The traditions for the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, in fact, wherever English is the language, remain unchanged. If a fox is viewed, hounds not yet on the line, the huntsman, ideally, should count to twenty before swinging hounds that way. Give the fox a fair chance to get moving. No hole, drain, or culvert can be stopped. The fox has every opportunity to pop down whatever underground chamber appeals to him. This has been the case in America but has only recently been put into practice in England.
The other tradition is that hounds have the right-of-way. There is no exception to this. A horse who kicks a hound must leave the field.
In counties where hunting is prevalent, those driving a car automatically slow. People should anyway as a matter of course, but those who don’t, if recognized, soon find themselves verbally accosted or in the social deep freeze. Hounds always have the right-of-way.
Never speak to a hound. Even if you were present at its birth, even if you walk out the pack daily, never speak to a hound. Only the huntsman and whippers-in may speak to the animal. Too many voices can confuse the hound and, worse, your big flannel mouth may cause the animal to lift its head.
The sound of “Hike to him,” “Hark,” or “Leave it” from a member of the field has caused huntsmen to just go off, a torrent of abuse following. Other, more diplomatic huntsmen, if hearing the sin, call the hound to them as quickly as possible. But the tradition is as it was in the time of the pharaohs: Never speak to a hound when hunting.
The animal wants to chase a fox, has been bred, trained, and loved so that it will do its job. There are more less-than-perfect-weather days than perfect, which means the hound is trying very hard to get a line, a thin enticing ribbon of scent. It never fails: the slow days are the days when sooner or later, the field starts talking. If ever hounds needed quiet, it’s on the difficult days. On great scenting days, even if some damned fool is blowing her mouth off, hounds won’t be distracted. The problem is, for true foxhunters, that most of the field hunt to ride instead of riding to hunt. If they aren’t tearing across the countryside, lurching over jumps, they’re bored. Good hound work means nothing to them. In fact, they don’t know it when they see it. And not one member out of a hundred will know the signs of a dishonest huntsman or master, ones who “arrange” for foxes or scent to appear. Honest masters and staff tolerate the rider types because they pay their subscription fees, which keep the whole show in business. It would be a barefaced liar of a huntsman or master who would say they didn’t love the days best when the field was small, weather bitter or iffy. The people in the field then are the true blues, the ones who love hounds, love the game.
By tradition, not only should one not speak to hounds, but one should not speak to the other hunters, especially at a check, when they sit and wait for hounds to recast themselves and find scent. Rarely is this observed, and even the best field master, if the field is huge, can’t enforce silence without sending an offender home. No one likes being draconian, but sometimes someone must be sent home because of bad manners. It certainly wakes everyone else up.
Sister Jane thought of these things as she prepared her kit for Opening Hunt. Always a gala occasion, she wanted to ensure that she presented a good example. Like most masters, she knew the real hunting would begin on the other side of the festive day.
In England, foxhunting begins November 1, the formal season. Americans usually determine Opening Hunt according to their latitude. Someone in upstate New York might start formal hunting in early October. By December the northern hunts, Canadian hunts, often shut down.
In Virginia, Opening Hunt will generally fall on the last Saturday of October or the first Saturday of November.
The Jefferson Hunt held to the first Saturday in November, in part because it’s close to November 3, St. Hubert’s Day, the patron saint of hunting. This particular Opening Hunt Saturday fell on November 5, the feast day of Zachary and Elizabeth, parents of John the Baptist. Still, it was close enough to St. Hubert’s Day.
The legend is that St. Hubert, a dissolute youth, was hunting on Good Friday when an enormous stag appeared, the cross shining between his mighty antlers. Thus was St. Hubert converted. He continued to hunt and breed hounds named for him, even when bishop of Maastricht and Liege. He died in A.D. 727, revered to this day. Churches are named after him, his blessings invoked by those in search of their quarry. Dedicated hunters, regardless of quarry, often have a St. Hubert’s medal tucked somewhere on their person or even a ring, the stag with the cross between its antlers.
