Page 49 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

‘Lovely pony that,’ said the exceedingly dirty man standing near it, who looked even thinner than his charge. ‘Suit you perfect, miss. I can see you like him.’

‘He’s very thin,’ she said disapprovingly.

‘No, he’s just lean and fit. You don’t want no fat pony, miss, that’ll lose his puff if you try to gallop.

Fat ponies ain’t healthy. Carry you all day, will this pony, up hill and down dale.

Doesn’t know the meaning of tired. Got more courage ’n a lion.

Your pa here, miss? Get him to buy you this here pony, and you’ll never regret it. ’

‘I’m sure I wouldn’t,’ Alice said, meaning something quite different.

‘Starved,’ said a voice beside her. ‘And beaten too, if I’m any judge.’ Alice glanced round and saw it was Miss Eddowes.

‘It looks so sad,’ Alice said quietly to her. ‘I wish I could do something for it.’

‘People who mistreat animals make my blood boil,’ Miss Eddowes said. ‘But judging by his appearance, the owner can’t afford to feed himself, let alone a horse.’

‘What will happen to it?’ Alice asked fearfully.

‘If the fellow’s lucky, he’ll get a few shillings for it from the knacker for its skin and bones.’

‘It’ll be killed?’

‘Then its troubles will be over,’ said Miss Eddowes. She looked at Alice, and read her thoughts. Everyone says you’re very rich. You could buy it. A few shillings would be nothing to you. You could feed it up and make it happy .

‘My dear Lady Alice,’ she said, ‘I doubt if anything much could save this poor beast. It’s probably twenty years old, and riddled with disease into the bargain.’

‘Oh, but—’ Alice began. She felt tears gathering in her eyes and was angry with herself.

She wanted to be calm and rational – that was the way to persuade.

She knew instinctively that passion wouldn’t do it with Miss Eddowes.

She swallowed and tried again. ‘I’m sure he was loved by someone once.

See how he likes me scratching his head. ’

Miss Eddowes looked a query. ‘They don’t give you an allowance up at the Castle.’ It was half a question, half a statement.

Alice felt embarrassed. ‘I never really have to buy things.’

‘No, I suppose not. Your mother—’

‘She’s away. She was at Cowes, then she went to Scotland.

I don’t think she’s coming back until the autumn.

’ There were a lot of questions competing for Alice’s attention just then, foremost among them, Why does my mother hate you?

But the pony gave a trembling sigh and eased its weight onto the other foot, and banished them all.

The owner spoke up again. ‘This your ma, miss? She looks like a good judge of ’orses. Buy the young lady this nice pony, lady, what she’s lost her heart to?’

‘I’m not her mother,’ Miss Eddowes said briskly. ‘And this poor animal should be put out of its misery.’ And she walked away.

Alice stood stunned, trying to think of a way out.

Could she offer to buy the pony and promise to pay later, when she’d had a chance to beg some money from Giles?

Or from Uncle Sebastian, more likely? But the man didn’t seem like a local – she’d never seen him before and he didn’t know who she was.

So he’d want his money right away so he could go home. He’d never trust her for it.

Then a voice from behind her said over her head, ‘Give you five bob for him.’

All the hair stood up on the back of Alice’s neck. She knew that voice.

The owner’s gaze tracked upwards to address a taller person. A hopeful look came into his sunken eyes. ‘Lot of interest in this ’ere pony, guv’nor. Young lady’s thinking of taking ’im. Twelve bob, I was thinking of asking.’

‘Better think again, then. Five bob, and that’s four bob more than it’s worth.’

‘I’d get eight bob from the knacker.’

‘You’d never get it as far as the knacker. Take five bob before it drops dead and you’re left holding a bit o’ rope. Come on, I haven’t got all day.’

And a moment later, the end of the dirty bit of rope that constituted a halter was in Axe’s hand, the thin man had melted into the crowds with his two half-crowns, and Alice was staring up at her hero with a mixture of gratitude and bewilderment.

‘Why?’ is what she eventually managed to say.

He shook his head. ‘Asking myself the same thing.’ He scratched his head under his hat, staring at the wretched pony. ‘How the dickens will I get it back up the hill? I must be going soft in the head.’

Alice laid a hand briefly on his wrist. ‘You’ve saved a poor wretched creature from misery,’ she said.

With expert and not unkind hands, Axe forced the pony’s mouth open and looked at its teeth.

‘Not as old as I thought,’ he commented, letting it go.

‘About fifteen. Maybe when it’s fattened up, it might have a bit of work left in it.

