If Wishes Were Horses Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  DEDICATION

  IF WISHES WERE HORSES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1998 by Anne McCaffrey.

  Cover art copyright © 2006 by Charles Bernard.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidepress.com

  DEDICATION

  To Amelia Michael Johnson

  my middle granddaughter

  who can read this for her own self.

  IF WISHES WERE HORSES

  Of course, many people in our small county village sought advice and help from my mother long before the War started because she was quite wise as well as gifted with a healing touch. Often, day and night, we would hear the front door knocker — shaped like a wyvern it was, with a stout curled tail — bang against the brass sounding circle. That summons was undeniable, echoing through the Great Hall and up the stairs. There was no sleeping once someone started pounding. Sometimes they didn’t pound but tapped, quietly but insistently, so that one was awakened more by the muted repetition than the noise. From the time I was twelve, I got roused quite as often as my mother did. Of course, I was also able to turn over and go back to sleep, which my mother could not.

  “Those of us who can help should not deny it to others,” my mother was apt to say, usually to still my father’s grumblings. “I’ll just see what I can do for them.”

  “Day and night?” my father would demand in an exasperated or frustrated tone of voice.

  However, he was such a heavy sleeper that he was rarely disturbed when she slipped from the huge oak four-poster bed to answer the summons. As I grew older and she began to rely on me to assist her from time to time, I realized that he never answered the nocturnal rapping, though occasionally Mother would send me to wake him to help us. What I never did figure out — then — was how she knew, on our way down the main staircase, that she would need his protection to answer that particular summons.

  “Oh, it’s nothing mysterious, Tirza love,” Mother told me. “If you listen, you’ll learn quick enough the difference in the sound of the knocking. That can tell me a lot.”

  It took me nearly two years before I could differentiate between the hysterical, the urgent, or the merely anxious kind of rapping.

  Mother’s ability to have some sort of a solution to almost any problem had become somewhat legendary in our part of the Principality. She had a fund of general knowledge, an unfailing sympathy augmented by common sense, and a remarkable healing touch.

  “Much of the time, Tirza, they only need someone who listens, and they end up knowing their own solutions. You may well have inherited the family failing, love,” she went on with a sigh. When she saw my stunned expression, she had added cheerfully, “But we won’t know that for a while yet. Oh, it could be worse, know. You could have inherited Aunt Simona’s teeth.”

  That was quite enough to send me into the giggles.

  “Oh, I am terrible!” And she rolled her eyes in mock-penitence. “However could I be so unkind as to mention Aunt Simona’s teeth! I may have no jam with tea tonight.” Her lovely eyes twinkled. “Now do be a good child and get me some clean bottles for this lotion I’ve just made for Mistress Chandler.”

  Nonetheless, I never heard anyone, not even Father, refer to Mother’s ministrations as failings. Except perhaps Aunt Simona, who had more than large protruding front teeth to make her unlovable. Mother also had an unerring ability to know who was speaking from the heart, telling the truth, and who might be unwilling to own up to the consequences of his or her actions. Father would invariably delay his magisterial sittings until she could join him, though her participation was confined to sitting quietly at one end of the table. Strangers would try to prevaricate or settle blame elsewhere, but she was never deceived in any particular. She and Father must have worked out some sort of private signals, for she never spoke at these sessions, merely listened. Father was the one who pounced on the culprit and would be in possession of details that would stun the miscreant, often into a terrified and more accurate account of what had happened. So, if Lady Talarne Eircelly was known for her wisdom and healing, Lord Emkay Eircelly was equally renowned for fair and firm justice.

  During the day, village women were more apt to come to the kitchen door, slipping into the big warm room with all its marvelous aromas and giving Livvy some hint of what their problem was. A cup of tea and a “morsel to eat with it” — anything from a slab of cake or plate of fresh sweet biscuits — would be instantly served by our Livvy. Even if that had not been Mother’s standing order, Livvy was the sort of person who knew the soothing properties of nice hot tea and a treat or two. Some folk eased in quietly, almost apologetically; others would already be in tears and found themselves comforted by Livvy’s ample self. The shyer men would come to the kitchen, too, murmuring about not wishing to disturb her ladyship.

