CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I saw that race,” the farrier said, gesturing with a pipe on the dusty square of ground outside his smithy. “Damnedest thing. I like Juliet. She’s not simply a fast horse, she’s a lady. Good temperament, and to the man who’s responsible for putting on and pulling off her dancing slippers, that matters.”
Caleb Bean, like many in his profession, was a sizable specimen. In addition to height, he had massively developed musculature over the arms, shoulders, and chest. He was clean-shaven, flaxen-haired and possessed of Nordic blue eyes.
“I’d rather chat in the smithy, if you don’t mind.” I was squeezing in this conversation when most of the other guests were either changing for supper or loitering in the stable yard. St. Just’s theory regarding training that ignored the need to practice downhill finishes was likely changing the future of racing, at least in this corner of Berkshire.
Bless him for his quick thinking. Curse the duty that drew him to Yorkshire. My own mental processes had slowed to a plod, and the only next step that had occurred to me was a chat with what passed for the local horse doctor.
“Perhaps your lordship doesn’t want to be seen poking around yet again?” Bean wiggled pale eyebrows. “The grooms were grumbling about you, but then, that lot lives to grumble.” He ambled with me back into the dim confines of his workplace. The space was ventilated by a couple of open windows—one low, one near the ceiling, doubtless the better to create a draft.
The only light source other than the windows was the forge and its glowing bed of coals. Smithies were kept dim by design, because the precise color—and therefore temperature—of a metal heating or cooling was easier to discern in low light. The walls were a tool box writ large, with every manner of hammer, tongs, rasp, testers, hoof-picks, and more arrayed on tidy rows of nails.
“I am happy to be seen talking to you, Mr. Bean,” I replied, “but bright sunshine bothers my eyes, and we’ve had nothing but sunshine for days and days.”
“Hence your blue specs.” He took out a square nail from a pocket of his leather apron and scraped at the bowl of his pipe. “Juliet deserved to win that race, to shine before her home folks. I’ve not seen a horse falter as she did, at least not in a race.”
“I asked St. Just for his opinion, and he was stumped. He said drugs would not have taken effect like that, after two and a half miles of good effort. I’ve wondered about the feedstuffs, but haven’t dared to inquire too closely.”
“The owners generally bring their own fodder and keep it under lock and key. Your lordship had best not temp fate by poking into oak sacks or sniffing the fodder.”
Bean tapped the dottle from his pipe onto his coals, where it crackled and turned to smoke. “Juliet didn’t look drugged. Anybody with sense will drug a colt prior to gelding him. A touch of the poppy and the poor lad doesn’t feel the cut, nor object to the operation. If a horse is particularly high-strung, we might do the same for his first few outings to the forge, though a drugged horse can also be a horse easily spooked.”
I propped a hip against a stone water trough. “You’re saying Juliet’s gaze was focused. She was alert to sounds and movement around her.” I’d observed that much.
“Aye, and she wasn’t getting snorty and proppy. She wasn’t going all hot and cranky like some noxious weed was disagreeing with her, though as to that, most noxious weeds are slow poisons.”
“You know your business.”
The grin was in evidence again, this time a bit wistful. “Horses have been my world since I was a wee lad. I wanted to be a jockey. Alas for dear little me. Papa was a stable master, my uncle was a farrier, so I took to the forge. My missus is as good a blacksmith as I’ll ever be—she comes from a long line of smiths up near Oxford—and we’re bringing our children up in the trade. I dearly hope they don’t end up working for the racing set, though.”
“Why is that?”
Bean produced a pouch, thumbed some tobacco into his pipe, and used the square end of the nail to tamp it down.
“Woglemuth says you served under Wellington. Denton says you were nearly drummed out of the corps, but he seems to respect you for it.”
“I did serve under Wellington. I was nearly drummed out of the corps. You would have to apply to Denton directly to gain his opinion of me.”
Bean used a taper to light his pipe, puffed gently, and cradled the bowl in his massive palm. “You don’t fit in with them, with Tenneby and his supposed racing friends.”
Bean didn’t fit in as a typical blacksmith either, or the usual caricature of one. He was neither dark, nor obnoxiously merry, nor unkempt. His speech was educated, and he chose his words with care.
