Nine White Horses (4 page)

“What if,” he said, “this stallion went back to the king who
loves him, but you had one to take his place?”

“You?” Halima did not seem appalled. She was not exactly
delighted, either, as far as he could tell.

He drew a breath to steady himself. “I know I’m a poor
second to yonder magnificence. But I am young, and I can be taught.” He paused.
“It doesn’t have to be a horse, does it? Unless I misunderstood?”

One of the younger ladies, who was closest to birthing or
foaling of them all, regarded him with a kind of weary indulgence. “So, young
thing. You think to find yourself a life of ease and pampering, and making of
children whenever it pleases you.”

He could not deny that he had thought of that, but he said
to her, “That would be dull beyond bearing, lady. I see that there’s much to do
here, both on the farmstead and in the matter of defense. Are your husbands
frequently stolen or appropriated or otherwise removed from their proper
eminence?”

“Presumptuous,” the eldest lady murmured.

The lady who was bearing said, “That was an accident, and a
singular misfortune. A mortal man happened to wander past our borders while we
were distracted by matters both high and holy. Our lord was young, and it was
spring, and the man was riding a mare. She was in season. What could our lord
do after all but what his nature bade him? He broke the wards that we had set,
and had his will of the mare—and when he came to himself again, he was bound
and bridled and on his way to Narbonne.”

“He sold for a great price,” Halima said, “and the one who
bought him had sorcerers at his command, who wrought such spells as we could
not break without harm to ourselves or our lord.”

Aymery nodded. He had guessed as much. “So,” he said, “if I
offer you all the talents that I have, and any others that you can teach, would
you let my king have his horse?”

“He is no one’s possession,” the lady who was bearing said
with a distinct chill in her voice.

“But the king may belong to him,” said Aymery.

“If he agrees, and you agree to serve our will in all
things,” the eldest lady said, “then so may it be.”

The breath rushed out of him. He had not expected that, not
yet. Maybe not at all. And what it meant…

Men gambled their lives every day. Aymery could still lose
this wager—though what exactly that meant, he was not sure.

Once more he bowed to Tencendur, and spread his hands. “My
lord,” he said, “it seems the choice is yours.”

And since Tencendur was a horse, and a stallion at that,
Aymery had no doubt what that would be. Pasture and mares forever after—or
until he was stolen or appropriated again.

If the ladies would allow it. Certainly it would take strong
magic; and Carl was a most Christian king. He had no sorcerers in his
following.

Tencendur rubbed an itch on his knee. If he was thinking,
Aymery could not see him doing it. He nosed at the paving of the courtyard, found
a bit of straw, chewed it thoroughly.

Then he turned and walked out of the circle of ladies.
Toward the outer gate.

They parted before him. Aymery could not read their
expressions. Even Halima was completely blank.

The stallion must be going out to pasture. He could not be
leaving. He was a horse. He would not make choices as a man might.

“You had better go with him,” Halima said as Aymery stood
gaping. “He’ll go where he’s determined to go, but if another traveler happens
by, and the traveler is riding a mare…”

That could happen, Aymery conceded. “But,” he said. “I
struck a bargain.”

“You did,” said the eldest lady. “It begins with this. Go
with our lord, young lord. Be his escort where he wishes to go.”

Aymery was bound to obey—even if he had not wanted it with
most of his heart. “I will come back,” he said.

“We know you will,” said the eldest lady.

Tencendur had nearly reached the gate. Aymery sprang in
pursuit.

The stallion stopped. His eye rolled. Aymery was duly
warned, but he was also properly commanded. He swung onto the now familiar
back.

It suffered him as it had before. He was no more in command
of the horse now than he had been, but that too was familiar, if not precisely
comforting. “As you will,” he said to the ear that curved back toward him, “my
lord.”

As Tencendur carried him through the gate, the echo of
hooves multiplied to an improbable degree. Aymery looked back startled.

The three eldest ladies stood where he had left them. The
rest trotted in the stallion’s wake, even she whose belly swung, huge with
foal.

