Tivington Nott (12 page)

Cheyne’s not going to
wait
for his answer, he’s going to squash it out of Grabbe! His massive horse is almost on top of us! I can smell it! Towering and powerful and, like its master, restless. Reaching with its head and sawing and pulling at the bit, its weight shifting dangerously from one great muscled leg to another, eyes wide with anxiety, hating to be forced this close to Kabara, soapy froth beginning to whiten its grey neck where the reins are rubbing and slapping, and a continuous rumbling and gurgling going on in its guts.

Grabbe gets hit a couple of times with flecks of saliva as he straightens from examining the hoof. Cheyne’s right over him, his knee actually nudging Grabbe’s cap a bit askew. ‘Yes John?
Well?
He went
in
did he?’

The harbourer looks up at him: ‘He did Mr Cheyne. But I don’t know whether he’ll come out for you.’

The Tiger laughs sharply at this, almost a shout, staring hard all the while at Alsop, who’d be over here in a flash finding out what Grabbe’s interest is in his horse, if it weren’t for this other sweating charger that’s threatening to trample me and the harbourer to death any second.

Cheyne doesn’t laugh. He’s not about to ease up on the pressure either. ‘Jack Perry and his hounds will take care of getting him
out
for us, John,’ he says, reefing on the reins and forcing his horse to stand close, side-on to Grabbe, effectively blocking his way.

‘Did you get a look at his “head”?’ Cheyne’s pushing hard while he’s got the chance. He wants to know as much as Perry knows. He wants to know it before things start happening, before Grabbe goes home to his breakfast and there’s only rumours and speculations left to go on. He wants to be set up sweetly with the facts before the inevitable confusions and complications and the accidents of the run start to develop. He wants to be sure of what he’s up to and to leave to chance as little as possible. He’s after a decisive clue that will enable him to distinguish this stag from all other stags when he first sees it, and not be misled by false starts after the wrong deer, or become confused when this stag changes the hounds on to the line of another later on. He wants to be certain that he can remain staunch to the line of the original quarry when others have become unsure of it. You can see that he doesn’t care if he’s being rude. Annoying John Grabbe doesn’t worry him in the least. He won’t back off till he’s squeezed as much information as he can out of the harbourer, and a description of the peculiarities of this Burrow Wood stag’s antlers is what he’s looking for from Grabbe, a definite identification. The stag’s unmistakable signature. He believes this much is his due.

Grabbe turns to me, his palm resting lightly on Kabara’s neck. ‘They don’t all have “heads” do they?’ he says quietly, friendly, taking his time despite Cheyne’s urgent pushing and shoving, speaking directly to me, almost as if he might even consider that there are no mysteries for
either
of us in this business.

But what does he mean? Can he mean he’s seen Kabara’s tracks at the soiling pit of the Tivington nott! That he’s slotted us there? Is this what he’s just been checking on? The print?
Kabara
’s signature?
Our
trace left there in the mud on the verge of that dark spring? Is that the connection he just confirmed for himself? Or am I jumping to a crazy conclusion? Is he telling me he knows all about the nott’s new home and my visits there, or is he telling me something less than that? Should I just accept that he knows? My instincts urge me to. There’s no way of being sure with someone like this.
Whatever
he says, he seems to suggest that he knows more and
means
more than he’s actually telling.

Before I can say anything he turns away, ducking under the nose of Cheyne’s horse and going over to where he’s left his pony standing. I look up and meet Cheyne’s aggressive gaze fixed on me. He’s debating with himself whether or not it might be worth asking me what Grabbe has said. The minute I look at him, however, he decides against speaking to me, wheeling his horse aside and going after the harbourer. At this moment the intermittent dismal howling of the imprisoned hounds surges up into an excited chorus, and Grabbe kicks his pony into a trot, eluding Cheyne and crossing the yard to intercept Perry and Tolland, whom the pack has got wind of returning through the gate.

I’m hit by a gust of warm alcohol and tobacco breath close to my right ear. ‘What did he say to you?’ Alsop asks, sounding winded and anxious, getting to me ahead of the Tiger. ‘He didn’t reckon there was something wrong with Kabara’s feet, did he? Anyone would have to be pretty bloody stupid to think that!’ He reaches down, leaning his weight heavily against Kabara’s shoulder for support, and with difficulty he examines the underside of the stallion’s hoof. ‘Sound and clean!’ he says, angry, as if he’s proving a big point. He gives a groan as he straightens up, and puts his hand on his side, beginning slowly to knead his ribs with his long bony fingers. He’s close, standing next to me. We both look at Kabara.