“Tenneby asked me to attend,” I said, “because I have a talent for sorting out mischief, albeit usually after the fact, while his situation calls for preventing mischief. In this regard, I have been a singular failure.”
“This lot,”—Bean gestured with his chin toward the manor house—“wouldn’t be caught dead admitting failure. They wager fortunes as if money grows in every hedge just for the picking. You think the racehorses are pampered, and for the present, that might be true. But where will these youngsters be in two years?”
“Some of them will be racing over fences?”
“Aye, until they wreck at some bullfinch or hedge on a sloppy day. The mares, if they’re fast and lucky, will have a few babies, but the best that most of the colts can look forward to is gelding and a few years in the hunt field. The rest will end up in the knacker’s yard because they are too fine-boned and hotblooded for anything but the racecourse. It’s a waste of a good animal, to breed only for speed, my lord. If you think about it for two seconds, you’ll reach the same conclusion.”
He was angry, harboring the slow rage of one impotent to right a wrong.
“That’s why Juliet’s defeat bothers you so? Because she has speed, stamina, and a calm temperament?”
“Aye. She should be bred to champion studs. More to the point, she should be retired from racing before she’s ruined. She’s proved her abilities already, but her owner will send her off to Newmarket, where she’ll be expected to win a fortune or die trying. Only if she survives that ordeal will she be allowed to join the broodmares.”
“I thought Sir Albertus owned her. He seems a decent sort.” A decent sort who’d all but asked me to leave the gathering.
“Juliet is owned by Mrs. Trelawny, the old vicar’s widow. She’s put the horse in Sir Albertus’s keeping, and he’s not the worst of the lot by any means, but neither is he in Tenneby’s league. If I might pay my employer a sideways compliment, he puts the horses first, and that rare integrity will mean his downfall among the racing brethren. Too many of them are far more concerned with purses, wagers, and victory, than with the lowly beast who does the hardest work.”
Another philosophical puff of the pipe.
The conversation had ruled out noxious weeds or poisoning and confirmed my hunch that Juliet’s defeat had been by design. Not much progress, but some.
As if we’d summoned him, Sir Albertus loomed in the doorway to the smithy, a dark shadow against the late afternoon sun.
“Exactly what is my lord doing here?”
Bean set his pipe on the edge of the stone trough. “His lordship’s gelding will need new shoes before the journey home. The more notice I have for such extra tasks, the more likely I am to get the job done timely. What can I do for you, Sir Albertus?”
Atlas did not need new shoes.
“I want you to look at Juliet’s shoes. They seem sound enough to me, and she’s trotting up sound, but her performance today was disappointing. Pierpont is quietly rubbing it in, offering to buy her for a quarter of her value. I am ensuring that next week Juliet will be first past the post.”
Pity offers. I’d bought Atlas out of pity for his previous owner, an officer down on his luck who hadn’t the coin for passage home. What a fortunate day for me that had been.
“Juliet’s shoes are fine,” Bean said, using the bellows on the coals. “I check the next day’s runners the night before they race. Unless she found a way to loosen a shoe while dozing in her stall, you can’t blame her defeat on me.”
Bean nonetheless took a pair of hoof testers, a file, and a mallet down from the wall and eased past Sir Albertus, who would insist on remaining in the doorway.
“You’d best not be seen here alone, my lord. The lads are already wondering why you were lurking in the stable at night, and now they’ll be wondering why you’d privately consult Bean after an inexplicable upset.”
I rose from the stone trough, dusted off my backside, and took my time going to the door. “Is that not the nature of an upset, Sir Albertus? They are inexplicable by definition, though I’m told Minerva was the second favorite. And who exactly will pass along to the lads that I’m asking Bean to reset Altas’s shoes? You’re the only person to see me here, besides Bean himself.”
We joined the blacksmith who busied himself studying the ground, though I suspected he was enjoying the exchange.
“They watch, those lads.” Sir Albertus tramped away from the smithy. “They see everything, and they will know you came here. I won’t have to tell them anything.”
“I agree they are observant, so why aren’t you asking them what they think of Juliet’s disappointing performance? I’m sure they all have theories, and their opinions will be better informed than mine could ever be. Bean, my thanks. You’ll find Atlas to be a perfect gentleman .”
Sir Albertus inhaled through his nose. “Of all the cheek. Bean, I’ll see you in the stable yard.” Off he went, exuding the air of one who had been denied an opportunity to kick the hapless dog.
