Tyringham Park (17 page)

“
Move over!
” she heard her mother shout, and Charlotte, jolted back to reality, wondered if Edwina had been behind her all along, rather than in front as she had presumed.

Another loose horse, this time a grey, appeared on Sandstorm’s left, just as Mandrake drew abreast on the right.

The gap in the hawthorn hedge about a hundred yards ahead was too narrow for the three to jump at the same time.

Charlotte tried frantically to change direction.

“
Get back!
” her mother screeched, nearer and more urgently.

The flapping stirrup on the saddle of the loose grey hit Sandstorm in the flank, causing him to leap in the air in a movement that was a cross between a shy and a buck, right across the path of
Mandrake, who didn’t have time to stop and whose front legs were clipped by the passing Sandstorm.

Sandstorm took the jump at such an acute angle that when he landed he was facing in the opposite direction to the other hunters who had veered sharply away after passing through one of the other
three gaps in the hawthorn hedge further along to the left. He continued to the right and then followed the high hedges around almost three sides of the field, before picking up the trail of the
others who were by now way in the distance.

Charlotte looked out for Mandrake and the grey, but there was no sign of them.

She pulled with all her weight on the left rein to try to turn Sandstorm but the stallion wouldn’t deviate from his headstrong flight. She was crying and shouting but no one could hear
her. Where were the stragglers? There must be some slow ones bringing up the rear. Even the children on their ponies weren’t to be seen. Had they turned back after the first hour or so?

Perhaps Edwina had had a simple fall and, disgusted with herself, decided to retrace her steps rather than be seen, not just splattered with mud like the rest of them but caked with it, a sure
sign of a fall. The teasing would be friendly – it could happen to anyone – but for Edwina it would be unendurable, such was her pride in her ability. Yes, that’s what she’d
do, thought Charlotte. Ride home and then tell everyone later Mandrake had developed a limp.

Or perhaps that didn’t happen at all, and Mandrake and her mother were both dead, or badly injured, lying there without help, and
it was all her fault
.

Charlotte was filled with a terrible foreboding. She had never told anyone how Nurse Dixon had hurt Victoria, but Nurse Dixon thought she had snitched so it was the same as if she had as far as
activating a curse was concerned, and here was the result of it. Mandrake dead, just as Dixon said he would be.

Charlotte wished that she herself were dead. Anything rather than having to face her mother – if she was still alive – when she returned to the house. ‘And you call yourself a
horsewoman?’ she could hear her saying with deadly rancour. ‘You can only ride Mandrake because he’s so well trained – a beginner could do just as well. Put you on another
and look what happens. Toadying up to Manus all day long, that’s all you’re good for. You’re nothing but a show-off, just like your father.’

Charlotte was jolted by her own thoughts. Had she ever heard her mother speak like that, or were Nurse Dixon’s phrases coming back to her, or had she made them up herself?

She didn’t have any more time to think as she was now approaching the end of the hunt, where the riders were grouped in a circle. Sandstorm slowed down of his own accord. Charlotte’s
weeping intensified, but now it was silent.

Waldron turned his back on his daughter when he saw her wiping her nose on the dangling sleeve of her ill-fitting jacket, but not before she had seen the look of disgust on his
face.

Lady Beatrice, sitting side-saddle on Lucifer, detached herself from the group watching the hounds tearing at the fox, to move beside Charlotte. “What is it, dear?” she asked,
thinking the girl’s distress was too extreme to be the result of seeing her first fox kill. “And why are you riding your mother’s hunter?”

Waldron turned around again when he heard that, and saw it was Sandstorm standing quietly at the edge of the group with Charlotte snivelling in the saddle. Funny how he hadn’t noticed
earlier as he usually saw the horse before the rider.

“You’re honoured,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately in an attempt to disguise his inebriation. “Not everyone would get that privilege. Where is she
anyway?”

Charlotte opened her mouth to answer but there was no sound.

“Not this bloody circus again!” said Waldron, and then to Beatrice. “One of her little tricks. Loses her voice, or so she says. Very convenient.”

Charlotte pointed back the way they had come.

