King of the Wind (8 page)

Agba was glad of the hood. It was like the protective shell of a turtle. He could see out, yet he felt that no one could see him. Had he only known, the darkness of his hood made glowing embers of his eyes.

Monsieur le duc cleared his throat. He bowed low. “Your Majesty,” he sniveled, “may find this letter interesting. I know not what it says.”

Louis XV looked past the Duke as if he did not exist.

“Read it to me,” he said absently, without taking his eyes from the horses or the boys.

“It bears the seal of Mulai Ismael,” the Duke said as he untied the silken cord and broke the red seal. His tongue passed rapidly over the complimentary phrases at the beginning. Then he read more slowly.

“ ‘The bearer of this letter is come with six Arabian stallions as a gift to Your Majesty. These Sons of the Desert are strong and fleet. . .’ ”

Here the Duke burst out laughing. “Really, Your Majesty, this is very amusing. The Sultan refers to these bags of bones as ‘strong and fleet and of purest Eastern blood.’ Pardon me, Your Majesty, but it is enough to make me die of laughter.”

At the sound of his hollow laughter all the horses laced their ears back.

The King’s face clouded. “Read on,” he said.

“Very well. ‘They are descended from mares that once belonged to Mohammed.’ ” Now the Duke’s voice was full of mockery and scorn. “ ‘From henceforward,’ the letter reads, ‘you may use them to sire a better race of horses among you. They will strengthen and improve your breed.’ ”

The King’s groom brought forward his mount. The horse was a big gelding, nearly twice the size of the Arabians. From his superior height, he looked down on the six stallions and let out a shrill whinny.

The Duke shrieked with laughter. “See there, Your Majesty! Even your own horse is laughing. I trust you will send these old sand sifters back to the desert where they belong. The bony broomtails!”

Agba’s fists clenched. He could not understand a word of this foreign tongue, but he knew that the man was laughing at Sham and the other horses. His burning eyes sought the King’s. He longed to tell him that the horses were gaunt only because of the terrible journey, and that soon they would be sleek and beautiful again. He longed to tell him how swift they were, and how brave.

“Send a messenger to Bishop Fleury,” the King said to the groom. “Tell him the King awaits him.”

The courtiers who were clustered behind the King drew a sigh. This was all very much like a play. Act One was over. Now there would be a little wait for Act Two.

Monsieur le duc made his own use of the intermission. He drew a tiny snuff bottle out of his pocket and dipped into
it with a miniature silver spoon. Then he fed each nostril a rounded spoonful of the snuff.

“Your Majesty,” he said, pinching his nose and snuffing noisily. “Mulai Ismael insults the horses of France. He insults your own mount. But more dastardly, he insults your Royal Majesty.”

Making a wry face, he let his glance wander over the chestnut, the dappled gray, the yellow dun, the black horse, the moon-colored horse. When he came to Sham he stopped short. “Monstrosity!” he spat out the word. “Nothing but skin and bones, and a crest so high you can hang your hat upon it! Fie! Pooh! Bah!”

His face wrinkled until it looked not much bigger than a prune. Then the prune seemed to burst open, and the very stable trembled with the force of the Duke’s sneeze.

Sham wheeled in fright. And to Agba’s horror his off hind hoof landed squarely on Monsieur le duc’s toe.

Quick as a flash Agba lifted Sham’s foot. He could not help noticing, with the faintest of smiles, that it was the one with the white spot.

With a mighty outcry the Duke grabbed his foot and went hopping about the stable like a one-legged bird.

“Help! Help ho!” he cried while the courtiers and the horseboys tittered. Agba thought he saw a smile flicker across the King’s face, but he could not be sure. Bishop Fleury had arrived.

Agba liked the Bishop at once. He had friendly blue eyes and wore no wig at all. His hair was powdered white by time. He bowed to the King first, then turned to the Duke, his eyes crinkled with suppressed laughter.

“What is it, Monsieur le duc? What is it?” he asked.

Monsieur le duc’s face was stained an angry red.

“This—this clumsy, camel-necked nag!” he stammered. “He crushed my toe. What is more, he did it from a vile temper and . . .”

“The Sultan’s letter,” the King interrupted. “I desire you to show it to Bishop Fleury.”

