by Brian Carter
Dawn filtered through mist and the moon had faded to transparency. Behind the eastern spur of Dartmoor the sun rose. Jacko opened his eyes onto the ball of burning gold and yawned. For him there were no yesterdays. The sun was his father, the stars were his masters and friends. In the hedge bordering the cottage gardens of Ullacombe a yellow-hammer trilled, and the robin who ruled the vegetable patch of the Rock Inn broke into song. All winter he had sounded like a rusty iron gate swinging on its hinges, but now he warbled loud and passionately to warn other cock birds off his territory. Many earthworms had been swallowed to fuel his performance. Behind him the remoteness of quiet, deserted farmland materialised from the mist.
Jacko’s long legs brought him to Haytor Quarry Ponds. Mordo the raven sat in the top of a rowan tree above the quarry and watched the lurcher. Every so often Mordo thought of his mate who was sitting on four eggs and he bowed and chuckled. Long ago ravens had nested on Hay Tor, but boys from Widecombe had taken the eggs. Mordo and Skalla had built a nest of sticks lined with sheep’s wool, moss and ponies’ hair in a 100-foot-tall oak at Pullabrook Wood. The eggs, were pale green, blotched and freckled with dark brown markings.
‘Big black bird know Jacko,’ the lurcher said. ‘He bow to me. He know I friend of stars. One day I chew off his head and he fly up to stars. Jacko good dog. Stars say so.’
He cocked his leg and watered the handle of a rusty iron winch. Mordo laughed quietly to himself, and a swish and flap of black wings announced the arrival of Swart.
‘Is it the dog?’ said the crow.
‘It’s a dog, right enough,’ the raven grinned.
‘That one’s special,’ Swart said. ‘He’s cracked, addled; nutty as a hazel bush. He goes round killing everything that moves – for fun. It’s obscene.’
The rowan branch bent under the weight of the two corvids.
‘He don’t bother me,’ Mordo said, regarding his cousin cheerfully.
‘The corvid that is born to be hanged need never fear the mad dog,’ Swart said.
‘Ah well,’ Mordo laughed. ‘We all run the risk of the keeper’s gibbet. What a bundle of bad weather you are, Swart.’
Swart frowned and waggled his beak in his breast feathers to disturb the fleas.
‘I was born crow and have been ever since,’ he said.
‘That’s a fact,’ said the raven.
Jacko flashed him a look of utter desperation and began to bark.
‘He’s talking to himself again,’ said Swart.
‘And why not?’ cronked Mordo. ‘I do it.’
‘Ah yes,’ the crow said slyly. ‘Well, I’m not surprised.’
‘It’s because I enjoy talking to intelligent corvids,’ Mordo said, refusing to relinquish his good humour. ‘There aren’t many about.’
Swart ruffled his feathers and quizzed the raven with a bright, black eye. He had never laughed in his life and he had no intention of beginning now.
‘Funny – you never see ravens till the best part of the day’s gone,’ he said.
‘We sleep slowly,’ Mordo grinned.
‘Cra-ark,’ said Swart and he flew away.
An idea crumbled in Jacko’s head and gusted through his brain like sparks from a furnace. Daws floated down into the silence and started to chatter. A pair of woodpigeons rose in a slow concave curve, paused with a clap of wings and swooped – only to begin their upward glide again. From the reedy margins of the pond came the clucking of moorhens, and the surface was divided for a moment by the blue flight line of a kingfisher. Jacko sighed. The raven preened the coverts of a great, black wing, whose feathers held and bent the light.
The lurcher drank noisily and set off towards the sun. Pain swelled behind his eyes like organ music and he raced down to Emsworthy, hurdling the furze clumps, dodging in and out of the rocks. Clouds drifted by, a shower fell and the road glistened. Jacko sat by the gate and fought the giddiness. The word ‘KILL’ was branded on the dome of his skull in fiery capitals. He grinned and sniffed the air. The smell of death leaked from a passing cattle truck. Round, terror-stricken eyes were pressed to chinks in the slats. Liquid excrement splatted onto the road and Jacko whimpered. The truck was a mirage wobbling on the red horizon. With a snakelike action the lurcher turned and bounded into the Leighon Valley, and under Holwell Tor he found Ashmere sleeping in the heather. The young fox leapt up but Jacko caught him by the neck and wrenched the life out of him with a twist of his powerful shoulders. From the corner of his eye he saw another fox slinking away but he had to linger and savage the carcass. By the time he was ready to kill again Stargrief had slipped into the clitter and quietly placed himself beyond the reach of the lurcher’s jaws.
