Knight's Gambit (24 page)

‘You come out for ride? Is no horse up for now, but plenty on the little campo. We go to catch.’

‘Wait,’ his uncle said in Spanish. ‘Mr McCallum has had to look at the ends of too many horses every day to need to ride one tonight, and my sister’s son and I do not have to look at enough of them to want to. We have come to do you a favor.’

‘Ah,’ Captain Gualdres said, in Spanish too. ‘And that favor?’

‘All right,’ his uncle said, still in the rapid voice, in that quick splatter of Captain Gualdres’ native tongue resonant, not quite musical, like partly detempered metal: ‘There was a great haste. Perhaps I came so fast that my manners could not keep up.’

‘That politeness which a man can outride,’ Captain Gualdres said, ‘was it ever his to begin with.’ With deference: ‘what favor?’

And he, Charles, thought too:
What favor?
Captain Gualdres hadn’t moved. There had never been doubt, disbelief in his voice; now there wasn’t even astonishment, surprise in it. And he, Charles, was ready to agree with him: that there could be anything anything could do to him that his uncle or anybody else would need to warn him against or save him from: thinking (Charles) of not only Mr McCallum’s horse but a whole drove like it cracking their cannons and crowns on him, maybe rolling him in the dust and getting him dirty even and maybe even chipping his edges or possibly even denting him a little, but that was all.

‘A wager then,’ his uncle said.

Captain Gualdres didn’t move.

‘A request then,’ his uncle said.

Captain Gualdres didn’t move.

‘A favor to me then,’ his uncle said.

‘Ah,’ Captain Gualdres said. Nor did he move even then: only the one word not even Spanish nor even English either because it was the same in all the tongues that he, Charles, had ever heard of.

‘You ride tonight,’ his uncle said.

‘Truth,’ Captain Gualdres said.

‘Let us go with you to the stable where you keep your night riding-horse,’ his uncle said.

Again Captain Gualdres moved, even though it was only the eyes, he—Charles—and Mr McCallum watching the gleam of the whites as Captain Gualdres looked at him then at Mr McCallum then back to his uncle and then no more, no more at all, apparently not even that of breathing, while he, Charles, could have counted sixty almost. Then Captain Gualdres did move, already turning.

‘Truth,’ he said, and went on, the three of them following, around the house that was too big, across the lawn where the bushes and shrubs were too many, past the garages that would have held more cars than just four people could ever have used and the conservatories and hothouses of too many flowers and grapes for just four people ever to have eaten or smelled, crossing that moon-still moon-blanched moon-silent barony with Captain Gualdres leading the way on the hard bowed pistons of boot-gleamed and glinted legs, then his uncle then himself then Mr McCallum carrying the white-oak cudgel, the three of them in single file behind Captain Gualdres like three of his family
gauchos
if Captain Gualdres had a family and they were not
gauchos
instead or maybe even something else altogether ending in
ones
.

But not toward the big stables with the electric clocks and lights and gold-plated drinking fountains and mangers, nor even toward the lane which led to them. Instead, they crossed the lane, climbing the white fence and crossing the moonlit pasture, on to and around and then beyond a small patch of woods and there it was and he could even still hear Mr McCallum talking almost: the small paddock inside its own white fence, and a single stable about the size of a two-car garage, all new since last September without doubt and neat and fresh with paint and the upper half of the single stall door open; a black square in the dazzling white; and suddenly behind him Mr McCallum made a kind of sound.

And this was where it began to go too fast for him. Even Captain Gualdres went Spanish now, turning, his back to the fence, compact, durable, even somehow managing to look taller, saying to his uncle what until now even the tone of the voice had not said, the two of them facing one another in the rapid splatter of Captain Gualdres’ native language so that they sounded like two carpenters spitting tacks at each other’s handsaw. Though his uncle began in English and at first Captain Gualdres followed, as if his uncle anyway felt that Mr McCallum was at least entitled to this much:

‘Now, Mr Stevens. You explain?’

‘With permission?’ his uncle said.

‘Truth,’ Captain Gualdres said.

‘This is where you keep your night horse, the blind one.’

‘Yes,’ Captain Gualdres said. ‘No horse here but the little mare. For night. Is left in the stable by the negrito each afternoon.’

