The Hunt Ball

C H A P T E R 1 3

Today, the summation of fall, was flooded with soft sunshine. As fall lingered long this year many trees still dazzled red, orange, yellow, and true scarlet. The sky, an intense blue, was cloudless. The mercury at ten A.M. sat on the sixty-six-degree line but would surely climb. This was a perfect day for everything but foxhunting.

As the Reverend Judy Parrish from Trinity Episcopal Church blessed the hounds on the beginning of the one hundred and eighteenth season, the crowd of two hundred people smiled. The hounds gathered around the divine as she stood on a mounting block so people could see her and so the dog hounds wouldn’t take a notion to offer their own blessing.

Diana observed the Reverend Parrish’s vestments flowing slightly in the light breeze. People’s clothing fascinated her and she thought it must be a bother to have to decide what to wear and be confined in it. Paying for it was the final insult. She had only to wash her sleek coat and go about her day.

Diana wondered why the Reverend Parrish’s robe was white with a multicolored surplice whereas the Reverend Daniel Wheeler’s robe was black, his surplice representing the ecclesiastical season. The Reverend Wheeler gave a blessing on Thanksgiving as that was the Children’s Hunt and the youngsters adored the Reverend Wheeler.

Diana considered asking Cora, who was older and wiser, but knew if she so much as opened her mouth a dirty look would shoot her way from the huntsman.

As they disembarked from the party wagon, their special van, he told them sternly, “No loose tongues. Be respectful.”

Sister, on Lafayette, stood to the left of the hounds; Shaker, on Gunpowder, was on the right. Betty and Sybil discreetly stood farther back just in case.

Tedi and Edward opened their house for this special day. Hospitality, second nature to them, made everyone feel part of the ceremony even if they’d not so much as fed a carrot to a horse in their life.

As the hounds, the horses, the foxes, and lastly the humans were blessed, Sister lifted her eyes to take in the large field, all one hundred and thirty of them. This number, unwieldy for a field master, was dwarfed by the four hundred or so who would take to the field on Boxing Day in England. Entire villages poured out along the road to cheer them on. For an American hunt, one hundred and thirty people in the field and another two hundred on the ground constituted a sizable number. She knew her people could ride. About the visitors, well, they’d either hang on or dot the landscape in their best clothes.

The best riders of Custis Hall came. Charlotte and Bunny sat beside each other. Bill Wheatley, in a weazlebelly with a robin’s egg blue silk stock tie, not incorrect if one studies the mid-eighteenth-century prints, was also there. Bill’s theatrical nature would leach out somehow. He had to be noticed.

Sister was glad Charlotte kept the girls on their schedule. Charlotte’s judgment impressed Sister. Over the last nine years she had ample opportunity to observe what to her was a young woman. At seventy-two, someone forty-three is young.

Her eyes lingered on Gray Lorillard next to his brother, Sam, and Crawford and Marty. They hadn’t a minute to catch up, although he did sprint to her truck when she pulled in to give her a big hug and a kiss. He made her feel like the most special woman in the world. And he was handsome. His hair was salt and pepper, his military mustache set off his straight white teeth, and his deep voice had a melodic, hypnotic quality. The other thing she noticed about Gray when they’d begun dating last year was his hands, slender but strong.

Bunny Taliaferro also had lovely hands.

She really didn’t know why she looked at hands. Maybe it was because a horseman needs good hands, but not necessarily pretty ones. She valued both.

A moment of silence, then Shaker coughed.

She smiled gratefully at Shaker, for he brought her back to the task at hand. “Hounds, please.”

He clapped his cap on his auburn curls, the cap tails dangling. They walked at a stately pace down the long winding drive; at the covered bridge he put his horn to his lips, pointed Gunpowder to the right, and blew for the hounds to get to work. “Lieu in there.”

“Finally!” An exasperated Dragon bolted along Snake Creek.

For all his eagerness and everyone else’s the day was a blank. No master wants a blank day even if Jesus Christ himself couldn’t get a fox up on a day with a high-pressure system overhead, dry, bright, and now seventy-two degrees. Still, everyone enjoyed a gorgeous ride and came back to the trailers in two hours. Even at the leisurely pace at which they moved along some people managed to part company with their horses.

As the hounds drank water back at the party wagon, Crawford walked over and said to Shaker, “That bitch has drive.”

He had pointed to Dragon.

“Dog hound,” Shaker simply replied.

“Ah, well, you ought to breed him.” Then Crawford walked toward his wife, who had just emerged from their dressing room in the horse trailer.

Shaker seethed.

Sister shrugged. “He has to be the authority.”

“No authority on manners and doesn’t know squat about hounds.” Shaker stroked Diddy’s head.

“You’re right about that.”

A hunt member should never presume to tell staff or the master what to do or how to do it. Crawford had told the huntsman what hound to breed, thereby committing two sins. First, he had breached etiquette. Second, he had revealed a dangerous ignorance should he ever get the opportunity to breed a pack. Beware being seduced by a brilliant individual. Always study the families, study the bloodlines.

