CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Fortunately for the king’s peace and my life expectancy, Hyperia was on hand at the rubbing-down house. Wickley paced as if delivering a third-act soliloquy at high volume, Tenneby and Hyperia watched him, and grooms and horses coming and going from the building seemed intent on ignoring the whole performance.
“Golden should have won,” Wickley said. “By God, that colt should have won. He was gaining on Moonglow, and that his victory was snatched from him by subterfuge is the most unsporting thing I have ever seen.”
“No,” I said, “it isn’t. You might have lost a few thousand pounds on the match—money you can afford to lose—but at Epsom, you saw Tenneby lose twenty-eight thousand pounds to the same sort of mischief, and that result was his near ruin. Cease your yelling now, and let’s see what we can learn from the victim himself.”
Wickley looked at me as if I’d sprouted a tail, horns, and cloven hooves. “Go away. On second, thought, don’t move. You were behind the starting line and behaving very familiarly with my horse. Explain yourself.”
Viginti, undeviginti, duodeviginti… “You yourself heard Miss West ask me to lend a hand when your colt was behaving badly. You heard her with your own ears, Wickley. You held my drink while I succeeded in settling your horse, and you made off with my punch, I might add. If you require further explanations, I am happy to make them, but not here. Two more races are to be run today, and half of creation has its field glasses trained on us at this moment. Sir Albertus has already made quite the scene, and my patience is fast eroding.”
“Your patience!” Tenneby came to life like a cuckoo clock chiming the hour. “Your patience! This is my race meeting, my chance to redeem the family fortunes, and twice now, a horse in top condition has been barely able to complete the course, much less prevail as predicted. This is worse than I could have imagined, Lord Julian, and your one purpose here, your one reason for attending, was to ensure that this exact problem did not arise.”
What a convenient and inaccurate sense of recall he enjoyed. “Tenneby, you arguably insult my intended. Please clarify: Are you asking me to leave?” Now that I probably should quit the scene, I didn’t want to. Somebody was making a fool of me, fleecing a lot of popinjays, and foiling Tenneby’s grand scheme to gallop his way to solvency. That was all quite depressing and annoying, et cetera and so forth.
But what about Golden, a good young fellow who’d tried his heart out, and for all I knew, today’s performance would see him trotted off to the knacker’s yard. Juliet might fare no better, though as Bean had pointed out, she was a lovely creature with many fine qualities.
Excalibur would be the next horse to suffer ill usage, I was nearly certain of it. He’d already been sent home in disgrace once for losing a battle he hadn’t been equipped to fight. That Tenneby, Miss Tenneby, and an entire household of servants would share the next disgrace bothered me, but the disrespect to the horses, the manipulation of them as if they were nothing more than chattel to be rearranged on a whim, offended me sorely.
Hyperia ceased rummaging in her reticule and took the place beside me. “His lordship has asked after your continued hospitality, Mr. Tenneby. A reasonable question, when it was you and you alone who prevailed upon his lordship to come in the first place. I flatter myself that my Lord Julian sought some pleasant time in my company, but his efforts since arriving have been bent upon keeping the races honest.”
Denton emerged from the rubbing-down house, a wet, weary Golden Sovereign on the lead line behind him.
“Let’s have a look at the horse,” I said, because time was of the essence. “If he’s been drugged, the sooner he’s examined, the more likely we are to see the symptoms. Caleb Bean’s opinion should be sought immediately.”
“Bean?” Tenneby said. “My farrier?”
“And part-time horse doctor. Wickley, look him over. Listen to his gut sounds, make sure his pupils contract when you shade them with your hand—it takes longer than you think, but the reflex should manifest. Pull his tail either direction and see if he staggers.” These were basic diagnostics any senior groom knew to undertake when a horse turned up listless or off his feed.
“Please do,” Hyperia said. “We might learn something of value. His lordship served among cavalry officers who worshipped all things equine.” She extracted her fan from her reticule, unfolded it, and began a languid motion beneath her chin.
