Dead Man Riding (17 page)

‘No. I'm going to meet Alan later, after the other men are asleep.' She sounded excited and nervous. I knew there wasn't much to be said and later whispered a good luck to her as she went softly down the stairs. She didn't answer. I dozed but woke later to hear her coming back up the stairs.

‘I've done it, Nell.' Her voice was part-triumphant, but shaky as well. I suppose my reactions were those of any fairly well-brought up young woman whose best friend has just taken the irrevocable step – concern for her, curiosity, and annoyance that she'd got there first. Midge was still asleep, or pretending well.

‘Aren't you going to ask me if I regret it?'

‘Do you?'

‘No.' There was a ‘but' in her voice, though. Something hadn't been as she expected it. It struck me that she hadn't been gone very long and surely two lovers on a hay-scented moonlit night shouldn't part before dawn.

‘What time is it?'

‘Does it matter?'

I found my watch and looked at it in the moonlight. Quarter past one.

‘Are you going to sleep now?'

‘I don't know. I feel so … I don't know … so confused.'

She went to the window. It struck me that part of her attention was still on something happening outside. Perhaps Alan was down there, keeping watch on his beloved.

‘Did Alan bring you back here?'

She shook her head. Something was wrong. Please the gods they hadn't gone and quarrelled already.

‘Nell, when you said—'

I think she was on the point then of telling me what had gone wrong but Midge stirred and opened her eyes.

‘What's happening?'

‘Nothing,' Imogen said. ‘I'm just going to bed.'

She undressed to her chemise and petticoat and lay down. I'm not sure if she slept. I did for a while but woke up at one point while it was still dark and realised what had disturbed me were soft footsteps down below in the tack room. I imagined the Old Man pacing, then I turned over, dozed again and woke up to find the room full of sunlight. Just after five o'clock by my watch and no hope of getting back to sleep. My head was muzzy, my skin prickling with bits of hay and insect bites and the idea of cool river water came into my mind. Midge was asleep, Imogen lying on her back with her eyes closed, still in her underwear.

I got dressed, grabbed a towel and went down the stairs to the tack room in bare feet, hoping not to meet the Old Man and have to explain what I was doing. No sign of him in the tack room or the stable yard and nothing in the yard by the house except sparrows taking dustbaths. I went along the lane and through the gate into the mares' field, wading through buttercups, my muzziness and itchiness fading with the clean morning air and the pleasure of being up and about before anybody else. There was a lot of mist, mostly down by the river as usual but reaching long fingers up into the rest of the field and collecting in the hollows, with the treetops standing out above it. It closed over me as I went down the slope to the river, like being under a milky canopy. There was a splash of something going off the bank and into the river that might have been an otter. When I tried the water with my toes it felt cold enough to question whether a swim would be such a good idea after all, so I got my clothes off quickly before I could change my mind and waded in. There's something about swimming on your own in the early morning that makes it better than other times, the little quiver of risk perhaps or the feeling that you might choose to float right away and not come back, turn into another person altogether. Not even a person necessarily – an otter or a fish. Being shut in under the mist made it seem even more of a private world and I stayed in the river for quite a long time, sometimes swimming, sometimes just kneeling with my head out of the water, watching two dippers bobbing up and down where the water broke over rocks. After a while the cold got to me so I swam back to where my clothes were, got dried and dressed but left my hair down to dry.

