LITMIR.BIZ

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was swept aside to reveal the silhouette of a man as wide as he was tall. “Now then, where’s this lad who’ll be helping me with my horses?” he called.

      Marcel scrambled to his feet, but no sooner had the man shouted into the narrow confines of the stables than a loud gurgle exploded from his throat. He slapped a hand over his mouth. “Er, sorry, my boy,” he muttered, but it did him no good, as his stomach immediately erupted again.

      No need to ask how he acquired his name then, thought Marcel. “Albert said I’m to work with you today, sir,” he said, as he reluctantly moved closer. Despite the gloom of the stables, Marcel could see the man better now, his little pig eyes squeezed above hearty cheeks. His beard was nothing much to speak of, just a few gingery wisps that had no chance of hiding that series of bulging chins. Lower down, he just got rounder, his stomach most of all. It rumbled as Marcel’s eyes rested on it, but this time the man managed to suppress his burp.

      “They tell me I shouldn’t eat so many onions,” he said apologetically. Then his face broke into a wide grin. “But I like ’em too much,” and to show it, he fished an onion out of his pocket and munched on it like an apple. “I’ve got an empty stall that needs cleaning out. Come on, put a shovel in that wheelbarrow and follow me.”

      After doing as he was asked Marcel was led to the last stall along the row. “I had a horse in here until last week. You see all this straw and what the horse added to it? Take it all to the vegetable patch, then fill the stall with clean straw. And mind you do it properly, not like that Fergus. He disappeared before the job was half done,” Old Belch explained, doing his best to look serious, though the face he made was more comical than gruff. Then he burped. “Oh, excuse me,” he said, and promptly burped again. The pungent odour of half-digested onions wafted heavily through the stables.

      Marcel started in with the shovel. It was easier work than he had expected and he was finished long before Old Belch came back and told him he could leave.

      “Could I stay and have a look at your horses?” he asked.

      Old Belch looked surprised. “No harm in that, I suppose. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

      There were seven stalls, counting the one Marcel had cleaned out. The first contained no horse but a thick bed of straw, a blanket and a book. Marcel remembered what Hugh had told him about Old Belch’s sleeping habits, but the book was a puzzle. How did someone like Old Belch learn to read? Then he realised that he could ask the same question about himself.

      A fine chestnut horse poked its head out of the second stall, hoping they had brought it a treat. “He cut himself badly jumping a fence,” Old Belch explained. “All better now though, so he’ll be heading home soon.”

      As they stopped at each stall, Marcel soon realised that all of the horses suffered from an ailment of one sort or another. One trod gingerly on its foreleg; there was a plough horse recovering from ulcers where the heavy yoke had rubbed against its shoulders; and in the stall beside it another withered beast stared at him, sad-eyed and listless.

      Old Belch answered Marcel’s question before he could even ask it. “People send me their horses, to heal them.”

      “What’s wrong with this one?” Marcel asked, looking into the next stall, at a horse with rather spindly legs and a long neck hidden beneath a matted mane. This mane was black, but as for the rest of the horse, name a colour and it was there: earth-brown, grey and plenty of dirty white with flecks of a lighter brown on its rump and face. “This one’s an ugly thing,” he commented bluntly.

      Immediately the horse snorted and threw back its head as though it protested at these words. Old Belch went into the stall and spoke to it in whispers that Marcel couldn’t hear, but they had an immediate effect and the horse settled down. “There’s nothing wrong with her,” he said in a voice that seemed far too soft and friendly for a man whose hair looked like a grizzled nest of snakes. “She’s just a bit wild, that’s all, too wild for her master – he didn’t want her any more. So now she’s mine.”

      Marcel took another look at the mare. She was no beauty, that was certain, but she was alert and eager to be free of the stall that confined her, no matter how well Old Belch cared for her. Wasn’t that just how he felt about Mrs Timmins and her orphanage?

      The last stall was the one Marcel had cleaned out. Old Belch was impressed with what he saw. “You worked hard. A proper young Hercules – but I suppose you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about, would you?”

      “Hercules,” Marcel repeated. “Yes, I know who he was: a great hero who cleaned out the dirtiest stables in the world.”

      Old Belch’s eyebrows shot up. “So he did. Now, where would a simple boy from the high country hear that story?”

      Marcel shrugged his shoulders. “Someone must have told me.” This puzzled him. He couldn’t remember a name or a face or a single day of his life before yesterday, yet he knew the tale of Hercules. There was more he remembered too, and the excitement of such memories made him eager to repeat them. “Didn’t Hercules have a horse, a special horse with wings?”

      “Ah, now you’re thinking of Pegasus. It wasn’t Hercules but another great hero, Bellerophon, the only man who could tame such a wild beast.” Old Belch’s face glowed proudly as he glanced over at the speckled mare. “The poor fellow came to a bad end, though. Pegasus was stung by a gadfly and bucked him off while they were high in the clouds.”

      Marcel had followed Old Belch’s eye back to the ugly mare. “Does she have a name?” he asked.

      “Name! Not that I know of. I’ll ask her, if you like, to see what she wants to be called.”

      Marcel laughed, thinking this was just a joke, but his smile slipped a little when Old Belch entered the stall again and put his lips to the horse’s ear. What was more, when he was finished the horse did the same, pushing her long snout close to the man’s own ear.

      “She was listening to my story about Pegasus but she doesn’t want the name of a horse that was tamed. She would rather be the gadfly.”

      “Should we call her Gadfly, then?” suggested Marcel.

      “Why not!”

      The horse reared her head away and turned a stern eye on both of them. Could she really understand them? Marcel was beginning to wonder, but Old Belch was unconcerned. “I prefer these animals to the well-bred beasts I looked after in the Army,” he confided.

      “You were in the Army?”

      “Not as a soldier, no. Fighting’s not for me. I cared for the horses. In fact,” he said, standing a little straighter and pulling back his shoulders, “I was once in charge of the royal horses. Had my own room in the palace, no less.” He looked down in mild embarrassment at his huge stomach, which he patted gently. “Of course, that was in my younger days. But it’s true. You can ask Lord Alwyn if you don’t believe me.”

      “Lord Alwyn! You know him?”

      “A little, but then everyone round the palace knew Lord Alwyn. It’s a great surprise to see him here, in Fallside, I must admit. Most brilliant sorcerer of his age, they say. He’s served our kings and queens for as long as I can remember. Master of the Royal Books, he was. Still is, I suppose, since I haven’t heard tell of a new one.”

      Books!

      “Belch,” Marcel interrupted anxiously, “Lord Alwyn came down to… er… meet me yesterday. Just me. He brought a special book with him. It knew whether I was telling the truth.”

      “Ah, the Book of Lies, it sounds like. He created it long ago, to help judge matters in the royal court.”

      “But how can it tell who is lying and who is telling the truth?”

      “Well, only Lord Alwyn himself could tell you that for sure. It seems he managed to bind up all things, past, present and future, into that book. It knows it all. More than that…” Old Belch’s face became mischievous, like that of

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