The Prince of Midnight (30 page)

For all of the dark and drizzling afternoon, the Seigneur worked the rogue,
flapping blankets and banging on tin buckets and creating any other noise and
excitement he could manage, until the big gray stood calmly, refusing to even
blink.

He rubbed the horse all over with the whip and hung a coiled lead rope on its
ears while it followed him around the paddock like a child. Then came the long,
deliberate process of saddling and bridling an animal that had known nothing but
pain and terror from such things.

The Seigneur had unending patience. It made Leigh want to weep. At times
during the endless afternoon, she found her eyes filling again and her breath
coming in short sobs. She felt shattered, helpless, as if she should tag behind
him compliantly the same way the gray did.

He took exquisite care with the horse. Even when the drizzle started in the
late afternoon, he didn't rush. He never tried to force the animal to obey, only
set up each situation so that the horse preferred to do what he asked rather
than be compelled to keep running around the enclosure. Then he took what was
offered, returning praise and friendly scratching.

When finally the moment came and he swung softly and fully into the saddle,
the horse stood still, its ears flicked back alertly. In the waiting silence,
Leigh could hear the sound of the light rain and feel the expectation from the
crowd. The gray had had plenty of time to recover its wind and object to this
imposition forcefully.

But the horse just peered around at him from both sides, heaved a sigh, and
looked bored.

A loud cheer broke out. The farm boys began to whoop and the horse copers
pitched their hats in the air. The gray lifted its head and stared around, but
the lessons of the day were not lost. The horse held its place calmly, and then
after a moment walked off around the paddock, rotating its ears in casual
interest.

The Seigneur was grinning. For the whole of her life, Leigh thought she would
remember the expression on his face.

She put her head in her arms.

How can I go on? I'm weak, I'm going to fail, I'm not strong enough; Oh,
Mama, I can't keep on with this.

She kept herself buried, not watching anymore, pressing her forehead into her
arms and trying to find the bitterness that had sustained her. The evening grew
colder as she sat hunched beneath the tree, and finally it was one of the copers
who squelched up in the drizzle and timidly said, "Ma'am? Was you wishing to
ride back?"

She lifted her head. He stood there holding the chestnut. In the early dark,
the rest of the audience had dispersed, and Leigh saw the Seigneur already
halfway down the lane, riding the black and leading the rogue alongside.

She accepted the coper's leg up onto the sidesaddle that the Seigneur had
insisted upon purchasing for her. The chestnut didn't wait for any signal from
Leigh: as soon as the man let go of the bridle, it swung around and trotted
quickly after the other horses.

Leigh allowed it, having no better decision at hand. The Seigneur never even
turned around and looked at her.

Back in the stable yard, he swung off the black and told the boys that he'd
tend to the horses himself. They seemed glad enough to stay clear of the rogue,
but there were low whistles and speculation as the big horse stood calmly amid
the flickering bustle in the yard.

As Leigh dismounted, the Seigneur caught her bridle. He took off his tricorne
and handed her the rogue's lead. "What do you prefer to call him?" he asked
shortly.

She gave the horse a weary look. He'd said it could be a weapon. She needed
one. Now, more than ever before, she desperately needed a weapon to help her go
on. "Revenge," she said harshly. "That's what I'll call him."

He scowled at her. "No. That's a stupid name."

"Revenge." She set her jaw. "That's his name, if you give him to me."

"Right-ho," he said in a low, angry voice. "The way you always call me
'Seigneur.' I'm a person, Leigh. I've got a name. This is a horse, a living
breathing animal; he's not a goddamned mission."

She brushed her damp hair back from her face. "I don't even know your name.
You only have initials."

"You never asked." He turned to work at the black's girth. "But why should
you? That would make me real, wouldn't it? Something more than a tool to get you
what you want."

Her throat thickened in that desperate, painful way that kept overcoming her
wits. In a caustic voice, she said, "So tell me your name."

He looked back at her sharply. She lowered her face, staring at the lamplight
shining on the wet stone cobbles and the horses' hooves.

