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He parked the car by the roadside, choosing a space under a broad oak to ward off the increasing heat of the sun and pointed across the way to a broad stretch of meadowland dotted with stately chestnut trees. “They should be still out there waiting for someone to come and round them up for the afternoon’s hay carting.” He glanced up at the branches of the tree, assessing the wind direction. “Come on. Get out and come and prepare to meet the best horses in the east of England.”
Warily, but making no protest, Joe took off his trench coat, fa
“Here they come! They’ve caught our scent.” Hu
A quarter of a mile away in the distance something in the landscape was breaking loose and on the move. Hu
Joe found himself, ridiculously, reaching down to his side for a weapon—any weapon. It was Hu
With one mind the horses hauled themselves to a halt only feet from the men, carving up the turf with their braking back hooves, front ones pawing the air in a dramatic flourish. A row of rampant, Sie
The older horses, neighing with delight, ignored Joe and pranced up to greet Hu
The trained horses were clearly no menace to a stranger who entered the field in the company of their adored horseman but the unbroken pair, inquisitive, unaware of their strength, were where the danger lay. Jostled to one side by the older horses, they sought another outlet for their excitement. Not recognising Joe’s scent, they moved in skittishly towards him, muzzles extended, noisily sniffing, inexperienced feet clumsily trampling the ground and any human foot left unthinkingly in their way. They were unaware of their killing strength, emboldened by the presence of the older members of the herd and excited by the unknown. A potential disaster.
Hu
Joe kept his stillness but turned his head towards the bolder of the pair of colts and began to murmur a few pleasant words. He backed away, creating the space he knew a horse liked to keep about itself. “Let him come to you, laddie!” The remembered words always rang in his ear when he met a strange horse. In response, the youngster showed an increasing interest, following him with confidence, butting him lustily with his nose when Joe turned again. The nose followed up with a more intimate inspection, twitching as it moved with slobbering, sensitive lips around Joe’s neck and face. A foam-flecked tongue emerged and began to lick his neck. At this point, Joe gently brought forward a hand and caressed its ears. As this gesture was well received, he leaned forward and breathed, as he’d been taught, into the huge nostrils, continuing to speak the words he’d learned so many years before. Gaelic? Latin? Chinese? It could have been anything. Horses knew no language. They were responding to his tone. It wasn’t difficult to speak with delight and love for these beautiful creatures. They seemed to understand that he admired them. The second colt edged the first away, eager for its share of attention. Joe fumbled in his pocket and found a Chelsea bun. He broke it in two and gave them half each, sending the pair into ecstasies and provoking a concerted attack on his pockets.
Hu
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.