A Black Fox Running Read online

  Melissa Harrison, 2018

  Part One

  ‘Nature teaches beasts to know their friends’

  Coriolanus

  WULFGAR

  ‘Yes, I can smell him,’ said Stargrief. The old dog fox raised his muzzle.

  ‘And the lurcher,’ Wulfgar said.

  They came out of the trees to drink at Lansworthy Brook. Wulfgar led the way, stepping gingerly through the reeds. His paws crunched into frail ice where it silvered the hoofprints of cattle. He was a large, dark fox with a brush almost as black as the peaty Dartmoor soil, and even his underfur and lower limbs were black. The wind and rain of three summers had lent his coat a pale sheen and the tip of his brush was whiter than wild parsley. His eyes gleamed against the grey December afternoon and pointed ears deciphered the faintest sounds which the wind could not mask.

  ‘They were here last night,’ said Stargrief. Two inches of tongue moistened his nose and he read the air long and carefully. His head moved a little from side to side and he seemed to lean on the wind, each quiver of his nostrils bringing him a detailed account of what lay in the field and far beyond. Presiding over everything was the smell of gin-metal spiced with the scent of passing birds. The earth smelt of ice and moss and nibbled grass, cattle, men and dogs, then the rank odour of the trapper alerted all his senses.

  Stargrief was slight and inconspicuous. His coat was the colour of winter woodland. He placed his paws carefully in Wulfgar’s tracks, for gin traps had been tilled amongst the reeds to catch wild duck.

  ‘That mad dog isn’t far off,’ Wulfgar said. The smell of fieldmice lofted in a white plume as he yawned.

  ‘This is a bad place in broad daylight,’ said Stargrief. ‘There’s a disused sett in the wood up ahead. I don’t know about you but I’m on my last legs. I could really do with a sleep.’

  Running beside the stream they came to the ford. Stargrief’s heart no longer raced but he found it difficult to match his young friend’s speed through the wooded valley of the River Sig.

  The sett was warm and dry. The badger boar and sow had been dug out and clubbed to death by the man who owned the lurcher. Wulfgar licked a paw and rubbed it over his face.

  ‘The bottoms of my pads are freezing,’ said Stargrief. ‘Winter seems to last for ever. What a penance age can be!’

  He groaned and laid his tail across his nose.

  ‘Maybe the lurcher could do you a favour,’ Wulfgar said cheerfully.

  ‘I won’t make it easy for him,’ said the old dog fox. His thin angular body was shaking.

  ‘Winter has sharp teeth,’ Wulfgar said. ‘Curl up against me, old mouse. There’s more flesh on a seagull. After all these seasons are you afraid of death?’

  ‘No. Dying doesn’t trouble me — but you’re so damned stiff the next day.’

  Wulfgar chuckled in the darkness.

  Now hunger eclipsed everything.

  The path was less than a foot wide, and where it mounted the hedge of blackthorn, hazel and bramble behind Bagtor Cottages, the grassy surface was trampled but not worn away. Here and there were crumbs of snow.

  Delicately Wulfgar flattened out over the top of the hedge and the wind passed, leaving a sudden hush. He squinted up the valley. Thrushes flashed among the leafless trees. The Sig glittered through distances speckled with white smudges that moved and bleated. Wulfgar narrowed his eyes. Above the blur of Saddle Tor clouds left little room in the sky for the sun of the winter solstice. His paws scuffed the crisp bramble leaves and he heard the shrew scream. It was not a scream of fear, for the shrew was even hungrier than the fox. Standing on tiny hind feet it menaced the fieldmouse amongst the stems of bramble and hemlock, then it was on the mouse’s back and the struggle was over before the wind returned.

  The hunting foxes trotted up the coomb of half-frozen sphagnum moss and lichen to the birth place of the River Sig. The world was bounded by the slow heave of horizons ending always in cloud. Powder snow lifted and smoked on the easterly wind, hissing through grass and furze to drift against drystone walls and clumps of heather.

  Wulfgar stalked mallard and snipe but caught nothing. Soon it became necessary to cross the Widecombe Road under the scrutiny of Swart the crow and his mate Sheol who were scavenging among a flock of Scottish Blackface sheep.

