Lord Morgan's Cannon

by MJ Walker

  Lord Morgan then realised his mistake. He spotted Edward watching him intently from inside the puzzle box. He cursed himself and placed a black veil over the box, casting the monkey once more into the dark. He then set about his crates and his cage. In various orders, he stacked the crates within, trying to establish whether they would topple and how close four stacked crates would come to the exit at the top. Satisfied, he then kicked the cage, sending the crates inside into a sprawl upon the floor. He lifted the veil from the puzzle box, and sharp as he could, he flicked the latch and reached inside, grabbing Edward about his sore ribs.

  The monkey was too exhausted to fight. He paddled his little feet but he made no effort to push at his captor’s hand, or bite his fingers. He accepted his fate as Lord Morgan forced his body through the small gap in the top of the tall meshed cage and dropped him in. Edward landed on a box made of balsa wood that had once contained twelve of the finest Cameo cigars hand rolled in Havana. Edward grabbed at the mesh, to climb up the inner wall of the cage. But the human hit at his fingers. He grabbed again, but the human slapped the cage harder, rattling it. He wouldn’t let Edward climb out.

  Lord Morgan then stepped backwards, watching the monkey, and punched his mechanical clock once more. Edward had already made his decision. Too often in his life, humans had called him stupid. The traveller upon Dover’s white cliffs, the Ring Master and many of the humans that had paid good money to see him perform. They had even called him stupid as he’d rifled their pockets and stolen the last of their change. He was not now going to be judged too stupid to fire Lord Morgan’s cannon, the one hope the animals had of securing their future, of saving themselves.

  So Edward showed the professor just what he could do. He didn’t need time to think about it, or to consider the mechanics of his actions. He’d already thought it out. He grabbed the largest box, a dirty crate that stank of tomatoes, and set it upon the floor of the cage. He sourced the next largest, a painted box, and lifted it upon the first. He dragged another and climbing his tower, he set it down and jumped upon it, testing the tower’s strength. Then, as the professor looked on, wide eyed, Edward leaped to the floor and pulled the cigar box up behind him, as he scaled his creation. At first he struggled to position the last box without toppling the tower. But the moment he’d laid his final foundation he jumped upon it and leaped up, his waistcoat and tail fluttering as he extended his arms and fingers. Moving through the air, he thought of the giant cannon, and what it might be like to be fired from it. His hands hit the double wire that bordered the exit. In a single flowing movement, he swung his feet up past his head through the gap in the wire. He let go and somersaulted out, to freedom.

  Sitting on the cage, Edward expected Lord Morgan to come for him. The monkey scanned the room, plotting his route. But the professor hit his mechanical clock, stopping it, and started laughing. He laughed and he roared, clearing his throat, holding his arms out from his chest as he chortled with excitement.

  “Under a minute! My god, you did it in under a minute!”

  The professor made no effort to capture Edward. Instead he started talking to him, directly, forgoing his earlier conversations with the rabbit.

  “I’ve never seen such a thing. What a talented creature you are! What a special monkey! Oh I will have to write to them about you,” said Lord Morgan. “The young Mr Thorndike. Even William James. They’ll all be impressed I’m sure. Oh I wish Mr Darwin had lived to hear of this, eh Charles?”

  Edward felt himself being drawn to the professor’s words. He was a clever monkey, the professor was saying. A special monkey worth mentioning in correspondence to other scientists. Perhaps he was the cleverest monkey in all the world? Maybe he could run his own circus and make it the best circus in all the world? Then he remembered the Ring Master. How he too would compliment Edward. How he would tell him he was a fine monkey. And then he recalled how the Ring Master would take the stick to Doris and the whip to the anteater. How, when he was drunk, he would beat Edward.

  Lord Morgan ate a biscuit. As he chewed, crumbs falling into his beard, his mood changed.

  “But this is confirmation my cannon is flawed. I will have to rework it. It can’t be used as it is. I shall revise it straight away.”

