by Colin Dann
‘I think he will be, but he’s suffered a nasty shock,’ replied Bold. ‘Whisper, can we do anything for him?’
‘Nothing at all,’ she said. ‘It’s just a question of time. But we might be able to aid his revival.’
‘How?’
‘Like this . . .’ Whisper demonstrated, breathing her warm breath over the bird.
‘I see – warmth,’ said Bold, and added his services. Then he turned and looked for a moment at the dog. ‘You can help here, my friend, I think,’ he said.
The dog was delighted and came forward eagerly, breathing out clouds of steam in the crisp air with his stentorian gasps.
Robber opened his jet-black eyes and saw the three mammals puffing and blowing together quite amicably. He tried to stand.
‘Take it carefully,’ Bold said. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Rather at a loss,’ answered the bird. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We’ve been mistaken,’ said Bold. ‘This great fellow wants to be our friend.’
‘No friend of mine,’ muttered Robber, ruffling his feathers. ‘And I hope he has no enemies!’
‘He’s very contrite about it,’ Bold whispered to him. ‘Try to be forgiving.’
Robber struggled to his feet and tested his wings to see if their delicate bones were intact. ‘I found your message and came straight away,’ he explained.
Bold had to stop and think a minute. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I see. Actually, I just wanted to see how you were making out.’
‘Perfectly,’ said Robber. ‘At least I was . . .’ He directed a piercing glance at the newcomer.
‘I’m Rollo,’ said the dog naively. ‘Rollo the mastiff.’
‘Are you indeed?’ Robber said grudgingly. ‘Well, your master should take better care of you.’
‘Yes, he should,’ Rollo said warmly. ‘He leaves me out in the yard in all weathers and nothing to amuse myself with. He doesn’t know I get out, though. I can jump the fence!’ He seemed quite proud of this announcement.
Whisper and Bold exchanged wry glances. The mastiff was obviously quite an artless sort of beast.
‘Perhaps you’d better be getting back?’ Bold suggested. ‘Or he will discover you can escape?’
A look of consternation passed over the dog’s great wrinkled face. ‘Oh – yes,’ he said blankly. But he made no attempt to move off.
‘We’ll still be around,’ Bold said reassuringly. ‘We live here, Whisper and I. There’s always another day.’
‘Yes, thank you, yes,’ Rollo said, greatly pleased. ‘I’ll certainly come again.’ He started to walk away, but kept looking back at his new friends.
‘Until the next time,’ Whisper called.
Rollo barked joyfully and bounded away, leaping the wall elaborately as if giving them a demonstration of how he managed to jump his own fence.
‘Stupid creature,’ muttered Robber. ‘He could have killed me.’
‘But he didn’t, mercifully,’ said Bold. ‘And we must cultivate his friendship. An animal that size could prove to be a very useful ally, one day.’
—— 16 ——
The Ties of Blood
Whisper and Bold were visited frequently by the mastiff in the ensuing weeks. Since he was only about during the day, it meant that the pair of foxes were usually roused from their sleep by one or two of his great barks, summoning them to join him. They tried to be friendly, but Rollo’s visits were not always welcome, particularly if they had exhausted themselves hunting for food the previous night.
The turn of the year came and went. The winter weather had not been too cruel. Food was available – not plentiful – but, working in concert, Bold and Whisper usually found enough to eat. Towards the end of January the mating season for foxes arrived. The pair had already established a firm bond in the period they had been together and so this extension to their relationship was quite natural. Bold still wondered from time to time about Whisper’s choice of mate, but dismissed his thoughts almost as soon as they took shape.
When Whisper knew she was carrying Bold’s cubs she decided it was time to put the next part of her plan into operation. The winter was entering its final phase and there was no time to be lost. She and Bold were lying comfortably in their earth. Whisper said: ‘Very soon we must leave here.’
Bold raised his head and looked at her quizzically in the gloom. ‘Soon?’ he asked. ‘Before the end of winter?’ He thought she was referring to their eventual return to the country.
‘Certainly before the end of the winter,’ Whisper answered. ‘We have a long journey to make before spring arrives.’
