by Brian Carter
How can you say this is so and that is so if you haven’t trod the Star Place trails? said the young vixen. But I have, Stargrief smiled. I close my eyes and I’m there. The vision doesn’t come from inside me. It strikes the soul like a shaft of sunlight, flying from brightness to darkness. We are midnight wanderers but all paths lead to Tod. He is the silvery glow at life’s end.
Starlight filled his eyes. The white vision swam out of the night and he stepped into it. Stars quaked and silently exploded. The snow was unbearably bright. Running over it came the giant lurcher – white, breathing frost, eyes of ice, fangs of icicles, tail of shattered snow, on a white field under a black sky full of stars. No paw prints, Stargrief noted. Now the dark Man-shape was rising from the field to stand like a megalith. The lurcher sprang and bowled it over, then the dog powdered away into snow and covered the Man-shape. Three foxes clad in hoar frost trotted slowly round the field, howling with joy.
He had come through many seasons to this moment. Most of the village lights had gone out and the darkness had grown bigger and deeper. But one tiny bright light flashed on and off, far away where the land ended and the sea began. He looked up into the starry mind of Tod. Many things had been learnt, but he had not mastered the mysterious language of birds, which was a music like running water, like grass sobbing in the wind.
Yet other small truths had been attained through loving vixens, by accepting love. And there really was a love more magnificent and profound than that of animal for animal. Love of the world of living things. Every morning he walked through to reach his kennel was the dawn of creation. Like Tod. He screwed up his eyes with happiness.
Was he within the star or the vision? The golden radiance was warm like the place inside his mother’s body where he had drowsed. Many foxes were lying underground. Of course, he murmured. It’s Wulfgar’s vision. High mountains held back the sky. On the mountain snow were white grouse, white hares and white fitches. A great bird larger than a buzzard cruised down the valley. Now Stargrief was a spirit like the wind, gliding over the familiar moorland. Everything had changed. The towns were many, the houses were tall and roads ran wide and long where the fields had been. Only there weren’t any people or cars. Under the Great Tor huddled the cattle, sheep and ponies. No foxes, he thought idly. Then a vast, blinding light filled the sky and all the towns were burning and the mushroom cloud was billowing up. And the darkness swept in on a mighty wind, heavy with the reek of death.
He moaned and drifted back to Wulfgar’s vision. Several seasons had passed. The foxes were coming out to tread the silent, beautiful land. Great flocks of wildfowl shadowed the sky. Larks sang, the vixens screamed, the curlew called. Here and there a skeleton was slumped over the wheel of a rusting car or tractor. In the garden of the hillside farm the remains of a man, a woman and a child lay face down, reduced to bones, elemental – like the flints.
Was there something beyond Tod, concealed by the radiance? His mind could not take the same giant stride as his spirit. The dream was falling apart. ‘The bards lope in full of bizarre mythology’, he heard himself saying. Absurd. Looking into Tod’s thoughts. Into my own. When we have crawled away from Death’s jaws we may undergo a conversion. Thereafter vigils on the tors, vigils at the vole runs, mousing rituals, turning over dung for a meal, mesmerising conies.
He spun back into himself and drew a deep breath. The visions hadn’t yielded their meanings, although one thing was crystal clear: the coming winter would be hard.
He yawned and stretched and lay perfectly still. The faint click in the darkness below was the trapper’s cigarette tin shutting. Stargrief’s ears pricked and his nostrils quivered. Dry tobacco and paper whispered between forefinger and thumb as Scoble prepared a Gold Flake butt for smoking. The overpowering stench of the man’s body made Stargrief’s gut heave. The old dog fox got to his feet and tensed to skulk down the path off the tor. It would not be easy. Scoble was halfway up the only possible route and smooth rock fell vertically on the other three sides. But Stargrief was not alarmed, for he possessed the amazing self-confidence of his tribe. In his early life he had done many daring things – like stealing unnoticed across a vicarage lawn during a croquet party to snatch a ham off the table.
He was creeping down the rough granite steps when Wulfgar barked. Stargrief closed his eyes and swore under his breath. The bark was one of those particularly inane contact calls that dogs exchanged to reassure each other.