‘I get you,’ Jacko barked. ‘You there. Jacko get you. Tonight he come and –’
He gnashed his teeth and snapped at invisible foxes. For a long while he barked into the hollow places of the clitter and he loved the way they made his voice sound deep and menacing.
‘Old grey fox I get you,’ he panted. ‘Yes – Jacko do cracko old foxy-o. Bloody quick.’
Madness lifted him out of himself and he was running again towards the clean expanse of water, when the birdlike whistle of Romany brought him back into the morning. Rooks left the nests they were patching in the beechtops and mobbed him, but Jacko laughed wildly, lifting his head high and rolling his eyes.
‘One day Jacko grow wings,’ he barked. ‘Then flap-flap he go and he kill all black birds in sky. All caw-caw birds get sent to stars. And stars say, “Good dog, Jacko”, and Jacko get best place at fireside.’
From the dam at the end of the ponds Romany called again to his mate, and Moonsleek’s reply fluted down the Becca Brook. Something was wrong. The otter bitch swallowed the frog she had caught and made for the river, but Jacko hurtled out of an explosion of rooks and bowled her over. She spat at him like a fire cracker and gave a sharp yikker of rage. No wild creature had ever stood up to Jacko before, and the lurcher stared down at her in wonder. Moonsleek uncoiled and bit his nose. Jacko screeched and brushed her off with flailing forepaws. The otter wriggled under the alder roots and melted into the river.
‘Caw caw caw,’ laughed the rooks.
Jacko splashed through the shallows. The dark flickering shape of the otter sped away from him but he was fast and never lost sight of it. Beneath the alders a dipper was striding along underwater, upstream, held down by the current washing over his slanting back. Every now and then he lifted a pebble with his beak and winkled out tiny crustaceans, but when Jacko’s shadow fell upon him he burst from the water and dashed over the marsh on short, brown wings.
Moonsleek swam into the deep water of the ponds and Romany joined her. A trout leapt high and fell back with a splash. The lurcher scampered up and down the bank whimpering at the otters as they glided among the drowned branches of sallows. At last he could bear it no longer and with a loud snarl he dived in and savaged the water. Romany closed his jaws on one of Jacko’s hindlegs and bit him to the bone.
It was a very wet and subdued dog that hobbled up to Holwell Tor.
‘Jacko kill they water fitches,’ he growled. ‘Yes – killy killy killy. But not in water. Water not good. Stars say so.’
There was a nest of small hot stars in his head. What was he going to do? He licked his wound and tried to remember. Then it dawned on him. He was a mighty lurcher running across a red world, reaping a red harvest. In the dream of his pain he killed a sheep and two newborn lambs. Red drizzle drifted down from the red sky.
‘No more, no more, please,’ he whined.
The stars laughed at him and he ran for home dragging his stiff and bloody hindleg.
CONFRONTATION
‘Ashmere is dead,’ Stargrief said.
Wulfgar silently waited for him to elaborate.
‘It happened in a flash. He was asleep. The lurcher just shook him by the neck and that was that.
One moment he was alive and then he wasn’t.’
The old dog fox lowered
his eyes.
‘The lurcher killed a sheep and some lambs as well,’ he went on.
‘That’s bad,’ said Wulfgar. ‘When sheep are killed, men come with dogs and guns.’
‘We take and are taken,’ Stargrief said.
‘Yes, well, maybe we accept too much. We aren’t stupid like rabbits. We are hunters.’
Stargrief smiled.
They were sitting under a chin of rock on Longford Tor. The wind of the vernal equinox was combing the deer grass in the valley by the derelict powder mill. Blossom lifted from the blackthorns. The north-easterlies had brought a fresh snowfall, forcing the ewes and lambs down from the high ground to the roadsides. Snow lay thinly in patches on the north-facing sides of walls and buildings.
