King of the Wind Page 6

  And so, within less than a week, Sham and Agba and Grimalkin were on their way to England.

  When Agba beheld the comfortable barn and the hillside pastures owned by Mister Coke, he was certain that the power of the wheat ear had spent itself.

  Jethro Coke’s wife was dead, and he had given the running of his household to Mistress Cockburn, a plump, motherly person who had eyes like black raisins and always a red spot on each cheek, as if she had just been bending over a hot fire.

  Mistress Cockburn not only found time to roast great haunches of mutton and stir up puddings and cakes, but she waited upon Mister Coke’s daughter and played nursemaid to her new baby. As for Benjamin Biggle, Mistress Cockburn set a place at table for him and nodded a stiff good morning to him with her starched cap. More than that she would not do.

  “Benjamin Biggle is a fat dolt!” she told Mister Coke on more than one occasion. And while Mister Coke was inclined, secretly, to agree with her, he tried to make the best of matters for his daughter’s sake. Besides, he was a birthright Quaker and he looked upon all God’s creatures as friends.

  “Benjamin,” he said to his son-in-law shortly after his return from Paris, “I’ve a surprise for thee. Follow me.”

  With an expectant gleam in his eye, Benjamin Biggle followed Mister Coke down the hill to the barn. There they looked in upon a busy scene. Agba, his hood thrown back, was dyeing the white tufts of hair that had grown in on Sham’s knees where he had cut them in the streets of Paris. Meanwhile Grimalkin was sitting on Sham’s back, polishing his own whiskers.

  “Good morning, friends,” the Quaker nodded in turn to Agba and Sham and Grimalkin.

  The sound of Mister Coke’s voice fell pleasantly upon Sham’s ears. And Agba’s hands, as they applied the dye made from rootlets, felt comforting to him. He stood so still he might have been a stuffed horse in a museum.

  “I bought this poor beast out of pity,” Mister Coke was saying to his son-in-law. “He appears to be gaunt and bowed by years and ill use, but with the good care of this devoted boy he will fill out and make thee a nice quiet pacer.”

  “Aye, Papa Coke,” replied Benjamin Biggle as he squared his hat over his small black wig. “Upwards of a year I have needed a horse and carriage.”

  The blood mounted in Mister Coke’s face. For a long moment he seemed unable to speak. Then he controlled his voice with effort. “A horse, aye,” he said, “but a carriage, no! A carriage is not necessary and therefore would be a vain adornment. Pride and conceit are against my principles.”

  “But, Papa Coke,” pleaded the son-in-law, biting his lip nervously, “I have never sat a horse!”

  “Pshaw and nonsense! I can assure thee that a child could sit this sedate mount. He is just the horse for a draper like thee. In my mind’s eye I can already see thee, traveling about the countryside, calling on housewives.”

  Benjamin Biggle’s face was growing as white as a mixing of dough. He took a sidelong glance at Sham, who returned the look with a warning movement of his ears.

  “It would seem best,” said Mister Coke as he lifted the pocket flap of his coat and took an almanack from his pocket, “it would seem best to wait until, say, Third Month, Fourth Day. The almanack promises more settled weather then and the little cob should be ready for a gentle canter. Shall we say the forenoon of Third Month, Fourth Day, for thy first ride?”

  Benjamin Biggle sighed in relief. Third Month was a long time off. “Be it so, Papa Coke,” he said brightly. Then he squinted at the position of the sun. “Mistress Cockburn is probably buttering the scones for our tea. We would better go.”

  Agba watched the two men walk up the hill—the long strides of Mister Coke and the quick, rocking gait of Mister Biggle. Then he went back to work on Sham’s scars.

  With the coming of spring, Sham lost his starveling look. He began to appear the four-year-old that he really was. Once more his coat was burnished gold, with the course of his veins showing full and large.

  Under the kind mothering of Mistress Cockburn, Agba thrived, too. She filled his plate with pigeon pie and dumplings, and when she discovered that the boy had a special liking for confections, she saw to it that each day he had a goodly helping of whipped syllabub or almond cake, or perhaps an apple pasty. All the while the boy ate, Mistress Cockburn kept up such a stream of conversation that it was scarcely any time at all before he understood such English words as: eat, poor boy, a bit of cake, beautiful daughter, fat dolt. Mistress Cockburn even found time to teach Agba his letters from her cookery book.