‘What do you think of him?’ he asks me, as if it occurs to him suddenly that my opinion might be of some interest. When I don’t reply immediately he looks at me. His face is greyish and chalky, tiny dry flecks of skin lifting from his cheeks, and the flesh hanging loosely from the bones of his skull as if there is no resistance to its weight any longer in the muscles. Seeing me reading all this in his features seems to amuse him, and his eyes, at first weary and preoccupied, brighten up with interest. He smiles slowly and sounds more relaxed when he asks, ‘Do you know much about horses?’

‘Not much.’

The Tiger and Mrs Grant converge on us. And there’s disappointed Harry Cheyne returning across the yard. Morris is hanging back from it all. I catch his eye and he makes a face of mock alarm. He’s enjoying seeing me stuck in the thick of it. Tiger rides up close to me and he leans down from his saddle. ‘What did Grabbe say to you, boy?’

Here they are! All of them! Surrounding me. Waiting for my answer to the big mystery. What do I make of it? What will they make of it? There’s nothing else to say. They are waiting.

‘He said not all stags have heads.’

Mrs Grant turns to Cheyne as he comes up; ‘Grabbe’s harboured a nott for us, Harry.’

He reins in next to her and sits there, digesting this unexpected information, not looking particularly convinced. He scarcely more than glances my way. There’s dislike or mistrust in this, maybe he hates to depend on an outsider for
anything.
I don’t know. That could be my paranoia. He’s checked in his quest for reliable facts, anyway, that much is certain. Mine is exactly the sort of information he doesn’t want. It signals the beginning of uncertainty and rumour, and it can lead to confusion. He sits on his big horse and he thinks. Accepting nothing.

But if Cheyne’s checked, the Tiger’s relieved. He’s cheered up no end now we seem to have avoided focusing on the sensitive subject of Kabara in front of everybody. ‘So he said he’d found a nott in there did he?’ he says to me.

‘He didn’t say a nott. He just said they don’t all have heads.’

Cheyne snorts at this, convinced beyond any doubt now that my information is worthless, obviously concluding that I’m confused and don’t even know that a nott is a stag without antlers.

The Tiger knows better than to make this mistake and he glares at me. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What about the horse?’ Mrs Grant’s voice, loud and clear and direct, a voice pinning down the attention of everyone within hearing of it, cuts through, her question startling the Tiger and ending, for the moment, interest in my uncertain report about the possible nature of the stag. Everyone looks at me and Kabara.

‘What did the harbourer say to you about the horse’s foot?’ A calm, self-assured woman, sitting confidently on her fine hunter. She looks physically fit and well prepared for this business.

‘He didn’t say anything about the horse,’ I reply.

The Tiger’s looking anxiously from Kabara to Alsop to her, and back to Kabara again, as if he expects the stallion to be snatched away from him any second.

‘He’s a noble creature,’ she says, studying the stallion, not really
that
interested in my reply after all; ‘but I shouldn’t care to hunt the moor on him.’ She looks past us then, seeing something beyond Kabara that interests her more, and she rises in her stirrups and waves, moving off as she does so and calling; ‘Jimmy! Hold up!’ and away she goes, heading across the yard to intercept Lord Harbringdon, who looks like he’s probably on his way to assist Perry and Tolland draft out a few selected hounds from the howling motley in the black hole.

‘Well, there you are!’ the Tiger says, jubilant, almost pouncing on Alsop. ‘Not an Exmoor hunter!’

Alsop looks from Tiger to Harry Cheyne. He can scarcely be seeing any real friendliness in
either
of their faces—and he puts his hand on Kabara’s neck, caressing the horse gently. ‘She doesn’t know my horse.’

‘Peggy Grant knows horses,’ Cheyne says in a hard tone; nothing to be argued with, making a statement of fact, local knowledge again, closing the subject. He’s had enough of this. He wheels his big grey and rides off towards where they’re getting the hounds out; ‘You coming, Bill?’

The Tiger’s quick to follow him. ‘Get up, boy!’ he says to me, hardly able to contain his delight at the way this little exchange has turned out.