Wulfgar barked again, much louder this time. He was running across the heath from Crow Thorn to Hay Tor, calling to Stargrief as he came. The hammers of the twelve-bore snapped back. O Tod, Stargrief thought, send the fool fox away.
But the next bark lofted from the turf very close at hand. Full of fear and dismay Stargrief cried, ‘Run, Wulfgar. The trapper. The trapper.’
To Scoble it was no more than a tomcat screech of defiance delivered right under his nose. He switched on the torch and caught Stargrief in the beam, ‘Shit,’ said the trapper, struggling to find somewhere to put the torch while he used the gun. His hands shook. The fox shot straight at him and all he could see was a pair of brilliant, bluish-white eyes flying across the darkness. He dropped the torch and fired blindly – left and right barrels. Something hard and lithe hit him below the knees, throwing him off balance. Then Stargrief was away, his claws rasping on the rock, making the descent in wild leaps.
Running flat out round the north side of the tor he came face-to-face with an anxious-looking Wulfgar.
‘Steady, old mouse,’ the dark fox said, grinning sheepishly. ‘You’re far too old for these capers.’
‘Don’t “old mouse” me, man’s scat,’ Stargrief hissed. ‘You nearly got me killed.’
‘Next time make sure the coast is clear before you pop into one of your visions.’
The torch flashed in the night behind them and Scoble growled and rattled off some sharp four-letter words. He had broken the gun to reload it and had snapped it back on his thumbnail.
‘Next time come quietly,’ Stargrief said, ‘or you’ll end up as a maggots’ snack.’
‘I wasn’t shot at,’ Wulfgar said innocently.
He shouldered the old fox as they breasted the heather. Stargrief snarled and stopped abruptly to dribble scats.
DARTMOOR AUTUMN
And suddenly the sky was full of birds.
Hastening down from the north the hordes of foreign thrushes filled the dusks with their cries. Often the darkness above the Leighon Valley rang to the mellow chok-chok of the fieldfares and the softer more repetitive notes of the bramblings. Then one night the swirling drizzle brought in an immense cloud of redwings. The border country was raked by fall after fall of birds from north of the Baltic. Among the continentals were parties of songthrushes, blackbirds, woodpigeons, chaffinches and robins. Starlings rushed over the tors in dark waves to settle on the farmland of Mid- and South Devon. There was also an unprecedented south-western movement of lapwings.
Reading the signs the foxes were uneasy, but men went about their business as though no warnings had been scrawled on the skies. The children knocked the few remaining conkers off the chestnut trees at Trumpeter. The harvest had been sung home in village churches all over Dartmoor: Widecombe, Ilsington, North Bovey, Holne, Chagford, Lustleigh, Manaton, Peter Tavey – names like a peal of bells. Gifts had been brought to the Barley Man. Bonfires burnt in cottage gardens and the smoke climbed softly blue into thinner blue. Across the in-country the shires plodded, dragging the plough through dark soil. Browns and golds had crept into the woods, and rowan and silver birch were at their loveliest among the heather by the brook where Wulfgar lay.
He tested the breeze with his nose. The night was brilliant under the Hunter’s Moon. A tawny owl hooted and received a sharp reply from his mate. The fox ran with the stream to the Manaton-Beckaford lane and singled out a strong thread of coney scent. He killed the buck swiftly on the lawn of Aish Cottage. There were no lights on in the building, for the American had gon
e home. While Wulfgar skinned the rabbit he dozed in the airliner high above the Atlantic.
The wanderlust possessed him again and he came down Ruddycleave Water through the thistles, ragwort and yellow spires of mullein to Elliott’s Hill Farm. But the collie alarmed before he could grab a fowl and he ran on to the fringe of Bagley Wood. It was the late part of a typical West Country autumn day – soft, mild, drizzly. The hawthorns were full of winter migrants and leaves fell in a light patter. Exciting scents crammed the air.
Wulfgar sat in the clearing among the hazel poles and curled the tip of his tongue around his nose. The woodcocks tumbled down through the branches and began to hollow out resting places in the fallen leaves. The fox took one and put the others to flight. They had not fully recovered from their journey across the North Sea although they had rested two days by the coast before heading inland.