The voice of reason was apparently audible to Wickley when the words came from a sensible female. He set about examining his horse, Denton murmured to another lad to fetch Bean, and I stood back, trying not to be furious with Tenneby.
He was more loyal to his horses than he was to somebody trying to prevent disaster from parking on his damned doorstep.
Wickley’s examination revealed no symptoms of poisoning. Bean’s slower, more formal measures reached the same result.
“Not poison,” Bean said as the call went out for the runners in the second race to assemble. “Not a poison I’ve seen or read about, in any case. I’ve discussed Juliet’s defeat with my wife, whose pedigree as a farrier goes back generations, and she’s equally confounded. We’ve both heard of horses simply running out of puff, passing in a moment from all’s well to barely moving, but the ailment seems to afflict only the rare coach horse, and Golden is not a coach horse.”
At the mention of his name, Golden pricked his ears. He ambled over to me, Denton playing out the lead line, and nudged my pocket. Nobody could explain to the horse what had happened, and the horse couldn’t give us any answers either. I scratched his ear, and he cocked his head in enjoyment.
“If he can’t redeem himself next week,” Wickley said, “I’ll have to sell him, and at a loss, blast the luck. I thought he was the better of the two. He and Remedy are half-brothers, and their sire’s progeny are all doing remarkably well. I can’t afford a no-hoper in my stable, and running out of puff won’t do. Won’t do at all.” He assayed a scowl at Denton, who ignored him, and at Tenneby, who stepped back as if slapped, and then at me.
“Have you something to say, Wickley?”
Hyperia laced her arm through mine and gave Wickley a half-bored, patient smile.
“Not in present company.” He nodded to Hyperia. “Miss West, good day and… good luck.” That last part was sneered and accompanied by another contemptuous perusal of my person.
Tenneby watched Wickley cross back to the throng on the other side of the course. “He insulted you, my lord. That doesn’t bode well. As displeased as I am with your efforts to date—what were you thinking to insert yourself among the runners before the start?—I must warn you that Wickley can be hotheaded, as can several of the other owners present. His rivalry with Pierpont is legendary. We take our racing seriously.”
No, they did not. They took their wagering seriously—and their vanity and their pride.
“Tenneby, it might surprise you to learn that you insulted me first by questioning my efforts before the earl. When my own host, the man who all but insisted I attend, disrespects me, then any other guest, groom, or passing mongrel is invited to do the same.”
“Suppose you have a point, my lord.” He craned his neck to regard the crown of the hill. “Ye gods, there goes Pierpont, rubbing it in, and Wickley trying to laugh it off. I am not up to their weight, and Evelyn tried to warn me, but Evelyn is always nattering on about this or that. What will you do next, my lord?”
“Accept your apology, provided one is tendered.”
Now he was the recipient of Hyperia’s patient-governess-with-a-slow-charge smile.
“I do apologize. The heat of the moment stole my manners. Most abjectly sorry. Are you staying or leaving?”
“If you send me away now, and the next few races run smoothly, everybody will conclude that you hired me to rig your meeting. You haven’t lost any great sums yet, but Wickley just lost a packet, and he was among those who profited from your defeat at Epsom.”
Three slow blinks. “You’re saying people will think… that I… that I hired you… Oh dear.”
“You cannot hire me, because I am a gentleman.” I spoke slowly, exhausting the last of my forbearance. “But the rest of your conjecture is logical. Send me away if you please to. The culprit has tossed at least two lucrative races, and perhaps that’s enough for him. Send me away now, and your meeting is disgraced. You and I share blame we do not deserve, and a villain, enriched by cheating, goes free to rig another meeting and fleece another upstanding member of the turf.”
“Is that what you want, Mr. Tenneby?” Hyperia asked with exquisite indifference. “Or would you prefer to persist in the face of difficulties, get to the bottom of the cheating, and even recover some of the pecuniary reverses visited upon you earlier, when no investigation was attempted?”
