Lord Morgan's Cannon (14 page)

“But we’ve learned about the fort from Tony. He’s an animal. And we are animals. So animals can learn from one another.”

Doris chuckled, pleased at what she’d heard. She stomped upon the soil in pleasure, shaking a nest of baby pheasant hiding not six feet away. Bessie trilled, while Tony turned his nose back to the ground, heading on into the woods. Bear chewed his toothless gums, contemplating this new idea of his. It felt like something he should make an effort to remember.

Tony led them up and over the hill. It was covered in short grass. Doris lipped its unnatural cut. She tasted rotting eggs, recognising the saliva of another animal, a ruminant, and the fog of methane gas hanging low. It smelled like the fields of cows that the circus often pitched in. But Doris couldn’t understand why English cows might be out and about in a wood. She had only ever seen them behind gates and bound by wooden fences.

Then she saw them. Three large cows standing on the slope leading down off the hill, with dark auburn hair and clean horns. Tony walked between two of the cows, which Doris recognised as female by their empty hanging udders. They didn’t raise their heads, chewing contentedly on cud.

Unsure whether to fly past or over the cows’ ears, Bessie landed on the ground. Bear arrived and kept on walking. He’d grown up with cattle losing themselves in the pampas. He knew they were docile and didn’t like to talk.

But Doris noticed the third red animal and the ring in its nose. She sized it against herself, realising it stood almost as tall as her shoulder. She spied the thick muscles in its neck and chest and its musty smell. The bull caught Doris’s scent and raised its head. It stared at her, pushing warm steam from its black nostrils.

The bull eyed Bear and turned to face the animals. He ignored the terrier and dancing budgie. He focused on the giant anteater and elephant. Confused, he couldn’t tell what was approaching. The bull could smell Doris was female, but she looked to him like an outsized cattle breed, one of those the humans would take to the ring and stick rosettes upon. And he wasn’t sure if he wanted another large bovine passing through his patch of grass.

Yet the anteater bothered him more. Bear’s long black and white hair reminded the bull of the old English sheepdogs that had herded him in his younger days, when he was raised at his mother’s hip upon a Devon farm. He didn’t like old English sheepdogs. They were too stubborn to get out from under his feet. They liked to nip and bite his ankles rather than encourage him on. This dog appeared taller than any he’d ever met. If it bit like the others, he’d have to teach it a lesson, the bull thought, whether it stood three feet tall or not.

The bull scraped a hoof into the dirt. It threw back its head. Doris had seen this behaviour before, among water buffalo. Even elephants respected the water buffalo. She immediately flared her ears and raised her trunk. She emitted the deepest, longest rumble she could. The sound was so low in frequency that Bessie and Tony couldn’t detect it, and if any human was capable of hearing infrasound, every resident of the city of Bristol would have lifted their heads and wondered what monster in the woods they had angered. The budgie and terrier felt the air move but only the larger mammals heard the unmistakable threat of an elephant speaking its mind. With a single epic sound, Doris had established a hierarchy among all the animals in the woods, placing her at the top.

The bull scraped the ground some more, for show. He snorted and bucked to the side, cantering a few steps behind one of the cows. He started to graze upon the grass, feigning nonchalance.

Bessie chirped up. She’d often talked to the cows that showed an interest in Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top, though they were always black and white, or brown. These were the first red cows she had seen.

“Hello,” she said happily. “Do you live here, do you live in these woods?”

The two cows ignored Bessie. They’d heard her but were more used to birds chattering in the trees or upon their backs as they picked off the ticks and horseflies. The bull raised his head.

“Yes,” was all he said.

“Is it a nice place?” asked Bessie. “Is it a nice place to live?”

“Yes,” said the bull again. “Why?”

Bessie hadn’t the presence of mind to know why she was asking. But she quite liked these woods, which contained a greater variety of trees than she had seen before. They felt quiet and peaceful. She thought of herself living here, forgetting how much she’d enjoyed the theatre of the circus, entertaining a paying public.

“Will you let us pass?” Doris asked the bull sternly.

“I suppose so,” said the bull.

He carried on eating. Bear looked back at Doris. She moved forward, straddling the anteater and terrier, reinforcing her stature. She flapped her ears and twirled her trunk around her left tush. She stuck out her chest, displaying the cuts opened by the barbed wire hidden in the hawthorn hedge of Lord Morgan’s garden, the congealed blood having run a little in the earlier rain. She ambled past the bull, flicking a stick up at his bottom, forcing him to trot on another few steps.

As the animals walked off the hill, away from the fort, Bear turned to the cows.

“Is this the way to the college?” he asked.

