The Last Horseman Read Free

presence was of no importance, Belmont turned back and strode towards the officers’ mess. The cavalry sergeant shouted commands and troopers led in their mounts. Lawrence Baxter let out a sigh of relief. And for the first time Edward sensed his friend’s apprehension, his anxiety at the close proximity of the hardened soldiers. Edward, though, felt a ripple of excitement. He could imagine these men galloping knee to knee in extended formation against a formidable enemy and careering through their lines, sabres swishing and slashing. As he led his horse out on to the parade ground not one of the troopers gave the two young men a second glance. They didn’t have to. One dismissive look was enough to make Edward feel that he meant less to the cavalrymen than a fly swished by a horse’s tail. The vast parade ground had been suddenly vanquished by these bold men and he was glad to ride through the gates towards the open hills that lay beyond – as the mixture of trepidation and admiration mingled with an inexplicable fizz of excitement.

C HAPTER T HREE
    A few miles north of the city Joseph Radcliffe stood in front of a gravestone. By the time he had left the house to ride out to the small hillside country cemetery, Dermot McCann was already buried in an unmarked grave within the prison walls. But it did not take the execution of a man to remind Radcliffe of his own loss, and each week, at this time, he would make the journey to stand before this grave. The words he uttered were always inaudible, but the guilt he felt must, he thought, be apparent to all. There were few among his friends and associates who knew of his personal tragedy, and this weekly act of remembrance on the windswept hill allowed him sufficient privacy to shed his tears. It was an indulgence he always vowed to resist, but the loss he felt continued to torment him.
    A shout, a whoop, the sound of hooves broke into his reverie. The folding hills and scattered woodlands obscured the riders whose voices he heard in the distance. With a few strides he cleared the low overhang that sheltered the grave so he could look out over the stretch of valley below. Two riders came in at the gallop, young men hunched low across their horses, arms moving rhythmically, urging their lathered horses on, neither using a whip. Recognizing them he almost called out, an arm already raised, his hat gripped ready to signal his presence. But he faltered and stayed silent, watching Edward lead his friend by at least half a length. The joy of seeing his son ride so beautifully, in perfect harmony with the horse, made him wish his wife could share the moment. Regret squeezed his heart, and he kept silent and let the riders disappear from view. With a final glance at the grave he walked back to where his horse munched lazily on the sweet grass that grew free of the frost beneath the hedgerows where brambles and thorns encircled the field that held the dead. No harm could befall them ever again.
    *
    It was a day to rid himself of the stain of the previous night’s killing and he had agreed to ride out to meet his friend Lieutenant Colonel Alex Baxter. An hour later his horse clattered across the cobbled courtyard of an Irish landowner, Thomas Kingsley, a man whose roguish charm concealed secrets of value to both the British Army and the Irish Nationalists. But no one could determine on whose side his true allegiance lay. The horse-breeder could sell a donkey to a monkey and enter it as a three-year-old thoroughbred filly in the mile-long Irish Oaks race. And what’s more he could no doubt fix the race so the donkey and its chattering jockey would win.
    Radcliffe saw Kingsley and Baxter standing at the far side of the stable yard where a groom held an unsaddled horse’s halter. Baxter was a lean man, a regular army officer all his life, one of the few in the officer corps who was not from the aristocracy. He took a serious approach to his manner of command, and the discipline he