It was hard to die without knowing who had won the Derby.
Lord Charles Beresford
Patrick gathered Gladiator’s reins as Lord Reginald Hunt and Mr. Angus Duncan said goodbye to the farrier, who was still shaking his head at the difficulty of getting the horse to stand still for his racing plates, and to the veterinary surgeon. Then the two of them walked several steps away, speaking so quietly that Patrick had to strain to hear.
“I’m glad that the stewards agreed to have him saddled at the starting post,” Lord Hunt said. “If he had to parade in the state he’s in-”
“He’s on his toes, that’s all,” Mr. Angus replied in his usual Scottish brogue. “A bit edgy, p’rhaps, but he’ll smooth out by the turn.”
“You don’t want Pinkie to lead him on?” Lord Hunt seemed increasingly anxious. “He’s a bundle of nerves. What if he breaks away from the lad?”
Mr. Angus’s nephew, whom everyone called Pinkie, stepped forward eagerly. “Be glad to take the horse in, Uncle.”
Without answering, Mr. Angus turned to Patrick. “We’ll be off, then, lad. Mind ye keep him steady, now. His lordship and I’ll make way, but the crowd’s apt to push.”
The May afternoon had gone cloudy, and a light mist brushed Patrick’s face as he gathered the horse’s reins and prepared to follow the two men through the milling spectators between them and the starting post, where Gladiator was to be saddled. He paused for a moment, laying a hand on the sweating, quivering shoulder and whispering a steadying “Quiet, now.” But the horse began a nervous dance, and Patrick’s earlier apprehension-that Gladiator might not be able to do himself justice today-grew even sharper. He frowned, thinking that perhaps that stuff in the veterinary’s bottle might have something to do with the way the horse was behaving.
But Gladiator was known to be erratic. The powerful colt, out of Brindlebay by the great Ballyhoo, had already showed that he had the heart of a Derby champion and the power to match it. At his best, as in the Bedford Stakes the previous autumn, he demonstrated tremendous acceleration, a remarkable finishing speed, and a wonderful maneuverability. At his worst, he was lethargic and dispirited, as at the Two Thousand Guineas at Newmarket in April, where he finished at the bottom of a field of eight. He could also show a sour, savage temper. Once, before Patrick came to apprentice at the Grange House Stable, he had bitten a thumb from an unwary stableboy. And just the week before, out on the Limekilns for trial gallops, he had thrown his rider and raced wild and free across the Newmarket heath while Mr. Angus and his nephew Mr. James watched helplessly, fearing that he might injure himself. It had been Patrick who finally caught the rebellious horse and returned him to his box, for though the boy was still several months away from fourteen, he was the only lad in the Grange yard whom Gladiator could tolerate.
From Patrick’s point of view, the bond was a natural one. He saw in the horse an unruly spirit much like his own and loved him for it, and the horse, as far as he was able, returned him a certain affection. Seeing this, Mr. Angus had made him the horse’s traveling lad, responsible for helping Pinkie with his care during the railway trip to Epsom and for leading him through the Derby crowd to the starting post. It was enough to make a stable lad’s head swim.
But Patrick was not an ordinary lad. Some two years before, he had found himself one of the players in a grand adventure at Rottingdean, a village on the south coast of England, through which he had been introduced to His Royal Highness and two other gentlemen, Lord Charles Sheridan and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. In gratitude for his services, the Prince had granted Patrick a stipend sufficient to guarantee his education, and at Mr. Kipling’s suggestion, he had gone off to school at Westward Ho!, on Bideford Bay, in Devonshire. Lady Charles herself had taken him to the school and had even shed a few tears when she kissed him and said goodbye.
Westward Ho! was an unconventional school, and as long as the boys paid the requisite attention to their studies and attended chapel with some regularity, they were free to bathe in the Atlantic beyond Pebble Ridge and wander the Devonshire countryside. But while Patrick was gifted with a shrewd intelligence and a maturity far beyond his years, he was hardly a discliplined scholar, and whatever academic enthusiasm he might have felt was poisoned by an odious master who took a sadistic pleasure in inflicting corporal punishment upon those in his charge. Patrick and his friends Turkey Bates and Jake Shanks sought sanctuary in the furze thickets above the cliff. There, smoking pipes and reading aloud from Surtees’s racing novels, they plotted to run away and become apprentice jockeys. It was a scheme dear to Patrick’s heart, for he loved horses more than anything else in the world-more than books, certainly, or games, or the prospect of taking the Army examination and embarking on a military career.
But those lazy golden days in the furze came to an abrupt end, and so did Patrick’s education. Turkey drowned one September day in the sea, and a fortnight later Jake was sent home to India because his father had failed to pay his tuition and board.
His friends gone, his heart broken, Patrick paid even less attention to his studies, and the master’s floggings consequently grew less restrained. The boy tried to hang on, if only to please Lady Charles, who wrote him the most marvelous letters and promised that he could spend the holidays with her and Lord Charles at Bishop’s Keep. But a month after Turkey ’s death and Jake’s departure, and a day after the most severe beating yet, Patrick could endure it no longer. He left without saying goodbye, without even writing to Lady Charles, whose kindness he could never repay. How could he confess that he had failed? How could he tell her that he wasn’t worthy of her concern, or her love?
Leaving Devonshire, the boy struck out eastward across the Downs to Rottingdean and to Harry Tudwell, in whose stable he had once worked. Harry set him to doing morning and evening stables and exercising the string on the Downs, and at midwinter, impressed by the boy’s understanding of horses and his firm determination to ride, he prevailed on his old friend Angus Duncan at the Grange House Stable to take Patrick on as stable lad and apprentice jockey. That was how he had come to be here on this day, at this race of all races, the Blue Ribbon of the Turf, the Derby Stakes, with the horse he loved.
Following the men, Patrick led Gladiator into the paddock near the start, where they were joined by Captain Dick Doyle, Lord Reginald’s racing manager and quite the fattest man Patrick had ever seen, and Johnny Bell, the jockey, who rode often for the stable and usually in Lord Hunt’s rose-and-green colors. Johnny was a pleasant, even-tempered young man, warm-hearted and kindly toward the stable lads and with none of the arrogance displayed by other winning jockeys. Over the past few months, Patrick had come to love him dearly, in part for his gentle way with both horses and boys and in part because Johnny somehow reminded him of his lost friend Turkey.
Now, Johnny Bell came to Gladiator, running his hand along the sweating flank. “How is he?” he asked Patrick, speaking low.
“Nervy,” Patrick replied, feeling the horse trembling against him as Pinkie attempted to throw on the saddle. Gladiator half reared, and as Patrick struggled to gentle him down, he added, in a breathless warning, “Wilder even than the day he got loose on the heath.” Johnny had been there that day, and had seen what happened.
“Don’t like the looks of him,” Johnny said, stroking the quivering flank, and Patrick heard the nervousness in his voice. But quite apart from the condition of the horse, it was no surprise that Johnny was nervous. It was his first Derby too, and Patrick knew how desperately he wanted to do well.
Patrick was considering telling Johnny about the business with the bottle, when they were joined by Lord Hunt and Captain Doyle. “He should run well today,” the captain remarked with a jovial confidence, pushing his betting book into the pocket of his frock coat and adjusting his waistcoat around his enormous girth. To Johnny, he said, “You have your instructions, my boy?”
Johnny cast an apprehensive eye at the horse, who was clearly unhappy with his saddle. “Don’t go for an early lead,” he muttered, “but keep in touch with the front runners. After Tattenham Corner and into the straight, show him the whip and come hard on the outside.”
