The Fall of Light (25 page)

“Every horse can run without my making it,” Teige said.

Clancy nodded and narrowed his eyes in appreciation of the point and spat again.

“Run races,” he said, and widened his gait and rocked slightly back on his heels.

“Not all,” Teige told him. “Some horses are not for races, but I can pick the ones that are.”

“Fair enough answer,” Clancy said. “Come on so.”

They left there and boarded a wagon that had been laid with feeding stuffs and sacks of flour and oats and such. Teige had
never seen such supplies bought. When he sat up on the seatboard, the beggars were clustered about and looked at him like
one who had betrayed. The boy was wearing Teige’s jacket. The blind woman, small and crooked in her cart, was wearing the
sleeves. Clancy whistled and the wagon moved away. They travelled down the end of the town and out the road a ways until they
came to the gates of the domain and turned in there and journeyed in the avenue past the tall trees where cool green shadows
covered the way. So long was the avenue, the house was not to be seen. The trees thickened to wood on either side of them.
Midges and flies speckled the air and buzzed and were like patches of imperfect air as they rose from the underbranches in
the warmth of after rain. Clancy whistled a sorrowful tune. The slow notes hung, a melancholy drapery in that verdant hush.
They moved on.

“Nearly there,” Clancy said without looking at him, and he clicked his tongue and quickened the wagon. The woods were behind
them then and the fields that opened on either side were lush and green and fenced with timber posts. They were the smoothest
fields that Teige had seen and might have been drawn by a child and imagined into creation. The first of them held no animals
at all, just a glossy sward moving in the small breeze. But before they had passed it, Teige could sense the nearness of horses.
Then as they wheeled about on a long curve of that road he saw them, thirty or so mares and new foals and two- and three-year-olds,
some standing, some grazing, some running to meet the breeze. The wagon slowed. Its horses whinnied and shook
their heads in the harness and there was an answering of sorts in the field.

“Well,” Clancy said, “that’s about half of ’em.”

“Half?”

“He’s more money than brains,” he said, and spat forward and studied the spittle in flight. “You think you can make something
of ’em? It’s eight pence a day.”

Teige climbed down. He moved very slowly under Clancy’s gaze and went over the fence and entered the field. The horses that
were standing there lifted their heads high and raised their tails and then broke into sudden speed like things shocked. They
went off away down the field, bringing others with them, including a number of the thin-legged foals that kicked two-footed
at intervals at the air behind them. Teige watched them all and walked calmly out into the centre of the field. He had about
him then a kind of ease that was broadcast by whatever means not known by science to the animals there. It was always so.
It was a thing that happened. He came into the company of animals and felt at once a kind of connection. It was something
with which he was already familiar, this serene and clear-sighted empathy, and he did not have to try to do anything, only
wait for the animals to feel it. He stood and watched the horses that had arrived at the far end of the field as they trotted
in the tightened space and turned about and cut backward across each other, cutting up the grass sod that was softened by
rain. They trafficked there for moments, hot and blowing and swinging about, some rearing, some nipping, others, mares, looking
for their foals. Then, a black colt with a white blaze on its face spun from the others and led them like a charge back up
the field. Teige stood still as they came. He was smiling at them and was for a moment like one within a tide, islanded there
by horses of all description, saying the sounds he said in greeting and holding out his hands waist-high as if proffering
invisible oats.

Clancy watched him another few moments and then, satisfied that the fellow was indeed what the boatman had described, clucked
his tongue and snapped the reins and took the wagon on up to the stables. Teige stayed in the field with the horses all that
morning. Clancy sent a youth with ropes and collars and a long-tailed whip, but none of these did Teige want. He walked back
and forth among the horses
and ponies there. The day moved the rainclouds aside and the sky was then clear and blue overhead. In time the horses grew
accustomed to the man in their midst and returned to grazing, standing with long necks craned and swishing their tails at
the population of flies. Teige studied each of them. There were many not in good form. He saw the full range of temperament
and kind, those already ailing in some manner, those whose hindquarters were stiffened, those in the early stages of colic
who turned about and looked at their stomach and made small, jabbing kicks at it. There were some with redworm, roundworm,
whipworm, early forms of spavin and wind galls. Teige did not know the names of all such but recognized in the horses the
discomfort of their condition and from this intuited a remedy. By the midday the youth who had brought him the ropes returned
with warm potatoes in a cloth and a jug of buttermilk. He asked Teige how he was progressing, and Teige told him that many
of the horses were poor enough and asked how it was that such a wealthy man as Vandeleur had not better stock.

