or ‘Across ’ere, miss,’ taking us towards the landward side of the town, away from the crowded streets.
Who was this Rancie person? Badly treated servant girl? Wronged wife? Betrayed sweetheart? Any of those could have appealed to my father’s chivalrous and romantic instincts. He’d eloped with my mother and they lived ten years blissfully together until fever took her. He grieved all his life, but there is no denying that his nature inclined to women. He loved their company, their beauty, their wit. In our wandering life together there’d been Susannas, Rosinas, Conchitas, Helenas … I do not mean that my father was a Don Juan, a ruthless seducer. If anything, quite the reverse. Far from being ruthless, he’d do almost anything to help a woman in distress. His purse, his house, his heart would be open to her, sometimes for months at a time. Undeniable, too, that some of the Susannas, Conchitas and Rosinas took advantage of his chivalrous nature.
‘There’s no great ’urry, miss. She won’t run away,’ Amos Legge protested.
I suppose I was walking fast. We were clear of the town now, only a farm and barns on one side of the road, a broken-down livery stable on the other.
Well, if it had happened like that, it wouldn’t have been the first time. But it had been the last. Violent husband or bullying father had resented it, caught up with him. For the first time, my unbelief in the black lie wavered. Suppose, against his will, that he had been forced into a duel after all.
‘Nearly there, miss,’ Amos Legge said.
We were level with the farm. I expected him to turn in at the gateway. Perhaps my father had instructed him to lodge this Rancie hussy out of town, for her protection. But we walked past the farm gateway and turned in under the archway of the livery stable with its faded signboard, Hunters and Hacks for Hire. There was a groom sweeping the yard. Amos Legge nodded at him and took my arm to keep me from treading in a trail of horse droppings. I drew the arm away. Seeming unoffended, he walked over to a loose-box in the corner, letting out a piercing whistle. A horse’s head came over the door, nostrils flared in curiosity, eyes bold and questioning.
‘What …?’
I was caught off balance, assuming that our journey was not yet over and we would have to ride. Amos Legge stroked the horse’s nose, whispered something then turned to me, the grin back on his face.
‘Well, miss, ’ere’s Rancie for you.’ Then to me, alarmed, ‘My poor little maid, what be you crying for?’
I had the story of Rancie from Amos Legge, sitting in a broken-down chair in the tack room, saddles and harness all round us and flakes of chaff floating in the sunbeams that pierced the curtain of cobwebs over the window. He stayed respectfully standing at first.
‘You see, miss, it all starts with a Hereford bull, look. Red Sultan of Shortwood ’is name was in the ’erd book, only we called ’im Reddy.’
He was clearly one of those storytellers who liked to take his time. I suggested he should sit down. He settled for a compromise, hitching a haunch on to a vacant saddle tree. I’ll abandon my attempt to record his accent because in truth the broad Hereford he talked is the hardest thing in the world to pin down. Those dropped ‘h’s, for instance, are nowhere near the carelessness of the Cockney, more like the murmur of a summer breeze through willow leaves over a slow-flowing river.
‘Reddy belonged to this farmer I used to work for, name of Priest. Well, there was this Frenchman at a place called Sancloo, just outside Paris, decided he was going to build up a herd of Herefords. They do well anywhere, only you can’t get the same shine on their coats away from the red soil at home, no matter how –’
‘But Rancie and my father?’
‘I’m getting to them, miss. Anyways, this Frenchman got to hear about Reddy and nothing would content him except he should have him. He offered old Priest a thousand guineas and all the expenses of the journey met, so we made Reddy a covered travelling cart fit for the sultan he was, and off to Sancloo we went, old Priest and Reddy and me. It took us four days and ten changes of horses to get to the sea, then another six days once we got to the French side, but we got Reddy safely to the gentleman, Old Priest pocketed his thousand guineas, and what do you think happened then?’
‘You met my father?’
‘Not yet, I’m coming to that. What happened was the old dev—, excuse me … He just took off for home and left me. He said all that travelling had brought on his arthritics, so he was going home the quickest way by coach. I was to follow him with the travelling cart and he’d give me my pay when I fetched it safely back to Hereford. So there I was in a foreign country, not knowing a blessed soul. So I took myself into Paris, thinking I’d have a look at it after coming all this way, and that’s when I met your father. After he’d settled my bit of trouble, he mentioned he had a mare he wanted to bring back, and it came to me that if the cart had been good enough for Reddy, it would do for the mare, as long as I washed it down well to take the smell away.’
‘Did he tell you how he came by the horse?’
Amos swatted a fly away from his face.
‘Won her at cards, from some French fellow.’
‘Did he say if the French fellow was angry about it?’
‘No. From the way he told it, the mare had already changed hands three times on a turn of the cards. Your father was thinking of selling her in Paris, only he looked at her papers and decided to keep her.’
‘Papers?’
‘Oh yes, she’s got her papers. And he wanted you to see her.’
‘He said so?’
‘He said he’d got a daughter at home with an eye for a horse as good as any man’s, and it would be a surprise for her.’
I had to blink hard to stop myself crying again. My father loved a good horse as much as he loved music or wine or poetry, and I suppose I caught it from him.
‘Was my father to travel with you?’
‘No. He had things he wanted to do before he left Paris, he said. Me and the horse were to start right away and he’d probably go past us on the road, because we’d be travelling slowly. But if we didn’t happen to meet in France, I was to wait for him at Dover and leave a message, which I did.’
‘How was he, when you saw him?’
‘How do you mean, miss?’
‘Well or ill? Harassed or anxious at all?’
‘Blithe as a blackbird, miss.’
‘Did you talk much?’
‘I told him I didn’t think much to France, and he laughed and said it was the best place in the world, apart from England. He’d missed England, and you, and he was glad to be going home and settling with a bit of money in his pocket. Quite open about that, he was, and paid me expenses for the journey.’
‘Did you meet any of his friends?’
‘Yes, I did. When he’d finished sorting out my bit
