The Secret Horses of Briar Hill

THE OLD PRINCESS LIKED to collect things. I know this because my room is in the attic. And except for that one time Jack and Benny sneaked up for a smoke, I am the only child who ever comes here. The stairs are narrow and steep. There are no lights, except for candles and lanterns, and a single window at each end. The storerooms are dusty and filled with crates covered in spiderwebs and stamped with words in foreign languages. Most of the crates are empty. When the princess left, she took almost everything valuable from downstairs, except the china plates and things we might need in the hospital. But I think, in her old age, she forgot about the boxes up here. I think everyone forgot.

It is lights-out, and I promised Sister Constance I wouldn’t sneak around, but in the attic I can move unseen and unheard. I light a candle and put it on a plate, which I set down next to the biggest box, an old trunk with rotting leather straps and sea-salt stains in the corners.

Outside, beyond the window, t

he moon is already a sliver, and it will grow more each night. I think of the box of Anna’s pencils. So many colors to find, and so far I have only two.

The trunk’s lid is heavier than I expected, and I strain to lift it off and lower it so it doesn’t crash loudly. It is packed with straw that is so old it has turned to dust. It catches in my throat and I stifle a cough as I dig around and find a package wrapped in newsprint. I unwrap it to find a small carving of a frog. It’s lovely, but made of gray stone, and the last thing I need is anything else gray, so I place it back in the crate. I unwrap another object: a golden box with a beetle on top and little pictures and symbols drawn on the sides. I’m not sure if gold counts as a proper color, since it isn’t on the pencil manufacturer’s list of rainbow colors. I don’t like the beetle anyway, so back into the trunk it goes. Then I pull out a velvet bag filled with clinking trinkets, and roll them onto my palm. Loose stone beads and some small carvings to go on a necklace: a woman with wings and a creature with a man’s body but a dog’s head. And then. A long string of blue-green beads that sparkle in the lantern light, and for the briefest moment, I do feel like a real explorer.

867-SEA TURQUOISE.

The color matches Anna’s turquoise colored pencil exactly! I carefully place the turquoise beads in my pocket and stand, dusting off my nightgown. Beside the heavy trunk are smaller boxes from a millinery. Some are round, some are long and flat, with LOCK & CO. and EDE & RAVENSCROFT stamped on the side. In the first one, I find an old-fashioned black hat with a short veil. The second and third are empty except for miles and miles of tissue paper. When I open the last one, my eyes light up. It is filled with soft satin fabric. 848-BLUSH PINK! I grin in delight at my good fortune and tear through the crumpled tissue paper to snatch it up. Only—it is not just fabric. It is a garment, and there is lace on the edges, and as I hold it up to the light, my eyes go wide.

It is a nightgown.

Not like my nightgown. Like one of those nightgowns. A woman’s nightgown.

Did this belong to the old princess? I can’t imagine a proper, distinguished lady dressed in pink silk and lace. I giggle a little at the thought, and then cover my mouth.

I should leave it in the box. I can’t go stringing up ladies’ underwear on the garden wall. What if Thomas peeks into the garden? What if the Horse Lord himself sees it, while delivering one of his notes?

But pink is not a common color. There is no powdered blush here. There are no sweetheart boxes of chocolates. So I fold the nightgown and gather the string of beads. Four colors now, and four to go. And then my cheeks go warm. I think about that old princess dancing around in her fancy pink nightgown, and I laugh out loud, before pressing a hand once more to my mouth, and then stifling a cough.

“OH, POOR THOMAS! You should have told me straightaway.”

Anna is cross with me. I give her back the yellow colored pencil, hoping it will make her feel better. She sighs, her eyes red, as she places the box back in its proper spot and lays it on her bed, next to the open book of Flora and Fauna.

I pick up the box and run my fingers over the sharpened pencils’ tips. 865-EMERALD GREEN. Other than Jack’s train, what else matches this color? Pine needles would only turn brown. There’s the faded sofa in the library, but I’d need four grown men to lift it.

It has to be the train.

“Was Thomas’s father quite famous?” I ask.

“He was well decorated, yes. He even received the Victoria Cross. Back during the Great War, when he was Thomas’s age, he was a private in the cavalry, and during the Battle of Cambrai they say he rode so fast he was able to warn every man in the trenches about encroaching gas. That was before they mechanized everything. In this war, they promoted him to sergeant and assigned him to the Special Air Service. There are newspaper articles about him and everything, you know; Thomas keeps a scrapbook. His aunt in Wales started sending him the clippings, after his mother died.” She sighs again and looks down at her hands. “He wasn’t exactly acknowledged by his father.”

“Why?”

Her cheeks flush. “He couldn’t be a soldier because of his arm.”

“What will he do now?”

“The same as the rest of us. Stay here. Tend to the sheep. Eat rotting onions and wait.”

I replace the green pencil in the box. “Do you think he can pick a horse’s hoof with just one hand?”

Anna raises an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

I shrug.

She looks wistfully toward the ceiling and presses a hand against the base of her throat. “I think Thomas can do anything. I think if they’d just have put a gun in his hand, he’d have won this war.”

I roll over onto my back and look at Anna’s ceiling. This was the princess’s own bedroom, once. The ceiling is covered with an oil painting of Greek gods, some strong and handsome, others with fat little bellies and curls cut from stone. She tells me stories about them. Zeus. Hera. Hades. But only when the Sisters aren’t nearby. They call those stories blasphemous.

“Do you miss your family?” Anna asks suddenly.

I take out the blue colored pencil. No. The red. Some things are red in the hospital. Anna’s felt hat. The soup cans in the kitchen pantry. But I already have the Horse Lord’s red ribbon.

“Emmaline?”