The Scorpio Races

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The next morning finds the island ghostly quiet. Though the frenzy of last night seemed to suggest that training would begin in earnest today, the stables are still, the roads silent. I’m happy for it; I have a lot to get done in the next twenty-four hours. I cast a glance toward the sky; a dimpled quilt of cloud hides the sun, and below it, smaller clouds race by, in a hurry to get on their way. I’ll know better how long I have until the storm gets here once I see the ocean.

In the eerie quiet of the morning, I turn out the youngest of the thoroughbreds for a bit of exercise and grass before the weather gets poor, and then I gather my supplies to take down to the shore. Two buckets and my pockets sunk full of weak magic.

As I’m about to head out, I hear a voice. “So you’re not a churchgoer, then.”

“Good morning, Mr. Holly,” I reply.

He’s in what I think they must consider Sunday finery in America: a white V-necked sweater and light jacket over creased khaki pants. He looks like he might be ready to pose for one of the mainland paper’s society pages.

“Good morning,” Holly returns. He peers inside my buckets and rears back with a wince. They’re full of Corr’s rank manure and even I have a hard time getting used to the odor. “Sweet Mary and Coca-Cola, that’s hard to bear.” Seeing that I’m struggling to open the gate without setting down my buckets, he opens it for me and closes it behind me, following amiably. “So you’re not a believer?”

“I believe in the same thing they believe in,” I say, with a jerk of my chin toward town and St. Columba’s. “I just don’t believe you can find it in a building.”

The ground is soft and scented lightly with horse manure as I start down the roads toward the shoreline that borders most of Malvern’s pastures. It’s on the opposite side of the island from the racing beach, and while there are still cliffs, they’re lower and more uneven, with uncertain beaches and more places for the ocean and the creatures who live in it to crawl onto shore.

Holly trots to catch up with me and slides one of the bucket handles out of my hand and into his. He grunts at the weight but says nothing else.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Looking for God,” Holly says, matching my stride. “If you say he’s out here, I’ll take a gander.”

I’m not certain he’ll find his sort of God sharing this work with me, but I don’t protest. It’s a bit of a walk to the cliffs and having company might not be terrible. As we get farther away from the protection of the stable yard buildings, the wind becomes more insistent, gusting across the fields unchecked. The only signs of civilization are the stone walls that mark Malvern’s pastures. They long predate Malvern’s herds; this is a Thisby many have forgotten.

Holly, to his credit, walks in silence for several long minutes before he asks, “What is it we’re doing, exactly?”

“Storm’s coming,” I answer. “Already it’ll be worse out at sea, and that will drive the horses in.”

“By horses, you mean” – again he pauses carefully before attempting a pronunciation – “the capaill uisce.”

I nod.

“And drives them in where, exactly? Whoa and hey!”

This last exclamation is because we’ve just gotten to a high point where we can see the ocean and the area around us. The land is all perilous, low cliffs, cracked and cut deeply into the green: pasture and then suddenly empty air and then pasture again. Below us and beyond us, the sea is whitecaps and foam and black rocks like teeth. A busy sea. Tomorrow will be hell, I think. I give Holly a long moment to drink in the sight before I answer his question.

“Drives them inland. If they’re in the shallow water around the island, they’d sooner be on land than facing those rocks and current. And capaill uisce newly on land isn’t something you’d like to see.”

“Because they’re hungry?”

I tip my bucket to allow a bit of the foul cargo to spill out onto the path, then continue picking my way along. “Because they’re hungry, yes. But they’re also uncertain, and that makes them worse.”

“So you’re dumping crap -”

“To mark territory. If they come onshore here, I want them to think they’ll meet Corr.”

“And not Benjamin Malvern’s broodmares?” finishes Holly. We work in silence then, marking the places of easy access along the high ground first, and then working our way down. Finally, there’s only the rocky beach to attend to.

“Perhaps you’d like to stay up for this,” I suggest. I can’t guarantee his safety next to the water. The sea is already tumultuous and dangerous, and there’s nothing to say that there won’t already be capaill uisce down there. Malvern would be displeased if I lost one of his buyers two days after losing a horse the same way.

Holly nods as if he understands me, but when I start down the path, he comes with me. This is a small bravery and I respect him for it. I trade my empty bucket for the one he holds and he massages his palm where the bucket handle pressed into it.

Here at the base of the path, the best of the shoreline is made of rocks the size of my fist, and the rest is boulders and pieces of the cliff that fell short of the water. Before me, the ocean stretches longingly toward my feet. It smells like dead things off at sea.

“If I were trying to catch another horse,” I say, “this would be a good time to do it.”

The surf has found its way into a shallow pool by our feet and George Holly inexplicably dips his fingers into the water. The pool is full of opportunistic anemones that stretch their tentacles out in the surf and urchins that would cut you if you stood on them and crabs that are too small to make a good meal.

“Warmer than I expected,” Holly remarks. “Why aren’t you trying to catch another horse, then? Since you lost one the other day?”

