I woke with dawn’s light filtering through the curtains. I’d had the postponed bath the previous day and the maids had successfully untangled my hair. I’d slept for most of the rest of the day, but now I jumped out of bed, pleased at how much better I felt.
My father had not been idle whilst I was recuperating. In addition to the servant’s bell cord, a little hand bell now sat on the bedside table. I racked my mind back to my old life and tried giving it a little ring. In came my brand new lady’s maid to dress me. Susie was only a few years older than myself, but highly accomplished. She had already found some old dresses in the attics in something like my size and having put me into one of these, she proceeded to do something incredible with my newly reclaimed hair.
I submitted to all this in a slight daze and hastened downstairs to escape the bewildering efficiency. Passing the disturbingly charred portrait at the head of the stairs, I met my father halfway across the hall. He was dressed for riding, had a crop in his hand and smelt slightly of horse.
“Are you going riding? Can I come?” I asked, recent illness, inexplicable hairstyle and unaccustomed skirts all forgotten.
“Fortunately,” declared the Duke, “I am not going, I am coming back from. Perhaps you can come with me tomorrow, but we shall have to see.” He spoiled the sternness of this latter declaration with a smile.
“Oh,” I said, rather disappointed, then brightening, I asked, “Breakfast isn’t finished yet, is it?”
“Breakfast is in fact my destination. And for that, you are most welcome.”
He continued towards the dining room and I fell in beside him, almost literally, for I kept treading on the hem of my skirt, which was too long and would have been so even for a girl who had not been wearing breeches for the past four years.
He caught my final headlong plunge and laughed as he steadied me. “You’ll be glad to hear,” he said, as we helped ourselves to sausages and toast and several other tasty things that made my stomach rumble just to look at them, “that the seamstress is due sometime today. She’s bringing a few of her needle girls too, so by the end of the day you ought to have clothes that fit properly.”
I managed to control my madly chewing jaws long enough to say, “That will be nice.”
Alban Ravena glanced at me again and covered a smile. “What’s her name, by the way?” he asked, nodding to Raven, who had launched an assault on a sausage with similar fervor.
“Oh, she’s called Raven,” I said, taking the sausage away from the ‘Raven’ in question. “You can’t eat all that,” I said firmly, “your stomach simply isn’t large enough.”
Raven screeched angrily but didn’t try to reclaim the sausage and soon curled up on my shoulder in a way that suggested she might just have stomach-ache. Whatever her uncanny intelligence, she was still a baby.
“What do you want to do until the seamstress arrives?” the Duke asked me. “This morning, I am at your disposal.”
“Can I see the stables? And the kennels?”
“Certainly, but we’ll have to wrap you up well.”
I heard this with some trepidation and sure enough, I went out to the stables swathed in a ridiculous number of warm things, from hats and scarves to coats and cloaks. Mostly the maid’s fault, although I felt pretty sure that if I hadn’t looked like a woolly ball on legs the Duke wouldn’t have let me out.
We were met part-way to the stables by what turned out to be the head groom, an elderly man, who limped slightly from one fall too many. “Ah, my Lord, I was coming to find you. I keep putting it off but it’s no good. It’s about Warrior.”
My father’s face fell. “How is he?”
The groom looked very uncomfortable. “We’ve given him special care for years, my lord, knowing how you feel about him, but he won’t eat at all now, not even his special mash. Perhaps you could...look at him, my lord.”
The Duke sighed and most of the happiness seemed to have leached out of him. “Yes, I’ll come.”
~+~
Warrior must have been an immense animal when he was younger, I thought, looking at the massive frame, now all but bare of flesh and horribly gaunt. He stood in a warm stall, head hanging. A blanket covered him and an untouched bran mash still steamed faintly in a bucket.
I looked closer at the mixture and by dipping a finger and licking it, established that it was an oatmeal mash laced with syrup. If the old horse couldn’t eat that, then it couldn’t eat anything. I couldn’t help dipping my finger a couple more times, for I had rarely eaten anything so tasty and nutritious since leaving my mother’s house. Then I noticed the groom eyeing me covertly and desisted. I’d just eaten a good breakfast, after all.
Alban Ravena stroked the great, bony head and was rewarded with a faint, but undeniably affectionate, nudge. “This horse carried me into battle when I was younger,” he told me quietly. “Kept me safe...fought better than I did,” he added, with a shadow of a smile.
Now was not the time to ask eager questions about when and where he had fought in battle, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Let’s try you with some grass, old fellow,” the Duke said after a moment, but it was only with a great deal of effort that the old horse was persuaded to walk as far as the nearest pasture. Warrior lipped at a few blades of grass, but they fell from his mouth untasted, and he went back to standing with his head hanging listlessly.
One arm around the great muzzle, Alban ran his fingers through the thin forelock. “Very well,” he murmured to the big horse, “you make yourself quite clear, old friend.”
He swallowed and his jaw tightened. He glanced at one of the grooms standing by. “John, my crossbow,” he ordered curtly. He glanced at me, “Go inside, child.”
I failed to suppress a snort at that. If I’d met this old nag wandering owner-less down a street, I’d have cut its throat and had a feast.
The Duke clearly realized his concern for me was misplaced, for he did not repeat the order. He slid his arms around the horse’s neck and ran his fingers through the patchy coat. “When I returned, I feared he might not remember me, after so long. I was very happy that he did. Ah well,” he finished softly.
John had reappeared and wordlessly held out a crossbow and a pair of bolts. The Duke drew away from the horse to take them. He stuck one bolt in the ground, set the other in place and cranked the handle rapidly. Then, expression set, he placed the tip to the back of the horse’s head and pulled the trigger.
The crossbow went off with a vicious thwack and Alban stepped back as the horse lurched, went to its knees and then rolled over to sprawl on its side. For a while the great hooves jerked, then they lay still.
Alban handed the crossbow and the second quarrel back to John. “Bury him between the oak trees on Gallant’s Rise,” he ordered, and strode off back to the stables.
I hurried after him, trying to think not of all that meat, tough as it might be, going to waste, but of my father’s pain at losing an old friend, even an equine one.
~+~