Jade and the Hunters Read online

  ‘Jade, it hurts to breathe.’

  ‘You’re going to be fine now, Bec. Just relax: I’m here.’

  Crouching next to Becca, Jade noticed that her own shirt sleeves were now see-through with rain. She stared up at the hill top down from which the others were coming. Did she and Tani really ride down there? It seemed unbelievable now.

  ‘The others will be here soon,’ Jade reassured her friend, before muttering to herself: ‘They’d better be.’

  The Blooding

  As if understanding the gravity of the situation, Tani stood patiently, tail to the rain, not grazing like Dusty, just watching his rider sitting next to the girl on the ground. When he raised his head, pricked his ears despite the rain and whinnied, Jade knew they wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

  ‘Over here!’ she called to the shape of four distant, bedraggled horses and riders.

  ‘Jade!’ Laura shouted. The group was trotting now, going as fast as they dared over the slippery paddock. ‘She OK?’

  ‘Think so.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Jacqui asked, seeing Jade’s sopping shirt and muddy jodhpurs. ‘You didn’t fall, too?’

  ‘No, I’ve been sitting next to Becca.’

  ‘Becca?’ Laura had slid off Sofia’s back to crouch at her friend’s side.

  ‘Hey, Laura.’ Becca still wasn’t moving. Her complexion was a pale greyish-green, with her freckles standing out almost black in contrast.

  ‘I called 111 when we had reception up on the hill. It’ll take a while, but an ambulance is on its way. Lucky you fell down on the flat, near the road; if you’d been up the hill with us, we’d have needed a chopper.’

  ‘I’ll wait with her. You should get Willa out of this rain,’ Miriam told Jacqui, taking off her own jacket and draping it over the fallen girl. ‘In fact, it’s no use everyone catching cold — you girls should get back to shelter, too.’

  ‘No,’ Jade and Laura said, in unison.

  ‘Miri, you and Jade will be the ones catching colds, out in only your shirtsleeves.’

  ‘Got a bit of natural padding,’ Miriam replied, patting her stomach. ‘And this to keep me warm,’ she added, grinning and taking another small swig from her flask. ‘It’s not the done thing to give brandy anymore, is it?’ she asked, looking at Becca’s ashen face.

  ‘I think maybe I should stay,’ Jacqui said. ‘You’re wearing a singlet, aren’t you, Willa? You’ll be fine.’

  Willa seemed to consider disagreeing, but, perhaps recalling how her grizzling had been received earlier, nodded silently.

  ‘Besides,’ Jacqui continued, ‘I’m the one with the cellphone.’

  ‘Is there reception down here?’ Jade asked.

  Jacqui fished the phone out of her pocket and peered at the screen. She swore quietly.

  ‘Never mind,’ Miriam soothed, ‘we’ll be all right.’ She held out the flask to Jacqui.

  Jacqui shook her head, annoyed. ‘We’ll be fine, Miri — it’s this poor girl that I worry about. It’s Becca, isn’t it, sweet?’ Until this point, everyone had been speaking as if Becca were unconscious.

  ‘Yep,’ Becca said quietly.

  ‘Where’s it sore, love?’

  ‘My top half.’

  ‘She said it hurt to breathe,’ Jade cut in.

  ‘Ribs, probably,’ Miriam said with a tone of experience. ‘Are you sure a sip of this wouldn’t help?’

  ‘Put it away, Miri!’ Jacqui snapped.

  ‘Fine.’

  The girls and women argued about how best to make Becca comfortable until the ambulance arrived. Eventually, everyone was shivering in their shirts, and all they could see of Becca was her white, helmeted head sticking out from under a pile of sodden jackets. Jade had gently unclipped the helmet’s chin strap and loosened Becca’s tie, but otherwise everyone was too cautious to move the invalid.

  ‘You girls at least should keep warm,’ Jacqui bossed. ‘And the horses, too. Why don’t you ride around the paddock for a bit? Or, better still, you could try and catch up with the hunt. I tried to call Prue to let her know what had happened, but of course she wasn’t answering. It’d be good if you could find her and fill her in.’

  ‘Which way would we go?’ Jade asked, not wanting to leave Becca, and especially not wanting to get lost somewhere in the Deaths’ thousand hilly hectares.

