Chapter 14
There's Always a Way Out
When Adam arrived at Widow Hawkins' the next Sunday, the horse was tied to the hitching post next to the stable, readily saddled. Juliet was standing next to her mount, stroking its noble muzzle. At Adam's greeting she looked up and beamed at him.
"Adam, how lovely to see you. How have you been this week?" she chimed. "How was church? Brought Reverend Oldman the troops into action against the poor gluttonous or the proud this week?"
"Well, you would know if you'd been there. But since you left me to suffer alone, I won't share the severity of my agonies with you. You have to earn the privilege to feast on my torments by living through the same kind of purgatory," Adam replied in a show of complete seriousness.
Juliet gave a high, clear laugh. "Oh, poor Adam! Was it that bad today?"
"Let's say, I surely missed your company, Myla— uh, Juliet," he chuckled. "I appreciated your comments on the sermon last week and was hoping for another exchange today."
"But you do realise we're supposed to listen quietly, don't you, Adam?"
"Well, do you?"
She snickered and sent him a sparkling glance.
Adam bathed in her eyes for a moment. Things could be very easy with her. He really didn't want to spoil that, but he simply had to say, "I see you saddled the horse already." He smiled, and he tried to keep any trace of triumph out of his voice.
Juliet looked at him with that lopsided smile again. Adam sensed an eyebrow-raising in the making. One, two—and here it was. A tiny adjustment but it changed her face significantly.
"Oh, no, I told you I won't do that." She pursed her lips and considered him with an intense stare. At this exact moment Josiah, the boy from the coach station, emerged from the open barn door.
"I cleaned the box like ya told me, ma'am, and put some fodder in Ny-o-bee's trough," he spluttered. "Have ya more for me ta do?"
"Not at the moment, Josiah, but I need you to come back later to unsaddle and groom her." Juliet turned from the boy to the man. "In about two hours, Adam?"
He looked at her in amazement. "Yeah, two hours should be a sufficient training time." Adam watched the boy give Juliet an eager nod and speed away. "You hired yourself a stable boy," he stated. Well, she sure had a creative way to iron out problems.
"I had to, hadn't I? Since neither you nor I were willing to do the job…." She smiled. "And Josiah was very glad to help me out. He became rather fond of Niobe, especially after he learned the origin of her name."
"And which origin did you tell him?" he asked her, curious about just how much she knew.
"Well, I assumed you didn't name her after the daughter of Tantalos who became stone after the tragic death of her children," Juliet said. "So I told him the story of Niobe, the first mortal love of Zeus."
"Yeah, I had her in mind when I named the foal. She was so beautiful and proud, she needed a special name."
"I must say, I was surprised to find this name out here. Niobe is not the usual Venus or Athena." Juliet gazed at him quizzically. "You must have done some research."
"Well, I always liked the Greek myths," Adam replied. He arched a sarcastic eyebrow. "We do have some books out here, you know."
"Oh, really?" she looked at him with wide round eyes and palmed her chin with both hands. "I thought you were still at the stage of mural paintings and cuneiform script."
"No. No! Didn't you see that large scary thing at your office? It's a fairly new invention, only 370 years old, and it's called print machine. They're making a newspaper with that."
"You don't say! And here I assumed Mr. Goodman was writing all the issues by hand every night. Great God, I walked right into the middle of an industrial revolution!" She clapped her hands in mock amazement but couldn't keep her face straight for long. She dissolved into sniggers.
Adam watched her in awe. Gone was the Queen of England, arrived was a relaxed young woman, completely at ease. It was as if a mask had fallen from her face. Even her upright posture had passed through a metamorphosis now as she bent with laughter. He had never seen her so full of life and cheer. This was a side of her he'd liked to enjoy more often. And this new easygoing manner would certainly help with the riding lesson.
"After all that mythological and bibliophilic talk, maybe we should start with the training now?" Adam suggested with a smile.
When Juliet nodded, still stifling her giggles, he took the reins and led Niobe to the small patch of land behind Widow Hawkins' house. Once this had been a back garden with flower beds and lawns but now that the widow had focused her attention on the sumptuous beds of roses and lavender and the opulent pink and blue and white hydrangeas in the front garden, it had degenerated into sandy soil with only traces of grass here and there—ideal for riding.
Adam cupped his hands for Juliet's foot and helped her to the saddle. He was quite satisfied with what he saw. He had been sure Niobe was the perfect horse for Juliet—and she was! Rider and horse made a perfect match. A beautiful, tall, and proud woman on a beautiful, tall, and proud horse. Juliet arranged her skirt, took up the reins, straightened her back and gave Niobe the tiniest nudge with the heel of her boot. The horse went into motion in an instant and Juliet rode her in a big circle around Adam.
For the next two hours Adam stood in the middle of their improvised riding circle and directed Juliet through the training. Amazingly, she did everything he told her to do. She wasn't the greatest rider in the world, but she sat the horse and she was able to implement his commands. And astonishingly enough, she did it without any complaints. For a long time Adam wondered why on this one occasion she was being so tractable. Only very much later did he understand that it was the prospect of learning that made her so eager and tame. She would go to any lengths to learn something new.
Over the next weeks they developed a certain routine. More times than not they would meet at church, sit next to each other and share whispered comments and an occasional stifled laugh at Reverend Oldman's sermons, which very often would earn them a scolding glare from Ben Cartwright. After church and a short lunch break they would continue with the training.
The lessons were filled with merciless teasing and good natured bantering and a lot of laughter…except for one day when Juliet commented on Rev. Oldman's executions about the virtues of marriage, and how both man and woman should seek for a spouse rather than to romp around, with a declamation of, 'Marriage is but a ceremonial toy' and Adam retorted that he didn't think Marlowe's Mephastophilis was the appropriate reference for matters of this concern, and he personally preferred Shakespeare's approach of, 'Marry, peace it bodes, and love and quiet life, and awful rule and right supremacy; and, to be short, what not, that's sweet and happy?' This led them to a heated argument about whether Petruccio was a better reference on marital aspects than Mephastophilis, how the Shakespeare quotation continued and whether or not this was a reasonable approach on the relationship between a man and a woman, if the theater-maker Shakespeare had really written his plays or if Christopher Marlowe had his hands in them and so they all came from the same source anyway, and if there was any need for human beings to get married in the first place.
Their discussion was brought to an end when Adam pointed out that if there were anyone eavesdropping on them right now, this would very likely evoke some quite interesting gossip among the population of Virginia City. The following awkward silence was finally broken by Juliet's, "Not that they aren't gossiping already!" And then they both hastened to praise the values of friendship rather than romance. That day they ended the riding lesson quite abruptly, and for some weeks they avoided this topic completely. Reverend Oldman's creative use of proverbs and their ongoing argument about the true origins of the Bard's works seemed to be much safer ground, so they tacitly agreed to stick to things like that.