by Mary Stewart
‘No, not a bit. Gosh, no, I’d love to stay, if you’d have me . . .’
His protestations were almost violently convincing, and only faded into silence when we caught up with the hay cart. This was enormous, and top-heavily laden, creaking along on its wooden wheels behind two plodding sorrel horses. The road was narrow, overhung with high hedges, and with ditches to either side.
‘. . . If you’re sure you could do with me?’ finished Timothy, as we negotiated the hay cart with three centimetres to spare on either side, and buzzed happily on up the next incline.
‘I’m beginning to think I can’t do without you,’ I said.
‘That settles it then. Hohenwald it is.’
The village of Hohenwald was much smaller than Oberhausen. It lay a mile or so behind the main road, in a pretty hanging valley, and was little more than a cluster of houses grouped round its church whose tower rose, crowned with a bell of grey-green shingles, above splayed roofs and gables of red tile. An arched stone bridge spanned a narrow mountain river, and led what traffic it could into the cobbled square. To south and west the land fell away in smiling orchards and fields of corn, some of them cut, golden among the greens, while to north and east the mountains lifted their stepped ramparts of pine forests. The verges of the gravel road were white with dust.
The sense of loss we had felt in leaving Oberhausen was cancelled here, even before we reached the village, by the sight of the now familiar posters wrapped round trees and gate-posts, and then by the Circus Wagner itself, settled in a field beside the river. It seemed odd to see, in this completely different setting, the same tents and wagons and big top, the whole build-up of the circus so exactly the same. It was indeed as if some genie’s hand had picked it up complete and set it down again here, some thirty miles away.
It was mid-afternoon when we arrived, and the first performance would not start till five, but already children were crowding in a noisy and excited mob round the gate of the field. I saw the dwarf, Elemer, sitting on the gate and talking to the children, and making them laugh. He looked up and saw us as the car went by, and smiled and lifted his small hand in a wave of welcome. So the news would go before us.
There was some coming and going of tourists in the village, but for all that we got beds easily enough at another small and scrupulously clean Gasthof beside the church. Shortly after four, we walked back to the circus field.
As we passed the big top, I paused and looked inside.
The grass was fresh, the ring strewn with fresh sawdust, and on the platforms that crowned the enormous king-poles, electricians were busy putting the last touches to the wiring. The top itself, with its floating spaces, looked different, lit now from above with the curiously unreal diffused light of sunshine through canvas. The whole space echoed to the sound of hammering and shouting as the tent-men put up the last of the wooden tiers of scaffolding and arranged the benches on them. Someone on a high ladder was hanging the rear curtains in place, the crimson drapes through which the horses would come. A couple of clowns, already in costume but without their make-up, stood talking very seriously in the centre aisle.
In spite of the differences, it was hauntingly the same as last night, and though at the moment this was only a tent enclosing an alien air, I got the strongest feeling that it was full and echoing with the hundreds of past performances, the music of past songs and dances and laughter.
As we emerged again into the sunlight and I saw the strange gate, the strange village, the strange bell-shaped roof of the church tower against its backdrop of pines, I found myself experiencing a sudden sharp sense of loss – which I hadn’t felt that morning – to realise that Lewis was not here. He was possibly already in Vienna. Last night’s episode might have been a dream, gone to join the flickering unreality of that almost forgotten news reel.
Annalisa was expecting us, and, to my relief, seemed pleased that we had come, and very eager that I should take another look at the piebald horse.
‘But of course you are welcome! I wish I could ask you both in now, but I am dressing, as you see.’ All we had in fact seen of her so far was a face peering past the curtain that hung over the doorway of her sleeping-wagon. In spite of her welcoming smile and obviously real pleasure, I thought she looked pale – the gaiety and sparkle had gone. I wondered if she had had any sleep at all last night. ‘But you will come afterwards again and have coffee? You’ll go to the performance, yes?’
