Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
“Atlas is all settled in,” Atticus said, hopping off a bench in the stable yard. “Seen to him myself. I’ll show ya.”
I had sent my mount ahead to the Keep in easy stages, though I planned to ride him home. His breeding was half Iberian, and he had the perfect manners, tireless stamina, and nimble athleticism for which those breeds were deservedly famous.
“What else have you noticed?” I asked. Clearly, Atticus was bursting to give me the grand tour of the otherwise deserted stables.
This time of year, the evening barn chores were completed early.
Horses turned out for the night were already at pasture, not that any grass was to be had.
The barn aisles would be raked, water buckets scrubbed and refilled, hay distributed to horses in stalls.
Hunt season was reaching its zenith, and both Algernon and Dunsford rode to hounds.
“That’s the baron’s morning horse,” Atticus said, nodding at a leggy bay in the first stall. “Nobody else rides him, though his manners is fine. He don’t bite nor kick. Name is Scipio, and he don’t have no other name.”
The horse pinned his ears and swished his tail at us.
He was ribby, as hunters in work tended to be.
The hounds-and-horses set claimed a lean horse needed less effort to clear an obstacle than a horse carrying extra weight.
A cavalry officer would observe that a skinny horse tended to tire more easily and bungle his jumps.
Not a wisp of hay graced the rack in Scipio’s stall. “Will he be given any fodder between now and morning?”
Atticus’s air of major domo at large faltered. “Dunno.”
I made a cursory inspection of the nearest stalls, all of which boasted a horse cleaning up the last wisps of a hay ration. Dunsford apparently liked all his horses lean, though to be fair, none quite qualified as gaunt, and winter was hard upon us. Even so…
“Ballocks to this.” I gathered up a large armful of hay from the pile at the end of the aisle and stuffed it into Scipio’s hayrack.
He gave me another dirty look—no horse was cheerful when peckish—but was soon aggressively pulling at his extra ration.
“If anybody asks, I gave him that hay,” I said. “Dunsford probably plans to ride him tomorrow in the first flight and wants him on the muscle and light on his feet. Twelve hours without fodder is much too long, though.”
“But he’s Dunsford’s horse, and you mighta just got a groom in trouble.”
“That hay will be gone in less than an hour, nobody the wiser. The grooms are doubtless at supper. A senior stable lad will do a night check before bedtime, and my crime will go unreported. I would rather risk Dunsford’s ire than see that horse colic. Where is Atlas?”
“Up thisaway.”
We processed through the dimly lit stable and came around a corner into a section of the barn with a cobblestone aisle.
Someone else was making a pre-supper visit to the horses.
In the dim light, I thought perhaps Algernon or Bryson had joined us among the equines.
This fellow moved with Bryson’s economy and, like Algeron, had Bryson’s height.
His hair was a darker brown than Bryson’s, and like Algernon, he carried a bit more weight.
“Mind you behave,” he said to the horse in a loose-box. “We might end up staying the night. Don’t be kicking down the walls, or I will never hear the end of it.”
He spoke like a Carstairs, in a rich, cultured baritone that suggested hours spent in the library, nights reading by the fire, and welcome in every local home of any standing.
“Mr. Peter Carstairs?” I asked. The Reverend Peter Carstairs, in all likelihood, also known as Parson Petey in family circles.
He ceased stroking the nose of a limpid-eyed chestnut.
“I have that honor. You must be Lord Julian. A pleasure.” He smiled genially and bowed.
“I’m summoned to supper, and one does not ignore Uncle’s summonses.
Welcome to the Keep, and if your urging motivated Bryson to drop by, we are all in your debt.
I understand your mother is in the area as well. ”
Well informed, as clergy tended to be. “Her Grace is biding with Lady Clotilda, as is my young nephew. I am intent on visiting my horse before changing for supper.”
“I won’t keep you. I do hope you are famished. Cook always lays on a feast when Bry comes through. One more reason I am ever glad to see my cousin.” He nodded in a manner reminiscent of that cousin and strode off, bootheels thumping on the cobblestones.
“The family priest?” Atticus asked.
“A vicar now. He has recently come into the local living, which is controlled by Dunsford. Where is my horse?”
“By that lamp.”
The sight of Atlas, who qualified as tall, dark, and handsome if ever an equine did, restored some element of calm that had gone missing the day he’d been led out of the stable yard at Caldicott Hall.
The horse whuffled at the sound of my voice and poked his head over the half door. I gave him two quarters of an apple filched from the hampers in the traveling coach and scratched a spot just below his ear that he particularly enjoyed.
