Mending Horses (21 page)

Billy's jaw dropped. She looked to Daniel for help. “I fancy that means you're forgiven, lad,” he said, putting a mocking emphasis on the
lad
.

“You have the gift,” the singer said. “There is not so many
comme ça
. Like us,
ben
?”

“M-Me?” Billy's voice squeaked.

“Oui, mon petit
. The most of them who sing—feh—” She dismissed them with a flick of her fan. “They sing here.” Her fan tapped Billy's lips. “Or here.” Madame's plump fingers touched Billy's throat. “But we—you and Madame—we sing here.” She put one hand on Billy's chest and another on her own ample bosom.
“C'est vrai, non?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Billy said, though she had no idea what
sayvray
meant. “But your singing, ma'am,” she said. “It was like—like magic. I could never sing like that.”

Daniel's fingers dug hard into Billy's shoulder, and he made a cautionary hissing noise through his teeth. Billy realized that there could be drawbacks to playing a lad's part. As a boy, how could she ask Madame Staccato to teach her to sing?

The singer laughed again, giving Billy and Daniel an appraising glance.
“Ah, mon petit
, you should hope not, heh, Monsieur—Monsieur—You have a name, but I forget it.”

“Billy. William,” she said. “And—and Daniel,” she added, pointing to her companion.

“
Monsieur Guillaume
, there are in some places the men who
sing like Madame, but you would not like what they do to make you so.” She cast an enigmatic look at Billy's trousers, then a longer one at Daniel's. Billy didn't understand, but from the way the singer's eyes traveled up to Daniel's face, and the way he reddened at her wink, she guessed that Daniel knew.

“N'est-ce pas, Monsieur Daniel?”
Madame Staccato added before bursting into laughter.

“But could you teach a lad like me to sing . . . better?”

“Aye,” Daniel said. “Mr. Stocking says Billy might make a fair tenor someday.”

“Tenor, bass, baritone, you will not know until you are grown.” Madame Staccato sighed. “But this—” Her fingers on Billy's cheek were soft as butterfly wings. “It will be lost.
Perdu. Quel dommage! Chante doucement
while you can,
mon petit oiseau
. You perhaps become
grenouille
—frog—when you grow, like this one,
ben
?” She jutted her chin in Daniel's direction. “And now,
mes amis
, it is time for Madame to take her rest.” The singer grasped Daniel by the shoulders, squishing Billy between them, so that her face was pressed into Madame's bosom.
“Au revoir, Monsieur le Grenouille.”
Billy heard the distinct smacking noise of two kisses being planted on Daniel's face. Then Madame's face was suddenly inches away from her own, and the singer's plump fingers squeezed Billy's shoulders.
“Au revoir, mon petit oiseau
,” she said, kissing Billy first on one cheek, then on the other. “Perhaps I see you again soon, heh?”

Billy stared after Madame's round purple shape as she bustled away.

Daniel's fingertips nudged Billy's jaw closed. “You'll be catching flies if you stand about like that,
lad
,” he said with a smirk. He took one of the seven apples from his cap and bit it, crunching loudly as he walked away. “C'mon, we still ain't seen them ponies yet.”

Billy raced to catch him up. “She was grand, wasn't she?”

“Aye. First person I seen who you hadn't none of your smart answers for. I'd take me hat off to her, if I was wearing it.”

“That name she kept calling me—
puh-tee wah-zoh
—what d'you s'pose it means?”

Daniel took another bite of his apple and chewed it slowly, savoring it with little
mmmm
noises so Billy's mouth watered, imagining how crisp and juicy and sweet it was. With a grin, he threw the apple to her so quickly that she almost missed it. “It means ‘you wee ee-jit,' of course.”

The lass had a gift, Daniel thought. So Madame Staccato had said of Billy. Everyone else seemed to agree. It was beneath him to envy a child, and a lass at that, but he couldn't help wishing that he had some sort of gift, too. The jugglers, the acrobats, the rope dancer all had their own particular gifts—gifts that he'd never imagined a week ago. Then there was Mr. Chamberlain, whose gift was to play a part so well that even when you knew it was trickery, you couldn't help being pulled into it. And Mr. Stocking, with his music and his horsemanship and his storytelling and banter, there was a fellow with enough gifts for half a dozen men.

