The Scorpio Races

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I stand in a round pen in the Malvern Yard with an American at my elbow, both of us watching Corr trot around us. It’s a pale blue morning that needs time to become pleasant. I was intending to spend it on the beach before everyone else got there, but Malvern caught me and pressed the buyer onto me before I could get clear. I didn’t think taking a stranger to the beach was a good idea, so I headed to the round pen to school until my visitor got bored. The rule requiring the capaill to train on the shore only counts if they’re under saddle, something I always take advantage of. There’s not much that can be done in a round pen that will prepare you for life on the beaches.

Already Corr has been going in circles at the end of the lunge line for twenty minutes. The American is enthusiastic but reverent, more awed by me, I think, than by Corr. Our accents make us cautious with each other.

“Quite a remarkable structure. This was built just for the capaill uisce?” he asks. He’s very careful with the last words, but his pronunciation is good. Coppie ooshka.

I nod. On the other side of the stables is the round pen that I exercise the sport horses in, sixteen yards across with high fence-like walls built of light metal tubing. Corr wouldn’t tolerate the metal for very long, and even if he did, everyone is too afraid to put a capall uisce in something that looks like it would blow away. So instead we’re in this fearfully wondrous pen that Malvern devised sometime before I arrived, dug eight feet into the side of a hill so that the earth makes a solid wall around it. The only entrance is a high-dirt-walled path ending at an oak door that serves as part of the pen’s wall. I like it well enough, except for when it floods.

“Capaill uisce? Capall uisce?” The American frowns now, doubting his usage.

“Capaill is plural. Capall is singular.”

“Roger. It’s never sure if it’s raining or not here, is it?” asks the American. He’s very handsome, in his late thirties, wearing a navy flat cap, a white V-neck sweater, and slacks that won’t stay that pressed for long in this humidity. The sky spits at us, but it’s not really rain. It’ll be gone before I head down to the beach with the others. “How long will you trot him out?”

Corr is already annoyed with the gait. My father once said that no water horse was meant to trot. Any horse has four natural gaits – walk, trot, canter, gallop – and there’s no reason for one to be preferable over another. But Corr would sooner gallop until he’s lathered like the surf than trot for half the time. My mother once said that I hadn’t been built to trot, either, and that’s true, too. It’s too slow to be exciting, too jolting to be comfortable. I’m perfectly content to let Corr do it on his own right now, without me on his back.

At the moment, he can tell that he’s being watched by a stranger, however, so he picks his feet up and tosses his mane just a little more than usual. I allow him his show. There are worse flaws than vanity in a horse.

The American’s still looking at me, so I reply, “Just taking the edge off. The beach will be crowded again today, and I don’t want to bring three fresh horses down there.”

“Well, he’s a beauty,” the American says. It’s meant to flatter me, and it does. He adds, “I see by your smile you already know.”

I didn’t think I was smiling, but I did already know.

“I’m George Holly, by the way,” the American says. “I’d shake your hand if it wasn’t occupied.”

“Sean Kendrick.”

“I know. You’re why I came. They said it wasn’t a race unless you were in it.”

My mouth quirks. “Malvern said you had your eye on some yearlings.”

“Well, I came for them, too.” Holly wipes the mist from his eyebrows. “But I could’ve sent my agent for them. How many times have you won?”

“Four.”

“Four! You’re the man to beat. A national treasure. Regional treasure, perhaps. Does Thisby have home rule? Why don’t you race on the mainland? Or maybe you do and I’ve missed it. We get your news slowly, you know.”

George Holly didn’t know it, but I had been to the mainland once with my father, for one of the races there. It was vests and flat caps and bowlers and canes, horses in snaffle bits and jockeys in silks and a track contained by a white rail, and wives who looked like dolls. The benevolent hills stretched gently on either side of the stands. The sun had shone, the bets had been cast, the favorite won by two lengths. We came home and I’d never gone back.

“I’m no jockey,” I say. Corr starts to come in toward us, and I push him back out to the wall with a flick of my stick.

The stick isn’t long enough to touch him, but it’s got a length of red leather fixed to the end, and it snaps to remind him of his place.

