There’s a downstairs room with a couple of storage heaters we could use. Place’ll be gutted in a few weeks, but Valent likes somewhere to work if he comes down.’
The filly put up no resistance now. Somehow, slipping and swearing, they managed to lift her into the trailer, then bumped her as little as possible over the rough track, as they tripped over tree roots, fallen branches and old bramble cables, before crossing the orchard to Badger’s Court. Here they installed her in Valent’s study, which had a chandelier and an Adam fireplace. The storage heaters were immediately switched on.
It was the only room intact in the building. The floors had been ripped out and the dividing walls knocked down, leaving only a shell with windows and cornices.
In the study, however, which must have been a little drawing room, all the works of Walter Scott still filled a bookshelf. The walls were primrose yellow and on the stripped wooden chimneypiece stood an invitation: ‘Mrs Hugo Wilkinson at Home’.
‘We’ll call you Mrs Wilkinson,’ said Etta.
The filly’s sunken eye, razor-sharp bones and old-fashioned-radiator ribs made her look prematurely aged, but after a glance at her teeth Jase said she was young, probably only three or four.
They decided it was too late to call out a vet. But despite the snow, Woody and Jase proceeded to go east, south and west, bringing water and wood shavings from Woody’s carpenter’s workshop, oldish good-quality hay, because new hay was too rich, from Not for Crowe’s stables and tubing to pour water into her to rehydrate her.
Mrs Wilkinson was soon tucked up in a bed of shavings three feet deep and banked deeper up the wall so she could really snuggle up and not roll over on her back and be unable to get up. Joey flipped when he arrived and caught sight of her.
‘I’ll get the sack. Valent will be gutted.’
‘Room’s going to be gutted anyway,’ reasoned Woody. ‘Poor little girl, keep your voice down, she’s terrified.’
In the light from the chandelier they could now see how hideously cut about and infected was her poor body and how she flinched at any touch, as if awaiting further torture.
‘Who could have done it,’ raged Etta, ‘dragging her into the wood, leaving her to die?’
‘She’s been knocked about the head.’ Jase examined the huge cut across her right eye. ‘Probably lost the sight in this one.’ Then, examining the deep gash on her neck and mopping it gently with disinfectant, he added, ‘Reckon someone gouged out her microchip to escape detection. To have one means she must have been born after 1999.’
As he examined her legs, he shook his head in horror.
‘Think she’s been tangled up in wire, perhaps in a car crash. Gypsies were here last week but they’ve moved on.’
Joey went off to get a camera he kept in his Portakabin: ‘Better photograph the evidence.’
‘She’s so totally starved and dehydrated the most important thing is to get some water into her,’ said Jase, stroking her shoulder.
It was not a pleasant task, inserting tubing into the filly’s nostril and down through her oesophagus. The greatest danger was directing the tube into her windpipe by mistake and drowning her. Jase and Woody held her head and body still as Joey poured the water.
Unable to witness such helpless terror, Etta bolted back to Little Hollow. Then she unearthed Sampson’s duvet, king-sized to accommodate his massive shoulders, and a yellow, light blue and orange striped duvet cover in his old school colours. On her return Etta taped it up to Mrs Wilkinson’s ears for extra warmth.
Woody had found a kettle meanwhile and produced some very strong, sweet black coffee. ‘Even more delicious than Foxy Lady,’ said a grateful Etta.
By the time they’d drunk it, it was three in the morning and she insisted they went home.
‘So must you,’ chided Joey.
‘You’ve all got to work tomorrow.’
Jase opened the thick Prussian-blue velvet curtains. The snow was still falling softly, wrapping up the world, like Sampson’s duvet round Mrs Wilkinson.
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘No racing, it’s Christmas Eve.’
‘I’m going to stay with her,’ said Etta firmly. ‘Martin and Romy have gone skiing.’
‘I better get back to Mary,’ said Joey. Mop Idle had been jealous in the past of Joey’s roving eye.
‘Thank you all so, so much,’ stammered Etta.
‘We’ll be back first thing,’ promised Woody, thinking of the sailor he’d picked up in Cheltenham and left in his bed, who’d probably robbed him and shoved off by now.