by Stacy Gregg
“Hey!” Issie called out and ran to catch him up.
Marcus gave her a half-hearted smile. “Hi, Issie.”
Issie smiled back. “I just wanted to say that I thought it was pretty harsh, you know, the way Valmont treated you.”
“Yeah, he’s not exactly the kind of guy who cheers you up when he visits,” Marcus said. They had been walking through the stable block as they were talking and had reached Liberty’s stall. Marcus pulled his passcard out of his pocket to access the mare’s loose box and Issie noticed that he had a different-coloured card to hers. Her card was blue, coded to match the colour of the ‘C’ stable block whereas Marcus had a green card to match stable block ‘D’.
“I don’t think I could work for a man like Valmont,” Issie said.
“Yeah, he’s a total jerk,” Marcus agreed. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the conversation in my mind where I shout back and tell him that I quit.” He sighed. “But he’s the boss. And he has some amazing horses. It’s a huge opportunity to ride for Valmont Stables.”
“Is he always like that?” Issie asked.
“It’s got worse lately,” Marcus admitted. “He’s under a lot of stress and I guess he’s been through a lot lately. Especially the whole tragedy with Valmont Promise.”
Issie didn’t know what he was talking about.
“You never heard about it?” Marcus said. “It was in all the newspapers last year.”
Issie shook her head. “Who is Valmont Promise?”
“Promise was Valmont’s superstar,” Marcus explained. “He was the best horse in his stables. One of those special horses, you know? All the grooms and the riders loved him. He had an amazing temperament and he was so beautiful – a Thoroughbred, but really solidly built – almost seventeen hands. He was the dream eventer – so talented…” Marcus trailed off. “Anyway, Promise was competing at his first big three-day event in California. He was halfway round the cross-country when he fell…”
“He hit a jump?” Issie asked.
Marcus shook his head. “No, it was so weird, he wasn’t anywhere near a jump. He was in the final stretch on the way home, and one minute he was galloping, totally fine, and the next he’d just collapsed on the track. The vet arrived a few moments later and said he must have had a massive heart attack.”
“So was he OK? Did he finish the competition?” Issie asked.
“No, Issie, you don’t understand. By the time the vet had reached him, there was nothing he could do,” Marcus said. “Valmont Promise was dead.”
Chapter 7
The sudden death of Valmont Promise haunted Issie. She kept thinking about how awful it must have been for Promise’s poor rider to feel his horse suddenly collapse beneath him. To start out on the cross-country course so full of hope and excitement only to have it end in tragedy.
Promise’s death was not the first time that a horse had died on a cross-country course. Eventing was a deadly sport, and Issie was reminded all too clearly of just how real the risks were on Wednesday morning as she stood with Tom at the start line of the cross-country course and prepared to walk it for the first time.
When you watch a three-day event on the television the fences look big. But when you are actually walking the course they aren’t big – they’re humungous. The first three fences weren’t too bad, but when Issie faced up to the fourth fence, a set of rails placed diagonally over a ditch known as ‘the Bridge’, she felt her mouth go dry in horror. If she stood at the point where the horses would be taking off then she couldn’t even see over the bridge to the other side. The jump was taller than her! And it wasn’t just the height of the fence that was terrifying, it was the spread as well. At the point where the horses would take off, the bridge was over two metres wide. But it wasn’t even the widest fence on the course. The biggest spread came towards the end of the course at fence 24, the Gamekeeper’s Brush. The brush had a ditch in front of it that the horses needed to clear, which made the total spread of the jump a massive 2.7 metres wide!
“It’s what they call a ‘rider frightener’,” Avery pointed out to her. “Comet will clear that ditch easily – he won’t even notice that it’s there as long as you look up and focus on the brush ahead; that’s the key. If you look down, then you’ll go down.”
They had taken nearly two hours to reach fence 24. Avery liked to walk a course slowly the first time so that he could examine everything in detail, pacing out the number of strides between the elements and checking the terrain for any hidden problems that might arise.
Issie, meanwhile, had been just as busy checking out the other competitors. Since the course had only just been opened that morning it was swarming with riders. Issie watched as the famed Austrian eventer Gerhardt Muller and his trainer strolled from fence to fence, chatting gaily as they walked. Gerhardt was so lanky and tall he could virtually throw his legs over the fences himself. He seemed self-assured as he eyed up the stride into the Gamekeeper’s Brush and stepped out his line. Issie, on the other hand, couldn’t even think about the striding – all she could think about was the size of that enormous ditch! It was big and deep enough to bury her and Comet if they mis-stepped and plunged into it.
Not that the Gamekeeper’s Brush was Issie’s only concern. She was also worried about the two water jumps. The first one, the Duck Marsh, had a giant wooden carved duck sitting in the middle of the water jump – the horses literally had to leap over the duck’s back.
“You’ll have to ride precisely at the duck,” Avery agreed. “It’s a narrow fence, but Comet is fine with narrow fences.”
“He’s never jumped a duck before!” Issie pointed out.
Avery shook his head. “He’s a horse, Issie. As far as he’s concerned, that jump is just another obstacle to be cleared. Comet doesn’t know that he’s jumping over a duck.”
