Mending Horses (10 page)

The men who'd spilled out of the tavern guffawed and commenced betting on how the escapade would conclude. The boy tried to jump down and flee, but one of the long reins looped around his ankle and snared him. Jonathan grabbed a handful of the child's trousers and shirt and hauled him upright. “Going somewhere?”

The boy exploded into a wildcat of fists and feet and nails and teeth, spitting out curses in some heathenish language. An elbow sent Jonathan's spectacles flying, and the street blurred into blotches of brown and gray and black. Then the boy was gone, though his curses still rang in the air, and the the crowd's laughter grew louder
.

A hand caught Jonathan's sleeve, and someone pressed his spectacles into his hands. He muttered his thanks and set the glasses back on his nose
.

A small, wiry man held the boy, cursing him in the same pagan tongue. He slapped the boy so hard that Jonathan expected the child's
neck to snap. But the boy gave as good as he got until the man clenched his hands into fists. A blow to the boy's midsection left him doubled up on the ground, the wind knocked out of him. The man threw the boy up against a fence, snatched a stick from the gutter, and began laying it across the boy's shoulders and backside
.

Jonathan grabbed the man's wrist before it could land another blow. The boy tumbled limply to the ground. “Is this your boy?” Jonathan asked
.

“Me boy?” The man looked confused, glancing from the peddler to the lad. Then he chuckled. “Aye, me boy,” he said, an Irish brogue tinting his voice. “Unless his mam was lying to me.” He pinned the boy back up against the fence
.

“Hold on just a minute, before you beat all the profit out of him.”

“Profit, huh? I'll be thanking you not to interfere.” The stick cracked down on the boy's back again. The boy's stillness unnerved Jonathan more than his curses had
.

“I'll give you fifty dollars for him.” Good God, had those words come out of his mouth? Fifty dollars? Nearly a month's profits—a month of dusty travel and sore throats and buggy beds. Two months' pay for a man like the boy's father
.

“You think I'd be selling me own flesh and blood like I was selling a dog?”

“Not selling. Hiring him out. He learns a trade, you get some money, I get a helper.”

“Mind your own affairs.” The boy's father raised the stick again
.

“A hundred.” The men around fell silent, their wagering momentarily stopped
.

The man let the boy fall to the ground. “You'd never.”

Jonathan pulled his pocketbook out, fanned his thumb across an assortment of banknotes. “A hundred. I'll give you a hundred for him.”

Jonathan could see the calculations working behind the man's eyes. The man rubbed a sleeve across his mouth before he spoke. “Five.”

Five hundred? He didn't have that even if he threw in the horse, wagon, and unsold goods. “One twenty-five.”

“Four.”

“One fifty.”

They settled on two hundred. Jonathan cursed himself for a fool as he counted out the coins and banknotes. Four months' profits for something that looked like a pile of filthy rags and greasy hair crumpled in the gutter. “There you go, my friend. Now let's go inside and have a drink while we draw up the papers.”

The man stuffed the money into his pockets. “I'm not signing no papers.”

“Your word then. Give me your word you got no more claim to him.”

A chuckle gurgled in the man's throat. “Aye, you can have him and welcome, for what he's worth.” The man thrust out a grimy hand
.

It was hard not to wipe his palms on his trousers after shaking the Irishman's hand. Harder still not to slap the barely suppressed grin from the man's face
.

What sort of devilish deal had he made? The boy was probably a half-wit. He knelt and turned the boy over. The child was filthy and bloody at nose and mouth. Jonathan pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the boy's face
.

“What in blazes are you going to do with him?” Jeremy Warriner, the tavern-keeper, asked
.

“I'll figure it out after he's done puking.”

“I'm not—” The boy gasped as his breath returned, then he promptly turned his stomach inside out in the gutter
.

Jonathan wiped the boy's mouth and helped him to his feet. He felt like being sick himself as he led the boy into the tavern. “You got a private room free, Jerry?”

Jerry nodded and jerked a thumb toward the stairs. “Second right.”

