He got up and stalked away. Peter watched him, troubled, sure that he must be in the wrong and knowing he was apt to face a severe whipping for this little piece of work. Then, halfway across the yard, the head groom turned, and a reluctant, grim little smile hit across his face like a single sunray on a gray morning.
"Go get your horse doctor," he said. "Get him yourself, son. You'll find him in his animal surgery at the far end of Third East'rd Alley, I reckon. I'll give you twenty minutes. If you're not back with him by then, I'm putting my maul into yon horse's brains, prince or no prince."
"Yes, Lord Head Groom!" Peter yelled. "Thank you!" He raced away.
When he returned with the young horse doctor, puffing and out of breath, Peter was sure that the horse must be dead; the sun told him three times twenty minutes had passed. But Yosef, curious, had waited.
Horse doctoring and veterinary medicine were then very new things in Delain, and this young man was only the third or fourth who had practiced the trade, so Yosef's look of sour distrust was far from surprising. Nor had the horse doctor been happy to be dragged away from his surgery by the sweating, wide-eyed prince, but he became less irritated now that he had a patient. He knelt before the horse and felt the broken leg gently with his hands, humming through his nose as he did so. The horse shifted once as something he did pained her. "Be steady, nag," the horse doctor said calmly, "be oh so steady." The horse quieted. Peter watched all this in an agony of suspense. Yosef watched with his maul leaning nearby and his arms folded across his chest. His opinion of the horse doctor had gone up a little. The fellow was young, but his hands moved with gentle knowl-edge.
At last the horse doctor nodded and stood up, dusting stable-yard grime from his hands.
"Well?" Peter asked anxiously.
"Kill her," the horse doctor said briskly to Yosef, ignoring Peter altogether.
Yosef picked up his maul at once, for he had expected no other conclusion to the affair. But he found no satisfaction in being proved correct; the stricken look on the young boy's face went straight to his heart.
"Wait!" Peter cried, and although his small face was full of distress, that deepness was in his voice again, making him sound much, much older than his years.
The horse doctor looked at him, startled.
"You mean she'll die of blood poisoning?" Peter asked.
"What?" the horse doctor asked, eyeing Peter with a new care.
"She'll die of blood poisoning if she's allowed to live? Or her heart will burst? Or she will run mad?"
The horse doctor was clearly puzzled. "What are you talking about? Blood poisoning? There is no blood poisoning here. The break is healing quite cleanly, in fact." He looked at Yosef with some disdain. "I have heard such stories as these before. There is no truth in them."
"If you think not, you have much to learn, my young friend, "Yosef said.
Peter ignored this. It was now his turn to be bewildered. He asked the young horse doctor, "Why do you tell the head groom to kill a horse which may heal?"
"Your Highness," the horse doctor said briskly, "this horse would need to be poulticed every day and every night for a month or more to keep any infection from settling in. The effort might be made, but to what end? The horse would always limp. A horse that limps can't work. A horse that limps can't run for idlers to bet on. A horse that limps can only eat and eat and never earn its provender. Therefore, it should be killed."
He smiled, satisfied. He had proved his case.
Then, as Yosef started forward with his hammer again, Peter said; "I'll put on the poultices. If a day should come when I can't, then Ben Staad will. And she'll be good because she'll be my horse, and I'll ride her even if she limps so badly she makes me seasick."
Yosef burst out laughing and clapped the boy on his back so hard his teeth rattled. "Your heart is kind as well as brave, my boy, but lads promise quick and regret at leisure. You'd not be true to it, I reckon."
Peter looked at him calmly. "I mean what I say."
Yosef stopped laughing all at once. He looked at Peter closely and saw that the boy did indeed mean it... or at least thought he did. There was no doubt in his face.
"Well! I can't tarry here all day," the horse doctor said, adopting his former brisk and self-important manner. "I've given you my diagnosis. My bill will be presented to the Treasury in due course... Perhaps you'll pay it out of your allowance, Highness. In any case, what you decide to do is not my business. Good day."
Peter and the head groom watched him walk out of the stableyard, trailing a long afternoon shadow at his heels.
"He's full of dung," Yosef said when the horse doctor was out the gate, beyond earshot, and thus unable to contradict his words. "Mark me, y'Highness, and save y'self a lot o' grief. There never was a horse what busted a leg and didn't get blood poisoning. It's God's way."