The truth is that there’s precious little reason to catch another capall uisce now that Mutt Malvern has put himself on Skata. There’s not much reason to have Edana, either, at this point. “I don’t need another horse. I have Corr.”

Holly prods one of the urchins with a stone. “How do you know there isn’t a faster horse than Corr out there? Waiting to be caught?”

I think of the piebald and her tremendous speed.

“Maybe there is. I don’t need to know. I’m not tempted,” I say. Of course, it’s not just the winning. I don’t know how to explain that I know his heart better than anyone’s, and he mine. “I don’t need another horse. I just -”

I close my mouth and pick my way to the other access point on this otherwise inaccessible beach. Drawing a handful of salt out of my pocket, I spit on it before throwing it across the mouth of the other path. I tip some of Corr’s manure out. Then I head back up the path without another word.

Holly follows me, and though I don’t turn around, I hear his voice clearly.

“It’s just that he’s not yours.”

I’m not certain I want to have this conversation. “It’s not that he’s not mine. It’s that he’s Benjamin Malvern’s.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes all the sense in the world, on this island.” Thisby is defined by things that are Malvern’s and things that aren’t. “It matters, like this: I belong to Malvern. You don’t.”

“So, freedom.”

I stop what I’m doing and regard him. Holly stands there below me on the path, gazing up, looking incredibly well kept and domesticated in his clean sweater and his pressed slacks. But his expression is anything but vapid. I still don’t think that freewheeling George Holly, American investor, has ever been anything but freewheeling George Holly, American investor, but for the first time, that doesn’t matter. I think he understands me regardless.

“So why don’t you buy Corr from him?”

I smile thinly.

Holly reads my expression. “Is it the money? Ah, he’s not willing. Do you have no leverage? Surely he needs more from you than to win the races. I’m sorry. I’ve overstepped. It’s not my business. Let’s go. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

But he did say something, and it can’t be unsaid. The truth is this: For eleven months of the year I make myself valuable to Malvern, and then for one month, I make myself invaluable. Would he be willing to give up that one month to keep the other eleven? Am I willing to risk it?

We stand back on the high ground; Holly is white against the green and I am black. I knock out the bucket, glad to leave the contents behind, and Holly wordlessly watches me scoop up a handful of clean dirt and whisper to it before scattering it back over the ground again.

“Magic,” says Holly.

“Is a snaffle bit magic?” I ask him.

“All I know is that when I whisper to dirt, my conversations are less than meaningful.”

He watches me treat the other two paths up from the cliffs. He doesn’t ask how I do it, and I don’t tell him, and then, after we’ve started back and the quiet seems long for him, I tell him, “You can say what you’re thinking.”

“No, I can’t,” George Holly says immediately, glad to be invited to speak. “Because it’s more of not my business. And seeing as I’ve poked a stick in my eye once already, I don’t want to do it again.”

I raise my eyebrow.

Holly scuffs off his hands as if he’s been handling something dirtier than water from the tide pool. “All right, then. So what’s going on between you and that girl? Kate Connolly, right?”

I let out a breath, stack my buckets, and head back down the road toward the yard.

Holly says, “If you think by not answering that you’ll convince me there’s nothing, it won’t work.”

“That’s not why I’m not answering,” I say, as he catches up to me again. “I won’t say there’s nothing. I just don’t know what it is.”

I can see her clearly, standing on the rock beside Peg Gratton, unflinching before Eaton and the rest of the race committee. I can’t remember when I’ve been that brave, and it shames me. The truth is, I feel myself being fascinated and repelled by her: She’s both a mirror of myself and a door to part of this island that I’m not. It is like when the mare goddess looked into my eye; I felt that there was a part of myself that I didn’t know.

“I’ll tell you what it is in American,” George Holly says, “but you might not want to hear it.”

I cast him a withering glance and he laughs with good humor.

“This is worth every day away from home,” he says. “Should I gamble on her, then?”

“You should save your money for hay,” I mutter. “It’ll be a long winter.”

“Not,” says Holly, “in California.” And he laughs, and from the distance of his laugh I realize he’s stopped walking. I turn.

“I think you’re right, Mr. Kendrick,” George Holly says, eyes closed. His face is to the wind, leaning forward slightly so that it doesn’t tip him. His slacks are no longer pristine; he’s tracked bits of mud and manure up the front of them. His ridiculous red hat has blown off behind him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. The wind has its fingers in his fair hair and the ocean sings to him. This island will take you, if you let it.

I ask, “What am I right about?”

“I can feel God out here.”

I brush my hands off on my pants. “Tell me that again,” I say, “two weeks from now when you’ve seen the dead bodies on the beach.”

Holly doesn’t open his eyes. “Let no one say that Sean Kendrick isn’t an optimist.” After a pause, he adds, “I feel you smiling, so don’t deny it.”

He’s right, so I don’t.

“You going to try Benjamin Malvern for that horse, or what?” he asks.

I think of Kate Connolly standing before Eaton, her face brave, looking like a sacrifice on that old killing rock. I feel the mare goddess’s breath on my face, and it carries the scent of thunder in it.

“Yes,” I say.