King of the Wind (11 page)

Fourth Day of Third Month dawned. In spite of the promise of the almanack, there was a fine drizzle in the air. But Jethro Coke was not one to be thwarted by weather. He saw to it that his son-in-law was up and about early. He even fitted him with an oiled cloth cover for his hat and an oiled cloth cape for his shoulders.

As Agba led Sham, all saddled and bridled, out of his stall and up the winding path to the house, the horse took one look at the flapping figure coming toward him. Then his ears went back and he jolted to a stop. He snorted at the voluminous cape of oiled cloth. He listened to the noise it made as it bellied in the wind. Benjamin Biggle must have seemed like some great monster to him. It was all Agba could do to keep him from galloping back to the barn.

At sight of Sham, Benjamin Biggle halted, too. For a full moment it looked as if his knees might buckle under his weight. If Sham was afraid of him, it was plain to see that he was twice as fearful of Sham.

“Be not unnerved, son,” said Mister Coke. “It is thy oiled cloth cape that alarms the creature. Step right up.”

Agba led Sham to the mounting block, then stood holding the reins.

“Come, come, Benjamin!” reasoned Mister Coke. “Let not the horse sense thy fear. Here, take the reins thyself. Now then, swing aboard!”

Shaking in fright, Mister Biggle took the reins. Then with his right hand he took hold of his left foot and tried to thrust it into the stirrup. Instead, he gave Sham a vicious jab in the ribs.

With a quick side jerk of his head, Sham turned around, knocked Mister Biggle’s hat off, and sank his teeth in the man’s black wig. The moment Sham tasted the pomade, however, he dropped the wig on the rain-soaked path.

Benjamin Biggle was furious. “I’ll ride the beast if it kills
me,” he said between tight lips. And donning his wig at a rakish angle, he swung his leg over Sham’s back, heaved into the saddle and grabbed the reins up short.

Like a barn swallow in flight Sham wheeled, and with a beautiful soaring motion he flew to the safety of his stall. As he dashed through the door, Benjamin Biggle was scraped off his back and into a mud puddle where he sprawled, his breeches soaked through and the wind knocked out of his body.

As if this were not enough trouble for one day, Grimalkin pounced on his head, screamed in his face, and ruined what was left of the black wig.

That afternoon as Agba cleaned Sham’s tackle, a faint sound, very much like a chuckle, escaped him every now and again. Even Grimalkin wore a smirk on his face as he perched on Sham’s crest and watched Agba remove all traces of mud.

Suddenly Agba looked up to find Mister Coke, Bible in hand, standing in the doorway. His face looked lined and old. For a long time he stood quietly, and the silence was a cord between the boy and himself.

At last he spoke, using little words and short sentences so that Agba would understand. But if he had used no words at all, Agba would have known.

“Thou and thy horse and thy cat shall ever be dear to me,” Mister Coke began in halting tones. “Thou must try to understand, lad.”

Agba looked into the deep-set blue eyes of Mister Coke. His own eyes blurred.

“It is about my son-in-law, lad,” Mister Coke went on. “He is confined to his bed from the morning’s experience. He is very sore on the matter. It is his wish that the horse be sent away at once. And Hannah, who is my only daughter, pleads his cause.”

Agba noticed, with a chill of fear, that all this while he had been tracing the wheat ear on Sham’s chest.

Seeing the fright on the boy’s face, Mister Coke put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Come, come, lad. I am merely selling thy horse to the good Roger Williams, keeper of the Red
Lion Inn. He loans out horses to merchant travelers whose mounts are travel-weary. Then, when the merchants are next in the vicinity, they return the mounts. Have no fear, lad, Roger Williams will use thy horse well. And I have the man’s word that thou and thy cat, too, will find a good home above the stable. He will come for thee and thy creatures early tomorrow morning.”

“Now,” said Mister Coke as he adjusted his square-rimmed spectacles, “let us read a verse or two from the Bible. It will help to cheer our hearts. Then I will leave thee without any words of farewell.”

Standing so the light would fall over his shoulder, Mister Coke let the Bible open where it would. And suddenly the years seemed to wash away and his face was wreathed in smiles.

“ ‘The horse,’ ” he read, with gusto, “ ‘rejoiceth in his strength. . . . He paweth in the valley. . . . He is not affrighted. . . . He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, Ha!’ ”

A look that was close to a wink ventured across Jethro Coke’s face as he closed the book. Then he turned, and sprightly as a boy, leaped across the mud puddle where Benjamin Biggle had fallen.

Agba thought he heard a chuckle and then words coming back to him out of the mist: “The horse saith among the trumpets, Ha, Ha!”

A
GBA COULD have been happy at the Red Lion if there had been only Mister Williams, the keeper of the inn, to consider. He was a mild-mannered man, with red, bushy eyebrows that traveled up and down when he spoke. And when he smiled, as he did often, they completely hid his eyes and gave him a sheep-dog look. Mister Williams was kindness itself.

It was Mistress Williams who made life hard. She was an enormous woman who went into hysterics every time she saw Agba. “
Mis
-ter Williams!” she would shriek at the top of her
lungs. “That—that varmint-in-a-hood! Get ’im outa here! ’E gives me the creeps! It’s ’im or me, I tell ye!”

