A Black Fox Running Page 13

  Two sunsets later, after quartering the Swincombe Valley as far down as the beehives of the Buckfast monks, he arrived at Huntingdon Warren. In the not too distant past rabbits had been kept on the hillsides in long banks of earth and stone to supply Man’s table with fresh meat. The warrener’s house was in ruins and the artificial burrows were hidden under grass, but the rabbits remained wherever there was a clitter, sharing the crevices with adders and lizards.

  Wulfgar crawled into the tangle of dead bracken and furze. He was hungry. Drawing back his lips he squealed like a rabbit in pain, and a doe popped out of a hole and stared towards his hiding place. Soon several nursing mothers had assembled on the sward before Huntingdon Barrow, stamping their hind feet, anxious to know what was wrong. Eventually a buck hopped forward to investigate and never lived to see the new moon firming in the sky.

  The track of Redlake Tramway marched down from the old china clay works to Bittaford, a distance of six miles as the raven flies. By dawn Wulfgar had left the track to kennel beneath the oaks of Piles Copse on the West-facing bank of the Erme. He slept soundly until the screeching of a jay brought him back with a jolt to the edge of another night.

  He licked the tag of his brush and let the hurt have its way, but he could think quite calmly of her now. The panic that usually gushed with the return of consciousness never troubled him again. He walked to the river and lapped the surface of the pool. Through his reflection he saw the dim skeleton of a pony stirring in the current. The water was the colour of Teg’s eyes.

  The fox followed the Erme on its flight into darkness. He had no idea where he was going, the river would be his guide. Maybe it would carry him to Teg. He grinned and wagged his narrow muzzle at the stars. Where the river ends a fox may find the truth, Stargrief had said. And the old dog had gone on to speak of the sea where the sun came from. Yes, he would go to it and eat the truth as a sick animal eats grass.

  The cattle path beside the water hastened him into the shadows of a wood. He froze and pricked his ears. The otter’s head glistened in mid-stream. The animals gazed steadily at each other, then the otter sank and became part of the rushing blackness.

  Wulfgar trotted through the woodlands, the night sky broken between leaves above him. He went under the viaduct and cleared a fence to find himself in a vegetable garden. Houses crowded around him and a hen began to cluck. He crept along the wire mesh of the chicken run, filling his nostrils with the smell of the birds. Then they were squawking and flapping and beating against the wire.

  Wulfgar jumped onto a high wall and ran along the coping stones. The river poured through the town of Ivybridge, passing rows of terrace houses and the paper mill, catching the glint of street lamps and the gleam of gaslights from kitchen windows. Wulfgar dropped down onto the footpath and was held in the beam of a torch.

  ‘A fox!’ the policeman grunted. ‘God – you scared me, boy!’

  The green eyes vanished. The policeman heard the splash of Wulfgar entering the water and tried to capture him again with his torch, but the fox was under the bridge, paddling downstream.

  He was carried beneath the stone arches of two more bridges before he scrambled out and shook himself among the buddleia of some wasteland south of the Lower Mill. Once the town lights were behind him, he sniffed the breeze that was bending the cow parsley and charlock. Cars were roaring up and down the Plymouth Road.

  The fox ran on.

  He spent a couple of nights hunting the farmland around Ermington. Ducks were killed on the Long Brook and he chopped many rabbits in the fields by Modbury.

  The Erme above Sequer’s Bridge was a sleeve of clear moorland water, flowing shallow and fast, dancing on a stony bed. Trout dimpled the surface of the pools. They leapt to grab insects and flashed silver in the sunlight. Wulfgar eyed them as he quenched his thirst and inevitably he recalled how Teg had sipped the coolness of the West Dart. But too much was going on to permit brooding. He lay in the ferns while the water skaters moved jerkily on the surface of the pool. Other insects were creeping out of the larval form to enjoy the heat before the dragonflies bustled in and the wagtails came to hawk the quiet reaches.

  Wulfgar yawned and revealed the armoury of the slaughterhouse. Without too much effort he could stretch and sniff at the spraint the otter had deposited on the rock below the alder roots. The fish smell did not please him. He glanced up at the leaf-dazzle and caught the eye of the sparrowhawk. The bird was so highly strung it would react violently to the snapping of a twig.

