Mount! (2 page)

Rutshire, 1786

The last race should have been called off, as the twin saboteurs, night and fog, crept stealthily over the course. Rutminster Cathedral spire, a landmark for miles around, was no longer visible. The Bishop of Rutminster, battling to ban racing, could identify neither rabble nor runners as he peered furiously out of his palace window.

Nor had bitter cold nor relentless drizzle dispersed a vast crowd, swarming round the betting posts, clamouring to watch the most eagerly awaited race in years – despite there being only two contenders.

The first was Rupert Black, a young adventurer, hellraiser, hard drinker and womanizer, who possessed the hauteur of beauty, but not of birth. His father was a small Northern racehorse trainer, and in the late eighteenth century, trainers were regarded as no higher than grooms.

Rupert Black had no income and fewer principles, but was such an amusing fellow that a fast aristocratic set had taken him up, welcomed him into their houses and let him advise them on bloodstock – about which he was clearly an expert.

Rupert Black had been called ‘Blackguard’ and ‘Black Sheep’, but was more often nicknamed ‘Rupert of the Roan’ because of his dashing cavalry charges on the hunting field and his beautiful blue roan mare, Sweet Azure, whom he was riding in the race ahead.

Pitted against him on a vastly superior horse called Spartan was the Hon. James Northfield, elder son of the fourth Baron Northfield, who owned 2,000 Cotswold acres, which included Rutminster Racecourse.

The austere, scholarly James, who had hitherto shown little interest in the estate or in women, had then outraged his parents and scandalized society by impregnating one of his mother’s kitchenmaids: a pretty Dutch girl called Gisela. Even more scandalously, he had then secretly married her.

The Hon. Rufus Northfield, except for having the same dark auburn hair, sallow complexion and close-set, fox-brown eyes, was a total contrast to his older brother James. A crack shot and rider, the inseparable crony of Rupert Black, Rufus loved the land and carousing with his father’s tenants. Despite his profligate behaviour, Rufus was showing signs of calming down, having just become betrothed to a rich and well-born local beauty.

At the ball given by Lord and Lady Northfield to celebrate this engagement, James’ new wife, Gisela, had nearly died of embarrassment after her husband had insisted she attend: only for her to be sneered at by the guests and served by the very servants on whom she had waited in the kitchen.

Worse was to come when the loathsome Rupert Black, already in his cups and having fluttered the pulses of all the ladies, had wandered up to her. Sliding a too-high hand around her thickening waist and squeezing her breast, he mockingly handed her a late wedding present. It turned out to be a copy of
Pamela
, Samuel Richardson’s wildly popular novel about a servant girl fighting for her virtue in the house of a lecherous master.

‘Richardson could have been writing about you,’ drawled Rupert, causing a ripple of laughter to run through several female guests who’d gathered around.

To their disappointment, however, Rupert showed no desire to dance with any of them and instead retired to the gambling tables in an attempt to reduce his debts and finish paying for a colt called Third Leopard, whose owner was threatening to sell him elsewhere.

As he raked in his winnings – a pile of sovereigns as gold as his hair – Rupert Black was singing the praises of his mare Sweet Azure, whom he might have been forced to sell if things didn’t pick up.

‘Like all good fillies,’ he said insolently, so a passing James Northfield could hear, ‘she has the face of an angel and the posterior of a cook – not unlike your new wife, James.’

Looking down at Rupert’s cruel, unsmiling face, its beauty hardly impaired by bloodshot, slightly crossing blue eyes, James, who loved his wife, upended the table; and, as coins scattered all over the floor, he challenged Rupert to a duel.

‘A better idea,’ suggested Rupert to noisy cheers, ‘would be a match race between Spartan and Sweet Azure round Rutminster Racecourse on the old track through the woods, the loser giving the winner four thousand guineas.’ And, as the Northfields owned the racecourse, it was arranged in front of witnesses that the contest would take place after the final race on the following Saturday.

Throughout that Saturday, rumours swirled round more thickly than the fog. Many of the gentry rolled up on horseback after a day’s hunting and were instantly engulfed by pickpockets, drunkards, prostitutes, cutpurses and gypsies telling fortunes, crowding round the betting posts as the money poured in.

Northfield had the finer horse, Black was the finer rider. But, although lithe and lean, at six feet tall, Rupert was twelve pounds heavier than the weedy James – twelve pounds which Sweet Azure, far smaller and slighter than Spartan, would have to carry over four miles. Yet Black was still the favourite.

The fog was thickening, ghost-grey, suffocating and blurring everything. As James pulled on his boots, he was reminded of Leonardo da Vinci’s treatise on painting, which claimed that objects seen through fog will loom larger than they are. In fact, James had been so busy writing his own treatise on Leonardo that, unlike Rupert Black, he hadn’t bothered to walk the course.

The only person apart from the Bishop of Rutminster not at the races was Gisela Northfield, who, fighting all-day sickness,
was in the cathedral praying for her husband’s safe return.

Down at the start in the water meadows, oak trunks darkened by rain, like towers in the twisting vapours, were just distinguishable from the black wooded hillside beyond. Once again, the starter questioned whether the race should be run.

‘I can see well enough,’ mocked Rupert Black, who was already mounted, ‘to notice the sweat of fear glistening on James Northfield’s face and to have no difficulty recognizing the winning post.’

James didn’t reply. He was having difficulty merely climbing aboard the plunging, insufficiently ridden Spartan. More so when Hibbert, his groom, let go of the reins in order to contain Seeker, James’ white mastiff, who was fighting to join the race and follow his master.

The crowd huddled together, unwilling to lose their places on the rail, blowing on their fingers, drinking from bottles which they might later throw at a losing horse, and shouting to keep warm. Their roar could almost be heard in Newmarket, miles away, as the two riders splashed off across the water meadows and up on to a track that ran round the wooded bowl of hills, before dropping back down to the water meadows for the finish.

It was colder and more claustrophobic up in the woods. The going was as slippery as the fat from the roasting capon Gisela had spilled over the floor, the first time shy James had stolen a kiss.