Chapter Seven
1894–1895
Flight of the Favorite
Nearly six months later, two things happened in rapid succession. I happened upon something I shouldn’t have, and I made a crucial mistake.
The rainy winter came upon us and gave way to a cool, dry spring. The men were plowing and planting, preparing for the summer ahead. My mother needed assistance with an especially heavy load of groceries she’d brought home from town, and she directed me to fetch one of the men from the barn. I feared I would likely find Ray there, as he was most often caring for the horses, but I had no choice. Mother had softened in her attitude toward me now that so much time had passed since the disaster at Biltmore, and I felt that we were once more on solid ground. I didn’t want to jeopardize that.
I stood in the doorway of the barn and shouted, “Raymond, my mother needs your help. Come now.”
No answer. I took one more step inside.
“Raymond?”
The air inside the barn was heavy with hay dust and thick with an animal smell. Suddenly, a horse cried out with a strangled whinny. I had never heard such a cry. I rushed in the direction of the sound and arrived at a stall to see Ray seated at a dappled mare’s front right foot, which was in a sling to keep her from striking out with it.
The hammer dropped from his hand when she kicked, and his grip on her leg was lost. She cried out again and shook her head fiercely, mane flying, against the air. I could see a metal spike protruding from her foot. Not from the edges of the hoof where she was shoed, but in the tender center. She had to be in terrible pain. I reeled.
“Leave that horse alone!” I shouted.
“I’m trying to get the spike out of her hoof, you fool,” said Ray.
I knew next to nothing about horses, but I could still see through his lie. “You’d want a claw hammer for that. Not a mallet.”
He reached down, gingerly dodging the horse’s swinging leg, and grabbed the fallen mallet.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Right now, I want you to step back,” I said. Shockingly, he complied.
I stepped past him into the stall, laid my palm against the side of the horse’s neck, and spoke to her in a quiet voice. When her eyes were no longer rolling back in her head, I lowered both hands as quickly and smoothly as I could to the spike in her hoof, so as not to startle her, and yanked hard.
Luckily, it came clean out straightaway. Thank God I’d caught him on the first stroke. I flung the spike away, and it landed almost silently in the deep hay at the far end of the stall. The horse whinnied and twitched, but she didn’t strike out at me. I stroked her neck gently and stared at Ray, still standing just inside the open door of the stall, the mallet in his hand.
“You ruin everything,” he said petulantly.
“What? You were trying to destroy this poor horse, and I ruined it?”
“I would have healed her.”
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t heal anything.”
“I healed you, didn’t I?”
“No,” I shouted, my pent-up anger all let loose. “You broke me.”
“Stupid girl. Do you have any idea how long it takes a broken leg to heal? Weeks, even months. I sent healing powers into your leg, and you healed in days.”
“You broke my goddamn leg in the first place,” I said, nearly hissing in my fury.
“Damaged things interest me. Especially if I damage them.”
He hefted the mallet, testing its weight. It made me nervous. Without moving too quickly, I backed out of the stall to put some distance between us.
“Anyway,” he said, “the story is the important thing.”
“And what’s the story?”
“I found the poor horse with a nail in her hoof. I risked my safety to free her. And I suffered for it.”
Uncomprehending, I asked, “Suffered for it?”
I saw him lift the hammer, and in a flash, I realized I was well within range if he chose to throw it, but that wasn’t what he had in mind.
He brought the hammer back toward his own face, and the flat metal of the mallet connected with his nose, and all of a sudden there was blood everywhere.
I couldn’t stay a moment longer. I fled.
When my mother asked, I told her there’d been no one in the barn, and anyway, I was strong enough to help her unload the groceries myself. We started to the work, and spoke no more about it.
But I couldn’t get that image out of my head. Swinging the hammer back toward himself, a look of unearthly calm on his face. Indifferent to the coming pain. I knew then that he was capable of anything.