The Bride's Farewell Read Online Free PDF

ownership and responsibility in equal measure—for herding and marking and selling the horses in good times, and for finding enough food to keep them alive in bad. But each horse needed trimmed feet and the ones that worked required shoes, and that made more than enough work for William Finch, and every other farrier in the parish.
    It was for this reason that Birdie’s father took on whichever Ridley girls were available to work, and gladly, for they were cheaper to employ than boys, and hard workers. As the years passed, however, the decision caused him some unease. For despite the bloodlines of his own children, each a pure horseman dating back ten generations, William Finch could not help noticing that the quickest learners, the best workers, and the children with the greatest natural affinity for the job did not belong to him.

Nine

    O nce inside Salisbury’s walls, Pell and Bean competed with half the population to cross roads crammed with the other half. Everywhere, fierce desperate little dogs raced back and forth, nipping and growling at the hocks of sheep and cattle to stop them stampeding down the long sloping chute of a high street. Jack pricked his ears forward, tossed his head, and danced crabways. There were so many sights to take in, so many people, so many varieties of bread and cheese and pies and ale and sweets; so many villains, cheats and players, vagrants, opportunists, showmen, and bawds. Salisbury was unnerving for a country horse, and exhilarating, too. Jack longed to plunge headlong into the chaos and add to it.
    It seemed as if the entire equine world had found its way to the horse fair. Men led big cart horses harnessed by twos and fours with polished brass and gleaming leather, brood mares still suckling late foals, and stallions available for stud. And always some boy galloped full tilt with nothing but a bit of rope for a bridle, scattering all manner of panicked creatures in his wake. Pell saw a child escape death by half an inch under the wheels of a wagon, while a big handsome white bull with a ring through his nose—docile as a lamb one moment—turned and ripped open the belly of a screaming cart horse the next. Some of the younger boys cheered for the bull as the poor horse’s entrails sagged from the wound and the awful smell of organs came to Pell in a gust so strong she could taste it. The brawl that followed was fueled by blood and mud and looked certain to end in more death.
    She turned Jack away from the scene just as Joe Ridley entered Salisbury through St. Ann’s gate in search of his renegade children. They passed within twenty yards of each other on either side of the frumenty seller’s striped tent, Pell and Bean heading toward the grounds of the cathedral, Joe Ridley to the nearest tavern.
    In the cathedral close, among the restless horses and old-looking children, Pell found Esther camped near a man and wife, not young, with a splayfooted cob tethered to an ancient wagon. For an instant, Pell wondered why Esther had settled here, away from the Gypsy encampment.
    Leading Jack, Pell asked politely if the old couple minded her taking the spot next to theirs, and seeing how young she was, with a boy they took to be her own and no husband in evidence, they took pity on her and granted their assent. They were glad to have a girl set down between the Gypsy wagon and their own, despite the questions raised by the fatherless child. The couple were Mr. and Mrs. Bewes, and pleased to make her acquaintance.
    “This is Bean,” Pell told them, letting go of him at last as he struggled away after his new friend.
    “An unusual moniker,” said the woman, drawing her eyebrows together. “Named after his pa, was he?” She was fishing, unable to settle for so little information.
    “No,” Pell said, but on second thought smiled, not wishing to sow suspicion where she needed friends. “He is my brother. The youngest of five.”
    “Five brothers!” crowed Mrs. Bewes, hands clutched