“Let’s have a look at him.” I took down the halter hanging by the door.
“He’s fine, guv. I checked him over. Fit as anything.”
Though my insistence on an inspection doubtless offended Atticus’s dignity as a groom-in-training, I put the halter on the horse and led him out into the aisle. He came easily, long since accustomed to jaunting off at odd hours.
“See? He’s fine.” A note of truculence had crept into Atticus’s voice.
I nonetheless did a manual inspection, running my hands over bony knees and hocks, looking for heat, swelling, nicks that could escalate into worse. I did the same with pasterns and hooves and then handed Atticus the lead rope.
“Trot him up, please.”
“He’s fine.”
“He is my personal mount, Atticus. I am responsible for his welfare. Please trot him up.”
I did not expect to see any unevenness in the horse’s gait and saw none. Atticus trotted the gelding back in my direction for good measure.
“I tell you, guv, he’s fine. The lads here are a good bunch, if a bit doddery, and they woulda told me if they saw anything amiss.”
“The right front shoe is coming loose. You can hear it against the cobbles. A hollowness compared to the other three feet.”
“You can hear a loose shoe?” Atticus glowered at the hoof in question. “He’s not lame.”
“He is not lame. You listen.” I took the lead rope and demonstrated with the horse.
“Hear it? The hostlers call that a clinchy sound. Catch the shoe going slightly loose, and you can avert tragedy. The traveling coach has some basic farrier’s tools in the boot.
I’ll see to the shoe in the morning, but don’t let the grooms turn him out until I’ve dealt with the problem. ”
Atlas nosed my pocket, though I had no more treats for him.
“Can I at least walk him some?” Atticus asked. “He shouldn’t be cooped up too long after coming all the way from Surrey, and it’s not dark yet.”
For Atlas, a former warhorse, the journey from Surrey could have been little more than a long day’s toddle. Even so, he was in new surrounds, dining on new rations, and drinking water that might not agree with him as well as the water at the Hall did.
“Walk him in hand, let him hand graze on any decent grass you can find, and take the opportunity to pass by Lady Clotilda’s stable yard. Finch has alerted the ladies to our arrival, so Miss West will be keeping an eye out for you. Let her know she can expect a call from me in the morning as well.”
“I’m assigned to dispatch?”
Atticus had a romantically distorted view of the dispatch rider’s life. Danger, saddle sores, and protracted discomfort had gone with the job, as had tremendous responsibility for the successful course of the war.
“You are walking my horse for want of another means of staying out of trouble. You will sleep in my dressing closet, Atticus.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Plenty of room with the grooms.”
“Plenty of heat in the family wing, and we’ve had this discussion. Take the cot in the closet, and you spare me having to find excuses to visit the stable when I have need of you. Let’s put the noble steed away.”
I passed Atticus the lead rope and went to fetch Atlas more hay. He’d covered miles that day in the unrelenting cold, and horses were not designed to endure long bouts of hunger.
Then too, I wasn’t eager to don my supper finery and put up with more of the baron’s ill humor, no matter how lavish the feast.
“The manor house used to be a castle,” Atticus said as we trooped along the gloomy aisle. “That’s why it’s named Dunsford Keep. The keep was the stronghold, the safe place the family could retreat to when the enemy was attacking the castle. One of the lads told me that.”
“He’s correct.” Atticus was a reluctant scholar, though he was acquiring the ability to read and write. “The old keep might still exist within the walls of the present building, or parts of it might still stand. I suspect the great hall is a modern addition for the sake of show.”
An expensive modern addition at that. My musings, about extravagance and vanity in the Carstairs’s history, were cut short by instinct.
I put a hand on Atticus’s shoulder to halt his progress and then put a finger to my lips. The boy nodded.
Something was wrong. Off. Horses demolishing hay had to be among the most reassuring sounds to any soldier. Whatever had piqued my caution was not a sound. The horses were also calm, relaxed, entirely absorbed with their fodder.
What could have…?
Ah. The scent of the stables—a perfume of horse, manure, bedding, hay, and leather—was limned with tobacco smoke. No groom would ever, for any reason, smoke inside a stable.
Somebody was outside, lingering in one place long enough to blow a cloud, or to overhear every word I’d exchanged with my tiger. I motioned for Atticus to seek the shadows and sauntered forth, prepared to meet blow for blow and hoping the eavesdropper wasn’t in possession of a sharp knife.