The Horsemaster's Daughter

All of Hunter’s fortunes rested with this magnificent, ruined animal.

He should have drunk more whiskey.

Grimly, he once again set the butt of the rifle against his shoulder and waited for the horse to settle. But the blood of champions flowed in this stallion’s veins and he had enormous reserves of stamina, despite the grueling sea voyage from Ireland.

After a time, the horse dropped his front feet to the ground. He hung his head, sides bellowing in and out, the banked fires of malevolence still burning in his eyes.

Hunter took aim. A single shot between the eyes and it would all be over.

He took in one long breath, then let half of it out. His forefinger tightened, squeezing slowly and steadily on the trigger. In the notch of the rifle’s site, the stallion stood hanging his head. Puffs of dust scudded outward as the horse exhaled through his distended nostrils.

“Mr. Hunter, sir!” yelled a voice across the lawn. “Wait!”

Hunter’s concentration shattered. The stallion swung his head toward the noise and his front feet pawed the ground. Gritting his teeth in frustration, Hunter lowered the gun.

“What the hell is it, Noah?”

The mulatto boy was out of breath from running, and his eager face ran with sweat. His breeches were soaked from the knees down. He’d probably just left the launch at the plantation dock.

Noah’s one passion in life was horses, not tobacco nor even, thus far, girls. Though only sixteen, he was regarded as a local expert at breeding and racing, and his small stature made him a talented and sought-after jockey. He had been nearly as excited as Hunter over the arrival of Finn, the Irish Thoroughbred.

“You mustn’t put him down, sir. I know of a way to save him.” Noah’s face was pale and taut with earnestness.

Exasperated, Hunter climbed off the fence. “Noah, it’s not possible, you know that. I’ve had the best trainers in Virginia down to have a look at him.”

“But I heard tell of someone—”

“Son, there’s no hope. Every one of the experts I consulted assured me the horse is ruined.” He gestured at the shadowy dark beast in the pen. “His mind is gone. He probably injured himself during a storm at sea, so he could be ruined for racing anyway. No one can get close enough to examine him. I’m sorry,” Hunter said. “I hate like hell that I have to do this.”

“Then don’t—”

“Damn it, you think I want to, boy? If this horse had a broken leg, you wouldn’t want him to suffer. You’d want me to put him down, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Noah stared at the ground, his bare foot stabbing at the grass. “But listen—I been trying to tell you something.”

“All right,” Hunter said, setting the rifle aside, muzzle down. Each time he looked at Noah, he felt a piercing tenderness, for the boy was his kinsman. The son of Hunter’s young cousin and an African laundress, Noah had grown up at Albion. He was an everyday reminder of the sweetness of first love—and of the bitter aftermath of forbidden passion. “Of course I’ll listen, but my mind is made up.”

“I was in Eastwick, at the drovers’ club there, and I heard tell of a man at the eastern shore who can gentle any horse.”

“I believe I heard from his advance man,” Hunter said cynically, angry that someone would play upon the youth’s hopes. “Would he be the one with the magical healing powder? Or maybe he’s the one who wanted to sell me a book of incantations.”

“No, this is for real. Honest and true!”

Hunter hesitated. Were it anyone save Noah he would dismiss the idea out of hand. But this was Noah, the boy he had educated when no school would have him, a horseman who had proved time and again that he had the head and heart for the business of racing horses.

Hunter took a long, hard look at the stallion. Once his dream, now his nightmare. Then he shouldered the rifle and walked with Noah away from the paddock. The ripening sun brought out the sweetness of lilacs and hyacinths in the air.

“His name is Henry Flyte, and he was horsemaster to Lord Derby in England. Grandson of the Lord Derby,” he added, referring to the famous Englishman who had inaugurated the first running of the Derby Stakes at Epsom more than half a century before. “Henry Flyte trained Aleazar.”

Hunter came to attention. The story of Aleazar was known throughout racing. The three-year-old had been bred out of the Royal Studs, but was declared unridable by the best trainers and jockeys in England. Then, seemingly out of the blue, Lord Derby had raced him at Epsom. The stallion had broken every record in memory, and Derby gave full credit to a trainer whose unusual methods had worked wonders on the horse. There followed some tragedy and upheaval, but it all happened when Hunter was a boy and he remembered no details.