Few years, if we’re lucky. I suppose that bloke couldn’t afford to feed it.

’ He stood staring at it in silence, thinking.

The pony had no energy to do anything but stand there, unaware of the changes in its fortunes.

Alice said, ‘I’m so grateful to you for buying it. I couldn’t bear the thought—’

He looked down at her. ‘I know. I heard.’ He coughed. ‘Miss Eddowes – she’s a practical person.’

Alice felt shy. ‘I didn’t know you’d be here,’ she said.

‘Everybody’s here,’ he said. ‘Nobody misses the fair if they can help it. And I’ve got, er . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘The church stall’s selling some of my carvings,’ he finished, looking shy himself. ‘Some little things I made. Help out with the beetle fund.’

‘Oh, how lovely! I must see them! But what are we going to do with the pony?’

‘I been thinking,’ Axe said. ‘I thought of the stable behind the forge – there’s a spare stall, and Mr Rowse’d let me use it temp’ry.

But I’m not sure this old boy’d make it down the far end of the village on his own legs.

So I’m thinking I should walk him round to the sexton’s yard behind the church.

Mr Gomperts lets me leave Della there. He’ll let me put the pony under the cart shed with a bit of hay.

I brought Della a feed down in the cart, and I reckon she can go without for once.

Pony can have it, and if he don’t drop dead from shock, I can keep him there a couple o’ days til he’s strong enough to go up the hill.

’ He scratched at the pony’s neck and examined his fingernail.

‘Could do with a good grooming as well.’

‘You are so very kind,’ Alice exclaimed passionately. ‘And now I feel guilty for making you buy him. If I had any money, I’d pay you back, honestly I would.’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘No need. You can come and visit him when he’s up at my place, see how he gets on. You should think of a name for him as well. I’m no good at names. And now, I’d better get him moving.’

‘Can I help?’

‘No, m’lady, better you go and mingle. You don’t want to be seen with this old scarecrow of a pony. Don’t want people talking.’

‘As if I’d care!’

‘Go and enjoy the fair. I’ve got him,’ Axe said imperturbably.

***

Moss had no idea why he had asked Ada to come to the fair with him.

He hadn’t known he was going to do it until the words were out of his mouth and, being Moss, it was issued less like an invitation than a summons.

She would enjoy the fair a great deal more, he said, if she understood the background to it, the history, the traditions.

And sweet, shy, pink-cheeked Ada had lowered her eyes and said, ‘Thank you, Mr Moss,’ in a whisper.

She looked even more enchanting in a grey skirt, white linen blouse and her Sunday hat of straw with a pink ribbon.

‘Most suitable,’ was all he allowed himself to say when she presented herself.

There was a brake going down to take the servants, but he wouldn’t subject her to the inevitable talk if they got into it together; and, besides, he wanted the length of the walk to have her to himself.

He loved to talk to her. She listened so quietly, and he felt himself grow powerful and eloquent in her service.

He wanted to educate her, so that she could Better Herself.

She was too good to be a housemaid all her life.

She was lovely and good, and with the polish he could give her, could raise herself to be a lady’s maid, or even get a job in a shop – a lady’s outfitters perhaps, or something genteel of that sort.

Actually, a different ending to her story was lurking in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t yet bring himself to take it out and look at it directly. It was too beautiful, too precious, too delicate, like a butterfly’s wing from which the bloom would vanish with too much handling.

On the way down the hill, they passed a hedge in which wild summer roses were having a second flowering.

He stopped, picked a spray and, with a bow, presented them to her.

She took them rather awkwardly, as though wondering what to do with them, and he said, ‘Perhaps, pinned to your hat . . . They’d go so well with your pink ribbon. ’

Between them, with one of her hat-pins, they accomplished this.

The roses were already dropping their petals in the heat, and he was afraid they would be quite bare by the time they got down the hill, but he forgot the problem when a story came to his mind, which he took pleasure in relating to her.

‘There is an old legend that the gods named the rose queen of all the flowers. This, of course, was in pagan times, when the people believed in lots of different gods, not the One True God we worship today, you understand.’

‘Yes, Mr Moss.’

‘Well, the legend says that the nightingale fell in love with the beauty of the flower queen, so much so that he flew down and tried to embrace her.’ In his mind, he was the noble, the eloquent nightingale, she the exquisite, beautiful rose.

‘Such was his passion, that he did not notice her thorns. As he embraced her, they pierced his breast, and drops of his blood fell on the ground.’