  Edward expected Lord Morgan to walk from the room and return wheeling a giant tube of black iron. He expected the professor of science to roll up his sleeves, grab at a spanner and somehow tinker with this cannon. To peer down its barrel and check its sights, to adjust its fuse and work out how to make this giant gun, the thing that Edward and the animals had been desperately searching for, work properly.

  Instead the professor took a bound leather book from a shelf. Blazed across the cover in golden letters were the words:

  An introduction to comparative psychology, second edition.

  He ripped a page of paper from a notebook and placed it upon the book. He read aloud, as he wrote a note to himself to start work revising the book immediately.

  “A canon: a general law, rule, principle, or criterion by which something is judged. To be a canon, it must hold across all examples. My canon cannot be applied to the circus monkey. This pin monkey has a higher psychical faculty. It is capable of reasoned thought.”

  He put down his pencil and spoke to Edward.

  “You might end up changing everything,” he said.

  The old leopard had begun to like the jaguar. He enjoyed watching her pace the enclosure. She had firm hips, a curvaceous back and surprisingly clear eyes for a captive cat. She ran herself against the fence and allowed the men who kept her to push their fingers through the wire and rub her fur. She meowed as they did so, giving the humans the impression that she liked it. But after a day in her company, the leopard had learned that she did it so they would like her and throw her the choicest cuts of meat.

  When a dead chicken was tossed over the fence, he jumped upon it. Taking it in his jaws he ran away with it up the tree. The jaguar didn’t fight him for it, or intervene. Confused by her actions, the leopard didn’t pluck the bird. He held it between his paws until he could bear it no more, and asked why she didn’t want it.

  “I lost my appetite years ago,” she said, shrugging her haunches.

  “Then mind if I eat it?” he replied.

  It was the first time he had asked another animal if he might eat their food. He began to pull at the feathers, savouring his best meal in months, since a pheasant had walked too close to his circus cage.

  She explained that she toyed with the keepers so they threw her the best meat, and too much of it. The leopard asked what she did with the meat she didn’t want. She said she left it for the crows and ravens. He asked her why she helped the birds. Because they were the only company she had, she replied. So she chewed at the meat on the ribs and knuckles, softening it until the black birds could pull it free. They thanked her for it, she said, particularly this time of year, when they had chicks outside of the zoo to feed.

  He began to understand why the jaguar tolerated him in her cage, despite him being a difficult breed of cat. She did feel something after all, but her feelings were buried, roused only when another animal looked her direct in the eye and sympathised with her plight. So he began to look her in the eye. That afternoon, he helped her chew a joint of pork thrown over the fence, though his cracked teeth only allowed him to pull off the fat, rather than work the bones. He didn’t swallow it. Instead he left it on a rock, as she did. He retreated and watched until a magpie flew down and danced around the gristle, unsure whether to risk its life for the food. The leopard didn’t know if a magpie counted as one of the jaguar’s friends. So he looked at her and she nodded.

  “Take it,” he gently said to the black and white bird.

  The magpie hopped upon a piece of rind, pecked at it and took to the air with it in its beak. As the bird flew away it dipped a wing to the cats. Now the leopard had a little of the jaguar’s trust, he asked her again:

  “Do you know a way out of this pla
ce?”

  She replied as she had before.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Will you tell me?”

  “If it means I get my enclosure back to myself,” she said.

  The leopard saw her whiskers dance, a hint of a smile passing over her snout.

  “There is one time it is possible,” she said. “When the humans come to evaluate you.”

  The jaguar described how all the animals in the zoo were sized and measured. Their family histories were recorded and discussed, their virility assessed. The humans tried to ascertain if any two of the same species might be closely related and by how much. But they couldn’t smell it out, as any animal could. So they had to guess, she said.

  This work was done by the keepers and sometimes by other humans that worked behind the scenes at the zoo; humans that wore waistcoats and suits rather than overalls stained by blood and dung.