“And the claim is,” Hunter said, “this wonder of a trainer lives in Virginia now.”

“It’s what the drovers are saying.” Noah shifted from foot to foot, clearly agitated. “Been here for years. They say he keeps to himself. He lives on an island across the marsh from Eastwick.”

The low islands were lawless, dangerous places where shipwrecks happened, and not always by accident. The favored haunts of pirates and fugitives, the long, shifting islands had become the stuff of legend, featured in spooky bedtime stories and tall tavern tales.

Noah took a rolled pamphlet from his hip pocket and shoved it at Hunter. “His name’s listed here in the Farmers’ Register.” He stabbed his finger at an article called “The Horsemaster of Flyte Island.” “Claims he tames wild ponies for riding and farmwork.”

“Why would such a gifted trainer leave Lord Derby’s Thoroughbreds for a herd of wild ponies?”

“I don’t know,” said Noah.

Hunter flipped through the yellowing pages. “This Register is two years old. How do you know the horsemaster is still there?”

“How do you know he’s not?” Noah’s solemn, handsome face was drawn taut with intensity and pleading. “He can save this stallion,” Noah added. “I know it, I do!”

“Son, a miracle wouldn’t save this stallion.” Hunter turned back toward the paddock, angry that he was letting himself be swayed by this earnest, hopeful youth. Earnestness and hope were alien notions to Hunter—for good reason.

“Don’t matter whether you put him down today or wait until tomorrow,” Noah persisted, an edge of anger in his voice. “We got to go see the horsemaster.”

“He’d have a chance to kill again.” Hunter lengthened his strides, thinking of the broodmare, dead because of the crazed stallion’s punishing hooves and wolf-like mouth. He thought of the hired groom slumped against the well house, cradling a crushed hand but thanking God he’d been spared his life. “And what makes you think this horsemaster would come to Albion for the sake of this Thoroughbred?”

Noah hesitated. “They say he won’t travel.”

Hunter let loose with a bark of laughter. “Even better. You’re saying I have to go to him?”

Noah danced ahead in his agitation. “It could be done, sir. I’ve thought and thought on it. You and I can drive the horse into the squeeze and I’ll get him blindfolded and muzzled. Then we’ll get the drover’s scow, the one with the pen. It’s shallow draft. It can dock right here at Albion so we can use the penning chutes, and at high tide it can be poled over to the horsemaster’s island.”

The drover’s scow plied between the low-browed peninsula that reached like a long, stroking finger down the eastern side of Chesapeake Bay and the mainland. Herds of horses, sheep and cattle grew fat on the rich salt grasses of the peninsula and islands, and each season drovers came eastward to pen them and bring them back across the water to market. But the drovers worked with tame livestock, not demonically possessed horses.

“It can work, sir,” Noah said, his voice rising with desperation. “I know it can.”

“Step aside, son,” Hunter said in exasperation. “This is hard enough without you calling up all sorts of false hopes.”

“Shoot him and you’ll have a dead horse for certain. I ain’t digging no grave for him,” Noah said defiantly. “Take him to the horsemaster and you’ll get your champion back. Sir.”

Hunter eyed the horse with its nervously twitching skin, all caked with mud and filth. The agent in Ireland had praised this stallion’s coat and conformation, the depth of his chest and the breathtaking sight of him running at top speed. The horse had, the agent claimed, that elusive quality known as “heart.”

“There’s nothing but madness in this beast,” Hunter said.

“Can you be sure of that?” Noah looked not at him but at the horse. Every muscle in the youth’s compact, slender body was tense, as if he wanted to leap into the paddock and tame the beast himself. “Can you be sure entirely? Look at that beauty.”

“I can be damned sure this horse killed an expensive mare and he’d do the same to you or me if we let him. He’s ruined, Noah. I don’t want that to be so, but it is.”

Noah’s head came up sharply as he confronted Hunter. “I never did ask you for much. You been good to me, I ain’t denying that, and I count myself lucky. But now I got something to ask. Do this for me, sir. Sure as I’m your cousin’s born son, give this horse a chance.”

Not prone to displays of emotion, Noah swung away and snuffled, wiping his face on his voluminous sleeve. He faced the horse in the paddock.