The bull lifted his head and was surprised at what he saw. For the first time he noticed that Bear had no teeth inside his mouth. He also noticed the spectacles wrapped around Bear’s head. Both struck the bull as imperfections for an old English sheepdog. He started to relax.

“I don’t know,” he said. “All I can tell you is you’re heading down to the gorge.”

Tony the terrier barked.

“Yes, this way to the gorge,” he said. “I do know where I’m going. Keep following me.”

With that Tony stepped up the pace, letting the slope carry him back into a thicket of trees that fell away downhill. He started to run right then left, to stop himself tumbling forward. Doris reached the edge of the incline. She could hear the sound of water running against rocks. Thirsty, she went over the edge and picked her way after the dog. She searched for the slabs of stone that started to appear on the forest floor, the granite providing a surer grip. Splaying her large grey toes, she spread her weight as she stepped from stone to stone, trying to avoid the leaf litter than might give way beneath. Behind her, Bear avoided the stone slabs. They scraped against his talons. He preferred to plant his feet upon the sticks and into the clumps of nettles that became more common the further down they ventured.

The wood became darker and more damp. Tony ran his paws into puddles of dirty water. The slope down the gorge was returning the morning’s rain to a large river flowing beneath. The dog reached its banks first, emerging from the trees out on to a beach of mud covered in wispy strands of dying grass.

Bessie emerged next, her vision filled by a kingfisher flashing along the river, curving its flight down until its stout body almost clipped the water’s surface, before climbing and alighting on a bare branch. Behind the kingfisher, which ruffled a chest of blue feathers more brilliant than even Bessie’s, smoke rose from the factories and shipyards lining the docks of the city.

Bear tumbled out of the trees, struggling to control his limbs as he hit the flats. Then came Doris, who immediately sank fifteen inches into the mud, squealing as she squelched.

“It’s up there,” said Tony proudly. “The college is up there.”

Bessie’s little heart soared. She loved hearing about places up and above and she was excited to be so close to their destination. Tony too was pleased to have led the others so close. However, Bear quickly saw the problem. The river was running high, bubbling just below the top of the banks. A strong current was flowing. He could see the eddies at the edge of the river, twirling around trapped fallen branches. Any leaves being carried upon the water were heading in the wrong direction, away from the city, rounding a bend in the river. And as he watched the leaves dipping underwater, re-emerging a few yards downstream, he saw the sides of the gorge. The animals were facing a sheer wall of grey rock, run smooth by the wind and rain. It stood one hundred feet high, far taller than the Big Top. Meeting a blue sky, it plunged at an almost vertical angle down the bank opposite. To get to where Tony was pointing with his button nose, the animals would have to swim like alligators across a high river and climb the opposing cliff like mountain goats.

“How will you get across?” Bessie asked the others. “How will you cross the river?”

“It’s been years since I last swam,” said Doris. “But I’m sure I can still do it,” she announced.

Bear too hadn’t entered such a body of water since his arrival in England. He didn’t know what was below the murky surface, whether bull sharks swam this far inshore in this part of the world. Or if the water was cold. He preferred being immersed in warm not cold water.

“We walk across,” said Tony. “It’s easy.”

Neither Doris or Bessie had ever seen an animal walk on water. Bear said he had, a small basilisk lizard that had once been frightened on to a pond by a circling hawk. But the lizard had special powers, said Bear. And even it could only run on water for a few strides before it disappeared beneath.

“No it’s easy,” Tony repeated. “We walk across. I do it a few times a week.”

“Look at me,” implored Doris. “I’ve learned a few tricks from the Ring Master, but there is no way I can walk on water. I’ll swim and use my trunk as a snorkel,” she said. “You can all ride on my back if you wish.”

“I’m not getting on your back,” said Tony. “And I don’t like swimming. I’m scared of the water,” he said.

It all became too much for Bessie.

“I don’t understand. We have to get to the college. We have to save Edward. We have to find the cannon. And then we have to save the circus,” she shouted, catching the attentions of a mute sawn and her cygnets silently drifting by on the current.

The mute swam opened her orange beak and hissed at Bessie, thinking her a young exotic magpie. Frustrated, Tony barked at the swan, which spread its wings, coiled its neck and hissed again.

“I’m taking you to the college,” he said, through gritted teeth as he growled at the swan. “And we are walking there.”

Bear suddenly realised that Tony was trying to indicate how. But being a terrier rather than a pointer dog, he wasn’t good at it. Bear followed the line of Tony’s short neck, realising he was trying to point into the air. Bear stretched his own towards the sky. High above their heads he saw a huge iron bridge spanning the gorge. It rested upon two brick towers set into the cliffs on either side of the river. The bridge looked new and shiny, its black girders shimmering as they formed a gentle arc. Even from far below, he could see two horses trotting on to the far side, their silhouettes passing through those of the girders, their hooves echoing as they left the road and struck the bridge’s wooden boards.