“Read it to me, Monsieur le duc,” said the Bishop. “My eyes are fading.”

Monsieur le due spared nothing in the reading. At the end he said, “I beg your pardon, Bishop Fleury, but the rains have spoiled the harvest. Corn is scarce. My advice to the King is to send these nags of small stature back to Africa.” His eyes fell on Sham. “Save one,” he added. “The chief cook is in need of a cart horse to drive to market.”

The King looked to the Bishop with questioning eyes.

“Dear son,” the Bishop said as he put a gentle hand on the boy’s head. “Pray look at your own stableful of horses. Pray look at your favorite mount. He is stout of limb, and lusty. These Arabian creatures are small. Moreover, corn is dear. Why do you not turn the high-crested creature over to the chief of the kitchen? He could draw a cart to market and bring back the food for your table. The other horses could be assigned to the army to transport supplies. They would thus need far less to eat than if they were employed in the chase.”

Agba’s and the King’s eyes met. It was the King who looked down first. He was King in name only. He had no power to change the order of the older men. He nodded his head listlessly. “Let it be as you say.” And without another glance at the stallions he mounted his great horse and rode away.

O
NLY AGBA and Sham remained in the King’s stables. Signor Achmet dared not go back to Morocco and face the wrath of the Sultan. He swallowed his pride and went along with the other horseboys, accepting a humble position as groom in the French army. Before he left, however, he took the bag from Sham’s neck and tied it around Agba’s. “The pedigree and the amulets will be safer with you, Agba,” he said, with a meaningful look at the King’s groom.

In the days that followed, Sham regained his vigor. And with it seemed to come an intense distrust of everyone except
Agba. With Agba in the driver’s seat, Sham’s way of going to market was so bold and handsome that journeymen turned round to gape at him. He pranced his way between the stalls of the pea-shellers and the artichoke-boilers as if he were making figure eights in the King’s courtyard. As for the harness and the degrading vehicle he pulled, one would have thought he wore purple housings and drew the King’s carriage!

But if the chief cook so much as touched the reins, Sham took the bit and went where he pleased, and no amount of whip-lashing could control him. The people in the market place stood in open-mouthed wonder at the spirit of Sham. Secretly they admired the proud way he took the cook’s lashes. There was the plump apple woman who polished her apples with her apron. She soon made it a habit each market day to save two of her biggest apples—one for the fiery little horse and the other for the quiet boy. Even the vendor of sweets held back a pan of frosted pastries on the days when Sham was expected. And a farmer who had the turnip stall managed to keep from his wife a whole sackful of turnips for Sham.

One day the chief cook insisted upon driving alone to market. He wanted to select a nice suckling pig for the King’s birthday dinner. “And,” he told Agba, “I need every inch of space for the live pig and for sausages and potatoes and mushrooms and herrings and eggs and chickens. You will stay in the kitchen and scour the pots.”

Now, the cook told Agba only half the truth. What he really wanted was to be rid of Agba. It irked him that a mere sliver of a boy could manage the horse and he could not. If
he could just get rid of the boy, he had a feeling he could master the horse.

But he was wrong. Without Agba, Sham was mischief itself. He waited until the cart was groaning with vegetables and fish and fowl and the live pig. Then suddenly he became forked lightning. In and out among the market stalls he streaked. He overturned the cart, spewing chickens, herrings, eggs, the frightened pig, and an amazed cook high into the air!

Children screamed. Fishmongers, marketwomen, eating-house keepers, slipped and stumbled. They shook their fists and shouted at the King’s cook.

As he scrambled to his feet, the cook was so confused he did not know whether to chase the horse or the suckling pig! He darted first after one and then the other, and ended by catching neither. When the little apple woman quietly held out her hand and brought Sham to a halt, it was more than the cook could bear. He was beside himself with rage.

“This settles it!” he cried. “Everyone but me can handle the crazy brute. I’ll sell him at the Horse Fair.”

To horse traders, the Horse Fair was known by quite a different name. It was called the Thieves’ Kitchen because no one knew where the horses came from and nobody cared. No questions were asked.

Red-faced and panting, the cook led Sham to the big open shed of the Thieves’ Kitchen. Sham was not winded in the least. He seemed actually to be enjoying the cook’s discomfiture.