A Horse Called Hero (16 page)

The plank swung on the strange green suspension, each movement of Wolfie’s as he struggled with the girth causing an echoing movement somewhere on the trampoline surface.

He looked up and saw the eyes that followed his every movement and he trembled before the fathoms of trust in them.

Dodo huddled, shivering on the rush.

Ned placed his feet on the end of the plank and said to Wolfie, ‘My weight’s on it now, start moving towards me.’

Wolfie looked at Hero then turned back to Ned.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘No.’

‘Leave him. Won’t make it – nothin’ under him, no traction.’

‘He will . . . he will get out – he can—’

‘No.’ Ned’s voice was loud and angry. ‘Get yourself out. Now.’

Dodo was crawling across the rush. Wolfie saw her reach for the rifle, stagger to her feet, one arm held to her chest, the other holding the trigger, no hand to steady the barrel of it. She
raised the rifle at Ned.

When Ned turned and saw, he froze.

‘Get him out. Get Hero out,’ said Dodo, her voice shaking, the barrel of the rifle wobbling.

Ned was silent for a few seconds, then, his eyes on Dodo, he shouted to Wolfie. ‘’Oow long? ’Oow long’s he been in there?’

‘I don’t know,’ he answered.

‘Get him out,’ said Dodo.

‘’E’s nothin’ under him,’ Ned said, ‘nothin’ to push off.’

‘He’s not sinking,’ Wolfie said. ‘There’s solid under him where two legs are, it’s solid.’

Ned thought for a minute, then said, ‘Put the gun down.’ Without turning to Dodo, he said to Wolfie, ‘Have you asked him to get out? Has he tried? Is he tired?’

‘No, no and no,’ answered Wolfie.

‘Tell ’er to put the gun down,’ said Ned.

Dodo lowered the barrel. Ned bent to pick up the coil of rope and began to poke around in the alder for a long branch.

Halfway along the plank, Ned tested the depth with his stick. He bent, bent further, then knelt, his arm submerged to the shoulder. ‘Ten foot maybe,’ he said.
‘Too deep.’

Dodo raised the rifle. ‘What are you doing?’ she said, pink rising in her cheeks. ‘What are you doing out here with a rope? With a rifle? It’s not your land.’

Ned, standing on an unsteady plank, in a bog, with a rifle raised at him, said nothing.

‘Why did the fire get out of control? You weren’t swaling, were you? Not now, not at this time of year?’

‘Sent to find you I was,’ he answered, his eyes on the horse. ‘You were lucky it hit that grass. The rush here’s thicker, doesn’t burn like the other stuff.
It’s broken the path of the fire.’

‘Was it on purpose, Ned Jervis, that fire?’

Ned bent slowly, conscious of the rifle aimed at him. He crouched on the precarious plank and, after a few tries, managed to loop the rope around Hero’s neck.

‘Don’t move,’ he said to Wolfie. ‘Stay where you are – steady as you can – or I go in. When I tell you, you ask him, just the once, shout an’ lash
together – good an’ hard –
hard
, hard as you can. At the same time I pull.’

Wolfie nodded.

‘All depends on his character, on the spirit in him. Some give in, some don’t. Depends on the fight in ’em.’

‘Hero will fight,’ said Wolfie, looking Ned in the eyes as he took the stick Ned held out.

Back on the rush, with the end of the rope in his hands, Ned nodded to Wolfie.

Wolfie rose and placed his legs apart, bracing himself. He looked at Hero. Hero’s head turned and gazed back at the boy, his eyes luminous with love and trust. Wolfie breathed deeply, then
he, who’d never, ever taken a whip to his horse, raised a stick high above his head. The dark almond eyes watched him and watched the stick.

‘Hero, you’ve got to do it – got to get out . . .’ he whispered.

Wolfie took a deep breath and nodded to Ned. ‘Out. Get out!’ he yelled and lashed. ‘Now! Out!’

Wolfie lashed again, yelled again, lashed again.

‘Gerr’on,’ shouted Ned, and pulled.

Wolfie lashed again, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘Come, Hero,’ he pleaded. ‘Now!’ He raised the whip again.

