A Hundred Horses by Sarah Lean Page B

Belle too.”
    Rita raised her eyebrows.
    “A foal!” She seemed just as surprised as I was.
    “Belle’s foal! He was born nearly a week ago, and he’s got a problem with his legs. Angel’s been looking after him in one of the stables.”
    Rita leaned heavily against the kitchen worktop and muttered, “Mr. Hemsworth said he was going to breed Belle, but then he . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “He wasn’t a man of many words; he didn’t tell me Belle was in foal, and I didn’t notice any signs. I was so busy worrying about what to do with the horses over the winter and how I’d cope without him . . . I just turned them over to Old Chambers. I needed time to think what to do. But why didn’t Old Chambers tell me she’d had the foal?”
    She sighed heavily, rubbed her forehead.
    “Let me tell you something about Angel,” Rita said.
    She rested her hand on my shoulder, and I knew we were now somehow together in this story.
    “Belle was the first horse we had, long before we took on the herd. Mr. Hemsworth chose her; she’s from a fine heritage. Angel’s mother was helping out here then. Sometimes . . .” She shook her head but continued. “One night Angel’s mother was putting Belle in her stable. It was the night Angel was born. Right there in the stable, with Belle watching over them. You know, I think that from the first moment, Belle raised that child. Taught Angel everything she knows.
    “I’ll let Old Chambers know Belle is here. We’ll keep quiet about how she got here, though.” She looked puzzled. “But he should have told me about the foal.”
    “Gem told me Angel stole all your horses,” I said.
    “Village gossip and tales,” she huffed. “Angel led them over to Old Chambers’s farm for me last autumn. I couldn’t face doing it myself. She was the only one who still seemed to care about them. Old Chambers runs the horse auction every spring. I thought if I didn’t see the horses, I would get used to being without them, just move on after the auction. I hadn’t seen Angel since she took the horses over there until she turned up the other day.”
    She sighed again wearily.
    “Angel was always a bit of a hooligan; perhaps someone saw her taking the horses over to Old Chambers’s farm. People believe what they want to believe, make up stories to explain what they don’t know.”
    Now there seemed to be another Angel, one who I was still getting to know. Rita appeared lost in the past for a moment. Then she squeezed my hand.
    “I didn’t know about the foal. Angel didn’t tell me either.”
    So Lunar had been Angel’s secret in the stable all along.
    “Angel did steal Mrs. Barker’s goat,” I said. “But she’s taken her back now.”
    Rita shrugged and waved her hand in the air. She took the comforter off her bed for me to take out to the stable and put over Angel. Then she stopped gathering it into a bundle and laughed suddenly.
    “The foal would have needed milk until Angel found Belle!” Rita tapped the side of her nose. “A nanny goat can stand in as a kind of foster mother. Up on a couple of bales of straw, she’d be about the right height. Goat’s milk is rich and almost good enough for a foal; Angel would know that.”
    “Really?” I said. But I was laughing inside because now I knew why she had stolen Dorothy.
    Rita was more serious now.
    “You know, Nell, I think Angel is just trying to hold on to Belle a little longer. I won’t deny her these last couple of weeks with her, with them both, before they go to auction. Come next Saturday, we’ll all have to move on.”
    Angel was a thief, but only because she had been stealing some time with the things she loved.
    Rita sat down then, as if something was too heavy for her to stand anymore. “What to do?” she muttered to herself.
    I went back to the stables. I covered Angel as she slept on the straw with the beautiful foal, Belle watching over them. I left some cheesy