“Is he sweet on the widow?” I asked.
Bean considered the baronet’s retreating figure. “My lord speculates in a direction familiar to all the local ladies, including my wife. Supposedly, Sir Albertus has added Juliet to his string to honor the late vicar’s wishes. Nobody expected her to shine as brightly as she does—as she did. But horses are expensive on a good day, and racehorses are extremely expensive. Why take on that bother when the mare could have been put in work as a hack or bred to produce saddle horses?”
“And now, Sir Albertus will look foolish before the woman he was trying to impress. Splendid. Why can’t horse racing just be a matter of horse racing?”
Bean sighted down the length of his rasp. “It can. Today’s steeplechase was all in good fun, but that’s not what gets the brotherhood of the turf to Newmarket. Tenneby is too decent for them, really, but he’s too stubborn to cut his losses.”
“If the earldom goes bankrupt, what will you do?”
Bean stuffed the rasp into a pocket that looked designed to hold that particular tool. “Emigrate. I can make a living anywhere that life involves horses, as long as I have my tools. Since the war ended, the government has turned mean. Lord Liverpool’s tariffs on foreign grain will see the peasantry starved for the sake of the gentry—and when English peasants starve, we tend to riot and revolt, usually to no avail.
“Even Tenneby,” he went on, starting for the stable yard, “a basically decent man, can’t admit the truth. He says the Corn Laws will safeguard English merchants from unfair competition. Bollocks to that. I have children to consider. A government that allows my children to starve while Wickley and his ilk bet a thousand pounds for an afternoon’s diversion… My wife would scold me for getting above myself.”
“I am not your wife.”
“I don’t want to leave England, but neither will I tie my fate to that of a man gone turf mad. When the old earl goes to his reward, I will likely gather up my tools and my family and seek a foreign shore.”
Hence his slightly disrespectful attitude. He would soon muster out, so to speak, and his regard for the established order of his present situation was eroding apace.
“Best of luck to you,” I said, holding out a hand. “If a character from a courtesy lord will aid your cause, don’t hesitate to let me know.”
I’d surprised him. I’d surprised myself, too, but Bean had given me covering fire with Sir Albertus’s attempts to interrogate me.
Then too, Arthur took a dim view of the Corn Laws and thought Britain ought to make up in shipping revenue what it was losing in agricultural revenue. The population in England was growing quickly while our arable land was, if anything, shrinking. In Arthur’s mind, that put the country on a collision course with starvation, which was a short step away from revolution.
None of which told me why Juliet had so spectacularly lost her race.
“One more question, Bean. You said you’d never seen a foot-sound racehorse precipitously fade like that on a course before. Have you seen it happen to other horses?”
“I have. Saw it once myself. Heard of the same thing happening to another horse, both coach horses. They were trotting along with the team one moment, then stumbling, then able to move at only a walk. No lameness, no swelling, no inability to flex joints. It’s as if the wind dropped from their sails, and all they had left was inertia to get them into port.”
“Did the condition progress?”
“No. Both were fine the next day and right back in the traces.”
We parted, though I was more puzzled than when I’d left the racecourse earlier in the afternoon. If a horse could somehow be made to falter halfway around a racecourse, then somebody stood to make a deal great of money and others to lose just as much.
But how in blazes was the horse tampered with, and by whom?
* * *
“I miss Lady Ophelia,” I said, passing Hyperia her glass of punch. “Godmama would be right at home among this crowd.”
I missed St. Just, too, though I’d seen him off only that morning. He’d promised to write and let me know of developments in Yorkshire. He’d quit the race meeting with the sort of reluctance officers tried to hide when they were posted to a new and less appealing billet.
The last set of first-week races had drawn a larger group of spectators than either of the previous outings. Distant neighbors, a few owners at loose ends from the vicinity of Windsor and the royal racecourse at Ascot, perhaps even a bored lordling or two escaping the London Season. The local inns would enjoy the additional custom, but Tenneby did not look to be enjoying his own gathering.
Mine host paced about behind the starting line, doubtless trying to be everywhere at once and failing miserably. Denton was there as well, exchanging good-natured shoves with Pierpont’s man, Hercules. Sir Albertus towered over Chalmers and gestured to various points on the course.
