Pacing the pen’s perimeter, Beck let out a flurry of barrel kicks, the metal frame shaking. Luca retreated back behind the kitchen wall.

‘It is your New Year, I believe,’ the prince was saying. ‘Kul am wa antum bi-khair.’

‘And Happy New Year to you and to all your family, sir.’

Luca had only worked for the prince briefly, a majestic and magnanimous man with a hundred horses, twelve daughters, five homes, three wives and just one, much-adored, son. To have saved the life of that precious only son, as Luca now knew to his cost, was to be bound in perpetuity.

Granted a status somewhere between courtier and adopted child, Luca had spent the past six years cherished and protected like all of the family’s most valuable assets, be they people, horses or money. The prince’s office kept tabs when he changed yards so that he could call, a fatherly gesture which also served to remind Luca who was in control – both reassuring and unsettling. His patron paid absolutely no heed to time zones, weekends, holidays or start dates, loathed mobile phones (‘walkie-talkie calculators for the young’), and wasn’t averse to giving a yard owner hell if he thought they weren’t treating Luca well enough. For a long time, he’d tried to procure the Horsemaker lucrative jobs and even set him up with his own yard, but he now understood the nature of Luca’s free-ranging spirit, his urge to go where he was needed, not wanted. ‘Like Nanny McPhee!’ the prince often exclaimed. He watched a lot of kids’ movies because he was a big, obstinate one himself.

It should have been the greatest of privileges to have such patronage, tied by honour for one heroic, life-saving act. But if the son whose life you’d saved hated you more than any man alive, it felt more like living under close surveillance.

‘I was speaking about you with Prince Mishaal only last week.’

Luca’s sinews tightened in reflex at the name.

‘He is very happy that you are in England. It is his new wife’s favourite country. They are regular visitors, and indeed Mishaal is coming to London this month to buy a football team, I believe.’

Not good news.

‘You will not recognise him, I think. He has changed a great deal.’

Luca pitied the poor wife, no doubt chosen by Mishaal’s family for her great patience and tolerance, just as his horses were.

‘Endurance races are his passion now, you know?’

‘Oh, yes?’ He could hear Beck bellowing again, furious at being left alone, and quashed an illogical urge to slam the phone down in case the call was being recorded and they recognised the whinny.

‘It is all he talks about,’ the prince went on, ‘racing across deserts like a dust storm, racing through forests, racing over mountains. Beautiful horses, like Al Khamsa. He is very successful, but his people are not trustworthy, not wise. He needs a horseman with your backbone, Luca. They want him to win at all costs and that is not God’s way, is it?’