The Bride's Farewell (7 page)

Esther had done whatever business she had come to do, taken the money, and disappeared. The children scattered through the fair, seeking food and entertainment. Pell’s father had long gone, encouraged on his way by an unpaid hostler. Meanwhile, Pell searched the crowd for Harris, and just when she began to think he must have changed his mind, he appeared.

“Let’s go” was all he said by way of a greeting, and off they set—Harris, followed by Pell with Bean last, trotting to keep up. Harris led them first to a handsome bay with a look in its eye that made Pell shrink. When she shook her head, Harris muttered to himself in a low voice, “But does she know what she’s about, eh?”

After looking at another two or three he favored, Pell said simply, “I’ll do the choosing from now on.”

It was an impossible arena in which to make decisions, and though she had no trouble picking a clean sane horse out of a herd scattered through a forest, she felt the strain of doing the same here. The place held so many people playing at smoke and mirrors and so many sizes and types of misfit men and animals, that she could easily begin to doubt the evidence of her own eyes. But thinking of the money, she squinted and watched, and eventually found a pretty little blue roan mare, delicately built and well put-together, and she knew immediately from the look of her that to ride her would be a pleasure and besides she was clean and healthy and had only not been bought because of her color.

“That one,” she said, and the man who owned her said, “The lady’s got taste, sir.” Which is what they all said when you wanted to see one of their horses. He trotted her up and down and, sure enough, she was a pretty mover with a temper to match. Harris bargained hard with the owner and got her for a good price. They led her away and she walked at Pell’s side sweet and light as a doe.

It was nearly an hour before she saw another animal worth taking seriously, a piebald Gypsy half-shire this time, broad and well-muscled with a nice willing manner and a kind eye. Except for people like Mr. Bewes, who bought horses solely on the basis of work worth, the fashion wasn’t much for a colored pony, especially one that looked to have been painted by a drunk. But a well-shaped head, sound legs, and a certain honesty attracted her. When Harris shook his head no, she ran her hand briefly down the horse’s neck and left a little sadly.

The next one she chose was a bony five-year-old gelding with a good deal of thoroughbred in him and a jagged blaze down his nose. He tossed his head and kicked out, and the man who owned him seemed relieved to see him off for little more than he’d have got at the slaughterhouse. But bad treatment and not enough food can make any animal look ruined, and this one, Pell knew, had the makings of something better. When she felt his legs and stroked his face he quietened right down, and she could tell from the length of his neck and the depth of his chest that once he was fed and treated well he’d be worth five times what they’d paid.

Two horses.

They made an offer on a black mare, but the owner turned them down, wanting a higher price. A rangy gray paced nervously on a short tether; he was bony and high at the withers, too big around the barrel, and stained green from living out. But having seen him move, she nodded. The same horse as he would look on good oats and exercise shone out at her, but she could not convince Harris.

And so the hours passed. It took all day to find six horses they both agreed on, and by the end of it Bean dragged his feet and Pell felt weary to the bone. Harris made fewer and fewer objections, but stood back and let her have what she liked, paying up each time while she silently kept track of the money and her cut of it. Occasionally he’d mark out a horse he thought looked good, and she’d point out a stiff hock or a bad way of moving, and sometimes she wouldn’t bother but just shook her head and went on, and by the end of the day he’d learned a thing or two about choosing horses and she’d learned a thing or two about driving a bargain.

He tied all six horses in a string behind his own, and told her he’d deliver her cut of the money in an hour, after he’d finished with another piece of business at the inn. At first she objected, not trusting him to return, but he threw down his bag and said, “That’s everything I own but what I’m wearing.” And she didn’t have much choice but to accept.

When an hour passed, and then two, and then more, the anxiety began to rise up in her. And it grew, and grew, until, not knowing what else to do, she left Jack with Bean and ran through the town toward the inn to seek Harris. It took only ten minutes, but when she arrived the innkeeper informed her that he’d paid up and gone.

It was with a sense of confusion that she ran back to the place where only moments ago she’d left a horse and a child, to find nothing but an empty square of trampled earth. On which, two frantic hours later, filthy, exhausted from searching, and near crazed with a sense of futility and the world’s injustice, she collapsed.

Fourteen

B
ean had long practice in watchfulness. He knew how to recognize danger by the expression on an unwary face and to judge how a situation might turn. So when Harris began to thread his way back through the crowd with his horses, Bean watched carefully, to see what might happen next.

He watched the man dismount hurriedly, watched him cast about, bemused.

At last Harris approached him, reluctant to engage with the half-wit but anxious to conclude his business and get on.

“Where’s the girl gone?”

Bean pointed across the crowd, and Harris followed the direction of his finger. Seeing nothing there of interest, he scanned the vicinity and exchanged a few words with a man nearby who only shrugged. After another minute, Bean saw the wheels in Harris’s head begin to turn, saw a decision form in his brain.

The man turned to Bean, speaking in an exaggerated manner. “
Tell her. I waited. As long as. I could
.” And he laughed at the thought of the half-wit telling anyone anything, reclaimed his bag, mounted his own horse, tightened the tie of the lead rope, and rode away.

