Tivington Nott (19 page)

No more than twenty yards in front of the leading hound, reeling in his stride, head down, hard-pressed and in evident distress, making his last great effort, the Haddon stag is galloping for his life down the hill towards the dense woods and the stream. The sight of the stag makes me forget about trying to control Kabara. He is so changed that it’s hard to see him as the same beast that stepped confidently out of the woods above Winsford this morning and stood in the sunlight, eyeing us calmly. Now his gait is faulty, his stride stiff and short. When he looks around, his gaze is wild and despairing, as if there isn’t much more he can do. If he stumbles on this slope those big hounds will haul him to the ground. He
must
run! The steady old hounds have taken the lead. That yellow brindly one’s right up there and Bellman’s not more than a yard behind him.

I realise that Kabara has steadied back to a saner pace, but I don’t know whether I managed to do it or whether he did it himself. And here comes Perry, cantering parallel to us up on the far hill. It looks as though he must have turned the stag back from a last attempt to get back on to the moor. And beyond him there’s Mrs Allen’s square, stationary car coming into view. Parked against the skyline, overlooking this combe—unmistakable with its black box on the back—ahead of us again! There’s something relentless about her movements in all this. Unerring. Anticipating the line of the hunt as if she were merely
waiting
for it to happen, rather than following its course.

Harbringdon has slowed and pulled in behind the last of the hounds, cantering shoulder to shoulder with Tolland. Kabara seems content to take up a place behind them, his madness extinguished by something.

But I feel like that too.

No one is saying anything, and as the beaten stag disappears beneath the dark boughs of the larches below us, the pack roiling in behind him, a scattering of rooks rises without a sound from the upper branches of the trees and wheels away into the sky. We go in under them, the thud of our horses’ hooves silenced at once by the thick layer of needles; our mounts collected, well in hand, the pace reduced to a processional lope as we descend the wide ride towards the water.

In another moment we emerge from the gloom of the plantation into a glade which leads us to the bank of a fast flowing river. A dozen or more hounds have already swum across and are clambering out a few yards downstream, where they have begun to quest for the scent of the deer; one balancing delicately on his hind legs, lifting his nose to wind an overhanging willow branch, others working out across the grass. Another bunch has headed off down the water, giving tongue and apparently close-hunting the stag; some struggle along in the water, alternately swimming and leaping from stone to stone, while the rest run along on the bank. A few of the young hounds who led the field away eagerly from Burrow Wood this morning are too overdriven to go any further and have either sat down or are standing shivering, heads drooping, tails between their legs, beyond making any further effort to work now that they have stopped; some of these may never fully recover from this murderous run.

Tolland checks the soft bank for the deer’s slot, determining its direction where it entered the water. The deep fresh marks driven into the tender grass point downstream. And that’s the way we go. Following the howlers! But they soon shut up, becoming uncertain of the scent, and within minutes it’s clear that we’ve lost him!

But he can’t be far away!

He’s round here somewhere!

A moment of confusion, loss of direction, then Perry comes crashing down the combe through a pathless scrub ahead of us, driving stragglers in front of him and calling the staunch and seasoned hounds to him by name. Back they go, falling over each other as their master rides through them, chased by his voice and his whip, back to the point where the deer entered the water. Perry ignores us, maybe even not seeing us, and almost pushes Tolland off the bank and in to the water as he passes, working his hounds feverishly, as if he knows the stag’s ruse and must unravel it within seconds or forfeit the chance forever.

We scramble out of his way, then fall in behind him. I bring up the rear after Harbringdon. We’ve gone only a few yards when he twists round in his saddle and points with his crop at a spot just in front of Kabara’s forefeet. Looking at the spot and not at me, he says; ‘Will you stand here?’ and he rides on.

I suppose it’s an order, so I pull up. This is my post! Watch and wait. Report enemy movements! All round us a scrubby wilderness, down to the bank and overhanging the rushing water; a tangle of thorn and willow above and an impenetrable underlayer weighted with moisture below, flood debris, dead trunks and branches, wads of leaves like banknotes.

