The Scorpio Races (9 page)

So while the horses make their soft, slow night noises, and the dark, knowing walls of this place hold me close, I clean out the three stalls. I wipe down the surfaces in the feed room. I give the water horses their meat, though I think they’re too wound up to eat it. And all the while, I imagine that this massive stable is mine, that these horses I care for are in my name, that the buyers who try them will nod approvingly at me instead of at Benjamin Malvern.

The Malvern stables are not truly the Malvern stables, after all, but a complex of stone barns that housed horses on Thisby long before the Malvern name existed on the island. The only thing that can match these buildings in stature, especially the main stable, is St. Columba’s in Skarmouth. The barns were constructed with the same spiritual fervor. The ceiling is held up with carved columns that depict wide-eyed men whose hands support the feet of men whose hands support the feet of other men in turn and again in turn, and at the top of all of them are men with the heads of horses. Like the church in Skarmouth, the sloped ceiling of the main barn is supported with ribs of stone, and in between, the surfaces are painted with complicated animals whose limbs knot around each other. The walls, too, are painted, with small, twisted figures jotted into the oddest places: a corner of a stall, in the center of the floor, along the left side of windows. Men with hooves for hands, and women coughing up horses, and stallions with tentacles for manes and tails.

And the most impressive painting of all covers the wall at the end of the main stable. In it, there is the sea, and a man — a forgotten ocean god, perhaps — dragging a horse down into it. The water is the color of blood and the horse is red as the sea.

It’s an old animal, this stable, the oldest on the island.

Everywhere in it are clues to the stable’s previous life. The stalls are so large that in all but three, Malvern has put up dividers so that he can accommodate more of the sport horses that he sells on the mainland. The door frames are iron, the door handles will turn only counterclockwise, and there is something written in red runes above one of the thresholds. The floor of the
teind
stall, the stall closest to the cliffs, is stained with blood, the walls arced with a spattered spray like sea foam. Malvern has repainted it many times, but when the morning light comes in full and strong, the stains are still visible. One of them is the print of a human hand, fingers splayed near the door handle.

It was not always stylish sport horses that were housed in this barn.

I finish with the stalls and the feed room and every other chore that I can think of performing, and then I shut down the lights so it’s just me in the dark, ancient stomach of the stables. One of the
capaill uisce
makes a clucking sound and another one replies. Even though I know the horses, the sound instinctively makes the hairs on my arms rise. Every other horse in the stable has gone silent and watchful at the noise.

The thing is, I don’t actually want the Malvern stables, not in either of its forms. I don’t want Malvern’s rich buyers, coming each October to watch the races and buy his thoroughbreds. I don’t want his money and his reputation and his ability to come and go as he pleases from Thisby. I don’t need forty head of horses to feel complete.

What I want is this: a roof over my head that is my own, accounts at Gratton’s and Hammond’s in my name, and, most of all, I want Corr.

For the first time in nine years, I lock the door to my flat, thinking of Mutt Malvern’s purple face and fisted hands. I lie awake for a long time, listening to the ocean violent against the rocks of the northwestern shore of the island, and thinking about the piebald mare.

Finally, I sleep, and when I do, I dream of a day when I can turn my back on Mutt Malvern and keep walking.

CHAPTER TWELVE

PUCK

The morning is raw and pink as I make my way out to Dove’s pasture. Cold as a witch’s tit, my father used to say, and my mother would say
is that the sort of language you’re teaching your boys?
and apparently it was, because Gabe said it just the other day. It’s not cold enough to freeze the mud, however — only a few years does it ever get cold enough for that — so I slide and stomp and shiver my way across the muddy yard. I’m trying not to notice that I’m nervous. It’s nearly working.

I call Dove’s name and bash the coffee can of feed against the fence post. It’s not a lot — I’ll feed her more after we’ve worked — but it’s enough to tantalize her. I can see her muddy rump poking out from the lean-to. Her tail doesn’t even move as I jostle the can again.

I jump as Finn says, right at my elbow, “She knows you’re cranky, that’s why she won’t come over.”