Hero tensed, his nostrils flared, his neck arched, his spine arched, his neck was corded with swelling veins, his eyes blazing, and his forelegs were fighting free of the holding squelch –
they were high and clear, doubled, like a jumping stag – he was swinging and falling – plunging down – spraying mud and water – his neck arching again, chest swelling as if
to burst, as if an inner sun were on the point of exploding through it, the titanic effort clear in his bulging eyes and corded veins. His neck, cheeks, forehead glistened, streaked with sweat and
mud and mist, his forelegs rose, neck and spine arching, leaping, falling, legs sloshing and plunging and staggering, and Wolfie was running along the plank, jumping on to the rush, calling out to
him, and Dodo was screaming to Hero and clutching Wolfie and together they howled and hurrahed through the rafters of the evening.

Hero was on the rush.

He lifted his tail, shook his head, shook his withers, bent his knees, doubled his legs and sank to the ground. He rolled and he rubbed his streaming flanks, rolling and rubbing and shaking,
kicking and rolling, rolling and kicking, his four hoofs to the heavens.

A long, hungry winter followed the summer.

Sergeant Box made his statement. The court martial and the accusations against Pa were brought into the glare of public attention once again, chewed over once again, the children vulnerable to
the insidious whispering of the village. The men talked of it in the pub, Mrs Potter and her friends in the Village Stores gathered and gossiped. Wolfie had quietly given up his liking for
Torpedoes and pear drops. Outwardly he minded less than Dodo about other people but he’d never gone back into the Village Stores. In London public and media interest in the case was
ballooning. Box’sstatement,thoughinPa’sfavour,didnotcommute the suspicion with which they were surrounded into warmth or kindness, but there would be an appeal, that much was certain.
The court martial had sharpened the tongues, ignited the talk of the villagers. Now the newspapers’ interest in Box and his statement had brought everything to the fore once more.

One Sunday in February, at the breakfast table at Lilycombe, Father Lamb stared at
The Times
headline, shocked and silent. Hettie,in an attempt to be cheerful for the
children, said, ‘Look, Wolfie, see how Hero clings to the ponies now. He so tall and gleaming, they so stout and furry.’

Dodo managed a weak smile. Hettie had been so brave, saying only, ‘
Scout died where she loved to be, with you both and with Hero
.’ She’d been so relieved to see the
children home and safe and then so worried by her father’s frailty, she’d not had time to grieve for Scout.

‘Twenty-five thousand dead in one night,’ repeated Father Lamb out loud. He picked up Captain and turned him and turned him, tenderly, gazing at him from all sides.

‘How the world has changed, Wolfie. Only yesterday it seems, we battled on horses, with lances . . . Now we can create six hundred acres of rubble, six hundred, in a single night . . . And
our bombs may fall on statesmen, but they also fall on women and children, on horses and dogs. Why not daylight raids on military targets?’

There were tears on his cheeks. The children and Hettie were silent. The Allied air raids on Berlin, on Dresden and Hamburg, now once again on Berlin, had been thorough and devastating.

‘Come, Father,’ said Hettie. ‘We must get you to church.’

She helped him to his feet. Dodo went for his coat and hat and scarf.

Leaning on his daughter’s arm, he said, ‘I’m finding the church a lonely place to be, Hettie. Twenty-five thousand dead. Can there be any justification for such a
thing?’

‘Shh, Father,’ said Hettie.

She looked at him anxiously. His congregation was dwindling. The village was uneasy with Father Lamb’s anxiety, that anxiety being so at odds with the country’s grim determination to
get the whole thing over with, at any cost.

The sky was leaden. Inside St Simon’s it was dark, almost as night. Hettie took her place at the organ, the children at her side, Wolfie to pump, Dodo to turn the pages.
A solitary figure in black sat at the front in the pew she thought of as her own.

‘There’s Mrs Sprig,’ hissed Wolfie.

‘Pray for her, Wolfie,’ Hettie whispered. ‘Henry was killed.’

Dodo and Wolfie bowed their heads.

Father Lamb lit a candle on the pulpit. He led the service, thin and frail and white, with a blanket draped over his cassock, the pale flame holding him as if in a pool of moonlight.

‘Let us pray . . .,’ he said, as the service drew to a close. When the shrunken congregation had bent to its knees, he continued, ‘. . . for the people of Dresden, for the
people of Coventry, of Berlin, of London. For all whose lives have been taken by the bombings for all human life must be valued.’

There was a discomforted shuffling in the pews. Someone at the back rose and left, slamming the door. Father Lamb continued. The Causey family rose and left.

Father Lamb announced the final hymn, Wolfie’s favourite. Hettie played the opening bars. Father Lamb sang:

‘
When a knight won his spurs in the stories of old . . .
’ His voice was whispery and frail but no other voice rose with his.

