King of the Wind (18 page)

Mincing along behind her came the princesses, Amelia and Caroline and Mary and Louisa, miniatures of their splendid mother. They were followed by lords and ladies in great number.

The cheering had scarcely died away when the entries for the race were led past the royal stand. Each of the horses was hooded and blanketed in the vivid colors of his own stable—red, yellow, purple, gray, orange.

Agba was dazzled by the sight. It was as if some sky giant had opened a jewel-bag and tossed rubies, amethysts, sapphires, and moonstones onto the grass.

Quickly he spotted the scarlet sheet that enveloped Lath, though he could see only two pricked ears and the whisk of his tail.

Over in the royal stand the heads of the lords and ladies were bobbing this way and that, adjusting their field glasses. They seemed more interested in making out the crests on the blankets than in the quality of the legs and feet beneath them.

Agba’s eyes gathered in the whole spectacle. He was glad that he had come. He had wanted so terribly to see Sham run. But now he knew that it was better this way. How could Sham compete with the youngsters of the turf? Especially when one of them was his own son?

Sham was alerted, waiting for a signal from Agba. Yet he stood still, obedient to Agba’s wishes. It was better so. Defeat would have broken his heart. Now he was forever unbeaten. In his own mind and in Agba’s he was still the wind beneath the sun. Neither horse nor gazelle could outrun him.

The saddle bell ended Agba’s thoughts. His eyes flew to the starter who was unfurling his red flag, sending his assistant a
dozen yards down the track. He watched the trumpeter blowing on his trumpet, his face rounder than a goatsack.

Now the horses were parading to the starting post. They were drawing up in a line. Nervous as grasshoppers. Dancing. Side-stepping. Rearing. Starting and being led back. Starting again. And again. And again.

The moment came. The starter dropped his red flag. “They’re away!”

Not for one second did Agba need to hunt for Lath in that flying stream of horseflesh. He did not even look for the scarlet and white stripes of the jockey’s body-coat. His eyes were fixed on the littlest horse, the littlest horse that got away to a bad start!

The field was far out in front. The big horses were whipping down the steep slope to Devil’s Dyke, skimming along the running gap, leaping up the opposite bank and across a long flat stretch. They were beginning to bunch, making narrow gaps. Lath was coming up from behind. He began filling in the gaps. He went through them. He was a blob of watercolor, trickling along the green turf between the other colors.

For a brief second the horses were hidden by a clump of hawthorn trees. Agba’s knees tightened. He felt Sham quiver beneath him, saw white flecks of sweat come out on his neck. It was well the grooms were there to hold them both!

The horses were coming around the trees now. The golden blob was still flowing between the other colors. It was flowing beyond them, flowing free!

In full stride, Lath was galloping down the dip and up
the rise to the ending post. He was flying past it, leaving the “lusty” horses behind.

“The
little
horse wins!”

“Lath, an easy winner!”

“Lath, son of Godolphin Arabian, wins!”

People of all ages and all ranks clapped their hands and cheered in wild notes of triumph.

Agba never knew how he and Sham reached the royal stand. But suddenly, there they were. And the Earl of Godolphin was there, too.

“I am pleased to give,” Queen Caroline was saying in her sincere, straightforward manner, “I am pleased to give and bestow upon the Earl of Godolphin, the Queen’s Plate.”

Everyone could see it was not a plate that she held in her hands at all. It was a purse. But only Agba and the Earl knew how much that purse would mean to the future of the horse in England. The Earl looked right between the plumes in the Queen’s bonnet and found Agba’s eyes for an instant. Then he fell to his knees and kissed the Queen’s hand.

A hush fell over the heath. The Queen’s words pinged sharp and clear, like the pearls that suddenly broke from her necklace and fell upon the floor of the stand. No one stooped to recover them, for the Queen was speaking.

“And what,” she asked, as she fixed one of her own purple plumes in Sham’s headstall, “what is the pedigree of this proud sire of three winning horses?”

Agba leaned forward in his saddle.

