The Grey Horse

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  The horse threw himself forward then, at full tilt, and after Colm was sure the fireworks were over he took a feel of the bit. “Oh, my sweet love,” he whispered, for he might as well have been pulling against a post of iron. “Someone here really is in trouble.”

  There were no fences on the bare hills north of the bay, but the boulders and puddles of standing water made up for them. The horse settled into a strong canter as soon as he had left the road, and Anraí wondered whether the show of madness at the beginning had only been for the purpose of upsetting Imperator’s delicate mind. He could not call that fairy cheating, however, for horses of more ordinary nature did it all the time.

  The long water jumps were exhilarating, and Anraí could not resist giving the horse some help, if only verbal. “Don’t place so close, lad,” he called as close to the outstretched head as he could reach. “If you go down into the water it’ll slow us remarkably. Nor do you need to arc as high as all that; water don’t rise up to bite you.”

  Already they were down the slopes around Knockduff and climbing the ridges. The horse charged the first one, going half up as he veered around. Uphill was no slower than the straightaway for this horse, and the muscles of his very wide hocks shone round, dark, and shining under the rain.

  “That was a waste!” shouted Anraí in disapproval. “One foot upward is worse than five feet on the flat. Go around next time.”

  Next time came very quickly, and obediently the horse kept to the low point between the ridges. But this was the bed of a stream paved in large, round rocks, and as Anraí chanced to look down, he gasped and closed his eyes.

  The grey splashed and grunted and still he was galloping. As they left the stream bed he stumbled, very slightly, but Anraí felt it and he cursed the horse for a fool.

  The next ridge was very steep and it sparkled with granite, but it fitted neatly into round hills on either side, and having come this way, they had no choice but to go over.

  The thrust of the quarters pushing the horse’s body up and forward was so strong that Anraí was on the edge of losing his seat. He feared also that the saddle might slide, and so he balled the reins in his hands, grabbed two handfuls of mane, and leaned forward, laughing that an old hand like himself would stoop to this beginner’s trick. And the horse came on almost as fast as on the smooth drive, but blowing and grunting with every push.

  “Don’t do yourself an injury, lad,” murmured Anraí, for he began to worry about this. Never in his life had the old man ridden a horse to damage, and he was fond of this fairy, both horse and man.

  At the top of the ridge the wind hit them and Anraí coughed. The way down was steeper than the way up, and in a few seconds the horse had begun to slide. Down it crouched on its hocks, and Anraí leaned far back, giving most of his reins away. Down the hill they came, sliding and hopping, and at the bottom the grey was covered up to the chest with spattered mud.

  To the south and below them was the tip of Cashla Bay and the tiny town of Casla, with the road winding through it. The grey horse heaved forward again and galloped over churned earth and rock toward it.

  As they came nearer, even Anraí could see the speck of red that turned into the chestnut stallion, with Colm on him. One glimpse and Anraí knew the horse was riding without control.

  They leaped the road ditch once more, and Imperator was remarkably close behind. Only a hundred yards separated the horses, and as Imperator saw or smelled the grey horse again in front of him he screamed and charged forward.

  “By Jesus, that’s a sweet-running animal,” said Anraí to the grey. I am proud of my hand in him, and I hope that he doesn’t fall dead on the road here or kill young Colm.” The grey put his ears back and his gallop grew a bit rougher.

  “But we’re going to beat them, my son,” added Anraí very quickly, and he smiled at the touchiness of horses. Or of fairies.

  When Eibhlín had told Máire about the challenge race, Máire had had no doubts concerning the grey horse Anraí would be riding. Nor did she doubt Anraí would win. And a voice within her said that Ruairí had been in training, and was why he had not been to see her these two weeks. Now he would be back. She shouted the voice down, because she had a great fund of common sense, and she knew that training for a race from Knockduff to Carraroe does not prevent a horse running from Knockduff to Carraroe. Besides, it didn’t matter. She was well rid of him.