“We can walk across,” Bear said, in wonder at the first iron bridge he had ever seen.

“The bridge leads from the woods to the college,” said Tony.

Doris embraced the mud. She plodded into it, shooing away the swan and drank from the river. She sucked up ten buckets of water and poured them over her back, her first wash since the circus rehearsal ruined by the old leopard. She caught the dog in her downpour, soaking his patchwork coat. As Tony shook his body, the ripples cascading down from his head to his tail, Doris asked him a question.

“If that links the woods to the college, and we have to walk over it, what are we doing down here by the river? Do we have to climb all the way back up there?” she said.

She sucked up another trunkful of water. She held it in, waiting for Tony to answer.

“Yes I suppose so,” said Tony.

Doris blew the muddy water all over the terrier, who looked at her with sad, confused eyes as little waterfalls cascaded down his eyelashes and the hairs of his beard.

It took until nightfall for the animals to climb back up the hill. With the trees for cover, Bessie flew on ahead, reporting back, helping Tony navigate his way to the edge of the woods that joined the road that led to the bridge. Doris had been grateful for her drink and bath, washing the mud and blood off her chest. But now she had become hot with the climb, allowing her ears to fall out and forward, airing her body as a large full moon appeared in the sky, casting the trees, road and bridge in a blue light. Bessie had alighted upon her back and tucked her head into her wing, catching half a sleep while the anteater and dog discussed what to do next.

Bear had an idea.

“The humans know you,” he told Tony.

“They know you too,” replied the terrier. “They come to see you in the circus.”

For a moment, Bear felt pleased by Tony’s words.

“But they don’t get excited when they see you,” Bear said.

“My master does,” said Tony, unsure now of the anteater. “What are you saying? That they don’t like me? I thought we were friends?”

“We are friends,” said Bear. “It’s good when animals stick together. But I don’t mean that the humans don’t like you. What I mean is that, if you were to walk over the bridge, and any of the humans saw you, they wouldn’t think much of it. You run around here all the time.”

“This is where I belong,” said Tony.

“Then you can go ahead and see if it’s safe for the rest of us to cross,” said Bear.

Tony liked this proposal. He jumped out on to a road made of stone and dirt, lit by a dozen gas lamps hanging from black posts. He walked down the road, as if out on a daytime stroll, passing from one golden pool to another. He appeared larger as he passed under each lamp, his shadow cast in four directions, before he shrank again, consumed by the blue haze cast by the moon.

As Tony neared the tower guarding the entrance to the bridge, the hairs on his back stood up, forming a fluffy ridge of black and white. He felt a cold breeze coming down the gorge. He walked past a station in the tower, with a light on. But from the road, he couldn’t see in.

Tony walked out on to the bridge. Something spooked him so he began to run, until he reached half way across. He looked back to see the anteater and elephant standing under the farthest lamp, watching his progress. He felt something move, perhaps the ground beneath his feet. He felt a little sick. Then he jumped, so startled was he by Bessie landing on his back. The little budgerigar had found it within herself to fly the length of the road to join the dog, scouting for humans all the way. The bridge was empty, quiet. The dog and bird conferred and then Tony barked, a single high pitch yelp. The sound carried down the river, bouncing off the walls of the gorge.

Bear and Doris set off down the road. She eclipsed each gas lamp and compressed the stones into the road. They reached the station, Bear passing just under the sill of a window. Doris walked right alongside it, tossing her head and ears in the wind. She failed to notice the old grey-haired guard sleeping on his chair, feet on his desk, hat down ever his eyes. As they set their feet upon the wooden boards of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s structural masterpiece, they became the first animals of their kind to ever cross into the city centre of Bristol.

Reaching Tony and Bessie at the halfway point, they couldn’t help but pause to look over the edge. Bear went to the side and stood on his hind legs. He put his huge talons against the iron railing and peered down the gorge, the smooth rock and water glistening beneath. Tony pleaded with Bear to share what he saw. Though he crossed this bridge almost every day with Lord Morgan, he’d never been shown the view. Suddenly Doris scooped the terrier up in her trunk and lifted his body over the side. He whined and yelped with fear and excitement as she held him a hundred feet above the river. All the animals laughed at the silliness of it, as Bessie flew about their heads, the stars appearing behind her blue and white feathers, peeking through a blackening sky. For a moment, they forgot they were entering a land forged by humans.