  “So they take you out of the cage, and then you pounce?” said the leopard proudly, imagining the moment.

  “No, not then. You’ll have to be patient. The keepers know all the animals too well. They study us all day. They don’t need to let us out of our cages. You need to wait until the other humans come, the ones that might buy you.”

  A line of hairs on the leopard’s tail and back stood rigid. He’d been bought and sold before.

  “What are you worried about?” said the jaguar. “You’ll be lucky if they come for you. They usually come for the new animals. If you haven’t been sold in a season, you’re here for good.”

  “So I have to hope that I’m traded?” snarled the leopard.

  “Yes,” said the jaguar. “Because when you are sold by a zoo, they take their time. They will feed you up. They will hose you down and wash your coat with brooms, whether you like it or not. I’ve seen it done to the lions from Asia. They even pampered their manes. All to get the right price.”

  The leopard growled.

  “If it goes well, they walk you to a clean cage. Then they get out the clipboards and parade you on a chain. And it’s then you’ve a chance. You’ll be on the outside. Break the chain and you’re on your own, with only the walls to scale.”

  “How tall are the walls?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But you’re a leopard. How tall would they need to be?”

  The leopard liked this cat. She had the answers he needed. But then it struck him.

  “Why haven’t you escaped?”

  “I thought about it once. At the start. Soon after they threw me in here, a buyer came for me. He said he liked me. But I heard the keepers tell him something. They said I couldn’t have cubs. I don’t know how they knew that. But they said I couldn’t have cubs. So what is there for me? And besides, where would I go?”

  The loud piercing shriek of a secretary bird broke the cats’ conversation, a raptor’s cry that denoted the presence of a hungry beast. The gorillas roared and a silverback thumped its chest. Something was moving through the zoo, disturbing the animals.

  Suddenly the wire fence enclosing the cats began to shake. The cats broke for cover, leaping up the maple tree, settling into a fork each, trying to blend with the leaves and bark. The humans who had transported the leopard here, cold and wet within a cage upon a trailer, were back. They came whistling and carefree, one eating an apple, the other wiping his hands upon his overalls, a bag of dead mice hanging from his hips as they leaned on to the fence and rattled it.

  Smiling and laughing, they spoke to the cats.

  “Someone’s here for you laddie,” said the fatter man with the mice.

  “Look at them,” said the man with the apple. “A day together and they’re getting along. I expected one of them to be dripping blood by now.”

  “She’s a good girl this one. It’s him I was worried about.”

  The fatter man shook the wire again, straining the metal loops tying it to the posts.

  “Someone’s here for you. Now what have you done in a previous life?”

  “What do we know about him?” said the second man, spitting out a pip that caught in his teeth.

  “The leopard? Not a lot. Brought here in a bag by those farmers. That’s it.”

  “So maybe it’s his owners come to get him?”

  “Could be. They want him for nothing, saying he’s theirs.”

  “Will they get him?” asked the other.

  “Can’t see it, can you? Unless they’ve got the papers, but they don’t look the sort to have papers. And we paid good money to take this one in. He’s not going anywhere unless there’s profit in it.”

  “Well let’s get him in the crate and get this over with.”

  The men disappeared from the cats’ view.

  “This might be your chance,” said the jaguar gently.

  The old boy rose off his lean belly. He proudly stretched on the branch, yawned, and sneezed, clearing his senses. He ran down the trunk and along the grass, smooth and quiet, readying himself.

  The men reappeared pulling the same cage upon the trailer. They spun it around and lined it up with the exit to the rectangular tunnel of wire leading to the enclosure. They worked quickly and when they finished they dragged at two long lines of dirty pink hose that twisted along the path.

  “You ready?” purred the jaguar.

  The leopard winked at her.

