“Stop, you piece of shit!” he heard again from behind the house.
“Go, go, go!” Daniel yelled in an undertone as he came level. He mounted his bay as he did so, took the reins and rope from his brother’s hands and set off at great speed. “Go!” he said again.
They heard more shouting. “STOP!”
A shot rang out. Natan could have sworn he felt bullets whistling past his ear. “Fuck this,” he said, instinctively ducking his head and increasing speed.
Daniel laughed.
“Fuck off,” Natan said.
They continued at a fast gallop until they came close to old Pancia’s house. The hooves beat on the road like the drums in a band.
When they got home, after taking First Deal back to old Pancia’s, they dismounted and started taking off the saddles.
“Do you think they recognised us?”
Daniel glanced at his brother. “Let’s hope not.”
They placed the saddles and bridles side by side on the fence and took the horses back to the stable. They put new water in the pails and hay in the manger. They gave the horses a few good slaps on their necks and walked back to the house.
“Thanks,” Daniel said just before they went in.
“Don’t mention it.”
FORTUNATELY, First Deal had managed to get pregnant, and eleven months later gave birth to a splendid black colt. Daniel called him First Born.
Natan was hardly ever around any more. He’d grown a short beard like a sailor and spent all his time in the city, doing things no one knew about. From time to time, he would come back for a few days, spend all his time riding in the hills and then go away again saying he was going on a trip.
In the meantime, Daniel and the pharmacist’s daughter had done what there was to do. Daniel spent all his free time with her. He would ride up to her house on his bay, let her climb up behind him, and take her somewhere in the countryside. They talked about houses and children and a life together, and whenever Daniel felt sick he would go to her house to be seen to. This was the way life could be, Daniel thought.
One day they were in the inn, sitting at a wooden table in the corner, having soup.
Daniel and the girl heard a commotion from the other side of the room. There at the counter was the man who had sold Daniel First Deal. He was talking excitedly and was being held back by a couple of friends. After a few seconds he broke free, walked heavily across the room and up to Daniel’s table. He had the watery eyes and lopsided stride of someone who has been drinking too much.
“You stole my horse, you bastard,” he said when he was level with Daniel.
Daniel glanced at him. “I didn’t steal anything,” he said.
One of the man’s friends came over and took his arm. “Let’s go,” he said. “We can sort this out another time.”
“No!” the first man said, pulling his arm away. “This bastard stole a mare from me and then sneaked over and got her pregnant with the German’s stallion.”
“I didn’t steal anything. I paid for that mare.”
“A pittance!”
“She was sick. You were going to send her to the abattoir.”
“You knew you could cure her,” the man muttered.
“No, I hoped I could,” Daniel said, glancing again at the man, then took another sip of his soup. “Go home,” he said. “You’re drunk.”
The man stood there for a couple of seconds, as stiff as a log, and stared at Daniel with his drink-sodden eyes. Then he turned and saw a big glass tankard someone had left on a table beside him. It all happened in a moment, and Daniel did not even have time to raise his hand, but he would remember every instant: the man’s twisted fingers tightening round the tankard, the fingertips and the palm of the hand turning white with the pressure, the tankard coming off the table and leaving a round puddle on the surface, the muscles of the man’s arm tightening, his left foot shifting forwards, his face screwing up with the effort and the anger, those dozens of lines on it like a crumpled leaf, the remains of the froth in the tankard as it came closer, the cold glass against his left eye, the explosion of glass in little drops and that suspended moment when it seemed to him that he was seeing an enchanted world. Then the darkness and his own hands on his face and that sensation like a hundred burning coals. The last thing Daniel remembered was the pharmacist’s daughter screaming.
The girl rushed to Daniel, who was lying on the ground unconscious, his face covered in blood. The man’s friends dragged him outside. He was still waving his arms about and threatening to finish what he had started, but he didn’t sound very convinced any more.
The innkeeper ran out from behind the counter with a cloth in his hand, and went and pressed it to Daniel’s face.
“Let’s take him to my house,” the pharmacist’s daughter said.
The innkeeper nodded, crouched down and took Daniel in his arms.
The pharmacist did not know what to think when he saw his daughter come in with the innkeeper carrying a wounded boy in his arms. He preferred not to think about what his daughter had to do with all that blood.
“Come in, put him in there,” the pharmacist said to the innkeeper, pointing to a door on the other side of the kitchen.
The innkeeper went through the door and laid Daniel on the big bed that was there.
“Fetch the doctor,” the pharmacist said at last, going to Daniel to get a better look at him. The innkeeper nodded without a word and ran out. The pharmacist carefully turned Daniel’s head and lifted the bloodstained cloth from his face. A long black cut, gaping like a toothless grin, descended from his left eyebrow to just above his jaw.
“Go into the shop,” the pharmacist said to his daughter without taking his eyes off Daniel. “Get some disinfectant, some gauze, a needle and some suturing thread, a pair of sterile scissors and some plaster. Then put some water on to boil.”
“Is he going to be all right?” his daughter asked.
“Hurry up,” he said.
When his daughter came back, he took some gauze and disinfectant and tried to clean the wound.
A few minutes later the doctor arrived. “What happened?” he asked, approaching the bed with his bag in his hand.
“He’s got a nasty wound,” the pharmacist said.
The doctor put the bag down next to the bed and leant over Daniel. He put his hands on his face and squeezed the wound in a few places. The blood came out again like water from a weir.
“Needle and thread?” the doctor asked.
“Here they are,” the pharmacist said.
The doctor turned and glanced at the pharmacist’s needle and thread. “Good,” he said.
By the time the doctor had finished an hour later, a crooked line of stitches ran down Daniel’s face. The doctor went and washed his hands, then came back into the room, rolled down his sleeves and started putting his coat back on.
“Give him an injection for the pain and let him rest,” he said, picking up his bag.
The pharmacist nodded and walked the doctor to the door. When he came back, his daughter was still there, looking at Daniel. Her eyes were still swollen.
“Go to bed,” her father said curtly.
It took Daniel a few seconds to realise what that white-hot dagger he could feel stuck to his face was, and longer still to try and work out where he was. Slivers of colour floated in front of him as soon as he closed his eyes, and it seemed to him as if his heart was throbbing beneath the skin of his face, trying to rip through the flesh and get out. He touched his face with his hand and felt the gauze over the whole of the left side. In a flash, he remembered the tankard and the rain of glass exploding like a firework. But that was all.