A Black Fox Running Read online

  He lapped the current as it sped babbling over grit and pebbles. Tongues of silt and storm debris shaped the flow. Beneath the oaks were mossy boulders, uprooted trees and torn branches. Here the Becca ran in a freshet, moon-speckled. Eels flickered in the shadowy deeps, dragging their silver slackness over rocks that had been polished and rounded by water. The bends were thick with jetsam.

  Having successfully stalked moorfowl he came to the pool below Leighon House. The deep belling of a hound carried across the lawn, then stopped as though someone had comforted the creature.

  Wulfgar had reached a place where the river seemed to have fallen asleep. He made scats on a boulder that served as a scenting post and cleared the arching root of an oak in one leap. The wire noose jerked viciously at his neck and cut into his windpipe. His body was thrown horizontal and slammed down on the ground with a thump. A great surge of panic flooded his gut, spreading like frost through his nervous system. His feet scrabbled for purchase and he tried to leap up and out of the snare. The wire bit into his throat, dragging him back. His tongue showed between his teeth and he retched. The motion loosened the wire a little and he was able to take air in quick gasps, but any forward movement threatened to choke the life out of him. Slowly he inched backwards. Then the noose opened a fraction and he sucked in a deep draught of the night, which was now rank with the stink of his fear. The panic gushed out in a steady pumping of urine.

  He lay and thought about the problem. He had seen many rabbits in the wire and their hysteria had always made matters worse. The harder they struggled the tighter the snare became until they blacked out and died.

  Moving backwards on his belly he located the stake. It was as thick as a pony’s fetlock and had been driven to the neck in the hard ground. Wulfgar gnawed at the wire, but it grated on his molars and would not part as the bramble snarls parted. Then he considered digging out the stake but any effort brought a savage reaction from the snare. Closing his eyes he gave a wail of despair that lofted to a full-bodied howl.

  ‘Is there anything I can do, friend?’ said a shrill voice at his side.

  Chivvy-yick grinned and chittered and jigged about in the restlessness of his joy.

  ‘Want me to loosen the wire with me strong little teeth?’

  Wulfgar smiled despite the noose.

  ‘Loosen my throat, more likely,’ he said.

  ‘Dear O dear! – don’t old Canker Head trust Chivvy-yick? Ain’t he grateful?’

  ‘Don’t play games with me, man’s scat.’

  The stoat laughed at this tremendous insult.

  ‘You ain’t in no position to be nasty,’ he said. ‘There ain’t no foxes round to back you up, and that loud-mouthed vixen is just a kennel for grubs now from what I hear. Miss ’er, do you, Canker Head?’

  Wulfgar growled and flung himself at the stoat but the snare plucked him from the centre of his pounce, leaving him choking and writhing in the grass.

  ‘That was truly funny, Canker Head,’ Chivvy-yick guffawed. ‘Snares suit you. Rot my bones! – if you ain’t more comical than a drummer in a wire! What a pity you crossed Chivvy-yick. Twice, if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘The third time could be fatal.’

  The fitch rippled through the grass and sprawled before him and began to lick the black tip of its tail.

  ‘How come a smart fox like you got his head in a noose?’

  Wulfgar recovered his breath but was loath to waste it on the fitch.

  ‘OK, Mange Bag,’ Chivvy-yick said. ‘There ain’t no love lost between us but I don’t do the trapper’s dirty work like them ferrets. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘No tricks?’

  ‘No tricks. I spit on all foxes but Man is Man.’

  He shut his eyes, drew down the corners of his mouth, shook his head and shuddered.

  ‘There is a badger in the sett higher upstream,’ Wulfgar said. ‘He’s my friend. He and the sow could dig out the stake.’

  ‘Great diggers and burrowers and miners are the brocks,’ Chivvy-yick agreed. ‘And Thorgil is the best of the breed. I’ll fetch him if you agree to one thing.’

  ‘Very well,’ Wulfgar said.

  ‘No more coney-snatchin’ off fitches. Never. Not ever.’

  The fox nodded.

  ‘Don’t go away,’ Chivvy-yick grinned. ‘I won’t be a jiffy.’

  It was most unfitchlike behaviour and the stoat’s departure left Wulfgar both perplexed and guilt-ridden. The short June night was nearly done. He yawned and the wire cut into his flesh. The stars had become feeble, like glow-worms.