There was a pause while the Earl found the right words. “Your Majesty,” he spoke slowly, thoughtfully, “his pedigree has been . . . has been lost. But perhaps it was so intended. His pedigree is written in his sons.”

How the country people cheered! An unknown stallion wearing the royal purple! It was a fairy tale come true.

The princesses clapped their hands, too. Even the King seemed pleased. He puffed out his chest and nodded to the Queen that the answer was good.

Agba swallowed. He felt a tear begin to trickle down his cheek. Quickly, before anyone noticed, he raised his hand to brush it away. His hand stopped. Why, he was growing a beard! He was a man! Suddenly his mind flew back to Morocco.
My name is Agba. Ba means father. I will be a father to you, Sham, and when I am grown I will ride you before the multitudes. And they will bow before you, and you will be King of the Wind. I promise it.

He had kept his word!

For the first time in his life, he was glad he could not talk. Words would have spoiled everything. They were shells that cracked and blew away in the wind. He and Sham were alike. That was why they understood each other so deeply.

The Godolphin Arabian stood very still, his regal head lifted. An east wind was rising. He stretched out his nostrils to gather in the scent. It was laden with the fragrance of wind-flowers. Of what was he thinking? Was he re-running the race of Lath? Was he rejoicing in the royal purple? Was he drawing a wood cart in the streets of Paris? Or just winging across the grassy downs in the shafts of the sun?

T
HE GODOLPHIN ARABIAN lived to a plentiful age. And when he died, at the age of twenty-nine, his body was buried at Gog Magog in a passage leading to his stable. Over his grave a tablet of solid granite was laid. There was no inscription on it. None at all. For the Earl of Godolphin did not need words carved on stone to remind him of the fire and spirit of the golden stallion from Morocco. He had only to look out upon his own meadows to see the living image of Sham in his colts and grandcolts. There were light bays and dark bays and chestnuts. But regardless of color, they all wore the high crest of the Godolphin Arabian.

“These are my knights of the wonderful crest,” the Earl of Godolphin would say when visitors came to Gog Magog. “The blood of the Godolphin Arabian courses in their veins. You can trace it in the height of their crest. And you can trace it, too, in the underlying gold of their coats.”

At Newmarket, however, men were not concerned with color or crest. What they were interested in was speed and stamina. And it was exactly these qualities that the descendants of the Godolphin Arabian inherited.

The names of Godolphin’s offspring were on every tongue: Lath, Cade, Regulus, Babraham, Blank, Buffcoat, Match’em, Molly Longlegs, Whistlejacket, Weasel, Old England, Silver-locks, Dormouse.

Eclipse, Sham’s great-grandson, was the pride of the kingdom. In his whole career he never ran except to win! He won eleven plates at Newmarket.
Eclipse first; the rest nowhere,
roared the crowds at Newmarket when Eclipse came sailing past the winning post.

It is a curious fact that today, two centuries later, the name of the Godolphin Arabian is found in the pedigree of almost every superior Thoroughbred. His blood reigns. To him goes the title: Father of the Turf.

Would not the carter of Paris and the King’s cook and the mistress of the Red Lion have laughed in scorn at the idea of Sham’s attaining such fame? How they would have held their sides had anyone predicted that Man o’ War, the greatest racer of his time, would owe his vitality to the fiery little horse from Morocco!

The Earl of Godolphin, however, would not have been surprised in the least. Perhaps he felt that some such honor would come to his horse. For when the Earl grew to be an old, old man he liked to take his visitors to Sham’s grave. And when they asked why the tablet bore no marking, he would say, “I shall trouble you with a very short answer. It
needs
none. You see,” he would smile, a faraway look in his eye, “the golden bay was tended all his life by a boy who could not speak. He left for Morocco the night that his horse died. Without any words at all he made me understand that his mission in life was fulfilled.

“So I have kept the tablet clean. It is for you and for me to write here our thoughts and tributes to the King of the Wind and the slim brown horseboy who loved him.”

After the Earl’s death, the Godolphin Arabian’s name and the year of his death were inscribed on the tombstone. Time, however, is erasing the letters, as if in respect to the Earl’s wishes.