Phryne nodded towards the door and she and Lin Chung left unobtrusively.
‘This is the strangest household,’ she commented. ‘Come for a walk?’
He followed her into the rose garden. It was too early for buds, but leaves were beginning to sprout.
‘You look very beautiful against that shiny background,’ he said. ‘It’s the same gloss as your hair – like very fine silk floss, such as is ordered by clerics to embroider altarcloths. I fear that I have offended our host.’
‘No, he’s overwrought, as his wife says. Can you ride, Lin?’
‘Mostly without falling off.’
‘Come on, then. We’ll see what’s in the stable.’
The stable yielded two hacks, thoroughbreds, well-fed and under-exercised. Lin caught and saddled his choice, a docile-looking brown mare. Phryne slid a bridle over the proud nose of a touchy gelding who danced uncooperatively as the stableman saddled him.
‘He’s a tearaway is Cuba,’ advised the groom. ‘You watch his tricks, Miss.’
‘I’ll watch,’ she said, putting one toe into the stirrup and hopping as Cuba shifted. She feinted, he stood still, and she swung up into the saddle.
‘Fooled you,’ she told him, and Cuba laid his ears back and walked reluctantly to the gate.
‘Out along the road and then along the riverbank,’ advised the groom. ‘Careful. They’re full of beans.’
Cuba shied violently at a piece of blowing paper, looked back to see if his rider was still there, saw that she was and gave in, trotting amicably onto the verge and turning to await his stablemate.
‘How did you tame him?’ asked Lin Chung. He was keeping his seat with ease and Phryne saw that he was a good rider; light hands and confident balance.
‘I didn’t tame him – he isn’t tame. He’s biding his time. Come on,’ she saw a stretch of road, flat as a plate and grassy. ‘Let’s gallop.’
She dug her heels into Cuba’s sides. He danced, complained, then put his head down and went like the wind. Lin galloped behind, admiring the grace of the flying horse and the rider, who had crouched down like a jockey, high on Cuba’s shoulders. They looked like the pen painting he had seen in Shanghai of the mongol invaders; man and horse melded into one.
It was possible that Phryne never saw the obstacle. Cuba certainly didn’t. In one moment, the sepia Ming drawing of fleeting horse and rider was destroyed. Cuba crashed to the road on his knees, and Phryne was flung over his head.
CHAPTER THREE
Great examples grow thin, and to be fetched away
from the passed world. Simplicity flies away, and
iniquity comes at long strides towards us.
Epistle Dedicatory,
LIN CHUNG leapt down and ran past the foundered horse to where Phryne must have fallen. He shoved aside the dense matted ti-tree, found a gloved hand and then a shoulder, and hauled.
He gathered Phryne into his arms, feeling her over for broken bones. Both collarbones intact, and both legs and arms. He was stroking her hair away from her face, checking for fractures, when she sat up and said crossly, ‘What in Hell’s name happened?’
‘Cuba fell,’ said Lin Chung. ‘I thought you had been killed – you should have been – you fall like a cat, Silver Lady, like an acrobat. Where does it hurt?’
‘Everywhere,’ she groaned. ‘The secret of my miraculous survival is ti-tree. Great stuff. Help me up, Lin, and we’ll see to this poor hack.’
With Lin’s arm around her, she limped back to Cuba, who was struggling to get up, nuzzled anxiously by the brown mare. Phryne called gently to the horse and he managed to regain his feet. Both his knees were bleeding.
‘Poor Cuba. What on earth made you fall?’ she took up each hoof in turn but there were no stones. Mopping at the horse’s knees with her handkerchief she stared at the wound, silent for a moment. Then she gave the reins into Lin Chung’s hand and said tautly, ‘Tie them to a fence and come and look at this. This isn’t a graze – it’s a cut.’
Lin Chung looped the reins around a handy branch and did as requested. Cuba looked at him mournfully and he stroked his nose.
‘Surely caused by the fall?’ Lin Chung commented.
‘He fell on grass, soft – well, relatively soft, grass. Walk back with me – ouch! God, I hit the ground hard. I saw bloody stars.’ Lin supported her slight weight without trouble, feeling as anxious as the mare now licking at Cuba’s knees.
‘Look,’ she said. A long thin tarred wire stretched from one side of the bridle-path to the other. It had been secured from fence to fence until Cuba’s fall had broken it.
‘More rustic humour?’ asked Phryne, wincing as she straightened.
‘Has it been there long?’
‘No. The wire’s new, not at all rusted, and it hasn’t had time to bite into the wooden fencepost. What a nasty little mind – I wonder whose it is?’ She coiled up the wire and stuffed it inside her shirt.
‘You’re shivering,’ said Lin Chung, embracing her more closely. She laid her face against his warm chest for a moment, then remembered Cuba’s legs, which would stiffen in the cold wind.
‘I’m shocked. It’s nothing. Bring the horses. We’d better get back.’
‘The mare can carry you,’ he said. Phryne was lifted without effort into the air and set down on the chestnut’s back as lightly as a falling leaf. She kept her seat by instinct as Lin Chung led the horses back to Cave House.
The stableman rushed to meet them, wailing, ‘I told yer ’e was frisky, Miss! Now look at ’is knees! Boss’ll go crook, I tell yer that fer free.’
‘I’ll tell you another thing for free,’ snapped Phryne, allowing Lin Chung to lift her down. ‘You’ve got someone playing tricks. Have you seen anyone out along the bridle path today – or yesterday?’
‘Why?’ The gnarled brown face wrinkled with suspicion.
Phryne leaned on Lin and drew the coiled wire out of her shirt. The stableman squinted at it.
‘Have you seen a snare like that before?’
‘Yair. Dingo ’Arry uses that tarred wire for ’is dog traps. What of it?’
‘That’s what caused Cuba to come down like a ton of bricks and fling me over his head. If I hadn’t been a fairly experienced rider I would have hit the road and been prematurely deceased. Now, be a nice man and stop snarling at me. I’ve had an exciting morning. I’ve got to sit down.’
The stableman, belatedly recognising that the rider was almost as battered as the horse, fetched her his own rush-seated chair and Phryne sagged into it.
‘Ooh, my bruises are all settling down and raising families. Before I go and sink into a hot bath, composed mostly of arnica, I want a few answers. Your name?’
The small man dragged a handful of straw out of his hair and looked at her. This was the toff that the Mistress had been creating about for days, the Hon. from an aristocratic family in England. The one who had brought the Chow with her and caused a scandal. He was not disposed to liking rich people. However, she had controlled Cuba well and it did not seem to be her fault that he was now in need of Stockholm Tar and compresses.
‘Me name’s Terence Willis. They call me Terry. You’re Miss Fisher, ain’t you? Done a bit of ridin’, I see.’
‘A bit. You used to be a jockey, eh, Mr Willis?’
‘How’d yer know that?’
Phryne smiled. He was small, light and bowlegged, with the curiously young-old face of a typical jockey. His hands, deformed from tugging on reins, were caressing Cuba passionately as the horse leaned its head on his shoulder and breathed down his shirt.
‘There is nothing else you could have been, believe me. Someone laid a snare for the first rider along that track. Who would that normally have been?’
