Ludo and the Star Horse - Mary Stewart, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 1
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LUDO AND THE STAR
HORSE
Mary Stewart
CHAPTER I
Home
This is the story of something that happened a long time ago, to a boy called Ludo, and you can
believe it or not as you please. It was told to me by Ludo's own grandson, and personally I believe every
word of it. But you, Amelie, must judge for yourself.
Ludo Spiegl was eleven years old, and he lived near a little mountain village in Bavaria called
Oberfeld. Herr Spiegl, Ludo's father, was very poor. He owned three goats and a cow, and that was all,
if you don't count his wife and son. Even the old horse he kept for work, and the cottage he lived in, poor
as it was, did not belong to him, but to the King, who owned the whole valley and all the land for many
miles around.
Herr Spiegl made his living chiefly by carpentry. He even cut the trees himself, and dragged them
down from the mountain with the help of Renti, the old horse, then sawed them up and stacked them and
left them to weather. He was a good carpenter, and there wasn't a house in Oberfeld without some of his
furniture in it. Even Doctor Kainz, from as far away as Niederfeld, had asked Ludo's father to make him
a table, and Herr Spiegl had once carved a seat for the church, which (said the priest) was good enough
for one of the King's castles. But the work was slow and hard, and of course it took a long time, so Herr
Spiegl had to take any other work that came his way. In summer he and Ludo— whose real name was
Ludwig, the same as the King's -—left the cottage in the valley and moved up into the mountains with the
goats and the cattle from all the valley farms. There the sun shone brilliantly all the time, and there was
plenty of good grass and water. This was the Alm, the summer farm. Twice a day all the cows came in
from the pastures to be milked, and from this milk Ludo's father and the other men made cheeses, which
were stored and later on taken down the mountain and sold. The cheese making was hard work, in sheds
full of steaming vats, and so was the milking. Ludo was too young to help. He spent every day out on the
mountainside watching the cows and goats and seeing that they did not stray. He loved the summer.
But when summer ended life was hard and fierce. Every year, about the middle of September, when
dew lay heavy on the grasses, and the butterflies wavered sleepily over the blue scabious and silver
thistles, the cattle would trudge, with sweet bells tolling, down the steep mountain paths back to their
winter homes in the valley. This was a time of festival in the village; there would be music and dancing and
the blessing of the cattle, and for a short time life would be full of gaiety and color; but then the feasting
would be over, the cattle would file into their places in the lower rooms of the cottages, and the Spiegls'
cow and the goats and Renti would be shut up for the long winter months. Ludo's father would check the
store of firewood stacked under the eaves, and would sort out the good seasoned wood for his
carpentry, and the household would settle down to the routine of winter.
Then the snow would come.
You have never seen such snow. You would go to bed one night as the flakes began to drift, and the
sky was dark, had been dark all day. When you awoke in the morning the sun was out, and what a sun!
A blaze in a sky so blue that it hurt the eyes, reflected everywhere from snow dazzling white with clear
blue shadows. You could tell where the houses were because the snow was house shaped. You could
see the pine trees because the snow stood glittering in Christmas-tree columns. But that was all. Roads,
streams, fields had gone. It was winter, and the snow locked the valleys.
In some ways this was an even better time than summer, because people would get out their
snowshoes and take to the snow. Ludo could never decide which he loved more; lying out in the sunshine
at the Alm, watching the goats and cattle peacefully grazing hour by hour; or racing downhill over the
crisp and sparkling snow, as swiftly as the King flew past in his golden sleigh with the four gray horses.
But winter could be cruel, too. You could go to bed one evening after a day in the sun and snow,
and perhaps if you woke in the night you might hear a small sound like a dog whining at the window's
edge. But it wasn't the dog; he was curled beside you in the blankets. It was the north wind; the wicked
winter wind that brought the blizzard snow, thick whirling flakes that blotted the world out and drifted
deep in the valleys and, worst of all, brought great torrents of snow rushing down the mountainsides.
These were the avalanches, which swept away everything in their path and buried it—houses, cattle,
people, everything—so deeply that they were never seen again until months later when the snow melted
in the spring and the bodies were dragged out to be buried.
It was on one such night that Ludo's story starts.
All the week it had snowed, so that the outlines of village and valley were blurred and soft with
snow. Inside the Spiegls' house it was warm and rather stuffy, because nobody with any sense would
have opened a window, and indeed Ludo and his father spent most of their day near the big stove in the
corner, busy with their winter tasks.
