Chapter 3: The Four Horsemen
The next day I wandered around the Levels campus like a confused tourist at Windsor Castle, hoping for a glimpse of the Queen, but continually finding myself in the gift shop or the toilets. All day I kept looking over my shoulders for the loose-limbed silhouette of Eddy Moon, without knowing why. My map failed me completely. Somehow, when I should have been in Spanish, I ended up in the hallway of the Avalon residence. A maze of stables ensnared me on my way to English.
The one constant of the day was the red-haired girl who stared at Eddy in history. She was in both my art and physics groups. The first time we recognised each other across the room we smiled at one another. The second time she came and sat beside me. “You again!”
“I know. You’re Pippa, right?”
She nodded. “And you’re Madeleine.” Her pale blue eyes examined me through thick glasses. “What’s your sport?”
I chuckled. Already I was getting used to Levels, but still its central bizarreness struck me. “I’m a swimmer.” I resisted asking the same question back, but it didn’t stop Pippa.
“I’m a rider.” She touched the tight braid she had made of her gleaming red hair. “Three day eventing.”
“Right.” I had no idea what she was talking about.
“I’m a bit bored of it, to be honest.”
I raised my eyebrows. This wasn’t the Levels way. “Really?”
She nodded. “I can’t wait to stop it all. I would now, apart from the College would probably chuck me out. That’s why I’m taking three such different subjects. So that when life no longer revolves around sports, I’ll still have a wide set of options.”
I nodded. Her selection showed much more sense than mine. Mum had advised me to focus on arts, or science, or humanities in my choice of three main subjects. I couldn’t. I loved the ideas of myself as an artist and a scientist and a book-reading academic so much I hadn’t been able to choose. So I went for all three at the same time.
Pippa’s voice dropped to a murmur as the teacher came in. “Which house are you in?”
“Logres, but I’m not a boarder.” I whispered back.
Her mouth drew down at the corners. “Oh shame.”
I smiled at the implication that she would have liked to have spent more time with me in the evening and at weekends.
At lunch I wandered around school, telling myself I was looking for Sarah. As I went I debated what I should say to Eddy Moon if I bumped into him, switching between an urge to apologise and an impulse to tell him off again. What made him think it was acceptable to completely ignore the person sitting next to you? Apart from the person sitting next to you giving you exactly that idea herself.
There was no sign of the Four Horsemen either, so I headed to Logres. As a member of the house, their sixth form common room was my place to hang out in the school. I found Sarah on the sofa in front of the TV and sat next to her. “Hiya. What’s going on?”
She looked at me out the corner of her eye. “Nothing. Usual. Trying to pretend I’m not hungry.”
I didn’t like to ask Sarah about the horsemen or Eddy, because she’d get the idea they interested me. I was curious about them, but not in the hormone fuelled way she would think. The mere idea of boys calling themselves the Four Horsemen was fascinating, in an obnoxious kind of way. I tried approaching the subject at an angle. “So. What’s so amazing about Camelot?”
Sarah’s face lit up. “You haven’t been?”
I shook my head. “It is only my second day.”
“Right. It’s on the far side of the grounds. On the other side of the cricket pitch. It’s basically a huge castle. They’re having a party next Saturday, though. If you can get yourself an invitation you’ll see it. It’s the biggest party of the year.”
“Are you going?”
“Are you kidding me? I think I would have mentioned it. Like, within three minutes of meeting you maximum. You know why none of the Camelot kids are around much this week? It’s because they get so bugged by everybody hassling them for invitations. Last year this Italian Prince bought one for a thousand pounds. They didn’t let him in and they chucked the kid who sold it him out of Camelot. He joined us in Logres, he’s over there.” She pointed at a stocky boy chatting with two friends in a corner. “He’s a wrestler.”
I wrinkled my mouth as if at a sour taste. “Really? That’s um, surprising.”
Sarah didn”t understand. “It’s not. If I had a thousand pounds and someone to buy it from I’d pay for a ticket. The party is to choose the new head of house. They all sneak into the swimming pool for some kind of challenge, then go back to Camelot and stay up all night.”
“Don’t they get in trouble?”
She shrugged. “The housemaster knows it’s happening, but the prefects are in charge.”
“Prefects?” I thought prefects no longer existed. Older students with responsibilities and powers over other students. “Oh God. Are prefects allowed to, like, punish people?”
“Oh no. Not anymore. They just organise things and run each houses’ sport teams.”
