Riding Shotgun (21 page)

“Put a crop in anyway,” she insisted.

“Let’s discuss this later.”

The Deyhles rode over to their host. He leaned out of the saddle and warmly kissed Cig’s hand. “Pryor Deyhle, I am so happy to see you, mademoiselle. If you’re with us we’ll run red foxes!”

“There are always red foxes at Shirley.” She smiled, knowing there always would be, and she began to feel confident, for foxhunting was her element regardless of the century.

A throng of people rode over, all talking at once, all eager to greet Pryor. With Margaret and Tom’s help she chatted, laughed, and got through it with few mistakes, although people thought her attire quite severe and a few were scandalized by her wearing breeches.

Lionel deVries joined the group. A small coterie swam around him currying for favor.

Lionel swept off his hat and bowed his head, beaming at the sight of her.

“Artemis herself.”

“Flatterer.” But she loved it. She felt that giddy sensation, the warm flush of confusion and attraction, and it was as though she was seeing him for the first time, seeing him as she had once before… in a time to come.

Lionel rode up beside her, reached for her hand and pressed it to his lips. “I have no need of invention in your presence. Simple descriptive powers will do.” Then he touched his hat and said to Margaret, “You, of course, must be Hera.”

Margaret’s silvery laugh was infectious. “I hope I have a more faithful husband.”

The gathering laughed although Amelie Boothrod’s was forced but she did say, “Zeus was faithful for three hundred years. That means Daniel has two hundred and fifty remaining.”

The group howled.

Daniel replied, “In your presence, my angel, two hundred and fifty years will be as the twinkling of an eye.” He winked. “But how could I fall to a circus of vices after a feast of such virtue?” The men whistled while the ladies applauded. Amelie beamed, although she didn’t believe a word of it. Somehow it didn’t matter at the moment.

In this frontier, this fragile outpost of European ambition and culture, social gatherings were cherished. The dueling of the Boothrods enriched the celebratory atmosphere. People labored long and hard on their farms and at their trades. Sunlight, as precious as gold, guided their activities. Laughter, even more precious than gold, bound them together. If there were a shortage of foxes they would chase anything that ran, including one another.

The loneliness of the fierce New World struggle to survive could be dispelled by gossip, laughter and the chase.

Here among these people she felt the bonds of community, true communion. It surprised her for she thought she lived in a fairly tight-knit community. She began to realize that she was compressed, her life had been squeezed into artificial blocks of time. Everything had to fit. Harried by numbers, from the clock to her social security number to her credit cards to her mortgage, she had been lulled into believing life was finite; after all, numbers are. But experience isn’t measurable and friendship can’t be squeezed into fifteen-minute intervals of telephone exchanges. She’d fallen into the trap of her epoch: frantic activity just to keep one’s head above water. She wanted out of that trap as much as she wanted to return to her children.

She began to dream—could she bring them here?

She felt oddly infused with light. She grasped a tiny truth for herself even as Lionel grasped her hand. She wasn’t a
number. She might mean nothing to her government other than a yearly tax payment, but the impersonality of large institutions could be resisted, could perhaps even be changed, if people like her declared, I’ll live my life as I please. I’m not a silent victim. I might lose the battle for individual freedom but I’ll surely lose if I don’t fight.

She’d never in her forty years entertained the idea that she could affect her time or the future. Yet looking at these people who endured more than she ever had or probably ever would, she felt gratitude and courage. If they could build a new world, some of them carried here against their will, if they could work, love and live, what in the hell was the matter with her? She could do whatever she had to do and a lot of what she wanted to do. The choice was hers.

“Dearest lady, where did you get that horse?” One young man, long-faced and blond, grinned as he rode toward her, snapping her out of her reverie and causing Lionel to squeeze her hand even tighter.

“Abraham Boothrod, Daniel’s son,” Margaret said out of the corner of her mouth for she rode on Cig’s near side.

“Mr. Boothrod—you’ve grown into such a handsome fellow!”

He glowed. Abraham was a young man in his father’s shadow. “You do me a great honor to flatter me so.”

The sound of the hunting horn cut off conversation as all eyes turned toward the hounds. Cig gasped, for moving around the side of a barn was a pack of black and tans, big-boned, handsome hounds. She’d always heard that black and tans were stubborn, hard to control. She’d expected a pack of English foxhounds, heavier than the American foxhounds she ran.