“Didn’t make it, eh? She’ll be annoyed.” To Beatrice, who wondered why he never spoke of his wife by name, he said with ungentlemanly satisfaction, “Just goes to
show that pride comes before a fall. Must have gone back to lick her wounds. There’ll be no talking to her tonight.” He took a swig from a hip flask, one of four, judging by the bulges
in his pockets, and leaned towards Beatrice, speaking with what he judged to be a flirtatious tone. “And how did you manage to sneak Lucifer out from under my nose, Beatrice? We’ll have
a talk about that later.”

Beatrice laughed. “I was too cunning for you. You know we ladies have to have a Manus-trained hunter.”

Waldron’s benign expression disappeared. “So I’ve heard. I was only joking. You’re welcome to him.” He took a long draught. “Brigadier has a few good years in
him yet, so he’ll do me.” He turned his back. “Time to retrace our steps. Come on, Freddie, and anyone else who fancies a dram at Rafferty’s on the way back.”

Only Freddie, one of his fellow officers, followed. The rest of the group, cold, tired and hungry, preferred to take the short cut back to the house, to bring them more quickly to the feast and
hot whiskeys waiting for them there.

Waldron and Freddie moved off in the direction they had come, Waldron holding himself in the over-correct posture of someone trying to look sober. On horseback he had no difficulty staying
upright. It was when he was dismounting he had a tendency to lose his balance and fall over.

The part Waldron liked best about going to Rafferty’s was the way the local men, hunched over their pints of Guinness, looking towards the door when he entered, couldn’t disguise
their admiration when they beheld him in all his splendour. Their dark clothes acted as a foil to his redcoat military jacket and its shiny brass buttons, his shiny leather straps and boots, and
the shiny pouch containing his polished service revolver. The other part he liked was the image of himself leaning on the bar sharing the leisure pursuits of the common man and not making them feel
out of place. His fraternising lent authority to any pronouncement he made about his tenants. “I know what they’re thinking,” he was fond of saying. “Don’t I drink
with them?” This year there would be an added satisfaction. It would be the first time Thatcher, who had never sat on a horse in his life, would be present at Rafferty’s to see at first
hand how much the tenants thought of their dazzling landlord.

“Stay with me, dear,” said Beatrice to Charlotte. “We’ll wait until the coast is clear and then we can take it nice and easy.” While they stood quietly waiting
until both groups were out of sight, Beatrice, witnessing Charlotte’s distress on what should have been her day of triumph, felt a bubble of anger towards Edwina and was constrained to say,
“Your mother was very naughty to put you on Sandstorm. On the way I noticed a few times you were having trouble controlling him. He would test a sixteen-stone man, so what chance would a
young girl like you have? Not that your mother is a sixteen-stone man, of course, but she has her own methods and Sandstorm knows where he stands with her. You did well to stay on. And to finish.
Good girl.”

Charlotte didn’t think she deserved the compliment. All she had done was stay in the saddle. Her limbs felt weak. The arms of the jacket refused to stay tucked up, making it difficult to
hold the reins, now stiffening in the cold. She couldn’t feel her feet and, checking to see if they were positioned correctly in the stirrups, had to shake her head to dislodge the tears that
continued to obstruct her vision.

“All right, Charlotte, we’d better go now. We’ll go the long way so we don’t get caught up in the crowd.” Beatrice wanted to go back the way they had come in the
hope of finding out what had happened to Edwina, but she didn’t say that to Charlotte. “Easy does it now.”

But when Sandstorm turned for home, he took off as briskly as if it were his first outing of the day, though with more single-mindedness, as he knew where he was heading.

A steady sleet began to fall. The two didn’t speak.

They overtook Waldron and Freddie who had dismounted and were retracing their steps, heads down, obviously looking for something one of them had dropped. The men looked up, saw who was passing,
and looked down again without a greeting.

Probably lost half a crown, Beatrice thought sourly, and continued to ride abreast of Charlotte.

When Charlotte saw the hedge of Logan’s field approaching with its wild hawthorn and four gaps, she felt so ill she thought she might faint. Sandstorm headed for the closest gap rather
than the fourth he’d jumped on the outward run. Charlotte’s mind was convulsing with vivid, fragmented images.