The giant duck wasn’t the only strange animal on the course. Fences 17 and 18 had wooden carvings in the shape of gigantic squirrels sitting upright on their hindquarters with their brushy tails extending out behind them to act as hedges.
“Remember to aim for the dead centre of the squirrel tail,” Avery told her.
“Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear,” Issie said, managing a feeble, nervous grin.
Many of the fences on the course had alternative routes for the riders to take. These alternatives were always longer and chewed up valuable seconds on the clock, which could lead to time faults, but they were also easier and safer options so the horses were more likely to go clear if they took the easy path. Many of the more experienced riders were choosing the longer, safer options – especially at tricky fences like the first squirrel jump, where riders were allowed to veer left and take another small fence that would set them up with a better line to the second squirrel.
Avery, however, dismissed the notion of the longer routes, saying that it would add too much time.
“You go straight through,” he told Issie. “Comet is a clever and honest jumper – he can handle the tough options, but he’s also much smaller than the other horses so you’re going to be cutting it fine when it comes to time. You cannot afford to waste a single second. You must stick to the short route between every jump, no matter what.”
It took them three hours to walk the course. It was funny, Issie thought, that what had taken her and Avery so long would be over in a matter of minutes on the big day. The optimum time for riding the cross-country was set at sixteen minutes and ten seconds – and any riders who exceeded this would get time penalties added on to their scores.
By the time they reached the final fence, the Bourbon Barrels, they had been caught up by several other riders, including Tara Kelly and Marcus.
“What did you think of it?” Marcus asked Issie as they walked back together to the stables.
“It was bigger than I expected it to be,” Issie admitted, hoping that her voice wouldn’t betray her nervousness. She was having a flashback to the ditch in front of the Gamekeeper�
��s Brush. If it was intended as a rider frightener then the course designer had done his job nicely – she was terrified by it!
“The water jumps are going to cause a few crashes, I think,” Marcus said. “I’m worried about the Normandy Bank towards the end. Liberty is a big striding mare and the distance between the fences is quite tight.”
“Not for Comet’s little legs, it isn’t,” Issie laughed.
“I’m going to walk it again tomorrow morning straight after breakfast before the trotting-up,” Marcus said. “You want to come with me?”
“Sounds great,” Issie agreed. “Meet you then.”
Issie wanted to walk the course at least three times before the cross-country took place on Saturday. She could walk it on Thursday morning with Marcus and then one final time on the Friday afternoon with Avery once she’d done her dressage test. The rules of the three-day event allowed riders to walk the course as many times as they liked and some of them would walk it as many as four or five times. The horses, on the other hand, were not permitted to see the jumps until they were on the course competing, so they would be looking at the fences in front of them with totally fresh eyes. Of course, there was nothing in the rules to stop Issie telling Comet all about the course.
“The jumps are very big, Comet,” Issie told the little skewbald when she arrived back at the stables, “but then we knew they were going to be, didn’t we?”
Comet nickered back in agreement. Issie grabbed a body brush out of his grooming kit and began to brush the skewbald’s patchy chestnut and white face.
“There’s a really big spread at jump twenty-four, the Gamekeeper’s Brush,” she whispered to the pony. “I’m a bit freaked out by it, but I…”
“Hey! What are you doing?”
It was Stella and she looked cross.
“If you keep brushing and feeding Comet then Avery will notice I have nothing to do and send me home,” Stella said, taking the body brush out of Issie’s hand and shaking her head. “Being the groom is my job, Issie – you’ve got enough to do.”
Issie knew this was true. Looking after Comet was officially Stella’s role. But Issie had never really got used to the idea of having a groom.
“I feel like a spoilt princess,” Issie complained.
“There’s nothing stuck-up about having a groom,” Stella pointed out. “It’s just professional, that’s all. The whole point of having me to do this stuff is to free you up so that you can focus on competing. You’ve got enough on your plate.”
She looked at her watch. “Like, aren’t you due at the rider briefing in five minutes?”
Avery was looking decidedly twitchy when Issie rushed into the media room.
Where have you been? her trainer mouthed at her as she pushed her way through the crowds to take a seat beside him. Issie plonked herself down just as Blaire Andrews stepped up to the lectern at the front of the room and tapped on the microphone to check it was on.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” she smiled. “Thank you so much for coming today. With just one more day before the Kentucky Four-Star gets underway this final briefing session is intended to cover all the key issues and any last-minute concerns that riders might have. We’d also like to use this opportunity for all of you to meet the press…”
“Yoo hoo!” Issie looked up to the left of the room where a plump blonde woman dressed in Donegal tweed was frantically waving. The blonde woman pushed past a couple of other riders at the back and crammed herself into the spare seat on the other side of Issie.
“We haven’t met before,” the woman whispered hoarsely, trying to keep her voice down as Blaire Andrews explained the rules regarding the trotting-up. “I’m Tiggy Brocklebent, senior writer at Horsing Around magazine.” She extended a chubby hand for Issie to shake. “I’d love to do an interview with you, for my magazine.”
“Ummmm, yeah, sure…” Issie frowned. She had just missed what Blaire had said. It was something about being disqualified at the trotting-up if you didn’t have the right number on your horse.
