CHAPTER NINE #2
‘Oh, shut up, Guinness! Do be quiet,’ said the huntsman good-naturedly, accepting a glass of whisky and milk from his hostess as Mrs Tanner giggled up at him coquettishly.
There must have been eighty horses standing on the drive already, Sage thought in amazement, with yet more coming up the road.
She was walking Ajax to a free patch of gravel, slightly out of the way, when an older woman, wearing a waterproof hat and green anorak, approached her purposefully, a cloth banking bag in her hand.
‘Morning. Who are you? I’m the secretary. Have you got your cap for me?’ she asked brusquely, holding up the bag.
‘Cap? Erm … Oh goodness, I hadn’t thought of that!’ Sage was mortified; she had only brought a twenty-pound note as a tip for the groom, and had completely forgotten about the cap. Her cheeks turned scarlet.
‘Morning, Mrs Woods. She’s with me.’ Rafe rode up, looking immaculate and startlingly handsome in his red coat, seated on his pristine white Warhorse.
‘Ah yes – you called me yesterday to pay for her, Rafe, didn’t you?’ Mrs Woods scratched her whiskery chin thoughtfully and moved off towards a woman on a coloured cob.
‘Are you nervous?’ Rafe asked Sage kindly, noticing her shivering slightly despite the sunshine.
‘Yes, but not about riding,’ Sage said fretfully. ‘Thank you so much for paying my cap.’
‘I know … horsey, hunting women are the pits, aren’t they?
Please don’t thank me, it’s my pleasure.
Don’t worry, they’ll be nicer when they see you ride – nothing inspires admiration like a pretty, properly dressed woman riding hard to hounds.
’ Rafe looked at Sage. Their eyes caught for a moment and then, aware that he had said more than he’d meant to, he changed tack.
‘Ajax will look after you and get you about. Wherever hounds go, you will follow. He’s a complete machine, you’ll see.
’ He moved Warhorse away from Ajax’s flanks where they were almost touching and turned to look over his shoulder.
A teenage girl in jeans and a crop top, despite the icy weather, shyly offered Sage a tray with glasses of port and whisky lined up on it.
‘I forgot it was acceptable for everyone to get plastered at ten o’clock in the morning on a weekday,’ Sage said, laughing, as she took a whisky. ‘Thank you.’
‘Hello, Emily. Back from school?’ Rafe asked the girl, relieved to talk to someone less havoc-making. Sage was really getting under his skin; he was sounding like a fool. He winced as he remembered that ‘nothing inspires admiration’.
‘I got suspended again.’ She hung her head, adding sullenly, ‘Mummy is making me do this as penance. I’m not allowed to ride today, even though Daddy said he didn’t mind.’
‘No, that would be rather counterproductive … you’d better eat humble pie and then she might let you come out on Saturday!’ Rafe was laughing but Emily had flushed bright pink and scuttled away.
‘Terrible scenting weather,’ proclaimed an effeminate man to a coven of overweight, blue-coated, chin-strapped women standing next to him on their heavyweight mounts.
He looked like a wizened gnome, Sage thought, with purple veins threaded all along the top of his sunken cheeks.
He knocked his port back in a single, greedy gulp.
‘Are you not having a drink?’ Sage asked Rafe, sipping her whisky and watching Louis languidly helping himself to a second glass as he chatted up a pretty girl on a leggy skewbald mare.
‘No, I never do when I’m hunting. It makes me reckless.
My father always taught us not to eat or drink anything after breakfast on a hunting day, not until tea, when we had washed off and fed the horses.
Louis is a reprobate. Just have one, or you’ll need to get off and pee and I won’t stop, not even for you!
’ he teased, knowing he would in fact, and extremely uncharacteristically, wait for her without hesitation.
The huntsman was a slight man. He had been a National Hunt jockey until a few years previously when he had retired due to injury.
He was not stereotypically good-looking: at thirty-nine years old he had a broken nose and craggy weathered features and on the ground he walked about with bowed legs, slightly crooked from so many injuries sustained while racing.
On a horse, though, he was dashing in his red coat and rode with natural flair and style.
He sat on his handsome chestnut horse with light hands and a hypnotizing smile that crinkled at the corners.
He took off his hat and started to loudly thank his hosts over the cackling, braying chat of the assembled crowd; the riders largely ignored him and continued their conversations.
Finally, after making a point of saying that they were hunting within the law (following a trail laid by a man and not chasing a fox), he then asked the mounted followers to respect the land, to close any gates that they opened, and to obey their fieldmaster.
Then, with a shout of, ‘Hounds, please!’ he was off.
His cry parted the hundred standing horses like the Red Sea and allowed him to take his hounds, flowing like waves around his horse’s legs, down the drive and through a wooden five-barred gate into the front paddock, which was surrounded by the hedges Sage had seen on their way in.
‘Get in behind him and stay right at the front.’ Rafe indicated the fieldmaster, Major Johnston, an elegant middle-aged man wearing a black coat and velvet cap who was seated on a beautiful bay just in front of them, adding, ‘Go on, Sage – hustle!’
They all stood about while the huntsman put his hounds into some thick scrub at the bottom of the paddock.
Sage jostled for position with Rafe, directly behind the Major.
Ajax was stamping his feet impatiently while Warhorse shook all over with expectation; other horses reared and circled, raring to go.
Then, suddenly, the lone voice of an old, reliable dog hound rent the air with a warbling, spine-tingling cry.
He had found the scent of his quarry: they were off.
The rest of the pack flew over to the lead hound who broke cover, and they all cascaded east along the hedge line, down towards the brook at the bottom of the hill on the other side of the boundary fence.