Horse of fire, p.5
Horse of Fire, page 5
‘In no time at all it’ll be Christmas,’ Jinny thought. ‘Not tomorrow night but the next, Shantih will be the Golden Horse.’
Miss Tuke was very late. Jinny waited for her impatiently, holding Shantih and Bramble in readiness for instant departure, but it was ages before Miss Tuke’s trekking van rattled into the drive.
‘One of the little blighters got himself kicked. Had to stop and see to it,’ she explained as she settled her hard hat on her head and climbed aboard Bramble.
When they reached the church hall “While Shepherds Watched” was carolling out to greet them.
‘Humph,’ said Miss Tuke. ‘Hardly worth taking their tack off. Nip in and see what Mr Redding thinks.’
Jinny handed her reins to Miss Tuke and went into the hall. Dolina was standing just inside the door.
‘It was Miss Tuke’s fault,’ said Jinny, expecting Dolina to be mad with her for being so late.
‘My mother,’ said Dolina, ‘has put her foot down. I am to have no more to do with it.’
Jinny stared at her in dismay.
‘You mean you’re not going to be a king? You’re not going to ride Callum?’
‘I am to have no part in such nonsense.’
‘But you can’t! You can’t! There’s got to be kings!’
‘I was only hanging on to tell you. Mr Redding is not bothered.’
‘But I am,’ cried Jinny. Dolina and Callum wouldn’t have been much but without them the nativity play would be a nonsense. ‘You’ve got to. You said you would and you’ve got to.’
Shepherds and angels were all listening to Jinny. Mr Redding and Miss Broughton came across the hall towards them.
‘Well I am not,’ said Dolina and stomped out.
‘We’ll find someone else. Perhaps I could be the third king on foot,’ consoled Miss Broughton.
‘That would be no use,’ said Jinny desperately. ‘There’s got to be a horse for a king.’
‘Let’s discuss it when we have tea,’ suggested Mr Redding. ‘Some of the children have to go home early today so we just went straight ahead. You’re nearly on. Would you like to go round and be ready to ride up the path?’
‘This is stupid,’ thought Jinny, on the edge of sulking. ‘Me and the Tuke, what use is that?’
‘Rope in Petra or Mike?’ suggested Miss Tuke when she heard that Dolina had abandoned them.
‘Petra’s going to a party and Mike isn’t interested,’ stated Jinny.
This time Shantih stood calmly while Jinny presented her gift. As she came back to take Shantih’s reins and stand with her Jinny was caught again in the tissue of her dream, the aching longing that theirs should be a celebration worthy of the Christ Child, that the Child in his winter stable should be welcomed into the world by the best nativity play possible.
‘But two kings!’ thought Jinny in disgust and then she thought, ‘Ken?’ but she knew there wasn’t much chance. Ken thought most churches were like prisons and hospitals, places that destroyed the spirit. But perhaps she would ask him. You could never be sure of Ken. Ken as the Black King would be right.
6
Next morning Jinny left nothing to chance. She was up before any of her family and took a mug of coffee and two slices of toast down to the stable with her.
‘Great, greedy horse,’ she told Bramble as the Highland almost knocked her over, barging in to get his feed as Jinny was tipping it into his trough. ‘There you are. There’s no one else going to touch it.’
Bramble wizened his nostrils and dived into his feed but Shantih waited courteously, stepping aside to let Jinny into her box and standing patiently while Jinny emptied the feed into her trough. She breathed over the dry oats, picking fastidiously at pony nuts, searching for strips of carrot.
‘I’ve got my breakfast here,’ Jinny told her. ‘And then we’re going out on the moors. Will you find the white stag for me? Take me to it again?’
For a second Shantih stopped chewing, regarded Jinny with a wise eye.
‘What do you know?’ whispered Jinny, smoothing Shantih’s mane, running her hand down her sleek neck. ‘How did you know the stag would be there?’
But there was no way Shantih could tell her. Jinny picked up the empty bucket and went out to eat her breakfast.
‘Stable service?’ asked Ken, appearing unexpectedly round the stable door.
