“Never say ‘foals’ where the mounts can hear you,” the riding master had said. “That is our word. We merely assume there are foals, though we have never seen any, so don’t say it. In fact, never say anything where the mounts can hear you.”
So she was silent now, as all the riders were, their speculations kept entirely to themselves. Dimity saw the faces of the other riders, pale with concentration, unselfconsciously quiet. Dimity would not have believed Emeraude could be this quiet if she had not seen it. Mummy probably couldn’t believe it at all. And Shevlok! How often did one see Shevlok without an imported cigar in his mouth—only the best Shafne tobacco would do for Shevlok—or his mouth open telling someone something. Except when Father was around, of course. When Stavenger was around, Shevlok was notable for sitting in corners and not attracting attention to himself, notable, one might say, for self-effacement.
As this Hunt was notable for quiet. Silent as the earth-closets in midwinter, when no one else was there and the frost lay deep. Dimity concentrated on breathing quietly. The eraser feeling was in her head again, and she fought it off, thinking about what she would have for dinner when the Hunt was over. Grass-hen fried in oil with imported spices on it. A fruit salad. No. Too early for fresh fruit. A dried fruit pie.
And then they were off, down into the valley toward one of the dark copses, Dimity reminding herself what the riding master had had to say about that. “The trees are extraordinary,” he had said. “It will be difficult not to gasp or exclaim. You will do neither, of course. You will keep your mouth shut. You will not crane your neck or stare about or shift your weight.” Besides, she had seen them on the simulator screens, a thousand hours’ worth of them.
So she kept her mouth shut and her face front as the black towers loomed around her, their leafy burden shutting out the sky, the world suddenly full of the sound of water and of hooves moving in water, the squish and slide of it, the smell of it filling her nostrils in a way quite different from the smell of rain. This was not merely damp but sodden, a dank, fecund smell. Dimity opened her mouth very quietly and breathed through it, getting herself accustomed to the smell which made her want to sneeze or cough or gasp.
She felt the signal for the hounds, felt it without understanding it until the hounds lunged away, scattering outward in all directions, noses to earth. The sound of their scuffling scramble faded. There were historic words to go with this, the riding master had said. Into covert, her mind said. Into covert, my lads. As though anyone would really dare say “my lads,” to hounds!
Somewhere a grass peeper shrilled and shrilled again, an arrhythmic pulse within the grove, repeating until it was almost but not quite a pattern, then silencing until she thought it had stopped, only to return once more. She caught a glimpse of a peeper out of the corner of her eye, white and wriggly, squirming among the grass roots.
A hound bayed, a deep, bellowing aroo which made her heart falter as it went on and on. Then another joined, half a tone above, the sound of the two like a knife in her ears. Then all the pack, the tones of the voices lost in a vast cacophony, aroo and aroo, unmelodious and dissonant. The mounts screamed in answer and lunged deeper into the wood. They had found the fox, started the fox, would pursue the fox. Dimity shut her eyes and held on once more, biting her tongue, biting her cheeks, anything to stay conscious and upright, anything at all.
A thought came to her.
This is Darenfeld’s Coppice, her mind told her. Darenfeld’s Coppice which lay, once upon a time, within the bounds of Darenfeld’s estancia. You are riding to hounds in Darenfeld’s Coppice, where your friend Janetta bon Maukerden died. Dimity’s mouth opened to shout, and her mind told her mouth to close itself once more. You will be still about it, she told herself. No one really said Janetta died here. No one said that. No one said anything except her name and then whispering, “Darenfeld’s Coppice.” And when Dimity asked, they said shush, shush, don’t say, don’t ask.
They know more than you do, she told herself. You can’t tell them anything they don’t know already.
The hounds were baying as they raced away, and the mount beneath her was dashing after them. She stayed on, eyes shut once more. It was all she could do to hold on. To stay where she was. Not to fall off. To be silent. To bear the pain. To go on with the Hunt.
The Hunt does go on. Time passes. The fox runs for hours. The riders pursue it for hours. Dimity forgets who she is or where she is. There is no yesterday, nor any tomorrow. There is only an everlasting now, full of the pound of feet on the turf, the rustle of grasses as they push their way through, the scream of the fox far ahead, the bay of the hounds. Hours gone. Days, perhaps. Perhaps they have ridden for days. She would not know.
There is nothing to mark the passage of time. Thirst, yes. Hunger, yes. Weariness, yes. Pain, yes. All of these have been there since early in the morning: burning thirst, gnawing hunger, aching bones, deep-set as a disease. Her mouth cannot be drier than