  ‘Never mind!’ The weather had cleared enough for Jacqui to see a horse and rider cantering towards them. ‘Speak of the devil! She must have checked her voice-mails during a break.’

  ‘Wiggle your toes,’ Mrs Death ordered. She watched Becca’s jodhpur boots twitch a few times. ‘And now make fists.’

  Becca’s left hand moved fine, but curling the fingers on her right hand made her wince.

  ‘Did you black out at all?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘How long have you been with her, Jade?’

  It felt like at least two hours, but probably wasn’t more than twenty minutes. ‘I’m not sure — maybe half an hour.’

  ‘She’s been awake and lucid the whole time?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘Think so?’

  ‘She closed her eyes a few times. But you were still awake, eh, Becca?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Jacqui told Prue to stop interrogating the poor girls.

  ‘It’s for their own sake!’ Mrs Death replied. ‘This way, I can quickly tell the paramedic what’s happened and he won’t have to bother them. So what actually happened?’

  Given the opening, Laura couldn’t resist: ‘Zoe just rode on and left Becca lying by the fence. We saw from the hill!’

  ‘I see.’ Mrs Death seemed less affected by this information than Laura had hoped. ‘And you arrived on the scene first, Jade?’

  ‘Yeah. I saw Becca fall, and when she didn’t get up, and when no one else stopped to help, I rode down the hill.’

  Mrs Death nodded.

  ‘That hill,’ Laura said, pointing at the steep incline behind them. ‘More of a cliff really. It was amazing.’

  ‘You must have jumped the fence, too — the hill being on the other side,’ Mrs Death deduced. ‘A bit reckless.’

  ‘I was just thinking of Becca,’ Jade said, embarrassed.

  ‘Very brave of you,’ Miriam interjected. ‘Shows real guts.’

  Jade decided that she liked Miriam.

  Ignoring the praise, Mrs Death carried on with her questioning. ‘So, when Jade left, you called the ambulance, Jac?’

  ‘Yeah. That’d be about forty-five minutes ago now.’

  ‘They’ll be here soon, Becca; I promise. We’ve had them out here before — they should have that gate by the highway etched into their memories by now.’

  But it was still another twenty minutes before they heard a siren and saw flashing lights turning in at the gate. Jade, who had been leading Tani in circles, stopping frequently to hug his clammy, yet still warm, neck, sighed with relief.

  It wasn’t until she watched Becca being hoisted onto the stretcher, with a brace around her neck, that Jade realized how cold and achy her own limbs felt. Putting her wet jacket back on, she suddenly felt eager to be at home, watching a DVD with her dad, wearing old slippers and eating cinnamon toast. Tomorrow, she thought with great relief. Very soon now.

  Laura insisted on riding in the ambulance with Becca. Although the paramedics seemed less than pleased to have another twelve-year-old to look after, Mrs Death appeared annoyed at having no one to deal with Sofia, and Jade felt rather abandoned, Becca said that she would like Laura’s company and her word was final.

  ‘Excitement over,’ Mrs Death said as the ambulance drove away. ‘Now, let’s catch the hunt up.’

  Jade’s face fell. ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m having you on. I couldn’t jump and lead this slug.’ Mrs Death glanced at Sofia, who was at that moment meditatively scratching her knee with her teeth. ‘Besides, I bet they’re back at breakfast now, anyway — they were losi
ng the scent when I got your message, Jacqui.’

  ‘Breakfast it is, then,’ Jacqui said. ‘I think we could all do with some hot food and drink inside us.’

  Taking the main road (not caring at this point whether a hundred trucks went past) the cavalcade, made up of Mrs Death leading Sofia, Miriam leading Dusty, Jade, Willa and Jacqui as tail-end Charlie, were back at the stables in no time. Jade could hardly believe that all along they’d been so close to the Deaths’ house — the field had felt far more remote. But in less than half an hour they were walking towards the home paddock and past tired horses tied to trucks, rugged up and comfortably munching on buckets of feed.

  The riders were looking similarly comfortable in the stable. Wet jackets had been replaced with homespuns and polar-fleece vests that Jade recognized from the local vet clinic. (They came free if you bought ten packs of worming paste.) In the middle of the well-swept stable, Mr Death had set up trestle tables laden with plates of sandwiches, pies, sausage rolls and cakes, as well as pots of tea and coffee and assorted fizzy drinks and bottles of liquor.