‘I’m finding it difficult to make long journeys,’ said Stargrief.
‘I hope I’ll live to enjoy such difficulties,’ Wulfgar said.
‘A long life doesn’t necessarily mean happiness,’ said Stargrief.
‘Ashmere would disagree.’
‘It was a good, clean death.’
‘Always death – good, bad, Tod’s will, the wire, the gin, a blast from a gun. We accept and die, or run and cringe. It isn’t a hunter’s philosophy.’
‘The world has changed since Tod’s day. It belongs to Man.’
‘But we aren’t stupid.’
‘So what do you suggest?’
‘I don’t know,’ Wulfgar said. ‘I only know we accept too much as inevitable.’
Stargrief nodded and extended his forelegs in a luxurious stretch. A sunny morning broke though the river mist. The silver-green tufts of thread moss were stiff and cold between the animals’ toes. Both foxes sniffed the air that smelt faintly of running water, furze and sheep, as clouds swept across the open moor bringing a flood of darkness.
‘I think I ought to go back to the clitter and the ponds,’ Wulfgar said.
‘You’re asking for trouble,’ Stargrief said.
‘If the trapper sees I’m not around he’ll start looking elsewhere. You know what he’s like. And Teg’s in no condition to run or do anything.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘A couple of sunsets.’
‘I could provide the odd rabbit or a nestful of fieldmice if Teg would accept such gifts from a worn-out old dog.’
Wulfgar smiled and nodded.
‘The state I’m in,’ Stargrief continued, ‘she’ll probably have to look after me.’
Under Broad Barrow he found Thornblood and Briarspur trailing a sickly pony foal. The mare kept nudging the little creature with her nose, snuffling gently, but the foal carried the heaviness of death and could not be roused. Every so often its mother showed her teeth and charged the foxes who separated and waited patiently for her anger to subside. The murky start to the day suited the occasion. Hail fell and rattled off the bare hillside. The foxes bowed their heads and let the squall wash over them.
‘So it was Ashmere’s turn,’ Thornblood said rhetorically.
Wulfgar squinted at him while the hailstones beat a sharp tattoo on his skull.
‘That bloody lurcher’s as hard to shake off as the Itching Sickness,’ said Briarspur.
The shower passed and the sky above Hay Tor brightened. A shimmering flock of rooks lifted from Natsworthy Spinney and fell and rose again. The foxes turned as one and stared into the valley. Their movements were unhurried, for they knew that once the oaks were in bud the hounds would not come to the moors. The hunting season on Dartmoor was over and the riders who had whooped and spurred their way across the wilderness were now preparing for the point-to-point races. Pheasants, partridges, grouse and foxes were safe from all save the poachers’ guns.
‘How long have you been following this scent?’ Wulfgar asked when they had finished reading the wind.
‘Two sunrises,’ Briarspur said. ‘It should have dropped ages ago.’
He placed his nose briefly on a hailstone and regarded Wulfgar from the corner of his eye.
‘I’ll join you at sundown,’ the dark fox said.
He ran through the cuckoo pints and ramson that carpeted the floor of the spinney. Once he was alone it was possible to absorb Mind-self in Body-self so that no thoughts raced ahead of the moment. The soft yellow blaze of hazel catkins lit the trees as they roared and danced. Many branches had been ripped and broken by the equinoctial gales. Stormbully and Fallbright rode the turbulence high above the valley, but they saw Wulfgar leave the hazels and ashes and marked his progress up the steeps to Honeybag Tor.
At Hedge Barton a sparrowhawk snatched a cock chaffinch from the bramble thicket behind the great barn. The little bird screamed in the predator’s talons and a rook came flapping out of the treetops cawing loudly to taunt the hawk. For a hundred beats of the chaffinch’s heart, rook and sparrow hawk jostled each other in mid-air. Then the sky overhead was suddenly black with rooks who continually stooped on the hawk until the songbird was released.
Wulfgar lingered on the edge of the brambles in case there were any casualties. The wind in the beech trees sounded like a giant blowlamp.