  But she never considered missing the end of the race. When the lookout rang the bell that meant that a horse had reached Lochán an Bhuilín, she was across the street from the hostelry, wearing her best petticoat and breathing hard.

  Back on the road, Anraí felt no strain, nor did the horse under him seem to be suffering. The wind beat on his face, though, and at times it made him cough. He remembered Ruairí’s full name: Rory son of Granite out of Wind, and he wondered that a body’s own mother might blast against him in this manner. Better if she were blowing behind his tail.

  But behind his tail was not wind but the chestnut stallion, and he was coming up fast and smooth, throwing his legs forward only an inch above the roadway and making pebbles scatter. A glance over his shoulder revealed to Anraí the red neck, not crested but stiff and straight as a board of oak, and the wire bridoon tearing unnoticed through the corners of the stallion’s long, black mouth.

  Anraí cried loudly, “Are you in control at all, Colm?”

  “Not a bit of it,” screamed the jockey.

  Then the red’s nose was even with the grey’s long, whipping tail, and still he came on. Suddenly Anraí’s soaring mood failed him, and he was in a fury that he would lose this race. “They’re taking us, lad,” he called to the horse, and he raised his empty hand to hit him, not having a crop.

  That hand never finished the motion, for with a grunt more like that of a pig than a horse, the grey horse gathered his quarters under him and sprang low and long, over the ditch again and onto the very broken ground of the peninsula. As he ran he screamed like five stallions put loose into the same box.

  Anraí was confused. He took a tentative feel of the mouth, to which the horse responded by bending his neck nicely, but not checking speed. “Ruairí, Ruairí, surely the road is the, clearest and shortest way from here!”

  The grey horse gurgled in his throat and bounded on over the scree.

  Colm had ridden so long in vain effort to rate his stallion, that he hadn’t the strength to stop him when it bellowed its answer to the challenge, shied off the road, and flew the ditch. Onto the rubbled ruin of the coast it climbed, and at its first step it hit a forehoof against a rock, stumbled, and almost went down.

  Through this maze of sharp rock and sinkholes the grey horse cantered with all four legs bent and muscles bunching. The rain had let up, but the horse was blacker still with its own sweat. His head no longer stretched forward but was at the vertical, with the veins on its face like tree roots and its neck muscles pressed out against the slick hide. Anraí felt the steam rising from his horse’s effort, and he leaned back in the saddle, so not to get in his way. It was not a terribly fast progress, for the horse placed every leg with care.

  The cottages of the coastline appeared, with their stone-fenced acres stretching toward the bay and the ocean. The grey horse took the fences in the same rounded form, and Anraí did not try to interfere.

  There was a child’s shout as they passed over the garden of a cottage, jumping the beds. Ten feet from the door they passed, and Anraí had a glimpse of a woman’s oval face peering out, with her mouth a perfect circle of wonder. Over the next wall, and Anraí could hear more shouts marking the passage of the red stallion behind them. He doubted that horse had thought to leap the potatoes.

  Here, north of Lochán an Bhuilín, the cottages were clustered more tightly, and they had a rabbit’s run, popping fence after fence. The grey horse shied once, much to Anraí’s surprise, and a man rose up behind them from where he had been weeding, cursing them in a voice shrill with terror.

  This was
the same route he had taken on his first ride on the horse, which, like this one, had been out of Anraí’s control. But this time they were running closer to the cast and the road, for Carraroe was straight along. “What will you do now, lad, jump the whole lake or wade through it?”

  It nodded its pony head, as though considering those alternatives, but at the edge of the water it turned left and ran the black rocks of the bank, shooting flint sparks into the air. It took the five-foot embankment smoothly and came back to the road.

  Colm was aghast at how the chestnut was making himself suffer. The fences were no problem for it, but the stoney fields were deadly. They had stumbled a half dozen times and once gone down on one knee, but still the horse kept the bit and flung on. At the shores of the lake it slowed, scenting the air for its vanished opponent.

  “To the road, fellow,” shouted Colm, and he turned the horse and took the leap at the same place Anraí had, only seconds before.

