Lord Morgan's Cannon (9 page)

However, as the day turned, the leopard began to walk more lightly. In his cage, life had never been quiet. He was forever being poked or collared, or thrown a chicken wing to eat, as if that was a challenge. He’d looked up and seen the land as it passed, being driven on the back of a rattling wagon, but all he’d noticed were the roads and the tracks and the humans cutting the hedges, the draughtsman and their horses working the soil, the audiences watching him perform while wearing their own silly clothes.

Now he was free, in the open air, he realised how similar the countryside could be to his homeland. It was a place of grass and trees, of gently rolling hills and plodding animals with their heads down browsing.

He began to recall his first life, spent on another continent. As he slinked along the huge rectangles of green, he watched the sun catch his body, casting a shadow, and remembered how to use the longer grass to break it up. He started to use his nose again and his tongue to lick at the ground, to discover who or what had trampled it before. He even took time just to be still, to lie down every so often and let his tail flick away the flies, closing his eyes as the sun warmed his jowls. He dreamed of going home, of racing a cheetah and running from a pack of hungry hyenas, taunting them, knowing he would always outsmart his enemies. He thought of the giraffes and glow-worms at night and the little dung beetles that would roll past his nose. He almost missed the mosquitoes that would nibble at his rump.

He considered his life and his mood changed again. He felt proud as he remembered his youthful self, bounding away from the Masai and their elongated spears. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the strength that had now left him, and dwelt on how as a two-year-old cat he had climbed his way to the top of the tallest tree in his territory and surveyed the plains. Then he relived the moment it had all changed.

The Masai had come for him, but this time in numbers. They had changed the rules of the fight, bringing men on horses and guns and nets. And they had clearly been watching him, as he liked to watch them. They had tied out a goat and waited for him to take it. He’d been clever, piercing the tethered prey’s throat at night and he’d severed the rope too, taking the body off into the grass. He’d been strong enough to carry the goat the extra mile and he’d then dragged it up into his tall tree, out of reach of the lions and jackals. But he hadn’t realised the Masai has been watching him, waiting for his belly to fill, and for him to fall asleep in the branches.

They had come for him at first light, surrounding the tree, throwing stones at his body until he could take it no more. He tried to descend the tree and dash between two warriors with spears and shields, but he now knew that was exactly where they had wanted him to run. Behind the men were others on horseback, stretching a net across the grass. The net caught at his face and ears and the men fired their guns into the air to disorientate him some more. And that was the last time he ran across the land of his birth.

All these years on, he couldn’t shake it. He felt a fool, for succumbing so. He then growled at nothing in particular and roared as the anger took him. Anger at being stuffed into a crate, and being sick at the motion of the boat that had carried him up the great Nile river and across the Mediterranean to Marseilles.

Anger at the way he’d been sold for a bundle of notes into a French circus, and anger at how the Ring Master had made the leopard his own, taking him on another voyage across the English Channel to Hastings and then Margate, to London and beyond.

The old leopard started to run. He didn’t care who might see him. He wanted to run, to extend his gait, to stretch his body as far as his ligaments would allow. He jumped a brook at the end of a field and sprinted into a chalky plain, unbounded and never ploughed. His paws thudded into the soil, which sprung back, and he raised his tail, hitting top speed. He ran until he could feel the oxygen leaving his muscles and he strained against the fatigue, feeling like a two-year-old again. He didn’t notice the party of humans watching him in disbelief from atop a small cliff in front.

Up on the rocks, the small boy shouted to his elders.

“I told you!” he said, pointing down at the cat. “I told you!”

An older man with grey hair clipped the boy around the ear, silencing him.

“That’s no elephant,” he drawled, pulling at his braces, spitting on the ground.

He turned to two men standing behind him carrying pitchforks.

“Well what do you make of that?” he said, grinning.

“That’ll be worth a least a guinea, I reckon,” answered a short, bald man through a tired white beard and wrinkled skin.

“We better get more lads,” said the other, a tall, young farmhand with strong arms and straight back.

The man wearing the braces encouraged them all to withdraw slowly down the hill.

