The Price Of Horses

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Book Excerpt

Chapter One 

The country lane lay quiet in the lingering evening light of early summer. The leaves of the oaks and hawthorns in the field hedgerows on each side hissed softly in the gentlest of breezes. The sun was slowly sinking below the horizon, leaving mottled bands of alto-cumulus to the northwest glowing violent orange-red, like the reflection of some far-off conflagration. With barely audible flutterings, nesting birds settled down into exhausted sleep, the long day feeding hungry fledglings over for a few brief hours.

            A Romany travellers' trailer with ornamented chrome work and steel trims stood on the grass verge. Voices and laughter drifted from the open door. A small truck was pulled up nearby. Between the truck and the trailer, an open fire burned brightly. Above the fire a blackened kettle hung from a kettle iron. A smooth-haired brown lurcher, tethered by the trailer, watched everything that moved.

            Further down the lane, a dozen piebald gypsy vanners, tied to their plug chains, grazed the coarse grasses on the verge. The munch and stamp of the horses and the rattle of their chains as they grazed was at first all that could be heard. Then voices arose, strangely disembodied among the dense screen of hawthorns.

            Luke Smith, a fifteen-year-old Romany youth, and Riley, his elder brother, worked among the bushes, grooming the family's prize chestnut mare. Riley brushed the mane, Luke the tail. Seniority in such tasks was strictly observed.

            "You done good mushgaying, brother?" Riley asked. "There's no posh rawni's gryes in the field? No bokros and gurnis?"

            "I've dikkered every inch of it!" Luke replied hotly. "No sheep. No cows. There's only drummers as round and fat as firkins! And a couple o' snoring elephants."

            Riley was used to his brother's strange mixtures of fact and fantasy. "We'll put Nip in later to get us a drummer."

            "Rabbit stew for supper! We'll be living free as princes!" Luke exclaimed.

            By the trees across the lane, Old Musker, a tramp with a bushy grey beard, erected a small, hooped bender tent. He kept up a muttered commentary in traveller cant as he worked. No one knew Old Musker's age; he had been announcing that he was "nearer seventy than sixty" for as long as anyone could remember. He had attached himself to the Smith family for the past year, and in spite of him not being of their blood, they had kept him fed and watered. But he always set up his bender at a distance, as privacy mattered, too, on both sides.

            Ambrose Smith, the youths' father, a dark wiry man, stepped out of the trailer, followed by his wife, Mireli, and Athalia, his thirteen-year-old daughter. Both mother and daughter wore brightly patterned dresses, with headscarves over their long glossy black hair. Ambrose was in his weather-worn work jacket and heavy boots, his flat cap, shiny with time, set at a jaunty angle.

            He glanced at the sky. "Be a dark moon tonight. Reckon we'll get ourselves some free grazing." He gave a short whistle as a signal to his sons and waited until they emerged from the trees. "It's a beautiful evening, with only us here to please ourselves. Unplug the gryes, boys. We'll be putting 'em in that empty meadow yonder."

            Mireli cautioned them. "Riley. Luke. Look after the gryes. And your dadu. They's all we got!"

            "Let me come with you!" Athalia pleaded.

            "Your job's to take care o' your dai, my girl," Ambrose admonished her with a kindly smile. "She's all we got!"

            Luke, handsome and easygoing, laughed at her. "We're only gonna nick a little gorgios' grass, a bit o' chaw ta pani. It's no big deal."

            Riley, habitually scowling, took exception as usual. "Big deal? This Romanichal's a yank now!"

            Ambrose waved to the women, who watched their menfolk leave. Mireli glanced at

the lurcher. "If anyone comes prowling, Nip will tell us."

            The lurcher looked up at them at the mention of his name.

            Mireli waved to Old Musker. "Drop o' tea when you want."

            "Two minutes!"

            Mireli knew that clock time to Old Musker meant nothing. Two minutes could become as many hours. But she topped up the kettle from the water jack, placed more wood on the fire and got the drinking mugs ready.

            "You think Musker will live another year?" Athalia asked her mother as they went back into the trailer. "What if he dies? Where will we bury him?"

            "He said he wants to be laid in the churchyard in his village, or his mullo, his ghost, won't let him find peace. He told me he'd paid for his grave years back. Next to the birch tree he said, so he could be a part of its roots and travel in the underworld. But I don't know if he was just telling a mumpers' tale. Anyhow, who says he'll be dying? We're looking after him now."