“Good hunting!” Abraham saluted her with his crop.

“Good hunting to you, sir.” She returned the wish then asked Lionel, “Black and tans?”

“Aye, a new man from Ireland brought the whole pack over last year. The fellow has a gift with hounds. They’re in fine voice and so is he.” He dropped her hand at last.

She looked from the glistening pack to the other riders. Most rode in flat, saddle seat-type saddles. The stirrup irons
were just that, irons, although she saw a handful of black men riding with wooden stirrups.

“Grooms?” Cig asked.

Tom nodded as Lionel was reluctantly called away by their host.

Margaret added, “Some are slaves. That fellow over there wearing the blue coat is a freeman.”

“Slave trade is picking up.” Tom rubbed his chin. “The more hands a man can put in his field the richer hell become. Of course, you have to be rich to buy a slave in the first place.”

Cig half-listened, overwhelmed by the spectacle and by Lionel’s presence. She studied the other hunters who wore clothes comparable to her own. The coats, woven of sturdy fabric, were cut longer as were the waistcoats. Her waistcoat had contracted into a vest. All the men wore folded-over boots, which some were in the process of unfolding over their knees. Most of the ladies rode sidesaddle although a few did not. The women wore shorter boots and most wore skirts of practical fabrics, though a few wore silk, which they arranged on either side of their horses if riding astride. One young woman had wedged the ends of her skirt under her stirrup leathers. Most of the ladies looked comfortable in the saddle.

Except for Daniel Boothrod’s attire, the predominate colors of the coats were dark blue, dark green, or black. The waistcoats were white silk or cotton, a few were canary or buff. The breeches were all buff-colored and the young Huntsman wore deerskin breeches, a French hunting horn over his left shoulder. His close-cropped hair was curly blond, and his thick eyebrows were blond with a tinge of red. His jaw was strong, his nose straight and his teeth unusually white. He was perhaps a lean five foot seven. His smile could melt a heart of stone. It haunted Cig. He was a gorgeous flash of lightning.

“Who’s the Huntsman?” a mesmerized Cig asked.

“Patrick Devlin Fitzroy. He’s the fellow who brought over the black and tans.”

“Handsome,” Cig said.

“Him?” Tom shrugged.

“You never think any man is handsome but yourself,” Margaret teased him.

“As long as you think that, my love,” he replied.

“What happened to Edward Hill’s pack?” Cig correctly assumed a man of such property would keep a pack of fine hounds.

Tom frowned. “They rioted on deer.”

“Well, if it’s in the blood, forget
it
” Cig, at home in the hunt field, responded. A foxhound should never chase a deer.

Fitzroy blew the horn. The notes were deeper, rounder, than the straight, short hunting horns Cig knew, but the calls were identical. And the first sound of the horn always gave Cig goosebumps.

Fitzroy wore no cap or hat. The other riders wore broad-brimmed hats, which a few had pinned up to one side in cavalier fashion.

Tom, excited, edged up to the front of the field. Cig decided she’d stay back to watch people ride. Politeness overcame curiosity because they were watching her, too. Her habit was different enough to cause comment and her forward seat appeared precarious.

Fitzroy blew deep staccato notes, three times in succession to cast his hounds. Quiet in the saddle, he moved behind his obedient pack.

Cig noticed that Edward Hill’s groom, the African, Marker, fanned out to the left of the pack, and a giant of a man whom she didn’t know worked over on the right. Fitzroy worked like Roger with two whippers-in to keep the hounds in line.

As they moved away from the barns the country road opened up before them. There were fewer meadows than Cig remembered in this territory and fewer fences.

A lone, deep voice called. Others answered. No matter how many times Cig heard hounds find, it thrilled her. Full Throttle, accustomed to leading the field, complained about being stuck in the rear. “Behave yourself,” she chastised him. He swept his ears back, snorted once, but obeyed.

They picked up a trot and then the cry, full, burst out of the hounds’ throats like a canine Magnificat in C Major. Mrs. Boothrod, face flushed with excitement, rocked back and forth in her high-sided sidesaddle, her skirt draped over to one side. Abraham Boothrod sat straight up in his saddle, feet forward, heels down. His father’s insistence on haute école showed, for the son was a much better rider than the father.

