Flame and the Rebel Riders (18 page)

When Flame took the fourth fence without rushing at all, Issie knew he was ready to canter. By now, she was oblivious to the crowds watching them. She was no longer concentrating on winning. She was a professional rider in training mode.

Flame cantered on and popped the next two fences as if they weren’t even there. Issie kept him balanced between jumps by sitting back in the saddle to slow his stride. There was the odd moment when she felt the desperate urge to check him with a sharp pull as he came in a little fast or too close to a jump, but she always resisted it. She knew that Flame needed to learn to gauge his own take-off point, and the horse amazed her every time by rounding up and getting himself out of trouble. As they took the final jump and cantered back through the flags, they had only four faults on the board!

In the end, it wasn’t the fastest round of the day. The trotting and the fussing had added extra seconds and taken a toll on the scoreboard. Issie and Flame finished up with three time faults along with the four jumping faults. That made seven faults in total. It wasn’t a winning score, but for Flame it was a triumph. As
they left the arena to the sound of raucous applause from Aidan, Avery and Natasha, Issie realised she had never been so pleased with a horse in all her life.

“Wasn’t he great?” Issie was beaming as she rode out of the arena to meet them. “You were right, Tom. He jumped like a champion!”

“Fantastic!” Avery agreed. “You rode him perfectly.”

“All he needs is a few more events like this one to get his confidence up,” Issie said as she slid down off Flame’s back. “I just need a bit more time and he’ll be amazing.”

She looked imploringly at Avery. “Tom, you have to convince Cassandra somehow. She has to understand that Flame is complicated. You couldn’t expect him to win today after all he’d been through. She has to let us keep on training him!”

“I agree with you, Issie, but I don’t know if Cassandra can be convinced,” Avery said. “She was expecting results today, but there’s no way we’ll be in with a chance for a ribbon.”

A few moments later, the final scores had been tallied. Issie and Flame had done better than she could have hoped. As expected, their seven faults wasn’t good enough
to win a ribbon, but it did put them in fourth place. At the top of the rankings of course, with a clear round and a super-quick time, were Penny and Tottie. Ginty had done exactly what she set out to do—beaten them hands-down in front of Cassandra.

Compared to Ginty’s win, would Flame and Issie’s fourth place be enough to keep Flame’s owner happy? If Cassandra decided to take him back to Dulmoth Park then Issie couldn’t stop her. She’d have no option but to let him go.

“What is taking them so long?” Avery looked at his watch. “They should have done the prize-giving for this class ten minutes ago! They’re keeping everyone waiting now. The whole event will end up running behind schedule.”

As if on Avery’s command, the loudspeaker once again crackled back to life. “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologise for the delay. Could Cassandra Steele please come to the judges’ tent immediately? Cassandra Steele, please come to the judges’ tent now!”

“I don’t get it…” Aidan looked at the empty arena. “Why aren’t they announcing the winners?”

There was a look on Avery’s face as if the penny had
suddenly dropped. He turned his gaze to the judges’ tent, where a crowd seemed to be gathering.

“Come on!” Avery said. “The judges’ tent! There’s something happening!” And he strode off across the field towards the tent with Issie, Natasha and Aidan following closely behind him.

There was an angry crowd gathering at the tent. The competition was now officially running twenty minutes late and frustrated riders had begun to assemble, all of them trying to find out what was going on.

“Can everybody, please calm down!” A man in a suit was standing on a table just outside the tent addressing the riders. “We apologise for the delay. If you are entered in the next event we will be getting underway shortly. It appears there has been a problem with the previous event and an announcement is about to be made. The next event will start very shortly!”

“Excuse me.” Avery tapped the shoulder of a woman standing in front of him. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Well,” the woman said, “it seems that the horse that just won the last class was given a random drug test and failed it!”

“A random drug test?” Issie was stunned.

Avery nodded. “They often send the vet along to do them at the regional competitions.”

“What would they test for?” asked Issie.

“Substances that are illegal in competitions,” Avery said, “like bute or capsaicin.”

“Ohmygod!” Issie gasped. “Tottie will be full of bute!”