After an hour, the leopard had run himself ragged. Panting, heaving, he started to plod, mistiming his strides. He had become thirsty, for blood or water. He thought about retracing his steps, but the field of Cotswold ewes seemed distant now. He took the easy path and followed the contour of the land as it gently sloped, not realising he was walking downhill towards the outskirts of the city. Had he lifted his head, he would have noticed a gleaming new tower standing tall across the other side of a large gash in the land, a giant gorge that separated the farmhouses and mansions from the factories, workhouses and portside shacks and houses. But nose to the floor, nostrils wide, drawing in the heavy scents of the buttercups and bluebells, the leopard lolloped on. He started to examine the ground, the snails and slugs and little spiders that jumped out of the way. He gave himself to the closing of the day, the reddening light, cooler air and its fresh little creatures, the knobbly toads and newts and the dragonflies that buzzed low across the grass covering the cat’s ankles.

The leopard, new to this habitat, had travelled in a broad half circle. Having escaped Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top, he now passed through a cabbage field. His spots darkened, his whiskers hardening. He paused to rest in a divot where a ripening cabbage had grown earlier, before it was ripped from its roots. He sniffed at the ground, recognising the smell left by Doris’s feet. He closed his eyes, resting his mind, calming his heart and lungs as he dropped his shoulders just below the height of the cabbage leaves. And then he fell asleep out in the open, a mistake only made by old and tired cats, or those that had ceased to care.

He was woken by a familiar sound. Back home in the Masai, the humans struck their spears into shields covered with buffalo fur. Now he could hear pitchforks striking wooden crates and metal dustbin lids. He raised his head, knowing hiding would be futile. He turned to see seven men and a boy marching across the field towards him, shouting and cursing as they tried to appear more than their number.

He sized up the boy, figuring he could take him, but a man stood behind the child, blocking the escape route. And each human carried a pitchfork or machete. The leopard calculated again, seeing a wooden gate ahead at the edge of the field. He rose and ran for it. He knew this was what the men wanted. He knew he was being flushed out and this wouldn’t be the end of it. But he had no choice. He extended his stride and drove his legs into the soft earth, kicking up clumps of dirt. He accelerated all the way to the gate, which he leaped with a single bound, his belly grazing the strut. He landed and turned sharply, and set a solid pace down the track, passing a big blue house with a black door set back in a garden. He saw a little girl standing on the grass, playing with her stuffed toy bear. He jogged on and spotted another two men in front of him, holding a big net. He stopped and turned and made circles on the path, trapped by hedgerows. He snarled at the men and hissed, his spittle hitting the stones. He lowered his body and raised a paw showing the stumps of his claws. He drew it up and down, bluffing, hoping to scare the men into thinking he would cut them open if they didn’t move out of his way.

Bessie heard the commotion first. She broke away from the sad-looking terrier and braved the air, flying upwards as if caught by a tiny cyclone. She popped out of the top, some twenty feet high, to see seven men running down the track, jockeying with each other, encouraging themselves forward. Closer to the animals were two more men, holding a net in outstretched arms like a dirty bed-sheet that had been thrown to them by their wives. And between them all prowled the leopard, the first Bessie had seen of him since the fire in the Big Top.

Her little lungs drew a sharp breath. Beak still open, she turned her feathers, letting the air beneath escape, and she dropped like a stone until she spread her wings and tail, breaking her fall, landing gracefully on the anteater’s head.

“The leopard is here. The leopard is here,” she said excitedly. “The leopard is here. The leopard is here.”

Edward didn’t hear her and Doris hadn’t noticed she had flown all the way up and back down again. But the terrier’s mood instantly changed. He rolled left and right under the anteater’s paw, desperate to escape.

Bessie repeated herself.

“The leopard is here,” shouted Edward in agreement, jumping along the gate.

“We have to be quick, the humans are trying to catch him,” said Bessie.

“Humans!” trumped Doris happily.

She immediately turned her shoulder in the direction Bessie was pointing.

“Hang on,” said Bear.

He looked down to the terrier under his foot.

“What will they do with him?” he asked.

“The same as with a fox,” answered the terrier.

“They’ll kill him,” said Bear. “We have to save him.”

This confused Doris and scared Bessie. Edward, however, started to think. He chattered his teeth and picked out an old vestige of grape. He scratched his head. And before a minute had passed, he had come to a great realisation, which he announced to them all.