“And a tub and some soap and hot water. And something to eat that'll lie easy on his stomach.” Private rooms and baths and a nearly empty purse. Oh, yes, Jonathan had no doubt who was the half-wit here
.

He half dragged, half carried the boy up the stairs, amazed at how little he weighed and how close to the skin his bones sat. He dropped the boy into a chair, then stood with his back against the door while the boy stared about, wary as a cornered fox. The purple bruise around his left eye gave him a comically fierce look. Jerry dragged a tub into the room. Next came a parade of Jerry's nieces and hired girls with
kettles of hot and pitchers of cold water, soap and towels, a plate of bread and jam, and a mug of gingery-smelling tea. The boy's nose twitched, and his eyes followed the plate as the girl placed it on a table near the bed. He rose to follow it, but Jonathan stopped him with a hand on his shoulder
.

“Bath first, then eat.”

The boy stared at the tub in horror. No doubt it'd be the first bath of his life. He pulled his knees to his chest and shook his head. “I'll not be having no bath.”

“Look, son, I'm going to have to share my seat on the wagon with you, share my meals with you, and share my bed with you. I don't want to be sharing your bugs, too.”

“I got no bugs.” A louse put the lie to that statement by crawling across the boy's cheek. He pinched it dead and wiped it on his trousers
.

Jonathan laid his coat and vest on the bed and rolled up his sleeves. “Either take your bath or I'll give it to you. You ain't in much shape to argue the matter.”

“I know how to wash.”

“Sure couldn't tell from looking at you.” Jonathan tossed the cake of soap to the boy. “Why don't you show me, then?”

“What, with you standing there?”

“I may be fool enough to buy you, but I sure ain't fool enough to leave you alone.”

Grudgingly, the boy limped toward the tub. He gave the water a baleful look and swirled a hand around in it. He scooped some up and splashed it on his face
.

“Bath.” Jonathan said. He tucked one sleeve up a little farther and flexed his arm
.

“All right, all right.” The boy turned away and peeled off his shirt, then wrapped his arms around himself as if he were cold
.

Jonathan clenched his teeth to keep from crying out at the sight of the boy's back, so scrawny that his shoulder blades stood out like wings folded along either side of his knobby spine. He'd never seen bruises piled up on bruises that way. “Trousers, too.”

The boy winced. “Couldn't you at least be turning your back?”

“Couldn't you at least be not taking me for a fool?” Jonathan mimicked the boy's Irish brogue, hardening his voice to quell the sick feeling in his throat. “You got nothing I ain't already seen. If you're shy about the size of your parts, don't worry. They'll grow.”

The boy's neck turned red under the grime
.

“You are a wonder, son. Ten minutes ago you were trying to murder me, and now you're acting like you was brung up genteel as a gir—” The word turned into a choking growl as the boy looked over his shoulder, red-cheeked in dismay and horror. Jonathan ran a hand down his face. “No. Please tell me you ain't a girl.”

The child stood in silence for a long moment. “Did you really give me da two hundred dollars for me?”

Jonathan nodded
.

The girl stooped to fetch her shirt. “S'pose you'll be wanting it back, then.”

What in blazes was he supposed to do with a girl? Jonathan wondered, as the child crammed yet another hunk of bread and jam into her mouth. Not that there was much of a girl about her, in spite of her mop of unruly, haphazardly cut curls. She looked as though she'd taken a kitchen knife to her hair. She'd cut it nearly to her scalp in the back, where it was drying into little lamb's wool swirls, while the top was a tangle thick enough to house a colony of squirrels. She'd missed one lock entirely, and it hung down behind her ear, dripping a wet spot on the shirt Jonathan had given her to wear while her newly laundered clothes dried. It was a good thing the shirt covered her nearly to her ankles, for she didn't sit like any proper girl. She slouched in the chair, straddled it, perched on the edge with her feet tucked under her, kicked one leg back and forth, did everything except sit still
.

She was rapidly returning her freshly washed face to its former grimy state. A pale smear of butter and bread crumbs decorated one cheek, and her mouth was surrounded with a bright red O of jam that oozed down her chin. She raised her hand to swipe the jam off with her sleeve
.

