‘Well,’ I said, pondering, ‘was there anyone there who Misha considers could have been Alyosha?’
The answer to that was that he didn’t really think so, because when Hans Kramer was saying that name he was not saying it to anyone, except perhaps to the English girl, but she couldn’t have been Alyosha, because it was a man’s name.’
The cold was creeping back. If Misha knew any more, I didn’t know how to unlock it.
I said, ‘Please thank Misha for his very intelligent help, and tell Mr Kropotkin how much I value his assistance in letting me speak to Misha in this way.’
The compliments were received as due, and Kropotkin, Stephen and I began to walk off the track, back towards the main stable area and the road beyond. Misha, leading the horse, followed a few paces behind us.
As we passed the opening between the two rows of stable blocks, the green wooden horse box, whose engine had been grumbling away in the background all the while we had been talking, suddenly revved up into a shattering roar.
Misha’s horse reared with fright, and Misha cried out. Automatically I turned back to help him. Misha, facing me, was tugging downwards on the reins, with the chestnut rearing yet again above him, and the horse’s bunched quarters were, so to speak, staring me in the face.
As I came towards him, Misha’s gaze slid over me and fastened on something behind my back. His eyes opened wide in fear. He yelled something to me in Russian, and then he simply dropped the reins and ran.
7
From a purely reflex action I grabbed the reins which he had left dangling to the ground and at the same time glanced back over my shoulder.
The time to death looked like three seconds.
The towering top of the green horse box blotted out the sky. The engine accelerated to a scream. I could remember the pattern of the radiator grill for ever after. Six tons unladen weight, I thought. One had time, I found, for the most useless thoughts. Thoughts could be measured in fizzing ten-thousandths of a second. Action took a little longer.
I grabbed the horse’s mane with my left hand and the front of the saddle with my right, and half-jumped, half-hauled myself on to his back.
The horse was terrified already by the noise and the proximity of the horse box, but horses don’t altogether understand about the necessity of removing themselves pronto from under the wheels of thundering juggernauts. Frightened horses, on the whole, are more apt to run into the paths of vehicles, than away.
Horses, on the other hand, are immensely receptive of human emotions, especially when the human is on their back, and scared out of his wits. The chestnut unerringly got the unadulterated message of fear, and bolted.
From a standing start a fit horse can beat most cars over a hundred yards, but the horse box was a long way from standing. The chestnut’s blast-off kept him merely a few yards ahead of the crushing green killer roaring on our heels.
If the horse had had the right sort of sense he would have darted away to left or right down some narrow cranny where the horse box couldn’t follow. Instead, he galloped ahead in a straight true line, making disaster easy.
It was of only moderate help that I was still grasping a section of rein. Owing to the fact of Misha having taken the reins over the horse’s head to lead him, they were not now neatly to hand, with each rein leading tidily to its own side of the bit: they were both on the left side and came from below the horse’s mouth. Since horses are normally steered by pulling the bit upwards against the mouth’s sensitive corners, any urgent instructions had little chance of getting through. There were also the difficulties that my feet were not in the stirrups, I was wearing a heavy overcoat, and my fur hat was tipping forward over my spectacles. The chestnut took his own line and burst out on to the open spaces of the track.
He swerved instinctively to the right, which was the way he always trained, and his quarters thrust him onwards with the vigour of a full-blown stampede. His hurtling feet set up clouds of spray behind us, and it was while I was wondering how long he could keep up the pace and hoping it was for ever, that I first thought that perhaps the sound of the motor had diminished.
Too good to be true, I thought. On the straight and level, a horse box could go faster than a horse; perhaps it was in overdrive and simply made less noise that way.
I risked a look over my shoulder, and my spirits went up as swiftly as a helium balloon. The horse box had given up the chase. It was turning on the track, and going back the way it had come.
‘Glory Be’, I thought, and ‘Allelujah’, and ‘Oh noble beast’; jumbled thanks to the horse and his putative maker.
There was still the problem of getting the noble beast to stop. Panic had infected him easily. Non-panic was not getting through.
My hat fell completely off. Speed drove cold air through my hair, and stung my ears. The drizzle misted my glasses. Heavy double-breasted close-buttoned overcoats were definitely bad news on bolters. Flapping trousers never reassured any horse. I thought that if I didn’t do something about the pedals and steering I could very well ignominiously fall off: and what would Mr Kropotkin have to say if I let his Olympic horse go loose?
Little by little, a vestige of control returned to the proceedings. It was after all a mile-long, left-hand circuit, and the one way I had a chance of influencing our direction was to the left. Constant pressure on the reins pulled the chestnut’s head all the time towards the inner rails, and, once I’d managed to put my feet in the stirrups, pressure from my right knee did the same. Some soothing exhortations like ‘Whoa there, boy, whoa there you old beauty’ also seemed to help; even if the words were English, the tone and intention were identical.
Somewhere on the home stretch in front of the stands the steam went out of the flight, and in a few strides after that, he was walking. I patted his neck and made further conversation, and after a bit, he stood still.
This time, unlike after his training canter, he showed great signs of exertion, taking in breaths in gusts through his nostrils, and heaving out his ribs to inflate his lungs. I brushed the wet off my glasses, and undid a couple of buttons on my coat.
‘There you are, then, chum,’ I said. ‘You’re a good old boy, my old fellow,’ and patted his neck some more.
He shifted only a little while I cautiously leaned far forward to his ears, and put my arms right round under his chin, and brought the reins back over his head. It seemed to me that he was almost relieved to have his headgear returned to its normal riding configuration, because he trotted off along the track again at my signal with all the sweetness of a horse well-schooled in dressage.
Kropotkin had come a little way out to meet us, but no man walked far on that sticky dirt from choice, and he was back by the stable entrance when the chestnut and I completed the circuit.
Kropotkin showed considerable emotion, which was not surprisingly all for his horse. After I had dismounted and handed the reins to a stunned-looking Misha, he rumbled away in basso profundo, anxiously feeling each leg and standing back to assess the overall damage. Finally he spoke at some length to Stephen, and waved an arm in a gesture which was neither anger nor apology, but perhaps somewhere between the two.
‘Mr Kropotkin says,’ Stephen relayed, ‘that he doesn’t know what the horse box was doing here today. It is one of the horse boxes which take the Olympic horses, when they travel. Mr Kropotkin had not ordered a box to come to the track. They are always parked beside the stables he is in charge of, across the road. He is sure that none of the drivers would drive so badly in a stable area. He cannot understand how you and the horse came to be in the way when the horse box prepared to leave the stables.’ Stephen’s eyebrows were rising. ‘I say,’ he said dubiously, ‘you weren’t in its way. The bloody thing drove straight at you.’