“I am a plain mister,” Tenneby said. “You try speaking reason to the Epsom stewards, to anybody , when half the peerage is laughing and pointing at you and smirking behind their hands whenever you pass.”
I, who had been court-martialed in absentia by Mayfair hostesses and half of Horse Guards, did not howl or slap my forehead. “Very trying, I’m sure. I will leave if you ask it of me, or I will stay, but you should know that Sir Albertus is very opposed to my continued presence.”
“Evelyn doesn’t like him. Says he’s cozening Vicar’s widow just because he wanted to run Juliet. Everybody else puts the boot on the other foot, but Evelyn claims to know cozening when she sees it.”
“Your sister is very astute.” Hyperia continued to languidly ply her fan. “She approves of Lord Julian’s presence, as do I.”
Whatever else was true of Tenneby, he had the heart of a gentleman.
“I suppose that decides the matter, hmm? Stay for the nonce, my lord. If retreat is to be your fate, let it at least be an orderly retreat on another day. I’d best get to the starting line, troupe the colors, for whatever that’s worth.”
“Let’s stay,” Hyperia said when Tenneby had bustled off. “I want to see Excalibur run, and Tenneby is right that a display of calm is in order.”
“A tall glass of punch is in order. Wickley means to call me out, Hyperia. I ought not to mention such a topic before a lady, but Sir Albertus has already offered me public insult, followed by a lot of blather about honor, seconds, and sorting out scoundrels.”
“Julian, you didn’t…?” She snapped her fan closed. “Please say you did not let that windbag in boots goad you into dueling?”
“I don’t suppose you’d release me from my promise, Perry? The promise not to duel? I could pot him across the fundament, and he wouldn’t sit a horse for weeks.”
“The heat is affecting your humors, Julian. If you think I would stand idly by while you risked your life at gunpoint among a crowd that is clearly adept at cheating, you are much mistaken. Much mistaken. You survived the thirteenth circle of hell and worse on sheer stubbornness alone. To invite one of these… these dimwits to put out your lights over an accusation we know to be false would be an obscene return on the suffering you’ve endured. I refuse to countenance such foolishness.”
She was so quietly passionate, so clear in her own mind regarding questions that bewildered me.
“Hyperia West, I do love you.”
“No dueling, and don’t think to wheedle and flatter your way around me on this point.”
She loved me too. On that fortifying conclusion, I offered her my arm and escorted her once more unto the breach.
* * *
The last two races, a hurdle and a steeplechase, proceeded without incident. Excalibur won the steeplechase by a gentlemanly three lengths, and Tenneby was congratulated all around with apparent sincere good wishes. The colt—technically a stallion due to his age—would run again in matches later in the week, for what the owners referred to as “serious money.”
Foolish money, if you’d asked me.
Tenneby had several other prospects on the cards for the upcoming races, but my concern was focused on Excalibur. This running-out-of-puff scheme had apparently been used successfully with Excalibur in the past. That made him the closest thing to a safe bet for another bad turn from the cheater.
Then too, Tenneby was likely to be betting his last groat on the horse, making for high stakes even by racing measures.
“Watch Tenneby’s stallion closely,” I said as Atticus hooked Atlas’s final water bucket of the evening to its peg on the stall wall. “He is a truly fine animal and Tenneby’s only remaining hope for avoiding ruin.”
Atticus dipped his fingers into the cool water and applied them to his forehead. “Denton says Excalibur has perfect conformation. Built for speed, strength, and stamina. Piggott agreed with him, and even Hercules said the same. They all want Excalibur to win this time around. They don’t say that when the owners are on hand, but they say it to each other.”
Atlas dipped his nose into the water bucket and slurped noisily.
“The grooms are a congenial lot, aren’t they?”
“Seem to be, until it’s time to line up at the start. Denton has a temper, but I would, too, if I had to put up with Wicked and his struttin’. Pierpont’s no better, but he don’t order his grooms about just for the sake of making noise. They hop to do his bidding just the same.”
