Sons of Fortune (23 page)

“Oh, surely”—John laughed—“only one possible. It has to be Nelson. Let’s say Fred Nelson!”

Hey, chaps!” Boy went shouting through the cloisters. “I’ve got my Honourable! I’ve got my Honourable!”

It was only mid-March, but news of John’s “relapse”—his sudden visits to the spas of Cheltenham and Malvern—had reached Whitehall and prompted the government to curtail its investigations and grant the honour before it became too late.

Boy was looking for Caspar to tell him the good news. Soon there was a whole crowd clustered admiringly around him.

“Have you really, Stevenson ma?”

“Good cheese, man!”

“Bumpers tonight! I’ll sell you two magnums, if you like—you won’t get any in Langstroth.”

“Your pater been made a viscount?”

Boy looked superfluously at the letter from home. “No. A baron. Baron Stevenson of Cleveland.”

“Why Cleveland?”

“Because that’s where we’ve got some ironworkings—where the iron came from for the Crimea railway, you see. Where it started.”

“I’d have called myself Baron Stevenson of Crimea,” one boy said, strutting around like an actor.

“Hi, young ’un!” Boy called, catching sight of Caspar at the far entrance to the cloisters. “You’ve got your Honourable!”

“What’s that mean?” Caspar called as he came running to join the group.

“You get precedence at all future beatings!” Causton said.

Everyone laughed.

The whole school was given an extra half-hol. Or, rather, since nothing from Brockman was ever just given, they had to work for it by sitting through a homily on duty and service to one’s country. The school already boasted an earl, two marquesses, a baron, and half a dozen honourables—all but the earl’s being courtesy titles. Also there was an Indian prince. But all of these were ancient titles, many granted for reasons that no headmaster would try to build a sermon around. Boy’s and Caspar’s honours were the first new creations in the recent history of the school. The reasons behind the grant were grist to Brockman’s mill—and for half an hour he ground it exceeding fine.

Before he released them to the dales and playing fields he added two nuggets of information, seemingly unconnected with John Stevenson’s elevation to the peerage. The school now had sufficient funds, he said, to endow fifteen scholarships. Ten would be only for boys from Langstroth and contiguous parishes; five would be open. There was also a sufficiency, he said, to embark on a much more ambitious programme of changes in the school itself. The boggy land between the school and town would be drained during this term and three new houses, Blenheim, Ramilles, and Malplaquet, would he built there over the next year. The housemasters, Mr. Greaves, Mr. Ducie, and Mr. Treloar, would be joining the staff this term—indeed, Mr. Greaves was already here (Mr. Greaves stood and bowed stiffly); he would be teaching modern mathematics. The new houses would be filled by boys now in or due to enter Old School, which, once empty, would be converted into an assembly hall and classrooms. The boys would, he promised, see great changes at Fiennes this year.

Then he called for three rousing cheers for Lord Stevenson. Boy and Caspar, the title still a novelty, burned with embarrassed delight.

What Brockman had not said (because John had asked him not to) was that the twenty thousand pounds voted to him by Parliament on the creation of the peerage had gone straight into a charitable trust, out of which the scholarships and the conversion of Old School would be funded. The same trust would also fund five scholarships to the school from Stevenstown, the town John was building for the workers in the Stevenson iron and steel mills near Stockton on the river Tees. But those arrangements had not yet been worked out.

***

“What are you going to do, Steamer?” Causton asked. “Shall we call out the army?”

“I don’t feel like it,” Caspar said. Ever since the Dart–Achilles race he had been nicknamed “Steamer” Stevenson. “I’m going to try and get that pony at Ribble Farm and go for a ride.” He rubbed his buttocks and grinned. “Didn’t get in much riding last hols, for some reason.”

“Has he got two ponies?”

“I’ll ask.” Caspar’s tone indicated he wanted to be out alone today.

“I think I’ll fire Achilles,” Causton said casually as he turned away. It was a last bid to attract Caspar and it failed.

The farmer agreed readily enough, for a fee of one shilling. “I’ve no saddle to fit yon pony, mind,” he said.

“A blanket’ll do,” Caspar told him. “And a snaffle.”

“I’ve only a double-ring snaffle, for the cart harness.”

