The Hounds of the Morrigan (39 page)

He jumped down from the wall and they went in. Brigit, who was going mad for the poppies, hopped in first.

It was like being in a golden jungle. The gentlest breeze hushed the radiant sea of wheat, that seemed to give out a brightness that coloured the air above it, and was reflected on the children’s faces. Now and again there was a startled scuttle as they surprised a rabbit or a fieldmouse that happened to be too close to the edge of the path. Mild crowds of butterflies of all colours and sizes, twitched and hesitated about the ripe ears of wheat, and throughout the field millions of insects created a vast drone of life. High above, hundreds of skylarks sang through the stillness of the day. One after another they dropped like stones and, still singing, they hung only bare inches above the wheat. Then they went up again to do it all once more, just for the thrill of it, one would think.

Apart from the birdsong and the soft sounds the wheat made, and the occasional Sittings of nervous small animals, there was the creaking of a host of grasshoppers all playing the same tune but on differing notes. The ones nearest were the loudest but the far-away ones could be heard in company with them; and they were all like a great festival of massed soloists, each insisting on competing at once, with everybody obstinately refusing to listen to anybody else at all.

Over all of this, there was a huge langorous stillness that made Pidge go drowsy and dreamy with pleasure. A lovely peace came into him and despite the goldenness of the wheat, he felt relaxed and safe and he knew that it was all natural and real.

Brigit was picking poppies as she went along ahead. They all soon fell to rags but she couldn’t resist the colour. She was thinking that they were lovely except for the smell they left on her fingers.

‘Wouldn’t it be nice for these poppies if they smelled like cowslips or roses? Wouldn’t they like to? I wish I was a flower with my own perfume and everything, and I’d never have to get washed with soap,’ she said.

‘You wouldn’t like to be a flower and have no legs, to be stuck in the ground and not able to move—and a slug coming along to take a bite out of you,’ someone answered from somewhere amid the wheatstalks.

‘No, I wouldn’t like that,’ she agreed, thinking that it was Pidge who had spoken.

‘If flowers had legs, you wouldn’t like to be a slow little slug, because everytime it saw you coming, your dinner would run away and you’d always be hungry.’

Brigit sighed heavily.

‘I wish slugs didn’t eat flowers,’ she said wistfully.

‘We all have to eat something and that’s a rule of life.’

‘Yes. But I wish that slugs didn’t eat flowers all the same.’

‘Who are you talking to, Brigit?’ Pidge asked, coming out of his trance.

She looked back at him in surprise.

‘You, of course,’ she said, very puzzled that he should ask.

‘No. You were talking to
me
and a nice interesting conversation it was too.’

And suddenly, and without causing the slightest disturbance to the wheat, a magnificent dog-fox was standing in between them on the path.

‘I hope you are fond of foxes?’ he said with an unmistakable wink. His face seemed to hold aspects of intelligence and humour.

‘Oh, very fond of foxes!’ cried Brigit with delight. ‘That’s because I’m not a chicken.’

The fox coughed delicately and was, to all appearances—instantly very deeply absorbed in studying a splendid green beetle with polished wing-cases and quite remarkable antennae, who was taking a casual ramble up a wheat stalk.

Pidge frowned, thinking of Auntie Bina’s beloved poultry, and said:

‘Who are you?’

‘I am a friend and I’ll come with you for company’s sake if you’ll let me. My name is Cú Rua, but my good friends just call me Cooroo.’

‘You’ll be followed by hounds if you come with us,’ Pidge warned.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Cooroo answered, sighing. ‘They’re what they call foxhounds, I suppose?’

‘No. I don’t think so; they’re a different kind. Much thinner and all brown coloured.’

‘Oh do come!’ Brigit pleaded, putting an arm around his neck.

Cooroo laid his muzzle against her arm in a gentle kind of way and said:

‘What does Pidge say?’

‘Who told you my name?’ Pidge asked, interested to know, but hardly surprised.

‘Was it the winds?’ Brigit asked.

‘You told the bees your troubles and they told others until it came to me,’ Cooroo replied, as though surprised that they didn’t know.

‘I never told the bees anything, did I, Brigit?’

‘Not a word.’

‘Well, they heard at any rate. It seems that they were working the clover near a hill that was ploughed; and the story is—that you had lost some valuable thing—something that was helpful—and you cried out about it because you were very upset.’