“Me neither,” Holly announces broadly, putting his hands in his pockets like a boy. He rotates on his heel as I turn, watching Corr circle around us. “Just a horse lover.”

Now that he’s said his name, I know exactly who he is. I’ve not met him before, but I know his agent, who comes over each year to import a yearling or three. Holly’s the American equivalent of Malvern, the owner of a massive breeding farm known for show jumpers and hunters, wealthy and eccentric enough to come all the way to Thisby for a chance to improve his stock. “Horse lover” is a stark understatement, albeit one that makes me like him better.

And Malvern has me babysitting him. I should be flattered. But still, I’m wondering how difficult it will be to hand him off in order to get down to the beaches.

“Do you think Benjamin Malvern would part with this beast?” Holly asks. He’s watching Corr’s tireless stride and imagining it, I think, on his home soil.

My breath’s uncertain. For the first time, I’m relieved by the answer to that question, though it’s caused me sleepless nights before. “Malvern won’t sell his water horses to anyone.”

Also, it’s illegal to transport the capaill uisce from the island, but that doesn’t seem like something that would stop someone like Holly. If he were a horse, I think I’d have to trot him around this round pen for a long time to take the edge off.

“Perhaps he hasn’t been offered the right price.”

My fingers tighten on the lunge line enough that Corr feels the tension and flicks an ear toward me, always sensitive to my mood. “He’s had good offers.”

At least one very good offer. Everything I had saved over the years, everything from my share of the winnings. I could buy ten of Malvern’s yearlings, ten of any of his other horses. Just not the one I want.

“I expect you would be the one to know,” Holly says. “Sometimes it’s not money they’re looking for.” He doesn’t sound upset; a man so used to both buying horses and being refused them that neither scenario surprises him. “I sure do like the look of him. Malvern horses! Sh-ite.”

He’s so clearly delighted by it all that it’s hard to fault him.

I ask, “How long are you here?”

“I’m on the ferry the day after the race, with whatever Benjamin Malvern has convinced me I can’t live without. Want to join me? I could use a boy like you. Not a jockey, but a whatever you call yourself.”

I allow him a thin smile that reveals the impossibility of this.

“I see how it is,” Holly replies. He gestures his chin toward Corr. “Can I hold him for a moment? Will he let me?”

He is so polite about it that I hand him the lunge line and my stick. Holly takes them delicately, his feet automatically moving apart to give him a better base of support. The stick rests lightly in his right hand, an extension of his arm. The man must have lunged hundreds of horses.

Still, Corr immediately tests him. He tosses his head up and moves in, and Holly has to flick the stick at once. Corr keeps pushing inward.

“Snap,” I say. I’m ready to take him back if I must. “It has to snap.”

Holly flicks the stick again, this time hard enough to audibly snap the leather, and Corr twists his head, more conciliatory than ill-tempered, before trotting back out to the wall. Holly’s smile is broad and pleased. “How long has it taken you to get him like this?”

“Six years.”

“Could you do this with the other two mares I saw?”

I had tried the lunge line, in fact, with the pure bay mare, and though it hadn’t been a disaster, it hadn’t been pretty, either. Surely I wouldn’t have wanted Holly or anyone else with me in the round pen that day. I’m not entirely certain that six years with either of the mares would end up the same way that six years with Corr has. I’m not sure, after all this time, if it’s because he understands me better than they do, or merely because I understand him better than them.

“Who taught you this? Surely not Malvern.” Holly glances at me.

In that brief moment of distraction, the bare second it takes for Holly to look toward me, Corr surges away from the wall toward us. Swift and soundless.

I don’t wait for Holly to react. I snatch the stick from his hand and jump to meet Corr, pressing the tip of the stick into his shoulder. Corr rises up, away from the pressure of it, but I follow him. As he rears, I lay the red leather against his cheek, daring him to test me as he tested Holly.

We’ve played this game before and we both know the outcome.

Corr drops to the ground.

Holly lifts his eyebrows. He hands me the lunge line and wipes his palms on his slacks. “First time behind the wheel. At least I didn’t wrap her around a tree.”

He’s not at all fazed.

“Welcome to Thisby,” I say.