The Secret Horses of Briar Hill(20)

It is a nightgown.

Not like my nightgown. Like one of those nightgowns. A woman’s nightgown.

Did this belong to the old princess? I can’t imagine a proper, distinguished lady dressed in pink silk and lace. I giggle a little at the thought, and then cover my mouth.

I should leave it in the box. I can’t go stringing up ladies’ underwear on the garden wall. What if Thomas peeks into the garden? What if the Horse Lord himself sees it, while delivering one of his notes?

But pink is not a common color. There is no powdered blush here. There are no sweetheart boxes of chocolates. So I fold the nightgown and gather the string of beads. Four colors now, and four to go. And then my cheeks go warm. I think about that old princess dancing around in her fancy pink nightgown, and I laugh out loud, before pressing a hand once more to my mouth, and then stifling a cough.





“OH, POOR THOMAS! You should have told me straightaway.”

Anna is cross with me. I give her back the yellow colored pencil, hoping it will make her feel better. She sighs, her eyes red, as she places the box back in its proper spot and lays it on her bed, next to the open book of Flora and Fauna.

I pick up the box and run my fingers over the sharpened pencils’ tips. 865-EMERALD GREEN. Other than Jack’s train, what else matches this color? Pine needles would only turn brown. There’s the faded sofa in the library, but I’d need four grown men to lift it.

It has to be the train.

“Was Thomas’s father quite famous?” I ask.

“He was well decorated, yes. He even received the Victoria Cross. Back during the Great War, when he was Thomas’s age, he was a private in the cavalry, and during the Battle of Cambrai they say he rode so fast he was able to warn every man in the trenches about encroaching gas. That was before they mechanized everything. In this war, they promoted him to sergeant and assigned him to the Special Air Service. There are newspaper articles about him and everything, you know; Thomas keeps a scrapbook. His aunt in Wales started sending him the clippings, after his mother died.” She sighs again and looks down at her hands. “He wasn’t exactly acknowledged by his father.”

“Why?”

Her cheeks flush. “He couldn’t be a soldier because of his arm.”

“What will he do now?”

“The same as the rest of us. Stay here. Tend to the sheep. Eat rotting onions and wait.”

I replace the green pencil in the box. “Do you think he can pick a horse’s hoof with just one hand?”

Anna raises an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

I shrug.

She looks wistfully toward the ceiling and presses a hand against the base of her throat. “I think Thomas can do anything. I think if they’d just have put a gun in his hand, he’d have won this war.”

I roll over onto my back and look at Anna’s ceiling. This was the princess’s own bedroom, once. The ceiling is covered with an oil painting of Greek gods, some strong and handsome, others with fat little bellies and curls cut from stone. She tells me stories about them. Zeus. Hera. Hades. But only when the Sisters aren’t nearby. They call those stories blasphemous.

“Do you miss your family?” Anna asks suddenly.

I take out the blue colored pencil. No. The red. Some things are red in the hospital. Anna’s felt hat. The soup cans in the kitchen pantry. But I already have the Horse Lord’s red ribbon.

“Emmaline?”

I replace the red colored pencil. “I miss my horses.”

She settles back into her pillows, gazing out the window, running her fingers lovingly along her book’s spine. “You’ll see them again.”

“No. I won’t.” I think of Thomas’s father, and I picture my horses, and my mouth is filling with ash, and I swallow it down, and down, but it keeps coming up. “They’re dead.”

Her head snaps to me. “Oh, little goose. I’m so sorry.”

I think of the horses kicking and kicking at their stalls, and no one to let them out.

“The stories of the bombings were just awful,” she says. “Everyone talks about London, but Nottingham got it bad too, didn’t it? So many souls lost, in just one night. And all the fires. I heard they still found some fires smoldering even after a week, when they went through the rubble looking for…people.” She pauses. “Do you want to talk about it, Em?”

I take out the purple pencil and hold it up to the light.

Anna reaches out and strokes my short tufts of hair. “Of course you don’t. You’d have to be mad to want to think about that sort of thing. Much better to think about when we go home and see our families again. I’m going to hug them all, especially my brother, Sam. He’s going to make it through the war, I know it.”

She tilts her book in my direction. “I’ve decided that I’m going to study to be a professor of natural sciences. I did some research on the name of your winged horse, Foxfire, and I discovered the most magnificent thing.” She flips the page and points to an illustration of a glowing insect. “Did you know there are creatures that glow? It’s a phenomenon that happens in certain insects and fungi and sea creatures.” She traces a hand down the page, lovingly. “Before people knew what caused it, they thought it was magic. They called it will-o’-the-wisp, and fairy fire, and honey glow.” She smiles. “Fox fire, too.”