‘Could be,’ said Jinny and gave him a piece of her toast. She hadn’t had a chance to speak to him last night. Over supper hadn’t seemed a good time and then Ken had gone to his room which meant that he was not to be disturbed. She would need to ask him now, for she had to let Miss Tuke know what was happening.
‘You’re up early,’ she said to Ken.
‘Comes from spending the night reading “Lord of the Rings”. See myself as Tom Bombadil’ said Ken, tapping his feet and twirling neatly round. ‘Tom Bombadil is the Master.’
‘Good mood,’ thought Jinny but before she had time to ask, Ken said, ‘I’ll be your third king.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Magic,’ mocked Ken. ‘Your mum asked me.’
‘That would be absolutely super if you would. Miss Tuke says she’ll bring one of her trekking ponies over and you can be the Black King on Bramble. I never thought you would, you know. You’re not usually keen on things like this, are you?’
Ken’s green-brown eyes laughed at Jinny. ‘You mean I’m not much of a Christian?’
‘Well… You’re not, are you?’
‘No one in your family goes to church much and I should reckon I read the Bible more than they do. It’s the same as all the other books of power, shouting out the way it is. Only no one listens. They go to church instead. Anyway adoring the Child is different. Pagan, worshipping the light. Taking gifts.’
‘Myrrh for you,’ said Jinny bringing Ken back to earth before he got started.
‘Myrrh! Phew! Not today. No place for your myrrh, whatever it was. Need more than myrrh to welcome the New. Got to find something worth offering, something that costs.’
‘That’s what the headmaster told us,’ said Jinny, remembering her headmaster’s challenge that they should find something they were afraid of and take a long, hard look at it.
‘Anyway,’ said Jinny, getting up from the bale of straw she had been sitting on. ‘That’s smashing if you’ll be a king. Will you phone Miss Tuke?’
‘Are you moving on?’
‘I’m going to look for the white stag again.’
‘More! More!’ groaned Ken.
‘Am,’ said Jinny and went off to start mucking out.
‘I’ll go towards Ardtallon,’ she thought half an hour later, when she was climbing over the moor, away from Finmory. ‘Don’t know that way so well.’
Shantih was fresh, plunging and dancing as she made her way across the moor, leaping over the low stone walls at a touch from Jinny’s legs, soaring into the air from a walk, desperate to gallop on.
‘You’ll charge right into the hall,’ thought Jinny, knowing it was the extra oats she had been giving Shantih, and she imagined herself jumping over the manger, charging through the angels and scattering the audience.
As she rode, her eyes were skinned for the least movement of deer.
‘Be lovely if they came down so close to the house all the year round,’ she thought. ‘I would see the fawns. Tame them.’
Jinny switched back her hair, furious with herself. It would be the worst possible thing for the deer if they were to become tame. The best for them was that they should stay wild and free. Best for people too, that the deer should be independent, half glimpsed on the skyline, a sudden touch of beauty that lit up an ordinary day with the reminder of the otherness of things.
Jinny rode on for about an hour, seeing parties of hinds in the distance and once the branched silhouette of a stag. There was no sign of the white stag nor did Shantih show any awareness of its presence. She walked spring-heeled, looking about her but accepting Jinny’s aids without any will of her own.
Jinny heard the helicopter behind her, glanced back over her shoulder, shuddering goose-over-her-grave as she remembered how it had swooped over her before.
‘Hope it’s not the same lunatics,’ she muttered to Shantih, her fingers imperceptibly gathering in the reins, her seat pressing tighter into the saddle as she waited, her spine tingling to the approaching noise.
‘It is!’ thought Jinny desperately. ‘It’s the same one,’ and in a second the mechanical fury was upon her.
Shantih laid her ears, set her neck and with a half rear was away galloping low and possessed, her mind taken from her, unable to do anything but flee from this destruction.
Jinny yanked viciously at the bit, tugging with both hands on one rein as she fought to turn Shantih from the path of the helicopter. As she struggled Jinny was aware of the deer fleeing in front of her. Like fire over tinder-dry grass they flickered and leapt, as the terror of the helicopter drove them on.
‘Stop!’ Jinny screamed. ‘Oh Shantih, stop! Shantih stop it! Whoa horse! Whoa!’ but her screaming hysteria had no effect on Shantih’s breakneck speed.