Although not a dressage rider, Cig recognized the very same dressage principles that had been drummed into people’s heads throughout the centuries. The field of riders evidenced those principles. A good rider was a good rider no matter what discipline—or the century.

Within seconds the whole field exploded down the road, flat out. Cig forgot to stay behind. The pace was too good. She passed Margaret, loping along on Pollux, enjoying himself tremendously. From Pollux’s point of view this beat plowing. Cig blew past Lionel deVries and his acolytes. He spurred his horse to keep up with her. One minion slid off lüs horse trying to keep up, too. Daniel Boothrod became a blur. He called out something but she couldn’t hear him. She did hear Lionel though, drawing alongside her.

“No mortal rides like that! You are the goddess of the hunt.”

“Lionel,” she replied, exhilarated, “you
can
ride.”

His hands followed the motion of his horse’s head and neck. He fell in behind her. “I just want to keep my eyes on you.”

She naturally took the lead. She didn’t mean to be rude but no one appeared to be acting as Fieldmaster. She zipped right in Patrick Fitzroy’s pocket, staying close in behind him and the hounds. He looked around in amazement then delight.

The hounds, longer-legged but much heavier than her hounds, couldn’t cover ground as quickly as her pack. Still, they were wondrous hounds.

The pack, running tight, swerved left into a wood filled with massive black walnut trees. No one had cut trails so the riders picked their own way through. She glanced around to
check on her field, as she thought of them, and discovered that Tom on Helen was behind Abraham Boothrod and behind him, riding hard, was Daniel. Many of the ladies in their velvet seats elected to go around the woods but they knew their hunting etiquette and were careful not to cross the line of the fox.

Margaret, keenly listening for the hounds, rode in the middle of the field. Many people were mounted on draft horses, draft crosses, or carriage horses, heavier-boned and slower than Full Throttle who among this crowd was an animal of surpassing beauty. But then Cig thought him beautiful even if he’d been among Olympic show jumpers. Throttle, all heart and a good brain, relished his position. He was in front. He knew his job: stay close to the hounds. Running at a slow controlled canter behind a draft horse, clods of dirt flying in his face, would never do.

With everyone crashing about in the thick woods Cig thought the black and tans would lift their heads or become distracted. Noses to the ground they pressed on, jumping obstacles, but as she feared, getting more entangled in underbrush than her own pack simply because they were so much bigger.

One hound twisted a leg in a vine and howled bloody murder. Cig, seeing the field slowed by the underbrush, pulled up, quickly dismounted, and freed the hound. He crashed about on his way. She swung back in the saddle as Tom, Abraham, and Lionel watched approvingly. Fitzroy, turning in his saddle as he rode on for he had to keep up with his pack, touched his whip handle to his brow in thanks.

“The fox will find a creek if there is one or he’ll run over deer tracks,” she said.

Tom pointed to his left. “There’s usually a current of strong cold air along the run there.” Cig recognized the word for creek.

“Follow me,” she quietly said.

The field did as she told them because she was a natural leader—and they were having great sport.

Cig lifted her head, feeling the cold air on her cheeks.
Tom knew this territory. She did, too, but it sure didn’t look like this. There were forests where she knew miles of pasture. Once she hit the creek, though, she knew she wasn’t far from the edge of Shirley Plantation as she knew it. They were heading northwest.

The hounds straggled out of the woods. She pursued, plunging into the creek, clambering up on the opposite bank. The field followed her. Soon they arrived at a huge pasture, one end marked by snake fencing.

The sidecar ladies, as Cig thought of them, were nowhere in sight. Cig raised her hand to halt the group. Lionel rode past her.

“Hold hard.” Command drenched her voice.

Lionel halted, raised a bemused eyebrow and said, “Yes, your Highness.”

Without missing a beat Cig shot back, “Better than your Lowness.”

Abraham Boothrod guffawed and Margaret’s jaw hung on her ample bosom.

Cig turned to the field. “If you follow me I promise you the hunt of your life.”

Edward Hill, blood hot for the chase, held up his silver-headed crop. “We’ll follow you to the gates of Hell!”