Devils And Unicorns

Chapter 16

The day before the Perchborn Gold Cup, all runners were required to undergo a routine veterinary examination and drug test. Just as she had done one year earlier with Mighty Light, Florence travelled down to the capital three days before the race. Zac rode Last Unicorn; Martha sat aboard their neighbour Mrs. Mullins' old gelding, Rusty; Florence followed on Dissent. Charlie, as usual, made his way down via routes unknown, and met up with the others upon their arrival in the city. The trip to Perchborn had taken two full days to complete on horseback, and they stopped for the night at a tiny settlement on the wastes called Hangman's Rest.

When they finally rode into Perchborn on the second evening of their journey, all six were exhausted. After bedding down the horses for the night, Zac and Martha went out for a drink while Florence returned to the hotel alone. While her friends were living it up in the bars of central Perchborn, Florence was climbing into another strange bed to try to get to sleep.

Since those turbulent twenty-four hours at Bailey's Point, she had been suffering with insomnia. She would turn from side to side for hours at a time, staring at one wall and then the other, trying to empty her head of thoughts. Last Unicorn would go racing through her mind like an express train, or she might see nothing but the lifeless corpse of Mighty Light lying in the sand. But mostly, she thought about Charlie. He occupied her dreams and her waking thoughts like a fever. She had virtually stopped eating – the unremitting butterflies in the pit of her belly prohibited her from stomaching any significant quantity of food – and she felt exhausted from the constant hammering of her heart behind her ribcage. Yet she could not sleep, and could not shake him off.

Since the party returned to Marsh Crossing after Last Unicorn's Reek Marsh victory, Florence had spoken to nobody about what had almost occurred between her and Charlie in the Tavern of Angels, least of all the man himself. On the outside, things had returned to normal. She and Charlie conducted ordinary conversation regarding the likes of Last Unicorn's training, Jersey Devil's recovery, the Gold Cup opposition and money. As far as anyone else was concerned, nothing had changed. But inside, Florence was facing daily torment. She was watching him all the time: eating his breakfast, sitting on the fold-out bed in his stable surrounded by paperwork with his brow furrowed in concentration as he studied his craft, standing on the bottom rail of the fence alongside the gallops with a stopwatch in his hand as he timed Last Unicorn's work, smiling at her as he stepped out of her bathroom with wet hair after a shower. And whatever he did, he captivated her in doing so. This was like a living hell: knowing that she was falling in love with Charlie, hating this fact, and being powerless to do anything about it either way.

She was grateful for the distraction that Last Unicorn's impending Gold Cup run provided her, for without that she felt sure she would have been driven crazy by Charlie's constant diversion. The horse had come through his journey from Marsh Crossing relatively well, and seemed to have settled in nicely in his temporary stable.

Late in the morning on the day before the race, the racecourse vet attended Last Unicorn in his stable to examine him and collect the first of two consecutive daily urine samples. The horse gave him some difficulty in his task, doing his best to resist the restraint imposed by Martha and attempting to bite his examiner more than once. The vet was fairly good-humoured about it, reminding Florence and Martha that he was also certain to have trouble with the equally temperamental Rigarando.

After the examination, Florence and Martha decided to take some lunch at a small café just across the street from the stable block. Sitting at a table outside, Martha was picking at a selection of fruit, but Florence was not touching her food at all. Her stomach was a maelstrom of nerves and emotion. They were chatting about the race, speculating pointlessly over the chances of the likes of Rigarando, Dorfinoise, Chi, Firecat, Councillor Hicks and of course Last Unicorn himself; however, their meal was soon interrupted by the appearance of Charlie. He arrived at their table with a grave look on his face.