First of all let me tell you what the cottage was like, because, Amelie, it wasn't the kind of house you
have ever seen, and probably never will now, though here and there in Bavaria to this day there are
tumbledown old wooden huts that look like cattle sheds, but which were once houses where people like
Ludo lived.
The Spiegls' cottage was all made of wood, and was two storeys high. In the bottom storey the
animals lived during the winter; they had stalls at one end of the room—we had better call it a
barn—while the other end was used as a storeroom for the animals' fodder, and also for some of the
family's food, like potatoes, and tubs of pickled cabbage which they called sauerkraut, and strings of
hard dry sausages, and flour. Then there were Herr Spiegl's tools, and his jars of glue and varnish, and a
stack of seasoned wood ready for making into furniture. In one corner stood a box filled to the brim with
what looked like the dried roots of trees, and knotty bits of wood broken from dead branches. Which is,
in fact, exactly what they were. Besides being good at making tables and chairs, Herr Spiegl enjoyed
wood carving, and almost every evening in winter, when the other work was done and Frau Spiegl sat
down by the stove with her sewing, Ludo and his father would sit there, too, whittling away at carvings of
gnomes or goats or chamois, which they might be able to sell during the summer to make a little extra
money.
It is true that Ludo's carvings did not sell very well—unless his father improved them a
bit—because, as his father said to him, "You will never make a carver until you can talk to the people
you carve, and they talk back to you."
Ludo didn't quite understand what his father meant, because, though Herr Spiegl certainly talked
away (to himself, said Ludo's mother, blinking through her spectacles in the light from the stove), Ludo
had never heard the little carved gnomes and elves saying a single word. But it must be admitted that,
when Herr Spiegl had finished them and hung them on the cottage wall till spring, they looked very lifelike
indeed, as if they had affairs of their own and would, as soon as the family was sound asleep for the night,
jump down from the wall and go about their own business. And though Ludo's carvings each had two
eyes, a nose, and a mouth, all in exactly the right places, they looked just like pieces of pine root with no
affairs at all.
But still Ludo whittled and whittled, and wished that he could be allowed to help his father with
something really useful, like tables and chairs; but he was as clumsy with a plane or a chisel as he could
be, and after he had cut himself a few times, and spoiled some good pieces of wood, he was forbidden
to do any more. Myself, I think this clumsiness must only have been because he was too eager, and tried
to do work which was beyond him, but Herr Spiegl would shake his head impatiently, and wonder aloud
what he had done to be saddled with a clumsy son like Ludo, and Frau Spiegl would purse her mouth up
over her neat sewing and say that it wasn't everyone who was born with clever hands, but that even Ludo
was a bit of a help sometimes. Then poor Ludo would hang his head and wish with all his heart that he
could do something, even the smallest thing, really well, so that he could be a help to his parents, and
perhaps one day hear people in the village saying, "There goes that clever boy of the Spiegls'," the way
they did about Emil the baker's son, and Hans from the smithy, and even Rudi his friend, who had once
earned a silver coin for showing the King's huntsman which way the stag had gone. But nobody was ever
going to say that about Ludo Spiegl, who had never been to school, and who did nothing well except
carry wood and fetch water, feed the animals and clean their stalls, mend the harness, sharpen his father's
tools and mix the glue and clean the brushes and sort the nails and sweep up the shavings. . . . So he
would carve away at some tough old pine root (for of course the best pieces had to be kept for his
father) and dream of one day being a real wood-carver and making things so beautiful that they were fit
for nothing less than the King's own castle.
Now, the part of his work that Ludo liked best (apart from the wood carving, which was really play)
was feeding the animals. Not the cow so much, because she was rather a stupid creature, or even the
goats, which were clever, but would take advantage of kindness, and give you a nip or pull loose from
their collars and give endless trouble before they could be caught again. But he loved the old horse Renti,
whom he had known all his life. Indeed, Renti was older than Ludo, being now seventeen years old,
which for a working horse is a very good age indeed. And a working horse he certainly was; he did
everything, the ploughing of Herr Spiegl's tiny field, the dragging of the logs down the mountainside to be
sawn up, the carting of the cut timber and then the finished furniture, and a dozen other tasks. For
fourteen years he had done this, and for the last three or four it could be seen that he was getting slower
and slower; then one day a rolling log caught one of his forelegs and hurt it. By good luck the leg had not
broken, but ever since that day Renti had gone stiffly and a good deal more slowly. So soon, perhaps this
next summer, said Herr Spiegl, they would have to get another horse. Neither Ludo's mother nor father
said a word about what would happen to Renti, but Ludo knew that his father could not afford to feed
two horses, so he knew that Renti would be taken away and killed. So every day, when he had finished
feeding the other animals, he took Renti his feed and then sat by him, talking to him for company.