  The fat man pulled up the end of one hose, nestling a brass nozzle into his belly. The other turned a standing tap, shouted, then ran and set himself behind the plump keeper, wrapping his arms around the man’s waist.

  Was this it? thought the leopard. Was this all they had?

  For a fleeting moment he saw a column of water leave the nozzle’s end. It looped up and over his head, before falling upon his back. The force of it bruised his bones and nose, water shooting between his teeth, choking him. He turned and they chased him with it, firing water at his hips as he tried to run. They made him dance left then right, before he was forced to bolt for the open gate leading to the tunnel. Hurting and wet, he sprinted down it and into the cage, gagging and spitting. Behind him the men carved a line of mud into the grass until the hose ran dry. Water dripped down every feature in the enclosure.

  The jaguar sniffed at the air, licking a dollop of moisture from her chin. She roared.

  “This is your chance,” she cried.

  As the humans wheeled him away, the leopard shook his coat and walked his cage, taking one pace then turning, warming his muscles.

  They transported the cat back past the secretary bird. The sad stork that shared its cage now looked interested in life, lifting its huge bill away from its feet, staring with deep-set yellow eyes at the cat in transit.

  The leopard smelled the hippo again. But this time the aroma was sweet, a reminder of the wilds. The men joked and jeered as they pushed him along the path, wondering how high his price might go.

  Then, as they moved him inside, into a bare concrete room, the leopard caught the scent of old leather, of a whip. It was the smell he knew best, beyond those of all the animals he wanted to eat, the queens he tracked or the urine left by younger, more foolish males. It was the smell of a whip that had been cracked and used, that had burnt at its tip. A waft of stale whisky passed his nostrils, and another of vegetable oil and sweat. He instantly knew the Ring Master and his strongman were near.

  “There he his. That’s my cat. There’s the boy,” announced the Ring Master.

  He walked in to the room wearing his best, most red jacket. He’d left his hat upon his head and had waxed his beard. He twirled his cane, dressed up for the day. Behind him followed Jim the Strongman, who stood a foot taller than the keepers and another thin, insipid man, clothed in a smart grey suit and white collar, twirling his moustache.

  The Ring Master struggled to make idle conversation with the men from the zoo. There was nothing in the room to speculate about, no prompts for him to work. He asked after their families and took a silver flask from his pocket, offering them a nip. But the keepers remained
quiet, deferring to the man in the suit, who didn’t answer.

  The leopard poised himself for the moment they would pass a chain through the cage, looping it around his neck, for when he would be paraded. He adjusted his plan, figuring he’d take one swipe at the Ring Master, for old time’s sake, before he made for the door and the wall of the zoo.

  “So we’ll take our boy. We’ve a big show depending on him tonight,” said the Ring Master.

  He gesticulated to Jim the Strongman, who moved towards the cage.

  “It’s locked,” said the moustached man. “And we hold the key. You say he’s yours. What is your proof?”

  The Ring Master started to blabber. He patted his pockets, talking of documents carrying seals and signatures he’d left at the circus. Just like he sold his shows, he tried to sell himself, exaggerating his credentials. Jim the Strongman flexed his muscles under his shirt.

  But the man in the suit was unmoved. He was a bureaucrat, an administrator of animals. He knew more about how to carbon copy receipts, keep a ledger and apply for import certificates than he did the difference between an old circus leopard and a sterile jaguar. In this cat he saw only money. He knew how many guineas they had paid the farmers and he knew the net profit he would accept in return for selling the leopard on, minus the costs of a day’s labours. It was more money than the circus made in a month, before the animals had gone and the Big Top had burned.

  So the Ring Master tried a different tack. Pretending he was good for it, he invited the zookeepers to release the leopard from the cage, on a chain of course, so he could inspect the animal’s form. He knew and had trained this cat. He would flick his whip and send the cat into frenzy, before commanding it to heel. He would so scare the men from the zoo they would hand the leopard to him. They might even pay him to take it away, this uncontrollable beast.