‘And after supper—dinner—midnight, whenever it’s dark enough, you come out here and go into that paddock and walk across to that door and open it, in the dark, like now.’

And at first he had thought how there were too many people here, one too many, anyway. Now he realised that they were short one: the barber: because Captain Gualdres said,

‘I set first up the jumps.’

‘The jumps?’ his uncle said.

‘The little mare does not see. Soon she will not see forever. But she can still jump, not by seeing but by the touch, the voice. I teach her the—how you say it?—faith.’

‘I think the word you want is invulnerability,’ his uncle said. Then it went into Spanish, fast, the two of them, except for the rigidity, like boxers. And he might have kept up with Cervantes just writing it, but having the Batchelor Sampson and the chief of the Yanguesians trading a horse right before his face, was too much for him until his uncle explained it afterward when (or so he thought) it was finally all over—or came as near to explaining it as he, Charles, ever really expected.

‘Then what?’ he said. ‘What did you say then?’

‘Not much,’ his uncle said. ‘I just said, “That favor.” And Gualdres said, “For which, naturally, I thank you beforehand.” And I said, “But which, naturally, you do not believe. But of which, naturally, you wish to know the price.” And we agreed on the price, and I performed the favor, and that was all.’

‘But what price?’ he said.

‘It was a bet,’ his uncle said. ‘A wager.’

‘A wager on what?’ he said.

‘On his fate,’ his uncle said. ‘He called it. Because the only thing a man like that believes in is his destiny. He doesn’t believe in a fate. He doesn’t even accept one.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘The bet. Bet him what?’

But his uncle didn’t even answer that, just looking at him, sardonic, whimsical, fantastical and familiar still, even though he, Charles, had just discovered that he didn’t know his uncle at all. Then his uncle said:

‘A knight comes suddenly out of nowhere—out of the west, if you like—and checks the queen and the castle all in that same one move. What do you do?’

At least he knew the answer to that by now. ‘You save the queen and let the castle go.’ And he answered the other one too: ‘Out of western Argentina.’ He said: ‘It was that girl. The Harriss girl. You bet him the girl. That he didn’t want to cross that lot and open that stable door. And he lost.’

‘Lost?’ his uncle said. ‘A princess and half a castle, against some of his bones and maybe his brains too? Lost?’

‘He lost the queen,’ he said.

‘The queen?’ his uncle said. ‘What queen? Oh, you mean Mrs Harriss. Maybe he realised that queen had been moved the same instant he realised he would have to call the bet. Maybe he realised that queen and the castle both had been gone ever since the moment he disarmed the prince with that hearth-broom. If he ever wanted her.’

‘Then what was he doing here?’ he said.

‘Why was he waiting?’ his uncle said.

‘Maybe it was a pleasant square,’ he said. ‘For the pleasure of being able to move not only two squares at once but in two directions at once.’

‘Or indecision, since he can,’ his uncle said. ‘And almost fatal for this one, because he must. At least, he’d certainly better. His threat and his charm are in his capacity for movement. This time, he forgot that his safety lay in it too.’ But that was tomorrow. Right now he couldn’t even keep up with what he was watching. He and Mr McCallum just stood there looking and hearing while his uncle and Captain Gualdres stood facing each other, rapping out the brittle splattering syllables, until at last Captain Gualdres made a motion, not quite a shrug and not quite a salute, and his uncle turned to Mr McCallum.

‘What about it, Rafe?’ his uncle said. ‘Will you walk over there and open that door?’

‘I reckon so,’ Mr McCallum said. ‘But I dont see—’

‘I’ve made a bet with Captain Gualdres,’ his uncle said. ‘If you wont do it, I’ll have to.’

‘Wait,’ Captain Gualdres said. ‘I think it is for me to—’

‘You wait yourself, Mister Captain,’ Mr McCallum said. He shifted the heavy stick to the other hand and stood looking across the white fence into the empty moon-filled lot, at the silent white wall of the stable with its single black square of half-door, for almost a half minute. Then he shifted the cudgel back to the other hand and climbed up onto the fence and put one leg over it and turned his head and looked back down at Captain Gualdres. ‘I just found out what all this is about,’ he said. ‘And so will you in a minute.’