‘Journey?’ Bold sounded puzzled. ‘A journey to where?’
‘To a safe place for our cubs to be born,’ said Whisper.
‘Isn’t it safe here?’ he asked. ‘We haven’t been troubled –’
‘Not safe enough,’ she interrupted. ‘I want the cubs to be born in the Nature Reserve like you were.’
Bold caught his breath. ‘White Deer Park?’ he whispered.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You have to take us there.’
Bold saw the sense in his mate’s words but was sick at heart. For long moments he said nothing. Then he murmured, almost as if to himself: ‘I never thought of returning there.’
‘Not on your own – I know you didn’t,’ said Whisper. ‘But we have to think of our offspring.’
‘Yes, yes, I see the sense in it,’ said Bold lamely. A thought struck him like a flash of light. Was this the reason for her selecting him? ‘Tell me, Whisper,’ he said quietly, ‘is this why you chose me?’
‘For your knowledge of the Nature Reserve? Yes, in part,’ she admitted. ‘But it was your ancestry that impressed me mostly.’
Bold let his head drop on to his paws. He felt as if a heavy weight bore down on him – the weight of his father’s name. ‘Then it was not for myself you wished to mate with me?’ he said agonizingly.
Whisper tried to reassure him. ‘Of course it was for yourself,’ she said. ‘You have the blood of the Farthing Wood Fox in your veins. I’m proud of you. Now my cubs will make me proud too.’
She couldn’t have said a more distressing thing. Bold was crushed. His mission had failed. ‘Well,’ he said softly, ‘it seems my struggles are over.’
‘Your struggles?’ she echoed.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Dear Whisper, had you not realized that I’ve been trying to forge my own destiny? All my short life I have tried to escape that long shadow cast by my father’s fame. I left the Park to live life my own way – to create my own identity. Now I see I shall always live within that shadow – I can’t shrug off my origins. It is my fate.’
Whisper was stunned. She couldn’t speak.
‘I know now,’ Bold went on sardonically, ‘why you preferred a crippled, haggard specimen, old before his time, to any one of a dozen, healthy young dogs. Hah! My only claim to fame is my genealogy!’
‘Stop! Stop!’ she cried. ‘I can’t bear any more! Why are you so bitter? You have created your own destiny. You’ve lived a braver, more resourceful life in your one year than is even contemplated by most creatures. What you did took a great deal of courage!’
‘And now I go creeping back from the world I chose, with my tail between my legs!’
‘You talk as if your life is over!’ Whisper exclaimed hotly. ‘You are to be a father in a couple of months. Your destiny now is to pass on to your cubs the knowledge and the craft gleaned from your experiences. To teach them, with me, just as your parents instructed you!’
‘Yes, yes, I know the role expected of me,’ Bold said wearily. ‘I’ll lead you to your haven of peace and tranquillity; you need have no fears.’
‘We have a bright future ahead of us, Bold,’ Whisper encouraged him.
Bold could not share her enthusiasm. It seemed to him as if his life consisted only of a past. Eventually he said: ‘When do you want to begin?’
‘As soon as you – we,’ she hastily corrected her
self, ‘feel fit enough.’
The error was not lost on her mate. ‘We must try and fatten ourselves up a little for the journey,’ he said. ‘I think I know how we might be able to do that.’
‘How then?’
‘Oh – don’t worry. You can leave it all to me,’ Bold said enigmatically. He spoke no more. Whisper assumed he wanted to sleep and settled herself down. But Bold had never felt farther from rest. So, when the sounds of Rollo’s tremendous greetings echoed in the earth, he was glad of an excuse to depart.
‘You needn’t stir,’ he told Whisper who, of course, had also been wakened. ‘I’ll go and see him.’
Rollo’s great tail threshed the air as he saw his small friend emerge from his hole. ‘It’s a glorious day for scents and explorations,’ he told the fox. ‘I wish you’d come with me.’ This was his invariable invitation.
‘All right,’ said Bold.
Rollo was overjoyed and spun round in a frenzy, bellowing excitedly. He was unable to believe his luck. ‘Will you – will you really?’ he cried.
‘Yes, but I don’t want to follow scents,’ Bold informed him. ‘Show me your den.’