  The wind brooded on its melody. Despite the ache in the air the sheep gave off a warm, damp smell. Back from the road the heather grew thick and deep, and Galloway cattle stood in it up to their hocks. The foxes passed among them and found the sheep path. Presently the heather gave way to turf and they came upon some cowpats. Flicking them over one by one with their paws they greedied on the beetles lodged in the soft under-sides.

  ‘Must the soul tread the same stony track as the body,’ Stargrief said wearily.

  ‘Is that a question?’ asked Wulfgar.

  ‘If it is, who can answer it? I was only making noises – like a sick cub.’

  Wulfgar licked the old fox’s muzzle.

  ‘I wish I was the first fox standing in the brand new world,’ Stargrief went on.

  ‘You’d get your coney then.’

  ‘I wouldn’t need conies.’

  ‘Even Holy Tod visited the rabbit runs.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I’ve lived on dreams for too long.’

  ‘Didn’t the beetles help?’

  ‘Of course, of course! But I see a fox lying dead on the cold hillside and it makes me sad.’

  ‘Perhaps it is yourself you see.’

  ‘Perhaps. Winter is like a long illness.’

  ‘Don’t forget you have been sick,’ Wulfgar said briskly.

  ‘You were out of your mind for two sunsets. We all thought you were going to die. You should have died.’

  ‘Better dead than ga-ga,’ Stargrief smiled.

  ‘Life would be easier if you’d stop thinking about yourself.’

  He was tired of company and Stargrief could see it in his eyes.

  North-east of where they stood Hay Tor was bursting out of cloud. Dartmoor was the colour of a hen kestrel. Beside water the grass was green and stiff, and the wind keening through the heather sounded like the stricken shrew. Scent lay breast high. Wulfgar jerked up his head and sniffed the invisible contours of what lay before them. Instantly he was aware of fox.

  ‘How did the hunting go, Ashmere?’ he said.

  The sheep path, which was one of the main highways for most moorland creatures, brought them to the scenting post. At first they failed to see the young dog fox Ashmere, who was crouching low and facing them with ears pricked. Then the twitching of his brush caught Wulfgar’s eye.

  ‘Have the crows got your tongue?’

  Ashmere rolled onto his back and presented his throat to the dark fox. The gesture was not wasted.

  ‘Come on,’ Wulfgar said. ‘Get up and go about your business. You’re not a cub any more.’

  ‘And you must learn to live with your greatness,’ said Stargrief.

  Wulfgar strutted around the grey tooth of granite where three paths met before cocking his leg and depositing his own strong smell. The odour of the post contained much gossip, telling him not only how many foxes had visited it but also their names and condition.

  After luxuriating in the ritual he sat on his haunches and thrust a stiff hindleg into the air and cleaned his belly.

  ‘The hunting wasn’t so good,’ said Ashmere. ‘In fact it was terrible. This morning the hounds came to the Great Down and ran me close to death. They killed a vixen.’

  ‘What was her name?’ asked Stargrief.

  ‘Fernsmoke.’

  ‘I knew her,’ said Stargrief. ‘She was very young,’

  Nothing lives long, he thought, only the valleys and tors.

  This morning she saw the sunrise and was part of it.

  Brambles were knotting his guts but his eyes remained blank.

  ‘They broke her up under the beeches,’ said Ashmere.

  ‘It was a clean death,’ said Wulfgar.
<
br />   His companions nodded.

  ‘The Good Death,’ said Stargrief. ‘And what about you, Ashmere?’

  ‘I’m still a bit stiff and tired. I’ll probably kennel in the woods below.’

  ‘Watch your step,’ said Wulfgar. ‘The trapper was down by the mill yesterday. His dog’s on the loose again.’

  ‘I’d rather have the hounds breathing on my arse than that creature trailing me,’ Ashmere said. ‘The lurcher never gives up. Never.’

  Wulfgar and Stargrief went down the path keeping their heads high to avoid the spikes of gorse. The wind sang in their chest fur. Beneath Saddle Tor were four small frozen ponds. A heron paced the margins, but despite his slowness he flapped into the sky before the foxes could strike. The bird was called Scrag. Behind the ice he had seen tangles of grass lying motionless in the water gloom like sleeping eels.

  ‘Herons aren’t good eating, anyway,’ Stargrief said.

  Wulfgar nuzzled the texture of the day, sifting rabbit smell from the scores of other scents which showered his knowing.