‘Timothy’s going to see the show again, and if I know him, he’ll see your act twice,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think I will, thank you. I’ll just go round to the stables. How’s the patient?’
‘Better, much better. He’s a different horse already. He hardly limps at all, just a little, as if he was stiff . . . not a real limp at all.’
‘We call it “going short”,’ I said. ‘Is he eating?’
‘Not much . . . but he really does look better. I am so grateful to you.’
‘Think nothing of it. I take it you’ll keep him now?’
I smiled as I spoke, and she responded, but (I thought) with a rather wintry charm, and said merely: ‘Then I shall see you later? Also gut! If you want to come in here and use my wagon, please do so, it’s never shut. Come in and make coffee if you want it, anything. Just what you wish.’ The smile again, better this time, and the head vanished.
‘She looks tired,’ I said. ‘I hope she manages her act all right. Well, see you later, Tim.’
The stables, too, were uncannily the same. There was the same smell, the same rows of horses’ rumps and idly swishing tails, but the sun was white on the canvas, and the air of sleepy peace was gone. The liberty horses were being prepared for the show. The rugs had been stripped off them, and their skins gleamed in the light. Half a dozen were already wearing their harness. Men hurried to and for carrying rugs, surcingles, plumed bridles. The Shetland ponies, some of them getting excited, were beginning to fuss, nibbling one another’s necks and switching their long tails. The Lipizzan stallion in his stall near the door stood placidly, head down, ears relaxed, taking no notice of the fuss and bustle. It was difficult to realise that in less than an hour’s time he would be in the ring, magnificent in the spotlights, clothed with gold and jewels and flying through the air. Here in his dim corner he looked ancient and heavy with wisdom, and as earth-bound as a horse of white stone.
Opposite him the piebald stood with drooping head, but as I approached his eye rolled back, and he moved an ear in greeting. What I had taken to be a boy was hunched in the next stall, busy over a piece of harness, but when he spoke, I realised that it was the dwarf Elemer.
‘So you are back to see the suffering one.’ I don’t know where the dwarf had learnt his English; it was guttural and stilted, but the vowels were cultured. His voice was deep and pleasant.
‘Yes. He looks a lot better.’
‘He has eaten a little. Not enough. But he will mend . . .’
I went into the stall to look at the horse. ‘So Annalisa was saying.’
‘. . . For what it is worth,’ the dwarf said. He lifted the jewlled saddle off its trestle, and began to hump it rather painfully across to the white stallion’s stall. It almost hid him from sight, and the girth was trailing, but I thought I knew better than to offer help.
I turned my attention to the horse. The dolly was still in place, the swelling had vanished, and he accepted my hands without wincing. I moved him back a pace in his stall, and saw that he was putting the leg to the ground with more confidence already. The coat still stared, but his eye was brighter, and his general countenance very much better than last night.
I straightened up. ‘“For what it is worth”?’ I wasn’t quite sure if I had heard the guttural murmur aright. ‘Do you mean they won’t keep him?’
He shrugged. The effect, with the tiny short arms and the big shoulders, was awful. I had to exert sharp control to stop myself from looking away. ‘Who knows?’ was all he would say, and set one of those shoulders to the whit
e stallion’s hock to make him move over.
Then all of a sudden, it seemed, the show was on us. The horses went streaming out for the first act. I saw the ‘cowboys’ swing up into their saddles, and the ‘Entry of the Gladiators’ came thudding from the big top. The groom Rudi hurried into the Lipizzan’s stall and, taking the saddle from Elemer, heaved it one-armed on to the stallion’s back. I had been wrong about the dwarf’s susceptibilities; the groom cracked some joke in German which, from the accompanying gesture, had some reference to Elemer’s height, but the latter only laughed and went scuttling under the stallion’s belly to fasten the girth. I straightened up from my examination of the piebald’s leg, and stood fondling his ears, while I watched the white stallion putting on, jewel by jewel, his royal dress. Then the dwarf came across to me.