Sister wore a St. Hubert’s ring on her wedding ring finger. Raymond bought it for her at a lovely jewelry store in Vienna, right across from the Spanish school. She wore it with her wedding ring. Adorned with oak leaves and acorns on the sides, it had worn down over the last forty years. Her wedding ring finally broke in two, ten years after Ray’s death, which was in 1991. What remained was St. Hubert’s ring, which seemed fitting.
On her right hand, the third finger, she wore a red-gold signet ring, a fox mask beautifully engraved. Her son gave it to her when he was thirteen. He paid for it himself, no help from his father, out of money he had earned repairing tack. RayRay liked working with his hands. Sister, not given to gusts of emotion, cried when she opened the green Keller & George box, to behold the simple, beautiful ring. She never took that ring off her finger. Ray Jr. was dead by the next Christmas.
Like most people, she harbored superstitions. She wore her grandfather’s pocket watch when hunting. Many’s the time as a child when, out hunting, she’d see her grandfather pull out his watch, flick open the case, and check the time.
So often her mind would go back to her husband and her son, two handsome men, in her estimation, anyway, and she’d remember them riding together, flying their fences, big smiles on their faces. She had hoped RayRay would inherit the mantle of master of foxhounds as well as his great-grandfather’s pocket watch.
Life has a funny way of working things out. Last year, after decades alone at the helm, she finally took on a joint master, Dr. Walter Lungrun, her husband’s natural son. It seemed that everyone knew but her. Even Walter’s father, while he lived, knew. When she found out she thought “The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.” As for Big Ray engaging in affairs, she didn’t hold it against him because she was having affairs of her own. However, she didn’t become pregnant. Now she rather wished she had.
Every marriage creates its own world, and while Sister’s marriage wasn’t conventional it was solid. They did love and support each other.
But that was all so long ago, and Opening Hunt was tomorrow. She refocused her attention on her attire.
Her top hat, her black shadbelly, her canary breeches hung in the closet. Her fourfold stock tie, pressed, was folded over a hanger. Her shirt, the banded collar fitting her neck with a half inch to spare, also hung there. Her canary gloves, buttersoft, rested on her Dehner boots, the patent-leather tops gleaming. Her hammerhead spurs sparkled. Her hat cord was already attached to the top hat so she wouldn’t fumble for it in the morning. All she would need to do was hook it on the inside back loop of her shadbelly collar.
She’d been foxhunting since she was six years old. Before that her mother and grandfather would take her out on a leadline. Even so, at seventy-two, she kept a list of everything she needed taped to her bureau. Sister had a horror of being incorrect in any fashion. Her only cheat was the thin garter strap that slipped through the tab at the back of her hunting boots. Before Velcro, a row of small flat buttons closed the breeches on your calf. The buttons ran all the way up to the knee. The garter strap slipped between the upper buttons. There were those who said it should go between the second and third button and those who argued for the first and second button. Centuries ago, the garter strap kept the boots in place. A few people argued that the garter strap kept the breeches in place. She finally gave it up because the leather rubbed her leg. She’d come back from the High Holy Days, Opening Hunt, Thanksgiving
Hunt, Christmas Hunt, and New Year’s Hunt, with bloody legs. So far, no one commented on her slight rebellion. Then again, few knew the difference.
“Golly, that’s it. I can’t do any more.” She flopped into bed glad the fire in the fireplace warmed the room, which faced the northwest. “Don’t bring me any mice tonight. I need my sleep.”
“How about a juicy spider?” Golly teased.
“Even I won’t eat a spider,” Rooster mumbled as he rolled over on the rug beside the bed.
“You eat everything else.” Raleigh put his big paw on the harrier’s back leg.
“Is this going to be a chatty night? I need to sleep.”
The phone rang.
Golly put her paw on the receiver. “Hollywood calling.”
“Hello.”
“Honey, I’m at the airport. Sam’s coming to pick me up. I just couldn’t let Opening Hunt go without being there.” Gray Lorillard’s voice lifted her.
“I can’t believe you! You’ve come all the way back from San Francisco for Opening Hunt? I’m so happy!”
“I’ll see you in the morning. Did I ever tell you how good you look in a shadbelly?” He laughed. “I know you need your sleep so bye.”
