The Stacy Gregg 3-book Horse Collection: Volume 1
It is a Bedouin tent. As the jeeps get closer to the camp, Haya can see the wide-open tent mouth and the men of the Desert Patrol coming out to meet them. Their Chief Officer is a handsome man with high cheekbones and she recognises him as Major Jafar, the same man who brought the camels Lulabelle and Fluffy to the palace on her birthday.
“Your Majesty.” Major Jafar gives a reverential bow to the King. “I hope your journey has not been too unpleasant.” He gestures to the patrol’s camels tethered beside the tent, dressed in their colourful Bedouin saddles strung with tassels. “In the desert, the camel is best transport.”
While Major Jafar’s men make preparations for their onward journey, he welcomes the royal party inside where strong black tea is served, piping hot and still tasting of the embers of the fire, with lots of sugar to make it very sweet. Haya and Ali sit cross-legged on cushions sipping their tea while the King talks with Major Jafar. Haya notices how happy her Baba seems here with his men and she realises that, to her father, the desert is truly home.
One of the Bedouin, a desert soldier in uniform like the rest with a curved dagger at his hip and a gun slung across his back, has been watching as Haya and Ali finish their second cup of tea and now he approaches Haya.
“You want to see your camels?” he asks. His voice is gruff, but his eyes are very kind. She nods.
“Come with me.”
The camels are tethered on long ropes in a row in the sand. Their legs are hobbled with leather straps and they have saddles on their backs with the girths loosened off so that they can rest comfortably. They stare for a moment at Haya and Ali, then continue to munch at the chaff in the feedbags strapped to their faces.
Lulabelle is the fourth camel in the line. Fluffy is curled up alongside her and is now old enough to have a feedbag of his own too. On the baby camel, however, the feedbag almost swamps his entire face and all you can see of him is a pair of wide brown eyes and long fluttering lashes.
“They remember, eh, Haya?” the Bedouin says. “They know they belong to you.” He beckons her closer. “Here, you can stroke them. It is quite safe. No camel will bite if it has a feedbag.”
Haya notices how the Bedouin does not say “Your Royal Highness” when he speaks to her. He does not use her title like most people do, he says only her name. It is nice the way he says it, Haya, as if he were speaking to his own daughter, and it makes her feel at home, out here in the desert. And she is home. After all, she is a Bedouin too.
“Hello, Fluffy.” Haya strokes the camel’s soft caramel fur. How different the camel is to Bree, his face all velvet but lumpy-bumpy with stiff whiskery hair sprouting everywhere and those enormous brown eyes with long lashes, built to withstand the grit of a desert sandstorm.
“Haya!”
Haya raises her head at the sound of Ali’s voice, but when she peers down the row of camels, she cannot see him anywhere.
“Ali?”
There is silence. No reply.
“Ali, where are you?”
Haya leaves Fluffy and Lulabelle and begins to walk along the camel row. Ali and his tricks! He must be hiding, nestled in beside one of the great beasts. She looks for him as she walks all the way down the row and back again, but there is no sign of her brother. Now she is becoming anxious.
“Ali?”
And then she hears a giggle. It sounds like it came from one of the camels.
Haya listens hard as she moves slowly from camel to camel. And then, when she is halfway along the row, she hears another giggle. The sound is muffled, but she can tell exactly where it is coming from.
Strapped to each saddle are two large bags made of brightly coloured canvas, each one big enough to hold all a Bedouin might need for months in the desert. If she looks closely, Haya can see that one of the bags is breathing in and out.
“Ali?” Haya gives the saddlebag a jab with her finger and the bag suddenly comes to life and begins to squirm. “Come out, I know you are in there.”
Haya pokes the bag again and a mop of dark hair and two eyes pop up from the top of it.
“Let’s play hide-and-seek,” Ali says.
They spend the morning playing among the camels. Then, when they get thirsty, they go back into the tent for more tea and listen to the men telling their battle stories. The desert can be a dangerous place, full of bandits, and those daggers and the guns that the Desert Patrol carry are not just for show. Haya and Ali sit wide-eyed and listen to the tales until finally their father and Major Jafar both rise and signal to the men. It is time to go.
The camels’ feedbags are gone and there are colourful bridles on their heads instead. One of the Bedouin is busy tightening Lulabelle’s girth.