‘They are starting. Are you going in to see the show again?’
I shook my head. ‘I was wondering . . . I suppose this old chap won’t have had any exercise at all since the fire? Has he even been out to grass? I thought not. You know, a bit of gentle walking would do him a world of good, and a bit of grazing would do even more. I wondered if there was anywhere I could take him? Do you think the verge of the road? Would it be allowed?’
‘Of course,’ said the dwarf, ‘you must do as you wish, you know what is best. But do not take him to the road, there is too much dust. Go the other way.’ The little arm gestured towards the far door of the stable. ‘Behind this field there is a wood, but it is not a big wood just a – what do you say? – a belt of trees, perhaps twenty metres wide. There is a gate, and a path up through the trees, and above them is a little alp; it is common land, and there is good grass there. Nobody will stop you.’
‘Can I leave him grazing there till the pull-down?’
‘Of course. You will not want to hobble him, no? Then if you wait one moment, I will get you the tether and a peg.’
It was easy enough to find the place. At the far side of the field the ground lifted sharply away from the flat land where the tents stood, and the late sun gilded the young fir cones with amber and threw into deep shadow the path that wound upwards through the trees. The wood of the gate was damp, and it creaked a little as I opened it and led the old horse through. We went slowly. He put his off fore to the ground perhaps a little tenderly, but he was by no means lame; at most his gait was stiff, and as we made our way gently up the mossy track between the pines he seemed to go better with every step. He lifted his head, and his ears pricked with the first sign of interest he had shown. Even I, with my poor human senses, could smell the rich scents of that summer’s evening.
Above the belt of pines lay the alp the dwarf had told me of, a long terrace of flat green, dotted here and there with bushes, and walled on every side by the dark firs. Someone had scythed down the long meadow grass, and the hay lay drying here and there in little piles; where it had been shorn the new grass was fresh and tender green, and full of flowers. The air smelt of honey.
The horse shouldered his way past me into the sunlight, dropped his head and began to graze. I left him to it, and carrying the slack of the tether took the peg into the middle of the meadow and drove it in, then moved a little way off and sat down.
The ground was warm with the day’s sun. Faintly from below the belt of pines came the circus music, muted and made more musical by the distance. I sat listening, enjoying the last of the sunshine, while I contentedly watched the now greedy grazing of the old stallion. The grass was thick with familiar meadow flowers – harebells, thyme, eyebright, and, where the scythe had not yet passed, the foaming white and yellow of parley and buttercups. What was not so familiar was the fluttering, rustling life of the meadow: the whole surface of the field seemed moving with butterflies – meadow browns, blues, sulphurs, fritillaries, and a few of my own Vanessas, the red admirals and tortoiseshells. Their colours flickered among the flowers, each vanishing momentarily as it clung and folded, then opening to its own bright colour as it fluttered on. Even the green roots of the grass were alive, as countless grasshoppers hopped and fiddled there. The air droned with bees, all zooming past me, I noticed, on the same purposeful track, as if on some apian Autobahn of their own. They were all making for a little hut, the size of a small summer-house, chalet-style and beautifully built of pine, and as full of tiny windows as a dovecot. It was, in fact, a bee-house, a sort of collective hive for several swarms, each one with its own tiny bee-door, behind which it made its honey in candle-shaped combs. Amused and interested, I watched the laden bees aiming like bullets, each for its own door, remembering how, even a few years ago, in my own childhood, the English meadows, too, had been alive with wings, and how quiet now was the poisioned countryside.
From beyond the pines, sounding surprisingly remote, the cracked bell of the little church chimed six. There had been an interval of silence from the circus. I supposed it was the clowns’ act, or the performing dogs: now, faintly and sweetly, but quite distinctly in the still clear air, the music started again. I heard the fanfare and recognised it; it was the entrance of Annalisa and her white stallion. The trumpets cut through the air, silver, clear and commanding. Old Piebald stopped grazing and lifted his head with his ears cocked, as one imagines a war-horse might at the smell of battle and the trumpets. Then the music changed, sweet, lilting and golden, as the orchestra stole into the waltz from Der Rosenkavalier.
