Journey to Freedom (9 page)

Night fell. Lorna’s patience was exhausted. She set off with tremendous eagerness, fully confident that this time there would be no bar to her taking the succulent calf. The honey badger was watching out for her. He wanted to be in at the kill. He saw her huge lithe body looming in the twilight as she hastened along the much-used path. The badger swung in behind her, running quickly to keep up. Lorna was in a hurry. Ratel guessed the lioness was intent on rectifying her earlier mistake. He knew she felt cheated and wouldn’t be comfortable until she had satisfied her pride. He hoped to have a portion of the tender meat she had set her sights on himself.

At the thorn hedge the badger started to climb again. Lorna, who hadn’t acknowledged his presence until then, growled threateningly. ‘No! Not that way, my friend. You must come the long way round like me!’

The badger, halfway up the hedge, stopped and considered. So the lioness was afraid he would reach the
prey first? Perhaps he would. Would it be worth his while to take this chance of purloining the choicest parts? He weighed the pros and cons. Lorna’s snarls grew in fierceness as he hesitated. The badger enjoyed the idea of scoring over the lioness, but he feared the consequences. Slowly he clambered down.

‘Very wise,’ Lorna commented. ‘I doubt if you would have seen daylight again if you had crossed me.’

‘Probably not,’ the badger answered, unperturbed. ‘Lead on, lion.’

‘Complete silence now,’ Lorna urged as she once again caught the scent of prey. She stalked alongside the hedge, slightly irritated by the rustling of the badger’s feet behind her. Her eyes picked out an animal lying as still as death against the lowest thorns. She dropped to her belly and crawled forward cautiously. The animal didn’t move. It was quite dead. When the lioness realised this she hurried forward again.

A still-born lamb had been placed deliberately to forestall Lorna’s designs on the calf. The police had obtained the dairy farmer’s agreement to the plan following the newspaper’s request. The natural casualty had been procured from the nearby sheep flock and it was hoped this would serve to distract the lioness until her old keeper arrived the next day. However, in case the ruse didn’t work, two police officers stood on guard on the farm ready to shoot if they had to.

Lorna sniffed at the body hungrily. It was a small meal for her, but she was ravenous and couldn’t ignore it. She snatched up the carcass and ran back to the cover of the trees. The honey badger trotted after her hopefully.

Lorna snarled at him. ‘There will be none for you, Ratel.’ She busied herself with tearing off the remnants
of wool while the badger watched. ‘No more than a morsel for a lion. Find your own prey.’

Ratel had had an idea. ‘All right, I will,’ he said. He turned his back on Lorna and trotted down the slope once more towards the thorn hedge. He heard the crunch of bones as the lioness’s powerful jaws dismembered the tiny lamb. Lorna was too absorbed with her meal to notice where the badger was heading. ‘First to the prize after all,’ he murmured to himself.

He scaled the prickly hedge easily, just as before, and made for the barn. Nobody on guard was on the lookout for a small animal like a badger. He slipped through the darkness, arousing no more than a passing interest from a fox on the prowl for rabbits. Every so often Ratel stopped in his tracks. It wouldn’t be long before Lorna would have devoured the lamb and be on his tail. He listened carefully. He was excited.

The barn was closed. There was no way in now for a lion, but it was an old barn, and some of the boards were damaged. There were gaps for a small animal to wriggle through; the honey badger was capable of squeezing through surprisingly small spaces. He found one that would serve and scrambled through. The cow and her calf lay in a corner, the cow peacefully chewing some hay. The badger listened carefully. All he could hear was the champing of her teeth.

‘She doesn’t suspect yet,’ the badger chortled to himself. ‘What a din there will be when the lion discovers I’ve played a trick on her!’

Mother and calf got to their feet, suddenly sensing danger. The badger trotted forward and at once the cow began to stamp nervously and moo. The calf echoed her alarm. The badger was about to dart between them when there was a tremendous roar in the distance which he recognised at once. He stood
rooted to the spot. Lorna was calling him. She was furious.

