Chapter 1

      Anyone who knows anything about horses will tell you that there is no such thing as a white horse. A horse is never called ‘white’. They are always referred to as grey.

      Roberto Nunez shook his head and smiled at this. How silly these rules were!

      He knew that horses could not be white. Yet how else could he describe the mares that were galloping towards him? These mares were as pure white as the snow that topped the distant mountains of the Sierra de Grazalema. They were as white as the stone walls that ran around the stables here at El Caballo Danza Magnifico.

      Roberto Nunez’s purebred Lipizzaner mares were as white as any animal in nature could possibly be. Their colour appeared all the more startling because it was in stark contrast with the coal-black foals that ran alongside them at their feet.

      Although Lipizzaner horses are famous for being white, their foals are always born pitch-black. Gradually, as the foals grow up, their colour will change. As they mature, the Lipizzaners’ dark coat will begin to prick here and there with tiny white hairs so that by the time the foals have grown into yearlings they have become steel-grey. At the age of three Lipizzaners are almost grown-up, and their coats have become even lighter, with dapples beginning to show through the dark steel on their hindquarters. In this way, their coats will keep fading until finally, at around the age of twelve, their dapples will have washed away and the Lipizzaner will be utterly and completely snow-white just like their mothers and fathers before them.

      This was the way with the Lipizzaner. Roberto Nunez knew the breed well. At his hacienda, his grand estate here in southern Spain, he bred Andalusians and Lipizzaners, along with the highly strung, elegant, chestnut Anglo-Arabs that made up his internationally renowned troupe of performing horses known as El Caballo Danza Magnifico.

      The mares that were galloping towards him now, driven carefully by his men, were part of his breeding herd. They had been grazing for the day out on the dry rocky hillsides that surrounded his horse stud. Nunez liked to let the mares and their young foals roam free as much as possible. It toughened them up. It gave them spirit. But always he kept a close eye on his horses. Now, as night fell, he was bringing them home.

      There were about two dozen mares in this herd, all ghostly pale, with the bloom of their grey dapples fading on their rumps. Their manes and