The bell rang for the start of the afternoon’s lessons. No sign of Eddy Moon then, or for the rest of the day. I caught a school bus after the last class, and at home I found Mum waiting in the kitchen with bread sliced and toaster primed. Though tempted, I decided not to say anything about Eddy Moon. There wasn’t really anything to say.
“School’s cool.” I sat at the kitchen table spreading butter on toast. “I mean, it’s completely like Hogwarts, crazy traditions and rules and weird names for everything. But I’ll get used to it.”
“And what are the other students like?” Sitting across the table from me, Mum cut her own toast in half.
“They seem okay. There’s this one girl in three of my classes, Pippa. She seems nice. And Sarah’s alright. I mean, she’s always upbeat.”
Mum nodded, chewing on her toast.
“What about you? How was your day?”
“I got you a present.”
My eyes widened.
“It’s kind of a back to school thing. Plus I know out in the countryside it’s harder to be independent. You can’t jump on and off the tube like you used to in London.”
Now I narrowed my eyes. What was she talking about? “Have you got me a horse and cart?”
“Not quite. Follow me.” She led me out the back door and around to the side of the house, where a gleaming black bicycle leaned against the wall.
I wasn’t sure what to think. I’d ridden a bicycle sometimes when I was a kid, in the park, but not for years. Mum always thought London streets were too dangerous. “Um, Mum. Thanks, I think.”
“Don’t you like it?”
“Of course I like it. It’s just, aren’t you worried I might fall off it?”
“Well.” Mum pursed her lips. “You can practice. Just here in Chalice Drive. It’s safe.”
I nodded firmly. “Of course. It’s a shame Hurley’s not here though. He could help.”
Hurley was Grandma’s foster son, about the closest I had to a cousin. Grandma adopted him when he was five years old. Hurley excelled at everything. That autumn he was at an exclusive American private school on a scholarship. He had taught me to ride a bike once before. I remembered him zooming around me on a BMX like a fearless little wasp while I wobbled along. I grasped the handlebars of the new bicycle. “But he’s not here. So I’ll have to do it myself.”
I wheeled the bike down the path and onto the road. This was yet another reason to regret Hurley’s absence. Since I learned we would be coming to live in Glastonbury I had wished dozens of times that he would be there.
I swung my leg over the saddle and pictured his smiling face. Hurley wore a permanent grin, nothing or nobody ever got him down. He would know how to respond to the Four Horsemen and the peculiar Eddy Moon.
Holding my breath, I pushed off and wobbled down Chalice Drive. With ten small, semi-detached houses on each side, the road didn’t see a
lot of traffic, and I would be safe exercising my bicycle skills.
Eddy Moon. He combined everything that was worst in boys. Being rich, and posh, and arrogant, and at the same time apparently stupid and unable to put one word in front of another.
Shakily I turned the bike at the end of the road. A little old lady emerged from a side alley, carrying a metal shopping basket. She waved.
“Evening,” I said. “Um, good weather!”
Good weather? Why could I never think of anything sensible to say? I thought again of Hurley, who along with a perma-grin had a smart or funny comment about everything. Strangers loved Hurley. I bit my lip. It was probably better that Hurley was away, the Four Horsemen would have pulled him straight into their arrogant little gang. Apart from anything else Hurley rode horses as well as he rode bicycles. I circled my new bike in front of number 17. Mum’s gleaming rich-person’s BMW looked out of place next to the faded red brick and small windows of the little house. If Hurley lived with us the house would be impossibly crowded. He wasn’t as big as Eddy Moon, but the house was really small.
I gripped the handlebars as hard as possible and concentrated on keeping a perfectly straight line, trying to push the image of Eddy Moon’s big, calloused hands from my mind. Something squawked in the branches of a large tree in a front garden. Stopping I looked up at a large bird, like a gigantic crow, on a high branch. With its wings raised on either side it reminded me of a bat, or a gargoyle.
The little old lady stood beside me.
I smiled at her. “What is it?”
“Nasty thing.” She shuddered. “Gives me the creeps.” She hurried away, watched by the gleaming orange eyes of the black bird.
One last circuit, then I pulled back into our drive and leaned the bike against the side of the house.
In the kitchen I stood at the sink to wash my hands. Mum was back at the table, looking through financial reports.
“You still didn’t tell me how your day was.” I inclined my head towards the papers. “Interesting reading?”
“Not really. Grandma let the business get into quite a state. There were problems with the bees in the summer, and you know what the economy’s like, people can barely afford bread, let alone organic honey to spread on it.”
I twisted the cold tap back and forth. “Will it be okay?”