The breakfast exceeded even the last Opening Hunt breakfast. This time Tedi and Edward brought down an oysterman from the Chesapeake Bay who shucked oysters right out of an ice-crammed barrel. There were clams, too. Half a pig turned on the outdoor spit over open coals, as did half a lamb on a second spit, the roasting pit glowing orange. Twelve people had been employed to serve the guests; blue-and-white-striped tents set up outside provided shade since it proved so hot.

Two bars, four bartenders, worked feverishly. Foxhunters have hollow legs, but in the heat even the abstentious developed a powerful thirst.

The muffin hounds, like Knute Nilsson, who didn’t ride but came for the party, to see friends off, were in line for breakfast, which started at noon. The riders needed to sponge down their horses, water them. Tedi and Edward, having hosted many a breakfast, knew to keep the food coming. No rider should go home hungry.

Each long table had a low fall display, sheaves of wheat, with a miniature French hunting horn in the middle.

Tedi thought of everything. Sister, Walter, Tedi, and Edward moved from table to table making sure everyone had what they needed.

The girls from Custis Hall, thrilled to be part of the big day, and equally thrilled not to be eating Custis Hall food even though it was pretty good, sang, and then prompted others to join in.

Bill stood up, held up his hands like a conductor, and they belted out “Do ye ke’en John Peel.”

At the last chorus everyone joined in. Many guests now felt no pain.

Charlotte, who managed to attend Opening Hunt after all, touched Sister’s sleeve as she passed the table. “Thank you, Master. Another wonderful Opening Hunt.”

“Given the temperature, we could have gone fishing instead.” Sister laughed.

Charlotte pulled her down and whispered in her ear, “I’ll talk with Bill on Monday. I wanted to do some investigating of my own first and I thank you, too, for alerting me to something so sensitive.”

Sister squeezed Charlotte’s shoulder and moved on.

Ben Sidel, elbow to elbow with Henry Xavier, nicknamed X, a boyhood friend of RayRay’s and therefore dear to Sister, was extolling the virtues of his horse, Nonni.

Sister chatted with the men, then moved along.

As Ben’s eyes followed her, X remarked, “I’ll bet she’s pissed about Al Perez being hanged on her property.”

Ronnie Haslip, another childhood friend of RayRay’s, said, “Who wouldn’t be?”

“Yes, but the difference is she’ll figure it out. No offense to you, Ben,” X declared, his vest unbuttoned since he really was becoming rotund.

“No offense taken,” the genial Ben replied.

“Any ideas?” Ronnie liked being close to the action and gossip, and he liked the sheriff.

“Ideas are one thing, hard facts are another. The only thing I can tell you is he was hanged to death. He wasn’t killed somewhere else, then strung up.”

Ronnie shuddered. “Hope it was fast.”

“It wasn’t. He didn’t drop far, so his neck didn’t snap. He strangled to death.”

Ronnie and X looked at each other, then at Ben.

X dabbed his mouth with a napkin. He may have been fat, but he was dainty. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“It will. Once all the pieces are in place there’s something inevitable about the puzzle.” Ben knew talking business was part of his job, just as being a doctor meant you heard everyone’s symptoms. He noticed Walter Lungrun getting an earful from neighbor Alice Ramy.

As Sister swept by one of the end tables she noticed a small bespectacled figure walking toward the tents. A woman, perhaps in her early fifties, her hair pulled back in a severe bun, eyes searching, came toward Sister as Sister extended her hand.

“Hello, I’m Jane Arnold, welcome.”

In a faltering voice, the lady held out her small hand. “I’m Professor Frances Kennedy from Brown University. Is Mrs. Norton here?”

“She is. Let me take you to her, but please make sure you get something to eat. Can I get you a drink?” Sister also noticed that she wore beautifully made monkey’s fist gold earrings and one simple old ring, oval, with a black onyx stone, a crest engraved thereon.

“No, thank you,” Professor Kennedy respectfully declined.

Sister noted, making her way through the people, that Professor Kennedy was frail, not just thin. She wore a pleated skirt in the Kennedy tartan, a crisp white blouse, a Celtic brooch on her left shoulder. Her features were Caucasian, although she was African American, which made Sister wonder if her people weren’t originally Ethiopian, as they so often have sharp features.

People’s ancestry fascinated Sister, but that could be said of most Virginians, who, try as they might to avoid it, find that chickens come home to roost in middle age. By that time you look like your people. Blood tells.

“Charlotte, this is Professor Frances Kennedy. Professor Kennedy, this is Mrs. Charlotte Norton, headmistress of Custis Hall.”

The look on Charlotte’s face, welcoming but questioning, left Sister to wonder just what was going on. Then she noticed that Pamela Rene beat a hasty retreat to the smorgasbord.

Charlotte made the student next to her give her seat to Professor Kennedy and she sent Valentina for a plate of food and Tootie for a drink once she extracted what libation the quiet-spoken lady preferred.

“I’m here to examine your artifacts.” Professor Kennedy smiled shyly as she gratefully sipped iced tea, a sprig of mint floating on top.