Lord Morgan's Cannon (19 page)

“And what do you want?” said the bull.

“We think we’d like to live here,” said Bear.

Around him, Doris, Bessie and Edward nodded.

“We’d like to live with you,” he added. “We’d like to live like you. Would you allow that?”

The bull looked at the cows who were enthusiastically chewing long blades of rich green grass.

“Yes,” he said. “I would.”

“Thank you,” said the elephant, anteater, monkey and budgie, at the same time.

“But we’re not so sure about that leopard you talked about.”

Bear patiently explained to the cattle that the leopard was an old cat, long past his prime. He’d had his claws taken from him by the humans and his teeth weren’t now up to much. The anteater doubted they could puncture the hide of a cow, however much the leopard growled and hissed that they could. But he understood the cows might be wary of such a cat coming to live in their home.

Bear accepted there was a natural order. The songbirds ate the insects and the hawks ate the songbirds. Some animals were born to be predators and they couldn’t survive without taking others. But he hoped their experiences of the past few days had taught them something. They had shown all the animals he knew, those from the circus and those from the countryside, even the odd animal that had made its home in the town, with the humans, that where possible, it was better for animals to stick together and help one another than to be at each other’s throats.

Should they find the leopard and save him from the zoo, said Bear, then he promised that they would find a way. So that the cows felt safe and each animal could live in happiness and without fear. So that each of them, even the leopard, still had hope. Perhaps, said Bear thinking out loud, the old cat might prove himself useful. He could scare away those hunting dogs that still bothered the animals living wild in the wood.

“I haven’t known you long,” said the red bull to the circus animals. “But the cows trusted me when I found them, and we are happy because of it. So I will trust you. To find the leopard, you’d best ask the foxes. They have cousins that live in the city. They’d be able to take you to this zoo you said he was in. I will lead you to them.”

Edward offered to travel with the bull. Doris needed a rest and Bear was so behind on his sleep that he gratefully accepted. The anteater curled up beside the elephant and dreamed of the biggest termite mound in the woods.

“Do you know the foxes?” the bull asked Edward.

“They used to come around the circus. Looking for old scraps,” said the monkey. “Some were friendly, others not so much. The cubs were always playful. We met two foxes in the trees near here. One had mange. They wanted us to kill a dog chasing them.”

“I’m not surprised,” said the bull. “The humans make the dogs run after the foxes. I don’t know why. Do you know why?”

“They call it sport.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” the bull said to Edward. “Anyway, it’s best you ride on my back, high off the ground. In case they don’t take to you. You’re a good size for a hungry fox.”

Edward chuckled. He used to play tag with the tails of the foxes visiting the circus. He knew they were wily, but he was wilier and more agile. He’d long ago decided a fox could never catch a pin monkey. But he thought it would be fun to ride on the back of a cow, especially a big bull such as this. So he climbed up the bull’s long red hair and found a soft spot to sit in behind his shoulders.

The bull and monkey set off away from the fort, in a direction that Edward hadn’t been. The bull first entered a clearing which was alive with bluebells and large frogs leaping from under his hooves. Half way across he raised his tail and opened his bowels on to the grass as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Edward held his nose, but he couldn’t help but examine how the pat differed from a dung pile left by Doris.

“That stinks. It’s smelly, smelly, smelly,” a bird called.

Bessie landed next to Edward.

“You left without me. I want to come with you. I want to come. It will be exciting,” she said.

The bull didn’t even feel her land on his hard muscles. On he wandered, sometimes with purpose but often pausing to chew a succulent clump of grass that had freshly grown.

“So what do monkeys do?” asked the bull after a while. “If you don’t mind me saying, you look like a very small human. But more hairy. And you smell better.”

Edward started to tell the bull about how he could play an organ and even juggle. He explained with great pride how looking like a human helped him rob their pockets and he told the bull about taking snuff and dipping his tongue into their wine, though that made him dizzy.

But then he paused. He realised he was still talking as if he lived with the humans. All his hobbies and memories related to things humans did. As he rocked on the shoulders of the bull, he held his hand to his mouth and thought a while. Then he came to the conclusion that he didn’t know what monkeys do, not really, because he’d never been given the chance to live like a monkey.

“You can live like a monkey in the woods,” said Bessie happily. “You can climb trees and pick your own berries. You’ll have fun. It will be so much fun,” she said.