Halima came up level with his knee, and made as if to nip at
it. He slapped her impudence away—then paused in a kind of horror. By the
bargain he had made, she was his lady now, and the ruler of his life and honor.

She did not seem terribly offended. She continued beside her
sire, but more decorously now, as he cantered out of the valley of the ladies
onto the plain of Narbonne.

o0o

The wind was still blowing. The king’s tent was back in
its place, battened down at every point. The king’s council was still bickering
over what to do, and he was in an even fouler mood than he had been when his
horse was stolen.

When a messenger came running with word of a strange new
riding, Carl was more than glad to abandon his council. So, as it happened,
were most of the rest of his councillors. They streamed after him out of the
tent, into the wind and the evening light.

It was as the messenger had said: there was the page Aymery,
whom the king had missed at dinner, riding the stallion Tencendur and leading a
small and very fine herd of mares. The boy rode with neither bridle nor saddle,
and the mares were likewise free of all restraint.

Tencendur halted in front of the king. Carl reached out
almost blindly and took the stallion’s head in his arms. It came to rest
against him.

He sighed, and so did the horse. This was a homecoming, for
both of them.

o0o

“I should like to meet your mother,” Halima said.

Aymery was a man of consequence now. He had a tent—minuscule
but all his own—and if the manservant who came with it was a lazy lout with a
mouth on him like a Tiber bargeman, still he was a servant, and Aymery was
acutely conscious of the honor.

The tale had told itself. Most of it was even true: how
Aymery had tracked the stallion to the farmstead where he was bred, and found
him among his harem, and stolen him back for the king’s sake. No one knew about
the ladies, nor was Aymery about to mention that five of them were now enjoying
the admiration of every horseman in the army.

The king had been greatly moved, and would have given Aymery
more than a tent and a servant and a horse and a set of Saracen armor complete
with sword and bow and collection of lances, but Aymery had professed himself
quite unready for the noble bride and the estate on the Saxon border. The
bride’s father was visibly relieved: he had his eye on a greater eminence than
a very young and rather minor lordling from Armorica.

So that was settled, and Aymery had been thinking he might
manage a good night’s sleep. But when he came to his bed, he found Halima in
it—fully and decorously clothed, and bubbling over with questions about the
army and the camp and the court and the king.

And about his family, his sisters and his mother. “I should
like to meet them all,” she said. “May we do that? Soon?”

“That depends on the king’s pleasure,” Aymery said, before
he remembered; then he added, “And yours. I suppose I can get leave. If that’s
your will.”

“It might be,” she said. She propped herself on her elbow,
eyes dark in the lamplight. “I like your king. He’d make a fine stallion.”

Somewhat to Aymery’s surprise, his heart twisted. “I’m
superseded already, then?”

“No. He has too much of the world to carry.”

“And all I have is you.”

“And your mother. And your sisters.” Her brows knit in
reflection. “You know how to be what we need you to be. It’s bred in you. As if
you were of our blood, almost.”

“Old blood. Though not as old as yours.”

“Nothing is as old as ours.”

He drew a breath. He had not been going to say it, but after
all he had to. “Why did you let me go? Why did
you
go? Wouldn’t we all have been safer where we were?”

“Maybe,” she said. “And maybe it was time for us to walk in
the world again. We’re much less likely to be troubled by thieves and sorcerers
if we seem to belong to a king—and this king will live to a great age. Eldest
Grandmother saw it, and she always sees true.”

That was a great good thing. But there was still that other
question. “What I bargained for—if you’re here, and Tencendur is here, then
what do you need me for?”

“
I
need you,” she
said, “and you have much to learn, some of which my sire can teach. You can be
your king’s for as long as it suits us; but you’re ours always. That, we’ll
bind you to.”

Aymery let out a long sigh. “So I’m a slave of sorts. A
vassal. A servant.”

“You did choose it,” she reminded him.