I tighten the girth and mount up, but Alsop puts a restraining hand on my rein, preventing me from following the Tiger. ‘Well?’ he says, gazing up at me, belligerent maybe, or if not that then at least making a demand; ‘Your mate Morris reckons you know something about horses. I asked you what you thought of this one?’

Morris is standing about ten yards off, maybe within hearing, and maybe just out of it, depending on the level of our voices, but not watching us and obviously not caring one way or the other about the outcome. He’s keeping apart from it. That’s his way. Being his own man when his time’s his own. He’s good at that. Now he’s having his day off, that’s all. He’s on holiday. He’s standing there on the cobbles, shaved and washed and well fed, and he’s feeling this warm sun soaking its way through his jacket and into the muscles of his tired back. That’s what he’s doing. In a trance by the look of him, I’d say. He and Alsop have probably had a couple of drinks together in the pub before we got here. Come to think of it, that would be just the sort of thing Alsop would insist on after getting a lift in Morris’s car. He’d feel he had to do something. I can hear him carrying on about it. Them going off then, and Morris’s wife staying back, doing her knitting and sitting up the front of the car as always. In place.

For some reason, seeing Morris enjoying himself like this, looking stronger and more relaxed than he has since the exhaustion that overtook him at the end of harvest, makes me decide to tell Alsop the truth. Straight out. Which, for my own reasons, is not something I particularly like to do. ‘He’s a pretty special horse, Mr Alsop.’

He keeps his eyes on me, his hand still holding the rein. ‘Pretty special?’ He waits for clarification.

‘Well, I mean he’s out of my class! He’s got a fantastic potential!’

‘Ah!’ he exclaims, relieved, gratified! ‘Thank you!’ Then he becomes intent; ‘Listen! Will you tell that to your boss? Would you mind doing that?’

Would I mind doing
that
? What a joke! It’s just what I mean about coming straight out with the truth before considering the consequences. This injured old man doesn’t want my
opinion
about his horse, he wants my help to sell him! I should have kept my mouth shut! Played dumb! Shrugged my shoulders and mumbled something incoherent. Acted the giggling yokel! Before I know where I am I’ve almost been snared into taking sides. I rip the reins out of his grip and spur Kabara forward; ‘Tell him yourself!’ Are all Australians such simpletons? He calls out something after me, but I don’t hear what it is; an insult I think.

The huntsman has nearly finished assembling his draft of tufters by the time I get over there. There’s John Grabbe, Tolland, Mrs Grant, Lord Harbringdon, the two second-horsemen, Cheyne and the Tiger, and they’ve formed themselves into a mounted semicircle in which the half-dozen or so liberated hounds are contained. Jack Perry is dismounted and standing in front of the half-door, about fifteen feet off it, the inert lash of his hunting-crop trailing on the ground in front of him like a black signature, the stock of this weapon held loosely in his right hand. He is confronted by a packed frame of clamouring dog faces at the opening. ‘Bellman,’ he calls softly, and, despite the noise, from down in the dim interior of this temporary prison, shuddering all over with excitement, the hound whose name has been called springs from his place, bounding forward and shouldering aside the younger ones up front; then, in a kind of private signal of gratitude, lightly brushing Perry’s boots with his flank as he rushes past. For a second this great muscular hound stands still, gathering himself, then he goes half down on his stern and, tossing his black muzzle, he gives out a deep prolonged howl, his welcoming comrades in the draft nudging and circling and nosing him. Kabara shudders and stares down at this select group—most of them are the same dogs that had him up the bank half an hour ago—and he makes a threatening noise in his throat.

‘Take it easy!’ I plead with him, praying he’s not going to start carrying on again.

Tiger pulls up alongside me, bumping his horse into us heavily in his hurry. Making sure that no one overhears him, while trying to seem off-hand about it, he says to me; ‘Stick close today, boy. I shan’t want that horse to be too fresh if Finisher gets done up.’ And then he glares at me. ‘You understand what I’m saying to you?’

I understand he’d like nothing better than to ride into Gaudon Manor after the hunt this evening and show Alsop a beaten Kabara. A horse unable to take the pace. Something like that. He’s considering me narrowly. An odd sort of request for a master to make of his second-horseman. Will I do it without comment? My side of the bargain you might say.

‘Well, boy?’ he says, hating the fact that he can’t just grind this out of me, but must actually seek my co-operation.