by Paula McLain
Thoroughbreds are as skittish as they come, but Pegasus had always had a wonderful head on him. He was brave and cool even then, fixing his great eyes on me in the dark, trusting me to find a way. Because he believed I could do it, I believed I could, too, and started working on a plan. I had a rope tied to the saddle, which just might be long enough to pull him out if I could anchor it well.
I felt the bridge give and twist like bedsprings as I inched forward, too aware of adrenaline and my own ragged breath. Finally I reached the far bank and found a wattle tree wedged in well and angled into the side. It was a young tree, but it was all I had, and I hoped it would do. I worked my way back towards Pegasus, who waited with epic patience. I made a running knot across the bridge of his nose and another going round his head in a makeshift halter. The rope wouldn’t work if it slipped off. My thought was only to anchor him until morning. There was no way he could clamber out of the slats, not without leverage, and it would be too dangerous to try on my own in the blackness. I could lose him, and I would never chance that.
Just as I got the halter secured and the other end tied to the wattle tree, I leaned against his neck, resting. “This is going to make quite a story,” I told him in the dark, his velvety ears coming forward, listening. Tying a wool blanket over my shoulders into a cape, I settled along his side for warmth. But just as I thought I might be able to snatch a little sleep, I heard the smacking of brush and a rumbling crash. A herd of elephants had got our scent and come around. Now they wheeled and thundered on the bank, terrifying Pegasus. I didn’t know they wouldn’t rattle the bridge to pieces with us on it. By instinct, I stood. Pegasus struggled, lunging against the slats, shifting his weight in a rolling motion. I was full of pure fear, thinking he’d crash through, but somehow he got one leg out, then two. He stretched for the bit of the bank he could reach, pulling forward as the bridge gave and shifted around us. It was like trying to walk on a raft of shifting toothpicks, or crumbling burnt sugar, or nothing at all.
Somehow, like a hero, Pegasus gained his footing and pulled through the remaining slats. But we were at a terrible angle. His weight dropped down the bank behind him, steeply, and he was exhausted. The sandy loam gave like water, and I thought I might lose him anyway. The elephants weren’t far off. I could hear them groaning their warnings, and the unmistakable trumpeting of a bull.
Urging Pegasus on, I stood by the tree and grabbed the rope with both hands, wedging my full weight, bent in two, pulling with everything I had. Finally we were both on the ridge. I could see deep lines cut into Pegasus’s chest from the bamboo, and there were great strips of flesh torn from his legs. We were both lucky to be standing there, but we weren’t safe yet. The elephants were still nearby and heaven knew what else. Pegasus smelled like blood, and we were both tired. That made us an easy target for anything on the prowl. We would have to keep going.
—
When we finally made it to Solio it was nearly dawn. Berkeley’s loyal Somali servants still had run of the place until the family could find a buyer. They knew me, and though it was an ungodly hour they welcomed me in and readied a dry stall for Pegasus.
I carefully cleaned and bandaged his wounds and found they weren’t as awful as I had feared. The slats had gouged shallow trenches into the skin of his chest and legs, but there were no signs of infection and no fresh blood. He would heal well—thank God. In the meantime, where was Denys? Perhaps the rain had stalled him too? I had no idea what conditions were like and I hoped for the best as I settled down to sleep.
When I woke a few hours later, I had coffee and a light breakfast, all the time keeping one ear cocked for the sounds of Denys. He was coming in his noisy wagon. I would hear him half a mile away, and then we would be alone for six days. We’d never had anything near that much time, and I felt dizzy with the idea of his closeness, his smell, his hands, and his laughter. He would show me places and things he loved, and we would live right to the edges of every moment we had together. If only he would come.
Finally, after lunch I saw one of Denys’s Kikuyu boys come running up the road towards the house, loping steadily along as if he could run for ever. My stomach lurched watching him, for I knew what he meant.
“Bedar says he won’t be coming, msabu,” the boy said when he reached me. He had likely covered twenty steep miles that day. His bare feet were thickly padded with leathery calluses. He wasn’t winded.
