Free Highway Robbery by Kate Thompson Page A

can imagine, I’m sure, how astonished I was. He was very tall, that man, and his cheeks were red and he was breathing hard and there were tear-tracks across his face. He looked wild and mad, sir, and I have to admit that the sight of him terrified me.
    But of course, the way he looked was not because he was angry or excited butbecause he had been travelling so fast through the icy weather. And indeed, when he opened his mouth, it was not to yell at me, which is what I expected, but to say, quite gently:
    ‘Hold the mare for me, lad. And when I come back, I’ll give you a golden guinea.’

    And he ruffled my hair for me, sir. Look. Like this. Made it stand up like a bunch of straw. I would have done anything for him after that. I don’t oftenmeet with kindness, as I’m sure you can imagine. So I clutched tight to those reins and I closed my badger-hole mouth and I nodded my head until my teeth rattled.
    ‘You can rely on me, sir,’ I said. ‘I won’t move an inch from here until you come back.’
    ‘Good lad,’ he said. He pulled a saddlebag from the horse’s withers, then unfastened his cloak and laid it carefully over her back. That will tell you, sir, how much value he set on his mare, because it was a cold day for a gentleman to be out and about in his shirt-sleeves. He patted her on the neck, winked at me, and then he was gone, slipping away down the alley and out of sight.

C HAPTER T WO
    I WAS AS hungry as a sow with ten piglets, but I was full of satisfaction. I don’t know if that makes sense, but sometimes a bit of kindness goes further than a meat pie. And to be trusted too. To be given a bit of responsibility. That can make you feel like a man even if you’re only as high as a man’s elbow.
    And that horse, sir. I don’t think I’d actually ever held one before that. Most horses I see are pulling carts and they don’t need anyone to hold them. If thedriver gets down to make a delivery or to go for a pint of ale, those carthorses just wait there until he comes back. And as for carriage horses, the footmen won’t let the likes of me anywhere near them. I don’t know why. Maybe they’re afraid I’d give them fleas or something. But there I was, holding this horse, and she was huge! Sixteen hands if she was an inch. And so beautiful. Her nostrils were red as cornfield poppies. Her eyes were wide and bright with the excitement of the gallop and she kept looking this way and that, as though she was still seeing the countryside speeding past.
    I was, I have to admit, a little afraid of her. She was so massive and hot, all covered with mud and steaming like a dragon that could burst into a fit of violence at any moment. And she was very restless to begin with because she had been ridden so hard and so fast. In that way, I suppose a horse is pretty much like a man.They neither of them can shut down their feelings as quick as they’d like to. So the mare was looking from side to side and moving from foot to foot, and then she planted her four feet out wide and shook herself so hard that the saddle-flaps rattled and the black cloak slipped sideways. But for all her restlessness she never once tried to break away from me. She didn’t even pull on the reins. A pure-hearted lady through and through, sir, if ever there was one.

    And as she calmed down, I became more confident, until finally I found the courage to reach up and run my fingers down the front of her nose. She let out an enormous sigh and dropped her head.
    I could reach it better now and I stroked her forehead and combed her black forelock with my fingers. I swear she liked it, and I wondered whether horses were like boys, and whether they too felt the need for a bit of kindness now and again.
    So holding her was easy, but there was something that made it better than easy and turned it into a pleasure. The mare, as you would expect, was blowing hard, and her hot breath was coming straight at me and warming my miserable hands and feet. For a