  Cosima, Zoe, and her boarding-school friends, to whom Jade hadn’t been introduced, were sprawled on the old brown couch in the tack corner. Zoe waved vaguely at Jade, but didn’t seem to be beckoning her over. It was awkward: Jade couldn’t shadow Mrs Death all afternoon as she did the rounds chatting to the hunt club members. No, Jade would have to sit with the girls, whether they liked it or not.

  With a plastic cup of Fanta and a piece of bacon-and-egg pie, Jade shyly approached the clique. She was almost there when Jacqui called her name.

  ‘Come here, Jade — we need you.’

  Relieved, Jade turned to the familiar face. Jacqui was chatting to an extremely thin, weather-beaten man of about sixty.

  ‘This is Mr Donaldson, Master of Hounds. He needs a young forehead for his hare’s tail.’

  Jade understood very little of Jacqui’s last sentence. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You know about blooding?’

  ‘Umm …’

  ‘Well, they got the hare — it’s hanging up over there actually, by the graffiti.’ Jade’s eye followed Jacqui’s pointing finger to above the stable door. Below some faded fluorescent-pink tagging, a soft brown creature with long ears and a broken neck was strung up by its hind legs. Jade thought its tail was implausibly white, considering it had been running through the mud all morning.

  ‘Jac says you were pretty brave, riding to help your friend,’ said Mr Donaldson.

  Jade nodded, not sure how modest she should be.

  ‘This your first hunt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you jumped a full-wire, eh? That’s good going.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It was the way she charged straight down the hill that got me,’ Jacqui interrupted. ‘You’re definitely mad enough to be a hunter, Jade. And just right for blooding. You don’t mind?’

  Both the adults were looking at Jade proudly, as if they had awarded her first prize in the pony grand prix at the Flaxton Show.

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ Jade lied, not really sure what they were talking about.

  Mr Donaldson pulled a hunting flick knife out of his pocket and tapped the side of his beer bottle, trying to get everybody’s attention. Then someone put a thumb and forefinger in their mouth and whistled — that silenced the crowd.

  ‘Another good hunt. Thanks to the Deaths for their property and for the spread.’ Mr Donaldson was no orator. ‘Without further ado, we’ve got here a young girl who was hunting for the first time today. Pretty miserable weather to do it in, but she got around, and even helped her friend who took a tumble. Her name’s Jade, and she’s going to get blooded.’

  Mrs Death started a patchy round of applause. No one knew Jade, after all.

  Pulling the hare down from where it hung, Mr Donaldson held its fluffy white tail in one hand, his knife in the other, and the rest of the hare’s body between his knees. The knife must have been very sharp indeed, as it only took him a couple of saws before the tail was free. Laying the body outside the stable door, ready for the hounds, Mr Donaldson beckoned Jade over.

  With horror, Jade suddenly realized what was about to happen. Trying to appear grateful for the honour, Jade stood still and closed her eyes as the wet, red end of the tail was wiped from her hairline to between her eyebrows. Opening her eyes, she forced a smile for the crowd, who clapped again.

  ‘Want to keep it?’ Mr Donaldson held out the tail.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Fair enough. Hey, don’t rub it.’

  Jade had inadvertently reached up to the blood. There was blood on her fingers. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Just leave it for the rest of breakfast. That’s the tradition.’

  Trying to ignore the tight feeling of the blood drying on her forehead, Jade approached the couch again.

  ‘That was nice of him,’ Zoe said to Jade. ‘Usually only riders who’ve actually followed the hunt get blooded.’

  ‘I followed the hunt.’

  ‘You went through the gates—’

  ‘She jumped at least one full-wire,’ Mrs Death cut in. ‘After she rode down Blind Man’s Bluff. In the rain.’

  Zoe laughed. ‘Did Tani bolt again?’

  ‘No,’ Jade said.

  ‘So what did you go down there for, then? Are you crazy?’

  ‘I saw Becca fall off and I wanted to make sure she was OK. No one else stopped to check!’

  Zoe’s face fell a little. ‘It would’ve been dangerous to stop — there were other riders behind me.’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ Mrs Death told her daughter with unnerving lightness. ‘Luckily for Becca, Jade was brave enough to ride to her rescue. So, who thinks Jade deserved to be blooded?’

  Zoe’s two friends agreed. And, in amongst the other voices, was a deep little voice: ‘I do.’

