The Scorpio Races (42 page)

“Corr stood here,” Sean says wonderingly. “I would’ve died. He didn’t have to stay.” For a moment, I see that it doesn’t matter that he didn’t win. The fact of Corr’s loyalty is a bigger thing than the ownership of him.

Then, I watch his eyes sweep over Corr, taking in his lowered head, the blood on his nostrils, the twist of the hind leg. From here, it looks terrible enough that my guts lurch. Sean steps forward and carefully touches Corr’s hind leg, running his hand along it. I see the precise moment when Sean’s hand stops and his shoulders slope and I know it is broken.

I remember what Sean wished for: to get what he needed.

And at that moment, I don’t see how I can believe in any god or goddess or island at all, and if I do, how I could believe them to be anything but cruel.

Sean moves away and jerks up the girth so that the twisted saddle falls to the ground, leaving Corr bare and dark red, his hair curly and damp where the saddle had been. Sean runs his hand over the sweat-curled hair.

Then he twists a handful of Corr’s mane into his hand and presses his forehead against Corr’s shoulder. I don’t need him to tell me that Corr will never run again.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

PUCK

The rest of the day passes in a rush. There are prize ceremonies and money, journalists and tourists. There are congratulations and handshaking and so many voices that I can’t hear any of them. There’s tending for my cut —
My, that’s nasty, Puck Connolly, and how did a horse give you that? You’re lucky it’s not deep
— and pampering of Dove. It goes on for hours and hours and I can’t get away from any of it to anything important.

After the sun has disappeared, I learn that Corr has been given a makeshift shelter in one of the coves on the beach because he cannot walk back to the Malvern Yard. I manage to escape from the mob and make it partway down the cliff path. There in the twilight I see Sean Kendrick sitting against the cliff, eyes closed, and I would have gone to him, but fair-haired George Holly is already shaking him awake and coaxing him away. Even from here, I see that Sean’s expression is wrecked by everything that he’s lost. Holly gives me a far-off nod to send me on, but it’s not until Sean meets my eyes that I lead Dove back toward home.

Finn catches up to me on the way home, skipping a little until he falls into step with me. His hands are stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. For a few moments we walk in silence, the only sounds the pad of our feet on the dirt, and Dove’s hooves occasionally chipping pebbles as she walks. Dusk makes everything seem smaller around us.

“You’re frowning,” he says finally.

I know he’s right; I can feel the furrow between my eyebrows. “I’m counting, that’s why.” There’s not much joy in it, though. The numbers always come up the same: enough for us to save the house, not enough for Sean to buy Corr, even if Malvern would let him.

Finn says, “You should be celebrating! Gabe says he’s making a feast for us at home!” Even after this long day, he can’t keep the spring out of his own step. He’s like a colt on a windy day.

I do my best to keep the sting out of my words, because none of this is Finn’s fault, but a crumb of bitterness creeps in. “I can’t celebrate while Sean Kendrick’s down there with a broken horse he can’t afford because of me!”

“How do you know Sean Kendrick even wants him still?”

I don’t have to be told. I know Sean still wants Corr. It’s never been about the racing.

Finn glances over and gets my answer in my expression. “All right, then,” he says. “Why can’t he afford him?”

Saying it out loud makes it worse, though. I explain, “Sean had to win to get the rest of the money. He didn’t have enough.”

For a long moment, there’s just the slap of our shoes again, the scrape of Dove’s hooves, the wind gusting across our ears. I wonder if Holly’s taken Sean away from the beach. I wonder if Sean will sleep down there. He’s usually so pragmatic, but not where Corr’s concerned.

“Why don’t we give him some money?” asks Finn.

I swallow. “I didn’t win enough for both the house and Corr.”

Finn rummages in his pocket. “We can use this.”

When I see the fat wad of bills in his hand, I stop so fast that Dove rams her head into my shoulder. I demand, “Finn — ! Finn Connolly, where did you get that?”

I can see that Finn’s having to try very hard not to show me a smile. The effort of it gives him the frog face like nobody’s business. I can’t stop looking at the roll of money in his hand, nearly as fat as the purse for the race.