Going back up the slope I was in no hurry. I didn't have my watch with me but guessed it was still early, probably not seven o'clock yet. I'd climbed above the mist belt and was in sunshine but the mist wasn't dispersing yet. If anything it looked thicker than ever down the paddock towards the little gate where we'd ridden through to Mawbray's land. I was looking in that direction when I heard a horse whinny, high and sharp, then more whinnying. I wasn't too worried because horses turned out together sometimes have little quarrels but, remembering the mare that had got kicked, I thought I'd better wander down in that direction just in case. I'd taken only a few steps when it happened. A silver horse came galloping out of the mist, mane flying, with a rider on his back. I had no doubt it was the Old Man. Who else would be riding Sid? But from the first glance I knew that something was wrong. The Old Man was a superb rider and a very upright figure in the saddle. Now he was slumped forward, his head low down on the horse's neck. Sid knew it felt wrong there. He kept tossing his head, trying to get the rider back into position, but every time the head slumped down again. And the whinnying I'd heard had been the horse yelling out in fear and distress. He did it again as they came near me. I ran towards him and tried to grab for the rein but he swerved round me, his eyes wide and terrified, nostrils flaring so that you could see the bright red veins inside them. As he swept past, just missing me, I saw the Old Man's lolling head and open eyes and knew at once that he was dead. His heart. He'd gone out riding early and alone and his heart had gone, the way it nearly did when I'd seen him in the tack room. Sid was galloping up the field, making for the top gate. The mares had caught his terror and were thundering after him in a bunch. I had to jump aside as they went past and for a moment the tossing heads and manes looked very much like the Old Man's picture of the sea-wave horses in the tack room. Sid got to the gate and stood and yelled there for a while. Yelled, I'm sure, for the Old Man, not believing that the flopping thing on his back had anything to do with him. I wondered why he hadn't shaken it off in that mad gallop up the field. Perhaps, even in death, habit kept the Old Man in the saddle. Then when nobody came to the gate to help him Sid was off again, galloping across and down the field with the mares following. There was no hope that I could catch him so I ran up the field and into the lane. Before I'd gone far Robin came running from the direction of the house, looking anxious. I supposed the whinnying had carried up to the stable yard.

‘What's happening?'

I gasped out something, then we both ran. Sid and the mares were at the far side of the field when we got to the gate, just standing. But they weren't standing because they'd calmed down. They'd reached the point in their collective panic where they didn't know what to do next. Perhaps our figures at the gate decided Sid, because he came galloping and bucking towards us, the mares trailing behind. When he bucked the figure on his back jerked upright as if it had come back to life for an instant then slumped down again.

‘Why doesn't he fall off?' I heard my own voice saying it.

Robin didn't answer. He waited until Sid was within a few yards of the gate and let out a long, low whistle. Sid dug his hooves in and skidded to a stop, rolling an eye towards Robin, ready to gallop off again. Robin whistled again, the same low throbbing note, then vaulted over the gate and went towards the horse. When he came near Sid snorted and started backing away. I was sure he was going to turn and gallop off again but Robin was saying something to him – more of a chant than normal speech – and the terrified horse was listening. He let Robin go up to him and put a hand on his neck and only made a little flinch away when he picked up the rein. Robin stroked his neck until he was calm then led him over to the gate. After the first glance he hadn't looked at the Old Man. He knew as well as I did that he was dead.

*   *   *

I walked through the gate and went to meet them. Robin needed to keep hold of Sid's rein so I had to look at the Old Man. I'd seen dead bodies before but they'd been laid out neatly on beds and I wasn't sure that I could manage it. I made myself think of my father with his patients, pretend for a while that the Old Man might be alive and need help. Even so, I had to take it carefully, a bit at a time. Start with the feet. His feet must have got wedged in the stirrups, that was why he hadn't fallen off. I was looking at the leg and foot on the near side. He was wearing gaiters and short boots as usual and his foot was tight in the stirrup, but it wasn't wedged there, it was tied. It took me a long time to believe what I was seeing. The Old Man's ankle was tied with a leather thong to the stirrup iron. Then something worse. There was thick string tied to the stirrup iron as well. It went from there under Sid's belly, alongside the girth and when I went round to the off side I saw it was knotted to the stirrup iron there too. The offside foot was tied to the stirrup like the other one. That would have been enough to secure his body in the saddle, but there was more. His hands, brown and gloveless, were tied with more leather thongs to a broad leather strap round Sid's neck. Bound hand and foot to a terrified horse. Something stirred in my mind. I turned and found Robin looking at me, stroking Sid's nose.

‘I think we'd better take him up to the house as he is,' I said.