She put her head on one side. “I think so. I’ll need to talk to the bank, and sharpen up the marketing, but it’s going to be an interesting challenge.” Her eyes dropped to the tap. “Let me do that.” She came around the table to stand beside me. “What I’m looking forward to is being my own boss.” She laid her hand on the tap, moving it imperceptibly. “I’ll go to work when I want, and when I’m there I’ll do exactly what I want.” Pipes rumbled upstairs somewhere, and water poured into the sink.
“Mum! That’s exactly what I did.” I shoved my hands into the stream, in case it vanished as mysteriously as it arrived. “How did you do that? Grandma used to do that as well.”
She smiled. “Just a knack. You’ll learn it soon enough.” She moved back toward the table. “Of course, the lease on the BMW will be up soon, and I’ll probably have to get a van instead. If I brand it with a nice logo I can probably write off a lot of the cost as business losses so that...”
I stared at the water running over my hands. Mum would have us driving around in an old van with pictures of bees all over it. I shuddered. The sooner I started riding my bicycle everywhere, the better. Water blasted from the tap in a torrent, splashing over my school blouse. “Mum! Make it stop!” The water stopped of its own accord, pipes clanging in the distance. “Oh, never mind.” I sighed.
Upstairs I sped through the bits of starter homework the teachers had given us. At eight o’clock the smell of Italian cooking infiltrated my room, so I descended the narrow stairs. A square dish of lasagne steamed in the centre of the kitchen table.
“Vegetarian?” I asked.
“Of course, dear.”
I realised another advantage of life at Levels. Lunch there had been lavish and laden with meat. I would be able to get around the enforced vegetarianism of home.
I set the table, then sat down as Mum ladled lasagne onto our plates.
“So...” I chewed on a mouthful. “Have you heard of a family called Hechter? I ran into a boy called that this morning. They’re apparently quite big around here.”
“Mm.” Mum nodded. “Colonel Hechter has a big farm near Wedmore. A huge place. He used to be a banker. I ran across him now and then in the city. But he quit the rat race ages ago, now he breeds shire horses. People pay to look around and get pulled in a big horse cart.
“Ah.” I couldn’t help smiling at a sudden flashback. When I was ten years old Grandma had taken me to the Shire Horse Centre. The scale of everything transfixed me. The width of the doors and the height of the fences, but most particularly the gigantic size of the horses. Their heads as long as I was tall, towering over me, shifting massive, feathery feet and huffing like steam trains.
Mum looked at me. “Grandma took you there once. You would have met his son. What’s his name?” Her speech suddenly lost its rhythm.
“It’s Kieran.”
“There’s another one.”
“Really?” I took another mouthful of lasagne.
“A foster boy. I think his name’s...” Again Mum’s voice rose a tone. “His name’s Eddy or something.”
“Really?” I repeated, but this time with ten times as much interest. “Eddy is Kieran’s brother?”
“Well kind of, the Hechters have been looking after him. I don’t know what happened to his parents but...”
I swallowed the lasagne. “Do you know anything else about him?” I winced. I hadn’t meant to sound interested in him. I wasn’t really interested in him.
Mum narrowed her eyes at me. “Why?”
“No reason. I mean, he’s in my history class.”
“How’s he getting on?”
I sat up straight. It seemed we shared an interest in young Mr. Moon. “Well. I don’t know. He doesn’t say much. He’s a bit, you know, awkward.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I may have snapped at him.”
“Madeleine, no.”
“Well I was nervous, first day of school and everything.”
“He hasn’t had the easiest of times. I think it would be good if you could be nice to him, yes?”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened, as such. But he’s more or less an orphan, and I don’t know if he and... Well never mind. Do you want some more salad?” She stood up and took some lettuce leaves from the colander. I narrowed my eyes at her back. There was a subtext here that I was missing somehow.
I couldn’t get any more out of her, so I headed upstairs to finish off the short history question. ‘Were there any early signs of Napoleon’s greatness? What were they?’
Nothing obvious, was the easy answer. Napoleon wasn’t even top of his class. I looked at the names emblazoning my shelf of biographies, neither were they. I flipped open my beloved Macbook and said a silent thank you to Steve Jobs, another great man. Maybe there was an example of Napoleon being inventive? I pulled his biography from the bookcase and flicked through it for five minutes, then grinned. Half an hour later, the Macbook displayed the story of how Napoleon took two years vacation at the start of his first job so he could fight a revolution, then came back and got promoted. He had his own idea of the possible. I edited it word by word, anxious to give a good impression for my first task.