  “Which same,” Livvy would say tartly when she sent Tess to guide them to wherever Mother was at that time of day, “is exactly what they want to do and why they came. Mostly,” Livvy added, banging her pots and lids about or doubling the energy with which she did her present task, “all they need is to hear pure common sense. If they’d stop and think, which a body should be able to do, they’d see how to handle things. Seems to me as if they have to have Authority give ’em the word. Wear Milady out, so they will.” This threat would be accompanied by one of her gusty sighs. “And that’s not fair on her. What’ll happen if they’ve wore her out so much she’s unable to see to all the things she has to do in any one day or another?”

  “Could they wear Mother out?” my brother, Tracell, asked, startled. We had seen the latest arrival, for he had skulked about the herb garden, getting up the courage to come to the kitchen door. And we, dreadful children that we were, had followed — just in case there might be something we could wheedle out of Livvy when she had finished dispensing hospitality to him. “I heard her tell Aunt Rachella that it was having babies that wears her out.”

  “Most it would, the way she has them,” Livvy had said with a snort. “Two at a time.”

  “Catron came by herself,” Tracell reminded her.

  Livvy humphed. “Well-bred ladies like your dear mother ought not to be having twins. That’s for common folk, not ladies!”

  “Why not?”

  “Now, Lady Tirza, that’s not for me to tell you and you will kindly forget . . . what was just said, I wouldn’t want anyone saying I’d said a word against Lady Talarrie.” And she passed us the plate of lady cakes.

  “Mother’s not having another set of twins, is she?” Tracell demanded anxiously.

  “I should hope not!” Livvy said so firmly that we knew she must, indeed, know.

  Anyway, Mother had always told us, her oldest, when new babies were coming. She’d even known that Catron was coming by herself. Then she had Andras and Achill. And, when Father came back from the Miriseng Campaign, she told us that the next pair would be girls, Diana and Desma.

  “So, don’t you fret, young Tracell,” Livvy said, putting the now empty plate in the sink, “about your lady mother. She’s got strength for seven and sense for a dozen. Just do your best not to add to the trials and tribulations everyone else brings her.”

  “She’s our mother,” Tracell said stoutly.

  “For which you should be eternally grateful. Now out of my kitchen! I can hear her ladyship’s step, and you’ve no need to be here to embarrass young Sten. Like as not, she’ll have to bring him through here to the still room, so make yourselves scarce.”

  As we could hear my mother’s voice with the phrase that ever seemed to be on her
lips, “I’ll just see what I can do about that right now . . .”

  We were out the door in a flash. “I’ll see what I can do about it,” was Mother’s habitual response to most matters brought to her attention.

  In itself, the phrase was unusually effective. For instance, the day Tray fell off his pony and broke one of the bones in his forearm, her calmly confident, “Now I’ll just see what I can do about this . . .” cut him off mid-howl even though she had just given a careful yank on his wrist. I had heard the grate of the bones as they settled into line again. We used our two riding crops as temporary splints, tied on with the flounce of Mother’s petticoat. Tray was too surprised and — I must say — rather brave to forego any further outcry, though he was dreadfully pale until we got him back to the house and into his bed.

  * * * *

  I’m not sure why bad news has to pick nice, sunny spring days to arrive and alter perfectly contented lives. But I had noticed that Mother had been wearing all three of her special crystals for the last few days, and usually she wore only the one. She had also been casting frequent glances up the north road, outside the gates of Mallafret Hall, that led to Princestown. I did too, having caught her nervousness, but it was she in the end who saw the messenger, beating his lathered and weary horse up the long drive. Immediately she summoned my father from his study, sent me to get ale, bread and cheese from the kitchen, and ordered Tray to collect one of our fast and durable hunters from the stables.