‘
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold, With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand, For God and for valour, he rode through the land
.’ Dodo and Wolfie
turned to the audience and sang, as fully as they could. Father Lamb’s lovely baritone swelled with theirs and filled the church. ‘
And let me set free with the sword of my youth,
From the castle of darkness, the power of the truth
.’ He gave the blessing. They bent their heads. Wolfie saw Hettie’s lips move and remembered to pray. Putting his hands together,
he mouthed, ‘Dear God, Make Box well so Pa’s appeal can be soon. Make Father Lamb better. Make people come to his church. Help me look after Hero.’ Then he ran out of things to
pray for and mouthed, ‘Amen.’

At the gate stood a dark clot of men. As Father Lamb stepped out into the porch, they booed and waved hastily improvised placards –

‘God bless you,’ he said as he passed.

Later Hettie unplugged the Bakelite wireless set and hid the lead. Once again, she cancelled the papers.

Water froze in the taps, milk crystallized and froze in the larder. An elemental cold gripped the country, a cold to freeze the blood.

They woke on the last Sunday in February to a staring, unearthly radiance, white rime on stone and cobble, each blade of grass stiff, seed heads turned to silvery globes, branches bowed with
crystalline ice flowers, electricity cables glassy and garlanded with blossom.

Father Lamb had died in the night.

‘Dreadnought too,’ said Hettie, dark-eyed in the kitchen. ‘Dreadnought went with him.’

Wolfie looked out of the window, down past Hettie’s currant bushes to the graveyard. He smiled through his tears to think of Dreadnought and Father Lamb together at heaven’s gate, of
the rowan that would be there and of what God and Dreadnought would make of each other.

Father Lamb was buried next morning, with Dreadnought. They did not have far to go.

A myriad diamond stars wreathed Father Lamb’s rowan, each branch of it hung with berries that flashed like blood against so much whiteness.

After the burial, snow, soft as wool, fell from a pearly sky. For thirty hours it fell, transforming the hills to ghostly waves, unreal and timeless.

There was no school, the children confined to the house, Hero to his box. Restlessly he barged at the door of it till he broke the latch and Wolfie tied it with twine.

Samuel came, on foot, through snow to his thighs, a pair of corn sacks tied over his boots.

‘I’ll bring the ponies in – they can’t get to the grass,’ he called from the door. ‘Snow’s too deep on the lane to get ’em here, but I’ll
get ’em into the shippon at Windwistle – that’s big enough to hold ’em.’ He gestured to the sky. ‘There’s more to come – sky’s thick with it
– any more ’n’ it’ll bury ’em.’

‘Do we have enough hay?’ asked Hettie.

Samuel nodded. ‘Aye, and for the horse. For a week or two we’ve enough.’

‘I’ll put Hero next to the ponies,’ said Wolfie, watching Hero’s fretful head swing from side to side over the door. ‘He doesn’t like being on his
own.’

Samuel nodded. ‘Gi’s a hand with the gates then,’ he said to Wolfie. ‘Ned’s up there, rounding ’em up, but we could do with help on the gates.’

Wolfie waited by the sheep pens at Windwistle, stamping and blowing on his fingers. Clods of snow thudded to the ground. The trees made strange creakings and groanings.
Saplings snapped under their burden of snow with sudden, firework cracks. Wolfie was to keep one gate open, the gate on the other side closed. The ponies would be herded into the pen and the gate
shut, from there they’d be ushered into the shippon.

He heard Ned’s cussing and shouting, then a muffled pounding. The half-dozen ponies, their furry winter coats iced like Christmas ornaments, stampeded in a wild torrent at the gate, manes
and tails flying. Wolfie leaped to one side, leaned flat against the stone bank, holding the gate open as the ponies streamed through, sending snow flying.

Ned and Samuel ran staggering behind them, keeping to the bits where the snow had been flattened, making guttural, animal noises, herding them like a sheepdog. The ponies pounded on down beneath
the white arching trees.

‘That’s all on ’em. Shut it. Quick. Or they’ll turn and stampede you.’

Finding the bottom gate shut, the ponies came to an abrupt halt and whirled round. Finding themselves trapped between the two gates they became wild and frightened.

‘Hurry, get that gate to the yard open,’ Ned called to Samuel. ‘Wolfie, get the shippon door open.’

When they were all in, Samuel forced the frozen iron bar across its door, then tied baler twine around the top of it. ‘Can’t rely on the latch,’ he said to Wolfie. ‘They
can break their way out o’ most places . . . put the horse in next door so he can see ’em. Give ’em all hay.’