Nightstorm and the Grand Slam Read online

  He looked at Issie. “I hear you’ve been having similar problems of your own?”

  “You could say that,” Issie replied gazing at this handsome boy with the honey-blond hair and green eyes who had turned up out of nowhere.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Marcus asked.

  “I still can’t believe you’re actually here.”

  “Is that why you haven’t asked me to come in?” Marcus grinned.

  “Oh!” Issie realised that they were still standing on the doorstep. “Come in. Everyone’s in the kitchen and I think there’s still some bacon and eggs left if you’re hungry…”

  Avery, Stella and Francoise were just as shocked as Issie to see Marcus. Cups of tea were brewed, breakfast was dished up and Marcus filled them all in on what had happened to him since the Kentucky Four-Star. It turned out that he had only told Issie half the story.

  “The day that I resigned I had no idea what I was going to do, and totally no plan,” Marcus told them as he bit into his toast. “Then I get this phone call out of the blue saying that Gerhardt Muller had been injured on the cross-country at Badminton and did I want to take over the ride on Velluto Rosso?” Marcus lifted up his left arm and Issie saw that it was no longer in a plaster cast. “My arm had healed up by then and I was ready to ride, and Gerhardt is a friend of mine so of course I said yes. Then they told me that the horse was based at the Goldin Farm in Wiltshire. So here I am – back in England for the first time since I left home for Blainford Academy!”

  It was a fantastic story. And yet, Issie found herself slightly disappointed by it. She’d been half expecting Marcus to say that he had come all the way to the UK to turn up and surprise her. Hearing that he was in the neighbourhood anyway was strangely a bit of a let-down.

  “So, it looks like Issie and I are both going to be riding at Burghley,” Marcus said cheerfully. Then he saw the long faces around the kitchen table.

  “What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”

  “It’s Storm,” Issie told him. “He’s had an accident. I don’t know if I’m going to be riding at all.”

  After breakfast, Issie took Marcus down to the stables to meet Nightstorm.

  “He injured himself three weeks ago,” she explained as they walked down the driveway. “The wound has healed up nicely and he’s only got another week on box rest. Then I’m allowed to bring him slowly back into work.”

  Marcus frowned, “You’ll have a lot of ground to make up,” he said. “A month in the box will mean his muscles are wasted. I see what you mean about cutting it fine for Burghley.”

  Issie nodded. “Tom has worked out a training schedule. It’s going to be tight but I think we’ll have him ready. As long as the leg holds out…”

  Issie led the way along the row of loose boxes. In the second-to-last box she had stabled a black gelding called Bonaparte to keep Storm company. Bonaparte stuck his head out and nickered to her when she arrived.

  “Is this him?” Marcus asked.

  Issie shook her head. She gave a whistle and a moment later, in the box next to Bonaparte’s a striking bay stallion stuck his head over the door.

  “This is Nightstorm,” Issie said, reaching a hand up to stroke the stallion’s broad white blaze.

  “Wow,” Marcus looked genuinely impressed. “He’s really something, isn’t he?”

  “I think so,” Issie said, looking doe-eyed at her horse. “I’ve known him from the moment he was born. His mother was my old pony-club mare and his sire was one of the dressage stallions from El Caballo Danza Magnifico.”

  “With bloodlines like that he must be pretty good at dressage, then?” Marcus asked.

  Issie sighed. “Yes – and no. Storm is capable of pulling out a great test, but he’s unpredictable. Five minutes before we entered the arena at Badminton he’d actually just bucked me off! I got lucky and he behaved himself after that, but I need to figure out a way to make sure he’ll always perform – to get some certainty with him, you know?”

  “I know,” Marcus agreed. “The best ones are always so complicated.” He reached up to stroke Nightstorm’s muzzle, and Issie could see the genuine love and understanding of horses that he possessed.

  “Do you want a tour of the rest of the stables?” she asked.

  As they walked around the yards, Issie filled Marcus in on everything that had happened over the past months since they’d last seen each other. The loss of Victory to Natasha Tucker and the fickle departure of Issie’s sponsors left him stunned.