He says, “Forty-five to one.”

It takes me a long moment to puzzle out where I recognize the number from — the chalkboard at Gratton’s. Suddenly, I understand where the rest of the money from the biscuit tin went.

“You gambled on —” I can’t even finish the sentence.

Finn starts walking again, and now there’s a bit of strut to it. He says, “Dory Maud said you were a good bet.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

PUCK

My mother always told me that you should wear your best clothing when you are angry, because it would scare people. I’m not angry, but I’m in the mood to be terrifying, so I take great care in the morning after the races. I spend an hour before my mother’s oval mirror in her room, turning my ginger hair around a brush and twisting the curls with my fingers. I keep an image of Peg Gratton’s hair in my head as I sort it all out. There turned out to be much less of it when it was all going in the same direction, and when I pin it back, I see my mother’s face in the mirror.

I go to her closet and look at her dresses, but none of them look like they would scare anyone. So instead I find a collared shirt and put on a pair of breeches and my boots after I polish all of the beach that was caked on them. I borrow her coral bracelet and her matching coral necklace. Then I step out into the hall.

“Kate,” Gabe says, startled. He sits at the kitchen table and stares. I heard him packing last night. “Where are you going?”

“I am going to the Malvern Yard.”

“Well, you sure do look nice.”

I open the door. Outside, the morning is pastel and mild, scented with wood smoke, as soft as yesterday was hard. “I know.”

I strap my schoolbag over my back and take the bicycle because Dove has earned a day off if she’s earned anything, and I bike through the benevolent day to the Malvern Yard.

As before, when I get to the yard, it is bustling with activity. Grooms with horses going out to pasture, riders taking thoroughbreds out to the gallops for their run, stable boys sweeping down the cobbles.

“Kate Connolly,” says one of the grooms. “Sean’s not here.”

I didn’t think he would be, but I don’t like to hear it anyway. Still, I say, “I’m looking for Benjamin Malvern, actually.”

“He’ll be up at the house — is he expecting you?”

“Yes,” I say, because if he wasn’t expecting me before, he’ll be expecting me when I walk in.

“Well, then, let me,” says the groom. He pulls open the gate for me and my bicycle.

I thank him and walk my bicycle up to the Malvern house. It sits behind the stable and is a big, grand old thing. Like Malvern himself, it’s impressive and powerful-looking but not particularly handsome. I lean my bicycle against the wall and walk to the front door and knock.

For a long moment there is no answer, and then Benjamin Malvern opens the door.

“Good morning,” I say, and I step past him into his center hall. It is a naked thing, just wide-open ceiling and a little drawing-room table against the wall. I see a sitting room beyond it and a single cup sitting in the middle of a white tablecloth.

“I was just having tea,” he says.

“Good timing, then,” I reply. I don’t wait for him to invite me and instead step into the sitting room. Like the center hall, it’s nearly empty. Just a round table in the middle of a high-ceilinged room with nothing but brass sconces on the walls. It seems rather lonely. I wonder if he was just sitting in here wondering if the sea would ever spit out the piebald or Mutt Malvern again. I sit in a chair opposite to the one already ajar.

Malvern’s mouth works. “Milk and sugar?”

I fold my arms on the table and eye him. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

He raises an eyebrow before making me a cup of his odd tea. He pushes it to me and settles down opposite, crossing his legs and leaning back.

“What brings you blowing into my house like a hurricane, Kate Connolly? It’s quite rude.”

“I expect it is. I’ve come for three things, really,” I say. I tip the cup against my lips and he watches me. I close one eye. The tea is almost precisely like drinking a scone or licking the carpet. “Three things I’d like.”

“That’s quite a lot of things to like.”

I reach into the schoolbag and place a small stack of notes on the tablecloth. “The first thing I’d like to do is pay everything owed on the house.”

Malvern eyes the money but doesn’t touch it. “And the second?”

I take another big drink of tea for emphasis. It requires quite a bit of heroics on my part but I manage. “I’d like you to give me a job.”

He sets down his teacup. “And what is it you think you’ll do in this job?”