“Bye.” She hung up the phone. “Gray’s home! I can’t believe it. Thank God I had my hair and nails done yesterday.”
“Why do women do their nails? They don’t have real nails.” Rooster thought it odd.
“Color,” Golly spoke authoritatively. “Humans don’t have much color. Their eyes, their hair but other than that they’re one color, white, black, brown, you get the idea. See, if a lady paints her nails it perks up the rather drab affair.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” Rooster replied.
“They wear clothes. That’s colorful,” Raleigh said and lifted his paw off Rooster’s hind leg.
“Sure, but when they’re naked, no color.” Golly kept to her idea.
“What about men? Why don’t they do their nails?” Rooster was fascinated.
“Well, they do, I mean the ones who are very successful in business, but they don’t paint them. They buff them. Men can’t be colorful like women.”
“What about the pictures in some of the books Sister reads? Feathers and ruffles and stuff like that?” Raleigh noticed everything.
“That was when men were peacocks. All gone now.” Golly warmed to her subject. “Now the most powerful thing a man can wear is black and white, or gray with stripes for a morning suit, or white tie at night. White tie is even more powerful than black tie. All black and white.”
“You’d think they’d imitate us. We have varied coats.” Rooster was proud of his rich tricolor coat.
“Black and white.” Golly swayed a little.
“Not tomorrow. The men wear scarlet and the women are in black.” Raleigh liked getting one up on Golly, who was every bit as smart as he was and therefore a challenge.
“They get to be peacocks?” Rooster’s voice rose.
“A peacock that sits on its tail feathers is just another turkey.” Golly, irritated that Raleigh had found the exception that proves the rule, turned her back on the dogs on the floor to curl up by Sister’s side.
The phone rang again.
“Goddammit!” Sister picked it up and said in a modulated voice, “Hello.”
“Sister, this is Marty Howard and I’d like to bring a guest tomorrow.”
“That’s fine, Marty.”
“Well, it’s a last-minute thing and she only has black field boots. Might you overlook it?”
“If you can’t call around and find a pair of boots to fit her, of course.”
“Thank you. Good night.”
“Good night.” She hung up the phone. “Now I’m wide awake.” She grabbed the book next to the table, The Life of Frank Freeman, Huntsman by Guy Pagent, published in 1948 by Alfred Tacey, Limited, Leicester, England.
The phone rang again.
“I am going to rip this infernal thing out of the wall! Why are people calling me this late?” She picked it up. “Hello.”
A deep voice said, “If I reveal myself I’ll be killed. Al Perez had his hand in the till. He’s not alone.”
“What?”
Click.
She sat there for a moment, phone in hand, then put it back in the cradle. The odd tinty sound of the caller’s voice was unnerving.
“Close to home,” she said aloud as she dialed Ben Sidel.
C H A P T E R 1 3
Today, the summation of fall, was flooded with soft sunshine. As fall lingered long this year many trees still dazzled red, orange, yellow, and true scarlet. The sky, an intense blue, was cloudless. The mercury at ten A.M. sat on the sixty-six-degree line but would surely climb. This was a perfect day for everything but foxhunting.
As the Reverend Judy Parrish from Trinity Episcopal Church blessed the hounds on the beginning of the one hundred and eighteenth season, the crowd of two hundred people smiled. The hounds gathered around the divine as she stood on a mounting block so people could see her and so the dog hounds wouldn’t take a notion to offer their own blessing.
Diana observed the Reverend Parrish’s vestments flowing slightly in the light breeze. People’s clothing fascinated her and she thought it must be a bother to have to decide what to wear and be confined in it. Paying for it was the final insult. She had only to wash her sleek coat and go about her day.
Diana wondered why the Reverend Parrish’s robe was white with a multicolored surplice whereas the Reverend Daniel Wheeler’s robe was black, his surplice representing the ecclesiastical season. The Reverend Wheeler gave a blessing on Thanksgiving as that was the Children’s Hunt and the youngsters adored the Reverend Wheeler.
Diana considered asking Cora, who was older and wiser, but knew if she so much as opened her mouth a dirty look would shoot her way from the huntsman.