“Her ladyship would know everybody’s pedigree,” Hyperia replied, “also the scandals throughout those pedigrees. What do you think she’d say about Lord Pierpont?”
“He needs to make an appointment with his barber before all that curl-tossing dislocates his neck.” I accepted my glass of punch from the smirking footman wielding the ladle. “Let’s find some shade, shall we?”
We made our way among the throng, some of whom were on shooting stools, some of whom were on blankets. Others were milling about the viewing structure, while many more stood in line before the punchbowls.
“Tenneby is running Excalibur later today,” Hyperia said. “Expect that’s half the draw for this crowd. I wish it wasn’t so hot. The horses aren’t used to these temperatures so early in the year.”
Some of the horses would still be sporting the last of their winter coats, though Thoroughbreds tended not to grow as shaggy as their plow horse cousins.
“I wish I could spend this afternoon napping.” I’d continued intermittent nighttime patrols of the stables, though I’d heard no more muffled hoofbeats and seen no more midnight riders. Atticus had reported no suspicious activity, and yet, Juliet’s defeat lingered on everybody’s mind.
“Julian, shouldn’t you be among the owners and runners behind the starting line? If somebody is up to no good, that’s their last opportunity to interfere with a horse.”
The first race was for three-year-old colts only, the young fellows who’d learned the ropes and were ready to show the world how to run a race. They were fit, eager, and fast, also dangerous when upset or riled in confined circumstances.
“We can see the starting line quite well from here.”
Wickley appeared at Hyperia’s side. “Care for a small wager, Miss West? Ten pounds says Golden Sovereign leaves them all in the dust, which applies literally, thanks to our present weather. Golden is Remedy’s half-brother, and every bit as impressive.”
Hyperia patted his sleeve. “I’ll keep my money, though I’m sure your colt will do splendidly. Ten pounds is rather more than I’m comfortable risking on a horse race.”
He leaned nearer to her. “Pierpont has wagered a thousand against my Cleopatra in Monday’s opening contest. Considers himself the reigning expert on the equine distaff, you know, and says Cleo has already peaked, but then, he would say that.”
Hyperia did not oblige his lordship with a polite riposte. “ A thousand pounds ? On a single race?”
“Ten thousand is nothing on a hotly contested match, Miss West. The denizens of the turf know how to take a risk. Win today, lose tomorrow, and keep your head either way. By week’s end, the wagers will boggle your mind. What of you, Lord Julian? Are you inclined to chance a few quid on a runner?”
“No, thank you. I comprehend the need to take a risk from time to time, but it’s the why of it at a race meet that puzzles me. Risk your life to defeat Boney? That makes sense. He was choking England’s commerce with his Continental System and pillaging his way from Cairo to Copenhagen. Risk your fortune and the livelihoods of all who depend on you for the sake of…? What, exactly, Wickley? What drives a man to such a reckless flirtation with ruin over a mere horse race?”
Wickley regarded me evenly. “Perhaps you refer to Tenneby? He’s the only fellow here peering into the depths of the River Tick. We must afford him some understanding, my lord. He believes himself to have been wronged at Epsom, and he has some grounds for that belief.”
Wickley had dropped the insouciant air and was regarding the growing chaos behind the starting line. “Tenneby is making a last desperate charge, my lord, and surely even you can understand that. We respect him for it, even as we try our best to defeat him. That’s the nature of the sport.”
Behind the starting line, Wickley’s chestnut was propping and dancing, wheeling willy-nilly into other competitors despite Denton’s attempts to settle the horse.
“Good Lord,” Hyperia said. “Jules, please get down there before somebody is mortally injured.”
I had no idea what she expected me to do, but I passed Wickley my drink and sallied forth. When nobody else seemed willing to take on the task, I grasped Golden Sovereign’s reins near the bit and shook my finger in his face.
“You are setting a poor example for the enlisted men, young sir. Settle your feathers, or the starter will disqualify you for conduct unbecoming.”
“Been tellin’ him that,” Denton said as the horse followed me to the starting line, his steps gingerly and his ears pricked. “He’ll leave all his fire in the saddling enclosure, rate he’s going. Foolishness I expect out of a two-year-old.”
I produced a bit of carrot left over from my morning call on Atlas. “Is he too wound up, Denton? Worse than usual?”
