The Horse Road (10 page)

She let go of our arms to wring her soft hands together as though this turn of events had some personal effect upon her comfortable life.

‘I hadn't heard all this,' I muttered.

‘So hard on Arash – such an ambitious, clever young man! I do hope this will not affect his future.'

‘The king will have greater matters to attend to now, and will not need his falcons for the hunt,' Lila's father said. ‘The petty squabbles of princes are of no account in a time of war.'

As though she hadn't heard this, Lila's mother continued, ‘Oh, and your poor, dear mother! I must go and make sure she is being well cared for, that her needs are being attended to! Servants are so untrustworthy when the mistress of a house is ill and the master is away from home. How awful for you, my dear Kallisto. You must try and be a brave girl in this awful time! I will go and prepare to visit your mother immediately.'

With a final squeeze on my arm she departed in a swirl of azure gown, her small veil drifting backwards
from her elaborate headdress and curled hair. Her perfume lingered on the rooftop. Lila's father gave a last grim look at the valley and then followed his wife without a word. Lila and I stepped closer together and wrapped our arms around each other's waists. Hers was much more slender than mine; she was going to be as tall as her father, and far more elegant than either of her parents. It was as well that I had known her all my life, or I might have been intimidated by her beauty.

‘Are you scared?' she asked, slanting a glance at me with her dark, almond-shaped eyes outlined in black.

‘I'm scared for the horses,' I said, my voice small. ‘They are trapped here, the mares, the foals, Swan. The yearling, Tulip, arrived tied to a wagon late last night. We do not have enough food in our stable granary to feed them all for very many days. My mother sent a wagon of water and grain into the city but it was taken by a tribal chieftain as it entered the gate, and is being used for the light cavalry. And my mother was not even in her right mind this morning before I came to visit you. She was muttering and crying in her dreams.'

‘I'm sorry,' Lila said softly. ‘I'm scared too. Let's go inside.'

In her room, Lila brightened again. ‘Look!' she said, shaking out the folds of a new gown of green brocade sewn with tiny jet beads. ‘Does it become me?' She
held the gown to her body and shimmied across the room like a dancing girl; an exhibition that would have horrified her mother but that reduced us briefly to mischievous laughter. I flung myself backwards on Lila's couch, across a covering of dark sable furs imported from the Baltic lands, and watched while Lila unscrewed caps from various jars of face cream and sniffed at their contents.

‘Have you washed since coming home from your nomad adventure?'

‘I bathed this morning. Marjan heated water for me.'

‘You still smell like horses. But that's nothing new. Oh, try this perfume I bought in the market yesterday!'

She held out a small glass jar with a crystal stopper, her arm bracelets chiming prettily. Removing the stopper, she wafted something smelling like sandalwood beneath my nose and I promptly sneezed. ‘I'd rather smell like horses.'

‘You're such a barbarian. How will you ever move in court circles?' She flopped beside me on the fur and stroked it absently.

‘Is it true, about Arash's father?'

‘So my mother believes. Do you think this will affect your betrothal?'

‘No,' I said with a sigh. ‘Even if in disgrace at court, his father is still a rich aristocrat with lands and power. The king will need his support in this
war, and will not risk internal strife when there is a common enemy outside our gates. And the agreement between him and my father is of long standing; they made it when Arash and I were babies, and my father is set upon the match.'

‘But it is hard on Arash,' Lila continued. ‘I have heard that he is very shamed by his father's behaviour, and wishes to find favour at court himself so that his father's disgrace will not affect him as well. Perhaps he will take on his father's position – think how splendid that would be for you both! I have seen him riding to hunt, when the wild animals are let free from the paradise enclosure and the nobles go out with bows on their shoulders and falcons on their wrists. My mother has heard he has great skill with the falcons. And he looks so handsome riding out …'

I listened to Lila with one part of my hearing only; with the other, I strained to hear if the caged birds, further down the hallway, were singing. But the house lay silent, and the roar of the city was a distant murmur, blocked out by the thick mud and stucco walls. My ribcage tightened and I struggled to breathe.

