Airs Above the Ground (1965) by Mary Stewart

🐎 My second read of Mary Stewart brought me to Austria, to the circus and dancing Lippizaner stallions. The heroine is Vanessa March, a young wife, whose salesman husband is supposed to be on business trip to Stockholm, but she saw his glimpse on a newsreel, during a big fire in a circus in Austria! And moreover, with a young blonde on his side. So, when a friend asked her to chaperone a seventeen year boy who will be on a flight to his estranged father in Austria, well... how can Vanessa resist the trip? After some awkward moments, the young wife and the teenage boy open up to each other about their real intentions. Vanessa isn't coming to join her husband on holiday, and Timothy, the teenage boy, isn't to see his father. Tim is obsessed with horses, and intends to seek a job in the Spanish Riding School.

🐎 After the confessions, so to speak, they immediately become close friends and partner-in-crime. They soon found two things. That the blonde from the newsreel is Annalisa Wagner, the daughter of the circus owner, who performs with the dancing horses; and that Lee Elliot, who'd been helping in the circus, is none other than Lewis March, Vanessa's husband, and whose real job is not salesman, but a secret service agent! He is meeting his colleague, who was found dead during the circus fire, together with Annalisa's Uncle Franzl. Naturally, Timothy and Vanessa - who would have been a veterinarian had she not married - are delighted that Lewis asked them to loiter and look around for anything suspicious. What they find in the circus stable is Old Piebald - Franzl's old horse with a swollen leg (hematoma) during the fire. Vanessa operated the leg, and thus, bind a relationship with the old white horse.

🐎 The circus was a lovely addition to this book's charm. That, and the dancing horses. 'Airs above the ground' are the beautiful, traditional dance moves that the trained Lippizaner stallions do, including the levade, where the horse rears up and holds his pose.

The best part of the book is when Vanessa brought Old Piebald to graze on a patch of grass outside the circus tents, one evening. His leg was still a bit lame. It was during the show; Tim was watching, and Vanessa and Old Piebald were alone. Then suddenly, tuning in with the music, the horse slowly danced along. The rest is one magical moment that would carved itself into my memory deeper than the story itself.

In the distance the music changed: the Lipizzaner down in the ring would be rising into the levade, the first of the airs above the ground'. And in the high Alpine meadow, with only me for audience, old Piebald settled his hind hooves, arched his crest and tail, and, lame forefoot clear of the ground, lifted into and held the same royal and beautiful levade.

The moonlight flooded the meadow, blanching all colours to its own ghostly silver. The pines were very black. As the stallion rose in the last magnificent rear of the levade, the moonlight poured over him bleaching his hide so that for perhaps five or six seconds he reared against the black background, a white horse dappled with shadows, no longer an old broken-down gypsy's piebald, but a haute école stallion, of the oldest line in Europe.

🐎 All in all, this is a suspense novel with idyllic Austrian landscape as a background, and dancing Lipizzaners as a center point; spiced with some car chases and few actions. The heroine is a married woman, so you would find no romance here, as is usual with Mary Stewart's. But I think, I prefer it like this. Timothy stole my heart from the beginning, when he comforted Vanessa during the flight, as she dreaded the forthcoming landing, he said something like, I can hold your hand during the landing if you like... or something like that. And that's a gentleman on the making, Timothy Lacy! Then later on, when Lewis March appeared on the scene - and the show begins, because the suspense started with him - it is clear that Timothy adored Vanessa's husband. The villain (someone from the circus) had hit Vanessa earlier, so that she met Lewis with bruises on her face. When Lewis confronted the villain, he 'punished' him for ever laying hand onto his wife. And here, Timothy showed his admiration, which also showed his views of men hurting women. Bravo, Tim! 

* Originally I would have rated this one four stars, but the 'airs above the ground' scene of Old Piebald - his real name is Neapolitano Petra, by the way - and the ending, definitely deserved another star!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