The clattering of the hooves of over a hundred horses and the swirling of the hounds as they left the front of the house encouraged Sandstorm to surge forward. Charlotte tightened the reins to slow him down, as she wanted to stay behind everyone else, but he took no notice. She pulled the left rein to make him change direction and he ignored that as well.
There were clusters of people – servants plus members of the gentry who were too young or too old to take part – milling around and drinking, after seeing off the main bunch.
“Is that her?” said a penetrating young voice. “I thought she’d look like a princess. She looks nothing like a princess, she looks . . .”
Before the owner of the voice was silenced, the group, who were beginning to move off, stopped and stared at Charlotte.
One whispered comment, “At least she has a good seat,” reached her before she was pulled forward by the headstrong Sandstorm. “That’s something to be thankful for.”
Giving up hope of control, not looking to the left or right, Charlotte concentrated on holding on and keeping her eye out for obstacles so that she wouldn’t be taken unawares.
The first jump sent her slightly off balance as Sandstorm’s timing was different from Mandrake’s – he jumped from further back – but he was sure-footed and that reassured her a little.
The ice on the west side of the walls and hedges had not yet melted, even though it was now afternoon. The sun hung low and its light was weak.
As they cantered along and fanned out across the fields Charlotte didn’t know where her mother was in the group and didn’t look for her. She knew of Edwina’s reputation from conversations overheard in the stables. The grooms were always discussing the standards of horsemanship of themselves and their employers, and comparing them to the expertise of those from other estates. “No one messes with Lady Blackshaw,” was a much-heard remark. “She’s tough.” Edwina deliberately shoved other chasers if she was caught in the middle of a bunch, and usually emerged the leader. “Her mounts are trying to get away from her – that’s why they’re so fast,” Les observed once when he didn’t know Charlotte was listening. “They’re trying to shake her off. And all that sawing of the bit she does – ruins the animal’s mouth for good.” Charlotte had noticed her mother’s faulty timing, rising from the saddle or sitting back too soon or too late, and the rough snapping of the bit. It offended her sensibilities to watch.
After twenty minutes Sandstorm had jumped a number of fences, ditches and hedges so faultlessly that Charlotte began to think she would last the distance after all. To her relief, he stayed in a group near the back. At one stage, he bumped against a rider who was knocked slightly off balance and who let out a string of curses after he righted himself. Charlotte wished she could turn to apologise but she couldn’t afford to take her eyes off her course for a second.
A little later, Lord Crombie overtook her, shouting, “That’s the girl, Charlotte, keep it up!” He was known for choosing speed over endurance, according to Les, and Charlotte expected to overtake him later if the hunt went on for any length of time. A loose bay passed her on the left – she didn’t recognise it and wondered who had been unseated. Still no sign of her mother.
Children on ponies rode along the paths or through breaks in the hedges and walls. Most of them were older than she was, and none of them had spoken to her at the start – perhaps they would have if Sandstorm hadn’t surged past them like an unmannerly host.
The rhythm of Sandstorm’s stride was soothing Charlotte’s consciousness and she was beginning to understand her mother’s often-stated wish that she would hunt every day of the week if she had the chance.
Waldron sounded the horn to indicate that the dogs had picked up the scent of their quarry, a bagged fox released at the right time in the right place. Sandstorm shot forward, almost unseating Charlotte who feared she was on a bolting horse until she saw that those around her had changed from a slow canter to a fast gallop as well. For safety’s sake she wanted to pull back but was forced to accept she had no choice but to let Sandstorm have his head along the full length of Langan field.
Galloping at full speed, feeling the power of the animal beneath her and hearing the drumming of hooves on the vibrating earth all around her, she felt an urge to drop the reins, whoop with joy to the heavens, lean back in the saddle with her arms outstretched to embrace the world flying past and give herself up to the ecstasy of the chase, not just for this moment but forever and ever.
“Move over!” she heard her mother shout, and Charlotte, jolted back to reality, wondered if Edwina had been behind her all along, rather than in front as she had presumed.
Another loose horse, this time a grey, appeared on Sandstorm’s left, just as Mandrake drew abreast on the right.
The gap in the hawthorn hedge about a hundred yards ahead was too narrow for the three to jump at the same time.