“She is ready for you, Haya,” he says.
Haya steps up to the camel and the Bedouin takes his stick and taps the camel lightly behind the knee. “Cush, Lulabelle,” he commands. “Cush.”
Lulabelle brays her objection and refuses to drop, but the Bedouin is firm with her. “Cush!”
With a groan of resignation, Lulabelle drops to her knees and then lowers her hindquarters so that she is ready for Haya to climb aboard.
Haya has never ridden a camel before. The saddle is not like the ones that horses wear. It is made of hard wood with two very high pommels at the front and the back, and the seat is draped in a thick curly goat hide. When Haya is seated, she finds it surprisingly comfortable. She grabs the front pommel with one hand and the camel’s rope with the other, and then the officer gives Lulabelle a tap on her flank and the camel rises. Haya gives a squeak of surprise as she suddenly finds herself up very high indeed, two metres above the sand.
“Use the rope or the stick to guide her. Tap her there on the flanks to make her go,” Major Jafar says. And, with no more explanation, they are off, the King and Major Jafar leading the ride and Lulabelle falling to the rear of the camel train with Fluffy running loose at her heels as they set off across the desert.
The swaying motion of the camel feels like being on a boat cast adrift, rocking back and forth and side to side. It is so different to riding a horse; the camel’s wide strides are so ponderous as they lumber across the sand. They make good progress though and soon they are deep into the desert, climbing up rocky pathways that the jeeps cannot travel.
Coming downhill, the desert beneath them stretches to the kingdom’s border and the neighbouring dominion of Syria. Haya stares out across the parched, sun-bleached landscape and sees … nothing. Just sand and rocks and more desert, all the way to the horizon.
On the King’s shoulder, the falcon too seems to be scanning the horizon – although this is impossible since the bird still wears his hood.
Suddenly there is a movement in a tussock ahead. The King sees it and signals for the party to halt. Alone, with Akhbar on his shoulder and Anber the saluki at his heels, he rides forward.
When the King halts his camel, the dog drops obediently to a crouch beside him. The hound is motionless; he waits patiently while the King lifts Akhbar to his fist and removes the falcon’s hood so the bird can see.
Akhbar casts his eyes up at the blue sky, then scopes the desert terrain.
Whatever was moving out there before, Haya cannot see it. But the eyes of a girl are not those of a falcon. Akhbar has spied his prey: a desert hare, moving a hundred metres away.
Once, Haya had a conversation with her father about how much she disliked hunting. “It is cruel,” she told him. “The poor hare gets killed.”
“This is how the Bedouin, our ancestors, hunted for centuries,” the King said. “It is not a sport for us, Haya, it is tradition, our way of life.”
“But there are supermarkets now,” Haya pointed out. “We could get a hare from there instead.”
“And how did the hare in the supermarket get there?” her father asks.
The King holds Akhbar aloft and releases him. In two powerful beats of his great wings, the falcon lifts up and is gone. Haya shields her eyes and watches him soaring above the desert, his wings outstretched.
The falcon begins to circle, getting lower and lower. But he has lost sight of the hare. It has gone to ground and knows better than to move now. It will lie and wait. The falcon cannot flush it out from his vantage point in the sky.
But the hare did not reckon on Anber.
The King whistles a command and the saluki, who has been resting patiently at the feet of his camel, springs forward, swift as a deer, running on velvet paws. It doesn’t take him more than a few seconds to cover the ground to the tussock and once he catches the scent he hones in on the hare, chasing it out so that the prey is running in the open once more. Akhbar stoops and dives, his quarry in his sights.
Sensing the danger above, the hare springs forward, strong haunches powering it in rapid strides. Anber is giving chase, but the hare is even quicker. It darts ahead, always maddeningly out of reach of the saluki. The hare does not run in a straight line, but flits this way and that, hoping to confuse the hound so it can go to ground again.
If the saluki were hunting alone, then the hare’s dramatic twists and turns would be enough to put him off the trail. But up above, Akhbar the falcon is following the hare too. Each time the hare changes direction, Akhbar swoops down directly above the prey, giving the dog a marker to follow.
