The frost was gone by fair morning, and in its place came the whole county, up the Colt Hallow road in carts and on foot and horseback, to the opened gate of a house that had kept itself shut for three years. Vaux had summoned them all: buyers from three shires, the gentry in their fair-day best, the auctioneer, and — because he had never thought to wonder why the duke pressed the invitation so warm — Sir Ambrose Kingsley the magistrate and Mr. Reeve the veterinary surgeon, at the front with no notion they had been placed. Half were the same faces that had watched a widow handed out through a carriage window eight weeks gone. They came to buy the famous Ravensmoor grey. They stayed to watch her crowned.
Vaux opened it himself, because a man cannot help but reach for the thing that has always worked. "Your Grace." He said it loud, for the yard, easy and grave, the loyal servant grieved past silence. "Before the sale, there's a matter wants settling. Her ladyship has cried my black colt drugged, not mad, these eight weeks. Well — let her prove it. Let her handle the killer loose, before you all, if she's so certain of her physic. I'll not have Ravensmoor beasts sold under a slander." He spread his hands. "Or let her own silence answer for her."
It was a death sentence, and he offered it smiling, and the county murmured, because they had all heard that horse scream.
"I'll answer it," Mercy said. She did not go to the box. She went first to Nan. "Bring the book," she said, "and the bucket."
And Nan Sowerby waded to the front in her fair-day apron, the greasy mash-book held to her chest and, in her other hand, the feed-pail she had kept eight days sealed. She set it before Mr. Reeve.
"Three year I've wrote what went to that box," Nan said, to the surgeon, her voice not shaking though her hands did. "Marks for clean and crosses for foul, every one dated. Smell the bottom, sir, and tell these people whether it's honest bran."
Reeve crouched, turned the pail to the light, and bent to the muck at the bottom, smelling it long, sifting it under the point of his knife. His face changed. "This is not honest feed," he said, flat and carrying. "Some sharp stuff's been worked through it — an irritant, a stimulant. Given steady, a thing like this would fret a horse half to madness and never quite kill it." He rose. "This colt was not born mad. He was fed mad."
"Given steady," Mercy said. "And stopped, eight days since." She looked at Vaux, then the county. "You've all heard this horse. You've called him a murderer. Now hear him quiet." She nodded to Thady, and the old man drew the bolt of the killing-box.
The black colt walked out into the yard on a slack rope, and stood. He stood in the middle of that crowded court, ears soft and forward, blowing once at the strangeness of so many people, and dropped his head to lip at the straw, a horse a hundred souls had heard scream for three years, gone quiet as a cob at a plough. Somewhere a woman began to cry. The madness had been in the bucket; she had taken it away; and there he stood on four still legs for anyone with ears to hear.
Vaux's mouth had gone to a line. His own dare had detonated in his hand, and the yard was beginning to know it too. "That proves a drugged horse," he said, and his voice was still level, still reaching. "Not who. A coper's widow with a grievance could have salted that pail herself, this morning, to hang an honest man—"
"This morning." Mercy did not let him finish it. She turned to the surgeon. "That was the last bucket this man carried to the box with his own hand — taken from him while it was still warm, waxed and dated on the spot before two lads who will swear the day, and the seal you broke just now was whole. A grievance can salt an empty pail. It cannot reach back through an unbroken seal." She held Vaux's eyes. "You fed this horse that bucket. She only kept it."
Reeve turned the pail, found the waxed date, showed it round, and nodded once, and that was the end of that road for Vaux.
"The mare," Mercy went on, before he could find another. "You came to buy a grey. Let's be sure which grey you're buying."
The auctioneer, uncertain now, had the home-paddock mare led into the court, the clean-legged, brown-eyed grey the county had believed in for four years. Mercy would not go near her. She walked to the far end of the court, sixty feet off, turned, and set two notes against her teeth, Kit's whistle, her father's whistle, and called the mare's name across the silent yard. "Damson."
The grey did not turn an ear. Mercy whistled again, clean and carrying, and called again. The mare stood dull and incurious under the auctioneer's hand, cropped at nothing, gave no more answer than the barrel the book lay on.
"A champion," Mercy said, "that a boy of this house could bring across a field with two notes. Watch her not know her own name." And then, into the held breath of the yard, she lifted her voice toward the far paddock gate, where Dob had stood since dawn with a lead in his hand. "Bring her up."
Over the ridge, at the gate, a grey came through, and answered. Her name in a whistle, and a whistle straight back, a high glad throat-sound flung across the court. The true Damson came on down the yard at a swinging walk that put her head at Mercy's shoulder, wall-eyed on the off side, an old splint standing proud and plain on the near fore, writ in a dead duke's own marks. She thrust her grey nose into Mercy's hands and would not be got away from the woman who had whistled.
"Mr. Reeve," Mercy said. "Read her against the stud book in the duke's hand — the splint, the wall-eye, fifteen years old in the old duke's copperplate." She stroked the true grey's face. "That's Damson. That other's a stranger you've called her name at for four years." She did not raise her voice for the last of it. "The mare in this duke's paddock was never his. She was sold out the back, foal by foal, a ringer in her place, and the estate told the great grey had gone barren."