“What about you?” said Edward.

“Oh I’ve always lived like cattle live,” said the bull. “But we do get to play here. We never got to play in those human pens.”

He didn’t feel Edward pat him on the back.

“Sorry, I was asking Bessie,” said Edward, turning to the bird beside him. “In all the time we’ve known each other, I’ve never asked you what budgerigars do?”

“We put on a show! That’s what budgies do,” she said.

“Who is that speaking?” said the bull.

Bessie launched herself into the air and spun about the bull’s nose, pulling every jink she could muster, flashing her colour and twirling in the sun.

“We put on a show!”

“I’ve never seen a bird like you before,” the bull said, seeing her up close for the first time. “Are you a magpie? Or a jay? You’re a bit small for a jay.”

His words took the wind from under her wings and she spiralled down to the grass. She stomped her black toes, feeling for worms. Then she looked up at the bull and monkey.

“I’m not a wild bird at all,” she said quietly. “I don’t really belong out here. I was made to be kept.”

She had no back-story to tell, no tales of family, no wild times before she was caught. All she remembered was being hatched from a bright blue egg on to a bed of cotton wool in a shoebox, on the shelf of a circus wagon.

“By the humans?” asked the bull.

“Yes, that is what I am for,” said Bessie.

“Well that shan’t do,” said the bull.

“Come on. Fly back up here,” said Edward. “We’ll be alright. If we stick together.”

Sitting atop the bull, the monkey and bird expected to enter the trees once more in search of the foxes. But the bull walked through a series of grassy glades colonised by wood anemones, knapweed, dandelions and rockrose. Eventually the bull paused at a wild hedge growing at the edge of the last clearing.

“The foxes are down there,” said the bull, staring at a hole in the ground near the hedge’s roots. “They’ll be resting now. They like to be out at night.”

“How do we get them out?” asked Bessie. “Will they come out for us?”

“I don’t know,” said the bull, who began eating some clover.

Edward sat upon the ox’s back and thought about things. He remembered how Tony the terrier had first flushed out the vixen and dog from the badger hole in the woods. He considered climbing down from his steed, picking up a stick and taking it to the hole, barking like Tony and thumping his stick into the earth. He felt sure that would bring them out. Then he recalled how the foxes had turned on Tony. In their fear and desperation they wanted to kill the terrier and would have without Bear’s intervention. And Edward didn’t want to scare the foxes. He wanted their help. So he conjured up a new plan, one he was immediately proud of.

Using the bull’s red tail, hand over hand he descended to the meadow floor. He skipped over to the fox-hole and practiced being a rabbit. He picked at the green shoots in the grass and wrinkled his nose. Mimicking Charles, the white rabbit he saw in Lord Morgan’s laboratory, he thumped his feet, enjoying the sound as it echoed underground. For a few minutes he pranced and danced this way, while Bessie looked on, unsure of the monkey’s sanity. Foxes can’t resist rabbits, Edward thought, and they would surely come for him.

They did. But Edward hadn’t reckoned on a fox’s reflexes. As he turned his back to march again, a wet nose and two amber eyes appeared in the black of the hole. In a flash, the large thick-set male fox had sprung from his lair and was upon Edward, yellow teeth around the monkey’s thigh. The fox was just about to bite down and crush the leg of this rabbit he thought he’d caught when Edward shouted.

“I’m a monkey,” he screamed. “I’m a monkey.”

His words were just enough to earn a momentary reprieve. But the fox didn’t let go. Panting, he held on to Edward, who could feel the wetness of the fox’s mouth stain his own fur.

The monkey used his two arms to push against the fox’s jowls. When that didn’t work, he waved his hands in front of the fox’s glaring eyes.

“Look!” pleaded Edward. “I’ve got thumbs!”

The fox looked at Edward’s digits and back at the fox-hole. He seemed confused. Yet even now he didn’t release the monkey, the potential meal too good to waste.

A second fox crawled out of the hole, on bent legs. Shy and thin, her bony tail showed through what little fur was left upon it.

“It is a monkey,” she said softly.

“We’ve met before,” cried Edward, his leg becoming bruised by the fox’s bite. “We’ve come to find you. We saved you from that terrier remember?”