“’Tis Clancy buys ’em,” the fellow said. “’Tis he has promised there’ll be racers amongst ’em. There’s another forty in the
fields beyond.”

The youth left then and Teige returned to the slow work of the afternoon. Still he did not take the ropes into the field,
but went out through the animals, his fingers greasy from the buttered potatoes. He looked for the black colt and moved in
circumambient fashion toward him. The colt’s eye caught him at once and he flicked his ears back and forth thrice. His jaw
stopped. Teige took another few steps. The colt retained the stance he held and was for moments statuesque and posed as a
thing serene. The other horses raised their heads and looked and looked down again. Teige moved his buttered fingers together.
He was now five paces from the colt. He could see a nerve quiver in its neck and how the sleek black sheen of its flanks showed
condition. Slowly he moved his hand out. He let the scent of the butter travel to the horse and watched for the slightest
reaction. But there was none. The horse was planted. Teige took another step and said very softly the Irish word for “come.”

“Chugainn!”

And within the smallest particle of time, before the words had finished
sounding and travelled with the scent of butter across the space between the man and the animal, the colt bolted. He reared
and spun and blew and charged and knocked Teige to the ground all in one moment and was gone then off down the field, black
mane waving and hind hooves kicking backward in short, wild bucks. When Teige began to get up, he heard the sound of laughter
like glass tinkling. There by the side of the fence were two young women walking the avenue. They looked away from him when
he stood up, and one of them held her fingers to her mouth while the other nudged her, and both of their heads shook then.
They did not move on. Their mirth carried and flew about like an exotic bird. They were ladies of the house and wore long
dresses, one green, one blue. The girl in the green dress had hair of a light gold that fell about her shoulders. She could
not stop herself laughing. Her friend elbowed her time and again, but it was as if this action merely released more of the
birds of glee, and they crossed that field and flickered about Teige as he stood and pressed a hand on the small of his back.
The friend took a glance sideways over her shoulder to see him and quickly turned back again and whispered something and then
the girl in the green dress turned too and Teige saw her face for the first time. It was less than an instant. Then the friend
was pulling on her arm and dragging her around and the two of them were off away in quick steps up the avenue.

The afternoon grew cooler then. Teige worked with the horses with little luck, walking and standing and talking to them. He
did not get close to the colt again all that long day. By the time the evening was beginning and there were small bats flying
in the air, Clancy returned and told him to come with him to the place where he could stay. It was a stone building with a
strong roof in a clean courtyard. The coach horses were stabled there and the hunters for the manor house. The youth who was
called Pyle came and brought him food and stood by while he ate and then took the bowl away again. Stillness settled over
the place then. The May night was calm and mild and held the tangled smells of woodsmoke and horses and the sweetness of the
gorse blooming. Teige lay on straw bedding and thought of those on the island. He thought of his father watching the sky as
if hunting there traces of the lost portion of his family. He thought of where in the world Finan and Finbar might be and
if he would see them again.
But from each of these considerations his mind wandered. He stared upward at the blackness that was unstarred. And it was
then as if a map had been redrawn and he no longer possessed with surety the coordinates, for he drifted from all things in
that sleepless state and time after time returned only to the image of the laughing girl.

