The Scorpio Races

“It makes all the sense in the world, on this island.” Thisby is defined by things that are Malvern’s and things that aren’t. “It matters, like this: I belong to Malvern. You don’t.”



“So, freedom.”



I stop what I’m doing and regard him. Holly stands there below me on the path, gazing up, looking incredibly well kept and domesticated in his clean sweater and his pressed slacks. But his expression is anything but vapid. I still don’t think that freewheeling George Holly, American investor, has ever been anything but freewheeling George Holly, American investor, but for the first time, that doesn’t matter. I think he understands me regardless.



“So why don’t you buy Corr from him?”



I smile thinly.



Holly reads my expression. “Is it the money? Ah, he’s not willing. Do you have no leverage? Surely he needs more from you than to win the races. I’m sorry. I’ve overstepped. It’s not my business. Let’s go. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”



But he did say something, and it can’t be unsaid. The truth is this: For eleven months of the year I make myself valuable to Malvern, and then for one month, I make myself invaluable. Would he be willing to give up that one month to keep the other eleven? Am I willing to risk it?



We stand back on the high ground; Holly is white against the green and I am black. I knock out the bucket, glad to leave the contents behind, and Holly wordlessly watches me scoop up a handful of clean dirt and whisper to it before scattering it back over the ground again.



“Magic,” says Holly.



“Is a snaffle bit magic?” I ask him.



“All I know is that when I whisper to dirt, my conversations are less than meaningful.”



He watches me treat the other two paths up from the cliffs. He doesn’t ask how I do it, and I don’t tell him, and then, after we’ve started back and the quiet seems long for him, I tell him, “You can say what you’re thinking.”



“No, I can’t,” George Holly says immediately, glad to be invited to speak. “Because it’s more of not my business. And seeing as I’ve poked a stick in my eye once already, I don’t want to do it again.”



I raise my eyebrow.



Holly scuffs off his hands as if he’s been handling something dirtier than water from the tide pool. “All right, then. So what’s going on between you and that girl? Kate Connolly, right?”



I let out a breath, stack my buckets, and head back down the road toward the yard.



Holly says, “If you think by not answering that you’ll convince me there’s nothing, it won’t work.”



“That’s not why I’m not answering,” I say, as he catches up to me again. “I won’t say there’s nothing. I just don’t know what it is.”



I can see her clearly, standing on the rock beside Peg Gratton, unflinching before Eaton and the rest of the race committee. I can’t remember when I’ve been that brave, and it shames me. The truth is, I feel myself being fascinated and repelled by her: She’s both a mirror of myself and a door to part of this island that I’m not. It is like when the mare goddess looked into my eye; I felt that there was a part of myself that I didn’t know.



“I’ll tell you what it is in American,” George Holly says, “but you might not want to hear it.”



I cast him a withering glance and he laughs with good humor.



“This is worth every day away from home,” he says. “Should I gamble on her, then?”



“You should save your money for hay,” I mutter. “It’ll be a long winter.”



“Not,” says Holly, “in California.” And he laughs, and from the distance of his laugh I realize he’s stopped walking. I turn.



“I think you’re right, Mr. Kendrick,” George Holly says, eyes closed. His face is to the wind, leaning forward slightly so that it doesn’t tip him. His slacks are no longer pristine; he’s tracked bits of mud and manure up the front of them. His ridiculous red hat has blown off behind him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. The wind has its fingers in his fair hair and the ocean sings to him. This island will take you, if you let it.



I ask, “What am I right about?”



“I can feel God out here.”



I brush my hands off on my pants. “Tell me that again,” I say, “two weeks from now when you’ve seen the dead bodies on the beach.”



Holly doesn’t open his eyes. “Let no one say that Sean Kendrick isn’t an optimist.” After a pause, he adds, “I feel you smiling, so don’t deny it.”



He’s right, so I don’t.



“You going to try Benjamin Malvern for that horse, or what?” he asks.



I think of Kate Connolly standing before Eaton, her face brave, looking like a sacrifice on that old killing rock. I feel the mare goddess’s breath on my face, and it carries the scent of thunder in it.



“Yes,” I say.



CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR



PUCK



I don’t bother tacking up Dove on Sunday after church. Everyone and their grandpa will be tacking up their capaill uisce after they get out of Mass, and I think it might be a good opportunity to learn something about my competition. I’ll bring Dove up to the cliffs this evening, maybe, after she’s had the day to eat expensive hay and get used to the idea of being fast.