The hare ducks and weaves, but it is beginning to flag. It is accustomed to outrunning its foe with cleverness and very short bursts of speed. It should have been able to go to ground by now, but with the falcon circling above and the saluki below working in tandem, the hare is tiring fast.
Anber is gaining and as the hare tries to change course the hound puts on a burst of speed and outstrips his prey stride for stride. In a moment, the saluki is upon him. In a single swift move, he takes the hare in his mighty jaws and shakes it with an instinctive flick of his head, instantly snapping the neck.
With a shrill whistle, the King calls the hound back to him and Haya watches as the saluki drops the hare and obediently turns to go back to his master.
From the sky above, Akhbar plummets with his talons extended in front of him. Without touching the ground, the falcon swoops low enough to grasp the limp body of the hare in his claws. Then, with three massive beats of his powerful wings, he lifts up into the sky with the hare dangling beneath him.
The hare must weigh almost as much as Akhbar and he has to pound his wings to remain in the air. Anber races below him, but the falcon is swift. The hound has only just reached the King when there is a cry from above as the falcon comes back down to earth, dropping the hare neatly at the feet of his master.
That night, back at the palace, Baba, Haya and Ali have wild hare stew for supper.
Santi has explained how the filly must be weaned and at eight months old he tells Haya it is time.
They do it first thing one morning. While Santi loads Latifah into the horse float, Haya does her best to distract Bree. It is all going smoothly until the float begins to leave the yard and Latifah cries out.
“It’s OK, Bree, I am here, shhh.” Haya tries to comfort her startled filly, but it is no good. Bree slams up against the stable door with her chest, trying to force her way free, desperate to be reunited with the grey mare. Her frantic whinnies fill the air as she cries out. Haya stands by helplessly, realising that nothing she can do will ease the pain.
When Santi returns to the yard, he finds Bree in a lather, her distraught cries still echoing round the yard and the young Princess slumped against the door of the loose box in a flood of tears.
“Dry your eyes, Titch,” Santi tells her firmly. “You are in charge, remember? Sometimes we must do what is best for our horses, even though it hurts.”
“It is too cruel,” Haya says. “Look at her!”
“Her heartbreak will not last long,” Santi reassures her. “Horses are luckier than us. They live in the now. They cannot cling to memories as we do.”
Sure enough, two days later, Bree is quite content in her box on her own, and she is eating alfalfa and barley just like the grown-up polo mares.
Weaned off milk and on to hard feed, Bree grows quickly. Haya is growing too. At the stables she smiles and laughs with the grooms, singing songs as she helps them with the chores.
“What happened to our quiet girl?” Santi teases her. “Now we cannot get you to stop talking!”
*
On the first day when snow falls, Haya leads Bree out into the yard and watches to see what the filly will do. She remembers the way that Amina used to hate the feeling of the snowflakes on her face, how the mare would try and bury her head in Haya’s coat to wipe them off. In contrast, Bree steps out eagerly, snorting and stamping at the snow flurries, as if she is trying to crush them beneath her hooves.
Haya takes her down to the polo training grounds to let her loose to stretch her legs. When she unclips the lead rope, Bree trots out into the middle of the field and then stops abruptly to give the snow a sniff, then digs a little hole with her front hoof before dropping to her knees to roll. Haya watches the filly grunting with delight as she merrily flings her legs in the air and rolls back and forth, relishing the feeling of the cold snow on her back. Although Bree may look like her mother, they are not the same horse at all.
Bree’s coat has grown thick and shaggy like a teddy bear over the cold months, but as the snow melts, her fur begins to shed. And just like Amina, every time Haya grooms her, great clumps come out on the brushes to reveal a glossy bay summer coat underneath. Haya can see just how muscled and powerful her filly has become. Already at nearly two Bree is built like a showjumper, with well-rounded haunches and strong shoulders. Haya desperately wants to sit astride Bree, to ride with the wind in her hair, galloping across the desert sands.
“Bree is still not ready to break in,” Santi tells her. “Why not ride one of the other horses?”
“I don’t want to ride another horse, I want my horse.”
“I understand, Titch,” Santi nods. “But your filly must be given time to mature. It will be another year before you can break her in to the saddle. Use that time and become a rider. Then you will be ready for her.”
“Who will I ride instead?” Haya asks.
Santi says, “We will put you on one of the Tanks.”