“Not coming at all?”
“They’ve found no ivory.”
Denys was still working, then. His days didn’t belong to him, and he couldn’t have come if he’d wanted. That didn’t mean I wasn’t crushed. I watched as Berkeley’s man gave the boy water and food, and then watched him set out again after Denys, heading fearlessly to the north, tracing the bend in the road. When he was finally out of sight, I felt my spirits sag. Pegasus and I could have died on that mountain in the dark, and for nothing. I wouldn’t be seeing Denys. We wouldn’t have our days at all, and I had risked so much to get them, to be here. I was almost sick with it.
I packed up my things, and then threaded my way down to the river to the site of Berkeley’s grave. Months had passed, and the mounded-up earth had begun to sink here and there. I groomed the plot with my hands and the tip of my boots, wanting to do something for him and to feel close to him again. Above me, a pair of starlings scissored the air, calling out to each other in an elaborate system of chits and replies. Iridescence bloomed along their chests and heads in jewel-like green and blue and copper. The leaves quaked around them, but the rest of the forest was still.
“Oh, Berkeley, I’ve got myself in deep this time,” I said. “What am I going to do?”
Nothing, not even the birds, answered.
When Karen returned from Denmark, I tried not to hear news of her, but that was impossible. Colony life was too narrow and too bent on exposing every turn and gambit. She’d been ill and in bed for a time. That year’s coffee crop wasn’t good, and her debts were mounting perilously. I’d also learned that Denys had set off for Europe with almost no warning, but since he hadn’t sent word to me directly, I didn’t know why. I finally ran into Karen at the Muthaiga Club at the end of March. She was there having tea with Blix, and seeing them, I nearly fell on them both. That’s how things were in the colony. You needed friends, no matter how complicated those ties were, or what they cost you.
“Beryl,” Blix said, squeezing my shoulders. “Everyone’s talking about how your horses might just win everything. Wouldn’t that be something?”
Karen and I kissed hello tentatively. She looked thinner. The skin around her eyes was drawn, and her cheekbones were hollowed with shadows. “Denys has gone back to London,” she said almost immediately, as if she couldn’t keep her mind on anything else. “We had two weeks. Two weeks together after eleven months apart. And yet I’m supposed to be grateful. I’m supposed to be brave and carry on.”
Part of me wanted to shout Yes at her, loud and strong. She’d had a long string of days alone with him when my time with Denys had been stolen outright. And yet I also knew the grief she felt. I had it, too. Now he’d left the continent again. “Why London this time?”
“His father is fading. He and his brothers will need to find a buyer for Haverholme. The estate has been in Denys’s family for several hundred years. I can’t imagine how difficult this will be for them all.” She shook her head and short curls tumbled. Her shingle had grown out roughly. “I know I should be thinking only of Denys’s family at a time like this, but I want him home.”
Blix coughed lightly, a warning or reminder.
“You’re tired of hearing this song, I know,” she snapped. “But what am I supposed to do? Honestly, Bror, what?”
I could see that he wasn’t going to tangle with her if he didn’t have to. “Excuse me.” He pushed back his chair. “I’ve spotted a friend on the other side of the room.”
When Blix had gone, Karen sighed deeply. “I’ve finally agreed to give him a divorce. You�
��d think he’d be more grateful.”
“Why now? He’s been asking for years, hasn’t he?”
“I don’t know. I started to feel terrible about fighting so hard to hold him. I’ve just wanted someone, don’t you see? There was a time I thought Denys would marry me, but that seems a fool’s scheme more and more.”
I swallowed to steady my voice, determined to appear at ease with her. “Will things be more difficult on the farm, now, with Blix moving on?”
“What, do you mean with money?” She laughed darkly. “Bror has always managed to spend twice what’s in his purse. Then he asks for another loan…as if I actually have it.”
“I’m sorry. You deserve more.”
