Free Dancing With Mr. Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House Library by Sarah Waters

upwards, placing its foot on the metal tripod. He clenched the tips of the nails and rasped them smooth and safe. Like a manicurist, he filed the edges of the hoof tight to the shoe, sending slivers of horn falling to the ground.
    ‘There,’ he said. ‘All done.’
    She slipped the head collar from the pony’s head and they sat on the top bar of the gate to watch as the pony went back out into the field. It moved slowly at first, as though getting the feel of its new shoes. Then it dipped and tossed its head – like a ballerina, she thought – before arching its neck and trotting away towards the herd, its steps slow and elevated and its tail raised like a fine plume behind it.
    He turned to her and smiled. ‘So,’ he said, ‘she marries the prince in the end. But how did she come to be in the Valley of Glass? What was her own small error? And who is the Black Bull of Norroway?’
    She stared at him. ‘So many questions,’ she said. ‘And I am not Scheherazade.’
    He jumped down from the gate. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just—’
    She watched him as he wiped his hands against his leather chaps and gathered his tools, ready for the next pony. He was a very kind young man, she thought. Perhaps there was something about him that reminded her. Perhaps that was why she had started to tell him the story. She had lied about the prince. And the beginning of the story had never been told.
    In the beginning, she had felt as though she had been saved from herself, though she had not understood quite what she meant by that, at the time. He had been tall and strong and big of bone and heart. She had felt safe. She had imagined she might be looked after for the first time. For the first time, she had imagined she might be looked after. But he had gone away and he had not come back, though she had waited and waited and waited.
    ‘The girl and the bull,’ she said, ‘are travelling together. At first, she is uncertain of him and has no idea of their destination. But he carries her gently and safely, and she finds that she can lean against his great, black shoulders without fear.
    ‘They have been travelling some time together in this way, in quiet companionship, when they come to a dark valley overhung with brooding cliffs. This is the Valley of Glass and the Black Bull of Norroway must fight its guardian if they are to pass through safely.
    ‘“Sit on this rock,” the bull tells her. “If the sky turns blue and the sun begins to shine, you’ll know the battle is won. But should everything turn red, you’ll know I’ve lost. Above all, don’t move. If you so much as wriggle your toes, I’ll never be able to find you again.”
    ‘So the girl sits on the rock and waits. And when the sky turns blue and the sun begins to shine, bathing the valley around her in blue-gold light, she smiles. She watches as the bull comes ambling back towards her, his broad shoulders flecked with blood. But he cannot see her. She calls to him, but he does not hear. And he never sees or speaks to her again, although she sees and speaks to him all the time.’
    There was a long silence between them. The ponies had settled to grazing beneath the line of oak trees that ran across the centre of the field. A chaffinch hopped around the edges of the manure pile, seeking delicacies. Traffic hummed on the main road through the village.
    ‘So her one small error wasn’t an error at all,’ he said.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘She didn’t do anything wrong. But she broke the spell that joined their worlds. The door was still there, but it had been closed on her. And even if she had been able to open it, perhaps she would have found nothing on the other side.’
    ‘Nothing?’ he said.
    ‘Oh, you know,’ she said. ‘Some doors are better left closed, and all that. You never know what you might find behind them. And nothing is always a possibility. A blank, impenetrable wall, perhaps. Sometimes it’s better to leave the door closed than to