  A blue tit cut a yellow and blue curve among the alder leaves. The hawk swished away and a leaf fluttered down and settled on the water.

  The fox enjoyed the evenings beside the river. Although moulting had begun, his coat shone and everything about him had a healthy well-cared-for look from whiskers to claws. He was as sleek and lean as the torrent that caught the sun and tossed it about in blinding flashes.

  He trotted at the easy hunting pace along the tidal reaches of the Erme to Clyng Mill. It was the green and golden time of late spring in that part of Devon, which is called the South Hams. Watered by five rivers the farmland of small fields, market towns and villages ran to the edge of the cliffs bordering the English Channel. The green was of thick new grass, leaves and flower stems; the gold was of buttercups and dandelions in the pastures.

  That night he snatched conies from Torr Down and kennelled among bluebells and campion on the margins of the wood by the farm. An hour before dawn a pair of workdogs out rabbiting put him up and chased him through the trees to the river where he hid in a badger’s sett. The bolt-hole led him to the bank above the water. The dogs were still barking but he was no longer concerned as he walked on soft sand. Birds were constantly coming and going. Gulls and shelduck fed in the distant marshes, mallard dropped from the sky. And he heard a new, exciting sound – the boom of surf.

  The sky was dark and starry, and the emptiness of the universe made him sad. He had the feeling of swimming in space again. His bones and muscles and coat of thick hair had gone, and he had no more body than the wind.

  A line of breakers separated the river mouth from the sea and on either side woods and fields sat in a grey mass on the clifftops. Wulfgar came to the estuary and lapped salt water.

  The starlight was paling as the sky on the horizon slowly brightened. He climbed the cliff to a rocky outcrop and lay in a hollow of grass and thrift.

  The light of the new day came stealthily. The stars disappeared and little by little things became substantial. The peaks of the waves lifted and fell, white water ruffled the estuary. Then the sun was rolling out of a sea that sparkled, and a great black-backed gull barked and a cuckoo winged across the bluebell slopes repeating its name.

  Wulfgar laid his chin on his forepaws and waited for the divine revelation. But nothing happened. The sun climbed higher, the hoppers zithered and larks sang and the sea murmured. Presently he fell asleep.

  The yaffle gave its crazed laugh and hopped from branch to branch. Brown-green oak leaves hid it from Wulfgar. He licked a paw and cleaned his muzzle. Above the copse in Fernycombe Goyal the herring gulls swooped, their primary feathers blazing with silver light.

  Wulfgar had eaten gull chicks and eggs that he had found on the cliff ledges, and small crabs scavenged from Westcombe Beach. He had also gnawed bladderwrack seaweed for the iodine.

  The countryside was crying out for rain, but with the wind blowing gently from the continent the drought continued. Where the tiny green leaves of the turnip crop showed in the dusty soil the cockroach moved like a metal toy. The kestrel dropped and closed his talons on the insect, then he shrugged off the gulls who were mobbing him and returned to his mate and the nesting ledge at Beacon Point.

  Running by night Wulfgar came to Loddiswell and the River Avon, where a poacher saw him sniffing round the pigsties. The man had taken a salmon from Reade’s Pool. Crouching under the bridge by the mill on the Torr Brook he spotted the fox again as it waded the stream and dived into the darkness
.

  The hour of dusk pleased him most of all. He felt he had come to the frontiers of something thrilling. The wind had died and the air was loaded with scent. Along the grazing of Buckland-Tout-Saints dusk was gathering, and trees and houses had already been obscured. Cattle lowed, a lamb bleated, and the after-glow of sunset endured in the bottom of the sky. Mist hid the Kingsbridge Estuary and filled the creeks. It was almost dark and the coombs and lower fields were part of the night. Clusters of lights marked the towns and villages and an aeroplane droned against the stars. A shire horse stamped and snuffled and called to her foal. Wulfgar smelt the grassy fragrance of her breath as he descended the goyal.

  The running took him in a straight line to the headland. He crossed four streams and many lanes before daybreak glinted on the duckpond of Start Farm. The muscovies paddled slowly through the shallows, dipping their heads into the brown water. Wulfgar stood on his hindlegs and stared at them. But someone in the house pulled the lavatory chain and frightened him. He sat back on his haunches and whimpered and swished his brush. The ducks crowded together and an old drake began to quack. Wulfgar slipped away where the hawthorns linked branches in a green shade …

  It was like Sunday morning in Eden. The farmland received the first sunlight. Every year there were young fields under old trees. Men came and went but the fields remained and never decayed.