  ‘Maybe we’ll find a coney old enough for you to catch,’ he said.

  ‘If he’s that old he won’t be worth catching,’ said Stargrief.

  ‘Would you like me to stun an earthworm for you?’

  ‘Eat your grandmother’s scats!’ Stargrief growled. ‘I may be groggy but I’m not stupid. When I’m really fit I’ll grab conies by the warrenful.’

  Brightness flooded the sky around Holwell Tor and further on Greator Rocks and Hound Tor were shadows in shifting haze. Beyond Wulfgar’s vision Stormbully the buzzard sailed across the Leighon Ponds to take up his station above the slopes.

  The foxes trotted past the hawthorn where Swart lived. Three shrivelled red berries had eluded the songbirds and woodpigeons and they guided the eye to the crow’s nest less than twelve feet from the ground. Swart and Sheol had raised many youngsters here, for the tree was old but sound. Ponies and cattle had rubbed the bark off the middle of the trunk with their flanks, leaving wisps of black hair clinging to the wood. Stargrief snapped at these as he eased his scat onto the roots, sniffed at it and loped away.

  ‘What do the stars say about the coney hunting?’ Wulfgar asked.

  ‘They say Wulfgar comes to the runs with all the speed and guile of a legless pig.’

  Wulfgar smiled the lazy smile of an animal who was completely aware of his strength and power, and Stargrief basked in his good humour. No other fox of the Hay Tor Clan was permitted to take such liberties.

  They skirted the bog above the glint of running water. The murmur of jackdaws’ wings overtook them and crept back into the hush. Here and there the track was flooded and they trotted alongside it. The smell of rabbit was strong now and they clapped down in the heather and Wulfgar began to stalk.

  Near the ruins of the quarryman’s cottage was a hawthorn tree and a lawn of turf. Under the tree sat a rabbit. Although he was a first season buck he had learnt the lessons of his kind. There were movements in the heather which had nothing to do with the wind. Upright on his haunches he watched the dog fox rippling towards him, eyes flashing green and bright, mouth smiling. Instinct urged him to bolt but curiosity rooted him to the spot.

  The fox advanced slowly and smoothly. He flowed out of the heather and turned three somersaults on the lawn, then he stood on his hindlegs and twirled and swayed until the rabbit lost his fear. Two more somersaults brought Wulfgar almost within striking distance. He rolled over and bit at the tag of his brush. The rabbit smell pulsed in the pit of his stomach and he held the buck with his slumberous eyes, gathering himself to pounce. But even as his muscles hardened, the blackbird slammed into the hawthorn and let loose its scolding chatter. At once the rabbit was up and gone, his flight leaving Wulfgar scrabbling among the fallen stones of the cottage where there were many burrows. One bolt-hole was large enough for him to crawl into but the passage soon narrowed and he retreated backwards feeling angry and foolish.

  Stargrief did not laugh.

  Other foxes came to mind as they walked up the slope of dead bracken to Holwell Tor. Light was ebbing from the sky and the wind had dropped to a gentle breeze.

  ‘How has Wendel survived for two whole winters?’ Wulfgar said. ‘He’s such a bloody idiot.’

  ‘Thorngeld says he’s taken fowls from the trapper’s coops.’

  ‘He’ll end up on a wire. Pity the hounds didn’t get him instead of Fernsmoke.’

  And instantly he regretted his peevishness. In the beauty of day’s end he felt close to Tod, for life was sweet. Season lapped over season, animals died, others came into the world. The stream never stopped flowing.

  ‘I’ll come as far as the tor with you,’ said Stargrief.

  Near the hilltop a herd of Dartmoor ponies grazed, their coats thick and shaggy, their manes long. They tugged at the grass and ignored the foxes. Wulfgar paused to sniff the trunk of a rowan tree. Rabbits had been gnawing the bark and Ashmere had left his scat on one of the roots. He had also eaten dung beetles and his scat had a bluish tinge. Wulfgar ran his nose over it and continued up the sheep path to the brow of the tor.

  From the highest granite outcrop he looked up at Black Hill. In the coomb at his feet was the old granite tramway that long ago had carried wagons loaded with granite blocks from the rock face to the road and thence to waiting ships at Teignmouth. Stone from Haytor Quarries had been used to rebuild London Bridge in the reign of Queen Victoria, but the business had failed and the moors had crept back to hide most of the scars.