The night-running brought him through the cleave to the Dart and Holne Chase, to the river that was steep-banked and overshadowed in places by cliffs. Wooded hills rolled away on every side to the sky. Salmon ringed the surfaces of the pools and the stretches of deep water. A vixen passed him but did not answer his call.
The tawny owl dropped off the crag called Lover’s Leap and released a tremulous cry. It sailed over the river and flopped down in the nettles and gripped the vole, pinching the little creature’s scream into silence. Then it entered the darkness beneath the oaks and winged off to the Iron Age fort on the hilltop. A star left the Milky Way and slid across the sky. The moon surprised Wulfgar; it was so big between the boughs.
The next morning was misty, and Hay Tor soared remote and unearthly into fine, crumbling blue. Men and dogs came to the down and took away the ponies. The annual ‘drift’ began quietly, as colts and fillies were driven to Chagford fair. Dark streams of animals filled the lanes and roads. The drovers were happy. During the war similar ponies had gone to the horse-butchers for a few shillings, now they were to be sold as children’s mounts. Those that did not come under the auctioneer’s hammer would be branded and returned to the breeding herds.
Bert Yabsley loved the fair. He always drank best bitter and whisky chasers at the Ring of Bells. Afterwards he needed very little persuasion to do the broom dance on the wagon where the village ladies displayed their bottled fruit, jams and home-made wine. For his size he was amazingly nimble, and the crowd would laugh and cheer and egg him on. It was the highlight of the terrier man’s year and he was King of Dartmoor.
Autumn delighted him with its sensuality. The last of the cider apples stood bagged in the orchards ready to go to the mill: Bloody Butchers, Slack-ma-Girdles, Grenadiers, Kingston Blacks – their poetry belonged to the season of windfall splendour. Drunken wasps, partridges in covey, blackthorn heavy with sloes, owl cries and dark, golden sunshine – they all suited Yabsley. Along the hedges, tiger-striped spiders were spinning their traps for the bees. The robin sang his autumn song and the ivy bloom was attracting insects and birds to the farmhouse walls. And after rain yellow leaves flashed as they fell.
The wind wrote long sentences in the grass and rubbed them out with the next breath. Cold-eyed thrushes spilled from the rowans. Wulfgar sat up on his haunches and watched them go down the coomb, flickering silver and grey. A flock of golden plover wheeled over Seven Lords Lands, then lapwings poured in and settled on the marsh. A calm, frosty night had vanished before a rising gale. The slow editing of the countryside for winter was well under way.
Wulfgar visited the trap line on Holwell Common and found Killconey filching the largest rabbit. The dark fox was hungry and bad-tempered and refused to get bogged down in idle chat. He came at the gallop and drove Swart off a strangled doe. ‘Craark,’ said the crow, fighting the gale to get a footing in the beech tree. The wood boomed, leaves and twigs littered the air.
Wulfgar gnawed the rabbit free and carried it to some reeds by Emsworthy. Swart had winkled out the eyes, but such delicacies did not constitute a breakfast. The rooks regarded the crow coldly. They rode the bucking tree tops with a kind of yokel exultation that annoyed Swart. Their rookery leader was an old hen bird named Elder, who was wise and peppery. Only her mate, Cawder, could stand up to her, and he was very popular with the other rooks.
‘What does the crow want?’ Elder asked.
‘Ask him,’ said Cawder.
‘The last thing you get from a crow is the truth,’ snapped his mate.
‘Then don’t ask him,’ Cawder said, and the nearest rooks, who were picking up snatches of the conversation despite the gale, burst out laughing.
Elder glared at them.
‘There is the business of Old Wintercaw,’ said one of the younger birds.
‘Yes,’ said Cawder. ‘He’s been as miserable as sin for the last two nights. It has to be the Ring or something nasty and four-legged will get him.’
‘That would be unthinkable,’ the young rook bawled.
His deep cawing made Swart wince.
‘Halfwits,’ he muttered, marking Wulfgar’s spot and dreaming of coney’s entrails.
‘Very well,’ Elder croaked. ‘Set to – set to.’
One day, she thought, I’ll see the Ring from the inside.
