Then he exploded into motion, leaping high into the air and spinning in a head-snapping half circle to land stiff-legged, head down, hooves together with his back bowed upward so that he almost jarred me off, which was his intent. By sheer good fortune, this was a trick with which I was thoroughly familiar, having had to deal for more than a year with a cantankerous horse in King Ban’s stables that had mastered the same turning leap and must have been one of this animal’s relatives, and so I recognized the preliminary movements under me and adjusted to them practically without thought, relaxing my posture and leaning into his spinning jump, allowing the slackness of my body to absorb the shock of his stiff-legged landing.
He must have been greatly surprised to find himself still burdened after this exertion, because he stood stock-still long enough to permit me to lock my fingers in the hair of his mane and hammer him in the ribs with my heels, and then he went into action again, bucking, rearing, and spinning, determined to rid himself of me. I, for my part, was just as determined that he would not do so, because I had caught a glimpse of Tiberias Cato’s face just before this second rampage erupted and it was plain to see that he was even more surprised than the horse was by its failure to reject me. And so the gelding cavorted and reared like a mad creature and I clung on, adapting to his every feint and trick until he stopped again, quivering with fury. I did not relax for a moment, however. I knew he was not yet finished and I stayed poised, ready to adjust to whatever he might do next. Even so, what he did caught me unprepared.
With a mighty surge of powerful muscles he launched himself into a run, his stride lengthening rapidly into a full gallop, and I rode him easily, enjoying the sensation of speed until I saw where he was taking me. We were headed directly toward a huge old solitary elm tree in the center of the paddock, and it was clear that he was either going to run straight into it or brush very closely past it, using it as a tool to scrape me off his back. Incredulous, I watched until there was no doubt of what he was doing: the rough bark of the tree would scrape along the horse’s right side, and my right leg would not survive the impact. Then, a bare two leaps before disaster struck, I anchored my fists more solidly in his mane and swung my right leg backward across his back, twisting my pelvis and bringing my knees together on his left side, my right hip against his surging side. I allowed my body to swing down, straight-legged, until my feet hit the ground and rebounded, and then I used his speed to swing myself back up to straddle him again. I felt his speed start to flag immediately and he had no more tricks after that, so that I found it easy to turn him around and head him back toward Cato, his speed slackening until we drew to a halt in front of the stable master, whose face remained blank even after I had dismounted.
“They teach you to ride like that in Benwick?” was all he said.
“I’ve never been anywhere else.”
“Hmm. King Ban, does he ride like that?”
I merely nodded, not knowing what else to tell him. I knew, from my riding instructor in Benwick, that even although I was a mere boy, a child, I was one of the best riders in Ban’s kingdom and would one day be the best of all, but I did not want to say that to Tiberias Cato, lest he think me a braggart.
“I didn’t think you’d last through his first jump.”
I was on the point of telling him about the horse with the same trick in Benwick, but then decided to hold my tongue and asked him instead, “Does he do that often?”
The small man nodded. “Every time, even with me. Not many people can stay up there when he does that.”
“Did you know he would try to scrape me off?”
He shook his head, frowning. “No. I’ve never seen him do that before. That’s something new. He’s a clever whoreson, for a gelding.”
I shrugged. “It didn’t work, though, so he might not try it again. I mean, it’s not as if he’s human, is it?”
“No, but there’s times when he seems to come damn close. Anyway, take the bridle off him and turn him loose, then get out of here. You’re not supposed to be here at this time of day. No student is. Come back the day after tomorrow when your lessons start. What’s your name?”
I told him, and he nodded and pursed his lips, and such was my self-conceit that I saw nothing strange in being accepted instantly by Tiberias Cato, Master of the Stables, a unique and formidable being respected and feared by every student in the school. I was, after all, Clothar of Benwick, adopted son of King Ban of Benwick, since birth used to being treated with deference and respect.
It may have taken me as long as a week to realize that Tiberias Cato was no respecter of names or rank and that he cared not a whit what people in the world beyond his paddocks thought of anyone else. In Cato’s eyes, there was but one natural ranking in the order of men, and it lay visible in the ease and skill—or in the lack of ease and skill—that they demonstrated in their relationship with horses. Cato himself was more centaur than human being and he rode as though the animal beneath him was an extension of his body. I cannot remember ever seeing him use his hands to control a horse while mounted. All his control—and it was prodigious—was exerted from his hips downward, leaving his hands free at all times to do whatever he required them to do. It was very impressive, even awe-inspiring to watch, and yet in order to watch and appreciate his mastery of what he did, you had to be aware of it, and the astonishing truth was that most people looked at Cato, then through him or past him, without ever seeing how gifted he was. They dismissed him idly as some form of stable groom with the seniority of age and were too blinded by their own inadequacies to be able to discern anything of the magic he worked with horses.
I had no such blinkers hampering my view of the stable master. He fascinated me from the day I first saw him ride a horse, and he quickly became my hero. I made it my concern to find out everything I could about him, but of course there was only one man, apart from Tiberias Cato himself, who could tell me everything that was known about the Master of the Bishop’s Stables, and that was the bishop, who knew Cato perhaps better than Cato knew himself, and it would be more than a year before I could be sufficiently comfortable in his august company to come right out and ask him openly about his friend and servant Cato. And so until that time I merely watched and admired this favorite of all my teachers, nursing what little knowledge of his history I had been able to acquire from the stories the older boys told about him, and feeling my admiration for him increase with every new example of his knowledge and understanding of the ways and the lore of horses.
The six years that followed my departure from Benwick flew by, as time always does when we enjoy what we are doing, until the day when I found myself, slack mouthed and stunned, contemplating my sixteenth birthday, which was looming in the too-near future. I tend to remember the occasion nowadays as having dropped upon me as a complete surprise, as though I had not even been aware of my increasing age until Father Germanus pointed it out to me in the course of one of our regular weekly meetings. It is a comforting thought, that image of being caught off balance, ill prepared and unready, but that is not really the way it occurred. I may have been mentally and emotionally unprepared to be sixteen years old, indulging in wishful thinking and foolishly believing that if I paid no attention to the passage of time then it would flow on without changing anything, but the truth is that I had been very much aware of time passing, and of the changes I was undergoing, in common with my friends, as a result of its passing. Bodies that had been slim and soft, hairless and childish, had gradually become hardened and muscular, thicker and heavier, and the downy growth that had been barely visible upon our faces no more than a year earlier had coarsened upon some of us, the darker skinned among us, and hardened into stubble on our chins.