  And now the grey was visible in front, only fifty yards away. But there was no more than a quarter mile to go in the race, for Colm could see the church ahead, and milling people beyond it. He gave the stallion the second stroke of the crop that day.

  “Dear God, they’re catching us again,” whispered Anraí. “That horse isn’t human!”

  The chestnut’s legs were dark with blood and his lips dripped blood and its eyes were glassy. Too weary to scream again, it threw its long legs forward and came on.

  There were so many people. There is no horse race in Ireland that will not draw a crowd, but Anraí hadn’t suspected that his challenge to Blondell would cause such an event. That must have been Maurice’s doing.

  The gap was shrinking between the riders. On the road, the grey could not win. Anraí recognized this, knowing horses, and his eyes stung with love and pity for both animals.

  “It’s all right, my son,” he said to the grey, and he stroked the hot neck lightly.

  The horse made a spitting noise and Anraí was almost flung from the saddle by its bound forward. The advance of the red horse slowed.

  Here was the first grocer, and the streets were lined with watchers who cheered, for whom Anraí did not know or care. There was one that looked like Seosamh, but Anraí paid him no mind.

  Now passed the church, and Ó Murchú was there, small and neat in his black with his black hair. He lifted a hand.

  Colm struck the stallion for the third time, and the two horses were neck and neck. Vaguely he noted then that the grey was a good hand shorter than the chestnut, and shorter still in the leg.

  To the watchers by the line Maurice had stretched across the road, the noise of their approach was overwhelming, the pounding of the grey’s hooves and the clatter of the red’s shoes and the groaning, bellows breath of both. They cheered and whistled to make the sound more tolerable, but still all flattened themselves against the buildings as the horses galloped by.

  Diarmuid Ó Cadhain, standing at the line with James Blondell and his son next to him, saw the nose of the grey horse and the nose of the chestnut pass over the line and not a shade of difference between them. An instant later, the great chest of the grey flew by in front of the chestnut, for the chestnut had the longer neck.

  Ó Murchú stepped back, dark browed and thoughtful, for he was not certain if it had been a perfect tie or the grey had won. He heard the half-frightened cries of people vacating the street ahead, lest they be trampled by the backwash of the race. He heard a scream more piercing, and he lifted his head again.

  The grey horse had obeyed Anraí’s rein very willingly and was already trotting slowly, almost in place. Sweat poured from his forehead down his nose. The chestnut had run by, and with the competitor now behind him, he answered the rein with his ripped mouth. From a canter he stopped still, and all could see his heart pounding through his ribs, belly, and hide. Colm opened his hands with a whimper of pain, for his gloves were shredded and his hands as bad as the horse’s mouth.

  For only a moment the chestnut stood there, legs braced, and then it gasped, lifted its head to the sky, and crumpled. Its hind legs went first and then its front. Colm felt the collapse too late, he screamed as the horse pinned him to the ground.

  Anraí threw his leg over and leaped from the saddle, whereupon he fell flat on the road. Crawling and scrabbling he climbed to his feet and ran with deadened legs.

  Blondell was already there with two other men, and they heaved against the huge red back and worked the jockey free. “My leg,” he said, teeth clenched. “It’s just my leg; I’m all right. See to the poor beast.”

  But Blondell’s stakes winner was dead on the road, the bit hanging limp on its swollen tongue. Blondell picked up the long, gaunt head and knelt before it.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no, Imperator. You’ve killed yourself. You burst your heart on the race.” No one else was meant to hear the words, but Toby was there and Anraí Ó Reachtaire knelt beside.

  “Is he dead?” asked the old man. “Is the great fellow really dead, then?” Blondell glanced over to see Anraí’s face, white and mottled, and his eyes swimming with tears.

  “Alas! I would so much sooner have lost than that this should happen.” He put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “You were right, a Shéamais. He was the grandest horse in Connemara, and mine is but a pony who outtricked him on the road.”