Tired, I went to bed early then lay sleepless in the silence for what seemed like an age. For some reason the image running through my head, again and again, was of Eddy Moon rearranging his lanky frame, so that he could both sit next to me and keep his back to me. The grace with which he marshalled his long limbs was like a lion falling asleep in the shade.
The next morning I decided to give my bicycle its first try out. The route to the school wound gently downhil
l on the way out of Glastonbury, then flattened out onto long, straight roads as I headed across the levels. I hummed to myself. It was much easier than I’d imagined. Willow trees lined the drainage ditch beside the road and I startled an awkward heron from one of them.
Just as I began to think I might enjoy my new life in the countryside a cacophony of noise wobbled me almost into the ditch. Three enormous dogs leaped at the fence on the other side of the road, running to keep pace with my bike and barking and growling as they ran.
I yelled swearwords at them, got my head down and quickly left them behind. The adrenalin kick from my fear of the dogs meant I covered the second half of the journey twice as quickly as the first half and arrived at Levels after forty minutes. It was a good morning workout and I was sure my swim coach – who I was due to meet that afternoon – would approve.
First lesson was history. I hurried there and arrived in an empty classroom. After choosing the same place as before, I sat and stared at the door. One by one I counted the other students in, seven, eight, Pippa was ninth and came and sat next to me. Inside I cursed. Outside I smiled. “Hi Pippa. You okay? How did you get on with the Napoleon question?”
“Oh, fine I...” She stopped talking, her eyes fixed on the doorway.
The light in the room dimmed slightly. Eddy Moon filled the doorframe. From under his hair he glanced around the room and chose the opposite seat to my own. He sat down, pulled a textbook from his bag and read until Ms. Merrick arrived.
I glanced at him once a minute through the lesson. He never looked my way. Not once. From the moment he sat down I didn’t get a single glance at the beautiful, leonine face. Then the lesson finished and he was gone.
“What’s with him?” I hissed at Pippa. “Not very friendly is he?”
She stretched her mouth down at the corners. “I don’t know. He looks like a complete scarecrow, though, eh?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to argue with her, but I wasn’t going to pick on anybody else’s school uniform. My own was dodgy enough. “Don’t know. Maybe he’s an inner beauty.” To me his outer beauty was perfectly obvious.
She laughed and led the way to Spanish. As we went we talked about the Camelot party at the weekend. Pippa didn’t have an invitation but was still hopeful. When I told her I didn’t want one she didn’t believe me.
After classes I hurried to the pool. Pools. Levels College boasted a pair of Olympic sized pools and nerves fluttered in my stomach as I got changed. I had only raced in Olympic pools, never trained in them. Fifty metres was a long way to churn up and down for two hours.
In my swimsuit I hurried out onto the poolside, eager to get into the water. The boys’ changing room opened out beside the girls’, and I emerged at the same time as four boys. I glanced at them, then felt my stomach flip over with embarrassment. I crossed my arms. After two days seeking them, I had run into the Four Horsemen. They fanned out across the poolside, making me tiptoe along the very brink to get around them.
“Hey,” said Kieran Hechter.
I kept going, wishing I’d remembered to bring my towel out of the changing rooms.
“Hey,” barked another voice. “He’s talking to you.”
I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t heard them. I turned slowly.
Tiago Toscano stood at the front of the little group. He inclined his head towards his friend. “Kieran was talking to you. Stop and listen.” A lilting accent coloured his voice, but at the same time it sounded flat and commanding, as if talking to a servant. His athletic build was marred only by a long scar from the base of his throat, across his shoulder.
My breathing, shallow with embarrassment, switched to a gasp of fury. “I’m training. You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Actually we can tell you what to do.” Shaven headed Gennady Ivanovich drawled over Toscano’s shoulder. “Do you know who we are?” From his tone it was obvious he thought they were kings of the universe.
I looked from one member of the foursome to the next. I had been around swimmers all my life, so I was used to toned bodies and broad shoulders, but the Horsemen were something else. They looked like a group of sculptures in a Greek temple. Their biceps swelled in solid curves and the muscles of their chests and shoulders formed solid panels, like armour. All four had powerful looking legs curving into slim waists. Their tans ranged from deep gold to dark bronze, but all were marred with one or two heavy scars.
I took a breath. “No,” I lied. “And I don’t want to.”
Rami Ahmed began in a deep, grating voice. “We’re the-”
Kieran Hechter stopped him with a raised hand. “That’s not the point.” He pushed his glossy brown hair away from his forehead. Sinews flickered in his forearm, where he wore his scar, like a four horsemen membership badge. He bore another on his side, extending from his pronounced abs to his right nipple. “The point is, we’re having a party and we’d like you to come.”