The truth of the matter was that Agba’s deep, searching eyes, his soft, pattering footsteps, his flowing mantle and quiet ways, were so foreign to her own coarseness that she felt ill at ease in his presence.

As for Grimalkin, the poor cat could not even cross her path without sending the woman into a fit. When one night she accidentally stepped on his tail, there was such a yowling that she insisted the cat and the boy must go that instant. And so, within less than a forthnight after they had arrived, Agba and Grimalkin were turned away from the inn without so much as an oatcake or a handful of walnuts to take along.

Mister Williams walked with Agba as far as the road. There he stopped by the lanthorn that hung from the sign of the Red Lion. Even by its feeble glow Agba could see that the man was distressed.

“Y’ understand, lad,” he said, his eyebrows working up and down with emotion, “y’ understand I got me customers to think about. Mistress Williams knows an awful lot about cookery. Why, travelers come a good long ways just to taste of ’er whortleberry pie. I got to ’umor ’er, boy. You trot along now to Jethro Coke’s house. ’E’ll take ye in, I’ve no doubt of it. As for your ’orse,” he added with assurance, “I paid my good money fer ’im an’ I promises to use ’im well.”

This he meant to do. But Mister Williams was not the man for a spirited horse like Sham. He made quick, puppet-like motions as if his joints were controlled by strings. When he
came into Sham’s stall, he had a way of lunging in. Nearly always he carried some tool—a pitchfork or a hoe or a bellows. And he held it like a spear, ready for action.

The old, plodding horses in the stable were used to Mister Williams, but Sham snorted and reared every time he came near. Then the good man would try to calm the horse by giving him a grooming. But here again the man was as awkward as a pump without a handle. He knew none of the niceties of grooming. He would rub along Sham’s barrel from shoulder to hip, never realizing that near the hip the hairs grew in a little swirl. This lack of skill irritated Sham, for Agba was always careful to rub his coat the way that the hairs grew.

When it came to saddling, the innkeeper had an annoying habit of dropping the saddle on Sham’s back, and then shoving it forward into place, thus pinching and pulling the hairs the wrong way. When a rider mounted, the torment increased.

It was not surprising that Sham resorted to all manner of tricks to get rid of the pinching saddle. He sidled along walls and trees, thus squeezing his rider’s leg. He twisted his body into a corkscrew. He reared. He kicked. He balked. He threw so many guests of the Red Lion that finally Mister Williams decided he must do something about it. He called in Silas Slade, a weasel-eyed man known as the best horse-breaker in all London.

“Slade,” Mister Williams said, “I hain’t never seen a ’orse like this ’un. It’s ’is
spirit
. ’E not only unseats the clumsy fellows like me, but the best riders in the kingdom. ’E knows ’e’ll be licked fer it, but it don’t matter to ’im. The only ’uman bein’ what can ’andle ’im is a spindlin’ boy.”

“
Hmph!
” snorted Slade, his eyes gleaming. “I’ve yet to see the beast I couldn’t break. ’E’s feelin’ ’is oats, ’e is. We’ll get the meanness out of ’im!”

The first thing Mister Slade did was to saddle Sham in his expert manner and swing up. And the next thing he knew he was being carried into the inn and a doctor was bending over him, shaking his head gravely.

When Mister Slade was poulticed and bandaged and his leg put in a splint, he called Mister Williams to his side. “I’ll break the brute yet,” he said between swollen lips. “See that ’e’s moved into a small stall without a window. Tie ’im so ’e can’t move. Give ’im no grain and only a little water.”

Agba meanwhile had never left the vicinity of the Red Lion. He and Grimalkin had wandered forlornly about the countryside, sleeping in hedgerows, living on what food they could pick up in woods and fields.

One moon-white night Agba’s loneliness seemed more than
he could bear. He and Grimalkin were seeking shelter in a haycock. They had had nothing to eat that day, and neither of them could sleep. Grimalkin was hunting little gray field mice and Agba was looking up at the moon, seeing Sham in its shadows.

The Sultan’s words were drumming in his ears. “As long as the horse shall live . . . as long as the horse shall live . . .” He
must
get back to Sham!

He shook the straw from his mantle, swooped up Grimalkin, and ran silently through the night to the Red Lion.

As he reached the inn, he could see by the light in the taproom the bustling form of Mistress Williams. Quickly he changed his plans. Instead of approaching the stables by means of the courtyard he would run around behind the brick wall that encircled the stables. If he scaled this wall, he could enter Sham’s stall without being seen by Mistress Williams.

Agba felt like a thief, creeping along in the moon-dappled night, groping his way around the ivy-covered wall. Suddenly he stopped midway of the wall. Sham’s stall, he figured, would be about opposite where he stood. He undid his turban, knotted one end and caught it on an iron picket that jutted over the ledge of the wall. Then, with Grimalkin clinging to his shoulder, he climbed the wall and soundlessly slid down into the stable yard.

Grimalkin was everywhere at once. The familiar smells and sounds of the stable maddened him with delight. He streaked first into one stall and then another.

Mistress Williams at the time was in the midst of preparing
porridge for tomorrow’s breakfast. Suddenly she discovered that she had no salt. None at all. So she lighted a lanthorn and picked her way out to the stables where Mister Williams always kept a skipple of salt for the horses.