Charlotte tried frantically to change direction.
“Get back!” her mother screeched, nearer and more urgently.
The flapping stirrup on the saddle of the loose grey hit Sandstorm in the flank, causing him to leap in the air in a movement that was a cross between a shy and a buck, right across the path of Mandrake, who didn’t have time to stop and whose front legs were clipped by the passing Sandstorm.
Sandstorm took the jump at such an acute angle that when he landed he was facing in the opposite direction to the other hunters who had veered sharply away after passing through one of the other three gaps in the hawthorn hedge further along to the left. He continued to the right and then followed the high hedges around almost three sides of the field, before picking up the trail of the others who were by now way in the distance.
Charlotte looked out for Mandrake and the grey, but there was no sign of them.
She pulled with all her weight on the left rein to try to turn Sandstorm but the stallion wouldn’t deviate from his headstrong flight. She was crying and shouting but no one could hear her. Where were the stragglers? There must be some slow ones bringing up the rear. Even the children on their ponies weren’t to be seen. Had they turned back after the first hour or so?
Perhaps Edwina had had a simple fall and, disgusted with herself, decided to retrace her steps rather than be seen, not just splattered with mud like the rest of them but caked with it, a sure sign of a fall. The teasing would be friendly – it could happen to anyone – but for Edwina it would be unendurable, such was her pride in her ability. Yes, that’s what she’d do, thought Charlotte. Ride home and then tell everyone later Mandrake had developed a limp.
Or perhaps that didn’t happen at all, and Mandrake and her mother were both dead, or badly injured, lying there without help, and it was all her fault.
Charlotte was filled with a terrible foreboding. She had never told anyone how Nurse Dixon had hurt Victoria, but Nurse Dixon thought she had snitched so it was the same as if she had as far as activating a curse was concerned, and here was the result of it. Mandrake dead, just as Dixon said he would be.
Charlotte wished that she herself were dead. Anything rather than having to face her mother – if she was still alive – when she returned to the house. ‘And you call yourself a horsewoman?’ she could hear her saying with deadly rancour. ‘You can only ride Mandrake because he’s so well trained – a beginner could do just as well. Put you on another and look what happens. Toadying up to Manus all day long, that’s all you’re good for. You’re nothing but a show-off, just like your father.’
Charlotte was jolted by her own thoughts. Had she ever heard her mother speak like that, or were Nurse Dixon’s phrases coming back to her, or had she made them up herself?
She didn’t have any more time to think as she was now approaching the end of the hunt, where the riders were grouped in a circle. Sandstorm slowed down of his own accord. Charlotte’s weeping intensified, but now it was silent.
Waldron turned his back on his daughter when he saw her wiping her nose on the dangling sleeve of her ill-fitting jacket, but not before she had seen the look of disgust on his face.
Lady Beatrice, sitting side-saddle on Lucifer, detached herself from the group watching the hounds tearing at the fox, to move beside Charlotte. “What is it, dear?” she asked, thinking the girl’s distress was too extreme to be the result of seeing her first fox kill. “And why are you riding your mother’s hunter?”
Waldron turned around again when he heard that, and saw it was Sandstorm standing quietly at the edge of the group with Charlotte snivelling in the saddle. Funny how he hadn’t noticed earlier as he usually saw the horse before the rider.
“You’re honoured,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately in an attempt to disguise his inebriation. “Not everyone would get that privilege. Where is she anyway?”
Charlotte opened her mouth to answer but there was no sound.
“Not this bloody circus again!” said Waldron, and then to Beatrice. “One of her little tricks. Loses her voice, or so she says. Very convenient.”
Charlotte pointed back the way they had come.
“Didn’t make it, eh? She’ll be annoyed.” To Beatrice, who wondered why he never spoke of his wife by name, he said with ungentlemanly satisfaction, “Just goes to show that pride comes before a fall. Must have gone back to lick her wounds. There’ll be no talking to her tonight.” He took a swig from a hip flask, one of four, judging by the bulges in his pockets, and leaned towards Beatrice, speaking with what he judged to be a flirtatious tone. “And how did you manage to sneak Lucifer out from under my nose, Beatrice? We’ll have a talk about that later.”