Two seconds later the news crackled out for everyone to hear over the Tannoy. “We regret to announce that in the last class Penny Greville on Tottenham Hotspur has been disqualified. Would the following riders please now present themselves in the arena for prize giving: in first place, Veronica Perkins on Jupiter Jones, second is Chelsea Dunstan on Cleopatra, and third is Isadora Brown on Flame. Please come to the arena immediately to collect your ribbons. We apologise again for the delay.”

Issie couldn’t believe it. They had come third! Flame had won a ribbon.

“Don’t dawdle,” Avery said as he legged her up on to Flame’s back. “They might give that ribbon to someone else!”

It was the longest prize giving Issie ever had to sit through. Not that she was ungrateful to get her ribbon
- she was beyond thrilled. But she was also desperate to get back over to the judges’ tent and find out once and for all what had really gone on. As soon as she was out of the prize-giving ring, Natasha came bounding up to her, full of news.

“It was a random drug test!” She was panting and trying to catch her breath as she spoke. “Ginty was totally furious when the vet told her Tottie had tested positive. She hit the roof — but there was nothing she could do about it. You should see the stuff the vet’s got in his kit. They’ve got these amazing scanners and all he had to do was run them over Tottie’s legs and they could see that Ginty had used capsaicin on her!”

“So why did it take them so long?” Issie said.

“They had to do a proper blood test before they could disqualify her,” Natasha continued. “They called Cassandra over because Tottie’s her horse and of course Ginty denied everything — but then I showed the vet where the medicine locker was under the sink in the horse truck and that was it! As soon as they saw the capsaicin they disqualified her on the spot!”

“Ohmygod, Natasha! Ginty will totally kill you.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Who cares! She’s already
fired me. What else can she do? Anyway I was already going to move Romeo to a new stable. I’m fed up with Ginty’s place. I’d like to keep him somewhere nice next time.”

She smiled at Issie. “Do you think Avery has any room at Winterflood Farm?”

It turned out that Natasha wasn’t the only one interested in talking to Avery. Cassandra Steele had a business proposition for him.

“Avery! I’m sure you’ve heard about the scandal?” Cassandra’s sharp tone was even more dramatic than usual. “Clearly you and I have much to discuss. Things will have to change after the developments today. I must do what’s best for my horses.”

“Absolutely, Cassandra,” Avery said. “We’d love to keep training Flame at Winterflood Farm if that’s what you want.”

“Good gravy, man!” Cassandra shook her head in bewilderment. “Are you barking? Of course you’re keeping Flame! It’s the others I’m worried about.”

“I’m sorry?” Avery was confused. “What others?”

“All my horses!” Cassandra said. “I’ve fired Ginty. I’ve given her the rest of the day to pack her bags and get off the premises. I’ve already sent security guards to accompany her while she picks up her things. They’ll escort her from the grounds and change the codes on the gate so she can’t get back in again.”

Cassandra pulled herself up to her full height—which wasn’t very high at all—and looked Avery in the eye.

“With Ginty gone, I’ve got a stable full of world-class horses that need looking after. And that’s where you come in. I’d like to make you an offer, Tom.”

Cassandra Steele smiled. “I’d like you to take over at Dulmoth Park.”

It was the last day of the holidays. Issie had woken up and felt that strange sense of melancholy that you always get when you know summer is coming to an end. Tomorrow she would be back at school again. Her uniform was already lying on the chair in her bedroom waiting for her. From her bed she could see the blackwatch tartan of her pleated skirt peeking out from beneath the crisp white cotton of her school shirt. Tomorrow she would put her uniform on and begin her fifth-form year at Chevalier Point High School. But today she reached for her jodphurs, pulled on her favourite T-shirt and headed out of the door.

A week had passed since Cassandra Steele had offered
Tom Avery the position of head trainer at Dulmoth Park Stables. Avery had been so shocked at the time, he could barely speak. He just managed to stammer out “I’ll think about it”. The real surprise came on Monday when Chevalier Point’s head instructor phoned Issie up and broke the news that he had accepted!

“I don’t believe it!” Issie was stunned. “This is huge!”

“I know,” Avery agreed. “I talked it through with Cassandra and I’ve taken the job — but only with certain conditions attached. I’m more of a cross-country man than a straight showjumper. And it turns out that Cassandra’s keen to expand her business and buy some eventing horses. I’ve taken a good look at Dulmoth Park and I think the farmland has potential. The fields and the forest are perfect terrain — an ideal location for a world-class cross-country course. And with the state-of-the-art stables we can even start our own sporthorse breeding programme.”

