Bonecrack

Alessandro returned with an 'I told you so' face which I wiped off by saying he would be switched to Lancat tomorrow.

'Why?' he demanded furiously. 'I rode Archangel very well.'

'Well enough,' I agreed. 'And you can ride him again, in a day or two. But I want you to ride Lancat in a trial on Wednesday, so you can go out on him tomorrow as well, and get used to him. And after the trial I want you to tell me your opinion of the horse and how he went. And I don't want one of your short sneering comments but a thought-out assessment. It is almost as important for a jockey to be able to analyse what a horse has done in a race as ride it. Trainers depend quite a lot on what their jockeys can tell them. So you can tell me about Lancat, and I'll listen.'

He gave me a long concentrating stare, but for once without the habitual superciliousness.

'All right,' he said. 'I will.'

We held the trial on the Wednesday afternoon on the trial ground past the Limekilns, a long way out of Newmarket. Much to Etty's disgust, because she wanted to watch it on television, I had timed the trial to start at exactly the same moment as the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham. But the strategem worked. We achieved the well-nigh impossible, a full scale trial without an observer or a tout in sight.

Apart from the two Etty and I rode, we took only four horses along there: Pease Pudding, Lancat, Archangel, and one of the previous year's most prolific winners, a four-year-old colt called Subito, whose best distance was a mile. Tommy Hoylake drove up from his home in Berkshire to ride Pease Pudding, and we put Andy on Archangel and a taciturn lad called Faddy on the chestnut Subito.

'Don't murder them,' I said, before they started. 'If you feel them falter, just ease off.'

Four nods. Four fidgeting colts, glossy and eager.

Etty and I hacked round to within a hundred yards of where the trial ground ended and when we had pulled up in a useful position for watching, she waved a large white handkerchief above her head. The horses started towards us, moving fast and still accelerating, with the riders crouched forward on their withers, heads down, reins very short, feet against the horses' moving shoulders.

They passed us still going all out, and pulled up a little further on. Archangel and Pease Pudding ran the whole gallop stride for stride and finished together. Lancat, from starting level, lost ten lengths, made up eight, lost two again, but still moved easily. Subito was ahead of Lancat at the beginning, behind him when he moved up quickly, and alongside when they passed Etty and me.

She turned to me with a deeply worried expression.

'Pease Pudding can't be ready for the Lincoln if Lancat can finish so near him. In fact the way Lancat finished means that neither Archangel or Subito are as far on as I thought.'

'Calm down, Etty,' I said. 'Relax. Take it easy.

Just turn it the other way round.'

She frowned. 'I don't understand you. Mr Griffon will be very worried when he hears-'

'Etty,' I interrupted. 'Did Pease Pudding, or did he not, seem to you to be moving fast and easily?'

'Well, yes, I suppose so,' she said doubtfully.

'Then it may be Lancat who is much better than you expected, not the others which are worse.'

She looked at me with a face screwed up with indecision. 'But Alex is only an apprentice, and Lancat was useless last year.'

'In what way was he useless?'

'Oh- sprawly. Babyish. Had no action.'

'Nothing sprawly about him today,' I pointed out.

'No,' she admitted slowly. 'You're right. There wasn't.'

The riders walked towards us, leading the horses, and Etty and I both dismounted to hear more easily what they had to say. Tommy Hoylake, built like a twelve-year-old boy with a forty-three-year-old man's face sitting incongruously on top, said in his comfortable Berkshire accent that he had thought that Pease Pudding had run an excellent trial until he saw Lancat pulling up so close behind him. He had ridden Lancat a good deal the previous year, and hadn't thought much of him.

Andy said Archangel went beautifully, considering the Guineas was nearly six weeks away, and Faddy in his high pitched finicky voice said Subito had only been a pound or two behind Pease Pudding last year in his opinion, and he could have been nearer to him if he had really tried. Tommy and Andy shook their heads. If they had really tried, they too could have gone faster.

'Alessandro?' I said.

He hesitated. 'I- I lost ground at the beginning because I didn't realise- I didn't expect them to go so fast. When I asked him, Lancat just shot forward- and I could have kept him nearer to Archangel at the end, only he did seem to tire a bit, and you said-' he stopped with his voice, so to speak, on one foot.

'Good,' I said. 'You did right.' I hadn't expected him to be so honest. For the first time since his arrival he had made an objective self-assessment, but my faint and even slightly patronising praise was enough to bring back the smirk. Etty looked at him with uncontrolled dislike, which didn't disturb Alessandro one little bit.

'I hardly need to remind you,' I said to all of them, ignoring the displayed emotions, 'To keep this afternoon's doings to yourselves. Tommy, you can count on Pease Pudding in the Lincoln and Archangel in the Guineas, and if you'll come back to the office now we'll go through your other probable rides for the next few weeks.'

Alessandro's smirk turned sour, and the look he cast on Tommy was pure Rivera. Actively dangerous: inured to murder. Any appearance he might have given of being even slightly tamed was suddenly as reliable as sunlight on quicksand. I remembered the unequivocal message of Enso's gun pointing at my chest; that if killing seemed desirable, killing would quite casually be done. I had put Tommy Hoylake in jeopardy, and I'd have to get him out.

I sent the others on ahead and told Alessandro to stay for a minute. When the others were too far away to hear, I said, 'You will have to accept that Tommy Hoylake will be riding as first jockey to the stable.'

I got the full stare treatment, black, wide, and ill intentioned. I could almost feel the hate which flowed out of him like hot waves across the cool March air.

'If Tommy Hoylake breaks his leg,' I said clearly, 'I'll break yours.'

It shook him, though he tried not to show it.

'Also it would be pointless to put Tommy Hoylake out of action, as I would then engage someone else. Not you. Is that clear?'

He didn't answer.

'If you want to be a top jockey, you've got to fight your own battles. It's no good thinking your father will destroy everyone who stands in your way. If you are good enough, no one will stand in your way; and if you are not, no amount of ruining others will make you.'

Still no sound. But fury, yes. Signifying all too much.

I said seriously, 'If Tommy Hoylake comes to any harm whatsoever, I will see that you never ride in another race. At whatever consequence to myself.'

He removed the stare from my face and scattered it over the wide windy spread of the Heath.

'I am accustomed-' he began arrogantly, and then stopped.

'I know to what you are accustomed,' I said. 'To having your own way at any expense to others. Your own way, bought in misery, pain and fear. Well- you should have settled for something which could be paid for. No amount of death and destruction will buy you ability.'

'All I wanted was to ride Archangel in the Derby,' he said defensively.

'Just like that? Just a whim?'

He turned his head towards Lancat and gathered together the reins. 'It started like that,' he said indistinctly, and walked away from me in the direction of Newmarket.

He came and rode out as usual the following morning, and all the days after. News that the trial had taken place got around, and I heard that I had chosen the time of the Champion Hurdle so that I could keep the unfit state of Pease Pudding decently concealed. The ante-post price lengthened and I put a hundred pounds on him at twenty to one.