Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,21

down the road from my house, but there wasn’t time to seek him out before the next race, the three mile ’chase, and after that I had to change again and go out to meet the princess in the parade ring, where Kinley was already stalking round.

As before, she was well guarded and seemed almost to be enjoying it, and I didn’t know whether or not to alarm her with news of Nanterre. In the end, I said only to Thomas, ‘The frog is here. Stay close to her,’ and he gave a sketchy thumbs-up, and looked determined. Thomas looking determined, I thought, would deter Attila the Hun.

Kinley made up for an otherwise disgusting afternoon, sending my spirits soaring from depths to dizzy heights.

The rapport between us, established almost instantly during his first hurdle race the previous November, had deepened in three succeeding outings so that by February he seemed to know in advance what I wanted him to do, as I knew what he wanted to do before he did it. The result was racing at its sublime best, an unexplainable synthesis at a primitive level and undoubtedly a shared joy.

Kinley jumped hurdles with a surge that had almost left me behind the first time I felt it, and even though every time since I’d know what was going to happen, I hadn’t outgrown the surprise. The first hurdle left me gasping as usual, and by the end I reckoned we’d stolen twenty clean lengths in the air. He won jauntily and at a canter and I hoped Wykeham, watching on the box, would think it ‘a nice ride’ and forgive me Cascade. Maynard Allardeck, I grimly thought, walking Kinley back along the path to the unsaddling enclosure, could find no vestige of an excuse that time to carp or cavil, and I realised that he and Kinley and Nanterre between them had at least stopped me brooding over Botticelli, Giorgione, Titian and Raphael.

The princess had her best stars to her blue eyes, looking as if guns weren’t invented. I slid to the ground and we smiled in shared triumph, and I refrained with an effort from hugging her.

‘He’s ready for Cheltenham,’ she said, sticking out a glove to pat lightly the dark hide. ‘He’s as good as Sir Ken.’

Sir Ken had been an all-time star in the nineteen fifties, winning three Champion Hurdles and numerous other top hurdling events. Owning a horse like Sir Ken was the ultimate for many who’d seen him, and the princess, who had, had referred to him often.

‘He has a long way to go,’ I said, unbuckling the girths. ‘He’s still so young.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said happily. ‘But …’ She stopped abruptly, with a gasp. I looked at her and saw her eyes widen as she looked with horror above my right shoulder, and I whipped round fast to see what was there.

Henri Nanterre was there, staring at her.

I stood between them. Thomas and the friends were behind her, more occupied with avoiding Kinley’s lighthearted hooves than guarding their charge in the safest and most public of places.

Henri Nanterre momentarily transferred his gaze to my face and then, with shock, stared at me with his mouth opening.

I’d thought in the parade ring that since he’d been watching me, he’d found out who I was, but realised in that second that he’d thought of me then simply as the princess’s jockey. He was confounded, it seemed, to identify me from the evening before.

‘You’re …’ he said, for once at a loss for loud words. ‘You …’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

He recovered with a snap from his surprise, narrowed his eyes at the princess, and said distinctly, ‘Jockeys can have accidents.’

‘So can people who carry guns,’ I said. ‘Is that what you came to say?’

It appeared, actually, that it more or less was.

‘Go away,’ I said, much as he’d said it to me a day earlier up in the box, and to my complete astonishment, he went.

‘Hey,’ Thomas said agitatedly, ‘that was … that was … wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, it was,’ I said, looping the girths round my saddle. ‘Now you know what he looks like.’

‘Madam!’ Thomas said penitently. ‘Where did he come from?’

‘I didn’t see,’ she said, slightly breathless. ‘He was just in there.’

‘Fella moves like an eel,’ one of her friends said; and certainly there had been a sort of gliding speed to his departure.

‘Well, my dears,’ the princess said to her friends, laughing a trifle shakily, ‘let’s go up and