I glower at him. Somewhere, someone in Skarmouth is making meat pies, because I can smell them on the wind and my stomach grumbles as it rolls to point in the direction of the scent. “I am not cranky. Aren’t you supposed to be cleaning the kitchen or something?”

Finn shrugs and stands on the lowest rung of the fence. He seems unperturbed by the cold. “Dove!” he calls gaily. I am gratified to see that Dove doesn’t move an inch for him, either.

“Well,” he says, “she’s a useless mule. What are you doing today?”

“Taking her down to the beach,” I say. I touch my nose with the back of my hand; it’s that sort of cold that makes me feel like it’s going to run, even though it’s not.

“The
beach
?” Finn echoes. “Why?”

The idea of answering him irritates me as much as the answer does, so I pull the rule sheet out of my woolly jacket pocket and hand it to him. I rattle the can while he unfolds the sheet, and try not to feel sorry for myself as he reads. It takes him awhile to get to the rule that answers his question. I can tell exactly when he gets to it, because his mouth gets thin. I had thought, when I first decided to ride Dove in the races, that I would be able to exercise her far away from the beach and go down there only for the race. But the rule sheet that Peg Gratton gave me tells me I can’t. All entries must train within 150 yards of the shoreline. Penalty: disqualification with no refund of the entry fee. It feels specifically designed to thwart me, even though I know there’s a good reason for it. No one wants water horses running amok over the island as it gets close to November.

“Maybe you can ask them to make an exception,” Finn says.

“I don’t want them to notice me at all,” I say. If I went to the officials and made a kerfuffle over Dove, they might disqualify me anyway. My plan seems frightfully thin at the moment. All for a brother who left before either of us got up.

Finn and I both start at the sound of a car coming up the road to the house. Cars are never a good sign. Not many people on the island have them, and fewer still have a reason to come out here. Usually the only people who come this way are men who don’t take off their hats as they hand over unpaid invoices.

Finn, valiant soul that he is, vanishes, leaving me to it. The same amount of money has to be handed over regardless, but it stings less if you aren’t the one who has to count it out for them.

But it’s not a bill collector. It’s a long, elegant car the size of our kitchen, with a tall, elegant grille the size of a dustbin. It has round, friendly-looking eyeballs with chrome eyebrows; its tailpipe breathes white puffs that creep around the tires. And it is red — not the red of the horse I saw on the beach yesterday, but red like only humans can imagine. Red like candy. Red like you’d like to taste or possibly paint your lips with.

Red, Father Mooneyham often remarks sadly, like sin.

I know the car. It belongs to St. Columba’s, officially, donated to Father Mooneyham for his home visits by a well-meaning parishioner who’d come from the mainland and had some sort of spiritual conversion in the waters near Skarmouth. And it is true that Father Mooneyham travels all over the island in the car, visiting the islanders and giving last rites and first rites and in-between rites. But he never budges from the passenger seat. If he can’t find anyone willing to drive, he uses his bicycle as he did before, never mind that he’s old as sod.

I feel a little bad that Finn has hidden himself in the house, because he would’ve appreciated the grand red car of the priest. I tell myself it serves him right for being a coward.

Before I can properly wonder why Father Mooneyham has come out here, the driver’s side door opens and out steps Peg Gratton. Her feet are armored in dark green rubber boots that are unimpressed by our mud. I see Father Mooneyham fretting over something in the passenger seat, but he remains in the car. It’s Peg who has business with me, and that is a worrying thought.

“Puck,” she says. Her short hair is curled and red — not the same color red as either the car or the horse from the beach — and frazzled appealingly in a way that gives me hope for mine. “Good morning. You have a moment?”

It’s clever the way she says it, not as a question. I would have to contradict her in order to have my moment back. I make a note to use the method in the future.

“Yes,” I say, and then, though it pains me to add it, because the kitchen looks like faeries have been using it for black magic all night, “Would you like some tea?”

“I can’t keep the Father,” Peg says briskly. “He was kind enough to bring me out here.”

