"Very well. I will not go near them, but call out to them to put down their offerings, which I will then retrieve. Are you content that I should do that?"
"Yes."
"And say," intervened Pearce, "that we are sorry for their wasted journey."
"I will, John."
And so I went out to put a saddle on Danseuse whom I had not ridden for a long time. The storm had quite gone and, in the bright sun once again shining on us, the inmates of Margaret Fell were assembling for their airing, but I gave them no thought, my mind being intent only upon overtaking the visitors.
At the sight of a saddle, Danseuse gave a whinny of joy and her flanks shivered as I tightened the girth. And immediately I had mounted her, she began to trot very fast towards the gate, thus causing some fright to the women walking round the oak tree. I tried to rein her in, but she pulled so hard with her head that I was jerked forward and almost lost my balance. Then Daniel opened the gate for us and we were out of Whittlesea and at once my splendid mare began to gallop like a chariot horse and in no time at all we had reached the straggle of poor houses that is Earls Bride.
I had expected to overtake Piebald's visitors before reaching the village, but there was no sign of them. Managing to slow Danseuse to a quiet trot, I passed through Earls Bride and out the other side of it, where the flat, muddy track led on towards March. Because of its flatness, I could see some way down this road and there was nothing and no one visible on it. I persuaded my horse to stop. I dismounted and looked back at the village. As I have informed you, it is a place without an inn or hostelry of any kind, so I could not guess where the two women might be. It was as if the bright air that still smelled of rain had made them vanish.
Leading Danseuse by the reins, my hand close to the bit, I endeavoured to turn her round so that I could return to the village and knock on the door of one Thomas Buck (who is a thatcher and the only jovial man in this sad community) and enquire of him whether the two women had asked for shelter or rest in any of the houses. But Danseuse would not let herself be turned. She showed me a white, angry eye and reared up, jerking the reins from my hands. I stepped back, involuntarily. She is a large and powerful horse and, discomforting as my life is, I did not wish to be crushed by her hooves and thus lose it altogether on this lonely Fenland causeway.
But I see now that instead of stepping back, I should have tried with all my might to catch hold of Danseuse's bridle. For I was about to lose her. Once out of the Whittlesea gate, she had smelled her freedom in the sunshine. Now, she saw the straight, flat road before her and she took it. She kicked up her heels in a final little dance of joy and then she bolted away, faster it seemed to me than I had ever ridden her, faster even than on our night journey to Newmarket, and I was left with one foot in the ditch, staring stupidly after her.
Collecting myself, I did the only thing that came to my mind: I ran after her, shouting her name, the while knowing this action to be futile, as if a chicken tried to fly after an eagle. But then, at my side, appeared two boys, very ragged and with no shoes on their feet, aged about ten or eleven.
"We'll catch 'im, Sir!" they said and without waiting for permission from me, hurled their thin bodies down the track, calling: "Answers! Answers!" which they thought, from hearing my shouting, to be my horse's name.
I stopped and took a handkerchief from the pocket of my breeches and wiped the sweat from my face. Then I stood and watched. The speed of Danseuse had not slackened at all, but the boys did not seem to understand how easily she would outrun them, for they bolted gamely on, racing with each other to be the first to get to her and bring her back. I saw one of them stumble on the road made muddy by the storm, but he quickly recovered his balance and charged on. Seeing their determination it was tempting to hope, just for an instant, that if I waited patiently, I would, late in the afternoon, see them return, leading my mare between them. Yet I knew this would not happen. Danseuse would run until night fell. She would run until she was lame. She would never return to Whittlesea.
In less than five minutes, Danseuse and the boys passed out of sight. Feeling very stupid standing in the road, and remembering at length the errand on which I had come, I walked to the cottage of Thomas Buck. The thatcher was not at home. His scrawny wife, who is like a pullet with no flesh on her bones, informed me she had seen two women pass through the village but now they were gone along the road to March. I thanked her and she closed her door in my face. I had a great longing to sit down.
Recollected now, that day when I lost Danseuse, that day when Piebald's mother and sister and their basket of provisions seemed to vanish into the air, was one of the most momentous of recent time. For in it I passed from being a kind of visitor to Whittlesea (one who, whenever he heard the whinny of his horse always imagined some future hour in time when he would ride away, back into his old life) to a state of belonging. Since that day, with the stable once occupied by Danseuse empty, I have surrendered to Whittlesea. When I imagine my life passing, it is here that it passes. I shall change utterly. I will no longer be too "restless and dazzling" for fishing. I will be a quiet, brown person. And my skills as a physician and Keeper I shall allow to grow. And I am most moved by all this. For I see that all of it will come about because of Pearce's love for me which allowed me to come here and which – although I really do not know why this should be – is the greatest love I have ever been shown by anyone.
But I must tell you a little more about that day. Another event of importance took place upon it.
The urchin boys did not return for an hour, during which I sat on a pile of willow planks and counted the money that I had upon me, which was fourpence exactly.
They were very disappointed that they had not been able to catch the horse, both for my sake and for theirs, for they clearly understood that there was reward in the thing and when I handed them the two pennies apiece they looked long at the coins, as if willing them to turn into silver.
I thanked them for their gallant chase and asked them, if Danseuse should return to Earls Bride, to bring her to me at Whittlesea. They nodded and one of them asked: "Why is he called Answers, Sir?" to which question I could think of no reply but the feeble pun, "Because he answers to that name and no other." The boys appeared downcast by this, as well they might, so I left them to go in to their suppers of corn porridge and samphire and walked slowly back to Whittlesea, remembering deliberately as I went along all the daring and brilliant rides I had had on Danseuse since she was given to me from the King's stable; and then, upon arriving at the Whittlesea gate, putting them from me for ever and going in with a sprightly step, as if the loss of my horse was nothing to me.
I went into the kitchen of the Keepers' house, it being my turn to help Daniel prepare our supper, and there found Ambrose seated at the scrubbed table looking most grave and troubled. He asked me to sit down and I could sense that some news of a terrible kind was going to be given to me. Daniel, scraping potatoes in a bowl, looked from Ambrose to me and then to Ambrose again and said softly to him, "Robert is not at fault in this, Ambrose," and Ambrose nodded.
There was a long pause, during which Ambrose arranged his hands into their habitual steeple beneath his beard. He then told me, in a most sorrowful voice, that an incident had taken place that afternoon in Margaret Fell while I had been absent. The woman Katharine had bitten and torn her blanket into shreds and with these shreds knotted together a rope and with the rope endeavoured to hang herself from a crossbeam of the roof.
"Most fortunately," said Ambrose, "the screams of the other women brought us all running and we cut her down before she choked and died. But we cannot run any risk that she will try such a thing again and so, for the time being, we have had to put her in William Harvey."