* * *

Riley and Luke released the horses from their plug chains and walked them for a quarter mile to where Ambrose had opened a field gate to let the horses enter the wildflower meadow that bordered the lane.

            "Be some sweet grazing for 'em tonight," Ambrose remarked. "It'll help get 'em in shape for Appleby Fair. We've to meet Taiso there next week."

            Luke looked at their prize mare with pride. "I ride her over the field?" he asked eagerly.

            Riley frowned. "What makes you think you can?"

            Luke grinned. "I can ride anything! I could ride a wild boar if we'd any left in England. Or even one o' them African osteriches!"

            "You be riding for a fall!" Riley seemed about to punch his younger brother. Luke stepped back, laughing. He enjoyed annoying Riley, but the fun was beginning to sour, as increasingly he was growing to think of him as weak—and only a bully makes sport of a coward.

            "Freedom's wasted on you, brother. You gotta live it or lose it! One o' these days you'll wake up and wonder where it's gone!"

            Before Riley could reply, Ambrose stepped between them. "Wait till we get to Appleby. You can ride her there, both o' you. It'll help us sell her. Too risky to ride her down here in the dark. She might get a hoof in a drummer's hole and go down. Then where'd we be?"

            Ambrose, a man of practical good sense, was right, of course. His mind was filled with nuggets of wisdom, the fruits of forty years on the road. Luke stored his father's observations away like a secret coin hoard, but he also picked up something else: a sense of sadness that hung around the man like an invisible aura with no obvious cause. While Luke chased the impression away like an irritating bug, Riley seemed to have no power to banish it. Sometimes it seemed he was sucked into their father's sadness, as if the two of them were privy to some disturbing secret.

            But Luke's enthusiasm remained undiminished. "Can I swim her in the Eden at Appleby, Dadu?"

            "We'll see," Ambrose said thoughtfully. "We'll mebbe race her in Flashing Lane. If she wins, we'll get a good price for her."

            They stood a while, watching the vanners gallop around the field, enjoying their freedom. As the light faded, the horses settled down to graze and drink at the field trough. Then, at last, the chestnut mare was put into the field.

            "Beat you at Appleby this year, brother," Luke taunted Riley good-naturedly. "You'll

be a loser!"

            "Loser?" Riley scowled. "Another word for gorgio, ain't it?"

            They all laughed. The sound of two gunshots, followed by a sudden explosion, took them by surprise. Flames leaped into the sky in the direction of the trailer.

            "Dordi! Dordi!" Ambrose exclaimed. "Run, boys! Run!"

            They closed the field gate and sprinted towards the fire. Luke raced ahead, Riley and Ambrose a stride behind. Gradually becoming visible through the lane-side trees

were flames engulfing their campsite.

            The trailer was a fireball. Old Musker and Nip were nowhere to be seen. Luke, Riley

and Ambrose tried to get close, but the heat beat them back.

            "Mother! Athalia!" Luke yelled. He leaped forward, as if about to hurl himself into the flames.

            Ambrose grabbed him and held him back. "It's too late, son. We're too late. We've lost our dearest treasures."

            They stared helplessly at the inferno that had once been their home, tears

streaming down their faces.

            Luke released a terrible yell of despair. "Who's done this to us? Who's done this to us, Dadu?"

            His father and brother stared in despair at the flames. They shook their heads but made no reply.

            "Who's done this?" Luke persisted. "Who hates us so much?"

            "No one," Ambrose managed to reply through his tears. "No one's done it." He looked at Riley for confirmation.

            "An accident," Riley said, his voice choked with emotion. "Just an accident. Those gas bottles are dangerous things."

            Luke didn't believe them. He couldn't explain how he knew, but their words were hollow.

            "Who's done this?" he yelled again.

            "No one, Luke. Believe me."

            "An accident, brother!"

            But Luke's mind was screaming NO! NO! NO! "Who hates us so much, Dadu? I swear by my blood I will find them and kill them!"

Chapter Two

A derelict four-storey Victorian building stood close to the centre of a city in the English Midlands. Brick-built but crumbling a little, it was screened off from the surrounding streets by a solid eight-foot fence topped with razor wire. A few broken windows could be seen on the building's upper floors, and a long row of pigeons perched on the roof ridge like architectural adornments. Across the front of the building were the faded words RADFORD BUILDING SUPPLIES.