Chapter Eleven

T
HE CLATTER OF SID'S HOOVES ON THE STABLE-YARD
flagstones sounded terribly normal, as if his owner had brought him in from any ride. The injured mare stuck her head out of the box and whinnied, but this time Sid wasn't interested. Even Robin couldn't persuade him to stand still and he went round in circles, rolling his eyes towards the thing on his back. Since Robin had to stay with Sid it was up to me to fetch help, and for a moment I hesitated. Imogen and Midge were nearest, but I didn't want them to see the Old Man like this. Dulcie Berryman was next nearest and probably down in the kitchen by now, but the same thing applied. I admit my first reaction was to run for Meredith. He was older, after all he was a don. He'd know what to do. It was only then that I thought of Alan and remembered he had the right to know first. Looking back, it's odd that the idea of sending for the police didn't come into my mind at that point. Perhaps we'd already got used to managing things for ourselves up there. I told Robin to hang on, I'd be back soon and started running but before I'd gone more than a stride, there was Dulcie. She was walking under the arch between the house and the stable yard, with a big apron over her dress and slippers on her feet. From the casual way she was strolling and the beginnings of her usual smile when she saw me, there was no idea in her mind that anything was wrong. Then her face changed. She looked past me at Robin and Sid.

‘I should go back to the house,' I said. ‘There's nothing you can do.'

She took no notice and ran past me, heels of her slippers flapping to show the hard, calloused feet of somebody who walks barefoot a lot. Odd the things you notice. Then she stopped and said, ‘Oh.' It was the tone of a mother whose child has done something damaging – the moment of realisation and regret before scolding starts. I called again that I'd be back soon and went on running. I didn't tell them to leave the Old Man as he was until Alan got there because from the way Sid was behaving I didn't think they had much choice. I ran out of the yard and up the track, across the mown field to the men's barn. As luck would have it, Meredith was the first person I saw, standing outside the barn in his shirt sleeves, looking at the view northwards to the Scottish hills.

I said, ‘The Old Man's dead.' Then, because I didn't have much breath to spare put the rest into one word, ‘
Mazeppa
.'

Whether he understood it all from that I didn't know, because the other three came out of the barn in various stages of dress and undress. I told them as calmly as I could what had happened. Alan's face went sharp and pale.

‘Why? Why was he tied to the horse?'

Now it was too late I saw that I'd done Alan a wrong twice over by not telling him about the Old Man's heart trouble or his attempt to kill himself on the beach. Trying to protect him had made for a worse shock now. He seemed unable to move and Meredith had to suggest gently that they should all go inside and finish getting dressed. He and I waited outside for them. He asked me if I wanted to sit down, offered to get me water from the stream but didn't fuss when I said no.

‘I take it there's no doubt that he's dead, Miss Bray?'

‘No. It was what he wanted yesterday on the beach, only…'

‘I'm sorry, you don't have to talk about it yet if you don't want to.'

‘Alan will have to know about him trying to kill himself.'

We told him while we were all walking down the track. He'd wanted to run to the stable yard but Meredith made him go slowly and listen. Alan walked head down, not responding, and I wasn't sure how much he understood. To get it over, I told him about the Old Man's near-collapse in the tack room.

Alan said, still head down, ‘You're saying that he knew he was ill, he wanted to die?'

‘Yes, I'm afraid so.'

I tried to signal to Meredith with my eyes, over Alan's bent head, that I wanted a word with him. He understood and we dropped back a few paces.

‘We brought him up from the field just as he was,' I said. ‘I thought we'd better leave him like that until somebody else could see, but it probably shouldn't be Alan.'

He shook his head. ‘It's his right, don't you think?'

As it was, I needn't have worried. When we got to the stable yard there was no sign of Sid or his burden. Midge, Imogen and Dulcie were standing near the horse trough. When Alan saw Imogen he went running to her and laid his head on her shoulder. Unashamed, she put her arm round him and bent her head so that their foreheads were touching, not saying a word. I looked at Midge.