  He fell asleep without laying his brush across his nose.

  The sharp stab of pain brought him back to consciousness with a jolt that nearly throttled him. Chivvy-yick had bitten the tip of his ear. Blood pulsed freely down the side of his head into his chest fur.

  The fitch rolled around in the throes of helpless laughter and the rest of the stoat pack jeered at Wulfgar.

  ‘O I do like foxy’s collar,’ Shiv cried.

  ‘He looks like a rat on the keeper’s gibbet,’ said Flick-Flick.

  ‘Like a ferret on a lead,’ Snikker crowed.

  ‘I bet three drummers to a dead dog old Canker Head really thought I was going to get his mate the brock,’ Chivvy-yick gasped. ‘Imagine – a nice bit of hope to brighten his misery. Heroic little me would arrange for Scat Stink to escape from the wire – despite all the aggravation he’s given me.’

  He bared his fangs and narrowed his eyes.

  ‘O no no no! It could not be done. Never, no, not ever. Chivvy-yick went and got his nearest and dearest. A fitch can’t gloat alone. Stoat gotta share a good gloat. A stoat gloat. Yik-yik-yik.’

  Wulfgar gazed placidly at him. Day was breaking and he felt close to death, but he would not sacrifice his dignity in a slanging match.

  Though I may die

  the grass will grow,

  the sun will shine

  the stream will flow.

  The words of the prayer came from the living world beyond himself. He felt he had drawn them from the air, like breath.

  Soon the fitches grew bored with the mocking and taunting. At Slickfang’s suggestion they played the Blood Game, darting in to nip an ear or a paw, or to close their teeth on the fox’s brush. Wulfgar found it more difficult to endure the humiliation than the pain.

  And lying close to the ground he dreamt of Teg and remembered how they had comforted each other. Oakwhelp and the other cubs would be waiting in the golden field. All the heroic dog foxes would gather and he would walk beside Tod through the radiant places. But not yet, another voice cried inside him. The sweetness of the new morning was too good to leave.

  TREACHEROUS CONTRIVANCES

  Higher up, the water frizzled in grit-choked runnels, and jets spurted between the boulders. He stirred and the pain pounced. Green leaves climbed in cliffs heaped with the noise of insects and birds. The light had broadened and distant things were visible. Briefly the rain soaked the trees, dripping through the foliage. The wind swept up on the shower and lifted the end of it as it would belly-out a curtain.

  The stoats skipped around him, breaking the heads off the dandelions. The grass was full of the heavy, gold flowers. Wulfgar felt the familiar ache of regret. He had been careless with his life but now he cherished those little eternities of running on high ground. He pressed his nose to the earth, which smelt of the past.

  ‘This one’s got coney blood in him,’ Chivvy-yick sneered. ‘You’d get more fight out of a blind kitten.’

  He jumped onto Wulfgar’s back and cried, ‘Behold, Mighty Fitch on the dung hill.’

  The stoat pack hissed, then they were colliding with each other in a hotch-potch of limbs and bodies, but only for a second. Something landed in their midst and there was a silent explosion of fitches. Chivvy-yick departed furtively, avoiding the russet blur that streaked after Flick-Flick. The stoat twisted and screamed. The fox sprang, claws spread wide and fell on him, holding him pinned. F
etid breath was against his face. Once more he screamed, but the fox closed his jaws on the stoat’s neck and the struggling ceased.

  ‘Let the rest of the cowards run,’ the stranger said. His words rumbled up from his throat.

  He was a great, gaunt animal with a scarred head and a rip in his right ear.

  ‘You are in a bad way, friend,’ he added gently.

  ‘It could be worse,’ said Wulfgar. ‘What do they call you, stranger?’

  ‘Killconey. I’ve come from the country up beyond the Black Mire, near the sea that swallows the sun every evening.’

  ‘I am Wulfgar.’

  ‘Have you prepared to meet death, Wulfgar?’

  ‘Yes – but it wasn’t easy with the fitches swarming all over me.’

  His heart sank and he whispered, ‘Is it nearby?’

  Killconey gave him a slow nod.

  ‘A man is coming up the river. He has a dog. They will be here shortly.’

