Дик Фрэнсис: Bolt

Greatly relieved, I watched the princess join a bunch of her friends while Dusty, with visible disapproval, replaced the sweat-sheet and told the lad holding Cascade’s bridle to lead him off to the stables. Cascade went tiredly, head low, all stamina spent. Sorry, I thought, sorry, old son. Blame it on Litsi.

The princess, I thought gratefully as I peeled off her colours to change into others for the next race, had withstood Maynard’s persuasions and kept her reservations private. She knew how things stood between Maynard and myself because Bobby had told her one day back in November, and although she had never referred to it since, she had clearly not forgotten. I would have to do more than half kill her horse, it seemed, before she would deliver me to my enemy.

I rode the next race acutely conscious of him on the stands: two scampering miles over hurdles, finishing fourth. After that, I changed back into the princess’s colours and returned to the parade ring for the day’s main event, a three-mile steeplechase regarded as a trial race for the Grand National.

Unusually, the princess wasn’t already in the ring waiting, and I stood alone for a while watching her sturdy Cotopaxi being led round by his lad. Like many of her horses, he bore the name of a mountain, and in his case it fitted aptly, as he was big, gaunt and craggy, a liver chestnut with splashes of grey on his quarters like dirty snow. At eight years old, he was coming satisfactorily to full uncompromising strength, and for once I really believed I might at last win the big one in a month’s time.

I’d won almost every race in the calendar, except the Grand National. I’d been second, third, and fourth, but never first. Cotopaxi had it in him to change that, given the luck.

Dusty came across to disrupt the pleasant daydream. ‘Where’s the princess?’ he said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘She’d never miss old Paxi.’ Small, elderly, weather-beaten and habitually suspicious, he looked at me accusingly, as if I’d heard something I wasn’t telling.

Dusty depended on me professionally, as I on him, but we’d never come to liking. He was apt to remind me that, champion jockey or not, I wouldn’t get so many winners if it weren’t for the hard work of the stable lads, naturally including himself. His manner to me teetered sometimes on the edge of rudeness, never quite tumbling over, and I put up with it equably because he was in fact good at his job, and right about the lads, and besides that I hadn’t much choice. Since Wykeham had stopped coming to the races, the horses’ welfare away from home depended entirely upon Dusty, and the welfare of the horses was very basically my concern.

‘Cascade,’ Dusty said, glowering, ‘can hardly put one foot in front of the other.’

‘He’s not lame,’ I said mildly.

‘He’ll take weeks to get over it.’

I didn’t answer. I looked around for the princess, who still hadn’t appeared. I’d wanted particularly to hear what Maynard had said to her, but it looked as if I would have to wait. And it was extraordinary that she hadn’t come into the ring. Almost all owners liked to be in the parade ring before a race, and for the princess especially it was an unvarying routine. Moreover, she was particularly proud and fond of Cotopaxi and had been talking all winter about his chances in the National.

The minutes ticked away, the signal was given for jockeys to mount, and Dusty gave me his usual adroit leg-up into the saddle. I rode out onto the course hoping nothing serious had happened, and had time, cantering down to the start, to look up to where the princess’s private box was located, high on the stands, expecting anyway to see her there, watching with her friends.

The balcony was however deserted, and I felt the first twinge of real concern. If she’d had to leave the racecourse suddenly, I was sure she would have sent me a message, and I hadn’t been exactly hard to find, standing there in the paddock. Messages, though, could go astray, and as messages went, ‘tell Kit Fielding that Princess Casilia is going home’ wouldn’t have rated as emergency material.

I went on down to the start thinking that no doubt I would find out in time, and hoping that there hadn’t been sudden bad news about the frail old chairbound husband she travelled home to every evening.

Cotopaxi, unlike Cascade, was positively bombarding me with information, mostly to the effect that he was feeling good, he didn’t mind the cold weather, and he was glad to be back on a racecourse for the first time since Christmas. January had been snowy and the first part of February freezing, and keen racers like Cotopaxi got easily bored by long spells in the stables.

Wykeham, unlike most of the daily press, didn’t expect Cotopaxi to win at Newbury.

‘He’s not fully fit,’ he’d said on the telephone the previous evening. ‘He won’t be wound up tight until Grand National day. Look after him, now, Kit, won’t you?’

I’d said I would, and after Cascade, I’d doubly meant it. Look after Cotopaxi, look out for Maynard Allardeck, bury Prince Litsi under the turf. Cotopaxi and I went round circumspectly, collectedly, setting ourselves right at every fence, jumping them all cleanly, enjoying the precision and wasting no time. I did enough stick-waving to give an impression of riding a flat-out finish, and we finished in undisgraced third place, close enough to the winner to be encouraging. A good work-out for Cotopaxi, a reassurance for Wykeham and a tremor of promise for the princess.

She hadn’t been on her balcony during the race and she didn’t appear in the unsaddling enclosure. Dusty muttered obscurely about her absence and I asked around in the weighing room for any message from her, with no results. I changed again to ride in the fifth race, and after that, in street clothes, decided to go up to her box anyway, as I did at the end of every racing afternoon, to see if the waitress who served there might know what had happened.

The princess rented a private box at several racecourses and had had them all decorated alike with colours of cream, coffee and peach. In each was a dining table with chairs for lunch, with, beyond, glass doors to the viewing balcony. She entertained groups of friends regularly, but on that day even the friends had vanished.

I knocked briefly on the box door and, without waiting for any answer, turned the handle and walked in.

The table as usual had been pushed back against a wall after lunch to allow more space, and was familiarly set with the paraphernalia of tea: small sandwiches, small cakes, cups and saucers, alcohol to hand, boxes of cigars. That day, they were all untouched, and there was no waitress pouring, offering me tea with lemon and a smile.

I had expected the box to be otherwise empty, but it wasn’t.

The princess was in there, sitting down.

Near her, silent, stood a man I didn’t know. Not one of her usual friends. A man of not much more than my own age, slender, dark haired, with a strong nose and jaw.

‘Princess...’ I said, taking a step into the room.

She turned her head. She was still wearing the sable coat and the Russian hat, although she usually removed outdoor clothes in her box. Her eyes looked at me without expression, glazed and vacant, wide, blue and unfocused.

Shock, I thought.

‘Princess,’ I said again, concerned for her.

The man spoke. His voice matched his nose and jaw, positive, noticeable, full of strength.

‘Go away,’ he said.

I went.

I certainly didn’t want to intrude uninvited into any private troubles in the princess’s life, and it was that feeling that remained with me to ground level. I had been too long accustomed to our arm’s-length relationship to think her affairs any of my business, except to the extent that she was Danielle’s uncle’s wife.