I am more naked with her than I have ever been. I am alive. I have not felt alive before. I hate her for making me desire her. I love her for making me melt. But this cannot be love. This is the grinding of flint, two bodies striking sparks.
Anne sees through my disguises and asks who I am: the question I cannot answer, will not answer. Asks to see me, as if that girl exists. I’d like to see her face if I let her in on the wreckage that is my life. See the smile fall away and be traded for fear, her so-called love turned to loathing in the blink of an eye.
I hide in the stable. The mare tosses her head in greeting. I rub my palms along her neck and she blows air through soft-bristled lips.
‘You ask me no questions,’ I murmur, and she snorts once more.
I find a tick under her mane, bloated with blood. I tiptoe to the house, which stands mercifully quiet, take a half-burned stick from the hearth and carry it back to the stable, blowing on the ember to keep it aglow. I touch the red tip to the creature and it sizzles, falling away. The mare stamps her hoof, but I tell her all is well and she quietens, making no more to-do. I inspect every inch of her, tracking down and killing every tick that I find.
I’d be a horse any day. Four legs to carry me away, nothing to do but eat, fart, sleep and serve a stallion when the time is right. I jump on to her back and wrap my arms and legs about her. Her heat sends a shiver through my thighs. I cannot put my arms all the way round her belly, however far I stretch my fingers. My stomach tickles with her rough hair, nostrils prickle with the scent of her hide.
As I drowse in the dip of her spine it occurs to me how dimwitted I am, for the means of my escape is stirring beneath me. I grasp her mane in my fists, press my knees into her flanks and we trot from the stable, out of the yard, through the ford and in a moment are on the road to the sea. It is that easy.
I spur her into an unwilling canter and will not let up, kicking pitilessly until she begins to gallop, faster and faster till the fields are a blur of yellow, brown and green; till we barely touch the earth and she is flying me from this cramped rat-hole, wings on her fetlocks.
We thump along, my backside bouncing on her broad back. I feel the flex of bone and muscle, taste the snort of her breath, rejoice at the thunder of her hooves. The scent of tilled earth is seasoned with the salt of the marshes, stronger and stronger as we draw closer to the coast. I’ll sell her and pay my passage to Ireland as fast as that. I’ll be away.
The mare clatters to a halt, so suddenly I only stop myself from tumbling off by hanging on to her ears. She snorts with a sense of a journey completed. The firm track has petered out and we stand at the edge of the marshland, the ground soft with sour water. Today it is calm, very different from the last time I was here. It stretches ahead, flat and dour, cut through with sluggish ditches meandering towards the sea. I pummel her neck.
‘Move!’ I cry.
She droops her head, nose sniffing the hedgerow for a tasty mouthful. I yank on her mane and she ignores me. I jab my heels into her belly.
‘Come on!’ She finds a patch of grass that meets her approval and begins to crop, teeth grinding down its sweetness. ‘Giddup! Ho! Girl!’ I shout, thinking of all the encouraging words I’ve heard men yell at their beasts.
She pauses in her chewing and I think I have persuaded her: her guts rumble, she lets out a long fart and returns to munching. I kick more and more viciously, punching her head with my fists and tugging her ears over and over. She takes as much notice of me as she would a gnat.
I slide off her back and smack her side, kindly this time. She twists her head and brushes her nose against mine, blowing moist heat into my face. I bend, scoop up a handful of mud, hold it to my face and inhale deeply.
‘Smell that? It’s not been dug, or ploughed, or planted. They don’t want it. They say it’s of no use. But it’s beautiful. It smells of escape. Don’t you see?’
She does not. She’s a horse. She sniffs my hand.
‘It’s safe to walk upon, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ She draws away. ‘You won’t get lost. I’ve been here before.’ She knows a falsehood when she hears it and flicks her tail in derision. ‘Over there …’ I wave a dripping hand ‘is the sea. Take me that far. Then I’ll let you go,’ I lie.
She continues to graze.
‘Please,’ I beg. ‘Please take me away from here.’ One ear twirls as though she might be listening. ‘I’ll feed you warm bran mash. I’ll polish your hooves with butter. I’ll groom you with a golden brush set with badger bristle.’ She ignores my fairy tales and does not stir her hoof one jot further.
The sky is low, but not dangerous; like a sheet that needs laundering stretched above my head. Wind is bringing rain from the west. It’ll be here in under an hour, by the look of the clouds. Something about the weather is sickly, and I shudder despite myself. Birds are gathering overhead. Plovers flash their red beaks, a handful of seagulls crack the air with ugly voices. The skin on the back of my neck prickles.
‘Here to tell me of another storm?’ I cry. I shake my fist, setting them into a flap. ‘Afraid of me?’ I scream. ‘Good! You’ve made a dangerous enemy.’
You don’t just act like a simpleton, you are that creature, they cackle.
‘I’m not a fool!’ I yell. ‘I am not!’
You want her. You want her.
‘I don’t!’ I wail.
They swirl away, chattering. For all my protests, they are right. I am stupid. I do want her. Everything I have ever known shrieks at me to keep going, to ride and ride until the horse dies beneath me, and then run until I collapse with exhaustion, and then pick myself and run some more and never stop.
I throw myself on to the ground and scream my frustration and anger. I drum my heels, wail until I am wrung empty. I lie there listening to the nothing between my ears. The reeds rattle with my secret, passing the truth from stem to stem: The Maid is a fool, a fool, a fool. The Maid loves. The Maid loves.
For the first time, I speak to my fears as one who is not in thrall to them.
‘Be quiet,’ I say, and the tauntings hiccup to a stop, surprised that I am their master, even if only for a breath. ‘I am my own woman,’ I say. ‘If I love – so be it. If I love, that is.’
I rinse off the muck in a ditch and climb back on to the horse. Her vast eyes glitter with what looks a lot like amusement. She whickers and stamps her hoof. I cluck at her, tug her mane gently. She turns about and we begin the long trek back to the village.
As soon as I have stabled the mare, I seek Anne out and find her in the house, shelling peas. I take her hand and place it on my breast, over the spot where my heart thumps.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asks.
I shake my head from side to side. I cannot speak for the pebble lodged in my throat. The mute disguise I have created for the village is accurate, tonight at least. Anne nods in response. I stumble into her arms before she has had a chance to open them to me fully. I am so famished I think I may swallow her in my kisses. But she is hungry also. I cling to her like one who is drowning, and plunge my hand into her body as though the safety I seek is between her legs.