“That’ll do. Tie the reins through both rings. I want to save my legs if I’ve no saddle,” Caspar said. What he mainly wanted to do was to reassure the man he knew his way about a horse.

He saw the farmer smile to himself as he led the pony into the yard. “She’s not what ye’d call a properly schooled mount, mind,” the man said.

“As long as she goes.”

“Aye! Well, if it’s a
goer
ye want…” Again that smile.

The pony seemed to smile, too, even more secretly. There was a fierce challenging glint in her eye, a quick, mettlesome flicker to all her movements. She shied at every gesture he made but he could tell there was something calm, calculating, and watchful beneath this surface display of temperament. Caspar rubbed his hands in delight. Here was a challenge now!

“She’s not been ridden quite this while,” the farmer continued to dribble out his warnings.

Caspar led her forward to face a stone wall. Then, with a tight grip on both reins, he leaped quickly on to her back and gripped with all the strength in his legs and thighs. Every muscle in her stiffened. She trembled. She marked time—double time—but she held her ground.

The farmer chuckled with pleasure. “One hurdle you’re over then,” he said.

Beyond the wall was a newly ploughed field. “Anything sown there yet?” Caspar asked.

“Nay.”

“Open the gate then.”

She was fighting the bit; nothing was going to make her accept it. She was prancing on the spot, leaning right, leaning left, like a horse broken a bare half-hour. A thought struck a chill into him—perhaps that’s all she was! Perhaps she had never been ridden before! West Riding folk, they’d do anything for a shilling. He determined then not to let her have her head at all. There’d be none of that “co-operation” his mother was always drilling into them in riding lessons, not until this pony knew her master.

He forced her into two fiercely tight turns in the yard, a little ritual that had no taming effect on her at all. Then, when she was pointed at the gate, he dug in his heels and sat deep into her, knowing she would go like a shot off a shovel.

She went! Like a shot from a cannon. For almost a furlong the ploughed field might have been best Newmarket turf for all that it slowed her. Then the far wall loomed ahead. Caspar, judging his moment, began to saw the snaffle in her mouth—not fiercely, just enough to surprise her, slow her down, and make her refusal of the wall a matter of his command, not her whim.

It worked better than he hoped. But what he had not expected was that she would then turn on a sixpence and resume her charge back up the ploughed field. The move almost unseated him. And that, in turn, showed the wily little mare that he could be got off. He knew that was exactly the thought in her mind. And he was ready.

But he was ready for the wrong move—a sharp turn, a sudden four-legs halt, a skid, a slew…anything except a graceful dip of her left shoulder and a barely perceptible slowing of her gallop. He was not ready for that.

Over he went. The field and walls and sky spun one gentle arc and he was left standing bolt upright and stock still, looking in astonishment at the mare. She had halted a dozen paces away, had turned broadside to him, and was now shaking her head up and down. If she had laughter within her, that shaking was its outward expression. But all the real laughter was coming from the farmyard wall, where the farmer and two labourers were standing watching.

She let him come up and jump upon her again without a tremor. Now he understood. She was certainly no newly broken mount. Hundreds—thousands—of hours of being ridden had gone into perfecting that trick with the left shoulder. And look at the way she stopped and let him get back on—she was going to try it again! This was her best fun in weeks.

She let him canter her slowly back to the wall where the three grinning faces, rural red, peered into the field, waiting for more. It was a graceful, collected canter; oh, she had been well schooled at one time. No doubt of it. She was fully on the bit. She stopped dead in two paces.

“You might have told me,” Caspar said, grinning to show he was not truly angry.

“What? Spoil the fun?” the farmer answered.

“If I was a novice it wouldn’t have been funny.”

“If you was a novice, young master, you’d find yon mare the gentlest and most tractable of beasts. Go on—gallop her around ten minutes, get the steam out of her, and then ye’ll have a good go up on them tops.”

“Will she tip me off again?”

“Aye. She will that.”

“How do I stop her?”

“There’s a guinea for you if you ever find a way. No other man has.”

Caspar cantered and galloped the mare around until he felt the heavy going beginning to take its toll of her. Twice more she tipped him. Both times he landed on his feet, still not sure how she did it. But he was sure there was no malice in the trick; she took such delight in it.