  ‘I can smell them,’Wulfgar said.

  ‘Has Tod been good to you?’ asked Killconey.

  ‘Nearly always,’ Wulfgar smiled.

  His blood ran thin and cold. The fear leaked from his fur and stank like sackcloth soaked in urine.

  A stick cracked under someone’s boot and a man coughed.

  ‘I daren’t stay any longer,’ Killconey said.

  ‘No. You must run. I’m grateful for what you did.’

  ‘I won’t be far away if it’s any comfort.’

  Wulfgar managed another smile.

  ‘Go quickly,’ he said. ‘This is something that has to be done alone.’

  And I won’t die cowering like a rabbit, he thought. The hill foxes will remember me. His hackles stiffened and he grunted through his nostrils, sounding like a badger.

  The dog scampered up the path and began to bark.

  The young American was glad to get on the train and shake the dust of London off his shoes. He had done all the things he had wanted to do. He had seen the sights and eaten seafood at the street stalls and drunk Guinness at the Prospect of Whitby, but the old city with its bomb scars and double-deckers was only an interlude.

  The Torbay Express thundered across the shires, building up steam, pushing through the showery June day into the West Country. After Somerset there were small red fields among the greens of woods, corn and pasture, and as the train approached the cathedral city the foothills of Dartmoor were clearly visible.

  He got out at Exeter St David’s and collected the spaniel from the guard’s van. The dog belonged to friends who were holidaying in the States. They had insisted he make Aish Cottage his home until the fall. On leave from the Air Force he had stayed in pubs and farmhouses. The moors were one of two good things to come out of the war. The other was Jenny.

  Propped up in the back of the Shewtes’ Humber Snipe he let her do all the talking. She still looked like a little girl. Sometimes the leaf-dazzle parted and sunlight flooded the car. Then he remembered her serenity back in those days when Dartmoor was the summer place on the edge of the nightmare. Now there were no more missions in Flying Fortresses so loaded with bornbs they could hardly take off. But he had come through it all.

  Looking out of the window he saw the River Teign glinting among the trees.

  Aish Cottage stood small and whitewashed in the beeches above the Becca Brook. Up the hill was Beckaford Farm and a mile to the north lay the village of Manaton.

  The Shewtes drove away leaving him to unpack his gear and sort through the wildlife books he had bought in town. The spaniel romped on the lawn that needed cutting, birds sang and the beech leaves rustled in a low, watery way, like a stream flowing.

  OK, his father had said – go to England for five or six months. Get it out of your system. He was puzzled and Richard never tried to explain. Montana was just about the greatest place on earth, but Dartmoor was the dream. It was like a piece of music and he wanted to hear it through to the end. Then he could go home.

  Later he drank whisky and took his book out into the evening to catch the last of the sun. He wanted to sit in the long grass and read that passage from Anna Karenina where Levin mows the meadow with his peasants. The great literature went well with the sound of the trees and the solitude. Maybe he would put on the Berlioz seventy-eights, or maybe he would write a poem.

  The dog came up to him wagging her tail. And after dark he sat on the sofa listening to the Fantastique while moonlight slanted through the window. It made him think of Walden and Thoreau and Wordsworth’s poems of the imagination. Towards midnight he took the dog through the oaks to the river and walked its banks as far as Becky Falls.

  The night was calm and starry. He knew the stars well but they looked fine without the flak or the white slashes of tracer. Antares glowed softly in the south, and all the obscene human deaths could not cancel out its beauty.

  He sat on a boulder and the spaniel laid her chin in his lap. A cockchafer bumped against his forehead, once, twice, four times, and the water spilled white and loud over the rocks. Moonlight lay fragmented on the floor of the wood. Sitting there he thought about the things he had done. Being a survivor gave you an edge over your fellow creatures. His own company was enough. He didn’t want anymore bullshit or dirty jokes or empty laughter. He wished to hell he hadn’t promised to dine with the Shewtes the following night. Small talk was a kind of insult to the men who had never come back from the raids over Germany.

  When the shower woke him he was lying on the moss beneath a holly bush, and day had broken. The sky above Great Houndtor was pale blue blotched with big grey clouds. Raindrops rattled on the leaves and hit his face. It was cold. He pulled the collar of his old tweed jacket up to the lobes of his ears and the dog planted a splathering kiss on his nose.