‘I must go and check on the horses!' I said, jumping to my feet. In my haste, I banged my boot toe against the foot of a stool, carved in the shape of a lion's paw.

‘I will come over and visit you later,' Lila promised. ‘Maybe we can go to the bazaar.'

‘Maybe.'

Our friendship included the unspoken understanding that I would accompany Lila on her frequent trips to the markets. I kept her company while she lingered over earrings inset with emeralds from Egypt, over shawls and veils of finest Indian cotton, over sandals of turquoise leather stitched by hand with golden thread, over pots of cosmetics from Arabia. In return, she would help me to groom whichever horses we were keeping in our city stables. She had never complained about this, even when she stepped in dung or had a toe trodden upon. My loyal friend, she understood perfectly that without the horses I could not keep my spirit in my body, that it would fly over the city walls and lift off, like a hawk, into a high wind.

Now she rose gracefully from her couch; when she moved around, she made me think of a willow tree. ‘If you don't feel like shopping, we will do something else instead. We can play tabula,' she said.

I nodded, and bit my quivering lips, and fled down the pale steps into the courtyard to let myself into the garden that lay between our houses. I hurried between the green rows of onion shoots, the sprawl of cucumber vines, and almost fell through the narrow door into our own courtyard. The mares swung to face me, startled from their mid-morning doze, and I drew a ragged breath and leaned against the wall, waiting for the hammer of my heart to steady. At this moment, they are safe here, I reminded myself.

I moved amongst the mares, running a hand over Tulip's rosy coat, over Grasshopper's long face, over Swan's river of neck. Their coats burned with heat under my palm and I glanced upwards into the dazzle of the sun, rising towards the highest point of heaven. In the pastures, the mares would have drifted under the poplar trees and been standing head to tail, swishing flies from both themselves and each other. Here, they stood pressed together, ribs to ribs, without shade.
It will be too much for them
, I thought.
I'll go and talk to my mother about it.

At that moment, I heard the voice of Lila's mother, raised in shrill commands in our ground-floor kitchen. Our cook's assistant scurried out looking harassed and headed through the gate on an errand. Fardad's eyebrows, as he let her out, twitched up and down on his forehead in agitation. No, I could not go and talk to Mother; she was very ill, seized in the grip of fever and darkness, perhaps fighting with demons in her stupor. And Lila's mother was making the most of the situation, trying to be helpful in her fussy, breathless manner. I realised then, in that moment, that all those mares and foals and yearlings were dependent upon me alone; if they suffered hunger or thirst, or from the heat, it would be my fault. Mother could not care for a single one of them. Our city groom, and our country horsemen and their wives, were all in the hippodrome where the army camp had been established. In our household there remained only
servants without knowledge of horses, and my sick mother, and myself. I stared into the mares' deep, still eyes and felt the weight of their dependency and trust settle on to my shoulders.

Squatting on my heels, I watched for long minutes while the sun beat down. The foals were restless, trying to leap and buck in play. The mares grew annoyed, jostled from their hot daze. They stamped their hind hooves in irritation until the foals finally lay down in the shade beneath their mothers' bellies, and closed their long lashes over their eyes. The yearlings were even more restless, their tails lashing in agitation at the droves of flies. They jumped when stung on the flank, barging into mares, earning themselves bites on the neck and rump, and giving voice to high squeals of pain and surprise. Sandy, our beautiful golden herd boss, shoved her way around the densely packed courtyard, trying to establish her place between the stable door, from whence the grain came, and the water trough.

They are all miserable
, I thought;
they miss their cool rivers, their tall grasses. I must do something. When Mother awakes at last, she will be proud of how well I have cared for the horses on my own.

Our stable had stalls for six animals. I brought Swan inside first and bedded her down in chopped barley straw. Then I led Sandy inside because she would think it her due, and because she was angry at continuously being jostled by mares of lower rank.
Next I led in Peony, who had suffered when her foal was born, and needed rest and special care. Her colt, a shining sorrel with a sickle moon on his forehead, skittered in beside her and began to nurse with blond tail flapping greedily. Finally I led in Grasshopper, Tulip, and Swan's yearling filly, Pearl. The courtyard was less crowded now but the heat was fiercer, beating up from the ground, pressing against the high walls. Not a breath of air stirred in that bowl of sunshine.