Another winter, another spring and summer and then …
She swallowed. Her wisdom was as valuable to the rookery as a store of seeds, but the time would come when she could not participate in the nest building and stubble gleaning.
She fetched up a sigh.
‘Let the Ring be made,’ said Cawder, and the message was passed on to the rest of the commune.
Wintercaw could hardly fly, so some young rooks had to nudge him off his roost with their beaks. He was very feeble and his behaviour lately had disturbed the rookery. It was not merely age. Wintercaw’s plumage was full of parasites and he could not keep down his food.
There were times too when his strange ways outraged the rooks. On several gleaning expeditions he had ignored the peck order, actually pushing past Cawder and Elder to get at the grain. The wrangling that resulted from this heresy had threatened the Holwell rookery. Elder had been unhappy to see the food-gathering time squandered on petty squabbles. The strongest and most sagacious birds had to eat the most if the commune was to survive. Wintercaw could not be tolerated.
‘Him and his horrible ticks will have to go,’ Cawder had said, but it was a situation the rooks did not relish.
Wintercaw stood on wobbly legs in the sheepfield encircled by his fellow birds. Four young rooks attended him, carefully keeping their distance because of the ticks. Swart was interested; he sensed carrion in the making.
The cawing ended when Cawder clapped his wings.
‘The Ring has been called to decide the fate of the bird Wintercaw,’ said Elder.
‘What are his sins?’ chorused the rooks.
‘Abusing the peck order,’ Elder said. ‘Stealing nesting material, taking all and giving nothing to the rookery.’
‘I am old and sick,’ whispered Wintercaw.
‘What did he say?’ Elder shouted. The wind was lifting her feathers and shrieking in the grass.
‘He said he’s old and sick,’ Cawder said.
‘We know that,’ Elder said sadly. ‘He isn’t bad – he’s just a threat.’
‘Exile could be cruel,’ said Cawder, reading her thoughts.
‘Must it be the beaks?’ Elder cried.
‘Let it be the beaks,’ answered the Ring.
Elder nodded and the four executioners fell upon Wintercaw and pecked him savagely about the head. Then the Ring closed in and Wintercaw died under a torrent of blows. His tattered body lay like a black rag in the field and the rooks returned to the beeches.
‘Nasty, nasty!’ Swart said to himself. He battled against the wind and landed near the dead rook. His beady eyes missed nothing. The rookery appeared to have forgotten him and Wintercaw. He wagged his head. His seed-eating cousins had a dark side to their natures. Very crow-like. He hopped closer to his breakfast. There were depths of dar
kness that even he had not explored. Sheol would not believe him.
The thistles parted and the stoat dashed through them and flung himself at the crow. Swart leapt up on a black blur of wings and let the gale lift him over Holwell. His day had begun badly.
Chivvy-yick placed a paw on the rook and chattered at the sky. He would carry the carcass back to Emsworthy and the other fitches would think he had taken the bird alive.
A WET MORNING
Blood!
Chivvy-yick’s whole body registered the fact. Warm blood leaking from a coney! He dropped the rook and let the drool roll down his chin. Bounding through the bracken he gave the long, thin staccato cry of a hunting fitch. Wulfgar raised his head and grinned at him and Chivvy-yick’s heart froze.
‘Keep coming, Long Scat,’ said the fox. ‘There’s plenty of room in here for you.’
He opened his jaws.
Chivvy-yick crouched and hissed. He had stared death in the face many times but he had rarely out-foxed a fox. And he was clever enough to realise that bravado was not the answer. An irate fox was a dangerous animal.
‘And where are all your brave brothers and cousins?’ Wulfgar continued.
He lay with his paws across the kill and showed no eagerness to abandon it. The stoat fidgeted and blotted the gap in the bracken with his stink. The hot, musky smell of his fear pleased Wulfgar. The fox had shrugged off his black mood and was enjoying the rabbit. Drowsiness made him reluctant to get up. One night he would meet Chivvy-yick again and chop him, but now it amused him to torment the fitch.
The black buttons of Chivvy-yick’s eyes never left the fox’s face. Wulfgar ate some more coney and smacked his lips. Very slowly and carefully Chivvy-yick backed off.
