"Who is this?"
"This is Mrs. Rafael Clery, Nialla."
"Good God, lady, why didn't you say so in the first place?"
The connection went dead. I had told him who I was.
"Mrs. Clery…" Sheriff Erskine's unmistakable baritone leaped out of the earpiece and forced me to hold the phone a few inches from my deadened ear. "What's this about a fire at your place?"
"The west meadow's on fire. My husband and the men are there. But I thought you should know…"
"But… but we've got the Herrington place staked out." He sounded aggrieved.
"I realize that, Sheriff, but, well, is it possible for you to investigate here?"
"Are you alone in the house?" He was furious now.
"Yes, but the place is tightly locked up. I checked all the doors and windows myself."
"Then you stay there. Forest, I want…" And the connection was broken.
Your kindly police force is mobilizing. Relax. Help is on the way!
Relax?
I sighed and thrust the ends of my shirt into my shorts. Damn it!
"This is Mrs. Rafael Clery."
That had a very satisfactory sound to it.
It wasn't a creaking I heard; it was a tapping. I froze so solid I could hear the pulse of the air-conditioner turning on in the basement. Did this house have a basement door? One I hadn't locked?
I crept to the staircase. Nothing! I went down a few steps, still hearing that tap-tapping, rhythmic, insistent, demanding. I got down far enough to see the front door and the porch. There wasn't anyone there. I went to the kitchen, but halfway across it I couldn't hear the tapping.
It was louder in the hallway, and louder still as I crept back up the stairs, over the creak.
As I came level with the second story, I saw Dice at the dormer window of our room, tapping the pane with his nose.
I rushed to throw open the sash. "Dice, you scared me to death!" One overhanging beech limb swayed up and down. He'd taken the upper route. He wouldn't come in. He weaved in and out, more garrulous than I'd ever heard him. I peered as far as I could over the roof, but the ground below was invisible. The air was suffocatingly sultry. "Rafe send you to keep watch? Come on in, boy. Come in."
He ran a few steps down the roof, prrrowwing agitatedly. He must have smelled the meadow fire. I glanced up now, but this room faced east, and the meadow fire was to the west… Then why was I seeing a thin plume of smoke! A thin plume? From a meadow fire?
I wondered later that I hadn't tripped over Dice as we took those stairs in a mad plunge down. Dice's excited prancing didn't help as I fumbled with the double latch, double-hatched, double-damned door. The phone began to ring. I got the upper half open. To hell with the bottom, although I scratched my thigh on the brass weather-stripping as I vaulted over.
The pebbles of the drive made me excruciatingly aware that I had no shoes on, but I merely took to the grass, following Dice. He didn't need paths, and led me through the beeches and under-plantings to the back of the stable.
I could hear the sirens on the highway. I could hear, more acutely, the kicking and whinnying of fire-scared horses. And the dominant piercing note of Orfeo's bugling.
I remember grabbing a sheet from the drying rack, and I guess I grabbed the pitchfork as I raced past the manure pile. And stopped. Because the fire was not in the stable. It was outside. Someone had heaped hay and straw in the fifty-gallon oil can used as a water barrel for the roof drains. More smoke than fire. Not that it mattered to Orfeo, because the smoke, blowing in his window, was sufficient to start him going. The fire had been deliberately set to lure me here.
The meadow blaze had been started to draw the men from the house and the stable. How had Galvano got past the gate? The dogs? Where was he now?
Dice leaped to the small barred window at the back of Orfeo's box, wriggling to get his hips through the bars. The frantic gelding was plunging and kicking, shrieking with fear. The whole stable was in an uproar.
I shoveled manure into the barrel. The stench was incredible, but the sheer sopping wet mass would put out the fire.
I hefted the pitchfork, ready to commit a little mayhem myself with it when I found Galvano. I tried not to think of Orfeo's terror. He was in no present danger, whatever he thought.
Galvano'd got rid of the men, probably watched them leave so he could be sure I was alone in the house. Had he tried to enter and found it locked? Probably. But if he'd seen the windows locked and closed, how had he planned to lure me out with smoke? The phone! It'd been ringing as I climbed over the door hatch. He could've called from the stable phone in the tack room. The intercom dialing system was printed beside the receiver.
I picked my way back to the front of the stable, wishing I'd had wit enough to put sandals on. And there was no way for me to peek into the tack room from the outside of the stable rectangle. The windows were small and high and impossible to reach because of the dense foundation plantings. I started for the main archway and halted. That would be the route Galvano expected me to take.
I raced around the stable again, wincing as I passed Orfeo's stall. From the sound of it, he'd' angled his kicks at the stall door now. It wouldn't last long. The upper hatch was open, and the bottom was nowhere near as substantial as the doors in G-Barn.
I pressed myself against the wall of the pasture gate, easing my way carefully forward until I could see the tack-room door. He had to be in there. That was where the phone was. And he must be expecting me through the main arch. Or had he gone up to the house to check?
I had to catch him now. A sudden ripping of wood close by told me that very shortly the yard would be full of frightened horses! Horses. I glanced quickly at the tack-room door and darted around the corner, keeping low. I peeked at the first box. Bay heels lashed at the door. Which one was Sadie? I flipped the hatch lock free and ran on. Loose horses would bring Galvano out and the men back! Gray hooves battered the next door. Praying that this wasn't Maisie, I waited for the next kick and then slipped in as fast as I could move. The gray had her head down for another go when I grabbed the loose halter rope and jerked her head up. Flipping the end over her neck, I managed to jam it through the nose-band ring on the other side. This must be Sadie. She was calming with a human near her.
Wood was splintering all over the yard now. I turned the mare, vaulted to her back, nearly spiking her with the pitchfork, and then kicked her out of the stall, just as the bay in the first box erupted into the yard, with Maisie on my right charging to freedom a second later.
I had headed the excited Sadie toward the tack room when hell really broke loose. Orfeo splintered the last cross-piece of the hatch, banged hysterically about in the box a moment more, and tore into the yard just as the skinny figure of Caps Galvano emerged from the empty stall on the other side of him. He collided against the flank of the fire-crazed horse. Behind the gelding streaked the mighty Eurydice, his tail enormous, every hair of his spine as erect as a porcupine's fighting crest. I couldn't imagine what Dice thought he'd accomplish by chasing after Orfeo. But then, I wasn't all too sure what I was trying to do, having the devil's own time keeping my seat on Sadie's smooth bare back (how in hell had knights managed lances?) without skewering myself or the mare. The sweat pouring down my face half-blinded me as well.
As it was, the dogs made the "capture." Orfeo, witless as all horses are when fire-scared, came thundering back to his own stall in time to knock Galvano down again. Rafe and Dennis, legs pumping, arms flailing, narrowly missed the bay's stampeding exit as they came through the arch. Maisie had found her way out the pasture door, and Orfeo, Dice gamely a jump behind, crashed after her. I remember thinking that there was nothing impeding his use of that off-hind now.