  They went with the path up the side of the river. A blackbird alarmed and the shower petered out. Through the trees on his left he saw the house at the top of a sweep of lawn. The dog ran ahead of him and disappeared behind some boulders and gave tongue. Richard crouched to avoid the branches of the oak and saw the fox. The spaniel was barking furiously now and made token lunges at the trapped animal. Wulfgar faced her silently. He had encountered liver-and-white spaniels before. They were noisy but not too dangerous. The fox got to his feet and wondered how he was going to fight the wire and the dog.

  ‘Stay, Meg,’ Richard said.

  The spaniel clapped down, whimpered, and looked over her shoulder at the man. Richard slipped out of his jacket and when he held it in front of him like a matador’s cape, Wulfgar growled and fidgeted despite the wire. The fox leapt backwards in a contorted arc that fell apart in mid-air. He was choking to death. The noose had lacerated his throat. He beat at it with his paws, then the coat covered his head and the man was holding him tight between the knees, almost cracking his ribs. Fingers fumbled the wire and Wulfgar snapped and bit one of them clean through the nail.

  ‘Easy, fella,’ Richard grated.

  He tugged open the snare with both hands and Wulfgar wriggled free. The fox ran blindly until the coat jagged on a root and was ripped off his head. He shook himself, laid back his ears and climbed the slope of oaks and boulders. The spaniel sent a single, defiant bark floating after him.

  Using a rock, the American smashed the top of the stake and removed the wire.

  ‘Away with your nets and traps and snares and treacherous contrivances,’ he murmured.

  Pythagoras knew his stuff. Someone ought to write it on the sky in letters the size of the Empire State Building. But he was no longer angry when he picked up the dead fitch. He examined it from fangs to claws before stowing it in his coat pocket.

  Crouching at the pool he washed his damaged finger. Beneath the surface were pebbles of many colours – buzzard brown, rust, bronze, white, ochre. Close to the bank the shillets were half-hidden by drifts of grit. A little dark fish called a miller’s thumb shot away, and above the water the midges and caddis flies rose in tribal dance. The morning was made for living things.


  ‘I saw it but I don’t believe it,’ said Killconey.

  He had finished licking the wounds on Wulfgar’s body that the dark fox could not reach.

  ‘Of course he didn’t mean to free me,’ said Wulfgar.

  ‘Then it was an accident?’

  ‘What else? Maybe he wanted me alive.’

  Killconey shuddered. ‘That would be worse than a bad death.’

  ‘Stargrief says many animals are kept in captivity.’

  ‘But why? Do they eat us?’

  ‘I don’t know. Men aren’t like animals.’

  They had come onto Hamel Down and were lying in the sun above Grimspound.

  ‘I feel as if I’ve got a chicken bone stuck in my gullet,’ Wulfgar said. ‘Tod, it’s sore!’

  Killconey grinned.

  ‘Will you stay to see the lurcher die?’ asked Wulfgar.

  ‘No. I’m not of your clan. It’s your business.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Here and there.’

  ‘If you pass the ponds look out for me.’

  ‘Run with your head high, dark brother.’

  A TRUE ANIMAL

  Under Greator Rocks was a meadow that always escaped the mowing machine. It was very small, bounded on three sides by woodland and on the other by the Becca Brook. Wulfgar visited it often for the mice and conies. In the wind the grass became waves of silver light, hollowed here and there with shadows that quaked and rocked and tossed out handfuls of larks.

  On quiet days the rustlings betrayed mice and voles, birds, lizards and snakes. They threaded through the foxtail grass and meadow soft, making the field scabious and poppies shake. The scabious was a sturdy, lilac flower, a little lighter in colour than the meadow-crane’s bill. When the wind laid back the grass the sun caught the flowers and set the goat’s beard and buttercups glinting yellow. Sometimes the rustle among the packed stems was an adder swallowing a lark nestling.

  The American had learnt to keep still for long periods. He came to the woods and river without the spaniel and waited for things to happen. Once he saw Wulfgar on hindlegs in the meadow catching moths, and near the end of June he glimpsed the otters fishing the big pond. He did not come frequently because he was afraid of alarming the wild creatures. He had also rediscovered the North Moor and its stretches of true wilderness.