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From Patrick’s point of view, the bond was a natural one. He saw in the horse an unruly spirit much like his own and loved him for it, and the horse, as far as he was able, returned him a certain affection. Seeing this, Mr. Angus had made him the horse’s traveling lad, responsible for helping Pinkie with his care during the railway trip to Epsom and for leading him through the Derby crowd to the starting post. It was enough to make a stable lad’s head swim.
But Patrick was not an ordinary lad. Some two years before, he had found himself one of the players in a grand adventure at Rottingdean, a village on the south coast of England, through which he had been introduced to His Royal Highness and two other gentlemen, Lord Charles Sheridan and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. In gratitude for his services, the Prince had granted Patrick a stipend sufficient to guarantee his education, and at Mr. Kipling’s suggestion, he had gone off to school at Westward Ho!, on Bideford Bay, in Devonshire. Lady Charles herself had taken him to the school and had even shed a few tears when she kissed him and said goodbye.
Westward Ho! was an unconventional school, and as long as the boys paid the requisite attention to their studies and attended chapel with some regularity, they were free to bathe in the Atlantic beyond Pebble Ridge and wander the Devonshire countryside. But while Patrick was gifted with a shrewd intelligence and a maturity far beyond his years, he was hardly a discliplined scholar, and whatever academic enthusiasm he might have felt was poisoned by an odious master who took a sadistic pleasure in inflicting corporal punishment upon those in his charge. Patrick and his friends Turkey Bates and Jake Shanks sought sanctuary in the furze thickets above the cliff. There, smoking pipes and reading aloud from Surtees’s racing novels, they plotted to run away and become apprentice jockeys. It was a scheme dear to Patrick’s heart, for he loved horses more than anything else in the world-more than books, certainly, or games, or the prospect of taking the Army examination and embarking on a military career.
But those lazy golden days in the furze came to an abrupt end, and so did Patrick’s education. Turkey drowned one September day in the sea, and a fortnight later Jake was sent home to India because his father had failed to pay his tuition and board.
His friends gone, his heart broken, Patrick paid even less attention to his studies, and the master’s floggings consequently grew less restrained. The boy tried to hang on, if only to please Lady Charles, who wrote him the most marvelous letters and promised that he could spend the holidays with her and Lord Charles at Bishop’s Keep. But a month after Turkey ’s death and Jake’s departure, and a day after the most severe beating yet, Patrick could endure it no longer. He left without saying goodbye, without even writing to Lady Charles, whose kindness he could never repay. How could he confess that he had failed? How could he tell her that he wasn’t worthy of her concern, or her love?
Leaving Devonshire, the boy struck out eastward across the Downs to Rottingdean and to Harry Tudwell, in whose stable he had once worked. Harry set him to doing morning and evening stables and exercising the string on the Downs, and at midwinter, impressed by the boy’s understanding of horses and his firm determination to ride, he prevailed on his old friend Angus Duncan at the Grange House Stable to take Patrick on as stable lad and apprentice jockey. That was how he had come to be here on this day, at this race of all races, the Blue Ribbon of the Turf, the Derby Stakes, with the horse he loved.
Following the men, Patrick led Gladiator into the paddock near the start, where they were joined by Captain Dick Doyle, Lord Reginald’s racing manager and quite the fattest man Patrick had ever seen, and Joh
Now, Joh
“Nervy,” Patrick replied, feeling the horse trembling against him as Pinkie attempted to throw on the saddle. Gladiator half reared, and as Patrick struggled to gentle him down, he added, in a breathless warning, “Wilder even than the day he got loose on the heath.” Joh
“Don’t like the looks of him,” Joh
Patrick was considering telling Joh
Joh
“And keep clear,” Lord Hunt warned. With a glance at the horse, he hunched his shoulders and added, u
Maniacal was a better description, Patrick thought, for Gladiator was behaving as though the very devil was in him. He glanced uneasily at Joh
“The more spirit, the better,” Captain Doyle said emphatically. “He stands at 66 to 1.” He gri
Brightening, Lord Hunt clapped the jockey on the shoulder. “Bring him home the wi
Nervously, Joh
“Right,” said the captain, and he and Lord Hunt left hurriedly for the stands, making a detour through the crowded betting ring for a last-minute wager.
The field was collecting and the starter called the preliminary warning. Patrick held Gladiator’s head while Mr. Angus gave Joh
He could not have guessed that the end of it all would be much worse than the begi