Racing over the frozen ground Shantih stumbled, regained her footing and charged on. She cleared a low wall, then stretched out to clear the spread of fallen stones on the other side.
Jinny crouched helplessly. There was nothing she could do except hang on. She had no strength to fight against Shantih’s blind panic.
‘Why doesn’t it pass us?’ she thought. ‘Why is it staying behind us?’
It was as if the helicopter was a mechanical sheepdog, driving them purposefully before it, roaring from side to side, steadily increasing the number of deer that fled before it towards Ardtallon.
Suddenly Shantih fell. One second at full gallop, the next, catching a front hoof in a snare of heather she came crashing down. Her face hit the ground, her quarters and hind legs rose in the air behind her, as spectacular as a steeplechaser’s fall. Thrown clear into a brittle, pin cushion of heather, Jinny lay face downwards sobbing with fury. Who were they, these mad men, who took pleasure out of tormenting the deer? How dare they fly over the moors like that, terrifying them for their twisted sense of pleasure?
Jinny pushed herself to her feet again and dashed to where Shantih stood with her head hanging and her sides clapped in. Holding her breath for fear of what she might find, Jinny ran her hands down Shantih’s legs and under her belly, felt urgently over her head and back but there was no blood. Grasping the bit ring Jinny urged Shantih forward, moved her about but her horse was sound.
‘Dear God,’ she said throwing her arm over Shantih’s withers, butting her head against Shantih’s neck. The fear that Shantih might have been harmed filled her eyes with tears. ‘Oh thank you, God.’ For so easily going at that speed over the frozen ground she could have injured herself, broken her leg, her back. But only her nose was scratched where it had hit the ground.
Jinny slipped her arm through Shantih’s reins and saw the helicopter rise from the herd of deer it had gathered and clatter off in the direction of the submarine base.
‘Bloomin’ wonder how often he does this,’ Jinny thought furiously. She was sure it wasn’t allowed, was not legal to harass deer like that. Surely other people must have seen it and reported it to the police. But the villagers and farmers were used to seeing helicopters crossing to the base. Maybe they were only doing it just now, taking advantage of the empty moors when all the sheep had been taken down close to the farms and there was no one on the hills to see them. They wouldn’t dare do it when the sheep were on the moors.
‘Sport,’ thought Jinny, beside herself with rage. ‘That’s what they’d call it – sport!’
Shantih was streaked with sweat, her mane and tail wisped and her chest and belly curded white.
‘Poor horse,’ said Jinny looking at her wretched state not knowing whether she should lead her part of the way back or whether she could ride her. One thing was certain, she would take some grooming to turn her into a king’s horse for that afternoon. ‘Oh Shantih! Oh horse!’
Deciding that her weight didn’t really make any difference to Shantih and that there would be less chance of her catching cold if she rode her, Jinny mounted and stared about her trying to get her bearings.
She was almost at Ardtallon, so there would be no way down to the road, for here the moors dropped in a sheer fall of rock to the ground at the side of the road.
‘Engage jump power,’ thought Jinny and tucked her knees under Shantih’s great, feathered wings.
Last summer she had ridden round the road to Ardtallon to see Dolina. They had gone for a picnic on the moors. Dolina had insisted that the almost vertical track up the side of the rock was only a dawdle but Jinny had been terrified as she had led Shantih up it. She had gone home over the moors swearing nothing would ever make her take Shantih down the track to the road.
‘Och, Callum would be skipping along it,’ Dolina had insisted, but when Jinny had tried to find out how often Callum had actually skipped his way down, Dolina had become rather vague.
‘Bet he never came down it,’ Jinny thought. ‘Maybe up it but never down,’ and she certainly wasn’t going to risk taking Shantih down it now.
She was just about to turn and retrace the steps of their crazed stampede when she saw three men standing together, close to where the helicopter had lifted from the deer.
Although Jinny couldn’t make out who they were she was sure they must be farmers, for who else would be on the moors in this cold? And even if they weren’t farmers they must have seen the helicopter buzzing the deer and would be witnesses to prove that Jinny’s story wasn’t an exaggeration.