“Naw. Bigger crowd. All the ladies waving their fans. He likes you.”
The chestnut was a handsome young devil of about sixteen-two hands. Elegant, glossy, muscular, and lean, he was another epitome of the George Stubbs ideal. I patted his neck as he crunched the little bit of carrot into oblivion.
Dasher came up on Golden Sovereign’s right, and I pretended to fish in my pocket for another treat.
“Best hop it, my lord,” Denton muttered. “Starter might actually give the signal before the wash dries.”
I patted both horses and ducked under the railing that separated the course from the spectators. Why hadn’t Wickley bothered to see to his own horse, and was Golden Sovereign merely excited, or had he been somehow interfered with, such that he’d end up plodding across the finish line?
I made my way up the hill to where I’d left Hyperia and Wickley and instead found Healy West, swilling punch and smiling fatuously at Miss Evelyn Tenneby.
“This lady knows her horses,” Healy said. “She says my George has perfect conformation for a jumper.”
“He does,” Miss Tenneby said, “but one needs speed, agility, timing, luck, and stamina for that conformation to mean anything on a racecourse. A brave and competent jockey figures prominently into the equation as well. My lord, has Wickley promoted you to head groom? I saw you calming Golden Sovereign. He’s more hot-tempered than Sovereign Remedy, though Wickley says he’s also faster.”
If Wickley had bet a thousand pounds on Monday’s race for the fillies, how much was riding on today’s performance by his skittish colt?
“I was merely being helpful at Miss West’s insistence, though I seem to have lost track of her. The heat makes the owners and jockeys fractious, and that communicates itself to the horses.”
“Precisely,” Miss Tenneby said, slapping her closed fan against her gloved palm. “The horses would be perfectly calm if the humans would be perfectly calm. But there’s my brother, along with half the owners, grooms, passing vagabonds, sightseers, and—”
“They’re off!” Healy shouted, rather unnecessarily.
Miss Tenneby produced a pair of field glasses and fell silent.
I was more prepared for the spectacle of a dozen horses, each weighing better than half a ton, galloping up the hill at more than thirty miles an hour. They thundered into the first turn all in a bunch, and that spacing held for the whole first circuit of the course.
Golden Sovereign was among the front-runners, trading the lead off with a bay and a lean gray. The pace was quick to my eye, but then, what did I know of racing paces?
“The second uphill will sort them out,” Miss Tenneby muttered. “They can’t keep this up in this heat.”
The leaders pulled away, or the back of the field fell behind, on the second ascent. Denton had maneuvered Golden Sovereign to the rail, which meant a shorter circuit than horses to the outside had to travel. Golden Sovereign, running second, pulled even with the gray, then ahead by a nose.
The crowd was on its feet, yelling madly as the two horses approached the final declivity before the run in to the finish. The third-place bay was holding on gamely, perhaps saving something for the final push, and then… the bay was running second.
The smooth, pounding rhythm of Golden Sovereign’s gallop slowed to the three-beat tattoo of the canter and then faltered further, until the horse was approximating the gait of a rocking horse, despite Denton applying the crop smartly twice. The pack thundered past Golden Sovereign, and when he was once again visible, he stood, head down, sides heaving.
Denton took his feet out of the stirrups, gave the horse a kick in the ribs, and the miserable creature shuffled forward.
“Poor lad ran out of puff,” Healy said. “Glad I didn’t bet on him. Wickley will be out a packet, and he’d hoped to send Golden to stud, you know. Lots of money to be made, standing a stud.” He rattled on, about Eclipse’s stud fees, and then old Tattersall making a mint off of Herod, and how Pierpont must be gloating.
Miss Tenneby was apparently so absorbed with the spectacle before us that she didn’t bother correcting him. Tattersall had made his fortune standing Highflyer at stud, not Herod, who had the honor to be Highflyer’s sire.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Miss Tenneby said, jamming her field glasses into her reticule. “Friday was supposed to be a fluke. The heat, the challenge of the terrain, Juliet having an off day. That mare has never had an off day in her life. Golden Sovereign might not have been the favorite, but he shouldn’t have been hobbled like this.”
She spoke figuratively, of course, but the same tone of disbelief and dismay ran through the conversations all around us.
“Damned strange, if you ask me.”
“Wickley will cry foul, mark me on this.”
