have something that would come off quickly. She would not have a lot of time in which to change.
There was mercifully little conversation as they went. Marjorie sat next to Persun as he drove, and the two of them conducted a stilted practice conversation in Grassan. “Where is the Master of the Hunt?”
“The Master of the Hunt is riding down the path.”
“Have the hunters killed a fox?”
“Yes, the hunters have killed a fox today.”
“It sounds like toads gulping,” said Stella, with a sniff. “Why would anyone invent such an ugly language?”
Marjorie did not answer. In her mind she was so far from the present location that she did not even hear. There was a fog around her, penetrable only by an act of will. She had separated herself from them. “What is the Obermum serving for lunch?” she asked in a schoolgirl voice.
“The Obermum is serving roast goose,” came the reply.
Someone’s goose, Persun thought to himself, seeing the expression on all their faces. Oh, yes, we are serving someone’s goose.
At Klive, Amethyste and Emeraude were playing hostess, both blank-faced and quiet, both dressed very much as Marjorie was. “The Obermum sends her regrets that she cannot greet you. Obermum asks to be remembered to you. Won’t you join us in the hall?”
Somehow Marjorie and Tony went in one direction while Rigo and Stella went in another. Marjorie did not miss Stella immediately. She found herself drinking something hot and fragrant and smiling politely at one bon and another, all of them shifting to get a view of the first surface. There the riders were assembling, faces bland and blind in the expression Marjorie had grown to expect among hunters. Sylvan came into the room, not dressed for the hunt.
“Not hunting today, sir?” asked Tony in his most innocent voice, busy putting two and two together but not sure how he felt about the resultant sum.
“A bit of indigestion,” Sylvan responded. “Shevlok and Father will have to carry the burden today.”
“Your sisters aren’t hunting either,” murmured Marjorie.
“They have told father they are pregnant,” he murmured in return, almost in a whisper. “I think in Emeraude’s case it may be true. One does not expect women of their age to be able to Hunt as often as the men. Father realizes that.”
“Has he—”
“No. No, he does not seem to miss… he does not seem to miss the Obermum. He does not seem to know she is gone.”
“Have you heard from her?”
“She is recovering.” He turned and stared out the arched opening to the velvet turf, jaw dropping, eyes wide in shock — “By all the hounds, Marjorie. Is that Rigo?”
“Rigo. Yes. He feels he must,” she said.
“I warned you all!” His voice rasped in his throat — “God. I warned him.”
Marjorie nodded, fighting to maintain her mood of cool withdrawal. “Rigo does not listen to warnings. I do not know what Rigo listens to.” She took a cup of steaming tea from the tray offered by one of the servants and attempted to change the subject. “Have you seen Stella?”
Sylvan looked around the room, shaking his head. The room was crowded, and he walked away from Marjorie, searching the corners.
“If you’re looking for the girl,” muttered Emeraude, “she went back out to the car.”
Sylvan conveyed this to Marjorie, who assumed that Stella had forgotten something and had gone to retrieve it. The bell rang. The servants in their hooped skirts skimmed into the house. The gate of the hounds opened. The hounds came through, two on two, gazing at the riders with their red eyes.
Marjorie took a deep breath. Rigo was standing at the extreme left of the group. When the riders turned to follow the hounds out the Hunt Gate, he was behind them all.
Except for one final rider, late, who came running from around the corner of the house onto the first surface, head tilted away from the observers, following Rigo out through the Hunt Gate at the tail end of the procession.
A girl, Marjorie thought, wondering why Stella had not returned.
A girl.
Something in the walk, the stance. A certain familiarity about the clothing, the cut of the coat…
Surely, oh, surely not.
“Wasn’t that your daughter?” asked Emeraude with a strange, wild look at Marjorie. “Wasn’t that your daughter?”
They heard the thunder of departing feet from outside the gate.
When Sylvan got to the gate at a dead run, there was no one left. All the riders had mounted and gone.
Stella had assumed that Sylvan would be among the riders. Despite what she had been told of the Hunt and had seen for herself, she had also assumed that she would find a way to bring her own mount near his. All such assumptions were forgotten the moment she vaulted onto the back of the mount that came forward for her. Before arriving at the bon Damfels’, she had worried that a mount might not be available, might not, as it were, be expecting her. Everything she had been told during her observation of the Hunt, however, indicated that there were always exactly as many mounts as needed for the hunters who assembled. If someone decided at the last minute not to ride, no mount showed up outside the gate. Since it was part of her plan to come into the garden late, after the hounds had gone through, there was no opportunity for anyone to intercept her. She came to the gate as her father was mounting, and then felt, rather than saw, a mount appear before her, extending its massive leg. She went through the movements she had rehearsed so many times on the machine that they had become automatic.
Until that moment everything had happened too quickly to think about, to consider, to change her mind. Then all at once the barbs were there, only inches from her breast, gleaming like razors. As she stared at them, half hypnotized and beginning to feel fear for the first time, the mount turned its head and drew back its lips in a kind of smile, a smile like enough to human for her to know that it held something like amusement, something like contempt, something, peculiarly, like encouragement. Then it lunged off after the others and she gasped, putting all her concentration into keeping herself braced away from the bony blades.
They had gone some distance before she thought to look for Sylvan. From behind, all the riders looked alike. She could not tell if he was there or not. The rider directly ahead of her was her father. She knew his coat, cut unlike the coats of the other hunters.
After a time she thought to look for Sylvan. All the riders looked alike. Except for her father. His coat was different from the others…
After a time she looked for Sylvan. Her father was riding ahead of her…
Her father was riding just ahead… ahead…
It was a good day for the Hunt. Though summer was over, the pastures were still green from recent rains. The farmers had taken down some of the worst of the wire fences, and those that were left were clearly visible. Ahead, crossing the silver-beige stubble of an oat field, she could see the foxhounds, running hard, before the pack lost itself behind the slope to her left. The light wind brought the yelp and clamor of the dogs and the sound of the Huntsman’s horn. Dark figures fringed the top of the hill, followers, hands shielding their eyes from the sun. One among them waved his hat and pointed the way the fox had gone. She reined her horse to the left, down along a spinney and around once more, up and over the crest of the hill, the short way around. From the top of the hill she could see the fox fleeing across the pasture below, nose low, bushy tail straight behind as it darted under a fence, then atop a long log and into Fuller’s Copse. She urged her mount over the fence toward the copse, taking the jump cleanly, joining some hunters already there, hearing the thud of hooves as others arrived. The Master gestured for them to circle the copse, and she turned to one side, positioning herself near a ditch where the fox might flee.
She could hear the hounds in the copse. The Huntsman was in there with them; his voice rose, calling individual hounds by name, urging them on. “Bounder, get out of there. Dapple, up, up girl…”
Then there was a shout and they were away again, the horn, and the hounds giving voice…
Sylvan.
