. McKenna delivered a baby boy. Her fever had caused the birth to come early, but the child was healthy.
When Mrs. McKenna brought him outside for the first time, he seemed scarcely bigger than a wild rabbit, his skin all wrinkled and pink. He grew quickly, though, and was soon brought to church to be baptized. He was named Connor, after Mrs. McKenna’s father, who had left to find work in America when she was a little girl.
Meanwhile, Mr. McKenna and Shannon had returned from Dublin with Liam. I was shocked to see him balancing on two crutches, his right leg missing up to the knee. His pants were rolled up and pinned so that the fabric wouldn’t drag on the ground.
He seemed to have lost something else as well. He reminded me of a corn husk after it had been stripped from the ear. His skin was sallow, and his eyes looked lifeless. I neighed to him in greeting as he crossed the yard, but he didn’t even look up. He nearly fell when his crutch hit a rock, but he shrugged off Shannon’s hands with a sharp word when she tried to help him.
Once he was inside, he stayed there. He didn’t go to church with the family or play outside with the younger children. It was like the boy I remembered had never returned. Only a ghost had come home to take his place.
But life went on for the rest of the McKenna family. Shannon continued her trysts with Brendan at Hulton Manor. Often she rode with him while he was out flying his falcon or jumping cross-country with Embarr. I had to admit, the stallion was a fine hunter—he could clear a five-foot hedge without a drop of sweat marring his chestnut coat. Embarr was always polite when we met, dipping his finely sculpted head in greeting and matching his sweeping strides to my short, quick ones. But there was something remote and even disdainful about his manner. It was as if he thought it beneath him to mix with a mere farm pony like myself.
One afternoon, our riders led us side by side through the magnificent walled garden at Hulton Manor. The pear trees were in bloom, and I nosed eagerly for fallen fruit when Shannon paused to rest on a stone bench. I had gobbled five or six before I noticed that Embarr was watching me with an expression of amusement. Embarrassed, I sidled away from the tree and wiped my dripping muzzle against my foreleg. Embarr, of course, was too dignified to be interested in the pears. He stood like a bronzed statue, awaiting Brendan’s next command.
But Brendan had other things on his mind. He and Shannon were sitting together on the bench, holding hands. Brendan was describing some fancy ball he was going to attend that evening.
“I can’t imagine what it would be like to go to such a dance,” breathed Shannon, leaning closer to him. Her voice was always so small and mouselike when she spoke to him. It wasn’t like her at
all.
“You’re a farmer’s daughter,” said Brendan. “What would you wear? I’d invite you myself so you could see what it’s like, but I’d be a laughingstock among my school friends.”
Shannon stood up. Her cheeks were flushed with anger. “Brendan Hulton, are you saying that you’d be ashamed to be seen in public with me?”
Brendan looked almost confused. “Of course,” he said. “My father expects me to make friends within my own social class. Furthermore, you’re a Catholic. You can’t possibly think we could ever court each other.”
For a moment, I thought Shannon was going to slap Brendan. Instead, she spun on her heel and grabbed my reins. Sensing her agitation, I took a step forward. She yanked at the reins, and I tossed my head in surprise. Shannon was usually a gentle rider.
Brendan grabbed my bridle and held me still while she mounted. I didn’t like how he was upsetting Shannon, and I nipped at his hand.
“If you don’t understand what I mean,” he said, rubbing his wrist where I’d bitten him, “just look at our two horses. That’s the difference between us.”
“Oh, so I’m just a common workhorse, am I?” Shannon’s voice was far from mouselike now. It was more like the screech of an angry hawk. “I’ll have you know that Darcy is the fastest and bravest horse in the county, maybe in all of Ireland.”
Brendan laughed. “If you were a gentleman, I’d challenge you to a race. As it is, I can only apologize if my words have offended a lady.”
“Oh, keep your stuffy words!” cried Shannon. “You don’t think I’m a lady, so don’t pretend to treat me like one. In fact, I do challenge you to a race. With a proper prize if you should win. Anything you like.”
“What if I asked for a kiss?”
Shannon’s cheeks burned red. “Fine, if that’s what you want. But you’ll never collect it.”
Darcy Page 3