  Blondell turned his eyes away, though not out of anger. He found his son was crying like old Raftery, and he began to blink himself. “Colm, why did you let him do this?” he asked, in a whisper that grew into a shout.

  “Hush, a Shéamais. It wasn’t poor Colm’s fault. It was Imperator’s race and he took it. He couldn’t be turned or rated.”

  “You might have been able to,” said Blondell flatly. He closed the red horse’s staring eye.

  “Not me. Not even Ruairí MacEibhir. If pain will not turn them, a man’s strength certainly can’t.”

  Blondell winced, and he nodded, and he put the horse’s head down. “What about your pony, Anraí? Shouldn’t you be walking him?”

  Anraí snorted. “Oh, he’ll take care of himself.” But he rose up, feeling very lightheaded. He walked back to the grey, who hadn’t moved all this time, and he put a hand to the soaked shoulder. “Well, we won, my pack pony, my native horse.” And the horse put his black nose to Anraí’s forehead.

  There was a small circle of people around Anraí, afraid to cheer or to shake the man’s hand while the dead horse lay in the road with its master mourning beside it. Anraí looked at them as though he didn’t know why they were there, and then Tadhg Ó Murchú stepped through, wearing his cassock.

  “Sit down, Anraí. You don’t look so good,” he said. Anraí tried to smile at him, but as the priest touched him he went down like the horse and lay in the dirt with his legs under him. A woman gave a long, warbling wail.

  Ó Murchú’s left hand was under Anraí’s neck, and Toby Blondell, at Ó Murchú’s command, straightened his knees. To the priest’s dismay, Anraí’s face was turning blue. Someone shouted for a doctor, as though one of the poor peasants gathered round might suddenly turn into one. Ó Murchú performed the sacrament for his friend, whispering, and without any oil. Anraí’s floundering hand interrupted him.

  Tell Áine,” he said, though he had no breath. “Tell Áine that I would have waited for her if I could.” Then he dropped his hand on his chest and stared at the sky with his blue eyes until the priest closed them.

  Ó Murchú bent over his friend’s face and kissed him. Then he stood upright, neat, black, and secret, as always. “He is gone from us,” he said to the crowd. “Our brother Anraí is gone. Give him your prayers.”

  When Áine drove in, she seemed to know before, and she stopped the gig in the quiet street where none of the people were talking, and she walked into the church where they had laid him. “Oh, old man, old man,” she said, and she sat down on the pew next to him and put his head on her lap. “Farewell to forty bright years,” she said to the closed eyes, and her
own eyes were dry. “Never was there better sweetheart or husband along the coast than you, my angry old man, and if it were mine to choose, I’d follow you now.” Then she reached under his shirt and took out a sweat-stained halter of rope, which she slipped down her own white blouse.

  Outside in the street Maurice asked about the grey horse, who, by surviving, had won the race from Knockduff to Carraroe. Then all the bystanders looked up and down, for when Anraí fell, no one had had an eye to spare. Máire Standún walked over to the last place it had been seen.

  Down at the dirty slope of the street by the hostelry was lying the saddle, with the girth still buckled. The bridle was in a heap nearby.

  Seosamh Ó Reachtaire sat at the deal table in Seán Meighian’s house and wondered whether he was going to join his mother in the church.

  It was a complex question, and in front of him was a mug of poitín to mull it over with him. Seán himself was at the hostelry, along with half of Carraroe, digesting in company the great race and the losses it had entailed. Seosamh felt a dull resentment that he could not join them, being the bereaved and therefore one of the most salient objects of discussion. He would wish to be alone, they knew. His circle of good friends (who never had been his friends before he went into the army and came out again) would be much happier without him to restrain their humors. And their speculation.

  Rain beat against the shutters, and Seán’s house was very damp. Seosamh filled his mouth with poitín and let the stuff sit there, so that at least his breath might be warm.

  The church would not be warm, and the rainy walk of almost a mile would not be warm, and his coat of rewoven British wool would soak through. Báinín was better for getting wet, but Seosamh was long past the wearing of báinín. Or of uniforms.