  ‘Where will you lie tonight, old friend?’ said Wulfgar.

  ‘On that hill – close to the stars, close to Tod.’

  ‘Put in a good word for me.’

  ‘I always do.’

  ‘Then I’ll leave a rabbit by Crow Thorn.’

  ‘And you will run with Tod in the golden fields.’

  ‘Like a legless pig?’ Wulfgar smiled.

  ‘As Wulfgar of the High Tors – proudly. And they will tell your saga in the Star Place.’

  ‘What if I leave two rabbits at the tree?’

  Stargrief laughed and trotted down through the bracken to the tramway.

  After he had satisfied himself that the air was free of the taint of man, Wulfgar went to his kennel on the west-facing side of the hill, under the tor. It was a sheltered spot in the heather and furze above a great clitter where he often sat and swam on the tide of his thoughts into drowsiness.

  For the fox, evening was a time of mystery. Wulfgar settled down and laid his chin on outstretched forepaws. The Becca Brook rushed through the dusk to shining ponds that mirrored the sky. Greator Rocks and Hound Tor sailed out of cloud but the head of the Leighon Valley was lost in mist. Daws jangled into the beeches of Holwell as lights were coming on in the old house. The sky on the horizon where Blackslade Down nudged the West was grey and gold.

  The pupils of Wulfgar’s eyes narrowed to vertical slits and he gazed at the sun until clouds hid it and filled the valley with darkness. A hundred thousand years before his birth another fox had lain under Holwell Tor watching the same sun go down. Stargrief had spoken of such a past as if the blurring of countless seasons was of no more significance than the fall of hawthorn blossom.

  Wulfgar winkled balls of ice and snow from between his toes. The sky was deepening grey, then darkness swelled and the night became a vast map of scents. The daws no longer made a din in the beech trees but the crisp air amplified the sound of the river.

  MOONLIGHT AND FOG

  In the stealth of a frosty night the barn owls quartered vole runs close to Jay’s Grave, white of moonlight on white wings, the glaring moors racing to the sky. Kitty Jay had hanged herself in some forgotten winter of man’s history. Her grave was a simple mound of grass and stones with a jam jar of flowers at the head. It lay at the crossroads and was visited by tourists.

  The owls knew nothing of suicide or wrong of any sort, for their purity was of the moonlight through which they sailed. Every so often they scr
eeched at each other as though the silence were too much to endure, but the voles died noiselessly in the grip of talons that squeezed the breath out of them. Each pellet on the barn floor at Hedge Barton contained the bones and fur of six or seven of these tiny animals.

  Wulfgar heard the owl cries and checked for a moment in the grass at the foot of Hound Tor. He stood and assayed the distances with ears and nostrils, then he sniffed at a dead whortleberry leaf, brushing the twig with the tip of his nose so gently he failed to disturb the frost. It was nearly dawn and he had yet to make a good kill. Back in Leighon Woods the bank voles had proved hard to catch, and the owls had not helped. Trotting down the slope to Swallerton Gate he saw the halo round the moon above Hameldown Beacon. A vixen barked in the copse near Beckaford and he answered without urgency.

  Two nights later Wulfgar came to the stand of beech trees at Holwell called the Rookery. The weather had changed. A mild west wind washed away the frost and the sky vanished. There was before him a shifting greyness like his own breath, the moisture beading his whiskers and fur. He walked along the path of beech leaves with the exaggerated delicacy of a cat. Among the trees on the ground above him Thorgil the badger was rooting for grubs. The great, one-eyed boar grunted as he dug and scratched. His sett in Leighon Woods had been occupied by badgers long before the Norman conquest, and in one direction the galleries and tunnels ran for a hundred yards.

  Another creature had heard the badger and was fleeing down the slope as fast as his short legs would carry him. He was a hedgehog named Earthborn, who during the cold spell had dozed in a pile of dry leaves against a field wall. Now he scuttled across the woodland path and almost collided with Wulfgar. Immediately the muscles along his sides and back contracted and he curled into a ball. Wulfgar strode around him stiff-legged, brush twitching, and gingerly touched the spines with the pad of a forefoot. The ball of prickles tightened and the fox cocked his leg and doused the hedgehog. Snuffling and sneezing Earthborn uncurled and the life was crunched out of him.