Atlas lifted his head, his chin dripping. He watched as Excalibur was led past the stall, then went back to his slurping.
The stallion moved with feline economy and leonine power. Stubbs would have been powerless to resist his equine majesty. I was again aware that only a truly nasty soul would wish harm on a helpless equine.
“Is the well recharging?” I asked as St. George was led past. Healy’s gray had the same grace and power as Excalibur, but with more muscle behind and a wider barrel. Two different varieties of excellence, at least as far as appearances went.
“The well’s not coming back fast enough,” Atticus replied. “Hercules worked out a roster for us so we don’t all have to take our horses down to the river one by one. We take them by twos or threes. You take mine, I’ll take yours. Woglemuth approved. We’re getting a little more sleep, and the horses are on a schedule so nobody goes thirsty.”
“And yet, you still personally bring Atlas his bucket for overnight?”
“If it was me, in this heat, I’d want to know I could have a sip now and again through the night. Bean got us a wagon from the home farm, so we fill up all the night buckets after supper and haul ’em over from the kitchen garden before we turn in. When the wagon pulls up in the stable yard, we set up a bucket line, like they do for a fire, and the whole business is done in no time.”
Common horse sense and a little cooperation were making a long two weeks more bearable for the rank and file. Up at the manor house, fortunes were being wagered on a whim, potentially mortal threats flung about, and impending ruin ignored, while somebody flogged honor past all recognition.
Many an officer had claimed to envy the common soldier.
“Keep up the good work, Atticus, and keep a sharp eye out. Someone from among these hardworking stable hands took several horses out for unscheduled gallops. Denton might well have been trying to swap Cleopatra for Maybelle, Blinken was put out of the running by foul play, and you doubtless heard about Golden Sovereign’s defeat this afternoon.”
“Bad business, guv.” Atticus peered into the bucket, which was by now half empty, and frowned. “Golden shoulda won. Yeah, the weather is hot and close, but it’s hot and close for everybody. If he lost, he shoulda lost by a nose, not like some old granny who gets to wanderin’ on the way home from Sunday services.”
Apt description. “But he did lose, and his defeat exactly mirrored Juliet’s recent defeat and Excalibur’s loss from several years ago. Somebody has figured out how to tamper with a horse so it’s not apparent until the creature actually falters.”
“Bean says he’s heard of it in coach horses, like tyin’-up, but not tyin’-up.”
Tying-up referred to a serious stiffness or lameness that could come on quickly, particularly after a horse in steady work had enjoyed a deserved rest, or a horse out of condition had been asked for strenuous exertion. The reigning theory among my cavalry cohorts had been that the horse was enduring muscle cramps, because a badly afflicted animal either could not or would not take a single step.
“You are learning a lot here, aren’t you, Atticus?”
“Between Denton, Woglemuth, Hercules, and Bean, I’m learning everything worth knowing. Denton says I have a good seat.”
This again. “You’re hacking up to the Downs every morning?”
“Aye, no gallopin’, though. Me doddering old guv won’t have it.” He assayed a grin as he scratched at Atlas’s hairy ear. The horse craned his neck, the better to enjoy the cosseting.
“You may attempt a hand-gallop tomorrow, if one of the other grooms will pace you. Stand in the stirrups to free Atlas’s back, don’t let the reins go slack lest he take off at top speed, but let him stretch his legs. Grab mane if you need to. There’s no shame in that if your horse is on the muscle. When Atlas has galloped off the fidgets, bring him back for a breather at the canter, then give him one more good push forward, followed by plenty of walking to cool down.”
I described basic training to build speed and stamina in the horse and rider. I’d far rather have reserved the pleasure of such an outing for myself, but Atticus deserved to enjoy the challenge in the company of his temporary confreres. They—and Atlas—would school him as I could not.
And yet, Atticus was still a mere child, and I was inviting him to gallop on a warhorse without my supervision. Hyperia would disapprove, St. Just would understand, and if the boy came to harm, I would have regrets for the rest of my life.
