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Enter Pale Death(35)

By:Barbara Cleverly


Hunnyton, he sensed, was intrigued and mystified by this behaviour. Should he tell him that his father’s head groom had been a member of the Scottish Society of Horsemen? More than just a member—a Grand Master in that secretive Masonic world. A possessor of the Word. One of the last in the land, Auld Angus had calculated; with the arrival of the new-fangled tractor, the days of the horse—and their horsemen—were numbered and his skills and knowledge would be extinct within a generation. His standing in his own community would disappear, was already disappearing. Thousands of years of acquired knowledge was laughed at and rejected by the young lads who preferred to turn a handle and steer with a wheel rather than feed, brush and harness up the great Clydesdales Joe’s father kept. Virtually turning his face to the wall, Auld Angus, with the first appearance of a motorised vehicle on his land, had taken the decision to pass on his knowledge to the one youngster who’d shown a willingness to listen and believe. He’d broken all the rules of the Society by confiding it to the son of a farmer. Farmers and landowners were excluded from the knowledge but with his life and his world coming to an end he’d reckoned he had little choice.

Joe had paid careful attention, committing the words and signs to memory, writing down nothing, swearing a fearsome oath never to reveal the secrets of the craft until his own last moments. To his astonishment, the Word whispered to him over a sack of corn in a barn at midnight—a hasty approximation of the initiation into the Society of Horsemen—had been two words, two words in Latin. Though he’d made no comment at the time and made no reference to it ever after, Joe’s classical education had led him to suspect, with an awe that was almost religious, that the whole ceremony and structure had been devised in a very ancient past. Romano-British, most probably. The traces they’d left behind in the landscape showed that the Roman army had had a stronger and more peaceable presence in these northern lands than was generally supposed. They’d farmed and kept stock. They’d married local girls. A good number of the soldiers were also horsemen by trade, some from far eastern lands, Persia and beyond. It had pleased Joe to think that when he’d whispered the Roman words into the ears of horses he’d ridden in India and Afghanistan that he was using a link in an unbroken chain reaching back from Britain, through Mithras, god of the soldiery, and Epona, goddess of horses, to some ancient, horse-taming homeland.

His life had taken him away from the country and finally anchored him to an office desk. The skills were not forgotten, though. Joe would say nothing to Hunnyton, as he’d said nothing to anyone, not even to Dorcas. His oath was his oath.

Lightly he remarked, “Amazing what an effect a Fitzbillie’s Chelsea bun will have! I nipped out after breakfast and bought a bag of them in Trumpington Street. I say—do you think they’d have the same effect on girls? Shall we try it?”

He made no reference to the tiny bottle of oil of cloves he’d bought for an alleged toothache from Lloyd’s the chemist next door. A few drops of that on his handkerchief and a discreet smear on his face and neck had done its job. Better than a calling card. Always a good stand-by in horse country.

“There’s Frank come to round them up,” Hunnyton said. “We’d better be off and leave them to their work.”

“Well, thanks for that! I enjoyed meeting your friends.” Hunnyton peered at him. “Got a hanky have you? You might like to wipe the crumbs and froth off your chin before we encounter civilised society.”


THE VILLAGE OF Melsett was indeed small. A strung-out length of timber-framed cottages, plastered and painted, with small windows squinting out under the weight of low-hanging reed thatch, undulated with the rise and fall of the land for half a mile. Each had a neat and extensive plot under cultivation at the back and the small front gardens, where there was space for one between the skirts of the cottage and the road, were ablaze with hollyhock, delphinium and foxglove. At the centre, where the road dipped into a water-splash, there was a village pub—unsurprisingly, The Sorrel Horse—and, opposite, a building which, judging by its size and the bell mounted on the roof, could only be the school. The Friday fishmonger—Mr. Aldous of Southwold, apparently, from the name painted on the side of his Morris van—had arrived to sell his wares from a box of ice in the back. They passed slowly along the high street, Hunnyton pointing out his own cottage as they drove by until they arrived at the ancient village church mounted on a slight rise above the village.

“We’ve time to stop here and look about before we go to see the vet,” he said, showing Joe through the sheep-gate. “There’s something you’ll want to see, Sandilands.”