“You’re the youngest rider ever to compete at Lexington, did you realise that?” Tiggy continued in her throaty whisper. “When I saw your name on the list of riders I said to my editor – now there’s our story! And you’re riding a fourteen-two pony? Unbelievable stuff, I’d—”
“Ummm, Tiggy?” Issie whispered back. “Can we talk after the rider briefing? I really need to hear this.”
“Absolutely!” Tiggy said, “I was just saying earlier to Caroline Powell… do you know Caroline? You must know her! You’re both from New Zealand. She lives in the UK too – just like you do. Such a lovely woman! It was such a thrill when she won the Burghley Horse Trials on Lenamore. Lovely little grey horse. Only fifteen-two you know. Not as little as your Comet, of course. He’s only fourteen-two – just a pony…”
Issie couldn’t believe it! Tiggy simply would not shut up! The journalist was still blithering on in her ear and it was almost impossible for Issie to hear what Blaire was saying. She was certain that she’d just missed some vital piece of information about the equipment check before the horses went into the start box!
“…and that concludes our briefing,” Blaire said, picking up her notes from the lectern. “I hope you’re all ready for the kick-off on Friday. Thanks very much for coming – there will be coffee and cake served in the main foyer and you’ll have a chance to talk to the press.”
Issie watched in horror as Blaire left the stage.
“Don’t worry,” Avery whispered to Issie. “I made notes. I’ll fill you in later…”
“You must be Tom Avery!” Tiggy leant over to introduce herself. “I’m Tiggy Brocklebent; so glad to meet you. I was just telling young Isadora that I’d love to write a feature on her for Horsing Around magazine.”
“Ummm, Tiggy?” Issie said. “I’m really flattered that you want to do a story on me, but I don’t think I’ll be interesting enough. There are lots of other riders here who are far more experienced than me…”
“That’s the point!” Tiggy said brightly. “I’ve written about all of them a hundred times before. They’re all seasoned professionals, but not you! You’re fresh – you’re news!”
Tiggy pulled out her shorthand notebook and wielded her biro. “Now don’t be shy. I want to know everything!”
Tiggy wasn’t exaggerating. She kept Issie for nearly two hours, talking about her horses – not just Comet, but all of the horses she’d ridden over the years, plus the history behind the wild Blackthorn Ponies at her aunt’s farm in Gisborne, and Francoise and Tom’s new base at Laurel Farm in Wiltshire.
“Is it daunting to be riding in your first Four-Star?” Tiggy asked. “It must be strange being surrounded by famous faces? Have the other riders been welcoming to you?”
“It’s pretty scary,” Issie said. “But everyone has been really nice so far.”
“Have you made any friends in the riders’ village?” Tiggy asked.
“Well, I already knew Shane Campbell – we rode against each other when we were competing at the Young Rider Challenge in Australia,” Issie explained. “And I met Marcus Pearce on the way here at a horse motel. He’s riding for the Valmont Stables.”
At the mention of the Valmont Stables Tiggy’s demeanour suddenly changed completely.
“A terrible business, the death of Valmont Promise.” Tiggy shook her head and then leant closer and whispered conspiratorially to Issie. “I was the journalist that covered the story, you know. So many unanswered questions! The vet’s notes afterwards said he had a massive heart attack.” Tiggy narrowed her eyes and whispered. “Personally, I have my suspicions that drugs were involved.”
Issie frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say I don’t think he died of natural causes,” Tiggy said. “I’d been at the three-day event in Pau watching him compete and Promise flew through the vet check beforehand. That horse had a perfectly healthy heart. And then the next thing you know, he’s lying dead on
the course! It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it just doesn’t add up. The star of the Valmont Stables, a horse worth several million dollars, suddenly dies and no one can find the cause? It’s all a bit fishy, if you ask me.”
Tiggy suddenly pursed her lips. “You mustn’t go around repeating any of this of course – I’d be liable for slander! But as far as I’m concerned there’s more to the Promise story than anyone realises.” She lowered her voice to a whisper once again. “All I will say is that a lot of people have a vendetta against Tyrel Valmont. He’s a very unpopular man. I’m convinced that there are dirty dealings going on and a massive cover-up of the truth! If you ask me—”
But before Issie could, Avery had interrupted.
“I’m very sorry, Tiggy, but Issie really has to go now. We’ve got the showjumping arena booked for three p.m. and we can’t be late.”
As they said their goodbyes and headed back to Comet’s stall, Issie wished Avery hadn’t stopped Tiggy talking when he did.
“I thought you’d be glad to get away from that old gasbag!” Avery said.
“She was telling me about Valmont Promise,” Issie said. “You know, the horse that had the heart attack on the cross-country course? Tiggy thinks there’s more to it – like there was something sinister about the way Promise died.”
Avery shook his head. “Heart attacks happen,” he said, “especially when a horse is galloping. It puts their heart under extreme pressure – and the modern cross-country course is incredibly tough. Six kilometres at a flat gallop is enough to put a strain on even the most sound, healthy horse.”
He looked at Issie’s face. “I get the feeling that something else is bothering you too.”