“Pull up if Atlas forgets his manners. Haul his nose around to your knee and be firm about it. He’s tried to bolt with me a time or two when my attention has wandered. He needs to know his jockey is on the job, not daydreaming about hot cross buns and lemon ices.”
Atticus finished scratching Atlas’s second ear. “I won’t be thinkin’ about no lemon ices when Atlas is flying over the Downs. You should go on up to the house, guv. Folk get to mutterin’ if you hang about the stables for too long.”
“Anybody muttering in particular?”
“ Everybody gripes and moans about everything. Like singing a hymn to get the congregation settled in the pews. The weather, the nobs, the flies, the well, the sot on the throne… and the strange milord with the blue glasses who seems to be on hand when a race is rigged. Then they look at me to see if I heard ’em, which they meant me to do.”
“I do wear blue glasses, that can’t be helped, but for the love of fast horses, don’t let those fellows rile you. Drink plenty of water yourself, Atticus. Heat is devious. It saps your strength from day to day, but you think you’ll rise in the morning fit to march again, only to drop in your tracks three miles on. I’ve seen it happen over and over.”
“Like Juliet and Golden Sovereign?”
Interesting observation. “Yes and no. The horses are not soldiers in wool uniforms, who’ve tramped thirty miles over hill and dale, with packs and weapons. When a soldier goes down like that, he’s often stopped sweating, and he’s half out of his head.” Still, the boy’s observation got me thinking. “Nobody is rugging these horses at night, are they?”
“Nah, too hot for that.”
I patted Altas’s sleek quarters and left the stall. “None of the grooms are falling asleep at odd times and places?”
Atticus followed me and took up an empty bucket. “We all fall asleep as many times and in as many places as we can manage. Lugging all this water about, getting up early for the gallops, the extra work from the races, and all the nefarious goin’s-on… We’re all cadging naps when we can.”
“Where are you off to with that bucket?”
“To get another half measure to top up Atlas’s bucket for the night. He didn’t have nothing left in his bucket this morning, and you just saw him drain the thing half empty. The heat ain’t gonna break for another few days at least, more’s the pity.”
“Amen to that. Do not fall asleep out here, Atticus. I’ll come find you if you do.”
“Guv, I’m tellin’ ya…”
“I know. The strange lord is a suspicious character. I’ll be careful, and you get up to the house when your day is through.”
If suspicion was falling on me, it could all too easily fall on the boy, too, a vexing thought. We passed a knot of grooms smoking pipes under the stable’s overhang. Denton, Hercules, and Corrie nodded to me, and I felt their gazes on my back as I made my way toward the house.
Lowly grooms they might be, but they doubtless took meddling with one of their charges as seriously as I’d take ill will directed at Atticus. They were kind to the boy for the nonce, but he’d fare very poorly indeed if he was tarred with the brush of suspicion already applied so liberally to me.
I was halfway up to the house when a man stepped out from the deep shadows of the privet hedges bordering the path.
“A word, my lord, and now if you please.”
My first instinct was to throw a punch and sprint for the house. Battle nerves. “Bean, good evening. My tiger has been singing your praises for appropriating a wagon to haul buckets from the kitchen garden well to the stables.”
He fell in step beside me. “Woglemuth is too stubborn to ask for that sort of help, but he’s not stupid. If the grooms get too worn out, somebody’s temper will snap, and then a substitute jockey will be drafted from the ranks and losses attributed to the understudy, sparking more pugilism. No schoolyard ever had to be as carefully managed. Pierpont’s head groom sorted out a schedule for watering the horses, and there’s less grumbling as a result.”
“One more week, and they will all go on to the next meeting.” I would go home to Caldicott Hall, and never again leave its beauteous acres for so vexing a destination as a race meeting. Unless the nefarious powers below and a quantity of rotten luck prevailed, I’d do so as a man still engaged to be married.
“Speaking of going on to the next meeting,” I went on, “Rubicon’s owner has apparently already decamped.”