She heard the rattle of the girth as he dragged the saddle off the horse's
back. She felt bruised inside, unable to look up and encounter his face
directly, to see his hair crowned with golden lamplight and rain.

"Sophocles," he said gruffly, in an undertone. "Sophocles Trafalgar
Maitland."

He paused, as if expecting her to say something. She couldn't seem to lift
her head. He carried the saddle away and came back.

"Well you may stare," he said, and gave a peculiar little humorless laugh.
"Silliest name on earth. I've never voluntarily told it to anyone before."

She could see his hand on the reins, sliding the leather between his fingers.

He turned away to the chestnut. "Begotten aboard ship off the Cape of
Trafalgar." He unbuckled the sidesaddle's balance strap. "So the story goes. My
mother claimed her lover was a rear admiral of the white squadron." He yanked
the leather girth straps free. "One might ask how she managed to find herself
aboard a navy flagship, but who knows? Maybe it's true." He pulled the
sidesaddle off the chestnut and stopped beside Leigh, holding the cantle against
his hip. "I go by my initials. S.T. Maitland. And don't bloody well tell anyone
the rest, understand?"

She gazed at him.

The truth came upon her with a simple, horrible clarity.

I love this man.

I love him, I hate him . . . oh, God.

She wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. Instead she only stared
stonily. "Why should I tell?" she asked. She flicked the gray rogue's lead.
"Where shall I put Revenge?"

He looked from her to the horse, and then plucked the rope out of her hand.
"I'll take him," he said. "His name's Mistral."

Three weeks and three hundred miles, and fifty times a day S.T. thought of
what she'd said. You importune me. You inconvenience me.

You're a fraud.

With Nemo loping alongside, he rode Mistral from dawn to dusk, alternating
every three hours with a lesson on the black he'd named Sirocco. On the road, he
taught both horses to give to his hand, to half with and without reins, to
retire backwards, to trot and gallop the Roman S. For three hours in the
morning, before they traveled, he worked Mistral alone.

His balance didn't desert him. At first he thought about it, lying warily
still when he woke, afraid to move his head. As the miracle held, it became
harder to remember, strange to realize in the middle of a school that he'd made
some effortless quick maneuver without thinking of the consequences.

When he did recall it, he shook his head vigorously, trying to make himself
dizzy as a sort of preventive measure, the way his lowly surgeon had advised.
But the renewed feeling of disequilibrium was so unpleasant, the sensation of
stability so natural, that he found his efforts growing fewer and farther
between.

He had his balance back. It wouldn't leave him. It could not. He concentrated
all his mind on the task at hand.

S.T.'s equestrian masters had been Italian, French, Spanish—with one law
between them: many horses make a rider; one rider makes a horse. In his life,
he'd ridden hundreds, but not since Charon had he found a mount with the natural
balance and intelligence of this powerful gray demon. It was a joy and a
passion; an obsession; to supple Mistral into the
terre-a-terre
with
smaller and smaller figure eights, to begin the
courbette
by teaching
him to pick up his forefeet neatly and together, then school him in the
ruade,
asking him to kick out his hind legs with a stroke of the rod under
his belly. Mistral had a particular talent for that air, having kicked down more
than one stall in his notorious career.

The black Sirocco was an honest, phlegmatic animal, harder to move than to
restrain, but Mistral did not suffer a fool gladly. His exuberance and
sensitivity required the slowest and most empathetic of hands, the greatest of
patience. But the moment that Mistral comprehended a lesson, he was capable of
performing it. S.T.'s prime concern was to fight his own urge to bring the horse
along too fast. Sometimes, instead of the serious schools, he spent the morning
hours in play, showing the gray rogue the same tricks he'd taught the blind
French mare, or just standing alongside Mistral and scratching his withers as
the horse grazed on winter hay.

It was in those quiet moments that his pride kept tossing up to him the words
Leigh had said.

You importune me. You inconvenience me. You're a fraud.

He'd left her stranded in Rye and come alone. It was like a quest: kill the
dragon—win the lady.

Damn her, he'd drape her in dragon skin. He'd feed her dragon soup. He'd
build her a bloody frigging castle out of dragon bones.

