Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves (2 page)

“Sorry, Master James,” Jeremiah said, ambling out from one of the stalls. “But the horses are to be kep’ ’n the stable this afternoon for the welcomin’ and all. Phineus’s orders.”

“Well, Phineus isn’t the Lord Morgan, is he?” said James, putting his hands on his hips.

“Beggin’ the young master’s pard’n,” replied Jeremiah with a smile. “But you’re not the Lord Morgan either. He’s set to arrive in just short order, which is why, once more beggin’ the young master’s pard’n, the horses are to be left ’n the stables.”

Now James was feeling very put off, but he knew there would be no point arguing with Jeremiah. Horses were horses no matter who sat on their backs, and Jeremiah knew more about horses than anyone in coastal England, which made his job sack-proof, even from Aunt Margarita. “Well, we’ll just see about that won’t we?” James stomped his foot and stormed back to the stable doorway.

“Phineus!” James shouted at the top of his lungs toward the house. “Phineus! Phineus! Phineus!” He stomped a foot on each repetition of the old tutor’s name until he was red in the face and the poor old man finally hobbled out of the house and slowly made his way down to the stables.

Phineus was the bushy-browed Morgan family tutor and had been for three generations. While none of the Morgan children could ever have been accused of being angels, it was whispered among the house staff that only James had pushed the poor old man so close to the brink of senility (a fact of which James was obscenely proud.)

“What is it, Master James?” The old teacher sighed. “Your father is almost here, you’ve ignored your lessons for the day, per usual, frightened poor Yves half to death - he’s still trying to wash the stains out of his clothes by the way - and apparently had another chef sacked.
What more inspirational deeds of chivalry could you possibly wish to accomplish this morning?”

“I want to be sitting atop Destroyer when Father arrives. I’ll be taller than everyone else, and he’ll see what kind of man I’ve become in his absence.”

James heard a choking sound a little too akin to laughter behind him, and he shot a glare over his shoulder at Jeremiah, who hid his face behind a horse’s rear end and kept right on brushing.

“Destroyer? Your pony?” Phineus screwed up his face.

“I’ve told you not to call her that. She’s a charger!”

“But Master James, we’ve already worked out where everyone will be standing. It’s all been arranged -”

“Well then rearrange it, Master Tooter!”

“Master James, I don’t think -”

“And you should keep right on not thinking and GET MY HORSE!” James stomped his feet again. “Or I’ll call for Auntie Margarita…and where do you think that will get you, Master Tooter?”

A resigned sigh wheezed through Phineus’s wrinkled lips. He shook his gray head and called toward the barn: “Jeremiah, get the bloody pony.”

“SHE’S A CHARGER!”

After a few moments James found his pony saddled and ready for him outside the stable doors. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation and leapt into the saddle – only to find himself eye to eye with Phineus and Jeremiah, who once again fell into a sudden fit of coughs behind his hand.

“I recall myself being a bit taller,” James said to himself, looking back and forth between Phineus and Jeremiah.

“You
are
taller, Master James,” Phineus said with a groan, cracking his back as though he hadn’t sat down in ages.

“Oh, this won’t do at all!” James raged, slapping his thigh in frustration. “I don’t want to be
as
tall as everyone else, I need to be tall
er
! Jeremiah, bring me Thunderbold!”

Jeremiah stopped coughing into his hand immediately, his natural smile falling into a dark frown. “Now sir,” he said with a firm shake of his head, “there’re funny ideas and then there’re just plain stupid’ns, and that’s a stupid’n. Whether you’re on your pony or on the ground, I’m sure your father’ll be pleased to see you. But if he rides up to find you ’n a casket, I’ll be quick ’n joinin’ you ’n one beside it.”

“Are you saying I’m stupid?” James demanded.

“No, I’m sayin’ your idea is stupid,” Jeremiah said matter-of-factly.

James felt his face grow hotter by the moment, but he knew he would get nowhere with Jeremiah. Instead, he turned his eyes on Phineus. “Phineus, make Jeremiah get me Thunderbold!”

“Phineus,” Jeremiah said with a warning in his voice, “Thunderbold really is a charger. I c’n barely hold her to the reins meself. That’s a bad accident waitin’ to happen!”

Phineus held his head as though it was about to explode, his old hands trembling almost violently. “Master James, you heard what Jeremiah just said. This is a bad accident–” Phineus halted in mid-sentence, staring out into nowhere for a long moment. Then a little shaky smile suddenly quivered its way onto the old tutor’s wrinkly face. “Jeremiah,” he said, his voice noticeably more warbly. “Get Thunderbold.”

TWO

hineus, did you hear what I just said?” Jeremiah asked.

“Oh, yes, Jeremiah! I most certainly did!” Phineus’s eyes blinked open as wide as they could go and his little grin split into a crooked smile.

“Glad to see you have finally come to your senses, old man,” James said, swinging himself off Destroyer.

“Be it on your head!” Jeremiah growled. He stormed into the stables, shaking his head furiously.

James could hardly contain his excitement as Jeremiah led the enormous steed from the stables. If this didn’t get his father’s attention, nothing would.

Thunderbold was the Lord Morgan’s old war-horse, which he rode to only the most formal military events. She had once belonged to an
army major, who had given her to Lord Lindsay as a gift, and Jeremiah always said that she had never lost the thirst for the thrill of battle. The bottom of her blood-red flanks stood taller than James’s head, her snorts rumbled in the morning air, and the sharp stomps of her feet drummed against the earth.

“I need some help up!” James demanded as he snatched a riding whip off the stable wall. Phineus rushed to James’s side, waving Jeremiah over.