  “Even with all of those trainers working for her, she’ll never get up to speed for Burghley,” Marcus concluded. “Not if she’s never ridden a four-star course before.”

  Issie wasn’t so sure. “She’s going to ride Victory at the Luhmuhlen Horse Trials as a warm-up. Apparently – according to the papers – I’m too chicken to face her!”

  Luhmuhlen was a famous four-star eventing track in Germany. The timing of the event meant that many of the top UK-based riders used Luhmuhlen as a test run for Burghley.

  “It’ll be my first competition on Velluto Rosso,” Marcus told her. “If you can’t face Natasha then I’ll do it for you.”

  “So why exactly did Marcus Pearce drop by?” Stella asked when they were all sitting down to dinner that evening.

  Issie kept her eyes on her plate, “I don’t know. He was in the neighbourhood, I guess, so he came to say hi.”

  “The Goldin Stables aren’t exactly ‘in the neighbourhood’,” Stella said doing air quotes. “They’re about twenty kilometres away.”

  “He was just being polite,” Issie said.

  Stella gave a smirk at the stiffness of Issie’s reply. “He likes you!”

  Issie could feel herself blushing. “He’s just a friend,” she said. “And he’s leaving for Germany at the end of the week and by the time he gets back we’ll both be frantic in the lead-up to Burghley…”

  Issie had a training schedule and it didn’t leave any time for boys – not even a boy like Marcus Pearce.

  She didn’t see Marcus again before he left for Luhmuhlen. She did get a text a couple of weeks later saying that Velluto Rosso had travelled fine in the horse truck to Germany, and that the chestnut mare had settled in well.

  Issie had read the papers that weekend hoping that, since Marcus was riding for Great Britain, there might be news on how he was doing. But the only stories were about Natasha Tucker.

  The writers in The Sun’s sports section had a field day over the so-called scandal when Natasha was banned from wearing her trademark bright purple jodhpurs to ride her dressage test.

  “Uptight equestrians!” one Sun columnist opined. “Stop being prissy and let smasher Natasha wear purple pants!”

  Had things really been reduced to this? Who cared what colour jodhpurs Natasha wore?

  “Actually,” Stella said when she read the article, “I quite like those purple jods she wears.”

  Issie looked at her dumbfounded.

  “What?” Stella said. “I like purple, OK? In fact, I even think a colourful halter can look kind of cute on the right pony. It doesn’t mean I like Natasha – obviously.”

  “Purple jods are so not the point,” Issie said. “I’m just sick of them running news stories about her like she’s a proper rider.”

  “Well it can’t go on for much longer,” Stella said. “Tomorrow in the dressage arena they’re going to finally see the truth.”

  Stella’s prediction was startling accurate. It didn’t matter how many expensive trainers and minions Natasha employed, they couldn’t paper over the cracks in her performance. Her test at Luhmuhlen was nothing short of a disaster. From the moment Natasha Tucker bumbled into the dressage arena in a disunited canter and made a ham-fisted salute to the judges she proceeded to massacre every single movement. Her final dressage score was the worst on record at Luhmuhlen since the event began.

  Rumour had it that Natasha threw such a brat fit backstage afterwards that not one but t
wo of her world-famous instructors quit on the spot.

  Natasha went into the cross-country the next day at the bottom of the rankings on a stonking score of eighty-five points. As it happened, her atrocious dressage score hardly mattered. Her cross-country was so bad she was eliminated at fence number two when Victory refused point-blank to jump.

  Two refusals was enough to get her eliminated at Luhmuhlen and Natasha was forced to make the walk of shame back to the start of the course. There, she caused a total scene by turning her wrath on the remaining members of her training team who were still on speaking terms with her.

  All of this gossip was gleaned second-hand via Stella from the grooms who worked the circuit at Luhmuhlen. According to them, the worst part was the fact that the rest of the syndicate members who owned Victory were right there watching the whole drama.