As they disembarked from the party wagon, their special van, he told them sternly, “No loose tongues. Be respectful.”
Sister, on Lafayette, stood to the left of the hounds; Shaker, on Gunpowder, was on the right. Betty and Sybil discreetly stood farther back just in case.
Tedi and Edward opened their house for this special day. Hospitality, second nature to them, made everyone feel part of the ceremony even if they’d not so much as fed a carrot to a horse in their life.
As the hounds, the horses, the foxes, and lastly the humans were blessed, Sister lifted her eyes to take in the large field, all one hundred and thirty of them. This number, unwieldy for a field master, was dwarfed by the four hundred or so who would take to the field on Boxing Day in England. Entire villages poured out along the road to cheer them on. For an American hunt, one hundred and thirty people in the field and another two hundred on the ground constituted a sizable number. She knew her people could ride. About the visitors, well, they’d either hang on or dot the landscape in their best clothes.
The best riders of Custis Hall came. Charlotte and Bunny sat beside each other. Bill Wheatley, in a weazlebelly with a robin’s egg blue silk stock tie, not incorrect if one studies the mid-eighteenth-century prints, was also there. Bill’s theatrical nature would leach out somehow. He had to be noticed.
Sister was glad Charlotte kept the girls on their schedule. Charlotte’s judgment impressed Sister. Over the last nine years she had ample opportunity to observe what to her was a young woman. At seventy-two, someone forty-three is young.
Her eyes lingered on Gray Lorillard next to his brother, Sam, and Crawford and Marty. They hadn’t a minute to catch up, although he did sprint to her truck when she pulled in to give her a big hug and a kiss. He made her feel like the most special woman in the world. And he was handsome. His hair was salt and pepper, his military mustache set off his straight white teeth, and his deep voice had a melodic, hypnotic quality. The other thing she noticed about Gray when they’d begun dating last year was his hands, slender but strong.
Bunny Taliaferro also had lovely hands.
She really didn’
t know why she looked at hands. Maybe it was because a horseman needs good hands, but not necessarily pretty ones. She valued both.
A moment of silence, then Shaker coughed.
She smiled gratefully at Shaker, for he brought her back to the task at hand. “Hounds, please.”
He clapped his cap on his auburn curls, the cap tails dangling. They walked at a stately pace down the long winding drive; at the covered bridge he put his horn to his lips, pointed Gunpowder to the right, and blew for the hounds to get to work. “Lieu in there.”
“Finally!” An exasperated Dragon bolted along Snake Creek.
For all his eagerness and everyone else’s the day was a blank. No master wants a blank day even if Jesus Christ himself couldn’t get a fox up on a day with a high-pressure system overhead, dry, bright, and now seventy-two degrees. Still, everyone enjoyed a gorgeous ride and came back to the trailers in two hours. Even at the leisurely pace at which they moved along some people managed to part company with their horses.
As the hounds drank water back at the party wagon, Crawford walked over and said to Shaker, “That bitch has drive.”
He had pointed to Dragon.
“Dog hound,” Shaker simply replied.
“Ah, well, you ought to breed him.” Then Crawford walked toward his wife, who had just emerged from their dressing room in the horse trailer.
Shaker seethed.
Sister shrugged. “He has to be the authority.”
“No authority on manners and doesn’t know squat about hounds.” Shaker stroked Diddy’s head.
“You’re right about that.”
A hunt member should never presume to tell staff or the master what to do or how to do it. Crawford had told the huntsman what hound to breed, thereby committing two sins. First, he had breached etiquette. Second, he had revealed a dangerous ignorance should he ever get the opportunity to breed a pack. Beware being seduced by a brilliant individual. Always study the families, study the bloodlines.
The breakfast exceeded even the last Opening Hunt breakfast. This time Tedi and Edward brought down an oysterman from the Chesapeake Bay who shucked oysters right out of an ice-crammed barrel. There were clams, too. Half a pig turned on the outdoor spit over open coals, as did half a lamb on a second spit, the roasting pit glowing orange. Twelve people had been employed to serve the guests; blue-and-white-striped tents set up outside provided shade since it proved so hot.
The Hunt Ball Page 9