Let her think him a fraud then.

The Reverend James Chilton might call it his Heavenly Sanctuary, but the
place had been known as Felchester for more than a few centuries. First a Roman
fort on the Pennine Way, almost within sight of Hadrian's pagan wall, and then a
stronghold of the Danelaw. The Norman French had not found it worth the building
of a castle, but the weekly market and the river ford had kept it alive into the
fifteenth century, long enough for a stroke of rare good fortune: a native son,
gone to London and come home rich. This proud citizen had seen fit to build a
stone bridge across the river, and Felchester's life as a town was assured.

All this, S.T. knew from Leigh. What he had not expected was the charm of it,
tucked as it was at the foot of a great, gloomy fell, between the heights and
the river. The workaday slate houses of the north were softened, some of them
plastered and whitewashed, their formidable outlines obscured by the exuberant
twisty lace of bare fruit trees and the reddish winter remnants of creeper. On a
clear day in late January, broad patches of sun lay across the wide main street,
warm in the sheltered valley.

S.T. felt conspicuous in his point-edged hat and cloak of thick
brandy-colored wool. It seemed that the sort of tourists who visited the
Reverend James Chilton's model town wore clerical garb and carried hymn books
instead of swords.

"You see—I try so very, very hard," Mr. Chilton was saying. After an hour of
enthusiastic exposition, his red hair stood out in all directions from his head,
heavily powdered, so that the natural color had become a strange shade of pale
apricot. "Gentlemen, I'm honest with you. We could not expect a heaven on earth.
But now I want you to look around our little home—stop with us tonight if you
please, and welcome; any one of the members can direct you to the guest's
dormitory."

The visiting clergymen stood around, smiling and nodding. Chilton gave S.T. a
particularly friendly smile, offering his hand. His freckles made his face seem
young and old at once. For an instant he looked directly into S.T.'s eyes,
without a blink. "I'm so glad you've come along," he said. "Are you interested
in philanthropy, sir?"

"Just curious," S.T. said, wanting no part of being hounded for a donation.
"Is there somewhere I can stable my horse?"

He was the only one who'd arrived mounted. The rest had come in the
Sanctuary's own plain wagonette, met at the front of the church fourteen miles
away in Hexham.

"Of course you may take him down to the livery, but I'm afraid you'll have to
care for him yourself. As I explained, that is our rule here,
gentlemen—responsibility! One stands upon one's own feet. Though you'll find
everyone most accommodating and helpful when you have need." Chilton nodded
toward S.T.'s sword belt. "I'll ask you to leave that in the stable, too, my
dear sir. You've no need for such things here on our streets. Now—I must leave
you all to your own devices and see to the preparations for my noonday service.
Do come up to the parsonage for a dish of tea in an hour, and then I hope you
will attend service with us, and we'll talk further."

As the group broke apart, S.T. gathered Sirocco's reins and led the patient
black horse down the high street in the direction Chilton had indicated. He
returned a nod and a smile from a shepherd girl as she passed. Her flock of
three white-faced sheep gave the scene a pastoral air, like something out of a
sentimental etching. A pair of little girls, capped and gowned like their
elders, giggled at each other as they carried a milk pail between them.

The females of Heavenly Sanctuary went about their business in buoyant
spirits, from what he'd seen. He could hear someone singing from an open doorway
across the road.

The stable still held the night's chill, empty of men or beasts but
meticulously clean. He put Sirocco in the first stall, pitched hay, and pumped
water. The black stuck its nose in the hayrack, only flicking an ear backward as
S.T. hung up his saddle. He debated briefly, decided he didn't owe Chilton any
particular compliance, and walked out with his sword still on.

He stood at the door of the livery, considering how best to reconnoiter. He
wanted this done, and done quickly, but nothing so far was as he'd anticipated.
No one in this town seemed downtrodden; no air of evil hung about the place . .
. and Chilton—well, Chilton looked nothing more than a bluff and rather boring
crusader, if the lengthy speech on morals and methods with which he'd greeted
them all this morning was any indication.