What was certain was that Tom could have walked away. Two or three paces would have taken him out of the stallion's reach and clear of all danger. The horse, so Grace believed, would simply have let him be and gone where the others had led. Instead, Tom stepped toward him.
The moment he moved, as he must have foreseen, the stallion reared up before him and screamed. And even now, Tom could have stepped aside. She had seen Pilgrim rear before him once and noted how deftly Tom could move to save himself. He knew where a horse's feet would fall, which muscle it would move and why, before it even knew itself. Yet on this day, he neither dodged nor ducked nor even flinched and, once more, stepped in closer.
The settling dust was still too thick for Grace to be sure, but she thought she now saw Tom open his arms a little and, in a gesture so minimal that she may have imagined it, show the horse the palms of his hands. It was as though he were offering something and perhaps it was only what he'd always offered, the gift of kinship and peace. But although she would never from this day forth utter the thought to anyone, Grace had a sudden, vivid impression that it was otherwise and that Tom, quite without fear or despair, was somehow this time offering himself.
Then, with a terrible sound, sufficient alone to ratify the passing of his life, the hooves came down upon his head and struck him like a crumbled icon to the ground.
The stallion reared again but not so high and only now to find some safer surface for his feet than the man's body. He seemed for a moment fazed by such prompt capitulation and pawed the dust uncertainly around Tom's head. Then, tossing his mane, he cried out one last time, then swerved toward the gap and was gone.
Part Five
Chapter Thirty-six
Spring came late to Chatham the following year. One night, in the closing days of April, there fell a full foot of snow. It was of that heavy, languid kind and gone within the day, but Annie feared it might have withered the buds already forming on Robert's six small cherry trees. When however in May the world at last warmed, they seemed to reassert themselves and the blossom when it came was full and unblemished.
Now the show was past its best, the pink of the petals faded and delicately edged in brown. With each stir of the breeze another flurry would dislodge, littering the grass in wide circumference. Those that fell unbidden were mostly lost among the longer grass that grew around the roots. Some few however found a final brief reprieve on the white gauze netting of a cradle which, since the weather had grown mild, stood daily in the dappled shade.
The cradle was old and made of woven wicker. It had been handed down by an aunt of Robert's when Grace was born and prior to her had sheltered the cranial formation of several more or less distinguished lawyers. The netting, across which Annie's shadow now loomed, was new. She had noticed how the child liked to watch the petals settle on it and she left those already there untouched. She looked in and saw he was sleeping.
It was too early to tell whose looks he had. His skin was fair and his hair a light brown, though in the sun it seemed to have a reddish tinge that was surely Annie's. From the day of his birth, now almost three months past, his eyes were never anything but blue.
Annie's doctor had told her she should sue. The coil had only been in four years, a year less than its recommended life. When he examined it, the copper was worn right through. The manufacturers would be sure to settle, he said, for fear of bad publicity. Annie had simply laughed and the sensation was so alien it had shocked her. No, she said, she didn't want to sue and neither, despite poor precedent and all his eloquent listing of the risks, did she want a termination.
Were it not for the steady configuration in her womb Annie doubted whether any of them, she or Robert or Grace, would have survived. It could, or should perhaps, have made things worse, become a bitter focus for their several sorrows. Instead, after the shock of its discovery, her pregnancy had, by slow degree, brought healing and a kind of clarifying calm.
Annie now felt a welling pressure in her breasts and for a moment thought of waking him to feed. He was so very different from Grace. She had rapidly grown restless at the breast as if it couldn't meet her needs and by this age she was already on bottles. This one just latched on and drank as if he'd done it all before. When he'd had his fill, he simply fell asleep.
She looked at her watch. It was nearly four. In an hour Robert and Grace would be setting off from the city. Annie briefly considered going back inside to do a little more work but decided against it. She'd had a good day and the piece she was working on, though in style and content quite unlike anything she'd ever written, was going well. She decided instead to walk up past the pond to the field and have a look at the horses. When she got back, the baby would most likely be awake.