“We have to hide,” he shouted. “If we don’t hide, they will catch us too. And then what?”

“We’ll go back to the circus,” said Doris.

“But the circus is in trouble,” said Edward. “They might not give us back to the Ring Master. What if they want to kill us too?”

“What about the leopard?” said Bear. “We can’t leave him.”

“We have no choice,” said Edward. “We have to hide.”

The animals looked at one another. None had any idea about what to do next, or where to go.

“Let me up,” said the dog, quietly. “I’ll help you.”

“Why?” asked Bear, suspicious of his intent.

“Because you helped me. You saved my life in the woods. Let me help you.”

Bear looked down his long snout at the dog. He licked his black gums and lifted his paw as the terrier sprang to life. At that moment, the bird, elephant, monkey and anteater expected the terrier to bolt between Doris’s legs and up the track, to freedom, the humans and the leopard whom he’d fought so bravely once before.

But the terrier didn’t run. Instead he stood on his hind legs and pushed his muzzle against the latch locking the iron gate into its post. He raised his head and flicked up the latch, setting it free. The gate swung open, Edward moving with it on top of the coat of arms, and the dog ran into the lush garden of the big dark house.

“Come on,” he barked. “Follow me. All of you.”

This time Edward led the way. Hand over hand, he climbed down the metal bars of the gate, his feet landing on a manicured lawn to the side of the path. The grass smelled of petunias, the air of sweet roses. Edward skipped on all fours, his tail held high. He didn’t follow the terrier, but aimed for the row of metal hoops that continued down the side of the house alongside a hawthorn hedge. Doris stepped over the anteater, who ducked to avoid her swinging toes. She flapped her ears and followed Edward. She felt like she was in the ring again, with a show about to start. The terrier criss-crossed the garden. He ran ahead of Edward and around the corner of the house, then reappeared barking. He ran back past the monkey and elephant to Bear, who had not yet crossed the threshold into the garden.

“You have to come. There’s not much time.”

Bear started to run, a rare way for a giant anteater to behave in the absence of a whip. The long hair flowed down each side of his body as he followed his friends and the terrier, weaving between bushes of perfectly clipped rhododendron leaves, passing the apple tree with its bird box and dangling ropes. The commotion had driven Bessie into the conifers. She flitted from tree to tree, occasionally looking back to see the heads of the men on the track and to hear their animated shouts. She saw two pitchforks being raised into the sky, like tridents about to be plunged into a fallen gladiator. She thought she glimpsed the spotted back of the leopard writhing on the ground.

The animals reached the rear of the house. The gardens were much bigger than they appeared from the track. Extending from the regular brickwork of the house was a conservatory, a large room of glass walls with a glass ceiling, each pane held by a thin strip of painted white metal. Inside the conservatory was a single leather armchair with a deep cushion and reclining back punctuated by leather buttons. The chair faced the garden. Next to it was a small tall circular table atop a single stand. A thick glass rested on top of the table, containing a small measure of port. Doris paused for breath.

“Where do you think we are?” she said to no one in particular.

“This is Lord Morgan’s castle,” said Edward with conviction, as he started to button his waistcoat and pat his fur.

The anteater joined them, but his mind drifted as a bright violet oil beetle scurried between a clump of clover in the grass.

“How do you know that?” asked Bessie, landing on Bear’s head. “How do you know that?”

“Think about it,” said Edward.

He bounced over the grass to a wooden bench and clambered atop. He opened his palms and spoke to the others. The terrier had joined them now, and cocked his head as Edward talked about him.

“This is Lord Morgan’s dog. And this is his garden. So this must be Lord Morgan’s castle!”

“Is this where the big cannon is?” gasped Doris.

Ignoring her, the dog yapped.

“He’ll see you,” said the terrier.

“The men can’t see us now,” chortled Edward, spinning atop the bench in glee.

“Not the men. Him.”

“Who are you talking about?” asked Bear, as he tried to concentrate.

“Lord Morgan,” said the terrier. “Tea has just finished. He’s about to retire to the conservatory.”

Doris looked back at the empty seat in the glass house. The chair pointed straight at them.

“He sits there at the same time each day,” said the dog. “He’ll see you.”

“Oh good,” said Doris.

“We can ask him about the cannon,” said Bear.