  ‘Cos?’ Zoe exclaimed.

  Mrs Death didn’t say anything; she grabbed her youngest daughter in an uncharacteristic hug. ‘Good girl,’ she said, eventually letting go. ‘Good girl. Let’s go inside for a minute, eh?’

  When Cosima and Mrs Death had gone, Jade sat down in the extra space on the sofa. Ignoring the hare’s blood on her fingers, she began eating her piece of pie and washing it down with quick gulps of the Fanta.

  ‘So, you go to Flaxton School?’ one of the girls asked.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nearly thirteen.’

  ‘How do you know Zoe?’

  ‘Her dad asked me to baby-sit her when he was out of town,’ Zoe cut in.

  ‘Baby-sit — truly?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  The girls laughed. Jade tried to laugh, too, but failed. Why should she sit with people who didn’t really want to talk to her? In fact, why should she have to wear itchy hare’s blood on her face? Scratching her forehead, Jade stood up.

  ‘Just going to get more food,’ she excused herself, as calmly as she could. Zoe nodded; the others were still laughing.

  At the trestle table, Jade chose a couple of cheese-and-onion sandwiches. While she was pouring herself another glass of fizzy, she overheard Mr Donaldson chatting to Mr Death about the food.

  ‘She’s a godsend all right,’ Mr Death said, in a slightly gruffer voice than usual. ‘I don’t know how Prue has time to do it all, but she always provides a good spread. She was up at the crack of sparrow’s fart this morning baking cakes.’

  ‘What a woman. And a beaut whipper-in, too. You know, mate, that should be you out there.’

  ‘If only. Swamped with work at this time of year, though.’

  Jade looked up and frowned at Mr Death. He gave her the quickest of winks.

  ‘Here, you deserve this,’ Jade said, giving Tani the bread from one of her sandwiches. At least the party was in the stable and there were horses to talk to.

  Tani’s whiskery lips licked butter off Jade’s palm. ‘Home tomorrow, boy. Back to Mr White’s. You can see you
r big sister, Pip, again. She’s more like your grandmother, though, eh?’

  ‘You can go home this afternoon if you like.’

  Jade spun around. ‘Dad!’

  ‘A little blonde friend of yours rang me at home. She suggested that my heroic daughter might like to be picked up this afternoon, seeing as Becca’s mum won’t be coming tomorrow. I hope she was right.’

  ‘Yes! She was so right.’ Not caring if the older girls on the sofa were watching, Jade gave her dad a big hug. ‘I’ll be five minutes. I’ll put Tani’s boots on and — what about Tani?’

  ‘I borrowed Mr White’s float. I think you’ll be more than five minutes, though — remember you’ll have to pack up Laura’s and Becca’s things as well as your own. And get poor old Dusty ready to go, too; we’ll be taking him home with us. Apparently Becca’s broken her collarbone as well as a couple of ribs, so she won’t be up to transporting horses for a while.’

  Having dressed the ponies in appropriate travel wear, and made a messy pile of equestrian gear for her dad to lug to the car, Jade dashed inside, one last time, to the cold bunk-room. Laura had managed to spread her possessions all over the cow-skin rug, but Becca’s were quite tidy and easy to pack up. It must be some sort of record, Jade thought, managing to stuff three sleeping bags into their covers in about two minutes. They weren’t the neatest bundles, but they would do.

  ‘My dad’s here to pick me up,’ Jade explained to Mrs Death and Cosima, who were still in the kitchen.

  ‘Let’s help Jade with all these things,’ Mrs Death told Cosima.

  ‘OK,’ Cosima said, making her mother beam again.

  ‘Thank you, Jade,’ Mrs Death said quietly, when Cosima was walking ahead, holding two of the sleeping bags. ‘I don’t know what happened, but I get the feeling you were at least partly responsible for Cosima’s recovery. So, thanks.’

  ‘I didn’t really do anything,’ Jade said.

  ‘All the same, it’s been nice having you stay.’ To Jade’s surprise, Mrs Death bent down and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Thanks for having us — all of us. It’s been … interesting.’ Jade couldn’t lie.

  Mrs Death laughed. ‘I’m sure it has. Zoe, fetch the ponies.’ They were at the car now, loading the bags into the small boot. It surprised Jade that Zoe had bothered to come out to say goodbye.