            An area of cracked concrete surrounded the building inside the fence with, to one side, a range of repair shops for the firm's vehicles, which were now long gone. The yard, which had once held breeze blocks and soft sand, was empty, as was the cement and plaster store. In front of the repair shops stood two travellers' trailers occupied by the current minders, who were there to prevent raiding or squatting by the city's opportunist elements. Everything of value, which was mostly copper wire and items of metalwork, had already been stripped by the minders.

            The site's owners, who themselves had gypsy traveller connections, had no wish to see their property overrun by gorgios. They were waiting for the outcome of a planning application to turn the site into a creative centre, which included a cinema and live performance space. If that was refused, plan B was to transform the building into flats, with retail units on the ground floor. Much less imaginative.

            The families in the trailers were Boswells, who had been pleased to let one of their extended clan occupy part of an upper floor as an added deterrent to intruders. The single male occupant kept himself to himself, rarely intruding on the families in the trailers, nor they on him.

            There was little evidence that anyone lived on the fourth floor. One end of the floor had been tidied up. A set of wooden shelves that had once held rainwater fittings was now a store for cat burglars’ equipment: screwdrivers, lock pickers, knives, torches, ropes and straw packaging. A frameless rucksack and a neat pile of clothes lay at one end, and a simple pallet bed was spread on the floor.

            Luke Smith, now thirty, had grown into a tall, athletic, muscular man, with black

shoulder-length hair. Dressed in joggers and T-shirt, he lay asleep on the pallet bed one mid-afternoon in early summer, having driven up from the Wickham horse fair that had been held the previous day. He had bought two dull-spirited cobs at Wickham, groomed and ridden them, using his natural talent to coax them back to energetic life. Then he had sold the transformed animals for twice what he had paid for them. It had been a good day.

            He was something of an outsider in the gypsy travelling community, an enigma around which dark rumours circulated. How did he make his vongar, his money, travelling folk asked? Why was he so secretive? Where had he learned his undoubted skills with animals? Luke did nothing to dispel the mysteries; rather he encouraged them by his sudden appearances at travellers' fairs and by his equally abrupt vanishings.

            He had a reputation at the fairs for a certain degree of honesty, which, broadly speaking, was rare. Anyone who bought a horse, a dog or a hawk from him more often than not got good value for their investment. He had plenty of travellers' tricks when it came to enhancing the appearance or disposition of an animal, but he also had something else, which the rumours described as a gift, some going so far as to say he had a magical touch.

            This particular rumour started years earlier at Stow fair, where he had come across an acquaintance in a state of despair and on the brink of furious tears. It turned out that a horse the man had bought earlier in the day had collapsed an hour later and seemed at the point of death. Luke had offered to buy the horse for half what the man had paid for it. The traveller eagerly accepted the deal, thinking the young man must be a bit simple in the head. An hour later, the same horse was sold for more than twice what the man had paid.

            “How did you do it, mush?” the traveller asked resentfully when he came across

Luke later in the day, having heard the price the animal had been sold for.

            “I talked to him,” Luke replied, looking serious. “I told him it was no way to behave, and he was letting his bloodline down getting sick for no reason. He decided to get up to prove me wrong!"

            The traveller shook his head, not knowing what to believe.

            Luke didn't mention that the animal had been drugged by his good friend Sy, who just happened to meet its unhappy buyer when the horse was sinking to its lowest ebb. Luke had bought the vanner and immediately administered the herbal antidote, plus a secret remedy he had gotten from an old horseman whose ancestors had been members of the East Anglian guild. Half an hour later, the animal was as lively as a horse of his mature years could be.

            "It was magic, I tell you!" the gullible traveller insisted that evening in the pub. "I've never seed a grye changed like that!" The rest, as they say, is history.

            The police had Luke's mugshot on file, as he had been brought in for questioning a dozen or more times in connection with daring burglaries that involved "unprecedented" climbing feats and "inconceivable" escapes if the alarm had chanced to be triggered. He had never been convicted, and, by rights, his photograph should not have neen retained. But he was the source of much official frustration and the desire—perhaps even an obsession—in several constabularies to put him behind bars.

            His reputation as a cat burglar extraordinaire was based on one brief frame of surveillance footage where he emerged from a property in West London's stockbroker belt in the act of pulling his balaclava over his face. It wasn't enough to put him in court, but the rumours spread like a virus from one constabulary to another until burglaries involving difficult climbs were rated as a Luke Smith five or a Smith eight.

            The world beyond Radford’s was full of him, but no one knew very much about him, at least nothing that was certain, including where he lived. The minders in the trailers, when they heard the latest “factual” rumour, thought it was all hilarious. Luke himself

characteristically said nothing…

            His mobile rang. He was awake and on his feet in one bound, snatching the phone from a shelf.