  In return he would show her the amulets in his bag and Sham’s pedigree. Of course she could not read the Arabic writing, but she was tremendously impressed with its importance.

  Fourth Day of Third Month dawned. In spite of the promise of the almanack, there was a fine drizzle in the air. But Jethro Coke was not one to be thwarted by weather. He saw to it that his son-in-law was up and about early. He even fitted him with an oiled cloth cover for his hat and an oiled cloth cape for his shoulders.

  As Agba led Sham, all saddled and bridled, out of his stall and up the winding path to the house, the horse took one look at the flapping figure coming toward him. Then his ears went back and he jolted to a stop. He snorted at the voluminous cape of oiled cloth. He listened to the noise it made as it bellied in the wind. Benjamin Biggle must have seemed like some great monster to him. It was all Agba could do to keep him from galloping back to the barn.

  At sight of Sham, Benjamin Biggle halted, too. For a full moment it looked as if his knees might buckle under his weight. If Sham was afraid of him, it was plain to see that he was twice as fearful of Sham.

  “Be not unnerved, son,” said Mister Coke. “It is thy oiled cloth cape that alarms the creature. Step right up.”

  Agba led Sham to the mounting block, then stood holding the reins.

  “Come, come, Benjamin!” reasoned Mister Coke. “Let not the horse sense thy fear. Here, take the reins thyself. Now then, swing aboard!”

  Shaking in fright, Mister Biggle took the reins. Then with his right hand he took hold of his left foot and tried to thrust it into the stirrup. Instead, he gave Sham a vicious jab in the ribs.

  With a quick side jerk of his head, Sham turned around, knocked Mister Biggle’s hat off, and sank his teeth in the man’s black wig. The moment Sham tasted the pomade, however, he dropped the wig on the rain-soaked path.

  Benjamin Biggle was furious. “I’ll ride the beast if it kills me,” he said between tight lips. And donning his wig at a rakish angle, he swung his leg over Sham’s back, heaved into the saddle and grabbed the reins up short.

  Like a barn swallow in flight Sham wheeled, and with a beautiful soaring motion he flew to the safety of his stall. As he dashed through the door, Benjamin Biggle was scraped off his back and into a mud puddle where he sprawled, his breeches soaked through and the wind knocked out of his body.

  As if this were not enough trouble for one day, Grimalkin pounced on his head, screamed in his face, and ruined what was left of the black wig.

  That afternoon as Agba cleaned Sham’s tackle, a faint sound, very much like a chuckle, escaped him every now and again. Even Grimalkin wore a smirk on his face as he perched on Sham’s crest and watched Agba remove all traces of mud.

  Suddenly Agba looked up to find Mister Coke, Bible in hand, standing in the doorway. His face looked lined and old. For a long time he stood quietly, and the silence was a cord between the boy and himself.

  At last he spoke, using little words and short sentences so that Agba would understand. But if he had used no words at all, Agba would have known.

  “Thou and thy horse and thy cat shall ever be dear to me,” Mister Coke began in halting tones. “Thou must try to understand, lad.”

  Agba looked into the deep-set blue eyes of Mister Coke. His own eyes blurred.

  “It is about my son-in-law, lad,” Mister Coke went on. “He is confined to his bed from the morning’s experience. He is very sore on the ma
tter. It is his wish that the horse be sent away at once. And Hannah, who is my only daughter, pleads his cause.”

  Agba noticed, with a chill of fear, that all this while he had been tracing the wheat ear on Sham’s chest.

  Seeing the fright on the boy’s face, Mister Coke put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Come, come, lad. I am merely selling thy horse to the good Roger Williams, keeper of the Red Lion Inn. He loans out horses to merchant travelers whose mounts are travel-weary. Then, when the merchants are next in the vicinity, they return the mounts. Have no fear, lad, Roger Williams will use thy horse well. And I have the man’s word that thou and thy cat, too, will find a good home above the stable. He will come for thee and thy creatures early tomorrow morning.”

  “Now,” said Mister Coke as he adjusted his square-rimmed spectacles, “let us read a verse or two from the Bible. It will help to cheer our hearts. Then I will leave thee without any words of farewell.”