Beatrice jumped first. When her turn came, Charlotte turned her head hoping to see empty space and no evidence that a clash had happened, but there were horses and people in a huddle beside the
wall. Was that Mandrake standing awkwardly? She would know his outline anywhere. One of his legs didn’t look right.

“Looks like an accident,” shouted Beatrice, already turning Lucifer. “I’ll have to go back.” She knew Charlotte would have no hope of making Sandstorm change
direction. “You go on. You should be all right from here.” She kept shouting but the distance between them had widened and Charlotte couldn’t hear what she was saying.

Miss East lifted the lid off one of the big pots to smell the Irish stew. “Delicious,” she said to Cook who was red-faced and perspiring. “It gets better
every year.”

“Put on the kettle there like a good woman,” said Cook, “and we’ll have a nice cup of tea before the rush. I deserve a puff of the pipe and a sit down. My legs are
killing me. Everything’s ready. What time is it?”

“Just after four. They should all be back shortly. I heard a few a while back but they were the children, most likely.” Miss East poured boiling water into the teapot.
“It’s a good sign Charlotte isn’t back yet – she must have lasted the distance. I’ve been thinking of her so much all afternoon you’d think I was riding beside
her.”

“You’re such a clucky hen where she’s concerned,” said Cook, sinking into her chair beside the range. “You’d think she was your own.”

It was the Dowager who had started the tradition of serving a hot buffet to the hunters as soon as they returned and before they changed. The hall floor of quarry tiles, so easily cleaned,
allowed them to come in, muck and all, without removing their boots. She said she wanted to hear their stories in their immediacy. If the visitors went off to rub down their horses and then change,
they inevitably swapped experiences with each other while doing those things, so when they finally came in to eat the vividness of the telling had dissipated somewhat. The hall, with its double
curved staircases, gilt-framed portraits, stuffed animal heads and, best of all, two huge fireplaces on either side burning unsplit logs that at times were so noisy they sounded as if they were
talking to each other, the lights and warmth, did what they were meant to do – offered a contrast between the cold darkness outside and the welcome inside that was an embrace and a sensory
assault. The trestle tables with their linen tablecloths were already covered with freshly baked breads, steamed puddings, mince pies, cheeses and cream, waiting for the carved roasts of beef,
turkey, ham, venison and the lamb stew to be added when the crowd arrived.

From the distance, the sound of barking filtered into the kitchen. The clattering of many horses’ hooves on cobblestones had Miss East at the door before she had time to think. She was
nearly knocked over by the procession of servers coming to collect the hot part of the supper. Cook jumped up as soon as she heard the noise and, not wishing to miss out on one moment of glory,
supervised the removal of the feast.

Waldron finally found the silver top of his favourite hipflask, the one that had been used by royalty and as such was his most highly regarded portable possession. He was lucky
he had found it when he did as thirty minutes later he might not have spotted it in the fading light. With the help of Freddie he remounted and they cantered on. With the thought of Thatcher
waiting at Rafferty’s, wondering why he was late, Waldron was keen not to waste any more time getting there.

Freddie, jumping through the second break in the hedge into Langan’s field, noticed some mounted figures huddled together near the fourth break further along, and a riderless horse with
its reins hanging loose standing apart. He shouted back to Waldron who, after making a clean jump through the first break, would have continued on unawares if Freddie hadn’t gained his
attention.

Waldron made a wide arc to turn, and identified the riderless horse as Mandrake. Was there something about a last-minute change of mount that someone had mentioned? He approached, lifting his
arm to drink from the fourth hip flask to help him concentrate. Mandrake, disturbed, stepped sideways. Waldron saw the bulge of the broken bone poke out against the skin. Something would have to be
done about that and he was the right man to do it and he had the means to do it and he would do it as soon as he was ready.

He noticed a fourth person. She was holding on to the wall, leaning over and being sick. It was Beatrice.

Freddie went over to the two mounted girls and one boy to ask who the rider involved in the accident had been, presuming it was one of the visiting Blackshaws he didn’t know.