P. Chisholm - A Famine of Horses

“How’s the wheat?” Henry asked, walking beside her and enjoying the view.

Janet began to suck her bottom lip through a gap in her teeth and her brow knitted.

“Sick,” she said. “We might get by with the oats and the barley if there’s no more rain. I’ll leave that field fallow next year.”

“But it’s infield,” protested Dodd.

“Give it time to clean itself. I might run some pigs on it. The beans are doing poorly too.”

“What will you do to replace Mildred?”

“I’ve heard tell there’s one for sale.”

“Not reived?”

Janet shrugged. “Not branded, any road. That’s why I want to buy him.”

“Buy,” said Dodd and shook his head.

Janet giggled. “Will you want to come with me or would it go against your credit to be seen giving money for a beast?”

Dodd considered. Janet was almost as good a judge of horseflesh as he was himself, and knew most of the horses from round about and wasn’t likely to be sold a stolen animal, at least not unknowingly. But she was only a woman. If it had been a cow…

“I’ll come with you,” he said.

They turned down a small wynd leading to one of the many ruined churches of Carlisle: this one had a churchman in it, a book-a-bosom man who spent most of his time travelling about the country catching up with the weddings and christenings.

“Good afternoon, Reverend Turnbull,” said Janet politely, “we’ve come about the horse.”

Now Dodd was no different from any other man. He may have had a longer and more ill-tempered face than most, but he could fall in love. He fell in love immediately, with the elegant long-legged creature that was tethered inside the porch of the church. The colour was unusual, a piebald black, the neck high and arched, the legs strong and firm, hooves as healthy as you could wish and best of all, he still had his stones.

Janet’s face was bland. “Where was he stolen?”

The Reverend Turnbull looked offended. “Mrs Dodd, I would never try to sell you or the Sergeant a…stolen animal. I swear to you on my honour as a man of the cloth, that he was honestly bought. Besides, do you think an animal like that could be reived and the Sergeant not know about it?”

Dodd turned away so the churchman wouldn’t see his face which he knew would be full of ardour. With a horse like that he could win the victor’s bell at any race he chose to enter, he thought, and the fees he could charge at stud…

“Well?” said Janet.

“Eh?” Dodd had his hands on the horse’s rump, running them down the beautiful muscles, feeling the tail which needed grooming to rid it of burrs.

“Have you heard of a horse like that being reived recently?”

“Reived…no, no, I’d have heard for sure. There now, there, I’ve no apples, I’m sorry…”

“Dodd,” growled Janet. Henry paid no attention.

“He’s an English beast, surely,” he said. “Never Scots, not looking like that, unless he’s out of the King’s stable.”

“Is he?”

“Is he what?”

“Is he out of the King’s stable, Reverend?”

The churchman laughed fondly. “No, no, he’s an English horse, from Berwick, I know that from the man that sold him to me.”

Dodd took the reins and swung himself up onto the horse’s back, rode in a tight circle before the church. He had a lovely gait, a mettlesome manner though he might have been short of horsefeed recently, and a mouth as soft as a lady’s glove.

“Who was that?” asked Janet.

“Oh, a peddler I know. He told me he came from further south than that, but he bought him in Berwick.”

“Why bring him here? Wouldn’t he get a better price from the Marshal of Berwick Castle?” Janet demanded suspiciously.

“I think he may have had some notion of crossing the border with him to sell to the Scots, but I convinced him he should not break the law and I bought him to sell on.”

Dodd slid from the horse’s back again and patted his proud neck.

“Hm,” said Janet, took Henry Dodd’s arm and moved him out of earshot. “Henry Dodd, wake up. Yon animal must be stolen.”

“Not from here,” said Dodd, “I’d know.”

“From Northumberland then.”

Dodd shook his head and smiled. “Get a bill of sale on him and he’s ours legally.”

“Oh, you…”

“Janet, he’s beautiful, he’ll run like the wind and his foals will be…”

“I know you in this state with a horse, you’d blather like a man possessed and pay three times the right price. If you promise me he isn’t stolen from this March, I’ll buy him, but you get away from here or the Reverend will see you’ve lost your heart.”

Henry smiled lopsidedly. “I can’t promise he’s not reived, but I’m sure as I can be.”

“We may have trouble keeping hold of him, you know, once the Grahams and the Elliots know we’ve got him.”

Dodd shrugged. “I’m not mad, Janet. I’ll have him cover as many mares as I can in the time, then I’ll enter him at the next race and sell him after to the Keeper of Hermitage or Lord Maxwell.”

Janet laughed. “Against the law.”

Dodd had the grace to look embarrassed. “Or the Captain of Bewcastle or the new Deputy or someone strong enough to hold him.”

Janet punched him gently in the ribs and kissed his cheek. “He’s a light thing to look upon, isn’t he.”

Dodd forced himself to turn about, bid the churchman a gruff good day and walk away while Janet leapt hard-faced into the bargaining.

Afterwards, she took the horses by back routes to the castle so that fewer unscrupulous eyes would see the beauty, and tethered both in Bessie’s yard. When she went in she found Henry, Red Sandy, Long George and Archie Give-it-Them all playing primero with a tall handsome chestnut-haired man she didn’t know, who talked and laughed more than anyone she had ever met, and had skyblue eyes to melt your heart.

She sat down, watched the play which was tame, and waited to be noticed.

“Oh Janet,” said Dodd happily, drinking from his favourite leather mug. “Sir Robert, this is my wife; wife, this is Sir Robert Carey, the new Deputy Warden.”

Janet rose to curtsey to him and instantly took to him when he too rose and made his bow in return, smiling and addressing her courteously as Mrs Dodd rather than Goodwife. That arrogant lump Lowther would have grunted at her and told her to fetch him another quart. Though she would hardly need to be introduced to him.

“Get me another quart, wife,” said Dodd, oiled enough to make a point of it. Janet smiled, thinking what babes men were, picked up the jug and went to where Bessie was tapping another barrel, with her bodice sleeves unlaced and laid over a stool, the sleeves of her smock pushed back.

“How are you, goodwife?” Janet asked politely.

Bessie shook her head, her lips pressed tight, from which Janet concluded that her Andrew was in trouble and she didn’t want to talk about it.

The primero game was still in progress. Someone had dealt a new hand and Carey glanced at his, and called, “Vada. I’ve a flush here.”

Everyone laid down his cards, but Red Sandy held the highest points and pulled in the pot, grumbling at Carey’s sport-stopping flush.

Carey stood. “Good night, gentlemen,” he said, “you’ve cleaned me out.”

“You could stay and try and win it back,” said Red Sandy unsubtly.

Carey smiled. “Another night, Sandy Dodd, I shall take you on and mend my fortunes, but not tonight. Thank you for your list, Sergeant.”

Janet watched him go, wondering how much his extremely well-cut dark cramoisie doublet and hose had cost him in London, and who had starched his ruff so nicely. He surely was a great deal easier on the eye than Lowther or Carleton. Archie had taken the pack and was shuffling the cards methodically, his tongue stuck out and his breath held in his effort not to drop them from his enormous hands.