‘Gladly!’ The dog set off at a spanking pace among the tombstones and paused by the churchyard wall. Bold went through his usual gap and Rollo landed on the other side with a thud.
‘You’ll have to go more slowly,’ Bold remarked. ‘My leg, you know.’
‘I know, I know – doesn’t matter,’ said the delighted Rollo. ‘Any pace you like.’ They proceeded on their way.
‘I saw your friend the crow,’ said the mastiff. ‘He seemed all right, for he croaked at me loudly enough.’
‘Are you sure it was Robber?’ Bold asked.
‘Oh, yes. It was obvious he recognized me.’
‘Yes. I imagine he would,’ Bold said with a touch of irony, but it was lost on this simple-hearted monster.
‘I want you to help me, if you will,’ he said next.
‘Help you? Of course I will,’ Rollo boomed. ‘You’re my friend. What am I to do?’
‘Not much really,’ said Bold. ‘Just feed me – and my mate.’
‘Feed you? What with?’
‘What do you eat?’
‘Meat, biscuits – er – well, lots of meat . . .’
‘That will do,’ Bold said humorously.
‘You want my food?’
‘No, no. Only what you don’t want. Our appetites are small by comparison. But we need to build ourselves up. We’re going on a journey.’
Rollo looked blank. ‘Are you planning to leave here, then?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Whisper wants to find a safer home for the birth of our cubs,’ said Bold.
‘But you don’t have to leave,’ protested Rollo who didn’t want to lose his friends as soon as he had gained them. ‘Your cubs would be quite safe as long as I’m around. I’d make sure of that.’
‘I’m very grateful for your interest,’ Bold said carefully, ‘but I hope I’d prove sufficient to the task of defending my own young ones. However, you won’t be required to help, as Whisper’s mind is made up.’
‘I see. But how long will it take you to find the right sort of place?’
‘Oh, as long as it takes us to get there. You see, she’s already decided on our destination.’
‘She seems to be very determined.’
‘She is, I assure you.’
‘I suppose, then, I won’t be seeing much more of you?’
‘I’m sorry to say that it does appear that way.’
Rollo’s great wrinkled face wore a look of gloom. ‘Could I – perhaps – come part of the way with you?’ he asked with a sort of shyness that could have been absurd in such a large beast if it had not been so genuine.
‘I really can’t see that it would be possible, Rollo,’ Bold replied gently. ‘We shall be moving by night and – well, stealth will be all-important.’
The mastiff lapsed into silence until they reached his yard. It was a large open pen of bare earth surrounded by a low wire fence. There was a big wooden kennel in front of which stood an empty food bowl and another containing water. There was access to the yard from a door at the back of the adjoining house. Rollo leapt easily over the fence and went into his kennel. He re-emerged carrying two bone-shaped biscuits, which he dropped by the fence.
‘That’s my ‘den’ as you call it,’ he said. ‘There’s no meat at the moment, I’m afraid. I ate it all.’ He nudged the biscuits through a hole in the links with his muzzle. ‘Try those,’ he suggested.
Bold lay down and, holding a biscuit between his front paws in the same way as a dog, took a bite with his side teeth. ‘Very appetising,’ he pronounced after crunching it up. ‘I’ll take the other back for Whisper. But when will you be given meat again?’
‘Tonight,’ answered Rollo.
‘Good,’ rejoined Bold. ‘Shall we come when it’s dark, then?’
‘Yes, do. I’ll look forward to it.’
Bold turned and began his slow return to the churchyard. Although he had not mentioned it to Whisper, since the occasion when he had found the wall repaired and had tried to kick out a new hole, his damaged leg had started to hurt badly again. The pain was severe enough to make him wince at times if he brought that leg down too heavily, and so the prospect of a long journey, perhaps lasting some weeks owing to his lameness, was an ordeal he dreaded. But he was resolved that Whisper should remain ignorant.
He reached Rollo’s hole in the wall and went through, still carrying the biscuit. Whisper slept so he dropped it by her and stretched himself out gratefully. At dusk the vixen awoke and found Bold by her side again. She let him sleep on while she devoured her titbit.