When he felt her beginning to labour he took her out to the headlands, where the going was firmer, and began to collect her, riding her forward into contact, slowing her pace, gathering her up.

At last he had her. Ears pricked, a soft foam on her lips, her hack supple, her legs under her, and every part of her waiting to respond to his command.

“Well done, young ’un!” the farmer called.

Caspar had forgotten he was there; he thought the man had left at the same time as his labourers. “I should be charging you,” Caspar said as he came back through into the yard.

“Oh aye!” The farmer laughed. “Try it on Tom Simple!”

As soon as Caspar rode the mare out into the dale he realized the ploughed field had taken the barest edge off her mettle. She was marvellous, forging ahead without any pressure from him, plunging surefooted up the sides of Widdale Fell, over Black Side, skirting Shaking Moss and Sweet Side, and so up to Mossdale Moor—five or six miles, crowflight.

Not once did he relax. Another of his mother’s axioms was that trust and suspicion go hand in hand when you’re riding; the one should always be as high as the other. But his trusting alertness did not stop him from enjoying the day and the place. There was no sun and very little wind. The clouds were one canopy of bright and dark grey rolling slowly overhead. The turf beneath was soft but firm. There was no point in trying to guide the pony except in the most general way; this was her territory and she knew what paths to take and where the going would suit her best.

There was one novelty he had to get used to though. At home his ponies were hunters. If they came to a gully or bank they’d go awkwardly halfway down the side of it and then leap out to the bottom. But this moorland pony was like a little spider; she’d go down the side as surefooted as a goat. More times than not she’d have three feet on the ground and only the fourth one moving—but all very quick, just like a spider. Even a little dry gully that he was sure she could easily jump she would sidle down and up in no time.

After an hour the fun of it began to intoxicate him. Grand schemes shaped themselves in his mind. They could start a stables at school and his army could convert to cavalry. What charges they could make along Whernside! They could build leaps and have point-to-point steeplechases! They could play polo! Yes, he’d have a word with old Brockman and get him to put chaps on punishment out on the moors with bags of paper and they could have mounted paperchases…or, if they could get a pack of hounds! Just three couple, you could hunt a boy with three couple, and the keep wouldn’t cost too much.

He decided then that he was Lord Cardigan leading the Light Brigade. All he needed to do was imagine that this ridge was actually a valley. Easy! The distance was right—about half a mile. And there were the Russian guns, their terrifying mouths perfectly round and black; he could see the gunners standing ready, the tow kindled and smouldering, waiting for them to come within range, knowing they could cut horses and riders to ribbons before the charge was half done.

He spurred the mare forward to a spine-jolting trot. She wanted to canter but he held her back. This was going to be a disciplined charge. No rabble riot. Soon he could see the astonishment in the gunners’ faces as these mad Englishmen came on and still on, riding into certain death. Crash! His brigade came under a withering crossfire from their right. Crash! Then from their left. Men fell all around. Captain Nolan fell, shrieking at them and pointing away to their right. Wounded horses broke ranks and charged ahead or turned and bolted, screaming.

Then, in a mighty ragged roar, the guns facing them spoke. Their quarry dissolved in one bank of white, huffing toward them. He felt the sharp whoosh of grapeshot as it parted the air around him. Men shrieked as they were hit. Horses whinnied and reared. But the line held! Only moments later, as the tumult receded, he could hear the steady, measured trot of his troops on either side.

Time to press forward. Down went his sabre. (Did the Light Brigade have sabres? Never mind!) Down went his sabre. The trot extended. Another squeeze and his great charger lifted into a canter. The blood began to race. The guns spoke again, to the right, to the left, to the front; but now his men were blooded. Not one of them winced as the second fusillade took its dreadful tithe of their company. Five hundred men surging forward in one terrifying machine of death. The Russians could double their kill—treble it—and still that relentless charge would overrun them. Nothing could stop his brigade now. War was glorious! How he envied Cardigan; and how he longed to grow up quickly and become a soldier.

He could see the fright in the cowardly Russians’ eyes now. There was no time to recharge their guns. They had to stay and be cut down—or run. They ran. He cheered in devilish glee. His men heard him and took up the cheer—a bloodcurdling, ghastly war cry. The Russians on their flanks had thrown down their muskets and were cheering this supreme act of bravery. Now he could smell the spent gunpowder.