What was Bean to do then? If he didn’t act, all would be lost; the retreating crowds could be counted upon to hide any number of dishonest men leading strings of ill-gotten beasts. His brain spun wildly as he searched the crowd for Pell. She must be almost here,
she must be
. But she wasn’t. So he scrambled up on Jack and followed the man who would take his sister’s horses without paying for them.

Harris eschewed the obvious routes out of Salisbury, opting for a little-used cattle path that skirted the cathedral, and disappeared almost at once into a wood. The path’s obscurity made Bean’s job difficult, but he kept well back, relying on the noise and trampled ground left by his quarry to mark the path.

His anxiety increased as they moved farther and farther from the center of Salisbury. After one hour, then two, then three, he gave up hope of Pell catching them, and the decision he’d made in a moment of desperation suddenly filled him with doubts. Lost and frightened and hungry, it occurred to him that it might be beyond his power to right this particular wrong. More hours passed. He had no idea how to bring Harris to justice, no idea how to back down and find his sister. The more time that passed between the original crime and the present moment, the more dismayed Bean felt, until he began to consider his task impossible and his original decision to follow Harris wrong.

For two days and nights Harris traveled, stopping only for an hour or two at a time to sleep and rest the horses. And for two days and nights Bean followed him, increasingly exhausted and consumed with hunger, so that he began to ride Jack by balance and momentum alone, his head drooping forward over the horse’s neck while Jack walked evenly and gently so as not to unseat his rider.

Jack harbored no thoughts of returning to his mistress. This indicated no particular shortage of imagination on his part, for a horse will generally behave unremarkably unless ill-treatment or lack of food persuades him to do otherwise. Did he think of Pell, or wonder at the fact that Bean had taken sole charge of their journey? Perhaps he did. But more likely he wondered at his rider’s growing passivity, wondered when he would next be allowed to stop and eat or drink.

And so they plodded on, ever more slowly, until on the third night Bean slipped off and, tired as he was, malnour ished and cold as he was, did not get up again but lay still on the ground, hugging his arms around his small thin body, half-dazed and half-unconscious, waiting for something to happen that would change his luck, while Harris and his horses disappeared into the night and Jack cropped grass beside him.

Of course luck can always be depended upon to change, and Bean’s did just that within a very few hours. By the time the sun had half risen on the morning of the following day, he had been discovered by a minor parish councillor, who picked him up, spoke to him softly and with sympathy, asked him who he was and whence he came and, receiving no answer, deemed him an idiot, took control of the horse that stood patiently nearby, and freed himself of all responsibility for the vagrant child by carrying him over into the neighboring town and depositing him at the entrance to the workhouse.

Such a fine-looking pony would be no good to the poor idiot child, the man told himself, whereas if he sold it to pay a debt he owed, it would relieve him of a most onerous mental burden. Cheered by this thought he set off for home, leading his serendipitous find and whistling a little tune, pleased with his luck and the way this unpromising day had turned out.

Fifteen

P
ell’s search began with determination but few clues. A white horse. A man with two dogs. A boy who didn’t speak. A horse trader. Even as she described all that she had lost, she could feel the hopelessness of it. What she sought matched too many boys, horses, men, and dogs to be of use. She searched every square inch of the fair, increasingly desperate, describing the child, the men, the crimes as she saw them (kidnapping, horse-stealing, breach of promise, thievery), and praying for information with all the fervor of a person who had not, a mere half hour earlier, believed in the utility of prayer.

The one person she did find was Esther. The woman appeared just as she had before, surrounded by her hectic crowd of children. She scrutinized Pell’s tear-stained face and the empty space where there had recently been a horse and a child, and grasped the turn of events at once, shaking her head at Pell’s story and saying of the two men, “They’ll both be long gone. And neither wanting to be discovered.”

But she almost laughed. The child would not stay found.

It was the last day of the fair, and only the dregs of society remained. Harris and Dogman might never have existed for all anyone recognized their names, or expressed an interest in them. The men she questioned all looked at Pell, putting together stories in their heads about her. It was nobody’s business what she was after and why, but that didn’t stop them wondering. Most had seen women in just this state at the end of other fairs, and men happy to be away.

By midday, when most of the crowd had packed up and moved off, she had made no progress.

It was Esther who returned with information of a poacher “up Pevesy way,” whose description matched the man with the dogs. The information gave no specifics but was more than nothing and would have to do. “We’ll travel that way with you,” Esther said, and told Elspeth to pack up the wagon, just as if her company had been formally requested. And so, with a great creaking of harness and clattering of wooden wheels, they set off.

Dozens of other travelers shared the road, most leading horses bought at the fair, and Pell questioned each with a voice that quavered and lost conviction with each new rejection. They climbed onto the beginnings of Salisbury Plain and, turning back, Pell could see church spires marking out every hamlet for miles around, with handfuls of houses scattered about each, and paths running from one to the other like a child’s game drawn with sticks in the dust.