‘Oh, the scrying-glass—that’s true,’ Pidge agreed, as he remembered that he had half-noticed the bees.

‘Could we be moving on?’ Cooroo suggested. ‘I never like to stay in the one place too long. I don’t even like to be out in the daytime; but if I have to be out, this isn’t a bad day for it.’

‘Will you let me stroke you sometimes?’ Brigit coaxed.

‘I’d be pleased,’ the fox said, and suddenly he looked shy.

Pidge smiled at him.

‘We’ll go on,’ he said.

‘W
HAT
kind of a day is a bad day?’ Brigit inquired as they sauntered on along the path.

‘A heavy day, with the sky overcast, when the scent sticks to everything. It’s better to stay in a hole freezing and starving on days like that.’

‘Why?’

‘Why is what
I’d
like to know,’ Cooroo said bitterly. ‘All I do know is—if I’m out on such a day, it’s: “Bloody end to you, my fine thief!” and: “View Halloo!’ and other strange cries. And horses and hounds and a long run until my heart feels as if it would burst through my ribs. It’s my belief that they are all stone mad. And sometimes, there’s death in it, on such a day.’

‘If you didn’t take chickens, they wouldn’t hunt you,’ Pidge ventured.

Cooroo turned and looked steadily into his eyes for a long moment.

‘Oh, but they would. You know it and I know it,’ he whispered sadly, and then he moved on.

For a while there was silence, broken in the end by Brigit who had been thinking her own thoughts.

‘I like chickens because they’re mostly daft, they make me laugh; and I like ducks because they always seem to be smiling,’ she said.

‘I like ducks too, they taste very well,’ was Cooroo’s opinion.

‘So they do,’ she agreed.

‘I like to eat as I’m under the impression that it’s good for my health,’ Cooroo remarked, looking innocently skywards. ‘Of course if I were a dog, I could sit up and beg; but as I’m a fox, well sometimes I steal. Now, would I rather be a beggar or a thief, or what is there to choose between the two? What do you think, Pidge?’

Here he gave Pidge a sideways look and Pidge was almost sure that the fox was laughing at him. With Brigit agreeing with all that Cooroo was saying, he thought that he had better put a word in on Auntie Bina’s side.

‘About the chickens … ,’ he began.

‘Oh yes?’ interrupted Cooroo. ‘Why don’t we talk about rats?’

‘Rats?’

‘You know the damage
they
do. And supposing I take the odd chicken or two—what’s that to the number of rats and rabbits I eat?’

‘I’d eat a rabbit but I’d never eat a rat, yerk!’ Brigit said, making a face.

‘But the cost!’ Pidge persisted.

‘Cost? What do you mean?’

‘The cost of the chickens and what it takes to feed them.’

‘Oh, the Cooroo said in a sarcastic kind of enlightened way. ‘Horses grow on trees for the picking, do they? And oats fall from the sky in showers! Hounds can be gathered free like mushrooms on a September morning, can they; and they relish famine and live on moonlight strained through silk washed down with tap-water? And I suppose you’ve seen cocks of hay floating in on the spring tide to be forked up like seaweed?’
cost
!’

‘I never have,’ Brigit said emphatically.

‘Add it all up and what have we?’ Cooroo asked.

‘What?’ Pidge said warily, feeling that he was losing.

‘Saying it plainly, we have the price of the horses, their stabling, feed and tack. We have what is paid for their shoeing at the blacksmith’s—am I right?’

‘You are,’ said Brigit, nodding vigorously.

‘Then we have the price of the hounds and the food
they
eat; we have the wastefulness of the rabbits and the gobbling and spoiling done by rats. It all adds up to a big bag of money and it’s all to save the price of a few chickens by killing me. What a lot they spend to save a little money!’

‘You forgot to say about vet’s fees,’ Brigit said. ‘We know all about these things because we keep horses at home, don’t we, Pidge?’

‘But—’ Pidge tried to say something, but Cooroo cut in again.

‘They should be
paying
me for all the good work I do. Why—they wouldn’t even have to muck out after me, or pamper me with bed and board. It would be more fitting if they would think of what I do to the rats and not what I do to a few hens—if they can think.’

‘What I was going to—’ Pidge began again, but Cooroo broke in as before.

‘They begrudge me my own life—they want my death and they seem to get pleasure out of it and that’s a fact.’