  Standing so the light would fall over his shoulder, Mister Coke let the Bible open where it would. And suddenly the years seemed to wash away and his face was wreathed in smiles.

  “ ‘The horse,’ ” he read, with gusto, “ ‘rejoiceth in his strength. . . . He paweth in the valley. . . . He is not affrighted. . . . He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, Ha!’ ”

  A look that was close to a wink ventured across Jethro Coke’s face as he closed the book. Then he turned, and sprightly as a boy, leaped across the mud puddle where Benjamin Biggle had fallen.

  Agba thought he heard a chuckle and then words coming back to him out of the mist: “The horse saith among the trumpets, Ha, Ha!”

  15. At the Sign of the Red Lion

  AGBA COULD have been happy at the Red Lion if there had been only Mister Williams, the keeper of the inn, to consider. He was a mild-mannered man, with red, bushy eyebrows that traveled up and down when he spoke. And when he smiled, as he did often, they completely hid his eyes and gave him a sheep-dog look. Mister Williams was kindness itself.

  It was Mistress Williams who made life hard. She was an enormous woman who went into hysterics every time she saw Agba. “Mis-ter Williams!” she would shriek at the top of her lungs. “That—that varmint-in-a-hood! Get ’im outa here! ’E gives me the creeps! It’s ’im or me, I tell ye!”

  The truth of the matter was that Agba’s deep, searching eyes, his soft, pattering footsteps, his flowing mantle and quiet ways, were so foreign to her own coarseness that she felt ill at ease in his presence.

  As for Grimalkin, the poor cat could not even cross her path without sending the woman into a fit. When one night she accidentally stepped on his tail, there was such a yowling that she insisted the cat and the boy must go that instant. And so, within less than a forthnight after they had arrived, Agba and Grimalkin were turned away from the inn without so much as an oatcake or a handful of walnuts to take along.

  Mister Williams walked with Agba as far as the road. There he stopped by the lanthorn that hung from the sign of the Red Lion. Even by its feeble glow Agba could see that the man was distressed.

  “Y’ understand, lad,” he said, his eyebrows working up and down with emotion, “y’ understand I got me customers to think about. Mistress Williams knows an awful lot about cookery. Why, travelers come a good long ways just to taste of ’er whortleberry pie. I got to ’umor ’er, boy. You trot along now to Jethro Coke’s house. ’E’ll take ye in, I’ve no doubt of it. As for your ’orse,” he added with assurance, “I paid my good money fer ’im an’ I promises to use ’im well.”

  This he meant to do. But Mister Williams was not the man for a spirited horse like Sham. He made quick, puppet-like motions as if his joints were controlled by strings. When he came into Sham’s stall, he had a way of lunging in. Nearly always he carried some tool—a pitchfork or a hoe or a bellows. And he held it like a spear, ready for action.

  The old, plodding horses in the stable were used to Mister Williams, but Sham snorted and reared every time he came near. Then the good man would try to calm the horse by giving him a grooming. But here again the man was as awkward as a pump without a handle. He knew none of the niceties of grooming. He would rub along Sham’s barrel from shoulder to hip, never realizing that near the hip the hairs grew in a little swirl. This lack of skill irritated Sham, for Agba was always careful to rub his coat the way that the hairs grew.

  When it came to saddling, the innkeeper had an annoying habit of dropping the saddle on Sham’s back, and then shoving it forward into place, thus pinching and pulling the hairs the wrong way. When a rider mounted, the torment increased.

  It was not surprising that Sham resorted to all manner of tricks to get rid of the pinching saddle. He sidled along walls and trees, thus squeezing his rider’s leg. He twisted his body into a corkscrew. He reared. He kicked. He balked. He threw so many guests of the Red Lion that finally Mister Williams decided he must do something about it. He called in Silas Slade, a weasel-eyed man known as the best horse-breaker in all London.

  “Slade,” Mister Williams said, “I hain’t never seen a ’orse like this ’un. It’s ’is spirit. ’E not only unseats the clumsy fellows like me, but the best riders in the kingdom. ’E knows ’e’ll be licked fer it, but it don’t matter to ’im. The only ’uman bein’ what can ’andle ’im is a spindlin’ boy.”