Bold woke eventually and told his companion about the arrangement he had made with the mastiff. Whisper congratulated him. ‘A very sound idea,’ she said. ‘When does he expect us?’
‘Tonight,’ said Bold.
They left the earth together and Bold led the way back to Rollo’s yard. The two foxes smelt the strong odour of fresh meat from some metres away as Rollo had nosed his meat dish painstakingly across the ground to the fence. He had refrained from tasting the food himself. So it was that Bold and Whisper heard their friend before they saw him, for the huge dog’s belly, as empty as a pit, was reverberating with the most ominous rumblings.
‘Rollo!’ cried Bold. ‘You’re there?’
‘I’m here,’ came the solemn, deep-toned reply.
Bold now saw the meat dish close against the chain link fence. ‘You haven’t touched it!’ he exclaimed in astonishment.
‘No, I – I thought I’d wait for you,’ replied the dog. ‘It’s more companionable to eat together.’
‘Poor Rollo,’ said Whisper as a fresh rumble racked the cavernous depths of his stomach. ‘How you must have suffered!’
‘Well, I’ll do so no longer, now you’re here,’ he replied and took a gargantuan mouthful.
Whisper and Bold were able to hook pieces of meat through the wire with their paws, and all three made a good meal. Rollo was far too polite to take more than the two foxes did between them; neither did he tell them he could comfortably have eaten as much again. But he did ask them when they expected to leave.
‘Not later than the new moon,’ said Whisper.
‘I shall miss you,’ said the mastiff, looking at them with his great mournful eyes.
The foxes did not know how to comfort him, so said nothing on that subject. They talked for a while and then made their farewells.
‘I’ll be here waiting for you tomorrow night,’ Rollo promised, ‘with the same supplies.’
‘Don’t starve yourself on our account,’ said Whisper kindly. ‘Eat what you want first.’
‘Thank you, Whisper,’ said Rollo, ‘but it wouldn’t be with the same relish.’
‘He really is a friend to us,’ Whisper remarked as they left him. ‘We owe him quite a lot.’
‘We do,’ agreed Bold, ‘and it makes me sad that we have to
desert him so soon.’
But Whisper’s resolution was final. ‘As to that,’ she said, ‘we have no choice. For blood is thicker than water.’
—— 17 ——
Back to the Country
The day for their departure came sooner than expected. Bold had gone at daybreak one day to have a look round for Robber to acquaint him of their intentions. He did not find the crow but he did find a message left under the privet hedge: a piece of meat still sufficiently fresh to persuade Bold that it had been dropped there that very morning while he’d been looking elsewhere. What could it mean? The crow seemed not to be in the immediate vicinity, so what was he to do? Bold decided he would go and consult Whisper.
As he approached the familiar churchyard wall, which soon would no longer encompass his and Whisper’s home, he realized what Robber’s message had intended to convey. The gap in the wall made by their friend the mastiff had been repaired again and so, once more, Bold had no access to his earth. Even as he looked at this new barrier there came several loud ‘caws’ from a nearby treetop. Bold spotted the bird among the bare branches and barked a greeting. Robber flew down.
‘I think we’re in need of your powerful friend again,’ he said to the fox.
‘No-o,’ Bold said dubiously. ‘Not on this occasion. The wall seals my entrance and my fate at the same time.’
‘Don’t talk in riddles, Bold,’ Robber urged. ‘What are you hinting at?’
‘Oh, I’ve just been looking for you to tell you that Whisper and I are to embark on a journey,’ Bold said casually. ‘Now I can add to that piece of information. We shall start today.’
Robber was full of questions.
‘It’s to be White Deer Park, my own birthplace,’ Bold told him. ‘For the sake of my unborn cubs I’m returning to the safe haven I turned my back on only last summer.’
‘Ah, so a family is in question,’ said Robber. ‘In that case, your young vixen is behaving very sensibly.’
‘She is – I don’t deny it,’ Bold averred. ‘Yet I can’t be sanguine about my own chances of completing the journey.’
‘You look more robust now than you’ve done for a long time,’ the crow observed. ‘If you take it easily . . .’
