pulled my hat down over my ears and, before any further additions could be found, such as a bell tent or a butterfly net, I put my heels into Red's sides and rode away from Lew Trenchard in a light mist.
The horse was as solid and without frills as his name, capable of two gaits: a leisurely stroll and a spine- snapping trot. An experimental urge towards a canter met with a slowing of the trot and a laying back of the ears, a clear message that he was going as fast as he could, damn it, and if I didn't like it, I could just get down and run myself.
I decided that there was no great need for speed, and where we were going there was no safe expanse of unbroken turf on which to practise it anyway. I and the horse settled down to our respective tasks.
However, Red had another idiosyncrasy that I did not discover until it was far too late to do anything about it: He shied.
My first hint of it was when I found myself tumbling into a protective roll in midair and thumping down onto the hard surface of the road at his feet. All the speed he lacked in forward motion he saved up for this burst of lateral movement: Red leapt like a startled cat, straight up and ten feet to the side. He didn't then bolt, didn't kick, didn't play hard to get; he just flew to one side as if being yanked offstage by a giant hand, and then stood placidly, looking slightly puzzled as to why I had chosen to fling myself to the ground, and waited for me to catch the reins and remount.
Which I did, having first checked to make sure I was whole and then looked closely at his hoofs, legs, girth, and anyplace else I could think of for a possible reason for his extreme action. Finding none, we rode on cautiously, and when there was no repeat of this aberration, my grip gradually loosened and my attention returned to its wandering ways, and an hour or so later the same thing happened.
Why hadn't the accursed stable lad bothered to mention this small quirk? I wondered, picking myself up painfully from the rocks.
We did cover the remainder of the ten-odd miles to Tavistock without incident. I scraped the mud from my clothing, fed and watered myself and the horse at an inn, remounted, and turned upward onto the moor. The mist firmed up into a drizzle.
Perversely, Red seemed to enjoy hills, leaning into them at a faster pace than his usual amble. Climbing the steep hill up from Tavistock, for the first time since leaving Lew Trenchard I began to think this might not be such a bad idea after all.
The road wound up the side of a hill, climbing a thousand feet in a mile, all of it a narrow but well-used track. At one tight patch we were confronted by a lorry committed inexorably to its downward journey, and I was grateful that Red did not argue about the need to remove ourselves from its path with all speed. We cowered in a faint indentation in the wall, pressing against the dripping bushes, and I heard the vehicle scrape a quantity of paint from its opposite side before it was past, the driver calling a nonchalant thanks. The rest of the climb was made without incident, and the moor opened up before us.
I dismounted, to give Red a rest but also to allow myself a moment to study this strange place. Even with Holmes' assurance that I need only keep to the roads, I did not relish the thought of entering the moor by myself. I stood beside Red and thought about the clear sense of personality I had had forced on me in the fog, the idea that Dartmoor was alive. Are you going to allow me to pass? I asked it, only half mocking. Will you keep from throwing your rain and wind at me, pulling your mists up over my head, setting your haunts to plague me and your pixies to lead me astray? I don't much like you, I told the land before me, but I mean you no harm. There was no answer, other than the sound of Red cropping at the brief grass with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. After a bit, I got to my feet. Friend or foe, I had no choice but to enter.
The road stretched out across the flat, rock-studded ground, the same terrain I had seen north of here, interrupted only by a quarry gouged into a dip and curve of the road and by the prison, riding a rise some distance from the road near Princetown. A grim place like all its kind, it seemed to declare that there would be no coddling of felons here, that punishment, discomfort, and boredom were to be their lot. The motto over the gate, I had heard, read PARCERE SUBJECTIS, or 'To spare the Vanquished,' and with Virgil I had to agree that it was marginally more humane to incarcerate one's enemy than it was to slaughter him. Built originally as a camp for prisoners in the Napoleonic War, Princetown Prison had seen the Black Hole and the cat-o'-nine tails, starvation diet and hard labour, and if recent years had seen a more enlightened regime, the image of life within those grey, circular walls remained one of brutality and deprivation, what Holmes had referred to as a place designed for the breaking of men's spirits. I suddenly realised that I had been sitting and looking at the prison for too long, and that I did not wish to have a guard sent down to ask my business. I put my heels to Red's side;for once he obliged.
He did not throw me again until we were nearly in Postbridge, when I was leaning inattentively in the saddle to look over a wall and found the wall coming rapidly up to meet me. Long years of martial training gave my body an automatic response to a fall, but hitting a padded gymnastic mat and flying into a pile of stones were different matters entirely.
I climbed back over the wall and grabbed the reins with more force than was either necessary or sensible. 'Damn you!' I shouted at him. 'A few bruises are one thing, but if you break my spectacles, how do you expect us to get home again?' I stormed around to mount, and had my left foot in the stirrup when a voice came from somewhere behind me.
'Does him usually hanswer you?'
I turned with my foot still in the irons, and nearly fell again. There was a face looking at me over the wall on the opposite side of the road, a person so wrapped up in scarfs and hats as to make any sexual identification difficult, but I thought it a young woman rather than an unlined, beardless youth. I laughed, embarrassed more at my loss of temper than at having been caught talking to the animal.
'He hasn't answered me yet, but we only met a short time ago. It wouldn't surprise me too much if he did.'
'Him's Mr Arundell's 'oss, bainty?'
'Yes,' I said, surprised. Lew House was a fair distance from here.
'Thought so. They boft'n cheap 'cause 'e kept dumping the lady who had'n avore. Don't do it to menvolk, cooriusly enuv.'
A misogynist gelding. Dear God, what on earth was I doing here? 'You know Mr Arundell?'
'He rides down here sometimes when t' hunt's on, though he do like ter follow th' hounds on foot.'
'Having met Red, I couldn't blame him.'
'I knaw who ye be,' she said conversationally.
'Do you?'
'You're with Znoop Zherlock, baint you? I heerd tell you're 'is wife?'
I supposed the question on the end of her last statement was understandable, even without the oddity of our ages, as I was wearing the same sort of raiment as she was.
'That I am.'
'And you're here for the Squire, Mr Baring-Gould.'
'Here now,' I protested. 'What makes you think that?'
'Oh, me mum's cousin's close friends with the zister of Miz Endacott, who cleans for Miz Elliott three days a week.'
'What do they think I'm doing for Mr Baring-Gould?' I demanded, and walked across to look over the wall at this all-knowing gossip.
'Ye be axin' questions about old Josiah Gorton and the ghostly carridge.'
'Well, I'll be—' I stopped, stoppered my rising irritation, and asked more calmly, 'So, do you know anything about either?'
'I doan,' she admitted. 'But Eliz'beth Chase, along by Wheal Betsy, she be waitin' to see'y.'
'Wheal Betsy being…?'
'Up from Mary Tavy.'
Which was nearly back to Lew Trenchard from here.
'What does she want to see me about?'
'An 'edge'og.'
I opened my mouth to continue this line of questioning, and then closed it, turned my back, and led the horse away. I would not be driven insane by the peculiarities gathered around me. I would not.
The rationale behind my expedition was fairly simple and really quite sensible, in its own way: The great