“I did,” he said. “I’m not sorry. Amazed, somewhat. Baffled.
A little scared.”

“You should be,” said Halima. But she smiled.

He smiled back. He caught himself wondering—did he dare?
Would she—?

She answered before he could say a word: she caught his face
in her hands and pulled him to her, and kissed him until the whole world went
away.

Then he knew he had chosen rightly. And so, he thought,
looking into her eyes that were the same whether she walked as woman or mare,
did she.

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The yard was full of Lipizzans.

I’d been driving by, missing my old mare and thinking maybe
it was time to find another horse, and I’d slowed because I always do, going
along any row of fence with horses behind it, and there they were. Not the
usual bays and chestnuts and occasional grey, but a herd of little thick white
horses that weren’t—but couldn’t be—but were.

They weren’t the Vienna School. They came from somewhere in
Florida, Janna told me afterward, and they’d been doing something at the
armory, and they needed a place to board for the night.

I didn’t know Janna then. I wouldn’t have stopped, either,
just gone down to a crawl and stared, except for the two horses in the paddock.

It wasn’t that they were wild with all the running and
clattering. It was that they were quiet. A chestnut and a grey, not big, just
about Morgan-sized, and maybe Morgan-built, too, but finer in the leg and
shorter in the back than most I’d seen—and of course you don’t see a grey
Morgan. But as upheaded as any Morgan you’d want to look at, with a good arch
to their necks, and ears pricked sharply forward, watching the show.

I pulled over without even thinking about it. I remember
wondering that it was odd, me staring at two perfectly nice but perfectly
normal horses, with all those white stallions taking turns around the yard and
being walked into the barn.

The grey would be white when he was older, there was that.
He had a bright eye, but calm. When one of the Lipps circled past his fence,
his head came up higher and he stamped. Then he lifted himself up, smooth and
sweet as you please, and held for a long breathless while. He was, I couldn’t
help but notice, a stallion.

The chestnut watched him with what I could have sworn was
amusement. His ears flicked back and then forward. His muscles bunched. He
soared up, even smoother than the grey, and lashed back hard enough to take the
head off anyone who might have dared to stand behind him.

Levade, capriole. Then they were quiet again, head to tail,
rubbing one another’s withers like any old plow horses.

I got out of the car. No one looked at me or even seemed to
have noticed the demonstration in the paddock. I wandered toward the fence. The
chestnut spared me a glance. The grey was too busy having his neck rubbed.

I didn’t try to lure them over. I leaned against the post
and watched the stallions, but with a corner of an eye for the ones in the
paddock.

There was an old surrey on the other side, with a tarp half
draped over it, half folded back. Someone sat in the seat. She was old, how old
I couldn’t tell; just that. She was over sixty, and probably over seventy, and
maybe eighty, too. It didn’t keep her from sitting perfectly straight, or from
looking at me with eyes as young as her face was old, large in their big round
sockets, and a quite beautiful shade of grey. She didn’t smile. If she had, I
might have ducked and left.

As it was, I took my time, but after a while I went over. “Hello,”
I said.

She nodded.

I supposed I knew who she was. I’d heard about a woman who
had a farm out this way. She was ninety, people said, if she was a day, and she
still drove her own horses. Had even been riding them up till a little while
ago, when she broke her hip—not riding, either, but falling down in her house
like any other very old lady. She had a cane beside her, with a brass horse’s
head.

“Nice horses,” I said, cocking my head at the two in the
paddock.

She nodded again. I wondered if she could talk. She didn’t
look as if she’d had a stroke, and no one had said anything about her being
mute.

“Not often you see two stallions in a paddock together,” I
went on.

“They’ve always been together.”

Her voice was quiet and a little thin, but it wasn’t the
old-lady voice I might have expected. She had an interesting accent. European,
more or less.

“Brothers?” I asked.

“Twins.”

I stared at them. They did look a lot alike, except for the
color: bright copper chestnut, almost gold, and dapple grey, with the mane and
tail already silver.

“That’s rare,” I said.