Haji arrived beside the racecourse, or rather, beside the "lake" he had seen earlier. A group of young aristocrats were mounting their horses.
Among them were Britons in red military uniforms and Frenchmen in blue ones. The British not only raced horses but gambled on dogs as well, though these horses and dogs did not look like they were meant for speed contests. The Bois de Boulogne had once been a royal hunting ground. It seemed they were preparing to hunt.
Haji watched the baying hounds. They were huge, nothing like the foxhounds English aristocrats used when hunting.
As a professional thug, Haji had done debt collection before. One debtor in particular remained vivid in his memory: a man addicted to horse racing. He was always trying to win his money back and never knew when to quit. In the end, he had piled up debts and even mortgaged the house his parents had left him.
When they repossessed the house, Haji remembered seeing horse-racing materials everywhere, including mountains of newspapers and liquor bottles.
On a display case filled with cat-shaped biscuits lay a book introducing the history of British horse racing. The Wars of the Roses had devastated England, drastically reducing the number of horses until cavalrymen had no mounts to ride.
To develop the country's horse industry, Henry VII and Henry VIII began importing large numbers of fine-bred horses from Italy, Spain, North Africa, and elsewhere. The king personally organized competitions among the nobles, and horse racing thus became "the sport of kings."
If not for that monk's reminder, Haji would never have thought in that direction. He deliberately checked beneath the riders, and every horse they rode was a stallion. Mares were for women.
If they had imported superior breeds to cultivate racehorses, that would be understandable.