The following morning he was up before the cock crew. When Clancy found him he was already in the field with the horses. Teige
asked him what the horses were being fed and asked that he be allowed to change their diet. He pointed out too some that needed
special care and should be withdrawn to other pasture. All of this Clancy agreed to without dispute, for he considered himself
a judge of men and placed his legs apart and rocked on his heels with his hands on his hips and told Teige that whatever he
asked would be done. He left him then and Teige returned to the horses. Later Pyle arrived and they separated some and steered
the lesser or ailing animals into the farther paddock. For the rest of that morning Teige was alone with the remainder. Showers
of drizzle came and went. The sky cleared and clouded and cleared again. The birds of that place were many and when the rain
passed they chorused and flew and it seemed to Teige that he had never seen such a multitude. From the woods nearby they flickered
and darted, thrush and sparrow and tit and robin. They sang full-throated. The song of the corncrake was there, too. And all
such harmonies were intermingled in the air like threads of fine colours. Whether it was this or not, Teige progressed slowly
with the horses that morning. He seemed to have lost some of his gift and was for the first time uncertain. He walked about
the field in circles and held out his hands and spoke quietly, but the horses, sensing something in his manner or spirit,
shied. He grew impatient then and at some times jogged futilely toward an animal that soon took off and left him there. He
was so engaged when the ladies walked the avenue again. This time he saw them coming, for in truth some part of him had been
all morning watching. He stopped his small running and the horses cantered away from him and turned at the far end of the
field. The birds were everywhere. He watched the movement of the light-coloured dresses from the corner of his eye. He saw
the golden hair. He saw that she was sauntering closer along the fence and felt himself foolish to be standing there in the
empty part of the pasture with no horse near
him. If he walked down toward the horses now, he would be walking away from her. The two desires to stay and go twisted about
inside him and he found himself doing neither. He just stood there, the birds flying about him. Then he heard a small tinkle
of laughter and there was some jostling and the crunch of the gravel pebbles, and then the girl with brown hair called out
to him:

“What are you doing there?”

Teige did not move.

“Hello? Oh, hello?”

Again the noise of whispers and urgings and some scuffling of pebbles, and Teige heard the girl say, “Wait, wait, he will.”

He turned around then. They were standing there, the girl with the brown hair looking directly at him, the other turned aside
and studying the smallness of her white shoe.

“We were wondering,” the girl said. “What are you doing?”

He thought to stay where he was and shout across to them. He thought it and decided on it and then was walking closer. There
was a drift of perfume there. It hung like a silk. He came within it and stopped and tried to draw deeper than a shallow breath.
He was looking past the girl who looked at him. He was looking at the girl now wearing a cream-coloured dress.

“Hello, do you understand? Maybe he can’t understand. What… are… you—”

“I am training the horses,” Teige told her.

“You do understand. Well, that’s what I said you were doing, but yesterday we saw you get knocked down and Elizabeth said
you weren’t, you couldn’t be, because you’re not supposed to get knocked down, are you? But I said, I do think he is training
them, and Elizabeth said that she supposed it could be true and maybe he’s just not very good at it.” She arched one eyebrow
and her lips curved in a tightened smile.

” ‘Tis true, maybe,” Teige told her.

There was a pause of sunlight and birdsong. Then Elizabeth lifted her eyes to him and said: “I didn’t say that.”

“You did.”

“Come on.” Elizabeth pulled at the other’s arm. “Come on, Catherine, I am going back.”

“Wait, maybe he’ll show us. Won’t you show us? Go on, do some, we’ll watch. Train them. You’ve to choose one for her, you
know”

“I’m going.” Elizabeth took steps away and Teige’s eyes followed her and absorbed all that she was.

“Spoilsport,” Catherine said after her, and then looked at Teige and laughed and skipped and ran and caught up with her and
they were gone.

The rest of that day Teige managed even less with the horses. He moved toward them like one in a dream and they swept past.
Sometimes in gathering desperation he ran then, sprinting alongside, pumping with his fists and sucking and blowing the air
through his teeth. Briefly he was like one of the ancient Fianna or Indian braves, a figure mythic and noble and swift, until
the horses opened gait and were gone and he was left panting and slumped in the empty grass. That evening when he lay in the
straw bed he watched the image of the woman his eyes had captured. She lingered before him awhile as he stretched there with
hands behind his head and the hushed darkness filled with the movement of the bats and the noises of the horses sleeping.
Then he rose and went outside. The night sky was quickened with cloud. Light from a gibbous moon came and went. He walked
barefoot across the courtyard and then out around by the short avenue that he knew led to the big house. When he saw it, all
of its windows were dark. Two wolfhounds lay on the top of the steps to the front door. They raised their heads to look at
him and Teige shushed at them and they lay down again. He stood there and studied the house and felt the feelings of his father
years before standing before the house of the lord. He slipped around by the side then. He touched the walls as he went. He
arrived at the back of the house where in latter years an addition had been built to the kitchen, and this he climbed until
he was on the cold slates of its roof. He moved along it low and catlike until he came to a window. With the tips of his fingers
then he slid it upward and watched the reflection of his face vanish as a thin curtain of muslin blew softly outward. This
he moved like a veil and then stepped quietly inside.