In a meadow in North Berkshire, a soft breeze and the smell of pastries lulls me into believing that I've finally taken my oft delayed sabbatical. But this picnic - and quite a picnic it is: blanket, tea, polite conversation and all - is strictly business. I am meeting with the Ladies Saddle Club of Berkshire to hear their side of a grizzly and controversial tale. Controversy is nothing new to Juba and I, as we've been researching for the Hot Topic column of BB for nearly a decade together, but to have it served with cucumber sandwiches and pecan tassies is a first.
The ladies arrive in style on their prized mounts - some side saddle in classic fashion, others astride in the modern way - their mounts well fed and glistening in the spring sunlight. It seems like such a club would surely be the pride and joy of any small town in Berkshire, but each day opposition mounts against these ladies - opposition I am not sure they are undeserving of.
It is only on close inspection that the secret is revealed - beneath the flowers and bows, the daintily crafted leather of their bridles, the impatient chomping of the horses at their bits reveals sharp fangs where equine molars are expected. These are no typical saddle ponies - they are of the Thracian breed. The infamous man-eating mares of Diomedes.
That is just a name, of course. These horses are many generations removed from the mares owned by the giant Diomedes of Herculean legend - and, in fact, many of them are stallions, not mares. They've tasted no man-flesh in their lifetimes, but eat a less compelling diet of kibble and scrap meat like the hounds the ladies keep in their stables. But the stigma that hung about those four fabled mares still hangs fresh in the air about the Saddle Club - no matter how aromatic the ladies make their picnics.
Three weeks earlier a carriage horse was bitten quite savagely by one of these horses, adding strength to fears that have been building in Berkshire for years.
"If it had been a dog," quips Marlene Thatcher, head of the Saddle Club and my host for the afternoon, "there would have been no story. Dogs are biting horses - and people - in a county like Berkshire on a weekly basis. This is the first instance of one of our horses doing anything remotely aggressive. And it wasn't unprovoked. The papers don't tell you that."
I sip at my tea - a little too sweet for my taste, but then everything about the Ladies Saddle Club seems more sugary sweet than necessary. The ladies in their genteel floral hats are doing their best to keep conversation light, but Thatcher is on point.
"We take precautions - we keep our distance from traffic and give people fair warning - that carriage driver was getting pushy and trying to squeeze in where there wasn't room for him, his horse would have gotten bitten or kicked by even the tamest old nag."
The photos in the paper showing the carriage driver comforting his bleeding horse certainly made no effort to be unbiased. But the question remains as to whether these animals belong on city streets.
The modern day Thracian Mare has been domesticated for many thousands of years - but that domestication has not rid it of the wild, unpredictable, and sometimes vicious nature of its wild cousins, who still run free in the undeveloped regions of the Thracian Plain. In other domesticated equines such qualities would have been selectively bred out over generations, but in the Thracians, who were historically the chosen mount of warlords and conquerors, they were passed down as favorable temperaments.
So why do the ladies of Berkshire choose such a mount for their afternoon exercises? They will not deny it is a form of fashion - the modern woman, they explain, wishes to be both genteel and wild, delicate and dangerous. The Thracian mares reflect that. One can admire their attempts to redefine themselves, but when the general safety is put at risk, it seems there would be other, less dangerous forms of self expression.
"We didn't intend to cause any uproar," says Thatcher in a quiet moment when the other ladies are attending their horses, "it was a whim and we didn't think anyone would care much, other than to gossip a little. But now we are quite attached to our poor beasts, so what are we to do? If the county decided to ban them, well - well, certainly they're not the ideal city-dwelling creatures, but they are dear things - it would break our hearts to have to get rid of them."
Her admission is the first compelling argument I've heard today, and, I know, the most heartfelt one. Whatever their behavior on the streets may be, today on the lawn I see an exchange of affection no less real than between other riders and their mounts. What the fate of these beasts will be I do not know, but it is a uncomfortable stalemate to be sure.
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