The Iron Stallions (2 page)

These days, though, the paddocks were a tangle of high grass, ragwort and thistles; the drive showed suckers of struggling saplings; and the ivy was straggling across the windows in a way he couldn’t ever remember before. Only the big cedar tree in the lawn stood firm and tall and undamaged by neglect.

The stables were empty of horses these days. When his grandfather had been alive there had always been horses there, their heads peering inquisitively out of the loose boxes, their eloquent eyes searching for titbits. Since his grandfather’s death, they had all been sold off, even the big fiddle-headed stallion he’d ridden in the last years of his life.

Old Ellis Ackroyd, who had fought with Josh’s father in the Sudan, South Africa and France, greeted them with a smile. He was white-haired now but there was still the look of an old cavalryman about him.

‘Mornin’, Master Josh,’ he said. ‘’Aven’t seen you round these parts for some time.’

‘We always say,’ Josh whispered to Louise, ‘that if Ellis had been with my father in the Middle East, he wouldn’t have been killed. We’ve always thought of the Ackroyds as a sort of good-luck charm.’

The house was silent as they crept inside.

‘What are we going to do?’ Chloe’s voice sounded faintly petulant.

‘I know what
I’m
going to do,’ Josh said. ‘
You
could go into the kitchen. There are always scones for tea.’

As his sister and Jocelyn disappeared, Josh stood in the hall with Louise, as though listening to the old house breathing. Once it had been full of his grandfather’s vitality; now the only sound was the clatter of crockery from the kitchen and the voices of the cook and the maid.

He indicated his grandfather’s portrait. It had been painted on his return from the Crimea and showed him as a young man, fierce-eyed and curly-whiskered, one arm on the saddle of his charger. Louise stood alongside him, faintly awed.

‘She was called Bess,’ Josh explained. ‘After my great-grandmother. She carried Tyas Ackroyd to safety after his own horse was killed.’

He put his head round the library door. His grandmother was sitting in what had once been his grandfather’s chair, her head forward, her eyes closed. Since her husband’s death, she always used the library, as though she preferred to spend the rest of her life surrounded by the things that reminded her of him.

‘It’s all right,’ Josh whispered. ‘She’s asleep. And she’s deaf, so she’ll not hear.’

The books were old, their leaves dog-eared with use, but the chairs were comfortable, and the glass cases held guns by Purdey or Atkins. All the pictures were of soldiers, most of them in the uniform of the 19th Lancers, the Clutchers, the regiment to which the family had given its devotion for generations. It had been founded by Josh’s great-great-grandfather, Joshua Pellew Goff, after the victory of Wandewash, when his grateful king had granted him these acres in Braxby and five hundred pounds to raise a regiment of light dragoons.

‘But after we beat Napoleon,’ Josh whispered, ‘we became lancers.’

Keeping one eye on the sleeping old woman, they moved quietly round the room. To Josh it was as familiar as his own bedroom. He had spent more of his childhood in this room, listening to his grandfather talk, than he had in his own home. Together, the two of them had chosen their own cricket team for Yorkshire and, when the Great War had started, had picked what they’d called the Cads’ Team, which, he remembered, had included the Kaiser, Lloyd George, and a few others whom his grandfather had not considered quite proper. It had at one time, he remembered, included his Uncle Robert, his father’s elder brother and now the holder of a barony from Lloyd George for his services to industry during the period of hostilities.

‘The fire-irons,’ Josh whispered, ‘are made of French swords found on the field of Waterloo. That’s Stuart’s pistol. It weighs a ton.’

There were Federal cavalry guidons picked up during the American Civil War, rhinoceros hide shields and assegais from Zululand, German and French lance pennants found on the field of Mars-la-Tour. Then Josh indicated a glass case. Resting on the red velvet inside were decorations. There were the jewelled sunbursts and gaudy Indian sashes presented to his great-great-grandfather after Wandewash; his great-grandfather’s Waterloo medal; his grandfather’s GCB, GCMG, KCB, and DSO and all his campaign medals and foreign decorations, together with his father’s DSO with its two bars. They represented the entire history of the Regiment and, almost, the British army.

He gestured at a wall covered with photographs. ‘That’s my grandfather,’ he said. ‘And that’s my father. He was killed on almost the last day of the war. That’s Jeb Stuart. The rest are all friends of my grandfather’s: Lord Roberts, Lord Chelmsford, Lord Kitchener, Buller, Lord Methuen, Earl Haig, Sir John French, Smith-Dorrien, Winston Churchill, Lord Ellesmere.
He
was my grandfather’s chief of staff and was killed as a general in 1917.’

