The horse tossed its head and gave a reverberating sneeze, and a few drops of spray reached Freddie’s face. He had three options: jump over the wide ditch which was full of water, reverse into the prickly hawthorn hedge on the other side, or sneak past the horse with his basin, past its tree-trunk legs and massive rump. What if it kicked him? One kick and he’d be dead.
Freddie was scraping up his courage to try the sneaking past option, when he heard a strong bright voice from behind the hedge.
‘You stay still, Daisy. I’m just shutting the gate.’
Daisy? What a name for a giant with dinner-plate knees. Freddie backed into a prickly hawthorn tree and peered through its berry-laden twigs, his mouth open in astonishment as a little girl emerged from a gateway and marched up to the horse with a confident swagger, her long dark hair swinging. She wore a red dress with a white ruffled pinafore over it, tightly laced boots and a rather tatty red ribbon in her hair. But what Freddie noticed was the glow in her dark eyes and the way she skipped happily up to the big Shire horse and picked up the trailing reins. The horse bent its huge head and blew softly out of velvet nostrils. Obviously it loved and trusted the tiny girl who was so absorbed with it that she didn’t notice Freddie standing against the hedge.
What she did next took his breath away. First she kissed the horse’s soft muzzle. Talking all the time in a voice like a chirruping robin, the little girl persuaded the horse to turn around, its metal shoes scrunching on the gravel. She led it back and coaxed it round until it was standing alongside the gate. Then she climbed energetically up the bars, stood on the top bar, and leaped expertly onto the horse’s bare back, opening her legs wide to stretch across the broad withers. She had sunburnt little knees as if she was used to hitching up her long dress and racing about in the sun. She looked relaxed and at home on the horse’s back.
High in the air, she rode past Freddie, her eyes alight, her plume of hair blowing in the breeze. She didn’t notice him at all. Freddie thought she was beautiful. And he saw how carefully the big horse plodded away down the lane with its precious cargo. He watched the little girl’s straight back and the horse’s shining rump disappearing with the slow clop-clop of its hooves, and he wished he had spoken to her. He could have asked her name.
Quickly he put the basin down and climbed a nearby ash tree to watch where she went. He thought she might be a Romany gipsy. She had the same bold manner and vibrant eyes of the gipsy children he had seen. But no, she was heading down a farm track between post and rail fencing, the Shire horse still moving placidly. She lived on a farm. A proper farm. Round golden haystacks, barns with red roofs and a farmhouse with several groups of cream-coloured chimneys. The horse and the little girl disappeared through the entrance gate which had two tall stone pillars with carvings on the top. The sun was shining on them and Freddie could just make out what they were. Animals with curly manes and fierce faces. Were they dogs? Or lions? Freddie had never seen a lion for real, only a picture of one, and he’d read about them in Rudyard Kipling. He knew that lions represented power. What kind of girl would live in a house with two stone lions guarding it? A rich girl, he thought.
Beyond the farm, half hidden behind a blaze of copper beeches, he could see another intriguing building with turrets and minarets. Hilbegut Court, he thought, awed. He had heard of Hilbegut Court and the squire who lived there like the king of the village. A flock of jackdaws evidently lived there too, he noticed as they flew up, chack-chacking, and a flight of white doves circled glittering against the sky twisting and turning in formation.
The little girl probably lived at Hilbegut Farm, he concluded.
The sound of voices wafted over the fields, he could hear her robin-like voice, and the laughter of the children playing. He longed to go nearer and peep, and, more than anything he wanted a closer look at the stone lions. It excited him to think of them sitting up there staring into the sunlight, glaring into the night, shrugging off the rain and the wind, appearing on winter mornings with icicles hanging from their jaws and hoar frost capping their manes.
There were so many things Freddie wanted to do. He wanted to go fishing, he wanted to carve wood with a penknife he didn’t have, he wanted to go to the cemetery and spend time studying the stone carvings there, the sweet faces of angels and the ornate letterings, the exciting gargoyles round the edge of the church roof who snarled down at him and made him shiver. He wanted to go pole-vaulting over the river like the boys he’d watched one day as he’d crossed the bridge on one of his endless errands. They were boys from his school, big boys, and they laughed at him and called him ‘snowball’ because of his white blond hair.
Now he wanted to go to Hilbegut Farm and feel the burning gaze of the stone lions. He wanted to sit in the sweet meadow hay and smell the summer, hide and keep watch to see that girl with the red ribbon. He tucked her away in his mind, putting her top of all the treasures he’d stored in there, to think about on his long cold walks. He’d paint a picture of her, riding the majestic Shire horse with her hair blowing in the breeze, if only he could have a piece of paper. At school they were allowed one piece each per week, for the art lesson, and Harry Price usually arranged a few bottles and an apple on his table.
‘Draw that,’ he’d bark, and stalk around the classroom criticising their efforts. They were never allowed to do a picture of their own. So strong was Freddie’s need to do the picture in his head that he actually considered stealing a piece of paper. Today it was November the 11th. Christmas wasn’t far away. He might hope for a drawing book instead of a penknife.
Still sitting in the ash tree, he heard shouting and three boys came running round the corner. They were yelling and jumping, pushing each other and throwing their caps in the air. Freddie climbed down quickly to grab the white basin which he’d left in the grass. He expected the boys to stop and ask his name and what he was doing there, but they clattered past in their rough boots, and one of them waved and winked at Freddie.
‘Come on!’ he cried, and ran on.
Puzzled by the exuberance, Freddie followed at a distance, the basin under his arm. It was an awkward, slippery, heavy thing to be carrying in his small fingers.
Approaching the village where the faggot man traded, he noticed the church and people milling around it. Something was happening. Instead of standing in a miserable queue, men and women were dancing and shouting, waving strips of cloth and throwing their hats in the air. Freddie stood against a wall, watching, half afraid of the unfamiliar riotous scene. He was used to misery. Now the whole village seemed to be going mad.
Suddenly a forgotten sound jangled across the countryside. The bells. The church bells. Ringing and ringing. Freddie could feel the stone walls trembling under his hands and down the backs of his legs. The clangour of the bells lifted his mind into mysterious halls of wonder, a place where everything was spun from gold. He’d never been to a party, and now a party had come to him, filling the sky with music.
The whole landscape seemed to shiver with the unaccustomed revelry. Flocks of finches and yellow hammers bobbed along the hedges with extra bounce, and the trees threw down the last of their leaves in swirls of gold. The cows started to gallop, bucking and twisting, with their ridiculous tails in the air, their hooves squelching. In the next-door field the sheep clumped together and stampeded. And all the dogs of Hilbegut village and beyond were barking like the symphony of a thousand dogs.