Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

A few days later, Lieutenant Sinclair had sent by messenger a note, asking when it might be convenient for him to call upon her, but she had had to reply that, apart from Saturday afternoon and evening, she received no time off; on Sunday morning, at 6:30, she again resumed her usual duties at the hospital. To which he had replied that he would request her company, then, on the Saturday next, at noon. He said he would brook no denial, and Moira, who'd read the note over her shoulder, said she should by no means offer any.

A bugle sounded, and Moira said, “Look, look, Ellie!” as the horses were rounded up and settled into place behind a long, thick rope that was stretched between two poles on either side of the oval track. “Is the last race about to begin?”

“It is,” Sinclair said, reappearing through the crowd, with two glasses in hand. He gave one to Moira, and one to Eleanor. “And may it please you, ladies, I have taken the liberty of entering a wager on your behalf.” He gave Eleanor a paper chit, with several numbers scrawled on one side, and the name “Nightingale's Song,” on the other. Eleanor did not entirely understand.

“The name of the horse,” he said, as Moira leaned closer to see, “seemed especially lucky, don't you think?”

“How much have we wagered?” Moira gleefully asked, though Eleanor wished she hadn't, and Sinclair said, “Ten pounds… to win.”

They were both aghast at the very idea of wagering ten pounds on anything. Their salaries were fifteen shillings a week, and one meal a day courtesy of the hospital commissary. That you might lose ten pounds, in a matter of minutes, on nothing but a horse race, seemed well-nigh incomprehensible. Eleanor knew that to her family-a barely solvent dairyman with five children and a long-suffering wife-it would be worse than that; it would be sinful.

Moira, in a quieter voice now, said, “And what do we win, if she does?”

“At the present odds, thirty guineas.”

Moira nearly dropped her lemonade.

A portly man in a red cutaway strolled past the starting line, then up to the top of the judging scaffold, draped in red and gold velvet; a Union Jack rippled from a very tall flagpole behind him. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced through a speaking trumpet in stentorian tones, “we are now honored to welcome you to the running of Her Majesty's first Ascot Gold Cup!”

There was a chorus of huzzahs and hooting and clapping that momentarily perplexed both Moira and Eleanor. Sinclair bent toward them and said, “Traditionally, this race has been known as the Emperor's Plate, after Czar Nicholas of Russia.”

They immediately understood.

“But given the situation in the Crimea,” Sinclair added, “the race has been renamed this year.”

The clamor died down, and the bugle sounded again, a trill of rounded notes aimed at the topmost balconies in the pavilion, and the horses paced impatiently, as if anxious to stretch their long legs and run at last. The jockeys stood high in their stirrups to keep their weight off the horses’ backs until the last possible second, with their whips tucked under their arms, the silken sleeves of their jackets billowing out in the afternoon breeze. The portly man in the cutaway pulled a pistol from his cummerbund and raised it in the air. Two stable hands untied the rope wrapped around the poles and threw it in a coil onto the grass. The jockeys fought to maintain control of their steeds and keep them behind a chalk line in the dirt.

“Riders, prepare!” the judge called out. “And on the count- one, two…” and instead of saying three, the gun fired, and the horses, bumping and jostling for position, stumbled or leapt forward onto the open track. There was a brief skirmish, as each horse and jockey vied for position, and then they were galloping off.

“Which one is ours?” Moira cried, jumping up and down at the rail. “Which one is Nightingale's Song?”

Sinclair pointed at a chestnut filly, currently running in the middle of the pack. “The crimson silks.”

“Oh, she's not winning!” Moira cried in despair, and Sinclair smiled.

“It's not even the first furlong,” Sinclair advised, “and there are eight in all. There's plenty of time for her to catch up.”

Eleanor took a drink of her lemonade and hoped to appear composed

… but inside she was as excited as Moira. She had never wagered on anything, even if it was with someone else's money, and until then she'd had no idea what that might feel like. But now she knew, and it felt oddly-wonderfully-exhilarating. The idea that thirty guineas was at stake-which, if she won, she would surely return to Sinclair, their rightful owner-was enough to make her head spin.

And again, she could tell that Sinclair had intuited her excitement. In her feet, she could still feel the vibration of the thundering hooves, and from the grandstands she could hear a chorus of voices cheering and jeering and crying out instructions that no jockey would ever hear.

“Keep to the inside rail!”

“Use the bloody whip!”

“Whatcha waiting for, Charger!”

“Ascot,” Sinclair confided to Eleanor, “is a hard track.”

“How so?” To Eleanor it looked like a wide and inviting oval, with a center expanse of deep green grass.

“The dirt is hard-packed. It takes a great deal out of the horse, more so than Epsom Downs or Newmarket.”

But unlike those racecourses, which Eleanor had never heard of, this one had the royal imprimatur. When she had come through the towering, black wrought-iron gates, she had noted the golden crown mounted in relief at their crest, and it was as if she were entering Buckingham Palace itself. There were rows of concession stands, selling everything from barley water to toffee apples, and all manner of customer, from well-dressed gentlemen with their ladies on their arm, to scruffy young boys hawking and shilling-and once, she could swear, stealing-from the carts and stands. Sinclair, with Eleanor on one arm and Moira on the other, had navigated through the crowds with absolute assurance, and taken them to this spot, which he assured them provided the best viewing of the race.

It certainly seemed so to Eleanor. The horses were rounding the first curve, and together they made a beautiful blur of black and brown and white, colored by the shimmering costumes and silks of the jockeys. The summer sun beat down on the field, and Eleanor had to fan herself-and beat away the persistent flies-with a program Sinclair had purchased for her. He stood close, much closer than any man would customarily stand to her, and it seemed only in part due to the pressing crowd. Moira was leaning halfway over the railing, her plump arms planted on either side, calling out encouragement to Nightingale's Song.

“Move along!” she cried. “Move your arse!”

Eleanor stole a glance at Sinclair, and they shared a private smile. Moira turned, abashed.

“Oh, do forgive me, sir! I forgot myself.”

“It's quite all right,” Sinclair replied. “It wouldn't be the first time such a sentiment was uttered here.”

Indeed, Eleanor had already heard far worse, and working in a hospital-even one that was dedicated to the care exclusively of women with some breeding-had inured her to both grisly sights and desperate oaths. She had seen people whom she knew would have been perfectly upright and respectable if she had met them in the normal course of their lives, reduced to violence and rage. She had learned that physical anguish-and sometimes merely mental perturbation-could warp a person's character out of all recognizable shape. Meek seamstresses had screamed and writhed and forced her to tie their hands with bandages to the bedposts; a governess, from one of the finest houses in the city, had once ripped the buttons off her uniform and hurled a dirty bedpan at her. A milliner, from whom a tumor had had to be removed, had scratched her arms with sharp nails and cursed her in language Eleanor thought only sailors might use. Suffering, she had learned, was transforming. Sometimes it elevated the spirit-she had seen that, too-but more often than was generally admitted it simply ran roughshod over its helpless victims.