I leave Finn and Gabe alone back at the house — Gabe came to service with us, though he looked at his watch and left halfway through, which made Father Mooneyham stare first at him and then at us. Father Mooneyham’s homilies are not generally painful, but you’re meant to suffer through them nonetheless. If your leg falls asleep, you don’t move. If the tea you drank before Mass has you dreaming of toilets on the way to Damascus instead of epiphanies, you pinch and burn and bear it. If you are Brian Carroll and you have been night fishing, you tip your head back so that holding your eyes open is not such an impossible task.



You don’t get up and leave. But Gabe did. And then Beech Gratton did as well. If Tommy Falk hadn’t been too pretty to come to church in the first place, I’m sure he would’ve left, too.



And now I definitely need to go to confession because I’ve not only thought dark things about my brother, I’ve thought them while in Mass. It is slightly uncomfortable to know that if I die in the next few hours, I’ll go to hell, but I have to get outside before the tide comes in and all the riders disappear.



Anyway, all of that seems far away when I’m out on the cliffs above the racing beach. Because though I don’t want to ride on the windy cliffs, I don’t mind sitting on them. I trudge out with a pack on my back made of a wool blanket gathered into a pouch, and when I get there I release its contents on the ground and find myself a secure perch close to the edge where I can see the training down below. I wrap the blanket around my shoulders, take a sip of tea from my thermos, and start on one of the November cakes. I heated three of them in the oven this morning along with some stones, and now the stones have kept them nice and hot. I’m feeling quite virtuous and useful as I take out my paper and pencil and the stopwatch that Finn found for me. If I sit here long enough, surely the horses will give up their secrets. I want to know how fast they cover the ground, and then I plan to take Dove over the same stretch and time her as well. If I know what my handicap is, maybe I can prepare better.



I’ve been sitting for about ten minutes when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Someone sits down a few steps away from me, one knee drawn up, an arm resting on top of it.



“So you’ve discovered the secret to winning, have you, Kate Connolly?”



I recognize the voice without turning my head and my pulse goes bump bump bu — and thinks about starting again, but doesn’t quite manage it. “I said you could call me Puck.”



Sean Kendrick doesn’t say anything else, but he doesn’t get up, either. I wonder what he’s thinking as we sit here, watching the horses down below. They look so different from above: The training looks orderly, quiet, on purpose, not like the chaos it felt like when I was down there. Even when I see two horses rear up to fight, their handlers working to tear them apart, the sound is muffled by distance and wind and this somehow lessens it. Toy soldiers.



I watch Ian Privett on his gray — Penda — as they gallop parallel to the water. I click my stopwatch and make a note.



“He’ll go faster than that,” Sean Kendrick says. “Later. He’s not pressing him now.”



I’m not sure if he’s being condescending that I’m bothering to write down this meaningless time, or if he’s awarding me with knowledge I wouldn’t otherwise have had. So I just trace my pencil over the numbers again, imprinting them into the paper. I want to ask him why he spoke up for me last night, but Mum told me that it was rude to dig for compliments, and this feels like it would be digging for compliments. So I don’t ask, though I want to, badly.



Which means we sit in silence some more, the storm wind cutting through my blanket and my hat and ruffling the pages of my notes. I reach into my pack and take one of the precious November cakes — still warm — and offer it to Sean.



He takes the cake without saying thank you. But the thank-you is somehow implied. I’m not sure how he does it, because I wasn’t looking at him to see his face when he took it.



After a moment, he says, “Do you see the black mare? Falk’s? She’s excited to chase. If she were mine, I’d keep her just behind the lead so she’d stay motivated. Make my move late.”



I frown down at the beach, trying to see what he sees. The beach is a mess of fake races and aborted gallops. I find Tommy and his black mare and watch them for a moment. She’s a fine-legged thing for a capall uisce, and when she steps, her head bobs just a bit when her left rear hoof touches the ground. “Also,” I say, because I have to say something, “she is a bit lame in the left rear.”



“The right, I think,” Sean Kendrick says, but then he corrects himself. “No, left, you’re right.”



And I feel pleased, although he is only agreeing with what I already knew.



Now I feel brave enough to ask him, “Why aren’t you riding?” I look at him, too, when I ask, studying his sharp profile. His eyes jerk back and forth, following the movements down below, though the rest of him stays motionless.



“Racing is about more than riding.”



“What are you watching for?”



There is, again, a tremendously long pause between my question and his answer, and I think that he’ll just not reply, and then I think that maybe I only thought the question and didn’t actually say it, and then I consider that possibly it had been somehow insulting though by now I can’t remember exactly what it was that I said to double-check my words to be sure.



And that’s when Sean says, “I want to know who’s afraid of the water. I want to know who can track straight. I want to know who will tear Corr apart as soon as overtake him. I want to know who can’t hold their horses. I want to know how they like to run. I want to know who’s lame in the left rear. I want to know how the beach has worn this year. I want to know what the race will look like before it’s run.”