"Because I can talk to
you"
said Ludo, "and even though I can't hear you, I'm sure you're talking
back to me."
And old Renti would blow gustily into the chopped hay and snuffle with his nostrils at Ludo's chest,
and the two of them understood one another very well.
CHAPTER II
The Lost Horse
One night, when the wind whined high among the white crags, and the snow swirled thick and ever
thicker around the cottage, Ludo sat there, quite alone but for the little gnomes that hung on the walls. His
father and mother had gone out, down to the village, because his mother's sister was taken ill and needed
help, and Herr Spiegl would not let his wife journey alone down the valley.
"It will be a bad journey down," he said, "and a worse journey back. But Ludo
will
stay here and
keep the stove going, and if you have to stay with your sister, why then, I'll come back myself before
morning. Because, mark my words, by this time tomorrow there will be no coming and going at all in this
valley."
So Ludo, who was not in the least afraid of the dark or the lonely silence, as you or I might have
been, sat there by the stove and carved away at a piece of fir wood which looked as if it should turn into
a very lifelike gnome if you carved a bit here and a bit there.
But it didn't. The wood in the stove hissed and settled, and the wooden clock ticked on the wall,
and the eyes of all the gnomes on the log walls watched, just as if any minute they would speak; and
below the floor the animals shifted in their stalls and one of the goats whickered, and when the wind
fretted too close around the cottage walls the shutters rattled.
Since there was no one to send him to bed, Ludo didn't go. He was cozy near the stove, he had
brought in plenty of wood, and he didn't give a thought in the world to economizing on the candle. So he
sat there carving the gnome's nose and eyes, while the others on the wall watched him, until the door in
the clock flew open, and the cuckoo said it was midnight.
It really was time for bed, thought Ludo. And since he slept in the same room, just on the other side
of the stove, it wasn't such a hardship to go as it is for us who have to leave a warm room and go up the
chilly stairs. He was just putting away his carving tools and the half-finished gnome when he was startled
by a loud bang, the kind that might be made by a slamming door, or by something heavy falling to the
floor. He stood still for a moment, listening. He could hear nothing but the quiet sounds that were the
familiar sounds of the night, with behind them all the whining of the wind. Then he realized that the room
was colder, as if a door had opened. But the door was fast, and so were the shutters.
So, thought Ludo, the cold draft was coming up through the floorboards. One of the windows in the
barn had blown open, letting the cold night in.
He picked up the candle, pulled up the trapdoor in the corner near the door, and climbed down into
the barn.
It was bitterly cold down there. In their corner beyond the strawstack the goats were huddled close
together for warmth. The cow, stupid creature, just looked at him reproachfully with her big long-lashed
eyes. But the horse Renti—
Ludo stood stock-still on the bottom step of the stairs, not believing it. Where the old horse had
always stood was only the frayed end of a rope hanging, still tied to the manger, but no Renti. And the
outer door of the barn stood wide open, pushed right back against the piled snow. Renti had gone.
Well, you can imagine that Ludo ran to the open door to peer out in the teeth of the wind, but of
course he saw nothing, because the flame was ripped straight from his candle, and outside there was
nothing to be seen but the high drifts of snow, and a sort of furrow where perhaps the horse had
ploughed his way through them. Already the furrow was no more than a dip in the snow's surface and,
though Ludo floundered along it into the dark for a few yards, he couldn't even see the track of it any
more. Nor, as far as his good young eyes could strain, did he see any moving thing or any dark shape
that could be the truant horse.
It was not really dark, because the snow lay everywhere and reflected back what light there was
from the stars. And what stars! In that clear black mountain sky they shone and glittered, and underneath
them the snow-peaks glistened, so that someone like Ludo, who was used to the winter darkness, could
really see quite well. And while he stood there the wind dropped as suddenly as it had risen, and the
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