He trotted in the lee of the wall down to Swallerton Gate. Between the clouds over Hay Tor there were rich seams of silver that broadened as Wulfgar skirted the cottage and came stealthily to the roadside. The grassy verge and the road were alive with toads who had been treading ancestral paths all through the night, seeking the Leighon Ponds. Some mysterious force had guided them across the darkness with no visible landmark to give them bearings. But foxes do not eat toads and there was nothing excitable in their actions to rouse Wulfgar’s killing lust. He went up the slope of furze and heather to the tor that cut the sky raggedly at the base.
Scoble had wasted a good hour casting March Browns across the shallows where the Becca ran into the Leighon Ponds. Moodily he squatted among the alders while the wind thumped the water and bent the reeds. It was an impossible day for fly fishing but between gusts down in the valley bottom there were periods of tranquillity. At such times the bailiff busied around the salmon pools and left the open stretches to poachers of genius. Scoble knew of easier ways to land a feed of trout but fly fishing was his passion. He had no difficulty in exchanging fish for whisky or petrol coupons. When he had finished he would hide the tackle and collect it after dark.
Sitting on a fallen tree the trapper considered the situation. Fish were rising and feeding but March Browns were not doing the job. He picked at his wart and drew his eyebrows together in a frown. The unlit Woodbine had stuck to the sensitive tissue of his lower lip and had to be freed with the tip of his tongue. Swearing softly he put a match to the cigarette and began to tie on a nymph. His big fingers were surprisingly nimble as they knotted the silk. The cigarette smoke stung his eyes, and he pawed at them and blinked. Then he glanced up and waited for the landscape to settle back into clarity.
Among the birch trees at the water’s edge on the far side of the brook stood the big dark fox. Scoble froze and let out his breath in a shuddering sigh of excitement. His stomach heaved and quaked with a sensation akin to lovesickness.
Wulfgar did not flinch. His nose had already told him the lurcher was absent, although the taint of the trapper filled his nostrils. He lifted his head slightly and decoded the wind’s other messages. Scoble could not take his eyes off him. The fox seemed to grow larger and brighter like an image on a negative. Then something clicked in Scoble’s mind and the lantern slide dropped neatly into place: field-corner, groundsel, ladies’ smocks, tall grass, brambles – everything starkly white and the phosphorescent carcass of the mule teeming with foxes where light dilated and contracted.
‘You black devil,’ Scoble roared, but the rifle in his hand turned into a fishing rod and he was staring across the river while the thunder of heavy artillery receded into a past that refused to die. Wulfgar had gone, but when the trapper came to the mud under the birches he found the oval spoor.
‘Good, good,’ he said. The words were forced through clenched tee
th.
A toad hopped over his boot and sat looking up at him like a dog. Scoble inhaled deeply and teased his wart with a fingernail. Nausea welled up in his guts. Other toads were emerging from the grass and plopping into the water. Down by the dam at the Hound Tor end of the ponds Scrag the heron was filling his crop with them. The trapper shivered and tugged the collar of his greatcoat up round his ears.
Dusk stooped swiftly as it does in early spring, but an illusion of sunlight remained in the smudges of sulphur tuft fungus on the rowan stump close to the dead foal. The mare lay beside the little body and licked it and nudged it with her nose. Sometimes she spoke to it softly from the depths of her love. The hard fact of death had not registered in her simple brain, but the three foxes sitting on the boundaries of her grief had attended such rituals before.
EARLY SPRING
Bert Yabsley grinned and said, ‘I saw ’em with my own eyes – two red ones and Old Blackie. They was fierce enough to scare off the mare and pull down the foal.’
The farmer folded his arms on the bar and gazed pensively into his Guinness. He was a small, honest little man with a nose like a partridge’s beak and bow legs encased to the knees in polished gaiters.
‘I’ve never heard of ’em hunting in packs,’ he said.
‘It’s that black sod,’ said Scoble. ‘He’s more wolf than fox.’
‘Dang me if you idn right, Len,’ Yabsley agreed. ‘I came up on ’em smartish and gave ’em both barrels but they was away through that furze like a dose of salts. Then Old Blackie trots back as bold as brass and gives me that cold-blooded stare – the “gull-eye” my missus calls it – and I’m buggered if I didn go all goosepimply.’