“I suppose part of me knew what I was getting into with him. Maybe we always know.” She made a soft clucking noise, as if swallowing air, or immovable fact. “Bror was never any good at feelings, but Denys isn’t any better, God help me. What can I do? He’s ruined me for life without him. That’s the thing of it.”
The colour must have rinsed from my face as she talked. I was losing the battle with normalcy and found it hard to balance my cup or quieten my hands. “He always seems so happy to be on the farm.”
“Why wouldn’t he be? He only comes when he wants to come. It never costs him anything. My struggles matter, yes, but they’re not his.”
She was speaking of commitment—she wanted all of him, and for life—but she seemed not to understand how this would be a stranglehold for Denys. She couldn’t force a promise. He would have to enter her life freely or not at all. After what I’d been through with Jock, Denys and I very much agreed on this. “Why do you keep trying?”
“Because when he’s here, I’m happier than at any other time. It makes everything else endurable. I’ll walk across the lawn and hear music from his gramophone, or come through my door and see his hat on the peg, and my heart lurches to life. All the other times, I’m sleeping.”
“You feel very much alive to me.”
“Only because you don’t know me. Not the way Denys does.”
I sat and listened to Karen’s sad, beautiful words, wanting to hate her—her good chairs and carpets. Her rare white lilies and face powder and overdramatic kohl. She was wrong for trying to keep Denys on a chain, but didn’t I want him, too? We were kindred in this respect, closer than sisters, and irrevocably estranged at the same time.
Before I left the hotel, I found Blix at the bar to say goodbye.
“How are you really?” he asked. Something in his tone was more delicate than I’d ever heard him be.
“Still standing.” I straightened my shoulders for him so he would worry less about me. “You know, Cockie was a lifesaver to me in London.”
“She’s a wonderful girl.”
“She’s marvellous. If you don’t marry her, I will.”
“Right.” He laughed and his eyes crinkled. “The plan is to do the deed when she returns. If she hasn’t come to her senses by then.” He laughed again, looking past the rim of his glass. “I’ll be the one wearing white.”
“And Dr. Turvy? He’ll be there, I suppose.”
“Yes. He’s promised to give away the bride.”
I trained Wrack in a fever. The St. Leger was in early August—there were only a few precious months left to get him on top form—and then the worst happened. Wrack’s recent successes should have made Ogilvie feel confident in his horse, but his friends had begun to whisper to him. How could he trust a girl to bring Wrack into his sharpest glory? For any old race at Nakuru, certainly, but for the St. Leger? Did he really want to risk it?
And so it was that less than three months before the race of my life, I had no horse. I could barely think or see straight. In the year I’d had Wrack, I’d put everything into him. His skill and prowess and moments of glory were me—mine—with my stamp on every reach and thundering turn. Now his loss had left me nothing. I was hollowed out.
“What will we do?” I asked Ruta. We were sitting on hay bales up in the stands, the sun and the day’s labours gone. Velvet night pushed in, soft and deadly.
“We still have half-a-dozen horses to run at the meeting.”
“In the smaller races, yes. I know we can take some of those, but for the classic, the one race that matters?”
“We must think on this,” he said, looking out at the night. “There is much we don’t yet know.”
“All the other owners will see that Ogilvie has pulled Wrack. And if he wins anyway, without us, they’ll clap him on the back saying how clever he was, how forward-looking.” I sighed and stewed, tugging at my hair, until Ruta left for home and his wife.
When I was alone again, I listened to the pulsing thrum of insects and the more distant noises of the stable, knowing that if Denys were anywhere on the continent, anywhere at all, I would have run to him, just to feel his arms around me, to feel centred there and know I could go on somehow, finding strength and courage along the way. But he wasn’t. He was nowhere I could find him.
—
A few days later, Ruta was out on breezes with Melton Pie when Eric Gooch came into the stable. He was an owner I didn’t know very well—tall and nervous-looking, with a tic of straightening his tie every few minutes. I was familiar with one of his fillies, though. Wise Child was out of one of my father’s best brood mares, Ask Papa. Like Pegasus, she’d been delivered into my hands, a bundle of slick warmth and promise. She had the right blood in her to be a serious contender for prize money, but early on another trainer had run her too hard. Her fragile tendons had been jarred severely on the wrong sort of track, concussing them. Now, no matter how perfect her pedigree was, she could barely carry a rider.