“Oh, no, you don't.” Jonathan captured her wrist just in time. “That's my only clean shirt.” He snatched a cloth from the tray and dropped it in her lap. “You travel with me, you got to be clean and civilized.” God, how would
he travel with her? A boy could be a son or nephew or apprentice. But a girl . . . He couldn't begin to number all the complications that would entail
.

She stared at the cloth for a moment. Jonathan drew his eyebrows together in warning. Seeing the wisdom of serviette over sleeve, she wiped her mouth. She frowned at the glob of jam that came away on the cloth, then licked it off
.

“You got a name?” he asked
.

She drew herself up straight in her chair and recited as if in school: “William James Michael Fogarty.”

“William. James. Michael. Fogarty,” he repeated slowly. “That's your name, huh?”

“ 'Tis now.” She pulled a mug of ginger tea toward her and spooned sugar into it
.

Jonathan put his hand over the sugar bowl after the fourth spoonful. “How 'bout if I just call you Billy?”

Her spoon clackety-clackety-clacked against the mug as she stirred the sugar in. “I s'pose.” Leaning close to the table, she slurped her tea noisily without lifting the mug
.

“Mister
Jonathan Stocking,” he said, pointing to himself. “You can call me
sir.
How old are you?”

“Thirteen.” A damn lie if ever there was one.

“Ten,” he said, guessing low in the hope that it would shame the truth out of her
.

“All right, then. Twelve.” She tore off another hunk of bread. “Next month.”

Jonathan smiled
.

“Why you done it?” she asked around a mouthful of bread and jam, spraying crumbs as she spoke. “Bought me, I mean.”

“Damned if I know. Why'd you pick my horse to steal?”

She shrugged. “He has a nice face.”

Much as he loved the old boy, Phizzy was flat out the ugliest horse Jonathan had ever seen. But she was right about his face; there'd always been a gentle sweetness in his eyes
.

“And—” She fidgeted about, as restless as any boy, and sat back down heavily, nearly upsetting the table with her elbow. “And because he was the only one as would talk to me.”

Jonathan pressed his lips together to hold the laughter in. “Yes, well, he's good that way,” he began, wanting her to know that he wasn't just humoring her, that he thought it was important, too. “So, um, what . . . what did he say?”

Her eyes met his, wide and blue and still astonished at whatever had happened between herself and Phizzy, her battered face the most childlike he'd seen it all afternoon. “He said yes.”

“Yes,” Jonathan repeated softly
.

The girl stared defiantly back at him, challenging him to doubt her
.

He removed his spectacles, letting the child dissolve into a faceless blur of white shirt and yellow hair
. Twenty-five years,
he thought
. No, more.
More than twenty-five years and still that spring morning was sharp and clear in his head. That day he'd stood with his head pressed against Blossom's rump, his arm up to his shoulder in her womb, his nose filled with the stench of manure and blood, and not entirely sure how much of the sweat and fear he smelled was the mare's and how much his own. He remembered groping around in the hot, wet dark of her, trying to turn the colt who wouldn't come. But gradually he'd found nose and legs and shoulder, eased the colt around so slowly it felt as though morning, afternoon, and night passed while he worked
.

Then Blossom gave a mighty heave, and Jonathan was flat on his back on the floor, certain that he'd killed mare and colt and himself in the deluge of blood and slime that washed over him, certain that if the hot, reeking fluid didn't smother him, the writhing weight on his chest would crush him to death. He spat and rubbed his sleeve across his face to clear his eyes and nose and mouth. The thing pinning him down looked like a creature dredged up from the depths of the sea, covered in a glistening membrane. Blossom's huge pink tongue descended on the thing, and a bedraggled, damp head emerged. The colt snorted in his face, then blinked sleepily at him. He and the colt stared at each other in breathless wonder. Then the colt touched his forehead with its nose and claimed him for its own
. Yes.
Jonathan had heard it as clearly as if the colt had spoken
. You're the one for me.
And Jonathan's heart had answered with the self-same words
.