The turf was slick as we slipped and slithered our way downhill but Beechnut plunged on regardless. Night had descended in the time it had taken to extract the story from Freddy, although I had probably only been sitting with him for a few frantic minutes, and in the gloom the slope had become shadowed and extremely treacherous. But the horse was unstoppable as if she shared the urgency that lurked fearfully at the back of my mind and I had to trust to her good sense as I let her pick her own route down the steep incline. Vicious gusts clipped us as we dodged the hazardous humps of anthills before crashing noisily through some brambles but then suddenly we were down into the comparative shelter of the level road and the shadow of the lower gateway was looming dully out of the darkness before us.
Beechnut paused long enough to let me open it before veering wildly through and impatiently stamping while I kicked the gate shut again. Then we were off; wading through the fiercely swollen Washbrook, staggering a little in its raging current but plunging on regardless. The gate into the lower meadows was open and she charged at it with her hind legs bunching for a gallop before I had even decided on our route.
I clung on like a burr as she sped across the flooding field, buffeted by wind and scared by her speed but doing nothing to check it. Barely able to see through eyes that were streaming, the sodden grassland flashed by in a featureless blur, but through the mist of wind-whipped tears, I suddenly became aware that we were not running alone. Grey against the seamless gloom, the fluid mass of a small herd of deer ran unexpectedly along with us like a bizarre extension of our shadow, and like a shadow they were entirely silent. I could hear nothing except for the steady thud of hoof-falls on saturated ground and Beechnut's rhythmic breathing, and the greyed figures of our companions were ghostlike as they floated alongside us across the wide gleaming surface.
We left them behind at the next gate and I steadied her there so that her feet would not slip as we negotiated the sudden change from grass to uneven forest trackway.
“Steady now, girl,” I murmured and she sweetly settled to a short bouncy canter as we picked our path through grossly swaying trees and between the stones that protruded from the running hill-wash. We splashed deep through the ford and swung hard right to follow the track that ran under the copse and would lead us round to the farm. It was peculiar to find myself returning to the same place that Matthew and I had fled from only a few days before but, ever brave, Beechnut stretched forwards again and accelerated up the incline to burst through a rotting gate and out onto the pasture fields that surrounded the farm.
The wild air met us with a brutal blast. It stopped us in our tracks and with sudden concern, I threw a hasty look around in case we had been spotted, but I could see no one.
We jogged messily across the open ground to the barn, eyes scanning the black gaping doorway for any sign of movement other than the swaying undergrowth but it was clearly deserted. With a curse I used rein and leg to turn the horse and urged her down towards the farmhouse, careless now of any disturbance we made. But I needn’t have worried; the farmhouse was similarly blank and empty.
I stopped for a moment, thinking furiously. Then inspiration struck and with renewed determination, I turned Beechnut about and let her fly again across the wide expanse of the open hilltop.
She stretched her neck forwards and lowered herself into the streamlined arrow of a racehorse as she sped across the curving grassland. We slowed briefly to navigate the spreading marsh of a thin stream and then, plunging through another open gateway and across the road that led to the village, we launched ourselves at the great grassy slope that climbed upwards to meet the summit of the high ridge.
It was impossibly steep and her laboured breathing became rough and irregular as she fought her way up the banks. But just as her great strength began to tire, the dark shape of the evergreen hedge loomed towards us and, giving her a moment to gather herself, I set her at the last slope and the low stone wall that bounded the open space of the drive near the rear range. She pricked her ears and I sat up to urge her on.
And very nearly fell off. There was a rough breath of air and a scattering of dirt as she locked her legs to slither agonisingly to an ugly stop. Her breast brushed the moss from the cold face of the wall and I would have fallen off but that she threw up her head at the last possible moment and by some miracle I managed to shove myself back into the saddle. With an angry snort she shied away and bunched to bolt wildly back down the slopes again but the hard hold I took on her mouth pulled her head round and held her panicked flight steady.
“Sorry, darling,” I said breathlessly as I put a hand on her sweaty neck to calm her. “I’m so sorry, it’s not your fault.”
It occurred to me later that it was probably very fortunate that she didn’t make the jump because if we had burst in on them like that, at such a maddened pace and so wholly unexpectedly, their reaction would have been purely instinctive and certainly devastatingly final. But as it was, her refusal checked my crazed headlong rush and instead we trotted relatively sedately along the wall to find the corner with its little gate that would lead us out onto the drive.
With limbs that were trembling from adrenalin and nerves, I slithered down from her back and led her carefully through the gap as the wind snatched open the gate and then swung it sweetly shut again behind us. Crossing her stirrups over the saddle and knotting the reins safely on her neck, I whispered a hard command of “Stand!” and, leaving her to forage for grass on Sir William’s neat verges, I slipped soundlessly along in the lee of the bowing yew hedge, under the darkened wall of the house and onwards to the corner where the high gabled frontage met the gardens.
And all the while I was keeping up a steady silent prayer that this maddened race would not, with all the laws of logic, prove to be far, far too late.