Under a Gilded Moon(43)

From several yards away, Sal could see that Cabot had seated himself on a log with several of the forestry crew. Asking questions.

“My impression, Mr. Tate, is that some here in your mountains may have received a surprisingly sufficient education—to a certain point. I wonder if you could tell me a bit about that.”

“Ain’t a bunch of illiterates, if that’s where you’re headed.”

“I didn’t mean to imply . . .”

“Had a schoolteacher during my growing up who took her job serious.”

“Could you tell me more of her?”

“Miss Annie Lizzie Hopson. Give her a hell of a lot of credit, even being a lady schoolteacher. She could learn an old shoat to read. Give out books.”

“Books that . . . forgive me, but were these books she bought herself and brought here? As a kind of . . . ?”

Tate spit to one side. “If you’re meaning charity . . .”

“No. I didn’t mean that.”

“She’d got people she knew in New York—college up there—took to sending down boxes of books. She took to spreading ’em out. Gave out pulled taffy candy to us kids for memorizing big ole hunks of poems. Plays, too.”

“Like,” Cabot said after several beats, “The Merchant of Venice, perhaps?”

“All that. Stayed a right smart while. Back when folks here still lived on their own land.” He stopped there, voice tight. “Back before there was foreigners here. Back when things was safe.”

As Sal watched, Dearg Tate shifted his gaze to the Grant fellow. Sal thought for a moment they exchanged nods, like men who knew each other. But he dismissed that; they were from two different worlds as much as Sal and Tate were. Maybe it was just the shared detachment in their eyes that joined the two of them for him. Sal knew all too well how full the world was of men who appeared aloof just like this, even as they molded that world to their own liking.

Turning back, Sal was only vaguely aware the conversation behind him had ceased. Gently, he ran a hand down the mare’s left front leg. Leaning his own weight against her body, he lifted the hoof.

“Bergamini!”

Sal jumped, but hung on to the hoof. The last thing this horse needed was for him to drop her foot painfully to the ground.

Slowly, he ran a finger to where a stone had wedged its point between the wall of the hoof and the tender part of the foot’s underside, its frog. After prying the stone out bit by bit so as not to further the damage, he traced the laceration.

“Bergamini, may I ask why you have left your work to play blacksmith?” Schenck’s w’s had gone to harsh v’s again: vork.

But Vanderbilt turned to the forestry manager. “I wonder if I might ask Mr. Bergamini a few questions.”

Schenck appeared to make himself pause before answering. “But of course.”

Vanderbilt knelt next to Sal. “Mr. Grant thought he detected a slight limp up that last hill, I believe, but he was rather deep in conversation.”

The scowl Sal delivered said there was no conversation so deep it warranted ignoring an animal’s pain. Lowering the hoof along with Sal, Vanderbilt patted the mare’s shoulder.

“Forgive me.” Vanderbilt directed this last comment to the horse. He turned to Sal. “I assume we should lead her back and not ride?”

“Si. Yes. No ride. The Arab in her is her strength—but also her weakness. She will not show she is in the pain. Perhaps much in the pain.”

“She does have Arabian in her, you’re right. For endurance.”

Sal ran a hand down the mare’s nose. “And for the looks. The Arab is the most beautiful of the horses.”

“You have experience with the breed, I take it?”

“In Sicily, we had much of the conquering. But it has given to us the architecture that is beautiful, and much varied. And a line of the horse descended from horses of the desert and the horses of the knights. The Middle Ages.”

“You have a preference for the horses of the desert, then?”

“The lungs are strong. The hooves are sound. They drink less of the water. They need less of the food. The intelligence, it is superior. The heads”—he returned a hand to the mare’s nose with its pronounced dip, its wide nostrils, its eyes large and deep set—“the most beautiful of all.”

The others in Vanderbilt’s party had drawn close, including the young woman whose horse had nearly trampled Nico and him in the forest that first night.

Cabot lowered his head toward Vanderbilt. “You may have found a new addition to the staff of your stables.”

Despite the clang and shush of the digging behind them, the lady whose horse had reared in front of Sal appeared to be listening with particular interest.

Vanderbilt addressed Sal. “You are the young man I met in Florence.”

“Si. I am.”

“And yet you grew up far to the south, in Sicily?”

“There was no longer the work in Palermo. But when I was a boy, my father, he cared for the horses of a landlord and also the horses to rent.”

“A livery stable?”

“Yes. For the tourists to Palermo who came off the ships. From him, I learned much.”

“I remember now that you not only took care of the luggage but also cared for the horses at the Pensione DiGiacomo.”