  “Bring up that bright bay, the one you say has no bottom to him,” she said. “Bridled.”

  “No saddle?”

  “The messenger will use his own.”

  “What messenger?” I asked Tray, because the thick trunks of the oak trees that lined the drive briefly masked the oncoming rider.

  “The one on his way up the avenue. Go! Now!”

  No one argued with that tone in Mother’s voice, and Tray raced for the stables as I ran to the kitchen. So we all appeared, along with Father, just as Prince Sundimin’s courier, his face gaunt with fatigue, as exhausted as the lathered mount who staggered up our drive, reached the wide front stairs.

  His message, while brief, was momentous, announcing that Prince Refferns of Effester had started a war with our Principality. Our good Prince Sundimin perforce had to raise an army to defend our cities and lands. All liegemen were to honor their oath to their prince.

  “Lord Eircelly,” the herald gasped, “muster your men with all possible speed.” Then he blinked with gratitude at the tankard of ale, which I held up to him while Mother gestured he should moisten his dry throat before continuing. “Deepest thanks, milady. Milord, the prince bade me to deliver into your very hands this message,” and he handed over a square of parchment, “and to assure you that the matter is of the gravest urgency.” He then tipped the tankard, drinking a good half of its contents. “I must also beg the favor of a replacement mount, milord,” he continued, “since I have far yet to go before I finish my assigned task.” Stiffly, he swung his right leg over the cantle and would have fallen against the horse had not my father, leaping forward, immediately lent a hand to steady him.

  “The favor is already granted, I see,” my father said at his driest, with a glance at Tray, who was leading a bright bay from the stable yard.

  “Sit, sir, and eat while we change the saddle,” Mother said and all but pushed the messenger onto the broad wing of the shallow stairs of Mallafret Hall.

  “Very good, my thanks, milady, milord, I was urged not to stop . . .”

  “Changing horses is scarcely a stop, my man,” my father said, “and you must restore yourself or you’ll not go much further on. Have you to ride all the way to the sea?”

  The weary man nodded, his mouth too full of bread and cheese to speak.

  “The road is good, the way is clear, and the sunshine will hold,” Mother said.

  By then, Tray and Father had changed the saddle to the bay’s back. As the man made two attempts to swing aboard his fresh mount, Mother tucked a second loaf in the saddlebag and urged him to eat as he rode onward.

  “The bay is genuine,” Father said. “Trust him. God’s speed!”

  Father stepped back and the man immediately kneed his fresh horse into a canter. He gave one wave as he turned right at the gate toward his next stop and the distant sea.

  “For that matter,” Tray said, “he could probably sleep on the bay and he’d keep going until he’s reined in. And you, my brave lad?” Tray asked the splay-legged, drooping headed mount whose breath came in wheezing gasps. “Shall we save you?”

  Father looked up from breaking the seal of the message with all its dangling official princely stamps.

  “I shan’t expect the impossible, Tracell,” my father said, gently, “but I’d hazard that he’s one of those marvelous plains’ Cirgassians and worth the effort.”

  “A Cirgassian?” Tray exclaimed, really looking at the exhausted animal.

  “Just look at the ears, the fine head, the deep barrel . . . if we can save him, we should try. Do see what you can do.” Then, having broken the seals, his eyes flicked through the usual florid opening paragraphs to the important part of how many men he must bring in answer to this muster.

  “Last year’s bad season in Effester has made Prince Refferns envious of our prosperity?” my mother asked.

  “As you so often do, my dear Talarrie, you have hit upon the crux of the matter. We are enjoined to give our liege prince the service and support due him as quickly as is humanly possible.”

  “Then the Shupp is low from the drought?” Mother asked.

  “Correct as usual, my prescient love. Tracell, see this poor fellow stabled in the thickest bed of straw you and Surgey can make, and groom him into such comfort as he may enjoy in his sad condition. Or would you rather take the drum to the village and announce the muster?”