Harbringdon and the others out of sight now.

I get off and loosen the girth. Kabara gives a big sigh and shakes himself, almost dislodging the saddle. He’d love a roll in the sand. On my feet for the first time in hours! My legs are shaky and aching. Kabara stabs at the path with his off hind hoof, so I go round and have a look. He lets me lift it. He’s suffered a slicing cut to the inside of the skin just above his pastern at the base of the cannon bone. It’s weeping a clear fluid on to a stain of blood around his hoof. I decide I’d better find a spot where I can get him down to the water and give it a good wash.

We’re making our way along the path when he is alerted by something. He stiffens and snorts a quick breath out of his wide nostrils, gazing fixedly toward a great mat of interwoven willow fronds and rubbish, which is heaving slowly upward out of the water about ten yards in front of us. We stand and watch. Pushing up through this great sodden pad, the festooned antlers of the stag emerge. Slowly and carefully he climbs out of the pool, draped with trailing lines of weed and rubbish, garbed like a circus creature for some special performance, the water cascading from his sleeked coat. There is a blindness of fatigue about him, for he doesn’t see us, sees
none
of the usual warning signs of danger, no longer sensitive to the forest about him, but searching single-mindedly for his life out of this day. I call to him softly; ‘Hey, stag!’ and he falters but doesn’t look round. The wilderness calling his name.

I should alert the hunt, tighten my girth, leap on to Kabara’s back and let rip with that cry that will bring Perry and his fierce dogs scorching down here in a hungry pack within seconds!

What then, stag? . . .

I am a hunter on station. Shall I call them?

With infinite care and daintiness he is sneaking through the tangle of scrub, his massive antlers a burden, laid back along his shoulders, his black nose pointing forward up the hill towards the moor. He is silent except for his breathing; which is a series of short, repeated sharp exhalations of breath, distinctly audible above the rushing of the water. Climbing step by step through the tangle towards the clearer going of the larch plantation, his body dark and hollowed at the flanks—he is going away!

He’s giving them the slip!

Tolland’s exultation was premature. The Haddon stag is not going out over Tarr Ball Hill this time. He has deposited no scent between the river and the path; the cascade of water would have washed it from him there. He has broken the foil! There is a gap now in the trail which a returning Perry and his dogs may pass through, going on at a loss and hunting fruitlessly down the water while their quarry returns silently to the wide moor. I watch his stealthy escape until he is out of sight up the hill and then I turn away and we go on down to the river to wash.

I’m sitting staring into the stream ten minutes later when I hear Cheyne’s view halloa echoing in to the valley from the plantation above! I look at Kabara and he flexes his poll and gives my shoulder a nudge. I get up and tighten the girth. By the time we get back to the glade the stag has been hunted back in to the water, where he has gone to bay, pushing his hind quarters into the far bank and standing almost shoulder deep in the rushing stream. He is going to defend himself.

He’s not like the mad bull, Vern Diplomat V11, who goes at it head down, scraping the ground with his hooves, snorting and threatening. The stag stands tense and quivering, gathered tightly into himself, upright, head held high and back, mouth firmly closed, sighting along the scalloped cheekbones of his face with his black eyes; his body arched, the stag is a drawn bow!

The hounds that are swimming at him directly are safe, as the strong current is carrying them away from him, but one bold dog has gone in above him and the current is carrying this one on to him. The stag goes back a little more, tightening his stance, drawing his sinews a final notch, his wide steady eye fixed on the approaching dog. Then suddenly he releases the tight power, lunging forward and downwards in a clean sweeping thrust that carries him eight feet or more off the bank, the white bone tip of his long brow point slipping accurately in to the paddling dog at the throat and coming out behind its right ear. The dripping carcass of the yellow brindle hound flicks out of the water and thuds in to the bank. The stag draws back again, his eye fiercer.

The other hounds moan and bay and howl their mournful howls at this, but they don’t turn aside until Perry’s desperate shouts threaten them with hanging, and then they draw off reluctantly, complaining and growling and giving out that deep peculiar baying sound that is sinister and needs no explanation.