  A crow harassed him as he ran with the stream down the coombe that was dotted with sheep. The scent of the sea lofted from Lannacombe Bay. Wulfgar nosed through the dead fennel, jumped the barbed wire fence and took the path along the edge of the cliffs to Peartree Point.

  Badgers had been rooting in the bluebells below Raven’s Rock, a great grey crag rising steeply above the sea, and one of their trails led to a terrace high on the cliff face. A fox could crouch there unseen and sleep while the day flowed and ebbed.

  And the blaring of the lighthouse foghorn woke him. The moon was full and yellow over Start Point and a thick sea mist stifled the sound of breaking waves. Only the top of the lighthouse was visible. The ridge leading down to the point was bare and serrated. The swinging shaft of light splashed the jagged outcrops like flashes from a welder’s torch.

  Wulfgar analysed the night air, drinking the smell of gulls’ droppings and fish bones, jackdaws, seaweed, thrift and sheep. He was the first of the Dartmoor Nation to make such a pilgrimage. A wry smile creased the corners of his mouth, for Stargrief had got some of it right. The sea lay between all wanderers and the sunrise, but where was the vision of truth? Wulfgar had spoken to the stars and they had remained silent. He was alone, but a dog fox spent half his life without company. It was a good life. Then he thought he understood.

  He had come to the sea like the river, shedding a part of himself on the way. The sea would provide no answers, no palliatives. The journey was the thing. In Man’s terms he had run fifty miles. He was Wulfgar of Leighon once more and ached for the wilderness of his birth.

  CONSPIRACY

  The breeze lifted the speckled breast feather cast by Leaf-dancer the kestrel. It sailed across the bracken and foxgloves pursued by a butterfly. A cuckoo spoke and Wulfgar raised his head from the drinking. The morning was dull and overcast but warm. Above the waters of the Leighon Ponds the flags shook yellow flowers. It began to drizzle and there was the smell of rain on dry earth. A thrush sang, the dragonflies tacked and hovered and before very long the sun was shining.

  The West Country had entered the third week of drought.

  The ponds were the best place to be. Wulfgar lay up close to the water and fed well on young moorhens and ducks. Often he swam to the island of alders and willows when the sun had gone down and the ghost moths danced over the turf. Once he even caught a trout – more by luck than contrivance. Drinking at the slack water near the dam he had seen the fish lying in the shallows and had flicked it out with his paw.

  The episode amused Romany. To him most creatures who were not water gypsies were dull-witted and clumsy. He hauled himself onto the dam and grinned at Wulfgar. Droplets of water fell from his whiskers. He had the head of a tomcat but his ears were small and flat and set far back.

  ‘A fox with a fish,’ he chirped. Like all members of the weasel family he spoke Fox with an unpleasant nasal twang.

  ‘I missed the chase, Wulfgar. You can’t beat a good chase – that’s what I say. The bubbly, rushing thrill of speeding through the coolness. There’s no excitement quite like it.’

  ‘The trout came to me,’ Wulfgar said. ‘I’m not too bright at the underwater stalking. I got it with this.’ He held up a paw.

  ‘Lucky it was a trout. An eel would have given you the slip,’ the otter said, and he winked. ‘Eels are like long, dark streaks of water. You got to grab ’em with your teeth.’

  ‘You’re more fish than fitch,’ Wulfgar said.

  The animals smiled.

  ‘And that trout’s a fluke – if you get what I mean,’ the otter said.

  ‘Very droll.’

  The fish was small and Wulfgar ate it quickly.

  ‘Stargrief tells me you’ve been to the sea,’ Romany said.

  ‘He’s back then?’

  ‘Yes – on his hill. He told me about Teg and the cubs.’

  ‘Going to the sea wasn’t particularly thrilling,’ Wulfgar said, hearing the metal jaws clang on Teg’s hindleg. ‘You follow a river and it takes you there. Nothing could be simpler.’

  ‘What about the sea?’

