The King’s Plate race was still a few days into the future, yet there seemed to be more people in the area surrounding the course than in the town proper. Was it always so? Their number would doubtless increase on race day. Where had they all come from? Where did they sleep? These visitors must have surely doubled the population of the town already.
As we merged with the crowd, Mr. Patley and I noticed a number of familiar faces from Bedford Street and Seven Dials in London: whores and pickpockets they were, and in such number as I had not seen before. The whores flirted one with another. The pickpockets dipped their hands each in the other’s coats and waistcoats. It was a carnival for thieves. We came at last to a rail fence that marked one of the limits of the course. Coaches and carriages were parked there, hard by, and the dukes and earls stood atop them, observing the activity out on the track through telescopes and spy-glasses. Each seemed to boast a surrounding retinue of a sizable number. There was a good deal of teasing comment that passed back and forth between them. It was for the nobles, as I saw, that this pageant was played out. But what was it they watched so intently out there on the course? I put the question to Mr. Patley.
“I don’t rightly know,” said he. “I reckon, though, that they’re studying their horses out there-not so much for speed as for gait and behavior on the course and whatnot. There’s a lot to learning a course like this one.”
“Why this one, especially?”
“Well, because of its length and the many rough places out there on the heath.”
“Not an easy course then, eh?”
“Oh, no. Ain’t a bit of it easy.”
We had a good view of the horses on the track-though not so good as the nobles and aristocrats atop their vehicles. We had found a spot between two coaches, somewhat protected from the crowd. From it, I watched and took in all that Mr. Patley had to say about the racing of horses in general, and the racing of them at Newmarket in particular. In the course of my days in Newmarket, he passed on to me a wealth of information. It all began, as I recall, with a question I asked about the number of horses out on the track. There was a great swarm of them following those on which the owners had their spy-glasses trained. They were moving along at a ragged pace and with no style whatever. It was almost as if this second line of riders were hoping that some reflected glory might be cast back upon them from the first.
“They can’t all be running in the King’s Plate race, can they?” I asked Mr. Patley.
“No, not at all. But it’s one of the faults of this race that there’s far too many in it.”
“They put no limit on the number?”
“Well, in a practical way I s’pose they do. They put the entry fee up so high, there’s not so many can afford it. But those who can are free to get out on the course and ride round it as often as they like.” He smiled and shook his head. “It makes for a pretty crowded field, don’t it?”
“It does indeed.”
We watched on as the leaders and the pursuing line of stragglers reached the farthest point from us. Then did Patley lose interest (or so it seemed to me) and began looking up and down the rail fence, as if for something he knew had to be there. Having found it, he pointed down to our right.
“There, Jeremy, just take a look.” There was a line of horses, with overweight riders perched on top awaiting the arrival of the mob of horsemen so that they might join them.
“What about them?”
“Well, just look. They’re waiting to take their trip round the course, and there’s none checking to see if they got any right to be here at all, much less to tour the track.”
“So right now anybody could get on the course?”
“As long as he’s got a horse to ride.”
I looked them over, those waiting impatiently for the mounted mob to make the circle complete. I had one more question, the last for a while.
“Who are those people waiting their turn on the track?”
“Local gentry.” He spat it out as if it were an oath or an obscenity.
As near as I could tell, the entire event was staged simply for the entertainment of the local gentry. The nobility-that is, those who owned the horses running the race-seemed to take it all quite earnestly.
When Mr. Patley announced his hunger to me, I realized that I, too, was hungry, and suggested we return to the Good Queen Bess where we might find us something in the tap-room. And so we started back, pushing our way through the crowd, which had grown a bit during our time at the rail. We pressed on, hands in our pockets, holding tight to our money bags. Just then did we spy the early odds posted at a turf-accountant’s stall. ’Twas Patley saw it first; he gave me a proper nudge in the ribs and pointed out the slate to me.
“There,” said he, “that might be of some interest to you, Jeremy.”
And, indeed, it was of interest-though not so much for the entries it carried as for the one it did not. I studied the list, then, having noted an omission, I studied it again.
“Mr. Patley,” said I. “Pegasus is not here on the slate.”
“I see he ain’t,” said he, attaching little importance to the fact.
“But why should Mr. Deuteronomy tell us he would be here, and then fail to arrive?”
“Oh, if he said he’d come, I for one believe he’ll be here. You see, Jeremy, they can’t post odds on a horse unless he’s present and officially entered.”
I nodded, accepting Mr. Patley’s explanation, yet not quite put at ease by it. I wondered what it was had held them up.
The turf accountant’s stall was at the very fringe of the area surrounding the race course. We went from it quickly through town and arrived at the Good Queen Bess in less time than it would take to tell.
“I believe I’ll inquire at the desk and find out if Mr. Deuteronomy has yet arrived to claim his room,” said I.
“Do as you like.”
Thus did we companions separate-I to make my inquiry, and he to the tap-room. Having no luck at the desk, I turned away, and who should I then spy entering the front door of the inn but Deuteronomy Plummer himself.
We greeted warmly with much hand-slapping and back-slapping. He asked me if all was right with my room, and I assured him that it was. Then did I inquire after his trip to Newmarket.
“We took it nice and slow,” said he. “Arrived just as intended.”
“And Pegasus is in good fettle?”
“Ah, ain’t he though! Every morning I give him a good talking-to, telling him just how he’s going to win this one.”
The idea of a conversation with a horse struck me as rather funny: I laughed, again in spite of myself. For his part, Mr. Deuteronomy was somewhat taken aback at my response.
“You think he don’t understand me? Well then, sir, you think wrong. Ain’t a smarter horse in the world than Pegasus!”
“Well, I’m sure that’s true, but. .” I left the sentence unended and hanging in the air. “Mr. Plummer, could you wait just a moment? I’ve a companion in the tap-room. He’s a Bow Street Runner, and a great enthusiast of your riding. Let me get him, and-”
“No, I’ve got to get these horses stabled,” said he, interrupting, “and watered and fed. Bring him to the track real early tomorrow. We’ll be out there at dawn, or close to it, learning the course.”
He then called to the clerk behind the desk, claiming his room, and ran out to tend to his horses. Well then, thought I, dawn it would be then for me-though Mr. Patley will no doubt be disappointed.
Yet he wasn’t, not in the least: “Oh no, I’m not surprised-and therefore I ain’t disappointed. He’s a real horseman, he is. Most of your lords and your gentry and whatnot, they have no sense of how to treat a horse. First rule we learned in the army was, take care of your horse’s needs, and after he’s been looked after, then-and only then-you take care of yourself.”
I had entered the tap-room to find him at a table near a window. There were two dark ales upon the table, a small loaf, and a big chunk of Stilton cheese. He looked as pleased and contented as I had ever seen him. He beckoned me over to him and gestured grandly at the bread and cheese, as if to say that that should hold us till dinner time. ’Twas then I told him of my meeting with Mr. Deuteronomy, expecting a howl of frustration in response and getting instead the well-reasoned lecture on the necessity of caring first for the horses.