There was some enchantment in hearing it at that distance on that lovely evening in the Alpine meadow. I settled my back comfortably against one of the little soft haycocks, and prepared to enjoy the concert; but then something about the old horse caught my attention, and I sat up to watch.
He had not lowered his head again to graze, but was standing with neck arched and ears pricked, in a sort of mimicry of the white stallion’s proud posture. Then, like the white stallion’s, his head moved, not in an ordinary equine toss, but with a graceful, almost ceremonial movement of conscious beauty. A forefoot lifted, pointed, pawed twice at the soft ground; then slowly, all by himself, bowing his head to his shadow on the turf, he began to dance. He was old and stiff, and he was going short on the off fore, but he moved to the music like a professional.
I sat among the lengthening shadows of the lonely meadow, watching him, somehow infinitely touched. In this way, I supposed, all old circus horses felt when they heard the music of their youth: the bowing, ceremonious dance of the liberty horse was something which, once learned, could never be forgotten.
And then I realised that this was not the movement of a liberty horse. It was not dancing as the palominos had ‘danced’; this was a version, stiff but true, of the severely disciplined figures of the high school: first the Spanish Walk, shouldering-in in a smooth skimming diagonal; then the difficult pirouette, bringing him round sharply to present him sideways to his audience; then as I watched he broke into a form of the piaffe. It was a travesty, a sick old horse’s travesty, of the standing trot which the Lipizzaner had performed with such precision and fire, but you could see it was a memory in him, still burning and alive, of the real thing perfectly executed. In the distance the music changed: the Lipizzaner down in the ring would be rising into the levade, the first of the ‘airs above the ground’. And in the high Alpine meadow, with only me for audience, old Piebald settled his hind hooves, arched his crest and tail, and, lame forefoot clear of the ground, lifted into and held the same royal and beautiful levade.
And this, it seemed, had been enough. He came down to all four feet, shook his head, dropped his muzzle to the grass, and all at once was just an old tired piebald horse pegged out to graze in a green meadow.
10
This is the attitude in which artists depict the horses on which gods and heroes ride.
Xenophon: The Art of Horsemanship
‘Tim,’ I said, ‘you’re not proposing to sit through the whole of the second house too, are you?’
‘No, I wasn’t, though I’d have liked to see Annalisa ride again. Why, did you want me?’
‘Yes, and I want you to skip Annalisa too, if you will. I’ve got something to show you, and it’s something you won’t want to miss. No’ – in response to a quick, inquiring look from him – ‘nothing to do with that. Something purely personal. Will you come with me?’
‘Well, of course. Where?’
‘Away up the hill behind the field. I’m not going to tell you anything about it, I want you to see for yourself.’
It was dark now, but the moon was coming up clear of the mountains and the trees. The air was very still, and the bats were out. The horse had moved on a little, grazing quietly.
‘Oh, you’ve got old Piebald here,’ said Timothy. ‘Goodness, he looks a different creature. He’s eating like a horse, as they say.’
‘Exactly like a horse. But – How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! . . . the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!’
‘What on earth’s that?’
‘Hamlet, with a dash of Noël Coward. Look, come over here, the grass is damp now, but there’s a log; we can sit on that.’
‘What were you going to show me?’
‘You’ll have to wait for it. It’s something that happened, and I hope it’ll happen again. Here, sit down. Listen how clearly you can hear the music.’
‘Mm. That’s the liberty act, isn’t it? There, that’s the end. Now it’ll be the clowns. What is it, Vanessa? You sounded sort of excited.’
‘I am a bit. Wait and see. It may not happen, I – I simply don’t know, and I may have been wrong. I can’t help feeling now that it was all my imagination, but if it wasn’t, perhaps you’ll see it, too.’