Free The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker Page B

chestnut woods began to thin and the early morning sun suddenly appeared over the far slope, Pamela tapped her horse’s sides with her heels. The stately trot became a canter, and she whooped aloud with the joy of it. Bruno grinned widely as flecks of mud spattered him from her horse’s hooves, and he felt the smooth stretching of his own horse as they kept pace and broke into the open field. A startled hare bounded back for the cover of the woods, rabbits took to their burrows and a great cloud of birds rose from their morning feast of worms and took, complaining noisily, to the sky.
    They cantered on up the slope to the sunlit ridge. As they topped the rise, the wide plateau lying magnificent and green before them, Bruno saw Pamela lean forward over Bess’s neck, urging her into a gallop. Bruno felt the tautening of great equine muscles beneath him as Victoria gathered her strength to follow. His mare moved easily into the new rhythm, her neck reaching out and her nostrils wide, as if eager to butt aside the clods of earth that were being kicked up by the horse ahead. Bruno sat forward, giving her free rein. He lowered his own body to urge her on and felt the rush of wind in his earsand the tattoo of hoofbeats. Movement by car or bike or any machine was slow and lifeless compared with this.
    Pamela reined in and slowed Bess to a trot and then a walk as the plateau began to fall away into the valley of the River Vézère below them, the distant red rooftops and the church spire of St. Denis nestling into the great bend of the stream. Victoria slowed of her own accord, whinnied softly and then edged up to stand beside Bess. Bruno gazed down on the gentle valley and the town below. The sun’s rays gleamed gold on the cockerel atop the war memorial. They breathed warmth into the honey-colored stone of the buildings. The eddies of the river danced in the sunlight as they rippled beneath the arches of the bridge that dated from Napoléon’s rule.
    He could never leave this place, Bruno thought. St. Denis owned him now, the only place he had ever thought of as home after his years of travels with the army. Seeing it now from horseback had opened fresh perspectives and a new sense of the terrain that he had previously known only in his car and on foot as a hunter. He felt a rush of gratitude to Pamela for teaching him to ride, knowing him well enough to be sure that he’d take to it and enjoy the strange, beguiling intimacy across species that connects a horse and rider. She was a fine woman, he mused, handsome and spirited and sure of herself and the life she wanted to lead.
    Pamela had made it clear that she wanted neither husband nor children, nor even a lover who would share her home. He was her friend for life, she had said one night soon after their affair had begun, but he should know that she saw him as a guest in her home and in her bed. The invitation was hers to bestow. And while Bruno was as jealous as she of his own privacy and equally devoted to the familiar comforts of his own home, he felt puzzled by Pamela. His previous love affairs hadbeen consuming and overwhelming, like diving into a rushing river and being carried headlong with little thought for course or destination. With Pamela, he felt that he took his place amid her horses and her
gîtes
and her morning ritual with the BBC World Service and her English magazines and all the other furniture of her life. It was all very pleasant and sometimes marvelous, but not what he thought of as love.
    “You’re riding well,” Pamela said, her breathing back to normal after the gallop. “I don’t think there’s much more to teach you, not unless you want to start jumping fences.”
    “You’re a great teacher. Six months ago, I couldn’t ride at all,” he said. “A great way to start the day.”
    “After a wonderful night,” she said, smiling in that private way of hers that had so confused him in the early days of their affair. He could never tell