  Eliminated from the competition, Natasha didn’t even stay on at Luhmuhlen to watch the showjumping the next day. If she had stayed, she would have seen one of the most closely-fought contests in the history of three-day eventing as the six leading riders came into the ring with less than ten points separating them. In the end, the winner of Luhmuhlen, with a dressage score of 38, and two incredible clear rounds, was the UK’s Marcus Pearce on Velluto Rosso.

  Meanwhile, back at The Laurels, Nightstorm was finally allowed out from enforced box rest. Issie had started his rehabilitation by taking him for gentle half-hour hacks each day along the bridlepaths on the property. This was trickier than it sounded since Nightstorm, bored and restless after a whole month trapped in the loose box, was highly-strung and mad keen for a gallop. He didn’t take kindly to the fact that Issie was insistent that he stay at a walk the whole time.

  By the end of the first week, Issie’s arm muscles ached from holding the stallion back, and she was relieved when David White popped around for a check-up and declared that she could now include some trot and canter work in Storm’s programme.

  “No arena work yet though,” David had clarified. “It’s too tough on the legs.”

  Far from being frustrated, Issie was relieved to have an excuse to avoid the dressage arena. The Badminton Horse Trials had been a lucky fluke. The stallion remained unpredictable and headstrong – and Issie had no idea what to do about it.

  She needed to find a new approach – and she needed to find it soon. Nightstorm’s leg was almost healed and when the vet gave him the all clear she would need to begin dressage training in earnest. It was already July so there were only two months left before Burghley.

  One evening, Issie called a meeting with Stella, Avery and Francoise in the hope that the four of them could figure out a solution to the dressage problem.

  “We could try drugging him,” Stella suggested.

  “And end up getting disqualified for using illegal substances,” Avery said.

  “No,” Stella said. “There are loads of drugs that are totally legal to use. We could give him Steady Neddy, it’s herbal and it calms them right down.”

  Issie shook her head, “I don’t think making him dozy is the answer.”

  Francoise looked thoughtful. “Storm is a very smart horse, maybe we need to make things harder for him?”

  “What do you mean?” Issie asked.

  “An eventing dressage test is very simple in many ways,” Francoise explained. “There is no piaffe, no passage. Storm has El Caballo bloodlines, which means he is capable of learning far more complex high school manoeuvres like courbettes and caprioles. If all we ask him to do is an extended trot and a half-pass there’s no challenge in it for him. He acts up because he is bored.”

  The others all agreed that the theory could be true.

  “So what’s the answer?” Issie said.

  Francoise paused and then she said. “We train him in the dressage arena as if he were an El Caballo performing stallion.”

  Issie was confused. “But he’s not going to be required to perform any of the high school movements at Burghley – it’s a waste of time!”

  “No,” Francoise said. “It’s not. The point is to keep him thinking. If his brain is busy he will no longer buck out of boredom.”

  Issie could see that the idea would work for the schooling sessions. “But it’s only a temporary solution. At some stage we have to stop doing fancy leaps and start learning the actual dressage test – and then he’ll get bored and throw a bucking fit – possibly in the arena at Burghley.”

  Francoise frowned. “I have not got the answer for you yet when it comes to the competition itself,” she said. “Hopefully, we will solve that problem too before Burghley.”

  The weeks of July were already flying by and Nightstorm was getting fitter by the day. The kilos that the stallion had gained from his weeks of being immobilised were quickly lost as Issie stepped up his training and began to take him out every other day for gallop sessions up the big hill track at the back of The Laurels.

  On alternate days, she would school the stallion over showjumps or in the dressage arena and so far she had to admit that Francoise’s outlandish training suggestion was definitely working.

  Now that Nightstorm was being challenged by the haute école moves, he no longer threw hissy fits or got stroppy. He was a remarkably quick study, and within a couple of sessions he had mastered the capriole, one of the most complex ‘airs above ground’, rising up on his hindquarters and leaping off the ground so that he seemed to float in mid-air, before kicking out his hind legs.