‘Who’s this one with the spiked helmet?’

‘That’s the Graf von Hartmann. He was a German general. He met my grandfather in America during the Civil War. That’s his son. He was a general too.’

‘Why are Germans here?’

‘We have German cousins. My Uncle Karl’s wife was my father’s sister. I’ve got a Cousin Konstantin and a Cousin Karl-August and two girl cousins, too.’

‘Isn’t it difficult having German relations?’

‘Not to us. They had rather a bad time in the war and when my Uncle Karl was killed my Aunt Helen blamed my grandfather. But that’s all over now. We helped them when the war ended and they came here for a while until things got sorted out in Germany.’

Louise looked round. ‘There’s an awful lot of–’

‘Junk?’ Josh smiled. ‘Some people call it junk. To us it’s terrifically important.’

‘And one day it will all be yours, dear. Your grandfather wanted you to have it.’

As he heard his grandmother’s voice, Josh spun round. She had wakened and was regarding him with bright interested eyes. She had been considered a beauty in her youth and the portraits and photographs about the house seemed to bear out the fact. She was small because she had always been small and she seemed to have grown even smaller since her husband’s death, like a tiny white-haired monkey.

‘Why
did
Grandpa want
me
to have it all?’ Josh asked.

‘Because he thought you’d take greater care of it than your Uncle Robert, dear. Your Grandfather never really got on with your Uncle Robert.’

She sighed, because there was more to it than that. Not satisfied with Cosgro Hall, which he had inherited through his wife, Lord Cosgro’s daughter, Robert had tried to gain control of Braxby Manor because he had always felt it made a better background to his title than the ugly brick edifice Lord Cosgro had built.

Josh was smiling at her. ‘I’d rather it remained yours, Granny,’ he said. ‘For years and years.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t want to follow your grandfather just yet, but it’s got to happen sometime. I’m not as tough as he was. They often tried to kill him but never quite managed it–’

Her voice faded and she shook her head, as though, like Josh, she found it difficult to remember the old man was no longer around, difficult, stubborn, eccentric in his old age, but still the most important person in her life.

It seemed time to change the subject and she indicated Louise standing shyly behind Josh.

‘Who’s this, dear? She’s not one of ours, is she?’

He pushed Louise forward. ‘This is Louise Peabody, Granny,’ he said. ‘She’s American.’

The old lady nodded. ‘We get on well with Americans in this family, dear,’ she said. ‘I was one. I was a Dabney, from Neese Ford. Perhaps that’s why I always got on with Winston Churchill’s mother. She was a Jerome, you know.’ She paused, thinking. ‘ I knew some Peabodys when I was young. From Charlottesville, Do you come from near there, dear?’

‘Yes, Ma’am. Charlottesville itself.’

‘Have you been looking at my husband’s trophies? He wasn’t very big, but, you know, he did rather fill life while he was alive.’

‘Did you go abroad with him?’

‘Oh, yes. Sometimes I had to leave my family behind, too. That’s the worst of being a soldier’s wife.’ The old lady’s eyes were far away. ‘People died so easily in those days – typhoid, malaria, cholera, things like that. And I often slept on a camp bed for weeks at a time. At one period, I even slept on the ground because my husband needed the bed.’ She peered at Louise. ‘She’s rather pretty, Josh. Is she a friend of yours?’

‘Good Lord, Granny, no!’ Josh blushed. ‘She’s Chloe’s friend!’

‘Ah!’ the old lady smiled. ‘I wondered. After all, you’re old enough now and you could do worse.’

When Josh returned to school, Reeves Major was swinging round the minute study they shared, humming and clutching a cushion to his chest.

‘Foxtrot,’ he explained. ‘Spiffing girl taught me. Name of Caroline Brett-Johnston. Old man’s a merchant banker with plenty of the ready. You should have come home with me. Ailsa could have danced with you. She’s not bad at it – for a kid sister. You feeling off-colour?’

‘No. School, that’s all. Be glad when I’ve finished.’

‘Expect you’ve been falling for a girl.’ Reeves grinned. ‘People do. At least, I do.’

‘I met a ripping girl while I was home,’ Josh said quickly. ‘American.’