This of course is not true, as it was the other way around. I narrow my eyes at her. Seeing the red car reminds me both that I haven’t been to confession in a very long time and that I’ve done a great many things that I ought to confess. It’s not a comfortable feeling.

Now Peg hesitates. She looks around the yard. It is a bit pathetic looking. Every so often I pull the biggest of the weeds out from the edges of the fence and the house, but there are still dark, leafy intruders everyplace things join up. There is not much in the way of proper grass in the stretches in between, just mud. I should tell Finn to fix the wheelbarrow that has passed out in the corner of the yard. But it’s not the mess that Peg’s eyes rest on, it’s the saddle I have set over the fence, next to my brushes. And the coffee can of grain in my hand.

“My husband and I were talking about you last night, right before we went to sleep,” she says, and for some reason, this makes me feel odd, to think of her and ruddy Thomas Gratton in bed together, and to think of them talking about me, of all things. I wonder what they talk about when they aren’t talking about me. The weather, perhaps, or the price of marrow, or the way that tourists always seem to wear white shoes in the rain. I think if I had a butcher husband, that’s what I would talk to him about. Peg continues, “And he seemed to think that you weren’t riding one of the
capaill uisce.
I said no, that’s not possible. It’s a bad enough decision to ride in the races, without making it complicated.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said he seemed to remember,” Peg says, looking at Dove’s muddy tail, “that the Connollys had a little dun mare by the name of Dove, which I said I thought was what you had me write down on the board last night.”

I hold the coffee can of grain very still. “That’s true,” I say. “Both of those things are true.”

“That’s what I thought. So I told him I was coming down here to talk you out of it.” She looks less than pleased with this idea. I thought it was probably one of those ideas that sounded better when you were lying in bed with your ruddy husband rather than standing in the misty cold morning staring at the reality of me.

“I’m sorry that you came all this way,” I say, although I’m not, and it’s unusual for me to lie before a proper breakfast. “Because I can’t be talked out of it.”

She puts one of her hands on her hip and the other on the back of her head, crushing her curly hair flat. It’s such a fierce posture of frustration that I feel a little bad that I’m the one causing it. “Is it the money?” she asks, finally.

I’m not sure if I’m insulted or not. I mean, clearly, yes, we need the money, but I would’ve had to be the island’s best fool if I thought that I stood a chance of winning against those massive horses.

A part of me prickles at that, and I realize, guiltily, that a tiny, tiny part of me, small enough to dissolve in a teacup or work a blister in the heel of a shoe, must’ve been daydreaming of that possibility. Beating the horses that had killed my parents on a pony that I’d grown up on. I must be the island’s best fool, after all.

“It’s for personal reasons,” I say stiffly. Which is what my mother had always told me to say about things that had to do with fighting with your brothers, getting any sort of illness that had intestinal ramifications, starting your period, and money. And this decision covered two out of the four, so I thought the statement was well earned.

Peg looks at me and I can tell she’s trying to read between the lines. Finally, she says, “I don’t think you know what you’re getting into. It’s a war down there.”

I shrug, which makes me feel like Finn, which makes me wish I hadn’t done it.

“You could die.”

I can see now that she’s trying to shock me. This is the least shocking thing she could say, though.

“I have to do it,” I tell her.

Dove chooses that moment to emerge, and she is mud-stained and small and faintly damning. She comes over to the fence and tries to nibble the saddle. I give her a foul look. She’s muscled and in good shape, but in comparison to the
capaill uisce
I saw yesterday, she’s like a toy.

Peg sighs and gives a nod, but it’s not for me. It’s a
well, at least I tried
nod. She clomps back through the mud and knocks her boots on the edge of the car door to keep from getting so much filth inside the beautiful red car. I rub Dove’s nose and feel bad about disappointing fierce Peg Gratton.

After a moment, I hear my name and see that Father Mooneyham is calling me. I can’t believe that Peg would have convinced Father that me on the beach is a spiritual matter, and my path to the passenger-side window is a dutiful rather than happy one.