The men keeping watch on the farm tightened their grips on their weapons. Powerful lights were switched on. Their beams swept the farmyard and the farm’s precincts, pasture and meadow, while Lorna continued to roar. Ratel marvelled at the noise, his skin bristling. The cow and calf were terrified. The lioness, angry and vengeful, was climbing the thorn hedge, her anger overriding her discomfort. Her face was scratched, her skin torn, but she ignored the irritation. The cunning of the honey badger had surprised and riled her beyond bearing. She was not so much furious with him as furious with herself for failing to anticipate his deception. She teetered on the top of the hedge. Thorny twigs and stems snapped beneath her weight and showered to the ground as she steadied herself for a jump. Just then the beam of an arc lamp swung towards her and stopped, bathing her in light and dazzling her. Lorna roared again, this time with fright. Desperate to escape the blinding light, she struggled to free herself from its glare. There was no refuge on the farm side of the hedge, where most of the area was starkly illuminated; Lorna half jumped and half fell backwards into the comparative darkness behind her. Pierced and ripped by thorns, she howled with pain. Then she retreated to the woods to lick her wounds, limping noticeably from a large thorn caught in one of her paws.

There was no direct path that could be taken to follow her. By the time the armed men were on her trail, Lorna was well hidden. The deep darkness of the forest made pursuit difficult and dangerous, and the men reluctantly decided to abandon the search. With fear of capture removed, Lorna became more conscious of pain. She lay in some undergrowth and tried
to bite the thorn free from her left hind foot. It was a very awkward manoeuvre; the thorn was too fine for her great teeth to grasp. She licked the place to soothe it, then continued on towards her lair.

By the time Lorna reached the cave, her paw was throbbing agonisingly. With each step the thorn had been driven further between her toes. She hobbled into her lair and lurched on to her side, keeping her injured foot free. Lorna gasped wearily and wondered how she could ever stalk prey again.

The honey badger had been scared by the brilliant lights. He hadn’t known where to run. He tried to skulk in a corner of the barn but the cow’s continual mooing made him jittery. He thought that eventually some of the men would come to investigate, so when he heard them set off in pursuit of Lorna he made haste to get clear.

He got out of the barn and scurried back to the hedge. He wasn’t sure where Lorna was and he knew she was angry with him. He needed to avoid her, at least until she had calmed down.

‘That wasn’t a clever trick,’ he told himself. ‘I gained nothing by trying to cheat her. Now she’ll be hunting for
me
.’ He climbed the hedge and carefully descended on the other side. ‘She’s so silent when she’s hunting,’ he muttered. ‘She could be lying in wait anywhere.’

He couldn’t catch her scent so, with distinct nervousness, he edged along the hedge bottom, constantly wondering if he would suddenly be crushed by the lioness leaping out at him from the darkness. Gradually, as the moments passed, the badger gained a little confidence. Maybe Lorna had forgiven him. If she had been hunting him, she surely would have found him by now. He felt easier and yet he was puzzled. Where could she have gone?

He returned to the forest and set about finding something to eat. Insects and a skinny frog were all that came his way that night. His concentration was upset and he spent as much time trying to locate Lorna as he did his prey. The forest, of course, was large and the lioness could have been anywhere. Yet the badger began to worry that somehow the humans had taken her.

‘Only one way to find out,’ he told himself. ‘I must go to her lair.’

Some distance from it he knew Lorna was inside. He sensed her presence even before he heard her panting breaths. She was in distress, he could tell, and he approached more boldly than he otherwise would have done.

She heard him and was surprised to find herself relieved. ‘Ratel! I wondered if you’d come.’

The honey badger paused at the entrance. ‘Are you ill?’ he asked. ‘What has happened?’

‘I got injured,’ the lioness answered in an unusually plaintive voice. ‘The thorns ripped at me. I’ve got one stuck in my foot. I can’t get it out and it’s lamed me.’

‘Thorns?’ the badger echoed. ‘From the hedge?’