The Tanks, two of them, live at the stables at Al Hummar. They are golden Palominos, sent to the King as a gift from America.
The Tanks came to Jordan by sea, many years ago, arriving at the port of Aqaba. When their ship dropped anchor, the horses had been standing in their crates on deck for so long they could barely move their legs and so Santi decided the best way to bring them ashore was to crane them over the railings and let them swim.
In the salt water, the horses’ limbs loosened up and they snorted and churned their way through the waves. As they stepped out of the sea on to the pale sands, the grooms gathered round in amazement. They had never seen horses like these before. The Palominos were stocky and solid, with thick legs and barrel-bodies. Compared to the delicate, fine-boned Arabians of Al Hummar, they were enormous.
“These are not horses!” one of the grooms exclaimed. “They are tanks!” And so the nickname stuck.
The Tanks have a loose box each prepared for them at the polo stables. One Tank is for Haya and the other for Prince Hassan’s daughter, Princess Badiya. It is decided that Ali can ride Dandy the Shetland and he is moved here too. Now the only thing missing is a teacher.
“Her name is Mrs Goddard,” Prince Hassan tells the King. “She is an Englishwoman who has recently moved to Jordan with her husband. By all accounts she is an expert horsewoman and has volunteered her services.”
The morning of their first riding lesson, Haya and Badiya and Ali all saddle up their horses with help from Prince Hassan’s polo grooms.
The same age as Haya, Badiya is a delicate girl with wide eyes and thick jet-black hair to her waist. A beautiful and gracious child, she is every inch the Princess. As they stand and wait, Badiya makes pretty braids in her pony’s mane and when she giggles Haya thinks how even Badiya’s laugh is perfect, like the clear, crystal tinkle of a brook.
“Where is Mrs Goddard then?” Haya sighs. She is tired of waiting. She wants to ride.
“Why don’t we get on?” she suggests to Badiya. “I’ll leg you up if you like.”
“OK,” Badiya agrees.
Haya takes the Palomino’s reins and puts them over the horse’s neck. Then she grabs Badiya by the leg and flings her up into the saddle. Unfortunately she has grabbed the wrong leg and somehow Badiya ends up back to front, facing the tail.
“Climb back down!” Haya tells her.
“I can’t!” Badiya squeaks.
“Jump down then!” Ali entreats.
This is the state that Mrs Goddard finds them in when she arrives. There is a lot of tutting and head-shaking as Mrs Goddard lifts Badiya back to earth. “Our first lesson today will be mounting the horse.”
Despite the desert heat, Mrs Goddard is dressed in a tweed hacking jacket and banana yellow riding breeches that balloon over her thighs. She has a back like a ramrod and wears her coiffed hair like the Queen of England with a neat scarf tied under her chin. She wears a pair of spotless cream leather gloves and she carries a smart brown leather cane with a silver tip. The cane, Haya soon discovers, is an extension of Mrs Goddard’s right hand – she uses it to gesticulate as she talks, thwacking it loudly against the side of her long leather boots.
“Riding,” Mrs Goddard says as she marches up and down the yard in front of her young charges, “is a discipline that takes a lifetime to master.”
“It feels like a lifetime already,” Haya mutters under her breath to Badiya. Beside them, Ali stifles a giggle.
Haya cannot understand Mrs Goddard. She is supposed to be a riding instructor, but spends half an hour explaining the correct way to mount, before they are even allowed on to their ponies! Once they are actually onboard, things get even worse.
“Let us discuss the correct position in the saddle. There must be a straight line directly down through the shoulder, the hips and the ankle and another straight line from the elbow to the wrist and all the way to the bit on the bridle. Your reins are held between the ring finger and the little finger just so. Let me see your reins, Princess Haya. That’s right.”
“Mrs Goddard, when are we going to gallop?”
“Well, I can tell you it won’t be today!”
“Mrs Goddard?”
“Yes, Princess Haya?”
“Can we ride like the Indians do in cowboy movies?”
“Cowboys and Indians?” Mrs Goddard is horrified. “Princess Haya, I am a certified British Horse Society instructor. This is not the Wild West!”
There are no more questions allowed during the lesson. The next hour is spent mounting and dismounting and checking their positions, and there is barely time to walk the ponies once round the arena before Mrs Goddard announces that is all for the day.