  “Hmph!” snorted Slade, his eyes gleaming. “I’ve yet to see the beast I couldn’t break. ’E’s feelin’ ’is oats, ’e is. We’ll get the meanness out of ’im!”

  The first thing Mister Slade did was to saddle Sham in his expert manner and swing up. And the next thing he knew he was being carried into the inn and a doctor was bending over him, shaking his head gravely.

  When Mister Slade was poulticed and bandaged and his leg put in a splint, he called Mister Williams to his side. “I’ll break the brute yet,” he said between swollen lips. “See that ’e’s moved into a small stall without a window. Tie ’im so ’e can’t move. Give ’im no grain and only a little water.”

  Agba meanwhile had never left the vicinity of the Red Lion. He and Grimalkin had wandered forlornly about the countryside, sleeping in hedgerows, living on what food they could pick up in woods and fields.

  One moon-white night Agba’s loneliness seemed more than he could bear. He and Grimalkin were seeking shelter in a haycock. They had had nothing to eat that day, and neither of them could sleep. Grimalkin was hunting little gray field mice and Agba was looking up at the moon, seeing Sham in its shadows.

  The Sultan’s words were drumming in his ears. “As long as the horse shall live . . . as long as the horse shall live . . .” He must get back to Sham!

  He shook the straw from his mantle, swooped up Grimalkin, and ran silently through the night to the Red Lion.

  As he reached the inn, he could see by the light in the taproom the bustling form of Mistress Williams. Quickly he changed his plans. Instead of approaching the stables by means of the courtyard he would run around behind the brick wall that encircled the stables. If he scaled this wall, he could enter Sham’s stall without being seen by Mistress Williams.

  Agba felt like a thief, creeping along in the moon-dappled night, groping his way around the ivy-covered wall. Suddenly he stopped midway of the wall. Sham’s stall, he figured, would be about opposite where he stood. He undid his turban, knotted one end and caught it on an iron picket that jutted over the ledge of the wall. Then, with Grimalkin clinging to his shoulder, he climbed the wall and soundlessly slid down into the stable yard.

  Grimalkin was everywhere at once. The familiar smells and sounds of the stable maddened him with delight. He streaked first into one stall and then another.

  Mistress Williams at the time was in the midst of preparing porridge for tomorrow’s breakfast. Suddenly she discovered that she had no salt. None at all. So she lighted a lanthorn and picked her way out to the stables where Mister Williams always kept a skipple of salt for the horses.

  As she entered the s
table yard, holding her lanthorn aloft, the rays of light fell upon the whirling antics of Grimalkin.

  If the woman had seen a ghost, her screeching could not have been more terrible. It penetrated the inn like a bolt of lightning. Out flew Mister Williams, followed by Silas Slade on crutches, all the journeymen who had not yet gone to their beds, and a constable of the watch, brandishing his horse-pistol.

  Agba was frozen with fear. He could not move. His feet seemed part of the earth on which he stood. Even Grimalkin stopped in his tracks. Then with a flying leap he found the harbor of Agba’s arms.

  “’E’s a footpad, constable!” yelled Mistress Williams. “A ’orsethief, ’e is! Jail ’im, I beg o’ ye!”

  Mister Williams’ eyebrows were working up and down furiously. “The boy ain’t a bad one,” he pleaded to the constable. “’E comes from Morocco and ’e’s gentle as a butterfly. What’s more,” and he shook his head and pointed to his lips, “the boy can’t say a word.”

  The constable took a quick look at the tell-tale turban hanging over the wall. Then, over the protests of Mister Williams, he clapped a pair of wrist irons on Agba and led him away to Newgate Jail.

  16. Newgate Jail

  AFTER WALKING swiftly for twenty minutes, the constable and Agba stood before a massive stone building.

  “Open up!” shouted the constable. “Open up!”

  “Ho! It’s you, Muggins,” the sentinel bawled out. “Who’s the poppet in a sack yer draggin’ in? What’s his crime?”

  While the sentinel and the constable were engaged in loud conversation, Agba’s eyes were drawn to the towers and battlements with muskets trained down on him.

  The moon was washing the face of the jail with cold white rays. It made Agba feel cold, too. Then in a niche in the wall he spied the statue of a white-robed woman. Curled at her feet was a cat so like Grimalkin that he might have sat for the image. Suddenly Agba felt warm again.