The male fox dropped Edward on to the earth. The monkey was all nervous and excited, overwhelmed by his near-death experience. But as he patted himself down, and started to wonder about the meaning of it all, he felt a little pleased that his plan had worked and he had drawn the foxes out.

“That’s them,” said the bull.

“I know,” said Edward, exasperated, running both his hands through the black tuft on his head, smoothing it.

He tried to calm himself.

“How do we know you didn’t lead that terrier to us?” asked the vixen.

“The dogs hunt us, yet you were friends with the dog,” added the male fox as he prowled behind his mate, keeping an eye on the bull grazing on the grass.

Edward felt exposed, alone in the clearing. He searched the hedge for an escape, but there were no holes to leap into or branches to climb if the foxes came for him.

“Don’t you all live with the humans?” hissed the male fox now. “You and that big hairy beast, and that giant cow?”

“That’s no cow!” interjected the bull, dropping a clump of chewed grass from his tongue. “That’s an elephant and that hairy beast is an anteater. Now you listen, you foxes. I’ve not known these animals long. And yes they did used to live with the humans. But not by choice. Like me, they were held against their will, and now they are free. If you don’t trust this monkey here, trust me, because I’ve heard their story. And I vouch for them.”

The bull stared hard at the foxes, his chest heaving with emotion. Edward was thankful for the bull’s words, deciding to be more patient with him in future.

The foxes lay down. But it was a feint. They weren’t convinced.

“What did that anteater do with the terrier once we’d left?” asked the male fox. “Did he let it go, after it had tried to kill us?”

The bull couldn’t answer. Edward tried to think on his feet. He wanted to tell the foxes the truth, that after their previous encounter in the woods, Bear had let the terrier go, and that they now considered Tony a friend. But he sensed how deep the antipathy between dogs and foxes ran.

Suddenly, behind the female fox, out of the hole scampered three little foxes, each with bright eyes and a shiny new orange coat. They skipped and jumped with the joys of spring. The vixen rose to her feet, but too late. The cubs attacked Edward, but with soft gums and baby teeth, tugging at his tail, wanting to play. As he was pulled in different directions, the vixen began to laugh.

“This monkey risked his life to find us. And that anteater saved mine. Let’s hear why they’ve come,” she said to the male fox as their cubs rolled around Edward.

Up on the bull’s back, Bessie blew out a lungful of air. She thought it might have been the end of Edward. Instead the monkey told their story, all of it, and truthfully. He began with their life in the circus, telling the foxes that each of them, in their own way, had accepted it as the only life they might have.

They hadn’t realised how harshly the humans had treated them, not really, until the fire had burned the Big Top, setting them free. It was only now, out in the fresh country air, that the elephant and anteater, the budgie and monkey had realised their own potential. What life could be like if they took control of it themselves and lived it as they wanted.

He spoke of how they had first set out to find Lord Morgan’s cannon, but how he’d learned the cannon was not a gun, and that quest was only for the humans anyway. It wouldn’t have saved the circus and it wouldn’t have saved them. So they had begun their own quest. To save each other and to set up life here in Leigh Woods.

But one thing prevented them from doing so. As well as the four circus animals the foxes had seen, there was a fifth. He was an old, cantankerous leopard. A selfish one, who would take the foxes’ meal without a second thought. But this leopard too had been forced to live an awful life. And whether he knew it or not, the other circus animals were his friends, and they had decided to save him. No animal deserved to be kept in a zoo by the humans. None deserved to be called stupid. And none deserved to be hunted for sport. As the monkey said all this, he realised he was using Bear’s words, and how wise the giant anteater had become.

The male fox growled.

“So you want us to help you find this leopard? And help set him free?”

“We only need your help to find the zoo. We’ll do the rest. You won’t have to risk yourselves,” said Edward.

“You’ve got these cubs to raise. You must stay safe and raise these cubs,” shouted Bessie from the safety of the bull’s back.

“What kind of animal is this leopard?” asked the vixen.

“He’s a cat,” said Edward.

“We don’t like cats,” said the male fox.

“He’s a big cat, a dangerous cat,” said the bull. “That likes the smell of cows and sheep. But I think we should help them, not least because the anteater thinks this leopard may be able to help you, by scaring the dogs away.”

The foxes had lived their lives knowing the young bull. He’d become a reassuring constant in their woods, a figure the foxes had told their cubs to run to if they were being pursued and couldn’t get underground.