“I think I’ll probably muck stalls and ride horses and push wheelbarrows, to start, and I think I’ll be good at it.”

Malvern considers me. “Jobs are not the easiest thing to be had on this island, you know.”

“So I’ve heard,” I reply.

Benjamin Malvern rubs his fingers over his mouth and looks up at the empty ceiling high above us. There’s a bit of a crack in the plaster and he frowns at it. “I think I could manage that. And what is your third thing you’d like?”

I set down my teacup and look at him, quite hard. If I am ever to look terrifying, this is the moment. “I would like you to sell Corr to Sean Kendrick even though Sean didn’t win.”

Malvern makes a face. “We had a bargain, he and I, and he knew it.”

“That horse is useless to you, and both of you know it. What is it you think to do with him?”

He opens one of his hands skyward.

I say, “So you might as well sell him. Unless you just fancy tormenting Sean Kendrick.” I consider adding
like your late son fancied
but figure that might be more foul than the situation requires.

“Did he ask you to ask me?”

I shake my head. “He doesn’t know I’m here. And he might feel a little odd if he knew that I was.”

Malvern looks into his tea. “You two are a strange pair. You are a pair, aren’t you?”

“We’re in training.”

He shakes his head. “Fine. I’ll sell him. But the price isn’t changing just because the horse stands on three legs instead of four now. Is that all from you?”

“I said three things and that’s what I gave you.”

“Indeed it is. Well, then, leave me to my tea. Come back on Monday and we can talk about your wheelbarrow.”

I stand up, leaving the notes sitting untouched on the table, and head out into the yard. The breeze runs long and low across the ground, sweeping up the sea and the island grass and the hay and the horses. I think it’s the best smell in the world.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

SEAN

The November sea is a jewel in the evening, dark and glittering beyond the ruddy stones. Corr and I leave the white cliffs behind us as I lead him toward the water. As when I first pulled him from the sea, he wears just a rope halter. I have long since pulled the wrap from his hind leg; it won’t heal him. Holly tells me that they have ways in California of setting the bone, but that he’d still never race again. He tells me that there’s nothing more foolish than for me to buy Corr only to turn him back into the ocean.

But Corr could no sooner go to California than he could fly, and in any case, I’m uncertain what a life like that would hold for a
capall uisce.
He loves the sea and to run, and while I could give him one of those things, we were happy.

And so now I walk him slowly down to the surf. In the sea, his clumsiness will disappear, his weight cradled by the salt water, and he won’t notice so much that his hind leg is not what it was.

I don’t want to say good-bye.

Back by the cliffs, Puck Connolly and George Holly wait for me, both of them with their arms crossed over their chests, their postures identical. They give me this moment alone, and I’m grateful for it.

Despite his painful progress, Corr’s ears prick to the sea. This November ocean sings sweetly to him, luring him and caressing him, quickening his blood. Together we step into the frigid water. In this light, he’s red like the sun before night, a giant, a god. His ear flicks back as the ocean plays over his injured leg and then back out to the horizon. The sea out there is black and depthless, hiding more wonders, perhaps, than even the waters of Thisby.

It wasn’t that long ago that Corr and I splashed in this surf, here at the base of these cliffs. Now he couldn’t even take a step without thought.

I run my hands down his neck, over his withers, down his shoulder. It’s something I’d taken for granted, just the presence of him. I rest my cheek against his shoulder, my eyes closed for just a second, and then I whisper to him.
Find happiness.

Then I can’t stand because my legs won’t hold me here a moment longer. I blink to clear my vision and reach up. I pull off his halter.

I back out of the surf, watching him. His ears are still pricked on the horizon, not toward me. The ocean is his love and now, finally, he’ll have it.

I flip up my collar and turn my back to him as I pick my way back up toward the cliff base. I don’t think I can watch him disappear into the water. It will break my heart.

Puck’s scrubbing her eyes busily as if she has something in them. George Holly bites his lip. The cliffs tower above me and I try to console myself,
I will find another
capall uisce,
I will ride again, I will move to my father’s home and be free.
But there’s no comfort in my thoughts.