He hadn’t really thought of Louise Peabody as particularly ripping until that very moment. She’d been merely a thirteen-year-old girl who’d been willing to listen to him. But it was always good to be able to keep up with Reeves Major. He was almost
too
worldly-wise.

Once when he’d accepted Josh’s offer of a day with the Braxby Hunt, a horse box with two magnificent mounts had turned up and Reeves had appeared clad in clothes that were obviously from Savile Row and made Josh’s seem ugly, cheap and provincial. The hack to the first draw had been excruciating and the only thing that had saved Josh’s face had been the performance of his mount – one his grandfather had chosen with all the stamp of the old man’s skill, nothing like Reeves’ handsome animal but with endless stamina and able to jump like a cat, even changing feet on top of stone walls to drop neatly down the other side, while Reeves, faced with what had seemed an endlessly high barrier, had preferred to go through the gate.

‘Pretty?’ Reeves broke in on his thoughts.

‘Who?’

‘The girl, ass!’

‘Oh! Not half.’

‘Do a bit of spooning?’

‘Oh, yes. A lot of that.’

‘Kiss her?’

‘I’ll say. Quite a goer.’

‘So was Caroline Brett-Johnston. I was asked if I’d like to take her to the hunt ball. I said they’d have to trot her up and down a bit so I could see what her action was.’ Reeves was adjusting his tie by the mirror. ‘Got a tip, by the way, for the 3.30 on Friday.’

‘You and your tips!’

‘Thought you liked horses?’

‘Riding ‘em. Not putting money on ‘em.’

‘It’ll make your allowance go further. She’s one of Lord Mara’s nags. Fancy ten bob on her for a win?’

‘Who’s going to get it on for us? Watkins, the porter?’

‘Not at fifty to one.’ Reeves grinned. ‘I’m taking no chances.
I
’m going to.’

‘You’d better watch out for Headlamps. He’s after you.’

‘He’s after all of us. He thinks the school’s a sink of iniquity.’

‘Anybody else in on it?’

‘Well, George Powell wants ten bob on and so does Grayson. I’m having ten bob. With you it would make two quid. I’ll slip out after Lights Out. I know where to get it on. Chap called Georgy Chubb. Hangs out in a pub called the Hole in the Wall in the High Street.’

By the time the matter was properly under way there were six boys in the syndicate so that they stood to win two hundred and fifty pounds between them, and that night, Reeves climbed down the wisteria that decorated the wall below the dormitory.

‘Look out for Headlamps,’ Josh whispered.

It seemed an age before the rattle of gravel against the window indicated that Reeves was back. They lowered the sheets they had knotted together and a minute later he was in the dormitory. He smelled of beer.

‘You’d better not breathe on Headlamps,’ Powell murmured.

‘I got it on with Georgy,’ Reeves grinned. ‘He said why don’t we draw for it? Winner take all.’

There was immediate agreement and it was Josh who drew the highest card in the pack.

‘Only wants the damn horse to win,’ Reeves said, ‘and you’ve got a fortune.’

For four days, Josh almost forgot the race, then Reeves Major appeared, looking dazed. In his hand he held a copy of
The Times
, filched from the school library.

‘It won,’ he said.

Josh gave a yell of delight. He had never owned more than a pound or two in his life. The prospect of having two hundred and fifty of them to do what he wished with was beyond imagining.

‘My God,’ Reeves said. ‘I shall be terrified of losing it when I go to fetch it.’

‘If the money’s mine,’ Josh pointed out, ‘
I
ought to fetch it.’

With the directions carefully written down, he climbed through the window after Lights Out and slipped down the wisteria. It was strange being in the town after dark. A policeman eyed him as he passed, his collar turned up, but he didn’t say anything. It was obvious where he had come from but the policeman decided it was none of his business what the nobs from the college got up to when they should have been in bed.

The Hole in the Wall was a shabby little pub and the bookmaker was a fat little man with a checked waistcoat and a thick gold watch chain.

‘’Ere y’are, young gent,’ he said. ‘Two ’undred and fifty nicker. Give my regards to Mr Reeves. I done business with ’im afore and ’ope to do it again. You goin’ to celebrate afore you set off back?’

Josh shook his head.

‘Go on, lad. One drink won’t hurt.’

Still dubious but electrified by the feel of the thick wad of money in his pocket, Josh nodded.

‘All right then,’ he said. ‘Just one. I’ll pay.’