‘Yes. I came after you. You must have heard me. I wanted to teach you a lesson, you treacherous little . . .’ Lorna’s voice subsided into a sigh but the badger began to back away none the less.

‘I caught nothing,’ he said. ‘There were humans all around. But are you sure you’re lame? How could you have got back here so easily?’

‘I
didn’t
get back here easily,’ Lorna snarled. ‘Every step was agony. Ratel, how can I hunt? I can’t walk.’

‘Let me see your injury. Perhaps I can help. Where is the thorn?’ He inched forward, unsure if he would be permitted to enter the cave.

Lorna was past caring about that. ‘You’ll see nothing
in here,’ she told him. ‘It’s far too dark. But you may come in. I – I’d welcome your company.’

The honey badger had never before been treated like this, not even in Lingmere. He trotted inside. ‘Well now, lion, this is a problem indeed,’ he commented. ‘When there is more light, I’ll inspect your paw. I can see which one is paining you, by the way you’re lying.’ He glanced around at the scraps of bone and hide littering the cave floor. ‘You won’t be doing any pouncing for a while, will you? You can’t make a leap on three legs.’

‘I know all that,’ the lioness growled. ‘I shall be confined to catching prey that walks past my nose.’

‘Whoops! Maybe I won’t come so close,’ the badger remarked jocularly, but he didn’t advance any further.

‘I shall starve,’ Lorna moaned. ‘I can’t live off beetles and grubs.’

‘I will bring you prey,’ the badger said. ‘There are plenty of rabbits and birds and squirrels. I won’t let you starve, lion. We have always been friends, haven’t we?’

‘Yes we have,’ Lorna purred. ‘Thank you, Ratel.’

‘And when you’ve recovered,’ the badger went on, ‘we’ll plot how we can trap that succulent, tender animal we both want so much.’

Lorna snarled. ‘The humans are guarding it. They threw lightning at me and forced me away. They would do the same again.’

The badger grinned, showing his powerful teeth. ‘It was night-time. What if we go by day?’

‘You are cunning. But would it be sensible? Humans are more active in the daylight.’

‘Yes – too busy to wonder if we’re coming.’

‘We’ve tried both daylight and darkness,’ Lorna reminded him. ‘Humans are always on guard, it seems.
I can’t think about it now, Ratel. Pain wipes out everything else.’

‘Do you want to sleep? If so, I’ll go.’

‘I
can’t
sleep. My foot pounds so.’

‘Unfortunate lion,’ said the badger. ‘I’m sorry for you. Do you ever wish you were back in the care of humans?’

‘Until now, no. Now I don’t know how I feel. But I would like to see my sister again.’

On his way back to Lingmere Joel thought a lot about the lionesses and how time was not on their side. When he arrived he was relieved and gladdened by the news that the police had stopped short of shooting Lorna. Now he had a few days’ grace in which to try to trace her and coax her into the open. He believed she might still respond to him in a way she would never do to anyone else. That she would remember him he had no doubt. Theirs was a long association and if anybody could save the day, Joel knew it was himself. But the news from Kamenza was not good. Ellen’s fast continued and she was thin and weak.

Joel lost no time in acquainting himself with all the places in the forest where Lorna had been sighted. Martin accompanied him to the woodland and described everything that had occurred there and how his team had failed at every point. ‘We needed you here from the word go,’ he finished.

‘That might have been wiser, yes,’ Joel agreed. ‘There was no time, though, to think about it. Things went wrong from the outset.’

The team gathered together again with Joel as their leader. They combed the woods, Joel calling the lioness by name at regular intervals. He was confident of some response from Lorna if he could only get to a spot where she could hear him. Each time Joel called, the
men stood silently and strained their ears for a sound. When they heard nothing, they moved to another place.

‘Lorna! Lorna! Lorna!’

The lioness heard the calls faintly from a distance, but the men were not sufficiently close for her to recognise Joel’s voice. She stayed in the cave, only moving to hobble to the stream to drink. While there were humans around she kept herself hidden. The wound in her foot made her extremely vulnerable. If she were discovered in the open, she would not be able to run away.