  ‘It’s big and tastes bitter. The sun comes out of it.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You have to swim in it to really understand it,’ Romany said. ‘I was there a couple of winters ago. The fishing was excellent.’

  Using his tail as a third leg he stood upright and scanned the dimpsey. Water spilled over the dam in a cascade to fill the smaller, muddier pond.

  Wulfgar said, ‘Have the hounds been here?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said the otter and he dropped back onto all fours. ‘They drew the river under the trapper’s house but didn’t kill. The trapper and his dog visited us back along. Ever since I took a chunk out of his leg the dog won’t go near the water. It was very funny. I think they were looking for you, Wulfgar.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Wulfgar said. ‘This trapper isn’t like other men.’

  ‘He caught one of my brothers on Little Two Rivers last spring,’ Romany said. ‘I fear him more than any living animal.

  I suppose you’ve heard about the lurcher?’

  Wulfgar shook his head.

  ‘He chopped a dog fox by Crow Thorn when the bluebells were opening. Stargrief said the fox was called Briarspur. It was an untidy death.’

  ‘One day I shall kill the lurcher.’ Wulfgar’s words came through his teeth in a grating snarl.

  ‘It isn’t possible,’ the otter said.

  Water puddled under his thickset, short-legged body. His eyes were round and black in a pug face.

  ‘Maybe we could learn something from the hounds and the bogeywolves,’ Wulfgar said, sniffing the air that was rich with the dark, leafy smell of the ponds.

  ‘Run and Live is our motto,’ said Romany.

  ‘And what if the lurcher could be persuaded to run into trouble?’

  Romany shook himself and grinned. Perhaps this fox wasn’t dumb. The dark one had always puzzled him. There was a light in his eyes quite different from the mere glint of intelligence. Then he considered another possibility. The death of the vixen and cubs could have unhinged him. Craziness took many forms and grief was one of them. Wulfgar was still fretting for his mate, but the pain was turning to anger. Romany was ten years old and he knew what it was like to nurse the ache of loss.

  In the water the dog otter was a different creature. His body tapered away as he swam with swift undulations of the spine. The trout was caught up in the convulsion of underwater acrobatics and brought alive to Moonsleek.

  Wulfgar heard the whistle and saw the sun t
winkle on the wet head. The otter was stalking a moorhen. The bird was swimming on the far side of the pond and Romany took exact bearings before he sank. Closing his ears and nostrils he moved deep down, but the moorhen had sensed something was wrong. She gave a cry and dashed backwards and forwards. Then the otter had her by the foot and the surface was empty. An expanding ring of ripples broke the reflections of flags and trees.

  Wulfgar rolled in the shallows below the alder branches. The night’s hunting had yielded fieldmice and lapwing chicks but not in satisfying numbers. He soaked up the early morning sunlight and ran his teeth like clippers through the fur of his underparts. Wasps were snatching caterpillars from the leaves of Jack-by-the-hedges. In the fields of the border country the grass stood higher than a fox, and the clover was in flower. Occasionally rucksacked figures were seen on Holwell Tor, although Man rarely came at dawn or dusk when the animals were busy.

  The fox contorted his body and raked his neck with a hindfoot. His tongue lolled over his lower teeth as he scratched long and luxuriously. The wasps continued to devour the caterpillars, slyly searching the undersides of the leaves. Wulfgar’s eyes narrowed. He would use cunning, not direct confrontation, so it would not be dog fox against lurcher. The clicketting Fight Ritual could not be applied. Foxes were masters of stealth but never hunted in packs. No, certain tactics could not be applied for hereditary reasons.

  Teg’s death was his own spur. Other dogs and vixens did not share this intense hatred. Fox would fight fox and any other creature in certain circumstances, but his instinct when confronted by overwhelming odds was to use cunning. There were extraordinary talents to be harnessed, yet how? If he could get the lurcher into the Fastness maybe the treacherous ground would swallow him, as it had swallowed sheep and ponies. He whimpered. In the open the dog would overtake and stop the swiftest fox, yet the animal had to die. The trapper loved it and it was his thing, an extension of his need to kill. The death of the thing would fill its master with pain. He would know the terrible ache that gnawed at the innards. And even if men did not have this capacity for suffering, the dog would be removed from their lives for ever.