  Issie was amazed at how quickly the skills that she had learnt under Roberto Nunez’s tutelage when she rode at El Caballo Danza Magnifico all came rushing back to her. With Francoise on hand to assist her, Issie was able to train Nightstorm as if he too were one of El Caballo’s flying stallions – which, in a way, he was, since he was descended directly from the great Marius himself.

  One afternoon Issie and Francoise were in the arena schooling Nightstorm to perform the courbette, a move in which the horse reared up and stayed balanced on its hind legs before bouncing forward like a bunny hopping.

  It was a precarious and dangerous task learning this movement. If the stallion reared up too far and lost his balance he could go over backwards. For the rider, the move required utmost precision. Issie was so focused on what she was doing that she didn’t notice that they had an audience. While she had been training, a silver Lexus had eased up their driveway and parked right beside the arena.

  “Were you expecting company?” Francoise asked.

  Issie looked over at the Lexus. It had tinted windows, making it impossible to see who was inside. The car sat there for a moment idling, and then the engine was switched off, and the driver got out. The chauffeur was dressed in the traditional uniform of a black suit and cap and he scurried around the car and ran to open the back door for his VIP passenger. As the door swung open Issie couldn’t believe her eyes.

  “Oh, you’re kidding me! What does he want now?”

  Full of bravado, Oliver Tucker emerged from his Lexus and strutted towards the arena. Issie couldn’t believe it when Tucker gave her a cheery wave as if they were old friends. But things were about to become even stranger still. Oliver Tucker was about to make her an offer that she couldn’t refuse.

  Chapter 9

  Oliver Tucker surveyed his surroundings, running a property developer’s eye over the stable blocks and fields.

  “Nice set-up you’ve got here, Isadora,” he said. “Very pleasant indeed.”

  “What do you want, Oliver?” Issie said nervously. The last time she’d seen this man he’d taken her horse away. She didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him – and she certainly didn’t like the way he was looking around The Laurels as if he owned the place.

  “There’s no need to be rude,” Oliver Tucker smiled his shark grin at her. “I’ve come here with a business proposition for you, young lady, so it would be in your best interests to use your manners and invite me in for a cup of tea.”

  Issie stood her ground. “I’m busy, Oliver. I
f you want to talk to me then do it here. I have horses to ride.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Oliver Tucker said. “So how would you like one more?”

  “What are you talking about?” Issie said.

  Oliver Tucker cleared his throat. “I have come to make you an offer on behalf of the syndicate. We’d like you to ride one of our horses in the Burghley Horse Trials.”

  Issie was as stunned as a mullet. “You’re kidding me!”

  Oliver Tucker’s face was expressionless. “I can assure you that I’m not,” he replied. “The offer is quite genuine. The syndicate is willing to pay you handsomely to take over the ride and prepare the horse over the next four weeks in time for the competition…”

  Issie shook her head. “Tell your syndicate no, thank you. I’m not interested in a chance ride on some unproven horse…”

  “You misunderstand me,” Oliver Tucker interrupted her. “You’ve already ridden this horse before.”

  Issie’s eyes widened as she realised what Oliver Tucker was driving at. “That’s right,” he said. “I’m offering you the ride on Victory.”

  “I can’t believe it!” Avery was incredulous, “After everything he’s done, Oliver Tucker has the bare-faced cheek to turn up and ask you to ride for him?”

  “He didn’t have much of a choice,” Issie said. “Oliver acts like he’s in charge but really it’s the syndicate who actually own Victory. They had a complete wig-out when Natasha failed so badly at Luhmuhlen and demanded that he swap back to letting me ride him.”

  “It’s true,” Stella came into the kitchen to join them. “I just got a call from a friend of mine who works at Ravenshead Park where Natasha has been keeping Victory. She said Natasha was given a second chance by the syndicate after Luhmuhlen. They gave her a month to pull herself together and get Victory back on track. She went into total overdrive with her trainers trying to fix the problems but last weekend at a two-star competition at Blair Castle Natasha got the worst dressage mark again – and was eliminated on the cross-country – again. At that point, the syndicate decided that they couldn’t possibly let her ride the horse at Burghley.”