Beatrice laughed. “I was too cunning for you. You know we ladies have to have a Manus-trained hunter.”
Waldron’s benign expression disappeared. “So I’ve heard. I was only joking. You’re welcome to him.” He took a long draught. “Brigadier has a few good years in him yet, so he’ll do me.” He turned his back. “Time to retrace our steps. Come on, Freddie, and anyone else who fancies a dram at Rafferty’s on the way back.”
Only Freddie, one of his fellow officers, followed. The rest of the group, cold, tired and hungry, preferred to take the short cut back to the house, to bring them more quickly to the feast and hot whiskeys waiting for them there.
Waldron and Freddie moved off in the direction they had come, Waldron holding himself in the over-correct posture of someone trying to look sober. On horseback he had no difficulty staying upright. It was when he was dismounting he had a tendency to lose his balance and fall over.
The part Waldron liked best about going to Rafferty’s was the way the local men, hunched over their pints of Guinness, looking towards the door when he entered, couldn’t disguise their admiration when they beheld him in all his splendour. Their dark clothes acted as a foil to his redcoat military jacket and its shiny brass buttons, his shiny leather straps and boots, and the shiny pouch containing his polished service revolver. The other part he liked was the image of himself leaning on the bar sharing the leisure pursuits of the common man and not making them feel out of place. His fraternising lent authority to any pronouncement he made about his tenants. “I know what they’re thinking,” he was fond of saying. “Don’t I drink with them?” This year there would be an added satisfaction. It would be the first time Thatcher, who had never sat on a horse in his life, would be present at Rafferty’s to see at first hand how much the tenants thought of their dazzling landlord.
“Stay with me, dear,” said Beatrice to Charlotte. “We’ll wait until the coast is clear and then we can take it nice and easy.” While they stood quietly waiting until both groups were out of sight, Beatrice, witnessing Charlotte’s distress on what should have been her day of triumph, felt a bubble of anger towards Edwina and was constrained to say, “Your mother was very naughty to put you on Sandstorm. On the way I noticed a few times you were having trouble controlling him. He would test a sixteen-stone man, so what chance would a young girl like you have? Not that your mother is a sixteen-stone man, of course, but she has her own methods and Sandstorm knows where he stands with her. You did well to stay on. And to finish. Good girl.”
Charlotte didn’t think she deserved the compliment. All she had done was stay in the saddle. Her limbs felt weak. The arms of the jacket refused to stay tucked up, making it difficult to hold the reins, now stiffening in the cold. She couldn’t feel her feet and, checking to see if they were positioned correctly in the stirrups, had to shake her head to dislodge the tears that continued to obstruct her vision.
“All right, Charlotte, we’d better go now. We’ll go the long way so we don’t get caught up in the crowd.” Beatrice wanted to go back the way they had come in the hope of finding out what had happened to Edwina, but she didn’t say that to Charlotte. “Easy does it now.”
But when Sandstorm turned for home, he took off as briskly as if it were his first outing of the day, though with more single-mindedness, as he knew where he was heading.
A steady sleet began to fall. The two didn’t speak.
They overtook Waldron and Freddie who had dismounted and were retracing their steps, heads down, obviously looking for something one of them had dropped. The men looked up, saw who was passing, and looked down again without a greeting.
Probably lost half a crown, Beatrice thought sourly, and continued to ride abreast of Charlotte.
When Charlotte saw the hedge of Logan’s field approaching with its wild hawthorn and four gaps, she felt so ill she thought she might faint. Sandstorm headed for the closest gap rather than the fourth he’d jumped on the outward run. Charlotte’s mind was convulsing with vivid, fragmented images.
Beatrice jumped first. When her turn came, Charlotte turned her head hoping to see empty space and no evidence that a clash had happened, but there were horses and people in a huddle beside the wall. Was that Mandrake standing awkwardly? She would know his outline anywhere. One of his legs didn’t look right.
“Looks like an accident,” shouted Beatrice, already turning Lucifer. “I’ll have to go back.” She knew Charlotte would have no hope of making Sandstorm change direction. “You go on. You should be all right from here.” She kept shouting but the distance between them had widened and Charlotte couldn’t hear what she was saying.