“For Town, so I’m told. A solid gentry bachelor with London connections has better things to do than mill about at horse races.”
“He quit while he was ahead, I’ll give him credit for that.” And he’d quit before I’d had a chance to question him, blast the luck. “Any other news?”
“I have further investigated the feeding situation,” Bean said. “Nothing out of the ordinary presents itself. The runners are all fed by their own grooms on rations brought from home and tailored to that specific horse, which is typical for a race meeting. The grooms keep their stores secured, no insult intended when mice delight in undefended grain. Our lads feed our horses, and they would notice anything out of the ordinary in the oat bins. It was worth a look, but tampering with feed is not your answer.”
Somebody had tampered with Blinken’s saddle, tampered with the exercise routine, and possibly tried tampering with the stall assignments. What did that leave?
“I am frustrated, Bean. My theories lead everywhere in terms of suspects and nowhere in terms of answers.”
“That’s not the worst of your worries, my lord.”
We approached the flight of stone steps that led up from the garden. Bean moved off the path to the shadow of the retaining wall that buttressed the park-facing facade of the terrace. We would not be visible from the house, though why anybody would begrudge me…
Ah. Bean did not want to be seen fraternizing with the strange lord. That, I understood.
“The worst of my worries has to do with Healy West betting the family fortune on a horse who goes like the wind at dawn and cannot be bothered to break a sweat in the afternoon. If the family finances are ruined, so are my marital prospects.”
Bean’s flaxen brows drew down. “One would think a lady without means would be more eager to marry a solvent bachelor.”
“One would, except that’s not how it works. You have bad news. I am hungry, thirsty, tired, and out of sorts. You’d best unburden yourself before I run barking mad into the woods.”
His teeth gleamed in the shadows. “Take a dip in the river. Cool the humors. Take a dip with your lady, in fact.”
“Bean.”
“Very well. Sir Albertus has vowed to confront you for what he deems your highly questionable conduct on too many occasions. He claims that if you will not meet him honorably, then you had best be on your guard on moonlit paths after dark.”
“He thinks to deliver me a beating?”
“Or worse.”
“Take it from one who barely survived captivity by the French—mere beatings are proof of a lack of imagination.” I had been repeatedly tormented by a man who had the most diabolical imagination ever possessed by an ostensibly human mind. The nightmares never left me for long.
“A beating is unpleasant nonetheless,” Bean retorted, “and you assume you will survive Sir Albertus’s boring display. He won’t sully his hands personally, you understand. He’ll have the local ne’er-do-wells deliver the drubbing and empty your pockets for form’s sake.”
“Because I will not leave. What does that suggest, Bean?”
“That Sir Albie is protesting too loudly? If so, he’s protesting very convincingly, my lord. Please be careful.”
“This week’s contests were the cheaper races to lose, and if I were our cheater, my best disguise would be as the first victim, wouldn’t it?”
Bean kicked at the dry earth and tore up a patch of brown grass. “My lady wife raised the same argument. Said Sir Albertus’s loss would distract everybody from considering him as the culprit. You are not distracted.”
“Nor am I convinced that all fingers should point at Sir Albertus. I will watch my back, and I appreciate the warning, but I am not about to be dissuaded by a few threats.”
“I thought not. I’ll bid you good evening, my lord.”
He sauntered off amid the lengthening evening shadows, and I took a moment to bide on the nearest bench. Over in the home wood, the birds had begun their evening chorus, and at the edge of the park, a doe grazed on the sparse grass.
I had not yet solved the riddle of the rigged races, and not for want of trying. Somebody’s scheme was working, as it had likely worked at Epsom on a grand scale several years past.
I rose wearily and directed my steps to the manor house. Had Old Scratch popped out of the ground and offered me a cool bath in exchange for my soul at that moment, the bargain would have tempted me. As it happened, I was accosted again before I had crossed the terrace, and tempting bargains did not figure in the ensuing conversation at all.