“Her legs could be built back up again,” Eric said. “With the right care.”
“Maybe they could,” I agreed. “But in twelve weeks?”
“She’s a fighter. And I don’t know.” He straightened his tie again while, above it, his Adam’s apple bobbed preposterously. “I have a hunch you’d know what to do with her.”
He was referring to my success years before with D’s horse, Ringleader, who’d had a similar injury. I’d trained him on the shores of Elmenteita, and he’d come back to run and win. But there hadn’t been the urgency then, and my career wasn’t at stake. “I don’t want to make crazy promises,” I said. “The truth is she might never live up to her potential now, let alone win classics. But the chance is there.”
“You’ll take her then?”
“I’ll try. It’s all I can do.”
The next day, Wise Child came to us with her soft lovely muzzle and her fighter’s spirit and those legs that nearly broke my heart. She’d been done terrible wrong and needed painstaking care now. Over the next twelve weeks, we couldn’t make the smallest mistake with her.
Like Elmenteita, Lake Nakuru had a rich and muddy fringe at its edge, which gave well. That’s where we brought Wise Child to run her paces. Sometimes Ruta rode her and sometimes I did—easing her from a trot to a canter to a gallop. A rose-pink tide of flamingos startled around us, making their wooden sound. Tens of thousands of birds climbed as one and then receded, settling with a clamour only to startle again. They became our timekeepers. They alone saw a kind of magic begin to happen as Wise Child grew stronger and surer of herself. She had been wounded, nearly broken. You could still see her fear each morning as she tested those first few steps gingerly, as if the mud might hold knives. But she had a warrior’s courage. When she opened up now, we could see trust and willingness in her, and something more than speed.
“This muscle,” Ruta said in her stall, as he groomed her silky and compact bay body. “This muscle can move a mountain.”
“I think you’re right, Ruta, but it also scares me. She’s in top shape. She’ll never be more ready, but even so it would take almost nothing for those legs to fail. It could happen on race day. It could happen tomorrow.”
Ruta continued his grooming, the dandy brush skimming her gleaming, liquid-looking coat. “All this
is true, but God is inside her. Her heart is like a spear. Like a leopard.”
I smiled at him. “Which one is it, Ruta? A spear or a leopard? You know, sometimes you sound just like you did when we were children, boasting how much higher you could jump than me.”
“I still can jump, Beru.” He laughed. “Even today.”
“I believe you, my friend. Have I told you lately how very glad I am that you’re here?”
I knew Ruta and I would be together always, until the very end. But no matter how close loyalty or God or magic crept into the weeks we trained Wise Child, human frailty and fear were stronger. Three days before the race, Eric came to see me. His wife had seen our heads pressed a little too close together at the club one evening, talking of Wise Child and her possibilities, and now she had given him an ultimatum.
“It’s you or her,” he said, in a near-strangled way, clutching at that tie until I wanted to rip it from his neck.
“But there’s nothing going on between us! Can’t you tell her that?”
“It won’t matter. She’s got to mean more than the horse, or anything else.”
“Don’t be stupid! We’re nearly there. Pull her after the race if you must.”
He shook his head, swallowing. “You don’t know my wife.”
“This is going to ruin me, Eric. I’ve killed myself for your horse. This is my race. You damned well know you owe me that.”
He went red to the tips of his ears, and then slunk away like a coward, muttering words of remorse.
—
When Sonny Bumpus came with a groom later that morning to take Wise Child, I was beside myself. I’d used Sonny as a jockey before, and we’d known each other since we were children, all the way back to my terrible years at boarding school in town. We’d lined up desks to play at steeplechasing then. Now he was one of the best riders in the colony, and it didn’t take much work to guess that Eric had asked him to ride Wise Child, and that both Sonny and my horse were being handed cleanly over to the new trainer.