No one else in his family shared his fear. His mother, he’d been told, had loved them so much she’d thought of them as friends. His father had grown up on farms where horses mattered as much as rain, and had never abandoned this idea of their importance. He’d also been part of a cavalry regiment, although when asked about it all he’d say was that horses weren’t made for modern warfare. Bill had been the best rider in the district—a fact Ned accepted, as he did all of Bill’s talents, without question. Asking his eldest brother where his skills came from wouldn’t have been any use, anyway; Bill would just have ridden off. Toby hadn’t been particularly interested in horses, but when he discovered the effect of galloping at full pelt through the district on a Saturday afternoon—when the local girls and young women were out visiting each other—it became hard to prise him from whichever animal would let him onto its back.

But it was Maggie who had loved them most. She was up with them every morning before the rest of the family woke. She brushed them, fed them, walked them, checked them, rode them, spoke to them, disciplined them, sang to them, prayed for them, closed her eyes and, in frosted dawns and muggy dusks, wordlessly communed with them. It was an unwritten law of the orchard that the horses belonged to Maggie, even if she held no specific right of ownership over them. To take one out meant speaking with her first. To walk in the light of her favour required doing something considerate for a horse: to bring one an apple, to tweezer off its ticks.

Ned couldn’t ride like Bill, couldn’t dash and smile like Toby. When he saw a horse he saw only the spook in its nature, felt only the stallion’s yellow teeth on his arm. So when Maggie asked if he wanted to go riding, Ned said no. He had chores to take care of, he told her. Fruit to check, rabbits to skin, weeds to pull.

She looked at him. Waited a moment. ‘I suppose I’ll find somebody else.’

She walked away, her back straight, her stride long. He pictured her riding with Bill, the two of them cresting a stubbled hill, Bill trailing to give her the lead. Ned knew, too late, that he’d failed her—failed her in the way he’d sworn not to when she’d returned to the orchard.

~