Why did some folk have such gifts and others not? Not that he was ungrateful, he thought, for fear of cursing what he did have, which was more than he'd ever expected. Friends, for one. He'd found and left one friend behind in young Ethan and had discovered another in Mr. Stocking. He glanced sidelong at Billy, contentedly nibbling her apple down to the core. And maybe half a friend when the wee demon was in a fair mood. He had his freedom, and most important of all, he had Ivy. That was more than any man had a right to ask, wasn't it?

The trouble was, his gifts had come from outside himself and could be lost any time. He traced a cross over his heart. God forbid the day Ivy would be gone. What would he have when it was just himself left, but a strong back and strong hands, like any other man? Was it selfish to want a wee bit of that spark that gave Billy her voice or Mr. Stocking his stories?

A nudge at his elbow broke into his musing.

“Get out of that!” He slapped Billy's hand away from the cap full of apples he held in the crook of his arm. “You've had yours.”

“Couldn't I be carrying some of 'em? Only three, that's all.
I want to see can I juggle 'em like them fellas in the show.” Billy tossed her apple core from hand to hand to demonstrate.

“Oh, aye, and they'd all be ending up in the dust bruised and battered.”

“Please? Just to try. You're not going to be eating all of 'em, are you?”

“They're not for me.”

“You'll make Ivy sick with all them apples. Give me three for Phizzy.”

“They're not for Ivy. Not this time.”

Billy's eyes widened. “It's them six ponies, isn't it? Whatever are you going to be doing?”

“I'm not exactly certain just yet. But I aim to have a good look at them somehow.”

“Why?”

“There's something queer about 'em.”

The dancing ponies didn't look like much without their trappings. The golden blankets had hidden bony ribs and patchy coats. Where the shiny black polish had flaked off, their hooves were cracked and brittle. Still, they picked up their feet with sprightly delicate motions as they milled around the pen.

Daniel took one of the apples from his cap and handed the rest to Billy. “You wait here,” he told her before he scrambled over the fence. The ponies scattered, then regrouped in a corner, huddled like sheep waiting to be shorn. He slipped out his knife and cut one of his apples in half, muttering softly about how crisp and juicy it was, just the thing for a good little pony. “Wouldn't it be a shame if I had to be eating it all meself, eh, lads?”

The first pony to come forward was a black-and-white piebald gelding whose shaggy forelock drooped into his eyes. He snorted and shook his head so that the hair swished out of his eyes, then fell back again like a curtain.

“Ain't you the brave lad, eh?” Daniel took a step forward, offering the apple to the little piebald. “Sure and wouldn't you be liking a treat 'long about now?”

The pony stretched his neck out as far as he could, trying to reach the apple without separating from his fellows. Daniel held the apple close enough to tempt him, but far enough away that the pony couldn't get it without taking a step.

The pony came forward.

Daniel stepped back, closed his fist over the apple and brought his hand in toward his chest. The pony followed. It wasn't until the gelding's head was nearly touching Daniel that he yielded the prize. The pony's lips quivered over his palm and made the apple disappear. Daniel stuck the rest of the apple into his pocket as the pony butted him for more. “Oh, no. That's for later. You stand still a bit first, eh?”

Billy started to climb the fence. “Wait,” he said, without turning to face her. “I don't think he's ready for two of us yet.” Billy sat on the top rail and watched while Daniel ran a hand lightly over the pony, working his way from nose to rump, noting what touch made the beast's skin quiver and what sent the quiver away, what made him cock his leg for a kick and how much to back off before the pony put the foot back down. He circled the pony several times that way, until the animal's wariness faded into resignation, then tolerance, then boredom.

“Let's have a look at them feet, now, eh, lad?” He slid his hand down the pony's front leg. The piebald trembled but didn't bolt. The muscles tensed as Daniel's fingers neared the fetlock covered with matted hair. He leaned against the pony's shoulder so it had no choice but to raise its hoof, let him cup its shaggy foot in his hand.

“Daniel!” Billy said in a loud whisper.

“A minute,” he replied, not looking up.