  To my brother’s credit, the care of a horse of such a distinguished breed ranked first in importance. So it fell to Sir Minshall as Seneschal, with young Emond beating the drum, to speed to the village square to announce an immediate muster and set the disaster bell to pealing out its summons. There were plenty of young lads in the village to send to apprise outlying farms, beyond the range of even that melodious bell, of the emergency and the haste that must be made in answer to the summons. Mother, Livvy, and I helped Father pack his saddlebags, add an almost unneeded burnish to his armor, for Emond was not careless with his duties as equerry, and roll up his travel blankets and gear.

  Father immediately dispatched an advance party of armed troopers and appointed dawn by the next morning as the moment of departure for the larger force. Thirty mounted knights there were, plus fifty foot soldiers, the muster that our prince required of my father from his oath of fealty. Father looked very pleased with the speed at which all had assembled, ready to travel. More was in readiness than could have been expected for all it had been decades since the prince had had to call upon his liegemen to defend his borders.

  “Scarce twenty hours between the call to arms and our response,” Father murmured to my mother and me, for Tracell now held the bridle of Father’s heavy-boned war steed in the courtyard. In the courtyard and spilling beyond the graveled avenue, digging up the lawn with heavy boots and shod hooves, were the others, banners unfurled and faces grim.

  “Speed is surely a requirement in any muster,” my mother said proudly and lifted her face for his farewell kiss.

  “I didn’t think to assemble so smartly, though,” my father said, holding her in his arms.

  “I am not the only competent one in this Hall,” she said in an attempt at levity.

  Did I see tears in my father’s eyes at this moment of farewell? Possibly mine were overfull as well for I was frightened. All the soldiery looked so brave in their fine uniforms, all the metal shiny and dangerous.

  Everyone who could have come to see our brave men depart, lining the avenue where they could, and the northern road as far as we could see.

 
“I can leave all else in your hands, my dear Competence,” my father said to my mother as he stamped his feet into his heavy boots, the ones with extra flaps above the knee to prevent sword cuts to his thighs. The other armsmen of Mallafret Hall were no less efficient in preparing themselves and had organized baggage wains, pack animals, ammunition and additional horses.

  “Had you a warning you kept to yourself, Talarrie?” I heard my father softly ask my mother though they did not know I was within hearing distance.

  Mother’s hand went unerringly to the crystals she wore on the long chains about her neck.

  “I’d knowledge of a sort, so I thought to have everyone check their equipment. We can also be thankful that the year gave us a good spring to plant in.”

  “My wise and lovely Talarrie,” and there was a pause as they clung together.

  “You will be safe, my love,” she added as she stepped back, fingers tight about the crystals.

  So the troop moved at a smart trot, the foot soldiers hanging on to stirrup leathers to keep up with the mounted troops. They were cheered out of the gates of the Hall, and relatives and friends fell in behind the troop, accompanying them well up the main road to Princes town. With unbecoming pride, I hoped that they would be first to join the main army of Prince Sundimin.

  “When will they come back, Mother?” I asked when our brave troop was so far away that we could no longer see the dust the horses kicked up. I had been very much aware of the sorrow in my mother’s eyes and the tense grip of her fine fingers on her crystals.

  “Not soon enough, Tirza,” Mother said with a sad little smile. “And not all who left here this morning.” Then she gave me a little smile, cupping my head in her hand. “But he will return.” She released the crystals, picked up her skirts, and went back into the house.

  “Surely the war won’t take long, will it, Mother?” asked my brother. After the scurry to get everyone prepared, he looked disgruntled. At fourteen he was much too young to be mustered with the men and, as my father’s heir, he could not even go as drummer as had fourteen-year-old Riaret, the smith’s lad. Tray adored our father, as indeed he should, and while some of his lessons included the studying of old battles and sieges and such like, he certainly ought to have known that wars had a habit of taking far longer than the most optimistic opinion. But then, Father always won the mock-engagements they invented in three days, four at most.