“Reminds me of Tenneby’s bad luck at Epsom two years ago. No, three years ago. Made quite a fuss about it.”
“Who won?” Healy asked.
“The gray. Moonglow.” Miss Tenneby was confident, though we hadn’t been able to see the finish from our vantage point. “The bay hasn’t the bottom to overtake a steady performer like that. Moonglow gets stronger as he runs, at least over three miles. He settles into a rhythm, and his jockey can rate him to an inch. The bay is a young three, and in a race like this, that shows. We should never have started racing Thoroughbreds younger than five. My brother will be beside himself.”
“Let’s find him,” I said. “Healy, if you locate your sister, please give her my regards and a promise to see her at supper.”
As Miss Tenneby and I moved through the crowd, I heard more muttering and speculation. The mood was sour and suspicious, as well it should have been.
“Lord Julian.” Sir Albertus inserted himself onto my path, causing Miss Tenneby to halt beside me. “I want a word with you.”
I did not want a word with him. “Ladies present, Sir Albertus.”
He blinked, then nodded at Miss Tenneby. “Miss Tenneby will excuse us.”
“No,” the lady said, “she will not. Lord Julian is my escort, and I am not giving him up for your convenience, Sir Albertus. Whatever you have to say, you can say it before me or save it for a more private situation.”
She was small but formidable and the nominal hostess of the gathering. Sir Albertus tried glowering and got nowhere with it.
“I know what you’re about to say.” I kept my voice down, because Sir Albertus was doubtless determined to make a spectacle of the discussion. “You saw me among the runners, chatting with Denton and leading Golden Sovereign to the starting line.”
“I most certainly did, and I saw you slip something into that horse’s mouth, and then we have this abject farce coming into the finish. You were present on Friday when my Juliet ended up in the same condition, and I wasn’t about to let you move among the runners without keeping a very close eye on you.”
Juliet, in the strictest sense, wasn’t his . Now did not seem the time to quibble over details.
“You saw his lordship feed Golden a bite of carrot,” Miss Tenneby said. “I had my field glasses trained on the start, and I know a carrot when I see one.”
“A drugged carrot, then,” Sir Albertus said. “A carrot hollowed out to hide some foul weed or tincture of mischief. If nobody else here will hold this meddler accountable, I will see to it.”
He would have slapped me, but I jerked my head back out of range. One didn’t outgrow schoolyard reflexes.
“No blow has been landed,” I said, “and no challenge will be accepted, because I have no need to face death for lending a hand behind the starting line. Miss West urged me to it, and Wickley was standing beside her at the time. It’s his colt who suffered a defeat, and if there’s a complaint to be made, I will hear it from him.”
A circle of gawkers was forming around us, and that circle included both gentlemen and ladies.
“I demand satisfaction,” Sir Albertus roared. “Twice now, the best horse hasn’t won, and both times, you have been implicated. Your dishonorable reputation precedes you, and if Tenneby won’t—”
I took a step forward. “Enough. I am an expert, Sir Albertus, with small arms and long guns. I have shot to kill my fellow man more often than you’ve brought down grouse, and I’ve hit my target more often than not. I fed the horse a carrot from the supply in the stable yard. Denton was in the saddle and saw everything. Speak to him and speak to Miss West and Wickley. Gather your facts before you make accusations you’ll regret.”
Hyperia had forbidden me to duel, but the temptation to brawl, to drop this posturing dolt with a hard right… but no. Ladies were present. I also wanted to inspect Golden Sovereign, to have Bean inspect him, and to talk to Denton somewhere private.
“Listen to his lordship, Sir Albertus,” Miss Tenneby said. “Consider St. Just’s theory, that we don’t train our horses on downhill finishes. Consider the heat and leave it to Lord Wickley to raise difficult questions. Excuse us.”
I bowed before offering Miss Tenneby my arm. The crowd grew quiet and parted for us, and through the stillness, I heard raised voices from the direction of the rubbing-down house.
“You will excuse me, Miss Tenneby. I’ll see you at supper, and thank you.”
She looked as if she wanted to follow me, but I made my about-face and departed quick time. Another day, another accusation of dishonor. I was so angry by the time I reached the rubbing-down house that the least provocation would have inspired me to dire foolishness.
Dire foolishness indeed.