I tiptoed into my mother's dim room, the smell of incense and bitter herbs curling into my nostrils along with the sickly sweetness of her oozing wounds. She tossed and muttered in her tangled sheets, although I knew that Marjan had spread them tight that morning. ‘Mother,' I whispered, but her eyelids didn't flicker. She would have given her permission though, if she could. I crept to the chest at the foot of her bed and lifted the lid on its bronze hinges, slipping my hand down under the blankets until I found the leather pouch of silver Bactrian coins. After slipping a few into the carrying pouch at my belt, I returned the rest to the bottom of the chest, and smoothed Mother's fair hair from her sweating forehead before running outside, happy now to breathe in the intense heat and the smell of horse dung.

With two of our household servants following, I hurried downhill through the city, passing women at the water fountains filling blue-glazed jars. The market
square was as crowded as usual, but people were agitated and noisy, and I had to push my way through them to reach the fabric stalls. Bartering was agony for me, although Lila could spend hours doing it, sweet and fierce by turns, reeling the seller in like a fish on a hook until she had won. Meanwhile, I would hover behind her, silent, fascinated, and envious of her slippery, persuasive tongue. Now, as I stepped up to a stallholder selling bolts of cheap local cotton, my knees quivered with shyness, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Then I thought about the heat beating upon the mares, and forced myself to speak. My voice, at first small, gradually took on strength as stubbornly I forced the price of cotton lower. Afterwards, the servants carried the rolls under their arms while I purchased long pieces of lightweight rope from another stall. I found two boys of about eight years old kicking a sheep's bladder in an alley, and promised them coins if they would carry stones to my house.

‘This big,' I said, gesturing with my hands.

‘We will hurry to do this!' one cried, and they tore off, raising puffs of dust with their bare feet.

My tunic was damp with sweat when I finally trudged home again. ‘Young ladies should remain inside, taking care of their households,' Fardad muttered as I entered the gate.

‘Revered elder one, I am taking care of my household. These mares are the treasure of our valley,' I
said quietly but he shuffled off, muttering into his wispy beard. ‘And Fardad!' I called more loudly. ‘I have a special task for you to carry out. Please?'

He turned back, his deep-set eyes impassive above the seams of his face.

‘We will need more grain,' I said. ‘And any other food that the mares can eat. If I give you money, can you go and buy food and arrange to have it transported here?'

‘Do I look like an errand boy?' he asked gruffly, but he held out his hand. ‘Give me the coins.'

‘Buy any hay you can find; I saw some being brought into the city last night. Any barley or wheat or millet. Mutton fat. Eggs. Dates and raisins. Peas.' I searched my mind for any other food that our horses could survive on during this war. ‘Chicken,' I said finally, and Fardad nodded, committing each item to memory, his bony old hand clasped about the coins.

After Fardad had departed, riding on the household mule, the two small boys arrived with a donkey carrying woven grass hampers filled with stones.

‘Pile them here,' I said, and the boys unloaded the hampers while Iris, one of our grey mares, came over to snuffle her lips against the donkey's neck in curiosity. When the boys had left, I began cutting my rope into lengths with my dagger, and tying one end of each piece around a stone. I threw all these stones over the wall, into a grove of almond trees that stood in a strip of wasteground. Then I tied the
other ends of the same ropes to the remaining stones, and threw them over into our garden. The ropes stretched tight above the courtyard, at the height of the walls, and formed a lattice. I called two servants from the house to help me, and together we cut up the cotton cloth into rectangles, and then we stood on overturned buckets and stretched the cloth rectangles over the rope lattice and began to fasten them in place with big stitches of thread.

It seemed as though we worked for hours while the mares stamped at flies, breathing softly. The cotton cast blocks of shade over the mares' backs, colouring their coats with mottled patterns of yellow and pink, green and blue.