“Oh, yes!” Phineus agreed a bit too eagerly. In fact, James thought the old man sounded more gleeful than he had ever been in his entire life. “Come on Jeremiah, don’t be a prune, help me lift the boy up onto his steed!” Phineus actually giggled, and with Jeremiah’s begrudging help, hoisted James onto the huge horse.

As soon as James was in the saddle he knew this was just what he needed. He was hands taller than Jeremiah and Phineus (who was looking oddly deranged at the moment) and felt like he could see for miles from atop Thunderbold. James puffed his chest out and fixed his face into the hard, chiseled look of a lord.

“I shall ride about the grounds, gentlemen, until my father arrives,” James announced. With slow, steady purpose he raised the riding whip high above his head, ready to lash Thunderbold’s side, as he always had to do with lazy Destroyer.

“No!” Jeremiah shouted, seeing what was about to happen, but it was too late. James cracked the whip into Thunderbold’s flank as hard as he could.

Thunderbold didn’t like that, not one bit.

The mighty war-horse reared up on her powerful hind legs, neighing with the force of a storm’s gale. Jeremiah’s eyes flew wide at the sight, and Phineus snapped out of the sleepwalking madness that had temporarily possessed him. Thunderbold’s sanguine forelegs churned in the air, James clinging to her neck for dear life, crying out with a shriek that would have done an Irish banshee proud.

“Thunderbold, no!” Jeremiah cried. But it was too late. It seemed the horse felt it had been insulted by an inferior and was not going to
stand for the cheek. Thunderbold bucked and kicked as James howled like a siren atop her back. Jeremiah leapt over the fence into the riding circle to avoid being kicked in the face, landing face-first in a pile of mud and horse mess for his effort. Phineus, meanwhile, reeled backward from the thrashing mare until he tumbled backwards into a water-filled trough. James though, however terrified and shrill he was at that very moment, did somehow manage to hang on to the wild charger (a fact he would later recall with a bit of pride, mostly to make up for the distinctly unpleasant memories of his girlish screams.)

Thunderbold stopped bucking after a particularly marvelous spin maneuver and, seemingly realizing that her rider had yet to surrender, decided to give him the ride of his life. She tore off toward the house with hooves pounding like rapid-fire cannon shots, all the while James harmonizing to the staccato beats with his most elegant falsetto scream.

The next five minutes were something of a blur to James, though he later had a reoccurring nightmare about the incident, which put the one-horse stampede in the following order:

First, Thunderbold blasted over the hill between the stables and the gardens. James recalled few enough specifics, but he was positive he heard Yves the gardener scream about ten really awful curse words in one breath, sounding a bit like a startled, foul-mouthed goose. The horrified gardener dove aside in his freshly pressed party clothes into a pile of fresh mulch as Thunderbold tore past him, tromping over his just-watered rose bush and daffodil presentation, leaving only churned dirt like a tilled field in her wake.

Second, Thunderbold careened around the corner of the manor toward the front entrance, where Dame Morgan herself was making her way out to check on the progress of the decorations. Upon seeing James hurtling toward her on Thunderbold like a terrified, weeping centaur, her face screwed into a squished-up cross between a mad bull and a pufferfish. James thought she less dove out of the way than fell over to the side, rolling and bouncing down the grassy hill in her new party dress.

That was when James and his steed – or, rather, Thunderbold and her tagalong - came to the decorations for the homecoming. The massive banner that read “Welcome Home Lord Morgan” was stretched between two tall poles, the tables on the lawn covered in the best linens, and the servants busy topping them with trays of delicious hors d’oeuvres. The galloping duo quickly blasted through, and in the aftermath, the banner was wrapped around the servants, who were topped in the food, beside the overturned tables that covered the grass-stained linens.

Finally, Thunderbold tore away from the house toward the thick forest that surrounded the manor grounds. Jeremiah had always told James the most frightening ghost stories of wicked nymphs, wild dryads, and magical gypsies that called the forest home. As James barreled toward the gnarled tree trunks, he imagined that if the jagged branches didn’t kill him, the ghosts and goblins would finish the job. James gripped his legs to Thunderbold’s flanks, squeezed the reins in his hands, shut his eyes tight, and waited for his short life to flash before his eyes.

But just before the moment of impact, a commanding voice called out from James’s left, deep and forceful above even the thundering hooves, a heavy voice, as though the words it spoke could push one down or lift one up all by themselves. “Whoa, Thunderbold, hold, hold!” the voice called.

James felt a hand grip the reins over his small fist, so tight that he bit his upper lip quite hard, his nose stung, and tears leaked onto his cheeks. The strong hand must have belonged to a powerful man, James knew, for it pulled back so firmly on the reins that even the mighty Thunderbold took heed. The ballistic mare snorted and neighed at the command, but soon obeyed, slowing to a subdued trot.

“Easy girl, easy,” said the voice.

James’s wild ride finally came to a complete stop, the sound of pounding hooves against the ground quieting, but a steady thump still thudding in James’s ears, the beat of his slamming heart. James peeked open one bleary eye. The dark, twisted trunks of the forest
stood not one horse-length before him, only shadow and silence lying beyond the tree line. The big hand still held tight over James’s own, gripping the reins in a fist. James followed the hand to the arm to which it belonged, up to the shoulder, and then to the face of the man who had saved his life.

The man sat on a horse as black as coal, dressed only in the simple, dark blue waistcoat and breeches of a sailor, a gray great cloak flung over his shoulders. He wore no powdered wig of a gentleman, but let his dark hair hang in a ponytail over his collar, a plain tricorn hat, one that had seen too much sun and too much rain in its life, sat atop his head, and salt and pepper stubble framed his sun-darkened jaw. Not one mark of a socially acceptable nobleman could be found on the man’s entire person, James noted, save for flashing blue eyes that gleamed in the light. But James knew this man was noble born indeed. This was the Lord Lindsay Morgan. This was his father.