‘Why do you take chickens at all?’ Pidge managed to ask.

‘I like the taste.’

‘So do I,’ Brigit said, defending him, adding reprovingly: ‘And so do you, Pidge.’

‘Once in a while there’s carelessness with door fastenings, and a lucky way left open that’s too great a temptation for me, a thief. But there are times when it’s hunger-forced work, and if I don’t find something to feed the hunger, the hunger will feed on me—and that’s another way to die that I’m not fond of.’

Pidge considered in his mind the things that the fox had just said. Hunger-forced work sounds really awful, he reflected in the end, and said nothing.

‘In bad times,’ Cooroo continued, ‘I could believe that all I am is hunger with a nose; but that’s only when I’m starving.’

‘What do you think other times?’ Brigit asked.

‘After I’ve eaten I feel like a cub,’ he told her, and he leaped up into the air and then chased his own tail in a small circle on the pathway to show her what he meant.

‘But truly, hunger is the sharpest knife. Ah, my poor vixen,’ he said, almost to himself, as they walked on.

For a long time there was only the rustle of the wheat in response to the stirrings of the air; and the conversations of insects and birds.

‘She was so clever and such a way she had with woodcock,’ Cooroo said in a kind of loud whisper that seemed to come from his heart.

Pidge gave him a quick look, wondering if the fox were laughing at him again, but he saw that Cooroo wasn’t thinking of him at all.

‘Will I never forget that time of hunger and cold—a time when starvation can beat intelligence—and she ventured out against all reasoning. They were on to her in a flash. I did everything to draw them away from her, barring jumping into their teeth. I flaunted, I barked, I ran across her scent—oh, so many times. But they were like machines. The hunters followed her without mercy all of that day and where she got her strength, I’ll never know. She was so beaten in the end that she lost her footing on a small overhanging ledge and fell into a lake. Whatever chance her tired legs had running on land against the softness of air, there was no chance at all in the struggle against the deep water. She swam, very feebly, as far as she could—but she was done-in, and drowned from pure exhaustion. Ah, it is a sad and puzzling fate to share the world with man, but what can we do? My poor vixen—she could charm anything but the hounds, will I
never
forget it.’

The children were deeply saddened by Cooroo’s words and Brigit was on the verge of tears. Her eyes shone and her lip quivered. Pidge thought it all very terrible; and to distract Brigit he thought that he would bring the conversation back to chickens.

‘Just tell me,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you take just one old hen. Why do you lay about you and kill so many?’ he asked, rather unwillingly; realizing that it sounded as if he were picking on poor Cooroo.

‘Aw Pidge, leave him alone,’ Brigit said, her face looking woebegone and her voice sounding fretful.

Cooroo looked at her with concern.

‘I
would
take one old hen if they’d let me,’ he said to Pidge though still watching Brigit’s face. ‘But you know yourself how cracked they are. No sooner do I put my nose in and say: “Good evening, Ladies! Anybody in here got foul-pest?” or any other joke like that—when they’re squawking and screeching in a way that’d waken the dead, let alone the man with the gun. You know yourself what they’re like. They have only to lay an egg and the whole world must know about it. You know how batty they are, don’t you, Brigit?’

‘Yes,’ she said, beginning to smile.

‘Of course you do. Well, then I panic and try to shut them up; but it’s always too late, do you see?’

‘I see,’ Pidge agreed, partly for Brigit’s sake—for you could hardly expect the chickens to do anything else but make a fuss, he thought.

‘Now that we have all that behind us, perhaps we can be friends?’ Cooroo asked hopefully.

‘I’m your friend already,’ Brigit said very earnestly and throwing her arms around his neck, she hugged him.

‘I know you are, Brigit.’

‘And so am I,’ Pidge said, and he was. And in his heart he wondered how it so happened that a few hens had become so valuable that they could cost the life of a beautiful fox.

Cooroo laughed in short happy barks and went on ahead through the golden radiance of the wheat.

Suddenly, from behind them, came the baying of hounds.

The hairs sprang up on Brigit’s arms and her eyes widened. Pidge felt the back of his neck stir in a horrifying way. It was so unexpected. Until this, they were quite certain that the hounds were far, far behind, because of the difficult barrier that the Elk had so easily crossed.

Cooroo was not startled at all as a part of him always listened for this sound; but his neck-hair had a roughened look and his nostrils twitched.