Cassandra had been won over by Avery’s plan to fill the paddocks with future generations of colts and fillies that would grow into great eventing horses. She also agreed when Avery told her that he wanted to hire Verity back as his stable manager.

“Verity knows the routines and requirements of your horses better than anyone,” Avery pointed out to Cassandra, “and she’s proved that she has the horses’ best interests at heart. She was willing to lose her job to keep Tottie healthy. That’s the sort of dedication that I’m looking for from my team.”

Cassandra Steele didn’t need any more convincing. “Get her back immediately and let’s get this place humming,” she told Tom.

Over the past week, Avery had done exactly that. He had commissioned the world-famous course designer Delaney Swift to work on the new cross-country circuit. Meanwhile, Verity had worked her way through the horses with Avery and between them they had decided who should stay and who should go. Some of Cassandra’s showjumpers would be kept, but others would be sold to make way for the young sporthorses. Special stalls would be set up to accommodate the new broodmares and their foals. Avery also contacted all of Ginty’s other clients who grazed horses with the stable, the ones that Verity had referred to as the ‘weekend rides’, and informed them that Ginty had left Dulmoth to set up her own stables and politely suggested that they might like to go with her.

The weekend rides that had been boarding at Dulmoth Park stables would all be moving out over the next two weeks. Only Romeo and Natasha were allowed to stay.

“But you’ll have to do your own grooming from now on,” Avery told Natasha. “This is a professional stable, and my team has too much work to do to pander to pampered ponies.”

Natasha and Issie had both got their old jobs back for the rest of the holidays. Avery asked Stella and Kate if they wouldn’t mind working at the stables to help out for the last week, too, while he looked for another new permanent groom to replace Penny. The girls leapt at the chance. “Much more fun than stocking supermarket shelves!” Stella had said gleefully.

Issie gave Stella and Kate a tour of the place on their first day and had loved seeing the looks on her friends’ faces as they took in its grandeur.

“This place is, like, totally serious!” Stella had walked into the tack room with her eyes on stalks. “Ohmygod! Is that really an Hermès saddle?”

Verity’s arrival back at Dulmoth Park on Monday was greeted with cheers from the other riders. The head
groom had left under a cloud but now she was returning as a hero to her new job as stable manager.

“How’s Tottie? Can I see her?” Verity asked Avery as soon as she walked through the door.

Tottie hadn’t been well at all. The showjumping competition that day had taken its toll on the mare, and when she had returned to Dulmoth Park and the bute finally wore off she was quite lame, barely able to move her hind legs. Avery hadn’t held out much hope when he had first examined her. Things looked even more grim when the vet arrived and said that the mare should never have been jumping with such bad arthritis.

“You caught the problem just in time,” the vet told them, “If you’d kept on riding her, this mare would have broken down — but arthritis can be managed if you treat it properly and rest the horse.”

“Will she ever be sound enough to jump again?” Verity asked anxiously.

“I don’t see why not,” the vet said, writing something down on his medical pad in illegible scrawl. He handed Verity the prescription. “Keep up this medication, work her in slowly and in another month or so this mare will be better than she ever was.”

Verity was so relieved she almost burst into tears. She threw her arms around Tottie’s dapple-grey neck, giving the horse a long, hard hug.

When Issie arrived at Dulmoth Park for her last Sunday ride before the holidays were over, the stable grounds looked a bit like a venue for a hunt meet — minus the hounds and the red coats! Along with constructing the new cross-country course it had been Avery’s idea to open the grounds up so that members of the Chevalier Point Pony Club could also come and use the facilities at weekends. A steady stream of riders and their horses were already passing through the swanky front gates of the stables.

By the time Issie had saddled up Flame and led him outside to join the others there were at least twenty riders assembled outside the stable block, including Dan and Ben. Dan was riding Madonna and Ben was proudly showing off his new horse, a very handsome sixteen-hand palomino called Shantaram. Ben’s surly bay Welsh pony Max had become far too small for him and
Ben had finally faced facts and sold him on. However, his new horse was taking some getting used to.