Perry spurs his hunter across the river and gets behind the stag. Leaping off he quickly pieces together his gun from the various leather pouches on his saddle. Tolland, Harbringdon and Cheyne come down the ride at a gallop together, arriving in the glade as the flat crack of the gunshot cuts a pause into the howling of the dogs—in time to see the Haddon stag die, to see him collapse into the water.

Despite being on a beaten horse Cheyne is first there, jumping straight in to the river and grabbing the antlers of the stag, and showing his great strength by hauling it out on to the grass before Tolland can effectively help him.

I ride across to the far bank behind Lord Harbringdon. And we gather round. The five of us look down silently at the slack body of the dead stag where it lies at our feet on the soft green grass, and Perry blows the mort. The long shrill blasts fill the glade; the wailing lamentation of the horn cries out, echoing and re-echoing deep into the scrubby combe, and then passes back and forth and back again, rises through the dark avenues of the larches, and rises even further, winding up and out thinly at last on to the wild wide moor far above us—where the master sits in her car and waits—and finally it is lost in the wind from the Atlantic.

The hounds bay and moan, join with the huntsman, prowling and skulking and slinking around behind us, their patience worn thin, clamouring for their reward. And so Perry stuffs the horn in to his jacket finally and takes out his hunting knife. We move back a pace as he lays the stag on its back and slits it up the belly. The guts and lungs and all the rest of the steaming contents hang out on to the grass, still attached at the windpipe; till Perry severs it and it falls free in a gurgling mass. He retrieves the liver from this stinking pile and he and Tolland drag the rest of the carcass away a few yards, before giving the hounds their signal.

In go the dogs with a rush, growling, ravenous, frenzied for a full share, spraying shit and blood and bits of torn white membrane around. They’ve finished the lot in less than a minute, rolling and scuffling and sneezing and shaking themselves and licking their dirtied muzzles with rapture.

The staghounds’ party.

There’s a pause. Perry is standing holding the knife, dangling in his hand, his other hand holding the top point of the stag’s antlers, waiting to go on with his work. He and Tolland exchange a look and Tolland reaches into the cavity of the stag’s carcass. He comes up with a handful of blood, holding his dripping palm away from his body in front of him. We watch him. Waiting to see what he will do. He takes two quick strides towards me and splashes the blood in my face.

They all look at me and say nothing as I recoil and try to wipe the wretched stuff off. I see Harry Cheyne’s hard features, his gaze focused on me, and Lord Harbringdon’s pale grey eyes, remote and slightly hooded, turned for this instant in my direction, including me in the group. And in front of me Tolland, his open and generous features for this occasion unsmiling.

‘Fair hunting, boy,’ he says, and Perry and the other two voice their ready agreement.

Perry bends to his task and severs the stag’s head.

I ride away from the death alone, and it comes to me at once that it is the ambivalence in the heart of the Tiger that keeps him from their company at the kill, not the lack of a good horse. His passion for the hunt is not complete enough for him to risk everything as Tolland and the others do. The Tiger takes his scheming with him wherever he goes.

I encounter Mrs Grant making her way down the combe to the kill, leading her beaten horse. She pauses and I stop on the path and look down at her.

‘Was it the right deer?’ she asks.

‘Yes.’

I meet no one else. The moor paths are deserted. I think about Mrs Grant’s question and wonder if I really saw the Tivington nott today, standing like a prehistoric stone among the larches, watching the hunt go by; or whether I just wish that I had seen him. I look around me at the wide deserted sweep of the moor and I feel sure that that strange creature is its only inhabitant besides myself. The hundreds of riders who began the day with us are gone. It is as if there has been no hunting. I finger the coarse hairs of the bloodstained slot given me by Perry at the last moment; shoving it into my hand without a word. I have it in the side pocket of my jacket.

When we reach the heights of Heydon Hill the valley is laid out below us all the way to the coast. Kabara halts. The sun is low in the sky at our backs, hanging huge and red over the grey Atlantic, and the shadow of the hill is cast far across the lowlands before us; fields, roads, villages, towns, smoke rising and tiny cars threading their way.