“Where are we going?” asked Micha eventually.
Thomas pointed into the distance, where a blur of white was just about visible as it cut across the hillside.
“I can’t see anything.”
“You will.”
Micha frowned, though his eyes gleamed with amusement. “This better not be some local joke at my expense. I’m wise to that sort of thing. Isidore took me to see the hand of a buried giant once. And what did we find? Five carved tree stumps.”
Thomas laughed. “It’s nothing like that, I promise.”
They rode on.
“What’s wrong with that hill?” Micha squinted into the distance. “It looks like the chalk is ... Oh wait, that’s the horse, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s hard to really see the scale of it from down here. I wish I had a way to take you up into the air.”
“What, no hot air balloon in your pocket?”
“In my other coat, I’m afraid.”
Thomas led the way to the top of a small, flat-topped hill, from where they could see the stylised, bone-pale outline of the white horse as it swept over the escarpment. It gleamed against the hillside, timeless as the moon.
“Is it better than five carved tree stumps?” asked Thomas as Micha regarded it in silence.
He nodded.
“It’s Bronze Age, I think. Or possibly Iron Age. Either way, it’s the largest in England, perhaps the oldest.”
“You seem very proud of it.” Micha sounded a little sardonic.
“I do feel a touch of ownership,” Thomas admitted. “Every seventh Midsummer, we join with some of the neighbouring parishes to weed and scour it so that it will never be lost to time.”
Micha barked out a laugh. “Always on your knees, Father.”
“But is it not a wonderful thought? Like linked hands reaching back through history. And then everyone gets terribly drunk.”
Micha shivered, though the day was warm, but when he spoke it was only to ask who had first carved the horse.
“Nobody knows. Hengist, possibly, because his standard was a white horse. Or Alfred, perhaps, as a memorial of his victory over the Danes at Ashdown. Or maybe it was just to honour pagan gods, I don’t know.”
Micha, frowning again, his expression otherwise unreadable and his eyes distant, said nothing.
“We call this Dragon Hill,” Thomas continued. “Legend has it that this is where Saint George slew the dragon.”
“You do like to stake your claim to history around here.”
“We like to feel important.” Thomas smiled. “But you see that piece of exposed chalk? No grass has ever grown there, and they say it’s because that’s where the dragon’s blood was spilled.”
Micha snorted. “Any other local legends I should know about? Did the Battle of Hastings actually take place in the next village across? Was Excalibur plucked out of that stone there? I suppose they signed Magna Carta in your front parlour?”
“Be careful,” said Thomas, mischievously. “You don’t want to give us ideas. But, now you mention it, the Spanish Armada did come up the Cherwell.”
Micha’s lips betrayed him, quivering with the slightest hint of mirth.
“Although,” Thomas added, “here’s a real piece of local superstition. They say if you stand on the eye of the horse, it’s meant to grant you a wish.”
“Is that so?”