“Daniel!” Billy repeated.

“Hey, you there! What're you doing, fooling around with my horses?”

Daniel's skin quivered the way the pony's had at his first touch. Would every sharp voice set him twitching as if someone had set a constable on him? He focused on the warm slope of the
pony's shoulder against his, the coarse dusty hair and bony ankle in his palm, the rough edge of chipped polish under his thumb. He settled his features before looking up. “He seemed lame. I was only wanting to see had he picked up a stone.” He kept the hoof in his hand, probing gently along the pastern. The twitchy feeling inside him came back, but for a different reason.

The barrel-chested, dark-eyed man glowering over the fence might have been Professor Romanov's twin, except without the mustache and beard. “And you, are you with him, boy?” he said to Billy, giving her the same wary look he gave Daniel.

“Yessir. We only wanted to help your pony because we didn't see anyone else about.” She spoke with the flat Yankee tones Mr. Stocking had been teaching them.

The man's angular jaw glowed pink. “And what did you find?”

Daniel let the pony's foot drop. “Just a bit of a stone caught in his frog. I've prized it out.” Following Billy's cue, he drained as much Irish from his voice as he could.

The man cocked his head with a sideways look in his eye, as if he were trying to catch Daniel out in a lie. “Did you find anything else?”

“No, sir, just a stone.” Daniel rubbed his palm hard against his thigh, but couldn't erase the feel of what he had found: a rough circle of scarred skin broken and healed and broken again under the shaggy mat of hair around the pony's ankle.

“You think you know something about horses, do you, boy?” As the man came closer, his coat opened a bit. What looked like a small furry animal peeked out of a vest pocket. Daniel realized that the animal was, in fact, Professor Romanov's beard.

“You're the Perfesser,” Billy said, her voice treacly with feigned awe. “We seen your show. It's a marvel what you can get them ponies to do.”

Professor Romanov puffed out his chest and grasped his lapels. “Ah, well, you have to have the knack for it, boy. Ain't too many that does.”

“Our master says ponies are the devil to work with,” Billy
continued brightly. “You must have—what, three or four lads helping you with 'em?”

“No, my boy, they are all trained by my hand and mine alone.”

“You never! They're lovely, they are, every last one. What are their names?”

“Red, Gray, Black, Brown, Socks, and . . .” The Professor pointed out each pony, whose color matched its name. “Oh, and Teeth.” The last was the spotted pony who'd taken Daniel's apple.

Billy pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Begging your pardon, sir, but those don't sound quite proper names for horses. I mean, it's just their colors.”

“Hmph. What's your name, boy?”

“Billy.”

“And what's there about you that looks like a Billy?” Professor Romanov stared down his nose at the lass. “Can't answer that one, can you? What good's a name that don't mean anything, huh? Can't answer that one, neither. I say Red or Socks, you know just which pony I want. Got no time to be messing with a lot of fool names like Billy or Harry or Daisy.”

“Oh . . .” Billy gnawed her lower lip for a bit. “But, sir, ‘Teeth'?”

“You stay around that pony long enough, you'll see why.”

“D'you think you'd be minding if we gave your ponies some apples? Seeing as they were so grand and all, we thought they might've earned a treat.”

“Hmmph,” the Professor said. “Seems to me it's the one who's trained 'em that deserves the treat.” He took a flask from his pocket and pulled the cork with his teeth.

“Can't you have any sort of treat any time you like?” Billy asked, wide-eyed as if she didn't know what was in the Professor's flask. “It's your show, isn't it? You got the best act in it.”

Laying it on a bit thick, she is
, Daniel thought. He rubbed his hand across his face and pretended to cough to hide his chuckle.

The Professor's suspicious expression melted. “If only the
world worked that way, boy,” he said, shaking his head. He tossed back a swallow of whatever was in the flask. “All right. You can give them damned ponies as many apples as you please.”

Daniel rubbed his eyes against the haze of segar and pipe smoke that fogged the inn's taproom. Billy tugged his sleeve and pointed out the familiar round shape and faded spencer of the peddler sitting in a corner with a pipe in his hand and a mug and a bowl before him. “Hope we're not too late for supper,” she said as they wove their way between the tables.