“I hope you appreciate this,” Haya complains to Bree in her loose box once the instructor is gone. “I am doing this for you!”
She strokes the filly’s muzzle. “I’m going to become a real rider, Bree,” Haya whispers. “Then we will gallop across the desert together, you and me. And just let Mrs Goddard try to catch us!”
Haya’s father has to go to London for a meeting and when he returns he brings presents for Haya, Ali and Badiya. The gifts are wrapped in paper from Harrods and when Haya unwraps hers she is delighted to own her first pair of proper jodhpurs. There is also a tweed hacking jacket and a velvet hard hat. Badiya is thrilled with her outfit and parades it in front of the mirror, but Haya just pulls on the jodhpurs and leaves the rest in the tissue paper.
“Do I have to wear these for lessons?” she asks her father. It is a bit much having a hacking jacket on in the hot sun and no one else in the yards wears a helmet.
“Mrs Goddard insists,” the King says.
“Mrs Goddard is no fun. I shall be ninety years old by the time she lets me canter.”
After her lessons with Mrs Goddard, Haya always lingers at the yards. She watches her uncle cantering his polo ponies in wide circles round the big arena at the bottom of the hill. Why can’t she ride like that?
Most of the polo ponies in Prince Hassan’s stables are mares, but there is one gelding. His name is Solomon and he is a deep, rich chestnut colour with a white blaze and two white socks. Solomon is quite tall for a polo pony, but he has deep brown eyes that are kind and gentle. He would be lovely to ride. One day, after the lesson with Mrs Goddard is over and the yards are quiet for once, Haya goes to the tack room and lifts down Solomon’s bridle from its hook and heaves the saddle over her arm.
It is not easy for her to get the bridle on the big chestnut; she has to reach up very high to slip it over his ears. It is even harder to get the saddle on, but she manages somehow. She gets the girth good and tight round Solomon’s belly and then leads him out into the yard and, using the box once more, she flings herself lightly into the saddle.
It is like being up a tall tower! Solomon is so much bigger than the Tanks and yet he’s so skinny there is nothing to grasp between her legs. He has a long neck and it stretches in front of her like a giraffe.
“Good boy, Solly.” Haya clucks the gelding on and he moves forward obediently. They walk down the rutted track that leads to the training field. Solomon has realised now that the lightweight on his back is not Prince Hassan, but he is a good-natured horse and he steps out willingly as Haya walks him back and forth across the sandy surface of the polo field.
“Good boy, Solomon, shall we try a trot?” Haya puts her legs on tight against Solomon’s sides, as Mrs Goddard has taught her.
But Solomon is trained to break straight into a canter.
As the big chestnut surges forward, Haya gets the shock of her life. She is cantering! It feels so fast it is almost like they are flying across the field, and so smooth – not at all bouncy like a trot, but fluid, like riding a rocking horse. This is what she always dreamed it would be like, with the wind in her hair and a horse beneath her. It is magical.
When Haya takes a pull on the reins, the enchantment comes abruptly to an end. Solomon gives a sudden pivot on his hindquarters. Haya lets out a shriek as she is flung forward on to his neck. She clings on for all she is worth, but it does no good and she is thrown out of the saddle. Solomon comes to a halt, but it is too late to save her. Haya slides in an undignified heap, landing on her bottom on the soft loam of the polo field.
She sits there panting with shock. She has never fallen off a horse before. The ground came up at her a lot faster than she expected! Once she gets her breath back though, she realises that falling isn’t so bad. She isn’t hurt at all. She gets up and dusts off her jodhpurs.
Solomon seems genuinely sorry that his overenthusiastic turn has thrown her off. He lowers his head to give her a sniff with nostrils open wide, as if to say, “Hey, what are you doing down there?”
“Good Solomon.” Haya leads the big chestnut over to the railing, climbing up so that she can reach the stirrup with her foot and mount up again.
This time she doesn’t pull at the reins with so much gusto. She turns Solomon gently, circling the field, getting a feel for the big horse’s strides. Haya does not know it, but she rides exactly as Mrs Goddard would wish her to. She has perfect posture in the saddle, with her back straight, and her hands steady and poised in front of her.