Then they watched him climb, still without haste, down into the paddock: a compact light-poised deliberate man with about him something of the same aura, sense of horses which Captain Gualdres had, walking steadily on in the moonlight, toward the blank white stable and the single black square of emptiness, of utter of absolute silence, in the center of it, reaching the stable at last and lifting the heavy wrought-iron latch and opening the closed lower half of the door; only then moving with unbelievable speed, jerking the half-door quickly back and out on its hinges and already moving with it, swinging it all the way back to the wall until he stood slightly behind it, between it and the wall, the heavy cudgel clutched in his other hand; swinging the door back barely an instant before the stallion, itself the same color as the inky blackness of the inside, exploded out into the moonlight as if it had been tied to the door itself with a rope no longer than a watch-chain.

It came out screaming. It looked tremendous, airborne even: a furious mass the color of doom or midnight in a moonward swirling of mane and tail like black flames, looking not merely like death because death is stasis, but demoniac: the lost brute forever unregenerate, bursting out into the moonlight, screaming, galloping in a short rushing circle while it flung its head this way and that, searching for the man until it saw Mr McCallum at last and quit screaming and rushed toward him, not recognising him until he stepped out from the wall and shouted at it.

Then it stopped, its fore feet bunched and planted, its body bunching against them, until Mr McCallum, again with that unbelievable quickness, walked to it and swung the cudgel with all his strength across its face, and it screamed again and whirled, spun, already galloping, and Mr McCallum turned and walked toward the fence. He didn’t run: he walked, and although the horse galloped two complete circles around him before he reached the fence and climbed it, it never quite threatened him again.

And during another time Captain Gualdres didn’t move, metal-hard, inviolable, not even pale. Then Captain Gualdres turned to his uncle; it was in Spanish still, but now he could follow it.

‘I have lost,’ Captain Gualdres said.

‘Not lost,’ his uncle said.

‘Truth,’ Captain Gualdres said. ‘Not lost.’ Then Captain Gualdres said, ‘Thanks.’

Then Saturday, no school: the whole unchallengeable day in which to have sat around the office and attended the little rest of it, the cleaning up; the what little rest of it remained, or so he thought, who even at that late hour of December afternoon had not yet known his own capacity to be astonished and amazed.

He hadn’t even really believed that Max Harriss would come back from Memphis. Mr Markey, in Memphis, hadn’t believed it either apparently.

‘Memphis city police cant transport a prisoner back to Mississippi,’ Mr Markey said. ‘You know that. Your sheriff will have to send someone—’

‘He’s not a prisoner,’ his uncle said. ‘Tell him that. Tell him I just want him to come back here and talk to me.’

Then for almost half a minute there was nothing on the telephone at all except the faint hum of the distant power which kept the line alive, which was costing somebody money whether voices went over it or not. Then Mr Markey said:

‘If I gave him that message and told him he could go, would you really expect to see him again?’

‘Give him the message,’ his uncle said. ‘Tell him I want him to come back here and talk to me.’

And Max Harriss came back. He arrived just ahead of the others, just far enough ahead of them to have got through the anteroom and into the office while the other two were still mounting the stairs; and he, Charles, shut the anteroom door and Max stood in front of it, watching his uncle, delicate and young and expensive-looking still and a little tired and strained-looking too as if he hadn’t slept much last night, except for his eyes. They didn’t look young or tired either, watching his uncle exactly as they had looked at him night before last; looking anything but all right by a good long shot. But at least there wasn’t anything cringing in them, whatever else there might be.

‘Sit down,’ his uncle said.

‘Thanks,’ Max said, immediate and harsh, not contemptuous: just final, immediate, negative. But he moved in the next second. He approached the desk and began to peer this way and that about the office in burlesque exaggeration. ‘I’m looking for Hamp Killegrew,’ he said. ‘Or maybe it’s even the sheriff himself. Where’ve you got him hidden? in the water-cooler? If that’s where you put either one of them, they are dead of shock by now.’

But still his uncle didn’t answer, until he, Charles, looked at his uncle too. His uncle wasn’t even looking at Max. He had even turned the swivel chair sideways and was looking out the window, motionless except for the almost infinitesimal stroking of the thumb of the hand which held it, on the bowl of the cold cob pipe.