            "Tam! How you doing, mush?"

            As he talked, he moved to a grimy window and looked out. It was his favourite

pastime. From his vantage point, views extended from the railway station and bus terminus to the inner ringroad and, beyond that, to the distant suburbs. On the skyline to the north, about ten miles distant, he could see the vague outline of woodland, almost obscured from view by the intervening smog of exhaust fumes.

            What held his attention was movement: the mainline trains entering and leaving the station, express coaches to distant cities making their way from the bus terminus, threading their route out of town to the motorways. Movement was something he understood. It was in his blood, going back more than a thousand years to the time when his people roamed the desert and hills of Rajasthan.

            Hidden in his secret eyrie, he spent hours watching movement. He had observed the flights of geese and wild duck through the winter months, carving their passage between the city's waterways and their feeding grounds in the surrounding countryside. Whenever he saw the birds, his own wild spirit leaped to greet them, as if he was about to join them on their timeless journeying.

            Closer to his base were the flights of the resident urban birds: the jackdaws that roosted in the parkland trees, the starlings that slept in the old warehouses by the river and the pigeons that lived in his block and in the tower of All Saints church half a mile away.

            The arrival in the city centre of a pair of peregrine falcons had caused some excitement. They had made their home on the sheltered southern side of the roof of a

redundant church that stood between his block and All Saints. The parent birds were raising offspring, and he had watched as the male picked off pigeons in mid-air on their perilous journey from All Saints' tower to the railway station roof.

            He felt a keen affinity with the peregrines, while in his imagination the hapless

pigeons were the members of the settled world, the gorgios, slow-moving and sluggish-witted.

            Members of the settled world surrounded folk like him with as many laws and petty regulations as they could. They tried to shackle the gypsy traveller because they couldn't tame him. So the traveller had no choice but to seize his chances or succumb to the pressure to conform. He had decided long ago that he was never going to give in.

            Luke listened to the Scotsman's voice on the other end of the phone telling him how

hard life was these days and how resourceful a dealer in "quality merchandise" had to be merely to stay alive. There was nothing in Tam's spiel he hadn't heard before. It was Tam's long-winded way of softening him up for some favour or risky project from which they would both make enough money to put their feet up for six months "in Scarborough or Skegness."

            As far as Luke knew, the antiques dealer had never been to either town. But Tam, like every born hustler, could never stop working, not for six months or even six hours. Luke imagined the man even dreamed of cutting deals in his sleep.

            It was true he had made a lot of money with Tam, most of which he had used to buy pasture land that he rented out to other gypsy travellers for rough grazing. He had even bought a small hill farm in the Welsh Marches, where his own horses were cared for by an extended family of traveller craftsmen who had rent-free use of the buildings.

            But he had no interest in money for its own sake, and to cap it all, he had developed a growing dislike for the Scotsman. He had come to the conclusion that it was impossible to believe a word the dealer said, even to someone like himself, who had known him for over a decade. When Tam got around to asking about his state of health, he was ready with his own stock reply.

            "Me? Not good, mush. This kind o' work's getting too dodgy. Last time, if you care to recall, I almost got nicked… I know there'll be a moon, but I ain't up for it tonight… You want to find a younger guy to do this sort o' work."

            While Tam continued persuading, Luke reached on to a shelf for a can of beer. He put the phone on the window ledge and took a long swig. He almost choked.

            "How much?… You're taking the piss, mush—there ain't such a figure! We gonna be nicking an old master? You know some Chinese billionaire buyers now, right?"

            He took another swig of beer as Tam continued his sales talk. Eventually, as usual, Luke's curiosity got the better of him.

            "Okay, I'll come down. But no promises! I don't care if it's an easy climb or not. You give me something tonight, mush, if it's gonna pay so much… 20K in advance, right? Make damn sure you've got it! You will? Okay, see you later."

            He rang off, drank his beer and stared from the window. He shouldn't have agreed. Tam McBride was trouble. He was taking bigger and bigger risks—or, truth be told, the cunning dealer was expecting that he would take the risks for him. And Tam knew too many dangerous people who could brush a poor burglar aside like a flea on a fox's ear if things went wrong. But where the dealer was concerned, there was always a challenge to be faced and a stack of money to be made. Maybe he'd be able to sign off on that derelict North Pennine hill farm only forty miles from Appleby…