Jinny walked Shantih towards them waving to them, the first time naturally but after that awkwardly, not sure whether they had seen her or not.
As Jinny reached them one of the men stepped forward.
‘Did you see the helicopter?’ Jinny demanded. ‘Did you see what it was doing? Chasing the deer!’
‘They’re easily scared,’ said the man, ignoring Jinny’s distress.
‘Of course they’re scared when the helicopter is down so low,’ began Jinny indignantly.
‘Do you know you’re trespassing?’ asked the man, his slit mouth setting free his words as if they were miser’s silver.
‘Trespassing!’ exclaimed Jinny in astonishment. She had always ridden Shantih all over the moors around Finmory and this was the first time that anyone had mentioned trespassing.
‘Of course I’m not!’ Jinny replied indignantly. ‘I can ride where I like. All the farmers know me.’
‘From now on this part of the moor is being taken over for government purposes,’ said another of the men coming forward. ‘So keep away from it.’
In the cold the man’s sucker lips had a blueish tinge and his half closed eyes swam in pools of moisture and at once Jinny recognized them as the geologists.
‘Whenever we get the rest of the wire and the posts we’ll be fencing it off,’ said the slit-mouthed man gesturing to a roll of barbed wire that was lying on the ground.
Jinny stared at it, not believing him. She was sure that if there was any possibility of the moors being taken over by the government the village grapevine would have heard about it.
‘So off you go,’ said the tadpole man. ‘And don’t come near here again.’
‘I’m going,’ said Jinny, ‘because I’ll be late for the dress rehearsal if I don’t. Not because you’re telling me to go and I’ll ask the police whether I can ride here.’
‘Cheek of them, telling me where I can ride,’ Jinny muttered as she rode away towards Finmory. ‘Bloomin’ cheek.’
She shivered, nervously aware of how isolated she was. Surrounded by the bleak distances of moorland anything could have happened to her and no one would ever have known. Then she remembered Miss Tuke saying that she thought the geologists were looking for somewhere to bury nuclear waste. Had they found the right kind of rock in which to bury their death canisters? Was this the evil that Sara feared was coming to the moor?
Suddenly Shantih stopped, her head lifted; her ears pricked sharply. The white stag was standing on an outcrop of rock on the hillside. It stood looking down on them with grace and majesty, pausing for a second before it raced away.
7
By the time Jinny reached Finmory Shantih was almost dry.
When she had brought Bramble in and taken a dandy over him, she was able to start and groom Shantih. The dried sweat stung in her nostrils as she worked. Shantih could have broken a leg so easily, Jinny thought, shuddering. Once it had happened there was nothing she could have done.
‘They’ve no right,’ she swore, ‘No right to fly their helicopter so low.’
Shantih’s mane and tail shone under her body brush and her forelock was a wisp of silken hair on her precise, dished face. So easily she could have been injured, fatally injured …
‘That will do you for today,’ Jinny told them. ‘Only the dress rehearsal. Posh you up proper for tomorrow night.’
When Jinny got in she tried to phone the police station at Ardtallon to tell them about the helicopter and ask if what the geologists had told her was true, but there was no reply.
In the kitchen Mrs Manders was peeling potatoes and Petra was perched on a corner of the table painting her nails.
‘That helicopter buzzed us again,’ Jinny told them, washing her hands. ‘The pilot must be crazy. I’m telling you the hill was covered with deer. Hundreds! Well … a lot. He was just driving them where he wanted, and Shantih came down. I think someone should stop them. I phoned the police but there was no one there.’
‘Is Shantih all right?’ asked her mother. ‘Did you hurt yourself?’
‘She’s okay. Luckily. Could have been killed,’ said Jinny. ‘They can’t be allowed to go on panicking the whole moor like that. Bet you Mr MacKenzie doesn’t know they’re doing it. No one on the moors to see them just now.’
‘What were you doing up there then?’ asked Petra, examining her splayed fingers.
‘Looking for the white stag,’ muttered Jinny, not wanting to talk about it, but Petra had already lost interest and returned to the interrupted conversation she had been having with her mother.
